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121 Sarina Dahlan | Speculative Fiction Author
461 Plays2 years ago
Speculative fiction author, Sarina Dahlan is back with a brand new prequel novel. Tune in to hear about her experiences writing book number two and what she has planned next.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:01
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:03
Speaker
Are these your notes about what we're going to say?
00:00:06
Speaker
Anything.
00:00:06
Speaker
It's a short answer.
00:00:08
Speaker
So how many novels did you not finish?
00:00:11
Speaker
Oh my God, so many.
00:00:13
Speaker
It was perfect.
00:00:15
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:00:17
Speaker
This is not a spicy question.
00:00:19
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:20
Speaker
This is it, guys.
00:00:21
Speaker
The big secret to getting publishers and having to write a good book.
00:00:25
Speaker
I had it here first.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
Exploring 'Preset' and World of 'Reset'
00:00:32
Speaker
On today's episode, we have a returning guest.
00:00:36
Speaker
The first time she was here, we talked about her amazing debut novel, Reset.
00:00:41
Speaker
And today we're here to talk about her new one, the prequel aptly named Preset.
00:00:48
Speaker
It's speculative fiction author, Serena Darlan.
00:00:50
Speaker
Welcome back.
00:00:51
Speaker
Serena Darlan Hi, thank you so much, Jamie.
00:00:53
Speaker
It's good to be back.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's great to have you back.
00:00:57
Speaker
Thanks for coming.
00:00:57
Speaker
We had some confusion over time difference, but we figured it out in the end.
00:01:03
Speaker
So we're here.
00:01:05
Speaker
Let's start off with, as I so often do, your exciting new novel, which will come out the day after this goes live.
00:01:15
Speaker
Tell us a bit about Preset.
00:01:17
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:18
Speaker
Preset is the prequel of my first book, Reset.
00:01:22
Speaker
Reset's the world that's set in a speculative world called The Four Cities, and their memories are erased every four years in the name of peace.
00:01:33
Speaker
The idea and the intention is to get rid of people's racism or hatred or any negative things that they have gathered from
00:01:46
Speaker
over years of living.
00:01:48
Speaker
So every four years, all the citizens' memories are wiped, and they start anew with a new name, new job, new place to live.
00:01:59
Speaker
And, you know, so because of that, you know, it was inspired a lot by Buddhism, which is
00:02:06
Speaker
from the country where I originally came from, which is Thailand.
00:02:10
Speaker
And even though I'm not Buddhist, I've always been very much, you know, an admirer of the philosophy.
00:02:17
Speaker
So in this world, at face value, it is a utopia, everything is taken care of.
Plot and Themes of 'Preset'
00:02:26
Speaker
You don't have to buy food, there's food, you know, that's that's given to you, you don't
00:02:32
Speaker
have to pay for a place to live.
00:02:35
Speaker
That place, it's given to you.
00:02:38
Speaker
And so at face value, everything is taken care of.
00:02:42
Speaker
Everything is pleasant.
00:02:45
Speaker
However, because in the nature of this place, memories thus seep back through dreams.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so some of the people will get
00:02:58
Speaker
dreams of their old lovers because those are the memories that stick to them the most and those are the ones that come out.
00:03:08
Speaker
So that was the world of preset and the story centers around two ex-lovers who are essentially trying to find each other through this dreams that they have of each other.
00:03:24
Speaker
Preset, on the other hand, is a story of
00:03:28
Speaker
of how this entire world came to be, how the idea of memory erasure and why the creator of it thought that it was a good idea to use in order to essentially control its citizens and keep peace in this world.
00:03:47
Speaker
So when I went into pre-sets, I actually started it about the end of 2019 after I finished pre-sets.
00:03:57
Speaker
reading, writing reset and trying to get an agent,
00:04:00
Speaker
But the story just, I was just kind of being dragged down by it because when you write of, when I was writing Reset, the story came really easily to me.
00:04:12
Speaker
It's a story about two people who just happen to be in this extraordinary world, but they themselves are just trying to live their life and connect and find each other.
00:04:26
Speaker
So it's a very intimate story.
00:04:29
Speaker
Whereas Preset,
00:04:31
Speaker
it's the story of that world before the last war destroyed most of mankind and the four cities become this isolated places where the last, you know, the last survivors live.
Challenges and Evolution of Writing 'Preset'
00:04:49
Speaker
And what kind of world, you know, the kind of fear, the survivor guilt and, you know, all of the,
00:05:00
Speaker
weight of having to usher humanity to, um, to essentially survive, you know, all of this weight rested on the creators of the four cities.
00:05:14
Speaker
Um, their names are Eli and Eleanor and they were married and they were in love.
00:05:19
Speaker
Um,
00:05:20
Speaker
And I wanted to tell a story of what happens to a marriage when the weight of the world and the responsibility of doing the right thing, you know, like just weighs down on two people who are just, you know, like trying to survive and the decisions that they've had to make.
00:05:42
Speaker
And as a result, they both kind of ended up on two opposite ends of
00:05:48
Speaker
of this how to save humanity conundrum.
00:05:52
Speaker
And it was, it was,
00:05:54
Speaker
difficult story for me to get into.
00:05:57
Speaker
One, I was just so intimidated by these two people because by default, they have to be extraordinary, right?
00:06:05
Speaker
In order for them to create this world and the kind of people that they were in order to survive and to essentially do all that they needed to do in order to kind of usher humanity forward.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
And it's interesting.
00:06:25
Speaker
I mean, you talk about it's like a daunting task to come on for reset.
00:06:29
Speaker
And when you were on last time and you talked about the world building and there were so many layers to it, the idea of doing a prequel to that and now being like, Oh, I already came up with all these incredible complicated systems.
00:06:42
Speaker
And the idea of I have to like, make sure that the thing that I write now lives up to the thing that I've already created, that must be a lot of pressure.
00:06:52
Speaker
it was a lot of pressure.
00:06:53
Speaker
Um, and there's this thing that's called like this second book, like dread.
00:07:00
Speaker
Um, and it's real because, you know, when you were writing your first book, you have this like beautiful, um, bubble of, of just being able to stay in your head and being able to just write the story that, that,
00:07:20
Speaker
that your heart calls you to do.
00:07:24
Speaker
With a second book, because I had actually gotten the contract for book two and three after book one came out, I hadn't intended it.
00:07:36
Speaker
to honestly, to write, that I hadn't intended that the story would continue to go because when I first started becoming a writer, I didn't know much about the business.
00:07:46
Speaker
I didn't know how to sustain it.
00:07:48
Speaker
I didn't know what's required.
00:07:51
Speaker
I just went into it all heart.
00:07:54
Speaker
And it had saved me in so many ways in that I just went into it wide-eyed and bushy tail and just so...
00:08:04
Speaker
fascinated and grateful for everything that came.
00:08:08
Speaker
And then second book, you know, the contract came and I was so happy and so grateful for that because it meant that, Oh, someone actually likes actually found my world worth, you know, visiting.
00:08:25
Speaker
So, but with contract comes deadlines.
00:08:31
Speaker
I've always been like, uh,
00:08:34
Speaker
a pantser.
00:08:36
Speaker
I write with my emotion and I write based on vibe.
00:08:43
Speaker
I have friends who are plotters and I'm so enthralled by their process.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm not that at all.
00:08:51
Speaker
So I was just writing, trying to find a way into this book too.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I had restarted so many times.
00:09:00
Speaker
I probably wrote
00:09:01
Speaker
five, six versions of it until I got to a place where I was like, okay, I think I started it at the right place finally.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:12
Speaker
But before that, it's like I had to have it read by a critique partner who actually came in and read my latest version.
00:09:24
Speaker
And she's like,
00:09:25
Speaker
I don't think you started this at the right place, but sometimes you're so close to it that you didn't see it.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah.
Themes and Inspirations Behind 'Preset'
00:09:33
Speaker
Well, that's great.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's all about finding people who will like critique your work or like you can bounce and get feedback off who are sort of knowledgeable enough about you and brave enough to say like, oh yeah, I think that your story starts in the wrong place.
00:09:48
Speaker
Right, right.
00:09:49
Speaker
And so many times that that little bit of kind of like
00:09:54
Speaker
a shift of mindset can help you see your story and so many different, like in a new light and just opens up the possibility.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so I restarted the story in the right place.
00:10:09
Speaker
And, and that was when I, you know, was able to finish what became the story.
00:10:18
Speaker
That's actually not even the final story, because that was what I had submitted to my
00:10:24
Speaker
my publisher, and then I was assigned a developmental editor
00:10:30
Speaker
And then she came and told me that, okay, half of the story is the backstory.
00:10:38
Speaker
It was great that you wrote it, but we need to also find the real story, find the other half of the real story.
00:10:46
Speaker
And so it became this, like this book just became like an excavation.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:53
Speaker
It's just layer and layer.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I hope it does show in the book itself that there's just so many different layers of
00:11:01
Speaker
within the book and it ended up being more of like a psychological thriller, sci-fi, you know, in the sci-fi world and a speculative world.
00:11:15
Speaker
But at the end, it really is about kind of like digging and finding what is the real reason and the real drive behind the creators of the four cities and how, um,
00:11:29
Speaker
they ended up with the concept of Tabula Rasa, how it came to be.
Series Potential and Symbolism
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:34
Speaker
Tabula Rasa being the every four years, everyone's memory gets wiped and everyone gets relocated.
00:11:40
Speaker
Exactly.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:11:42
Speaker
Was it always going to be a prequel?
00:11:46
Speaker
It was, well, when I first got my agent, she had asked, you know, when I sent her reset, she fell in love with it.
00:11:54
Speaker
And during our first call together, she asked whether or not
00:11:58
Speaker
this has serious potential.
00:12:01
Speaker
And in my head, I had thought of ideas around the world itself, because to me, I've always felt that the world, the four cities itself is a character.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I've always kind of seen it being, you know, this character that other characters interact with and the potential of, you know,
00:12:28
Speaker
the stories that can be told were already inside my head because I took so long writing Reset.
00:12:37
Speaker
And so I did tell her, I was like, yeah, I do have a backstory of how this place came to be and that it's about, it's a marriage story and it's about this husband and wife who actually came apart.
00:12:51
Speaker
And I had said, if Reset was a story about two people coming together,
00:12:57
Speaker
preset is a story about two people breaking apart.
00:13:01
Speaker
Oh, that's really, there's a great symmetry to that.
00:13:05
Speaker
It is very much a symmetry and, and, and everything about it is, is in the shows in the cover.
00:13:14
Speaker
And I'm so grateful that the cover designer, you know, had the wisdom to do that.
00:13:19
Speaker
It's like, everything is almost like the opposite of, in presets, the opposite of how they did
00:13:26
Speaker
Reset, but it still looks very much like a series.
Future Directions for The Four Cities Series
00:13:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker
They've done really well.
00:13:30
Speaker
They look really good together on the shelf.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
I'm very lucky with that.
00:13:35
Speaker
And this is, um, I'm right in thinking that you're doing another book.
00:13:40
Speaker
Is that also going to be part of the Four Cities series?
00:13:44
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:13:45
Speaker
The third book is actually, it actually happens, um, let's see, four years after Reset ends.
00:13:56
Speaker
So it is a true sequel.
00:13:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:59
Speaker
You're taking the Star Wars ordering method of putting things out, I see.
00:14:06
Speaker
In a way, yeah.
00:14:07
Speaker
Well, I felt like with Reset, I ended the book with the two creators, the Crone and the Planner.
00:14:15
Speaker
And when I ended it there, I felt that
00:14:19
Speaker
The readers needed to know more about them and that there was a lot of backstory that will help them get, you know, like the more of the philosophy that goes behind reset and the true heartbreak of it all.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
Cause, cause it's, it's, it's very, it's a very complex world and there's lots of layers and systems, um, involved with, uh, you know, you, you really dug deep when you were, um, putting the layers on of like how the memory wipes work and how the, everything gets moved around and the, and the, the kind of the place that they live in and things like that.
00:14:55
Speaker
But in the end, it does come down to they're very human stories.
00:14:59
Speaker
And it's always about the human connection and the people living in this very complicated near future world.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:08
Speaker
And that's kind of how I approach this story.
00:15:11
Speaker
I actually didn't intend to be a sci-fi writer.
00:15:15
Speaker
I was just writing a story that came to me one night in the middle of the night when the idea of what if
00:15:23
Speaker
you know, we can erase our memories the same way we can erase data.
00:15:27
Speaker
And, and I just thought, I mean, what came to me was a story of two people who happened to be stuck in this world.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then preset, I just followed that same thread.
00:15:40
Speaker
You know, I wanted to, to approach it in ways that I, as a reader, find connection with it, because oftentimes,
00:15:52
Speaker
And sci-fi, the tradition of it, it can be unapproachable to certain readers where they feel like it's hard sci-fi, I need to be a scientist, I need to be interested in science.
00:16:06
Speaker
But to me, speculative world is actually a great, great way to
00:16:13
Speaker
have a conversation about our own world and what is not working within it without having to get so close and, you know, in your face about a certain conversation.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:16:28
Speaker
I mean, this is something that Black Mirror does very, very well, where it's usually near future or further future, but it's always, they're always looking at a sort of, they're short stories of like specific social issues, aren't they?
00:16:44
Speaker
And with preset itself, the nature of when I was writing it, and the nature of what the essence of what the book really is, it is about the freedom of choice versus peace and control.
Influence of Personal and Societal Events on Writing
00:16:58
Speaker
which is the kind of conversation I was having with myself, especially after Roe v. Wade here in America was overturned in 2022.
00:17:08
Speaker
I had rewritten, that had happened recently,
00:17:17
Speaker
right before the summer when I had to turn in my final draft of preset.
00:17:23
Speaker
And I was just so distraught because I just felt betrayed.
00:17:28
Speaker
I felt essentially like a second class citizen in my own country.
00:17:34
Speaker
And I had in that moment, reach out to Kim Stanley Robinson, who is a sci-fi writer and hero of mine.
00:17:45
Speaker
We both went to the same school, UCSD, and I had interviewed him earlier in the year.
00:17:51
Speaker
And he had said something to me that stuck with me, and that is hope is a moral obligation.
00:17:59
Speaker
But after Roe v. Wade overturned, I felt like
00:18:06
Speaker
how, how can I have hope in this situation?
00:18:08
Speaker
And so I, I wrote to him.
00:18:12
Speaker
Um, I, I was so distraught.
00:18:13
Speaker
I was like, if I, looking back now, I was like, if I wasn't that distraught, I probably wouldn't have because by nature, I'm such a shy person that the idea of reaching out to like a hero would have been just like, no, why would you do that?
00:18:25
Speaker
Silly.
00:18:26
Speaker
Um, but I was just so distraught and I reached out to him at that moment.
00:18:29
Speaker
And the subject line was hope is a moral obligation, but how, um,
00:18:36
Speaker
And he gave me a great advice.
00:18:39
Speaker
He said, you know, essentially, don't let a crisis go to waste.
00:18:46
Speaker
And so I took that feeling of betrayal and that feeling of hurt and put it into the rewrite of Precept.
00:18:57
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:18:58
Speaker
So it wouldn't have been this book had I not had
00:19:04
Speaker
the pain of 2022.
00:19:05
Speaker
And that's interesting.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:09
Speaker
But I am so very proud of it too, because I'm like, I, I look at it now and I, I'm like, I don't know how I wrote this.
00:19:16
Speaker
It was such a tough, tough time.
00:19:20
Speaker
And yeah.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:22
Speaker
I still read it sometimes and I'm like, oh my God.
00:19:25
Speaker
When they said like there's magic to writing, it's so true.
00:19:28
Speaker
Because sometimes I look at certain things and I'm like, I don't know how I did that.
00:19:33
Speaker
I don't know how I went in and rewrite, have a book in less than a month and got this.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:40
Speaker
That's great that you took something that was just sort of terrible and had all sorts of bad emotions about it and you channeled it all into your writing.
00:19:51
Speaker
You made something productive out of it.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's kind of what writers do naturally, I feel.
00:19:58
Speaker
We kind of this compost heap and everything that we encounter, the people we meet, the things that happen to us go into this compost heap.
Speculative Fiction and Genre Blending
00:20:10
Speaker
And then from that, you know, something grows out of it.
00:20:14
Speaker
And hopefully we can harvest something out of it.
00:20:17
Speaker
And hopefully that harvest becomes a book.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:20
Speaker
Right?
00:20:21
Speaker
So I feel like that's kind of how writing and writer's mind works anyway.
00:20:27
Speaker
So it was almost as if like there's, I couldn't have done it, you know, a different way.
00:20:32
Speaker
Because that was my
00:20:35
Speaker
my way of never letting a crisis go to waste per se.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:41
Speaker
I think that's great advice.
00:20:42
Speaker
Getting back onto you, you mentioned that you, you never intended to be a sci-fi writer.
00:20:50
Speaker
When you, when you, when you wrap up this, the four cities series, do you think you'll stay in sort of speculative fiction, sci-fi or, or are you considering a different direction?
00:21:04
Speaker
I have so many half-written books in my drawer.
00:21:10
Speaker
And most of them are actually fantasy.
00:21:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:15
Speaker
But they still are in the speculative world where I think speculative fiction is that space where you can play around with the what-if scenario and
00:21:29
Speaker
And sometimes it leans sci-fi and sometimes it leans fantasy.
00:21:35
Speaker
And the words themselves, sci-fi and fantasy, were kind of words created, right, in order to shelf books in certain places at bookstores or in order for publishers to be able to kind of speak in shorthand.
00:21:53
Speaker
when they try to sell your book.
00:21:55
Speaker
But I rarely find that, you know, we are that clean of a writer genre wise, I feel like some of the best books I love blend genres.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so I don't I mean, in some ways, I don't necessarily feel like I'm going to get out of my, my sci fi world or speculative world, it would just be something different.
00:22:20
Speaker
And
00:22:20
Speaker
Maybe instead of science as a system of operation, it would be magic as a system of operation.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, I often think those two are much closer than they would immediately appear.
00:22:34
Speaker
I mean, I think someone told me ages ago that George R.R.
00:22:37
Speaker
Martin considers himself a sci-fi writer more than a fantasy writer.
00:22:42
Speaker
And almost all of the magical elements of Game of Thrones can be translated into direct sci-fi tropes.
00:22:51
Speaker
Oh, I love that.
00:22:52
Speaker
the white walkers are like a hive mind species that you would get in lots of sci-fi stuff and things like that i find that too um because oftentimes like science um or magic magic is like sometimes this is a it's a placeholder until we find a way to logically explain something right i mean
00:23:16
Speaker
In the older times, we used to look up at the sky and there would be certain phenomena that we can't explain and we would call it magic.
00:23:27
Speaker
But now we have a way to explain it.
00:23:30
Speaker
So it has a different name.
00:23:33
Speaker
So I don't necessarily see them as two separate
Scientific Research in World-Building
00:23:37
Speaker
things.
00:23:37
Speaker
Sometimes it's just, we just don't have a way to explain certain things in a scientific way yet, but it doesn't mean
00:23:45
Speaker
it doesn't exist or that it doesn't mean that it's not logical in its own way.
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:51
Speaker
I guess when it comes to literature and fiction and stuff, along those lines, the way that I would distinguish the two then is by saying that there is at least a pseudo-explanation.
00:24:04
Speaker
If you're going to do science fiction, it's usually that there's a pseudo-explanation for how things work.
00:24:09
Speaker
And you're kind of willing to accept that enough that you're like, yeah, that could happen.
00:24:14
Speaker
Like Iron Man, I think is a good example.
00:24:17
Speaker
Like they kind of vaguely explain how Iron Man works in the first film.
00:24:22
Speaker
And it's just realistic enough that you're like, okay, sure, I'll buy it.
00:24:28
Speaker
But with magic, it's like...
00:24:30
Speaker
And a wizard did it.
00:24:31
Speaker
And you're like, okay, well, a wizard cast a spell, so.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:36
Speaker
And with Preset, I actually, it's more, I would say that it's more of a science-based book than Reset because the heroine of the story, she's a scientist.
00:24:51
Speaker
And so I had to go into a lot of research around how, like, if we were to...
00:24:59
Speaker
mind wipe, how would it be?
00:25:01
Speaker
Like which part of the brain, or if we were to kind of create a drug that would help us remember, what kind of drug would it be?
00:25:11
Speaker
And, you know, like we actually have things that exist like that already.
00:25:15
Speaker
There are drugs to help patients with Alzheimer's that works on certain part of the brain.
00:25:22
Speaker
And there are ways that we can actually look at and map our brain and
00:25:26
Speaker
And all of this, you know, definitely does feed into, quote unquote, the magic of the four cities.
00:25:35
Speaker
Because, like I said, there's like a basis for where all of the explanations come from.
00:25:45
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:25:46
Speaker
I remember when we spoke before about reset when it was coming out that you had all these extra layers to the world building that often aren't even mentioned in the book.
00:25:59
Speaker
It was just part of your process to do that.
00:26:02
Speaker
Is that something that you really enjoy when you are creating a world is like doing this research and really figuring out how all of the bits fit together?
00:26:09
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:26:10
Speaker
Sometimes I do too much research.
00:26:15
Speaker
I think that's fine as long as you know when to stop putting it in the book.
00:26:21
Speaker
Exactly.
00:26:22
Speaker
Exactly.
00:26:23
Speaker
Sometimes I can get like, because it's so fascinating.
00:26:28
Speaker
Actually, my background is in psychology and I went to a school that's very scientific in nature.
00:26:37
Speaker
All of, you know, like I'd studied neuroscience and we'd have to read, you know, like the scientific papers on certain things.
00:26:45
Speaker
And so going back to reading scientific papers, kind of like, oh, I'm going back to college in a way.
00:26:53
Speaker
And there's just so many interesting things.
00:26:55
Speaker
fascinating things that scientists are doing that we don't often are exposed to until it becomes big news.
00:27:04
Speaker
Right.
00:27:05
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:27:06
Speaker
Until it's like bought by a big company and commercialized, which is like 10 years after the research actually like happened.
00:27:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:27:14
Speaker
And what I love also about the scientific community is there's this idea of continuation of memory.
00:27:23
Speaker
Someone can be working on something a hundred years ago and then they would pass.
00:27:28
Speaker
And then that knowledge would get picked up and worked on by another set of scientists all around the world for another decade.
00:27:35
Speaker
And then, you know, it would get picked up and it's almost like this...
00:27:40
Speaker
game of like just pass the ball or something where everyone is just trying to contribute to this set of knowledge.
00:27:49
Speaker
And that's really what I love about the scientific community.
00:27:53
Speaker
It is at its core so
00:27:57
Speaker
like so community minded and so focused on the knowledge itself and so open to sharing that I just love it.
00:28:08
Speaker
I can find like if I'm interested in idea of memory, I can find 10 papers, you know, that would reference each other.
00:28:17
Speaker
And I think that's one of the best things about humanity is that idea that knowledge is free.
00:28:27
Speaker
We can share it for the benefit of all.
Writing Community and Career Support
00:28:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
And we're better when we work together.
00:28:34
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:37
Speaker
So before we, as we're heading into the, the, the, towards the end of the episode, I did want to ask now that you have done the sort of publishing trail more than, I wouldn't say twice, but it's more than twice.
00:28:52
Speaker
Cause I know that you're, you're well on the way with book three.
00:28:56
Speaker
What have you learned along the way that you wish you could have known back when you first started, when you first signed with your agent with research?
00:29:07
Speaker
Ooh, so many things.
00:29:10
Speaker
One is you need community.
00:29:15
Speaker
I just, the other day, we get together, our San Diego writing group, get together once a month to this potluck and writing sprints.
00:29:25
Speaker
And someone said, it takes a village, doesn't it, to launch a book?
00:29:32
Speaker
And I said, absolutely.
00:29:33
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:29:35
Speaker
when my first book came out, it was 2021 and we had had COVID for about a year.
00:29:41
Speaker
And we were all pretty much disconnected from each other in person.
00:29:49
Speaker
So I didn't have any in live anything.
00:29:54
Speaker
I didn't know who to talk to, you know, like all of the things that I'd hoped I would gain as a writer and,
00:30:02
Speaker
all of those acts was kind of almost cut off on me because everyone just kind of went into a cocoon.
00:30:08
Speaker
But with preset, now that I've found my community, it feels so much different.
00:30:15
Speaker
It feels like maybe I can continue to do this.
00:30:20
Speaker
Maybe there is a way to
00:30:22
Speaker
sustain this long term with the help of others.
00:30:28
Speaker
Because when you are a writer, you're not just in your whole writing, right?
00:30:33
Speaker
I mean, once you finish your, you have a product, you have to learn how to talk about it.
00:30:38
Speaker
You have to learn how to promote it.
00:30:40
Speaker
You have to, um,
00:30:43
Speaker
learn how to interact with, you know, like all types of people and having a community definitely kind of carries you along.
00:30:52
Speaker
And, and, and, and sometimes,
00:30:54
Speaker
Like they would give me ideas.
00:30:56
Speaker
I have friends who would just be like, you know, for your promotion, it would be cool if you do this.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I'm like, oh my God, thank you.
00:31:02
Speaker
I've never even thought of that.
00:31:05
Speaker
So please, please, please, writers, get yourself a community.
00:31:10
Speaker
Those who you can trust.
00:31:12
Speaker
It doesn't mean these people are going to read your things.
00:31:15
Speaker
I almost recommend to separate them because you want people who you can get...
00:31:24
Speaker
honest feedback from, but you also need cheerleaders.
00:31:29
Speaker
You need people who will be behind you no matter what.
00:31:33
Speaker
And sometimes it's good to just separate the two.
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:36
Speaker
So get yourself a community.
00:31:38
Speaker
And it really is this giving, like circle of giving, right?
00:31:45
Speaker
It's like you bring to it
00:31:47
Speaker
things that like we call it our goats.
00:31:49
Speaker
Like you come into this circle of, you know, of tribe, what goats are you bringing to the table?
00:31:58
Speaker
And each one of us is like, okay, I can do this.
00:32:00
Speaker
And another person would say, well, I can do that.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then you end up having this very rich, like, village of people who are there to truly support each other.
00:32:14
Speaker
And they give you and then you give them back.
00:32:16
Speaker
And it just becomes this beautiful, fulfilling life that is more than just writing your book.
Navigating the Publishing Industry
00:32:26
Speaker
Because it is a lifestyle.
00:32:28
Speaker
It isn't just a job.
00:32:30
Speaker
It's not a career even.
00:32:34
Speaker
It is a lifestyle.
00:32:35
Speaker
You choose this and you have to find a way to sustain it.
00:32:39
Speaker
And community is definitely a beautiful way to sustain it.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely, it is a lot of people when I asked them about what kind of they would advise to people in writing or getting into writing is like find your tribe.
00:32:55
Speaker
And it, you know, it doesn't have to be a huge tribe.
00:32:57
Speaker
It could just be a few people as big or as small as you want it to.
00:33:00
Speaker
But yeah, it's so important to surround yourself, I think, with like-minded people who are on a similar journey to you.
00:33:07
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:33:08
Speaker
And my second advice would be to kind of brush up on the business of it all.
00:33:13
Speaker
You don't need to be a business person.
00:33:16
Speaker
You don't need to even know, you know, like the ins and out of publishing, but it does help to read up on what's happening.
00:33:26
Speaker
What, what is, you know, the latest thing, what's the latest, you know, like Harper Collins, when they had a
00:33:34
Speaker
when they had a strike, because that does affect you somehow, you know, because the strike affects the, the authors who actually were with Harper Collins and it affects how book stores or book blockers talk about, um, you know, about those books or about publishing, um,
00:33:57
Speaker
And so it helps to understand what's current.
00:34:02
Speaker
And it also helps to understand from the business end the decisions that publishers would make, the decisions that bookstores would make.
00:34:14
Speaker
Because in as much as it is, you know, for the authors, a heart work, because you're putting your heart and soul into this
00:34:22
Speaker
On the other end, it also for others need to translate to sales copies.
00:34:32
Speaker
And so and often that, again, is a shorthand in how they would look at a book and go, OK, this book produces.
00:34:40
Speaker
And so therefore we want this author to write more.
00:34:47
Speaker
So it does help to understand.
00:34:50
Speaker
So sometimes, because sometimes you're not quite sure the decisions that come down.
00:34:57
Speaker
So it helps you to guide you towards perhaps the best decision that can work for you as an author.
00:35:06
Speaker
And it helps when you have a conversation with someone to talk in their language.
00:35:11
Speaker
And so, you know, to get them to kind of see your point of view and you can see their point of view.
00:35:18
Speaker
And yeah, so it's such an interesting business.
00:35:22
Speaker
The longer I'm in it, the more I'm so fascinated by it.
00:35:27
Speaker
It is unlike any other business.
00:35:30
Speaker
It is, yes.
00:35:31
Speaker
It's got so many bizarre twists and turns and ins and outs to it.
00:35:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:37
Speaker
And a lot of it is you just don't know, you know, and, and so you, you kind of, kind of learn by talking to, to others and, and forming, you know, a tribe of people you can trust to give you advice.
00:35:52
Speaker
But one thing that I've learned is that every author's journey is different.
00:35:57
Speaker
So in as much as I can give you advice, that,
00:36:02
Speaker
advice is very limited to my experience and you can have completely different advice.
00:36:07
Speaker
I mean, a completely different experience.
00:36:10
Speaker
And, um, and so therefore, you know, it's, it's always like, I like to listen to those advice with a grain of salt and then, um, just continue to write, do whatever to me.
00:36:20
Speaker
I was just like, I, my, my, my one number one rule is I do whatever that keeps me writing and I don't do what stops me from writing.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yes, I think that's great advice all around.
00:36:34
Speaker
And I would say in terms of the thing that I think that I've spoken to a lot of people about and people are most surprised about in terms of getting a sort of appreciation for the industry and how the business of things works is that
00:36:50
Speaker
Uh, almost every book that gets published has to be signed off by the marketing team and the sales team.
00:36:57
Speaker
And those are two teams who are so primarily focused on the business side of things.
00:37:02
Speaker
That's where a lot of books, it doesn't matter how sort of poetic or beautifully written they are or how powerful the messaging is.
00:37:08
Speaker
Uh, sometimes the, you know, the sales team just don't think they can sell it.
00:37:12
Speaker
And that's that so many books will fall at that hurdle.
00:37:15
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:37:17
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, they have to kind of know, because everyone is so busy, right?
00:37:23
Speaker
And getting busier because there's just more workload all around.
00:37:30
Speaker
And so in as much as you can help the sales team or the marketing team to hone in on your marketing message or the kind of message, the kind of like
00:37:44
Speaker
they can give to someone.
00:37:46
Speaker
Like, for example, preset, when I talked to my publicist, I said, the heart of it is a conversation about peace and control, peace and control versus choice and freedom.
00:38:05
Speaker
they got that and they were able to kind of put presets in places where women can see the book.
00:38:13
Speaker
Because in a way, you know, books are a way for each one of us to have and to process these complex thoughts in smaller bites.
Personal Literary Preferences and Inspirations
00:38:25
Speaker
And so, you know, it helps to know where your books can
00:38:33
Speaker
You don't have to know precisely where it should sit, but it helps to know who will most benefit from having a conversation around your book.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, very true.
00:38:47
Speaker
And with that, we're already running over time, but you have already answered what would normally be the last, uh, the final question of the episode.
00:38:55
Speaker
Um, when you were previously on, you said that you would take to the desert island, 100 years of solitude.
00:39:02
Speaker
Is that still the book you would take?
00:39:06
Speaker
Um, yes, yes.
00:39:07
Speaker
But also, I love the book Thief.
00:39:10
Speaker
I think since then I had read the book Thief and love it.
00:39:15
Speaker
Like just love, love, love, love it.
00:39:17
Speaker
So I would also take that book if I had to swap it out.
00:39:23
Speaker
If you were forced to.
00:39:24
Speaker
If I was forced to only bring one.
00:39:27
Speaker
And of course, you know, all the books by Kim Stanley Robinson.
00:39:32
Speaker
He writes very much about climate.
00:39:37
Speaker
change and um his hope is a moral obligation you know message is in every one of his book and so i would want to bring at least one of them to kind of give me that sense of hope you're bringing a whole library now i'm bringing a whole library i'm bringing one kindle um
00:40:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:40:01
Speaker
One Kindle with a load of extra hard drives to plug into it.
00:40:06
Speaker
I know.
00:40:07
Speaker
I bring them all of them.
00:40:08
Speaker
My TBR is so big.
00:40:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:12
Speaker
And only growing.
00:40:13
Speaker
TBRs never get smaller in my experience.
00:40:16
Speaker
No, no.
00:40:17
Speaker
I just went to an event and I just bought – I brought back a like –
00:40:23
Speaker
probably gosh two feet worth like height of books i can't say no i'm like i can't leave these exactly someone's got to buy those books they're going to buy themselves um amazing well thank you so much shirena for for coming back on the on the podcast telling us all about your latest book and um everything that's going on with with you and your writing it's been really great chatting with you again
00:40:49
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much.
00:40:50
Speaker
This has been a pleasure.
00:40:52
Speaker
I can't believe it's already over.
00:40:55
Speaker
And in case you don't want it to be over and you're listening, you can follow Serena on Instagram at serena.darlin.
00:41:03
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on socials and you can get in touch and show your support if you head over to the Patreon page.
00:41:11
Speaker
For more Booker's Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes with YA authors Naomi Gibson and Melissa Welliver.
00:41:17
Speaker
Thanks again to Serena and thanks to everyone listening.
00:41:19
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.