← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Intentionality! Intentionality! Intentionality!
00:30:57
Author Interview with Danya Kukafka
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- [00:01]
A
What's up everyone? This is Cece. If you're a writer, then chances are you've wondered if your story is good enough. Maybe you're wondering that right now. I get it. Here's what I can tell you. As long as your story is making the reader curious, you're good. Now, I'm not saying you won't have to make edits when working with an agent or publisher, edits are part of the game. But I am saying that you will get ahead in your career if you know how to make the reader curious. The best way to do that? Infuse your story with plenty of tension, conflict and stakes. Which is why I'm so excited to invite you to join my four day course, Writing Tension Creating Tension, Conflict and Stakes in youn Story. It starts on October 13th. My favorite part about this class is that there are formulas. Yes, formulas for tension, for conflict, for stakes, and for the first time ever, we're having two optional interactive components including a query letter, studio and live critiques of select first pages. I'm super excited about this new format because I've seen it yield results in writers works and it works for writers of any genre as long as you're serious about improving your work. So if you're ready to take your writing to the next level, join me for this four day course. Don't worry if you can't attend live, the sessions will be recorded. For more information, check out my bio on Instagram or the podcast's website. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
- [01:33]
B
Have you been sitting on the fence about signing up for the Beta Reader matchup? Or have you signed up before but haven't as yet found your writing Soulmates the next matchup is the last one of the year, so don't snooze on it. Get matched up with those writing in a similar genre and or time zone so they can critique your work as you critique theirs. Your manuscript doesn't have to be complete to sign up for this 3,000 word evaluation. This particular matchup will be open to registrations from now until the 2nd of November, with the matchup emails going out on the 3rd of November. For more information and to register, go to Biancamarae.com and look for the Beta Reader Matchup tab. Please spread the word even if you aren't signing up this time. The more writers we have registered, the better the matches will be, which means you'll be paying it forward to your fellow authors. Hi there and welcome to our show the Ship no one tells you about writing I'm best selling author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cece Lehrer of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of P.S. literary. Hi, everyone. Today's guest is the internationally best selling author of Girl in Snow and Notes on an Execution. She is a graduate of New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She works as a literary agent. It's my pleasure to welcome Dania Kukafka. Dania, welcome to the show.
- [03:08]
C
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
- [03:11]
B
I am so excited to have you here because CeCe told me ages ago how amazing notes on an Execution was. She was like, oh my God. Oh my God. You have to read it. You have to read it. And I read it and loved it. And it only then occurred to me that I think you and I actually met in 2017 at Book Expo America. Right. Because both of our debuts were chosen as Indy's introduced program books for the American Booksellers Association.
- [03:41]
C
Oh, my gosh. You were there. That is so funny. Wow. Yeah, that was. It feels like a million years ago, but I do remember it. That's too funny.
- [03:50]
B
I love was one of the last ones, I think, actually they didn't have too many after that, but it was just so incredible to be there, have a debut chosen as an IND introduce, which was incredible. And then I was like, I've met this woman and I loved your debut as well. So then it made sense why I love this one so much. So for our listeners, if you're having a look on our YouTube channel, I'm holding up notes on an execution. I think there's multiple covers probably at this point because the book has done so well, but it's a beautiful cover. Right. So there is so much I want to discuss with you today, Daniel, before we begin, I just want to ask about the inspiration for the novel as well as the vision that you had for what you wanted the novel to be.
- [04:34]
C
Yeah, you know, the inspiration for the novel, I think, was just the fact of consuming a lot in this genre. I've always been a fan of true crime. I've always listened to the podcasts and watched the documentaries and read all the books. I love true crime. I also love a mystery. My first book, Girl in Snow, is much more of a whodunit. Like, you know, first page you have a dead body. On the last page you find out who did it. And I mean, I like to think it does a little more than that too, but it had that classic structure and with notes on an execution. I really wanted to try something different and to interrogate the very genre we're looking at. Right. So I felt that I wanted to do something new with it. And I also had always been fascinated with serial killers in a way that I couldn't understand about myself, and I think in a way that a lot of people don't understand. You know, why are we watching these documentaries over and over and over again? Why do they keep coming out? I think there are 13 documentaries about Ted Bundy that have been made. Why do we love that guy so much? I don't know the answer, but I wanted to at least ask the question.
- [05:31]
B
And I love how you've said average men become interesting when they start hurting women. And that is so damn true. And you also said in your author's note, you know, you wanted to look at what we lose when women die, what the victims would be like as adults because there's so much focus put on the serial killer themselves. And then you also finished with, the story of the serial killer is bigger than the bodies he leaves behind. It encompasses an infinite web, an elaborate tangle of predominantly female trauma and endurance. There is a question lurking in the dark corners of that weary tale. I wrote this novel because I needed to ask. I needed to look. I am tired of seeing Ted Bundy's face. This is the book for the woman who survived goosebumps. Absolutely love it. So, something that I just want to explore before we look into so much of the intentionality of this novel is I know before I begin writing, I have this idea, and it's this perfect idea, and it's like you can hear angels singing, and it's glowing. And then you start putting, you know, pen to paper or you start typing out the words, and nothing can ever live up to this idea that you had of it. But this novel seems so perfect. It's just so wonderful. So do you feel like the end product lived up to the vision that you had for the book when you started out writing it, or did that evolve as you went along?
- [06:58]
C
You know, I don't think I had the vision for the book until it was over, until I had written the whole thing. And I think the vision sort of came to me as my editor and my agent said, oh, this is what you've done. And I was like, oh, I think this is what I've done. And them telling me what I've done to understand it. I don't think that I had any intention of going to make any particular statements or do anything specific. I mean, the inspiration from where the book came from, of course, had its intention, but I did not. I did not think of that as I was writing each page. I was just trying to tell a story, I think, and sort of what it means to people and what has been layered over it on top of as a narrative comes from the read rather than the writing, I think.
- [07:38]
B
Yeah. And I think that's why it's so important to have people reading your work, because, you know, I know for our listeners, you're going to go, oh, I don't have an agent, I don't have an editor. But in terms of beta readers, in terms of first readers, it's so important because sometimes we're not quite sure what we're trying to do. And it is so wonderful to have somebody read it and go, this is what I took away. This is what, you know, really stands out for me.
- [08:01]
C
Yeah. And the book, actually. I mean, this book went through so many iterations. I'm glad you think it succeeds on the page, because for a long time, it really didn't. When I first started writing it, it was told in a completely different format from completely different perspectives. And my agent read it and sort of said, this is not it at all. Start over. I'm not interested. But I am interested in this one aspect, so flip it and make it. Make it that book instead. And I did. And I think that process really helped me define what I wanted it to be as well.
- [08:28]
B
I love that I'm fascinated by that because I'm so fascinated by the evolution of story, how you begin thinking this is the main character or this is what the story is. And as you write or as you get feedback, you realize that wasn't really it. So in terms of that, I want to look at so much of the intentionality you brought to every decision you made about the novel. And that's clear now to me in terms of the rewrite, how intentional these things were. So we're going to go through each of that, because I keep saying on the podcast, it doesn't matter what you do, just do it with intention, personality. Right. For our listeners. Let me read the back copy. Just so that for those of you who aren't familiar with the book, I just want to give you a bit of orientation here. So Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in 12 hours. He knows what he's done and now awaits execution. The same chilling fate he forced on those girls years ago. Through a kaleidoscope of woman, a mother, a sister, a homicide detective, we learn the story of Ansel's life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a 17 year old girl pushed to desperation. Hazel, twin sister to Ansel's wife, forced to watch helplessly as her sister's relationship threatens to devour them all. And finally, Saffy, the homicide detective, hot on his trail. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake. Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men. Okay, so the first thing in terms of intentionality is we begin with Ansel when there's just 12 hours to go until he's going to be executed. All the other POVs are written in the third person, but he's written in the second person. Right. So why that choice?
- [10:26]
C
This is a long story, but I'm gonna tell it to you. Yes. So when I first started writing this book, I thought it belonged to Ansel, the serial killer. I thought this was his novel and I had no intention of flipping it on its head. Whatever. I was trying to investigate my interest in serial killers by going into the mind of a serial killer and thinking about it that way. So the first draft I turned into My Agent was a book told from Ansel's perspective that spanned from his birth to his death, alternating with chapters from a character who's barely in it anymore named Blue. And Blue had this teenage love triangle going on. Ansel had murdered a sibling of hers that she now no longer has in the book. So it was totally, totally different. Half the book was told from Ansel. The first main chapter, which is told from his mother, Lavender, it started with that, but from his perspective as a child. And the only thing that stayed from that first draft was the scene set in the prison, which counted down the last hours of his life. And that was only one chapter of the book. It was maybe like 10 pages. And my agent read it and very thoughtfully said, that part is interesting. And then she said to me something I'll never forget, which is, what about the women? What about the women? I think this is a book about them instead. And that just really clicked for me, that plus the notes about the prison being more interesting. I then stretched out the structure of the book so the whole thing takes place in a 12 hour countdown down with the women's stories, interspersed in between, Ansel actually takes up like, I think, like 10 or 15% of the book. Now, his chapters are very short compared to the women's. And when I first sat down to write them, I kept them in the third person. So the first line is, you are a fingerprint. It had started as he is a fingerprint. And I wrote the entirety of Ansel's sections in the third person. And they felt so flat. I felt something was missing. And I was watching yet another Ted Bundy documentary and thinking to myself, why am I here? Why are we doing this? And the concept, I think, is to bring ourselves close to what it feels like to be a person, that bad person who makes those horrible decisions, a person who is evil in this way. We're so curious about it. It's morbid, it's kind of. It's kind of obscene, right? And I thought, well, what if the reader is the serial killer? Then the serial killer is you. You are a fingerprint, right? And it brings you so much closer. And I went back and I literally just transcribed everything from the third person into the second. And it came alive. It was like a lightning bolt. I've never had an experience like that since now.
- [12:48]
B
It was incredible. And I love how you make us the serial killer. But besides that, there was even another side to it that felt like Ansel was telling his story to himself. The other you could have been Ansel because he's so disconnected, right? He doesn't know how to feel things properly. He doesn't know how to behave. He's always looking at other people for cues on how to do this. And so the whole time it had that double thread where we are the serial killer and Ansel's just so disconnected from himself that it's almost like he's telling the story to himself.
- [13:21]
C
Absolutely. He's super into self mythologizing. He has this thing he calls the theory, right? Which is the stack of nonsense rubbish he's been writing. And we later find out that it's utter nonsense. It's basically incomprehensible. It's a puddle of nonsense that he thinks is this brand new fresh take on philosophy. But it's basically like, you know, a freshman in college has taken a Philosophy 101 class and it later comes to light via other characters that that's what he's writing. But he believes that he's smart. He believes that he's so different from all the other men in this prison because he is thinking deeply about right and wrong. He's thinking deeply about Himself. And so he's telling the story of himself to himself in a way that lets him off the hook or tries to let him off the hook until the moment where it can.
- [14:01]
B
Yeah, it is, because he's. He's trying to. It's more than trying to make sense of his life. He's trying to excuse the decisions he's made, etc. Etc. So there is that mythologizing. And I love the part where the prison warden goes, oh, it's a manifesto. Like, I've seen hundreds of these. And he gets so upset, he's like, it's not a manifesto, because I'm more special than these other people who've written the manifestos.
- [14:27]
C
But it totally is. What else would it be? Of course it's a manifesto, right?
- [14:31]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That just made me giggle because he gets so offended. He really gets upset. All right, so the novel has multiple POVs besides Ansel. So we have Lavender, his mother Hazel, who's his ex wife's sister, and Saffy, the detective. Now, this brings back to something you said, because you started off with Blue as a POV character. And I don't want to give away in the story who Blue is, but there are two other women who you could have told the story from as well. Shauna, who's a prison guard, who he kind of develops a relationship with. And then there was Blue. So I think when it comes to intentionality in a story, it's as important to go, these are the characters I'm including for these reasons, and these are the ones I'm taking out or I'm excluding. So if you can speak a bit about why those three women and why leaving out the other ones, especially considering you started with Blue.
- [15:23]
C
It's an interesting fact that you pinpointed that, because I held quite a series of auditions, is how I'm looking at it now. In retrospect, at the time, I just wasn't sure what story I wanted to tell. I knew Lavender would be one of the characters. I knew Sapphy, who later becomes a detective, would be one of the characters, but I did not know she would later become a detective. Perspective. I had started out saying, okay, if this is a story about the women, then who are the women? I knew I had Lavender. I knew I had Sapphy. And then from there, I went in a ton of other directions. I wrote a chapter from a character named Olympia, who is a employee at the Dairy Queen where Ansel works. I wrote a chapter from the perspective of Cheryl, who is an adoptive mother. Later on, in the book, I wrote a chapter from a courtroom illustrator who no longer even exists. I tried to write some from Shauna. It didn't work. The voice just wasn't right. But when I found Hazel, who had originally been a younger sister to Jenny, who is Ansel's wife, I sort of thought, okay, these three are the most interesting. I thought they were the most interesting. And I had sort of planned out the rest of the book to write 12 women. And I gave the first three to a friend who read it. Shout out to my friend Janessa, who read it very early and said, I like these women. Why don't you have them come back? And there was this click where I was like, oh, I know exactly where Lavender is going to be in another 30 years. And of course, Sapphy's going to become a detective. And of course Hazel's going to have. Have this really complicated relationship with her sister when they become adults. Right. And I. That was the moment the whole book sort of just unfurled in front of me was when I found those three. But it wasn't for lack of trying everybody else.
- [16:53]
B
Yeah. And. And this is what I mean all the time when I say circle the building of your work. You know, Daniel circled this building like a mofo. There's a lot of circling happening here.
- [17:04]
C
Yes.
- [17:05]
B
But also in terms of. So Jenny is the one who ends up married to Ansel, and so why not her perspective? Why her sister's perspective?
- [17:16]
C
You know, I tried her first. I actually wrote many thousands of words from Jenny, and she was too enamored with Ansel. I needed someone who could see through him. I needed someone who could see him much more clearly and who wasn't being fooled by him. Right. And part of Hazel's perspective is that she's watching her sister get tugged under the waves by this guy, and she can sort of. She gets it, but she also is scared of it. Yeah.
- [17:39]
B
And there's nothing worse than feeling so helpless when you see someone you love in the thrall of somebody like this and you can see, you know, through them and they can't see it, and you just feel so utterly, utterly helpless. So I love that we had it from Hazel's perspective because we got that sense of impending doom, that this is not going to end well. And yet we still had access to Jenny through Ansel's pov, and we had access to Jenny through Hazel's pov. So we still see Jenny even though we're not in her point of view.
- [18:10]
C
Exactly. And I loved there was a moment where I knew I was on the right track. When I was writing Hazel's Point of View and I was writing the scene of Jenny and Ansel's wedding and they're dancing together in their first dance. And Ansel's so charming, charming, charming. And from Hazel in the audience, she can see that as he turns in the dance, his smile just falls completely off his face. Right. And that's something that Jenny herself would never be able to see. His smile was fake all along. Right. And Hazel can see it, but Jenny's dancing.
- [18:36]
B
Yeah, yeah. She's in the moment. It's her wedding day, so. Yeah. All right. So can we talk about the structural framework of taking us into the past and bringing us back repeatedly to Ansel as the time ticks away until his execution? You know, this kind of structure, like, what did it allow you to do in terms of pacing and tension?
- [18:56]
C
I had to be very thoughtful about where my clues for the front story were coming into the backstory. And that was something that just takes trial and error. I think that's something that you just have to try. And if it feels like things are moving too fast, you have to pull them back, and if it feels like they're moving too slow, you have to push them forward. And I don't think there's any way I could have sat down and planned that out before writing it. I think it had to come just as I was working on the chapters as they were going.
- [19:20]
B
Yeah, yeah, that is something that's organic, that you've got to. It's like a tuning fork, you know, you have to feel for the emotional calibration of it. It. I have a follow up question before that, a word from our sponsors.
- [19:32]
D
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- [21:05]
B
Okay, great. So a follow up question to that is the challenge in this kind of framework is to make the present day storyline as compelling as the past, which you could have done entirely through interiority and emotionality alone. Because to be a person who understands that in two hours time you will die is a big thing. There's a lot of reckoning that you can imagine will be happening and there's a lot of feeling, etc. But without giving anything away, I want to say that you included a lot of plot elements as well to heighten the tension and make it especially fraught. Was that something that was automatically there? Was that something that came with the rewrite? Speak to us about that process.
- [21:48]
C
Yes, that was always there because I knew that you cannot countdown from 12 hours. For someone who knows he's going to die, he has to believe he's not going to for at least half of those 12 hours. Right. And that was where the plot points really came in. He has this prison guard named Shauna who he's sort of manipulated into believing that she can break him out of prison, that he's not going to die. So he, he opens the book, he knows the countdown is happening, but he's like, I'm better than that, I'm special. Right. And there comes a point at the very, very middle of the book, right in that crux where you're like, what's gonna happen now? That is just sort of a structural boon in the way that, you know, you look at the structure of any novel and you can say, is this a three act? Is this a five act? I think this one might be a five act. A friend once told me it was a five act, but I'm not sure though it was after written. But you can see within the structure of the book that he has a moment of changing and a moment of recognition and realization that I think was extremely necessary and heightened the tension. I think if that wasn't there, it would fall very flat.
- [22:47]
B
Yeah. But that ticking clock just makes it feel that much more fraught. And it's so interesting because there's a part that goes, this is a terrible person. He has done terrible things and you know that he's going to die. But there's a part that almost doesn't want him to die. Like you just wrote it so brilliantly. Because I was just so constantly conflicted. But I like that my attention wasn't on him. My attention was on the victims the whole time. Because you keep showing Safi thinking of the victims as they would be later in life. And for many of them, what she imagines for them is so mundane. It's not that she imagines that they go on to become Pulitzer Prize winning chemists or whatever. It's just, you know, being moms, just painting their nails or cooking dinner, which was incredible. That specificity really made them come alive. So can you speak a bit about writing them that way?
- [23:42]
C
Yeah, that was a much later addition into the book actually. That was really a question of how can you write a book about a serial killer? How can you write about murder without really thinking about the victims themselves? And I hadn't done much thinking about them for a long time. They were sort of these symbols of what he had done rather than people. And the people who populate the story are the women in his life, not the victims. And I did want to make that distinction because I think many books focus on the victims and I was interested in the living women around him. But you have to pay tribute to the people who have sort of died in your serial killer's hands. I think. And that was my intention there was really to let them have a moment to sing. They didn't have the whole book. They didn't really have perspective chapters, but they did have a moment where they got to say their piece.
- [24:23]
B
Yeah. And the fact is that they didn't have to become Pulitzer Prize winning chemists for their lives to have been worthy. You know, anything they chose to do with their lives meant they had that choice. It wasn't taken away from them. And there is that poignancy that really tugs at you throughout.
- [24:40]
C
I remember the moment one of those scenes came to me. I had gone. It was a Sunday. I don't usually write on Sundays, but I'd gone to brunch for a friend's birthday and came home and just had this image in my head. And I sat down to write it just immediately because I had pictured one of the victims. Izzy has this image of herself on her grandpa's sailboat in Tampa. She's peeling an orange and she's smelling it. And I was able to give her life in that moment in a way that she doesn't get to live the rest of her life.
- [25:07]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So other things in terms of intentionality, you chose not to use traditional quotation marks in Ansel's pov, but you used them in the women's. Again, why that choice?
- [25:21]
C
I wanted to give him a really distinct sense of style. And I felt that, you know, maybe it was literary ego. I don't know. It's kind of cool to not use quotation marks. Right. It was kind of fun. I. I felt like I had a lot of fun with it on the sentence level. It was just a stylistic choice that I liked. But it's funny, I'm working on a new book now, and I don't have that desire in this new book. I'm just doing it with regular quotation marks.
- [25:42]
B
Yeah. But I think so much of his perspective is so much interiority. It's so much thinking because he's just sitting there. You know, he doesn't have agency generally. He is just thinking. And so I liked that there was this crossover between his thoughts and what people had actually said because it was him remembering them. So it was a great stylistic choice, I thought, in his pov. What I also loved is that you had each of the POV characters grappling with existential themes like meaning and choice and what it means to be a good person. Not just Ansel, because he's the one who views himself as an intellectual and the other women don't. And yet they're all grappling with these things. That's like the golden thread through all the POVs.
- [26:24]
C
Yeah. I think the women are essentially more human than Ansel is. And that was intentional. I think they. They have families, they have love, they have empathy, they have questions, they have self awareness in a way that Ansel really doesn't about himself. He's all ego, he's all narcissism, and he's all sort of like faux philosophy. Right. And he's selfish, he's egocentric, and the women are able to see beyond themselves and actually ask the questions that he only is grazing the surface the of.
- [26:53]
B
Yeah, but also like guilt. If you look at the themes of guilt, look at Lavender's guilt. There's so much guilt woven through her story, and she's not the person who's been murdering people, but he has zero guilt about any of it.
- [27:05]
C
Exactly. And how women blame themselves for the actions of men comes through in every perspective.
- [27:11]
B
So many of the chapters are written almost as short vignettes that are strung together as opposed to really letting the reader sink into a scene. They not allowed to be too comfortable in each scene. And we jump around quite a bit. What does that allow you as the writer to achieve while also, you know, giving the reader snapshots of what they need but not letting them become too complacent?
- [27:38]
C
Tension. I think it's all about tension. When I felt myself getting bored in one space, that's when you have to move, right? Actually, you have to move before you get bored in one space. I think every chapter needs to feel like the reader is getting a little bite of something amazing, but not the whole thing. Things that need to keep going. Right. And I think any form of writing should implement that in some way. Some form of tension, some form of stakes, and some form of freshness and surprise. And that's why it jumps around so often, because when I felt that I was getting stale somewhere, I was like, nope, let's freshen this up. Let's go somewhere else.
- [28:08]
B
Amazing. All right, so there were also instances, which I loved, where you led the reader very particularly to them reaching certain conclusions about what they thought was happening in that moment.
- [28:21]
C
And.
- [28:21]
B
And they feel like they've read between the lines and they think they know what's happened. And then later you rip that out from under them and all their assumptions are upended. You know, can you speak a bit about doing that in a way that the reader doesn't feel manipulated? Or they don't feel like, oh, man, I'm being strung along here. Because there were a few instances, like, there's an instance with Lavender as she's in the ocean, and I'm like, okay, I think I know what's happening here. Wow. I think I really know. And then later I'm like, no, nope, didn't know what was happening here?
- [28:50]
C
You know, it's funny you mentioned that specific moment, because I also didn't know what was actually happening there or not. I left it rather open ended as she's walking into the ocean, what's gonna happen to her? Right? And when this book was just one chapter of Lavender, I was happy to let the reader make whatever conclusion they wanted. But when I realized that actually she was going to be a returning character, I did have to answer that question. So actually, I think most of those moments came from me not knowing at the beginning and then actually answering them.
- [29:15]
B
I love that because I'm a huge pantser and I believe if I'm surprised, my reader is going to be surprised. And there are instances where the reader really thinks they know what's happening. And I love it when I think I know what's happening and it turns out I don't because I'll try and fill in the blanks and then I'll be like, ah, you've kept me on my toes. I like that. Right. So I just want to read two examples of Dania's writing. It's just exquisite on the line level. It's. That's perfect. This is what we come to literary fiction for because it just makes us think about the human condition. So here we go. Saffie knew how to solve a mystery. She knew that itch, the restless tingling at the tips of her fingers, the hunt and the capture, the rush and release. She knew how to twist and fray each morsel of information, tugging tiny threads until the whole thing dissolved. A mystery Saffie could unravel, then study an exact and unequivocal science. But some cases evolved beyond mystery into something more crooked, more complex. The worst kind of mystery transcended its own body, transformed into a brand new sort of monster. Some cases turned cannibal, devouring themselves until there was nothing left but grizzle. Just stunning. Here's another paragraph. Every brain was different in its deviance. Human hurt manifested in select mysterious ways. It was a matter of finding the trigger point, the place where pain had landed and festered the soft spot in every hard person that pushed them to violence. Saffy knew it was a matter of learning those intricacies, of trying to understand an act that felt intolerably intimate, unbearably human, sometimes like a twisted form of love. I'm going to assume, Dania, that you've studied philosophy at some point in your.
- [31:03]
C
Life that, you know, I have not. I actually had to Google, like Philosophy 101 for some of Ansel's chapters especially, like, you know, thinking about who he would be quoting and who he would be thinking about.
- [31:15]
B
Yeah, but you're a deep thinker, and you can see that in this. There were so many times that I stopped and I was highlighting and I was like, oh, my God, I never thought of it that way before. So I. I mean, I feel like that's part of our job as writers, is to let the reader see our worlds in ways that they might not ever have perceived it themselves.
- [31:33]
C
Absolutely. You know, I don't really know where that comes from in me either. I really don't. It wasn't as though I sat down to ask that question or to write that paragraph even. It just kind of. I don't know. I think that's the thing about a creative act. Right. Is it plumes, the depths in some ways. Right. I think they're. I don't know. We do this because we want to be able to reach that state. Right. That heightened state where we're asking the deeper questions of what it means to be a person. That's why we write, and that's why we read. And often when I'm writing, I have no idea how I got there or how I reached that moment or how I reached that language. It just exists. I don't know. It's like magic, right?
- [32:08]
B
Yeah. That's when the angels are singing. Okay, so last question, because I know our readers are going to want to know. So, as an agent, I mean, it's fascinating that you, such a brilliant author, and you're an agent. So as an agent, are you very editorial? Do you struggle not to, you know, put too much of your voice into your client's work? How does that work for you?
- [32:27]
C
Yes, I'm extremely editorial. And it is. I mean, I love it. That's why I do it, because I feel like I have the skill set to see what a book can be before it is actually that book and partner with that person to help them make it that version of the book before we send it out. And that is so much of my job, and that's the part I really love the most, actually, is seeing something, seeing its potential, working with the author to make it the best it can be, and then the both of us bringing it out into the world and saying, what do you guys think? And when the answer is that everyone else loves it, too, it's the most satisfying thing in the world.
- [33:02]
B
I love that you said both of us, because I know with my recent book, my agent cece, was like, every time we hit a milestone or we hit bestseller list. She would be like, congratulations to you. And I'd be like, no, congratulations to us. Because it really is a team effort. It truly, truly is. Are you open to queries at all or not open to queries? I know our listeners would like to know that as well.
- [33:24]
C
Yes, I am open to queries now, and I'm actively looking for new clients at the moment, actually. I've had a great couple of years agenting, and I've. I've sold a lot of my books, so I'm really looking for new clients. You can find me on the Trellis website, Trellis Literary Management. I have a whole manuscript wish list on there, and then I have things that I'm specifically not looking for. And the query form is through the website as well. But I will say here I look. Look always for, I like to say literary fiction that is wearing some kind of genre sunglasses. Right. So in a similar vein to no Zone and Execution, I love literary fiction that works and plays with crime, thriller, suspense, mystery. I love literary fiction that veers into speculative, really light speculative or horror elements. And I. I love straight literary fiction, too, you know, grounded people in the real world, but it has to be doing something different with form and with structure and with voice. Voice. And I'll put this out into the universe. And particularly looking for new kinds of mysteries and thrillers, specifically from writers on the margins who are telling a different kind of story within the same genre balance that I love.
- [34:26]
B
Amazing. Thank you so much, Dania. So for our listeners, we are linking to Notes on an execution on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you get the book there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time. We can't wait to have you back with whatever's next. Thank you.
- [34:41]
C
Thank you for having me.
- [34:42]
B
And that's it for today's episode. I hope you'll join us for next week's show. In the meantime, keep at it. Remember, it just takes one. Yes.
- [34:56]
A
What's up, everyone? This is Cece. If you're a writer, then chances are you've wondered if your story is good enough. Maybe you're wondering that right now. I get it. Here's what I can tell you. As long as your story is making the reader curious, you're good. Now, I'm not saying you won't have to make edits when working with an agent or publisher. Edits are part of the game. But I am saying that you will get ahead in your career if you know how to make the reader curious. The best way to do that? Infuse your story with plenty of tension, conflict and stakes. Which is why I'm so excited to invite you to join my four day course Writing Tension Creating Tension, Conflict and Stakes in youn Story. It starts on October 13th. My favorite part about this class is that there are formulas. Yes, formulas for tension, for conflict, for stakes, and for the first time ever, we're having two optional interactive components including a query letter studio and live critiques of select first pages. I'm super excited about this new format because I've seen it yield results in writers works and it works for writers of any genre as long as you're serious about improving your work. So if you're ready to take your writing to the next level, join me for this four day course. Don't worry if you can't attend live, the sessions will be recorded. For more information, check out my bio on Instagram or the podcast's website. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
- [36:28]
B
Have you been sitting on the fence about signing up for the Beta Reader Matchup? Or have you signed up before but haven't as yet found your writing soulmates? The next matchup is the last one of the year, so don't snooze on it. Get matched up with those writing in a similar genre and or time zone so they can critique your work as you critique theirs. Your manuscript doesn't have to be complete to sign up for this 3,000 word evaluation. This particular matchup will be open to registrations from now until the 2nd of November, with the matchup emails going out on the 3rd of November. For more information and to register, go to Biancamarae.com and look for the Beta Reader Matchup tab. Please spread the word even if you aren't signing up this time. The more writing writers we have registered, the better the matches will be, which means you'll be paying it forward to your fellow authors.