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#232 - Hazel McBride
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Romantic fantasy author and TikTok creator Hazel McBride drops by to chat about her traditional debut, finding her agent through fan fiction and testing the waters of indie publishing.
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Transcript
Importance of Writing in Storytelling
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? You can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble.
Introducing Hazel McBride and Her Debut Novel
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by romantic romantic fantasy author and TikTok creator Hazel McBride. Hello. Hi, it's so nice to be here.
00:00:26
Speaker
So nice to have you on. um Thanks for chatting with me. Let's jump right in and talk about the book itself, which is out right now. it came out not long ago. Tell us a little bit about A Fate Forged in Fire.
00:00:39
Speaker
Yeah, like where's it again? This last month has been insane. It's been out for almost a month now. This is my debut novel with a traditional publisher. And my elevator pitch for the book is if the Barbie movie had dragons and was gay, which seems to be hooking the girls gays and theys, which is really the main demographic ah for this book.
Comparisons and Appeal of Hazel's Novel
00:01:06
Speaker
That's a, that's a great um pitch. is Is that how you, is that how ah it was sent out to publishers? I don't think so. I think like professionally it was comped as like, i think it was like House of the Dragon meets Outlander.
00:01:20
Speaker
Because of Scottishness, obviously I'm Scottish. ah But yeah, I started chatting about the Barbie movie and people really liked it. And then obviously when we were like going around bookshops and stuff, you do need to be quite quick and kind of telling booksellers like what your book's about. So I shortened it to that and um people people seem to respond to it. So it's kind of stuck.
00:01:42
Speaker
Okay, great. I mean, it's a great little pitch. um I know that ah you're kind of part of the BookTok, TikTok community, and a big pull for romanticity in this kind of genre, this space is the tropes that a story
Popular Tropes in Romantic Fantasy
00:01:56
Speaker
contains. So do you have the like, the the list of tropes that that the story has?
00:02:02
Speaker
I have a list of like the main ones. So obviously enemies to lovers is the big one. It's a huge trope, especially on BookTok. ah But my thing with it is they are true enemies to lovers.
00:02:14
Speaker
So this isn't like reluctant allies to lovers or rivals to lovers. They... legitimately loathe one another. They're on opposite sides of a succession war.
00:02:25
Speaker
There are multiple dagger to throat scenes in this book, very partial to that micro trope, I must admit. and There's a bit of heart comfort in there. There are... um Touch her and die is in there as well. I think, you know, that's always nice when they really hate each other and then you get like that payoff at the end.
00:02:47
Speaker
And I had someone ask me about only one horse and there's no only one horse in this one, but in Booty 2 you might get only one dragon. Okay, that's, that's close enough, right? Yeah.
00:02:58
Speaker
Okay. So can I can, can I infer then from what you've just said that you think that potentially enemies to lovers might be thrown around a bit more than it actually is true in the kind of case of the book?
00:03:12
Speaker
For me as a reader, i mean, all writers are readers as well. Yes. I think if if they haven't at least tried to unalive one another once, they're not true enemies. And I definitely think that enemies to lovers just cannot exist in contemporary romance.
00:03:28
Speaker
the The stakes just aren't high enough. Unless like the person has truly maybe like done something heinous, but then it's hard to bring them back from that in contemporary romance. I think the two genres that do the best are fantasy and historical romance.
00:03:42
Speaker
Because in historical romance, the stakes are so high. Like you can have genuine like blood feuds between families over something that's totally ridiculous. um And yeah, it always has like nice little twists and turns and a lot of tension. so Okay. Yeah.
00:04:00
Speaker
Whereas the contemporary stuff, you're looking more often than not, it's more like rivals to lovers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay, they're not going to, like, kill each other given the chance, but they're sort of like... Yeah, it's like... They'll be colleagues or something. Yeah, like, I hate this guy in my office. I'm like, well, you're not going to drown him in the water cooler. Like...
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You're going to like try and sabotage the thing so that you can do better in your job something. Yeah, that makes sense.
Hazel's Publishing Journey
00:04:27
Speaker
um Changing tack a bit here, I had a quick look through your your website and you you mentioned that this is your first, your debut traditionally published novels.
00:04:38
Speaker
So am right in thinking that you have um independently published some novels of your own prior to this? Yes. So back in 2018, I started querying agents for my young adult trilogy and did the classic, you know, new author, queried a bunch of agents and just didn't hear back.
00:04:59
Speaker
yeah So, you know, spent like a lot of months trying to refine query letters and do better research and like update my pitches and all that and still had no success. And I think it's really true when you hear like seasoned authors say,
00:05:13
Speaker
You might love that first manuscript and it might be good, but don't let it be your last manuscript. like Don't give up after that just because you don't see any traction. ah So, I mean, I still really believed in that story. So I did go ahead and self-publish it and and learned a lot doing it. Learned that I'm not very good at self-publishing, maybe. Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
ah And then, yeah, I was lucky enough that my agent approached me after reading one of my fan fictions, asking if I was working on anything original. And it happened to be the early draft of The Fate Forged in Fire.
00:05:46
Speaker
So I sent her a couple of chapters and she really liked it. And then the rest is kind of history. But yeah, I've kind of dipped my toe in both worlds now. And there's a lot of pros and cons on both sides, but I'm definitely more suited to the trad route, I think.
00:06:00
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Is it because when you self-publish or indie publish, you're basically taking on, you're not just being the writer, you're being like the marketer, the publicist that you have to do, like the font type you have to do There's so much, so many logistics involved. Is that just stuff that you don't want to do?
00:06:17
Speaker
i I'm just not very good at it. Yeah. I really, i really enjoy the marketing, like specifically with social media. I do really enjoy that. I'm chronically online and I obviously enjoy the writing, but yeah, the formatting, the distribution, sourcing, you know, cover designers and freelance edit, it's so much work.
00:06:39
Speaker
You know, indie authors do not get enough credit for, you know, they have to be a jack of all trades basically. Yeah. And it is like having four full time jobs. And, you know, unless you do get very successful and it is possible to get very successful as an indie author, um you're not often going to see you know a monetary return.
00:07:01
Speaker
And obviously in a creative career, it's hard to define like success as money because, you know, it doesn't necessarily work like that, but you know, we're all trying to pay the bills at the end of the day.
00:07:12
Speaker
So, you know, oftentimes you'll be an indie author, but have a full-time job on the side. So you're juggling a lot.
Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing
00:07:19
Speaker
ah Whereas now, I'm lucky enough that I can call myself a full-time author. So yeah, just having the support of a team behind you who are all professionals in like their own niches and what they do is great.
00:07:29
Speaker
And I feel very lucky with the teams I've landed with as well. Like my agent, my editor, et cetera. They're all, you know, the biggest champions of the book and we all want the same thing out of it, which is great. So there's never really been any tense or fraught discussions about like...
00:07:45
Speaker
Oh no, you want to go in one direction and I want to go in the other, which has been really nice. So yeah, I think I've ah got quite lucky with where I've landed. Yeah. I mean, to some degree, obviously when an editor takes on a ah novel, it's because they've they've seen something in the novel and they really like the novel. You know, they've they've bought that story.
00:08:01
Speaker
They don't want to do a massive change around on it most of the time, I'd imagine. so And that's also not to say that a lot of people who are traditionally published also have jobs.
00:08:14
Speaker
it's Making money in publishing is difficult no matter what angle you you you you get in it. um getting back onto you though ah i'd love to go back to the beginning a bit then because you've had this kind of quite interesting publishing journey of self-publishing then finding yourself an agent now now traditional publishing but i'd love to go back to when it all started was there a moment that you kind of consciously remember when you were writing that you thought i want to i want to try this i want to see if i can do this properly and like put it out into the world and see how far this can go
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah, so for me, like, all throughout my kind of like childhood and teenage years, writing was very much a hobby. So I would write fanfiction. And I would, like, you know, very early on, like, before I even knew what, like, AO3 or fanfiction.net was, I would, like, just write really terrible stories on, like, my mom's home computer and print them out and, like, give them to my cousins for them to read. And I would, like, write us into our favorite stories.
00:09:16
Speaker
And then when I got a little bit older, like probably around like 16, 17, it was just like a fun thing that I would do, you know, outside of school or university. I would just write stories without ever really having the genuine intention of like, I want to be a writer and I want to publish this. It was just something I did for fun.
00:09:36
Speaker
And then it wasn't until I was in my mid twenties and I think self-publishing was having, you know, a bit more light shone on it through social media. I think I stumbled upon ah self-published author who was kind of explaining the process a little bit. And I was like, oh, like this seems like something I could maybe do because I didn't really understand how the traditional publishing industry worked. Like I had no idea how to get a book published.
00:10:03
Speaker
ah So I started researching both sides. And then I think that led to me querying and then eventually deciding to go the traditional published route in the end. Yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
Well, after self-publishing, you tried it all. You sampled the whole buffet. Yeah. i was like, fan fiction, going to do bit of this. And then I'm going to try self-publishing, not like that. And yeah, trying this way.
00:10:29
Speaker
Well, the fan fiction worked out, you know, because that's how you connected with your agent. is there a which Is there a website that you kind of post fan fiction on or is it you just host it on your own website or something?
00:10:39
Speaker
No, I did post my fan fictions on a o three and There's not very many up there, to be honest. I kind of used it as like a writing exercise because I'd never written adult fantasy
Fan Fiction's Role in Hazel's Confidence
00:10:50
Speaker
before. And I got hugely inspired by House of the Dragon when season one came out.
00:10:54
Speaker
So i was I was like, oh, I'm going to write this. It was actually someone on social media was asking for someone to write a fan fiction about a girl stealing Aemond Targaryen's eye and wearing it as a necklace.
00:11:07
Speaker
And I just went to say less. And I wrote it. And it did kind of take off. It was a bit insane. So it was one of the first Aemon Targaryen fan fictions up on EO3. I started writing it.
00:11:20
Speaker
I think the season had only aired like halfway. And I really attribute... that to being one of the reasons why it became so popular is because there wasn't a lot written in the fandom at that point. um So yeah, it kind of took off. It got like a bit of an audience. That's obviously how my agent found it.
00:11:38
Speaker
And I really enjoyed it. And I was getting a lot of really great feedback. Like I think the fan fiction community is so supportive. yeah And just having, you know, as ah as an author, you never get that real time feedback. There's nothing like it. You know, you'll write a chapter,
00:11:54
Speaker
throw it up online and then within literally sometimes minutes you will have a reader being like oh my god this chapter is amazing when's the next one so it kind of like it did you know i'm autistic as well so like fantasy worlds are a bit of a special interest the neurodivergent hyper focus definitely hit and i ended up writing the 120 000 word fiction within days wow Yeah, I did nothing but write within those 12 days.
00:12:23
Speaker
And ah that is not healthy. Absolutely not. But I have no idea how that story made any sense or why anyone liked it because it was not it was not edited. It was not beta read. I just wrote and posted, wrote and posted.
00:12:39
Speaker
But yeah, like people liked the way I wrote, which really gave me the confidence to be like, oh, well, maybe I can write my own adult fantasy and people will read it, which is why i actually started doing that. So yeah, it was hugely beneficial for me.
00:12:56
Speaker
That's awesome. And the way you phrased it as sort of as a a writing exercise, it sounds like it is a really healthy writing exercise. Cause I think one of the things that a lot of authors I've spoken to have said is that sometimes when they sort of get stuck on, on a part of a book and they kind of get inside their own head, they need to do something. They need to just write, but they need to write without pressure and kind of doing something like that.
00:13:19
Speaker
Kind of takes a lot of pressure off because you're like, this is just for fun. This is like a fan fiction thing that I'm just posting online. You know, I think that's a really good exercise to just do throughout. Yeah. And also like with fan fiction, there's no, you're not aiming for any word count.
00:13:33
Speaker
So, yeah you know, you could literally write a fan fiction that lasts three chapters and people will be like, oh my God, I love this. Please can I have some more? And then you can also go the opposite way. And like, I've read some fan fictions that are like half a million words long.
00:13:49
Speaker
And people are still like, oh my God, yes. So it kind of breaks a lot of rules in what authors know as this is how you write. Even though there's technically no
Serendipity in Hazel's Success
00:13:59
Speaker
rules, there's still some rules. yeah um So yeah, i just like I just had fun with it. And obviously when the world already exists and the characters already exist and you know half of the material is already there, you're just kind of playing around with it. and it can It can really help you understand...
00:14:18
Speaker
better understand character motivations and how you would present things and how you would structure things. And then some original ideas might come in. So yeah, I think the, you phrased it perfectly, like writing without pressure.
00:14:31
Speaker
It just makes it fun again. Yeah, absolutely. And then if you're lucky, your fan fiction takes off and an agent reach out reaches out to you. I mean, I wouldn't advise any budding authors to be like, this is the this is the pathway to take. This the way. It was, you know, my book is called A Fate Forged in Fire, and so much of it feels like fate because of that.
00:14:53
Speaker
You know, if that girl, her name's Aaliyah, by the way, hadn't asked someone to write that fan fiction, I might not have done it. And then my agent might not have found me and this book might not exist. So... like There you go.
00:15:05
Speaker
There's a lot of, yeah, parts towards this publishing journey that definitely felt like fate that I didn't do on my own. Yes. And your agent is, uh, Ciara Finan. Am I pronouncing that correctly? You actually are. i'm so surprised. It's really funny because I definitely didn't, which, you know, I'm shocked at, like she's Irish. I'm Scottish. I really should have known better, but she does say that Ciara Finan is her alter ego because that's how most people, uh, think she is called, but yeah, you're right. It's Ciara Finan.
00:15:39
Speaker
Um, how did it kind of pan out for you when you suddenly were reached out to by an agent having obviously tried the agent route previously and not found any, uh, bites?
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah. So I, I actually have a really funny, not funny, but maybe an interesting story from my querying days in 2019. So I actually did get one response from a male agent and he asked me to redo a few chapters and send them back to him, which I did. And then he ghosted me for three months.
00:16:08
Speaker
Okay. Um, And I've since learned in the publishing industry, if an agent asks you for pages, they kind of have a duty to read them and give you feedback because they've asked you to do extra work. And I remember I sent, I think, two emails, very polite, just being like, hi, I'd love to let know if you're still interested. Otherwise, I think I'll self-publish. Yeah.
00:16:29
Speaker
And I got an email back from him and it was very much along the lines of, you are a little girl who knows nothing in this industry and you will never you will never succeed, basically.
00:16:40
Speaker
And I was really taken aback by it. And I was like, oh, so when i got the email from Kira, I was a bit not hesitant, but I wasn't like jumping in, you know, with two feet completely. like It wasn't an enthusiastic yes.
00:16:55
Speaker
So first of all, I made sure the email wasn't spam. I was like, this seems strange. And ah we set up a Zoom call and she was very she was very enthusiastic about it because we I think we had the Zoom call the very next day.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I had basically written a huge list of questions. And then again, I got so lucky that it became very apparent from about halfway through our Zoom call that we just gelled really well.
00:17:24
Speaker
Um, and I would say even now, like she's more than just my agent. She is genuinely my friend. We get on like a house and fire. we have a lot of the same interests. And I just felt like she was someone I could trust.
00:17:36
Speaker
So yeah, after that Zoom call, I was like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to self-publish this story after all. But the problem was that the book wasn't finished being written.
00:17:47
Speaker
So at that point, I think I'd written about four or five chapters and I'd sent her the first three because they were the only three that I had edited. So she said to me, she was like, go away, write the manuscript and then send it back to me.
Manuscript Development into a Duology
00:18:00
Speaker
And then if I like it, we can move forward. So again, my autism just heard, you must write this book as quickly as possible. And at that point I was unemployed.
00:18:11
Speaker
So I did actually have time to write. and Meanwhile, my husband in the background was like, they're going to remortgage the house. Hazel, can you please get a real job? ah Which I now like to throw back in his face being like, who's the breadwinner now?
00:18:28
Speaker
So yeah, I wrote the first draft in four weeks. So it wasn't quite the 12-day fever dream of the fan fiction. But yeah, four weeks is still insanely quick.
00:18:39
Speaker
and Yeah. How many words is it? At that point, it was still a standalone. Obviously, now it's been split into two books. So it's a duology, which works way better. um And I think I finished it at 150,000, just under, maybe like 148,000.
00:18:52
Speaker
just under there maybe like a hundred four to eight Um, and luckily she liked it and she, she was like, I love it, but we're going to need to split this into more than one book.
00:19:04
Speaker
And i was like, yeah, no problem. So we did about six weeks of developmental edits after that before submitting it to publishers. Okay. That's interesting. So it was written as one massive tome and then the decision was made. We need to make this into a duology. Yeah.
00:19:20
Speaker
Well, not initially. My agent kind of floated the idea of doing like a longer series. so maybe seven or eight books with multiple POVs, like epic, high fantasy type story, which I think would have worked, but it definitely would have made my job harder.
00:19:36
Speaker
um So we kind of... said to publishers, we're not set on this idea. We also have the idea of doing it duology per duology. So multiple standalone set within the same world. yeah And publishers were really like, that's where the market is. That's what we want. If you can write it like that, we want the book.
00:19:55
Speaker
So, mean, it makes my life easier to have like the isolated stories instead of, you know, switching POVs all the time. So, yeah. Yeah, I've definitely spoken to a lot of authors who who and agents who have echoed that sentiment where it's the interconnected stories are what's popular right now, you know, non-sequential. You could read them in any order, but they all kind of connect and you get lots of crossover and things like that.
00:20:20
Speaker
Exactly. And duology as well. I like a duology, nice and snappy. As a big fantasy reader myself, there is some relief in knowing that I'm not going to be waiting like... five ten 14 years in some cases for like the final book in a trilogy I'm convinced that I'm going to die before I see Winds of Winter.
00:20:44
Speaker
No, not George. He's going to bury us all and he's still going to be there like, it's coming, guys. Yeah. i've I've basically given up on Doors of Stone at this point, ah which is Patrick Rothfuss's third one, which was supposed to be out like 10 years Was that The Name of the Wind?
00:21:04
Speaker
yeah yeah the third one in that series yeah which is heartbreaking because it's such a good the first two are so good and i just all i want is the final one in the trilogy see the problem is people keep telling me it's incredible and i refuse to read it because i know like i'll get addicted to it and then the third you can't finish it exactly so i'm like i'm i will start it if that third book comes out if slash when is when i would start it Yeah, I used to recommend Name of the Wind to to everyone.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I've reached the point now where I'm like, I'm not going to recommend it until that third one's out. Because i don't if it would feel cruel to put people in the same position that I exist in. Yeah. So, yeah.
Desert Island Book Choice
00:21:42
Speaker
um We are at the point in the episode where I ah kidnap you and haul you off to a desert island with nothing except a single book written.
00:21:52
Speaker
and i But at least I will ask you, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be? Okay. ah Nothing sounds more terrifying to me than being whisked away to, kidnapped to take into a desert island.
00:22:06
Speaker
um Can I choose one book that's on my shelf? Because technically it's three books in one. Yes. It's the special edition of Lord the Rings. Yes. Oh, you've got it. You've actually got a three in one version of that. Oh, wow.
00:22:21
Speaker
I had someone sent me an Amazon link to prove that it could be done a few years ago because I didn't believe it. But that's didn't realize you actually have one. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. It's so pretty. It's got Elvish on the sprayed edges. It's, yeah. Oh, a spread edge as well. My goodness. fancy I mean, it's a brick.
00:22:40
Speaker
Like, it's huge. Yeah, must be. Yeah. But, ah and like, the pages are, like, Bible thin. Oh, wow. Well, not quite. I may be exaggerating. But yeah, I think that's what I would bring. i spent my entire teenage years completely obsessed with Lord of the Rings.
00:22:58
Speaker
um And obviously, if you can have all three in one, the time it takes you to go from like beginning to end is quite yeah long. And Tolkien's writing is so descriptive and immersive, I might forget the horrors of being kidnapped and stranded on a desert island. Yeah.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, ah of course you will. Because there's whole chapters which are just describing landscape and rolling hills and things. That'd be nice. Yeah, I'd be like, this is where I am. This is where I am instead. I want to go and be with Tom Bombadil.
00:23:30
Speaker
Exactly. Tom Bombadil. and I'm still sad that we've never really had him properly seen in live action yet. I know. just cut him out of all the things.
00:23:40
Speaker
I mean, i like i would love to campaign for like, I mean, those three movies, i i don't ever want them to be redone because I genuinely think they're perfect. Agreed. As an adaptation, they're so good.
00:23:53
Speaker
But it would be great to get like an extended, extended cut to just put everything in it.
00:24:00
Speaker
the extended extended version yeah because 10 hours or whatever it is it's not not enough that is not enough we need more um awesome great choice a classic and i think you yeah the first person i've met who actually owns the physic physically bound three books together so that's cool um i feel like i i might go and see if i can find one of my own now uh Next up, we are going to chat a bit more on books, a bit more about TikTok and ah some more craft stuff about fantasy and
Where to Find More Content
00:24:32
Speaker
world building. All of that will be available in the extended episode, ah which you can find at patreon.com slash right and wrong.
00:24:39
Speaker
oh yes i will clarify that for everyone the dragons and my books have four legs two wings i repeat four legs and two wings nothing yeah there's nothing worse than uh what was it i think it was in one of the episodes of the witcher ages ago and they kept talking about a dragon and then on screen all i could see was a wyvern and i was like well where's the dragon oh no Incorrect.
00:25:06
Speaker
Anyway, that brings us to the end of the episode. Thank you so much, Hazel, for coming on and chatting with me and telling me all about all your writing and publishing adventures. um For anyone listening, A Fate Forge in Fire, book one is out right now. You can get it in all the usual places.
00:25:22
Speaker
um But yeah, thank you so much. It's been awesome and and so interesting and fun chatting with you. No, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's been wonderful. And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Hazel is doing, you can find her on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at Hazel McBride author.
00:25:38
Speaker
To support this podcast, like, follow, and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again to Hazel and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.