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119 Annaliese Avery | YA and MG Fantasy Author
461 Plays2 years ago
Young adult and middle-grade fantasy author, Annaliese Avery is on the podcast talking about her latest novel 'The Immortal Games', her journey through publishing and her approach to writing.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:02
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:03
Speaker
These are your notes about what we're going to say.
00:00:06
Speaker
Anything is a short answer.
00:00:08
Speaker
So how many novels did you not finish?
00:00:10
Speaker
Oh my God, so many.
00:00:13
Speaker
It was perfect.
00:00:14
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:00:15
Speaker
This is not a good question.
00:00:17
Speaker
Ooh, 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 published is you have to write a good book.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm going to hear first.
The Inspiration Behind 'The Immortal Games'
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:32
Speaker
On today's episode, I am joined by middle grade and young adult fantasy author, Annalise Avery.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hi, welcome to the podcast.
00:00:41
Speaker
Sorry, I spoke over you.
00:00:43
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:45
Speaker
Let's talk about, you have a brand new book coming out and it will be out by the time this episode airs.
00:00:51
Speaker
It's not out right now.
00:00:53
Speaker
The Immortal Games, 11th of May.
00:00:55
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about it.
00:00:57
Speaker
Okay, so the Immortal Games.
00:01:01
Speaker
Basically, when I started writing it, well, I'm sure we'll talk about how it all came about, but I'd been watching Squid Games.
00:01:09
Speaker
And also, Elon Musk was kind of just in the beginning of buying Twitter.
00:01:16
Speaker
He was just thinking about it.
00:01:18
Speaker
And so when I had a little chat with my lovely editor, Yasmin, at Scholastic about things that we could write, and they said,
00:01:26
Speaker
We'd really like you to write a, uh, like a Greek retelling.
00:01:29
Speaker
And the thing that they wanted me to write did not fill me with joy.
00:01:34
Speaker
So, so as we were having the conversation about, you know, what I could possibly do and how they'd like me to have astronomy in it, but, uh, like most people, astronomy and astrology gets confused quite often.
00:01:48
Speaker
Um, um,
00:01:50
Speaker
this whole kind of idea for the, for the, you know, all of the things came together.
Plot Elements and Teenage Tokens
00:01:55
Speaker
So the Squid Games and the fact that, you know, people who are incredibly wealthy or have a lot of power, they, they always tend to do such frivolous things with it, like by social media platforms instead of like helping people and drives me nuts.
00:02:10
Speaker
So all of these things kind of like fell together in my head and I thought, okay, what if the gods of Olympus
00:02:16
Speaker
They're really bored.
00:02:17
Speaker
They've got nothing to do.
00:02:19
Speaker
Twitter doesn't exist.
00:02:20
Speaker
They can't possibly buy that.
00:02:22
Speaker
So every time there is an eclipse of the moon, they decide to do the thing that they do best, which is basically just mess around with humans and make their lives a little bit more difficult for their own entertainment and
00:02:36
Speaker
And they play these games, these immortal games, where they select a teenage token to represent them in the games.
00:02:45
Speaker
And then they set them quests.
00:02:47
Speaker
They set them a quest and there are tasks in the quest.
00:02:50
Speaker
And they just watch them get picked off until one of them is left as the victorious winner of the games.
00:02:57
Speaker
And obviously the god that supports them, they're the winners too.
00:03:01
Speaker
So that was like the whole idea just kind of plopped into my head.
00:03:06
Speaker
in one go.
00:03:07
Speaker
And that's the kind of premise of the immortal games, these epic games played by the gods.
00:03:12
Speaker
And our main character, Ara, she is desperate to be selected as one of the tokens of the gods because her sister was selected five years previously and she died in the games.
00:03:25
Speaker
And ever since then, Ara has wanted revenge.
00:03:27
Speaker
Whoever wins the immortal games gets to ask the gods for a gift and she would like to ask for a thunderbolt or a weapon that is capable of killing Zeus.
Pitching and Influences from Greek Mythology and YA Romanticy
00:03:41
Speaker
A classic revenge story.
00:03:42
Speaker
A classic revenge.
00:03:44
Speaker
Tied up with the Greek pantheon.
00:03:46
Speaker
Indeed.
00:03:47
Speaker
That sounds great.
00:03:48
Speaker
I mean, I imagine if the pitch was similar to that when you went to the publisher, I'm sure they were right on board straight away.
00:03:55
Speaker
Well, I did, when I did the pitching, because I'm, you know, an old person, I did throw in the kind of like Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans from like the old Ray Harry Houseman era, which I absolutely loved watching as a child.
00:04:11
Speaker
And there's a bit, I think it's in Clash of the Titans when they do like place things
00:04:19
Speaker
No, it's in Jason and the Argonauts.
00:04:22
Speaker
Here are places like a kind of like Neptunian type God, Poseidon thing on the board.
00:04:30
Speaker
And I was like, oh, yeah, okay.
00:04:32
Speaker
I like that.
00:04:33
Speaker
The idea of the board
Writing Process: A 'Pantser' Approach
00:04:35
Speaker
and the characters all moving around.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:38
Speaker
So this is, from that pitch, you might not know it, but this is being billed as a young adult romanticy.
00:04:48
Speaker
There is a romance going up through the thing.
00:04:51
Speaker
And romanticy, for anyone listening who's not sure what the word is that I'm saying,
00:04:56
Speaker
is the fusion of romance and fantasy, which is very big at the moment, especially because there is a lot of popularity around the tropes contained within it.
00:05:08
Speaker
Do you think about tropes while you're writing?
00:05:12
Speaker
No, not really.
00:05:14
Speaker
Like if they come along, I'll try and do them justice.
00:05:18
Speaker
Um, but because I'm a massive pantser, I never, I never really know what's going to come along.
00:05:24
Speaker
And, and to be honest, I took my pants into like a whole nother level with this book.
00:05:28
Speaker
So, um, so when we had this chat, me and Yaz about what I was going to write for the third book,
00:05:35
Speaker
It was in, let me think, it was just before, it was March, the end of March, just before the NanoWriMo started in April.
Astrology and Character Creation
00:05:47
Speaker
And I knew I had a really, really short delivery time because Scholastic wanted something by August, I think it was August the 8th or something was my delivery date.
00:05:59
Speaker
So I thought, okay, well,
00:06:02
Speaker
I'm just going to have as much fun as I can have with this.
00:06:07
Speaker
So I took about a week to get myself an astrology book because I love astronomy.
00:06:13
Speaker
I am an amateur astronomer.
00:06:14
Speaker
I helped to found an astronomical society about 10 years ago.
00:06:20
Speaker
But my astrology knowledge is quite limited.
00:06:23
Speaker
So I got myself an astrology book and I had a look through and I looked at all of the different star signs and I had a look at
00:06:29
Speaker
the traits.
00:06:30
Speaker
So that did kind of help me to build characters.
00:06:32
Speaker
So in a way, this is the most planned thing I've ever written from that point of view.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I had each of the 12 signs of the Zodiac.
00:06:41
Speaker
And then I love collecting images on Pinterest.
00:06:45
Speaker
So I went onto Pinterest and I just collected lots of kind of AI face generated images that I could then use to attach
Embracing Unpredictability in Plot Development
00:06:55
Speaker
to a person.
00:06:55
Speaker
Then I
00:06:56
Speaker
um, found a name for them.
00:06:58
Speaker
And then I went and got some D 12 dice.
00:07:02
Speaker
Um, so, uh, so some 12 sided dice, one that had, uh, all the signs of the Zodiac on it.
00:07:10
Speaker
And one that had, um, different planetary symbols that correspond to, to the Greek gods.
00:07:16
Speaker
And then I just basically picked a God and rolled the star sign symbol to see who was going to be matched up with which God.
00:07:23
Speaker
Oh, very cool.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, so I already knew who my main character was going to be matched up with, but everybody else, it was like open season.
00:07:33
Speaker
So I just rolled the dice to see how, you know, how that was going to fit together and the dynamics of their relationships.
00:07:39
Speaker
And it was quite interesting having already picked which character traits from the star signs I wanted for each of the characters, then seeing how that would, you know,
00:07:50
Speaker
mix with my image of what those individual Greek gods were like.
00:07:56
Speaker
And then as I wrote the book, I thought, you know, I'm just going to play it like it's an actual game.
00:08:02
Speaker
So the rules of writing it were every time I put my characters in peril, I would roll the dice and play the game and see who was going to perish and who was going to
00:08:18
Speaker
uh, you know, be in a bad situation who was going to, so in the game there is like, they roll for advantage, disadvantage.
00:08:24
Speaker
So I did that each time there was, um, a little kind of a trial within the quest.
00:08:30
Speaker
And the rule was that unless it was my main character, like that was fine.
00:08:34
Speaker
That like I had to abide by the rules and it got to about halfway through the book and I rolled the dice and, um,
00:08:47
Speaker
And I was like, oh, I really like that character.
00:08:50
Speaker
I really don't want them.
00:08:51
Speaker
I really don't want them to die.
00:08:53
Speaker
So then I rolled the dice again and I was like, oh, I really like that character.
00:08:58
Speaker
And I realized that actually I liked them all and it was going to be difficult.
00:09:01
Speaker
So I just killed them both.
00:09:02
Speaker
That's good though.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:05
Speaker
Because also I'd set up the rules to the game and by not abiding by the rules, I felt like I was kind of, um,
00:09:14
Speaker
Being untrustworthy with the story and not trusting it to come out the way it was supposed to be.
00:09:21
Speaker
And to be honest, Ara did come up once.
00:09:24
Speaker
Um, when I rolled and I didn't kill her, but she, she didn't have a fun time.
00:09:32
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:09:32
Speaker
She got punished for coming up on the roll.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah.
Drafting Techniques and 'Dirty Zero' Draft
00:09:35
Speaker
So she, she came up on the roll and, uh, and then she, yeah, she, she definitely suffered in that trial.
00:09:42
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:09:43
Speaker
As, as someone who plays tabletop RPGs at Dungeons and Dragons, more than I would be to most people,
00:09:49
Speaker
That sounds like you kind of wrote this book with a side of sort of D&D.
00:09:54
Speaker
That's kind of how it works.
00:09:56
Speaker
You set up a situation and then you roll to see the outcome.
00:09:59
Speaker
Exactly.
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
It was pretty much like that.
00:10:01
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:10:02
Speaker
And I definitely, I had, I just had so much fun writing it and, and I wrote it so quickly.
00:10:09
Speaker
So, um, my writing process is a little bit scary for some writers.
00:10:15
Speaker
Um, I like to write a first draft and, and I always think my first draft is basically me telling myself the story.
00:10:22
Speaker
Um, the vomit draft, some people call it.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
I like to call it my dirty zero.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, close enough.
00:10:32
Speaker
So I'll write it and then I'll throw it away and then I'll start again with my proper draft.
00:10:39
Speaker
So I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo and then I'd finished it just before the end of NaNo.
00:10:47
Speaker
So I put it to one side for a couple of days and then I wrote the
00:10:51
Speaker
actual first draft, um, in six weeks.
00:10:55
Speaker
Um, and then I sent it off to Yaz and we did a little bit of editing, mostly like strengthening the love triangle.
00:11:04
Speaker
Um, because I didn't quite realize when I was being romantic, uh, there was a bit when she read it and she was like, Oh my God, Annalise, that bit.
00:11:15
Speaker
It's so hot and steamy.
00:11:17
Speaker
I was like, really?
00:11:18
Speaker
It's just like, Oh yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
So, okay.
00:11:22
Speaker
So we did a little bit of work and then, um, then it went to copy edit and my lovely friend, Nikki Marshall was the copy editor, um, on the book.
00:11:31
Speaker
And yeah, it was like, it was just such a joy from beginning to end.
00:11:36
Speaker
Um, and I hope it comes across the, how much I was enjoying myself.
00:11:43
Speaker
I think so.
00:11:44
Speaker
I think it definitely does.
Inspiration for 'Night Silver' Series
00:11:45
Speaker
It comes through in the writing and you can sort of tell how invested you are in,
00:11:50
Speaker
the universe and the kind of setup that you've built and all the characters.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:55
Speaker
And most of it, I like, because I pants and the way that I pants, I don't know that things are going to happen until they happen.
00:12:02
Speaker
So like when the triple headed sand snakes turned up, I was like, hang on a minute.
00:12:08
Speaker
Where are these guys come from?
00:12:12
Speaker
But yeah, it's just things like that.
00:12:14
Speaker
They're just, they just happen.
00:12:16
Speaker
And I feel like I'm,
00:12:18
Speaker
you know, um, experiencing the story for the first time as much as the reader is.
00:12:24
Speaker
Um, that's very much the joy of being a pantser or a discovery writer is the thing happens that your kind of subconscious brings something forwards and you weren't expecting it.
00:12:33
Speaker
And you say, well, wow, how am I going to get around this problem?
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:12:38
Speaker
And sometimes your subconscious brings you delightful problems to get around.
00:12:42
Speaker
Um, when I, when I'd written the first, uh, dirty zero, um, I wrote the end and I didn't like it.
00:12:49
Speaker
And then, uh, I wrote the end again and I wrote the end again and I still didn't like it.
00:12:53
Speaker
And then when I wrote the, the, the actual first, uh, you know, first draft, the prof first draft, the ending did change.
00:13:00
Speaker
And it changed to the ending that it needed to be.
00:13:03
Speaker
But also a lot of other things changed in that first draft.
00:13:07
Speaker
So in the draft zero, it was written in...
00:13:11
Speaker
third person and all the way through and then when I sat down to start writing the first draft, Ara had, she'd had about three or four different names in the draft zero because I just couldn't find anything that fitted that was her and my wonderful agent Helen Boyle
00:13:31
Speaker
She came up with like, we came up with like a list of celestial names and Ara is a constellation, a southern constellation.
00:13:40
Speaker
And she was like, oh, what about Ara?
00:13:41
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I was kind of, I like it.
00:13:43
Speaker
I was umming and ahhing about Ara.
00:13:47
Speaker
And as soon as I gave her that name, she just...
00:13:50
Speaker
She came to the front and that was it.
00:13:52
Speaker
It was her voice that came out.
00:13:55
Speaker
And then, yeah.
00:13:56
Speaker
And then when I wrote the chapters with the gods, although it's in the third person, it does come from like Hades POV.
00:14:06
Speaker
And I was
Publishing Journey and Finding an Agent
00:14:08
Speaker
definitely like deeply...
00:14:11
Speaker
into the characterization as I was fighting, because there was one point where I was on a dog walk with my daughter and I turned around and said to her, yeah, so like Hades was talking to me the other day and, and I didn't quite realize there was another dog walker who just gave us a really wide berth all of a sudden.
00:14:30
Speaker
And I was like, oh, okay.
00:14:31
Speaker
And my daughter did say like, mom, you can't, you can't be saying things like that out in public.
00:14:36
Speaker
It's just not, it's just not appropriate.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
that's funny so this the immortal games is your as uh briefly mentioned earlier your third published novel um previously was the two night silver books uh had you written anything prior to um your debut the night silver promise
00:14:56
Speaker
Um, so I'd written like things that are like, you know, you're under the bed books.
00:15:03
Speaker
Um, and I'd written things that I thought, cause at the time you think they're great.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
So I'd written things that I thought were great.
00:15:11
Speaker
Um, and I'd, uh, done a master's degree in creative writing and I'd written a couple of, um, audio plays I really enjoyed.
00:15:22
Speaker
Uh, and I had written an adult novella, um,
00:15:26
Speaker
So I'd written a few things, but when I started writing for Night Silver, again, it was another nano project.
00:15:33
Speaker
I sat down to write nano and I'm so, so glad that I didn't write the thing that I'd planned because I thought, okay, I'm going to plan this and I'm going to write it out.
00:15:42
Speaker
And I'd planned to write a book about...
00:15:45
Speaker
It was about a, basically a pandemic.
00:15:48
Speaker
So I'm really glad I didn't write that book.
00:15:53
Speaker
And I sat down to write that and my daughter, my eldest daughter, she came down the stairs looking a bit steampunky.
00:16:01
Speaker
And I was like, oh, okay, that's quite nice.
00:16:05
Speaker
And then I just got this vision in my head of Paisley Fitzwilliam, the main character of the Night's Hell of Promise, standing on the top of her family home, looking out through a telescope at a comet.
00:16:20
Speaker
And I knew that the comet was really important.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I could hear like this...
00:16:26
Speaker
Um, kind of a tap and a cling and a tap and a cling.
00:16:30
Speaker
And I knew it was her brother Dax and he was sitting on the chimney, whacking his legs against the masonry as small children do.
00:16:38
Speaker
Um, and I knew that one of his legs was in a caliber, um,
00:16:43
Speaker
And then it all just kind of like poured out from there.
00:16:45
Speaker
I knew that the reason why he had his leg in a cub was because it wasn't a leg at all, not a human leg.
00:16:51
Speaker
It was a dragon leg.
00:16:52
Speaker
And that was really dangerous because there's a prophecy about a dragon touched boy.
00:16:58
Speaker
And also I knew that the place where Paisley lived was
00:17:06
Speaker
They believed that they lived in a clockwork universe.
00:17:08
Speaker
There was this astronomical kind of theory during the Enlightenment times that we lived in a clockwork universe.
00:17:17
Speaker
And I thought, what if that never went away?
00:17:20
Speaker
What if people actually believed that we lived in a clockwork universe?
00:17:24
Speaker
Then the stars and wherever they are would be extremely important to this universe.
00:17:28
Speaker
to this civilization.
00:17:31
Speaker
Um, so then I thought, okay, so where, wherever the stars are at the moment of your birth, that gives you your destiny.
00:17:37
Speaker
And if you believe that everything is made out of clockwork, then, then your life is a track, a clockwork track.
00:17:44
Speaker
Um, so that was kind of, again, another big confluence of ideas, just lots of different things that I'd collected coming together.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yes, I believe that's how Brandon Sanderson writes a lot of his worlds is that he always puts down loads of notes for cool ideas he has in books.
00:18:02
Speaker
And then when he has a big one that kind of has traction and he starts working on it, he starts referencing his smaller books with all the little notes and kind of cool ideas that he had and sees which ones he can fit in.
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, just pulling them all together.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:15
Speaker
Very cool.
00:18:16
Speaker
And I think it's a bit like a snowball.
00:18:18
Speaker
Once you get enough momentum, they just gather more and more like-minded ideas towards them.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:26
Speaker
And then you're like, oh, but if this is that, then that means that these things are this.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
Exactly.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:33
Speaker
And then you start talking to Hades out in public.
00:18:39
Speaker
So was it through, was, was the Night Civil Promise, was that, did, was that through submission that the book that you found your agent with Helen Boyle?
00:18:48
Speaker
So,
Transition to YA Fiction
00:18:49
Speaker
um, I actually won an undiscovered voices in 2020.
00:18:53
Speaker
Uh, yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
So the society of children's book writers and illustrators.
00:18:58
Speaker
So I'd, um, I'd been working on the night silver promise with the, with the golden egg Academy.
00:19:05
Speaker
And, um, and it went out on submission and the feedback that came back was, oh, it's a little bit too complicated.
00:19:14
Speaker
And, you know, and I was like, okay.
00:19:16
Speaker
So I knew that the Undiscovered Voices was coming up in, in the
00:19:21
Speaker
in the June.
00:19:22
Speaker
So I did what I do best and I threw it away and I started again.
00:19:27
Speaker
And when I started again, that's when I made it slightly more complicated.
00:19:32
Speaker
That's when I added in this idea of destiny and
00:19:36
Speaker
And the fact that Paisley's destiny, she had not received her destiny then.
00:19:42
Speaker
And everything just kind of slotted together after that.
00:19:48
Speaker
So, yeah, I wrote the whole thing.
00:19:52
Speaker
And then I remember after I'd finished writing it, I went downstairs to my partner and I said to him, I've done a thing.
00:20:02
Speaker
He's like, what do you mean you've done a thing?
00:20:04
Speaker
And I was like,
00:20:05
Speaker
It's a thing.
00:20:06
Speaker
I've, I've written a thing.
00:20:09
Speaker
And he was like, oh, okay.
00:20:10
Speaker
Um, and I felt really confident about it.
00:20:14
Speaker
I felt like, you know, there was absolutely nothing else that I could have done to that book to make it any better.
00:20:21
Speaker
That doesn't mean that there wasn't things that needed to be done to it, but it was just that I couldn't have done anything else with it.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, so I was lucky enough to be shortlisted for Undiscovered Voices along with 11 other amazing people who I'm still in touch with because they're just...
00:20:40
Speaker
They're just brilliant.
00:20:41
Speaker
And I always say that, um, in winning undiscovered voices, the gift that I didn't know I was getting was all of the other people that won with me because we're just, yeah, they're just fabulous.
00:20:53
Speaker
Um, and so, uh, I was lucky enough to have a couple of offers of representation and, um, yeah.
00:21:01
Speaker
And then I signed with, with Helen, who's just, she's just brilliant.
00:21:07
Speaker
She's like, yeah, brilliant.
00:21:09
Speaker
That's good.
00:21:10
Speaker
I mean, it's always good to hear when authors have a good relationship with their agents.
00:21:15
Speaker
It's a very important relationship and it's good for it to be strong.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:18
Speaker
And I, and I always thought that I wanted an agent that I was a little bit scared of because this is going to sound terrible, but like if, um, if I can get out of doing something, then I will.
00:21:33
Speaker
Um, but I thought if I'm a little bit scared of my agent, I'm never going to miss a deadline.
00:21:37
Speaker
Um, what I got was something infinitely worse because I never want to let Helen down.
00:21:43
Speaker
Oh, perfect.
00:21:44
Speaker
Oh, it's just like, so yeah, that's it.
00:21:48
Speaker
That's
00:21:48
Speaker
kind of worse than being scared well sounds great it sounds great to me going back to the books so the the night civil promise and the and the sequel um and the doom fire secret yeah yeah very much uh middle grade novels what was it a sort of publisher push or did you always want to kind of try out young adult with the immortal games
00:22:12
Speaker
I always wanted to write a young adult book.
00:22:17
Speaker
I didn't know if I was, you know, I didn't think I was going to write one so quickly.
00:22:23
Speaker
So I had a three book contract with Scholastic and the third book was unnamed.
00:22:30
Speaker
And then when we came to talk, you know, to have the conversations after Yaz had come back from maternity leave,
00:22:39
Speaker
um they said we'd like to pivot you into the YA market because that's growing at the moment um and we think that your voice would be really good for it and I was like oh good because I was excited about writing uh for YA so okay so it's sort of happenstance combined with something that you'd thought about doing anyway yeah just worked out
00:23:00
Speaker
worked out well, I think.
00:23:01
Speaker
Oh, and what's interesting, I was thinking is that, so the world of the Night Silver books is this, uh, and you, you kind of talked about it just then, this kind of amazing clockwork, steampunky universe that you've created, you created and sort of built up and
00:23:16
Speaker
the world building and that you speak very passionately about the world, it sounds like it was a very big part of that process.
00:23:23
Speaker
Was it then sort of, did it feel like you hit the ground running doing immortal games where you were jumping into the Greek pantheon with like a mythology that's very well established already?
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, in a way, because I did feel like some of the groundwork was done for me.
00:23:42
Speaker
But there were, you know, I kind of wanted to take what we have, what we, you know, all of the different things.
00:23:52
Speaker
you know plethora of stories that we have not just from Greek mythology but that people have you know taken and interpreted in their own way and just use it as basically as that as like a basis but not necessarily being too strict with everything I didn't you know because there are so many different
00:24:11
Speaker
different accounts of different myths that sometimes contradict each other anyway.
World-building Techniques
00:24:17
Speaker
One of the things that I was really drawn to was the idea of a Hades who was a pacifist.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:27
Speaker
I thought he spent so much time with Hades
00:24:31
Speaker
with humans, with humans of deceased and humans that will no doubt be lamenting their demise and the fact that they are no longer living and they don't get to see their families and they don't get to experience life.
00:24:47
Speaker
He'd probably have an attitude towards life that it was quite a precious and fleeting thing, especially for him because he's immortal and we're basically mayflies.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:00
Speaker
It actually reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, his sort of attitude towards the whole thing.
00:25:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker
I love Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
00:25:10
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
Just amazing.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
And I can definitely see, you know, there is parallels between dream and, and Hades anyway, with the, you know, the dreaming that Hades is, you know, has, has control over.
00:25:23
Speaker
And Hades is often given the bad end of the stick.
00:25:30
Speaker
He's often cast as the villain in lots of these sort of interpretations like Clash of the Titans has him as the villain.
00:25:36
Speaker
Animated Hercules has him as the villain, although I love him in that.
00:25:39
Speaker
So it's nice to see a different side of that.
00:25:41
Speaker
I tried to pay a little bit of homage to the animated Hercules by giving him piercing blue eyes.
00:25:48
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:25:49
Speaker
Because he has that blue flame.
00:25:50
Speaker
It's very different character-wise.
00:25:52
Speaker
The character eyes, yeah, that was the only bit, just the blue eyes for the blue flames.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:59
Speaker
But that's, that's cool.
00:26:02
Speaker
And obviously, you know, there's so many different interpretations of the Greek mythology and the pantheon and how it all interacts and stuff.
00:26:07
Speaker
So it's always fun to get a new one.
00:26:11
Speaker
So the big question, as we head into the twilight of this episode, big question.
00:26:16
Speaker
I know that writers are always working on something new.
00:26:19
Speaker
And I don't know if you'll be allowed to tell us, but if you can, are we, can we expect more Nightsilver or more Immortal games?
00:26:29
Speaker
Oh, neither.
00:26:31
Speaker
Neither.
00:26:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:32
Speaker
We're done.
00:26:33
Speaker
Something new.
00:26:34
Speaker
Well, neither.
00:26:35
Speaker
You can, yeah, something new.
00:26:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:37
Speaker
Amazing.
00:26:38
Speaker
Which I'm really excited about.
00:26:39
Speaker
So, um, I mean, I say I'm excited about all of the things I write.
00:26:44
Speaker
I really don't see the point in writing something.
00:26:47
Speaker
If you are not having fun and it is not joyful for you because we put so much of ourselves into our writing and so much time and so much effort.
00:26:57
Speaker
And, um,
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, it makes me feel a bit sad whenever I read accounts of authors saying, you know, oh, it totally destroyed me to write this.
00:27:07
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, like I can understand a challenge.
00:27:11
Speaker
Like there are bits in my books that I've definitely found challenging to write either from an emotional point of view or, you know, I've never been able to get through Night Silver and Doomfire without crying at the end.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:26
Speaker
But, you know, it's, it's still a joy because, because I've got that, you know, it's that payoff.
00:27:34
Speaker
It's the, it's worth it in the end.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's worth it because it's, um, but yeah, when, when people say, you know, I cut myself open and I bleed on the page, I'm just like, oh gosh, quick, get yourself a bandage and a lollipop.
00:27:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
I hope they're not writing children's books.
00:27:51
Speaker
They're writing picture books.
00:27:52
Speaker
That's what they're writing.
00:27:54
Speaker
Probably.
00:27:56
Speaker
Oh, the idea of writing a picture book does fill me with fear.
00:28:00
Speaker
It's so hard and it's so competitive.
00:28:02
Speaker
It's so difficult and it's just like, I can't do anything in less than a million words.
00:28:11
Speaker
My emails are longer than most picture books.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, stick to fantasy.
00:28:15
Speaker
You get loads of extra words in fantasy.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah, I do absolutely adore writing fantasy.
00:28:22
Speaker
That is my happy place.
00:28:25
Speaker
I don't want to write anywhere else.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, I know what you mean.
00:28:29
Speaker
I'll probably only ever write fantasy.
00:28:31
Speaker
Or maybe I'd think about doing sci-fi, but it would basically be just fantasy, but with a technological skin instead of magic.
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:40
Speaker
So Night Silver and Doomfire, I often think of them as science fiction masquerading as fantasy.
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah, because they're steampunky, aren't they?
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah, because there was this kind of science-y underpinning of things.
00:28:53
Speaker
I love creating book Bibles for my stories.
00:28:58
Speaker
So in my book Bible for the Celestial Mechanism series, there's all of these little hyperlinks for my editors and anybody else who needs to access the world.
00:29:09
Speaker
Oh wow, that sounds great.
00:29:10
Speaker
And in the hyperlinks, it's got things like, this is a Dyson sphere and
00:29:15
Speaker
this is how Tangerman works.
00:29:18
Speaker
Just because those things are like, even though we don't talk about them in the book, they're the basis for how the, the world, you know, how the world is built.
00:29:28
Speaker
This is the, it's the groundwork.
00:29:31
Speaker
So I think it's really important to know where your base is.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I think that's why I was able to write the immortal game so quickly because my base was already there.
00:29:41
Speaker
I just had to, I just had to run on it.
00:29:43
Speaker
So yeah.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:45
Speaker
I think with fantasy, people say world building is like a, it's like an iceberg where like you only see like the top 5% of it or whatever.
00:29:51
Speaker
And the rest of it, you just never hear about.
00:29:53
Speaker
And then the pitfall is people try, because there's so much world building, people want to like show you all the world building and then that clogs up the story.
00:30:00
Speaker
Oh, world building disease.
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:03
Speaker
That's a whole other issue.
00:30:04
Speaker
This is why I throw my first drafts away because my first
Finding Joy in Writing
00:30:08
Speaker
drafts are always full of me basically geeking out about things.
00:30:12
Speaker
And I feel like if I throw it away, it's almost like I think of my brain as like a story sieve.
00:30:20
Speaker
And I think of the first draft as like, I'm cooking pasta.
00:30:25
Speaker
So in order to cook pasta, you need an awful lot of water.
00:30:29
Speaker
And you cook away your story, you cook your pasta, it comes to the right temperature.
00:30:33
Speaker
You then drain away all of that water.
00:30:35
Speaker
And what you're left with in your story sieve is all of the pasta, all of the story.
00:30:41
Speaker
So when I go to write the first draft, I've already got my pasta.
00:30:46
Speaker
It's already there.
00:30:46
Speaker
I've just got to add the sauce and meatballs.
00:30:49
Speaker
Oh, that's great.
00:30:50
Speaker
I love that analogy.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:53
Speaker
What a great place to, to bring us to the final, to the final question of the episode, which as always is Annalise, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would it be?
00:31:07
Speaker
Okay, so I had the answer to this question already for you.
00:31:10
Speaker
Amazing.
00:31:13
Speaker
It was going to be Good Omens.
00:31:17
Speaker
Oh, I love that book.
00:31:20
Speaker
But then I got COVID.
00:31:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:23
Speaker
And during COVID, I listened to Legends and Lattes and it was such a comfort.
00:31:32
Speaker
And I just fell in love with Viv and the whole world.
00:31:35
Speaker
So now I'm like, I love Good Omens.
00:31:40
Speaker
I feel like that was for me the whole kind of package and it would keep me very entertained.
00:31:44
Speaker
But there might be times where I just need a bit of comfort.
00:31:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:49
Speaker
So I'd probably go for Legends and Lattes.
00:31:52
Speaker
Legends and Lattes, is that by Travis Baldry?
00:31:55
Speaker
Yes, yeah.
00:31:56
Speaker
Okay, I'd not heard of it.
00:31:57
Speaker
That looks great.
00:31:58
Speaker
Oh, it was delightful.
00:31:59
Speaker
It was just like, yeah, I was feeling really, really rotten and it helped me to feel so much better.
00:32:08
Speaker
A novel of high fantasy and low stakes.
00:32:11
Speaker
That's apparently what it is.
00:32:12
Speaker
It was just, it was just a pleasant read.
00:32:15
Speaker
You know, when you just like, yeah, it just felt like I was being wrapped up in a nice big hug of a story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
00:32:24
Speaker
Oh, well, it sounds perfect for a desert island.
00:32:27
Speaker
Indeed.
00:32:28
Speaker
I'm assuming that, like, I don't know, I've got Bear Grylls with me or something.
00:32:32
Speaker
Otherwise, I would obviously bring Bear Grylls by the book.
00:32:34
Speaker
Okay, quite an assumption.
00:32:39
Speaker
Otherwise, I don't know, How to Get Off a Desert Island would be a good book otherwise.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:32:44
Speaker
But not as cosy.
00:32:45
Speaker
Not as cosy.
00:32:46
Speaker
And on those, you know, really tough days when I've just had nothing
Future Projects and Favorite Books
00:32:51
Speaker
but...
00:32:51
Speaker
coconut to eat all day um you know won't have lettuce and lattes that would be sad i guess that depends if you like coconut or not um either way um thank you so much annalise for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your new book and uh and your old books and your kind of experiences through writing and publishing it's been really really great chatting with you
00:33:12
Speaker
Oh, it's been lovely.
00:33:13
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:33:14
Speaker
You are most welcome.
00:33:15
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Annalise is saying, you can follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok at Annalise Avery.
00:33:24
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss the episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:33:28
Speaker
And to support us, you can head over to the Patreon.
00:33:30
Speaker
For more Bookish Chat, check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:33:34
Speaker
Thanks again to Annalise and thanks to everyone listening.
00:33:36
Speaker
We'll catch you on the next episode.