Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
115 Alexandra Bracken | YA Fantasy and Sci-Fi Author
562 Plays2 years ago
#1 best-selling young adult sci-fi and fantasy author Alexandra Bracken is on this week’s episode talking about her brand new novel ‘Silver in the Bone’, her mad writing schedule for ‘The Darkest Minds’ and what it was like having one of her novels adapted by Hollywood. (Photo by Rita & Co)
Signing up to the Patreon will give you access to the Discord server, where you'll be able to interact directly with Jamie as well as many of the previous agents, authors and editors who have been on the show. You'll also be able to see who the upcoming guests are and put forward questions for Jamie to ask them.
Get a whole month with WriteMentor's Hub for free using the coupon code 'Write&Wrong'.
The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes
Jamie, Melissa and Noami talk about the best and the worst writing tropes!
Click here to find all of our guests' books as well as the desert island library over at bookshop.org.
Click on this referral link to get 30% off your first three months with Zencastr.
Recommended
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.
00:00:14
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:00:15
Speaker
This is nonsense.
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 had it here first.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:33
Speaker
On today's episode, I'm very excited to have best-selling superstar YA author, Alexandra Bracken.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hi, Alex.
00:00:41
Speaker
Welcome to the show.
00:00:43
Speaker
Wow, what a flattering intro.
00:00:44
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:00:46
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
00:00:47
Speaker
I mean, I was very excited to have you.
Discussing 'Silver and the Bone'
00:00:50
Speaker
For someone so young, you are so accomplished in publishing.
00:00:55
Speaker
When I looked up how many books you had out, I was honestly shocked.
00:00:59
Speaker
I was like, what are you?
00:00:59
Speaker
Honestly, I have been telling people my new book, Silver and the Bone, is my 13th book for about six months.
00:01:05
Speaker
And then I actually counted and it's my 14th book.
00:01:09
Speaker
So I would like to apologize to my Star Wars book, my little retelling of A New Hope, because sometimes I just completely forget that book exists.
00:01:18
Speaker
At least you know which one it was that you weren't counting.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:22
Speaker
I was like, does that one count if it's not totally original fiction?
00:01:26
Speaker
I don't know.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a wild ride.
00:01:29
Speaker
I've definitely been doing this a long time and I'm starting to feel a little bit like an elder in the young adult community, which blows my mind.
00:01:36
Speaker
Okay, that's a daunting thought.
00:01:40
Speaker
Let's talk about your 14th book, brand new, which will be out by the time this airs, Silver in the Bone.
00:01:48
Speaker
Tell us a bit about it.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:51
Speaker
So this is one of those books where I have been struggling for months to figure out the right way to pitch it.
00:01:56
Speaker
And then one of my author friends very recently was like, oh, it's kind of like this meets this.
00:02:00
Speaker
And I was like, that is exactly this book.
00:02:03
Speaker
So it's kind of like a young female Indiana Jones crossed with Arthurian legend with a dash of, and this was a missing ingredient, The Last of Us.
00:02:12
Speaker
And it has like a rival to lovers romance and a ton of twists.
00:02:15
Speaker
But I
00:02:16
Speaker
To be completely honest with you, I have been very taken aback by the amount of professional reviews, like trade reviews rather, that I've gotten that have cited that this book is fantasy and horror.
00:02:28
Speaker
I was like, I didn't write a horror book.
00:02:29
Speaker
And until my friend was like, actually, there is like some light flavoring of The Last of Us, kind of a little bit of a zombie essence thrown in there.
00:02:38
Speaker
I was like, oh, yeah, now I'm getting why all of the reviewers said this.
00:02:42
Speaker
But I can give you a nice detailed plot pitch if you would like that, too.
00:02:46
Speaker
Let's hear it.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's the story of 17-year-old Tamsin who, along with her brother, has grown up in this hidden world of treasure hunters who seek out magical relics.
00:02:56
Speaker
But the one thing she really desperately wants is to find an object powerful enough to break a terrible curse that's slowly but surely consuming her brother.
00:03:06
Speaker
And when she finds out that their missing guardian may have vanished looking for an object like that, known as the Ring of Dispel from Arthurian legend,
00:03:13
Speaker
She sets out to follow her guardian's trail to the ring and along the way she ends up working with, of course, her infuriatingly handsome and charming rival, a young sorceress, who want the ring for their own mysterious reasons.
00:03:28
Speaker
And the search ends up bringing them into the other land of Avalon of Arthurian legend.
00:03:32
Speaker
Only Avalon itself is suffering from a terrible curse and soon they won't just be looking for the ring.
00:03:37
Speaker
They'll be fighting to survive.
00:03:40
Speaker
Amazing.
00:03:41
Speaker
A little sprinkling.
00:03:41
Speaker
That's the zombie essence maybe coming out a little.
00:03:46
Speaker
Okay, so you accidentally wrote a horror, but you were aware it was Arthurian Legend was the goal.
00:03:54
Speaker
You zeroed in on that.
Genre Blending and Influences
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes it just happens that way.
00:03:59
Speaker
It happened that way with my Darkest Mind series too, where I didn't really realize I was writing a dystopian book.
00:04:04
Speaker
I thought I was writing sort of a sci-fi superpowers book.
00:04:09
Speaker
And some of it too is just like what's kind of out there in the world in pop culture too itself.
00:04:16
Speaker
kind of determines how the book is seen a little bit.
00:04:18
Speaker
Because for marketing purposes, the publisher wants to be able to kind of fit it into a genre a little bit more neatly.
00:04:26
Speaker
So sometimes it gets like kind of shoved in there, even into like one in particular, even if it's, you know, blends a couple of different genres.
00:04:33
Speaker
But I've been reading, are you familiar with John Truby at all?
00:04:38
Speaker
I'm not, no.
00:04:39
Speaker
He has a, he's basically, I want to say he's like,
00:04:44
Speaker
a screenwriting coach, especially he kind of focuses his specialty is like screenwriting, but he has a book called Anatomy of a Story that I love.
00:04:53
Speaker
It's a wonderful book for novelists, for screenwriters.
00:04:58
Speaker
It is definitely not necessarily for beginners.
00:05:01
Speaker
Like if you're just starting out on your writing journey, it may be a little bit overwhelming because he goes into such detail, but it's such an interesting story.
00:05:08
Speaker
way of thinking about constructing story.
00:05:10
Speaker
But that's a long tangent to get back to my point, which is he just recently released this absolute beast of a book about genre.
00:05:18
Speaker
And it's been so interesting to read through the horror section, the fantasy section, and the myth section and to kind of like tick off in my head.
00:05:26
Speaker
And I think all authors do this where they are kind of subconsciously tapping into these
00:05:31
Speaker
various genres and pulling in the different tropes.
00:05:34
Speaker
So it's, yeah, it's a fabulous book.
00:05:37
Speaker
I think it's literally called Anatomy of Genres.
00:05:40
Speaker
It's right behind me.
00:05:41
Speaker
And it looks like it's 3000 pages long, but it's worth it.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:46
Speaker
I mean, you want a big reference book, right?
00:05:48
Speaker
Because you're not reading it cover to cover necessarily.
00:05:51
Speaker
Exactly.
00:05:52
Speaker
You're kind of thumbing through it.
00:05:53
Speaker
Although I admire
Evolving Writing Style
00:05:54
Speaker
anyone who would be like, you know what, I'm just going to commit like two straight weeks of reading this book before taking notes.
00:06:00
Speaker
It's a gripping read.
00:06:02
Speaker
Exactly.
00:06:03
Speaker
But genre is so funny because it's interesting that you say when you're describing the darkest minds that you kind of pitch it as like a superhero, dystopian superhero thing, superpower thing.
00:06:15
Speaker
Whereas like there's, there's sort of such a, a tight crossover between saying that and also saying like modern urban fantasy.
00:06:24
Speaker
Cause lots of your stuff is also set in real cities, right?
00:06:27
Speaker
Like New York, Boston.
00:06:29
Speaker
Exactly.
00:06:30
Speaker
I think the term that we're using now is contemporary fantasy.
00:06:33
Speaker
I was like, when did it change from urban fantasy to contemporary fantasy?
00:06:37
Speaker
But yeah, I would probably consider The Darkest Minds at least a little bit of contemporary fantasy.
00:06:43
Speaker
It sort of comes down to how you would break down science fiction versus fantasy when it comes to superpowers or
00:06:52
Speaker
just the overall story world and all of that.
00:06:57
Speaker
But yeah, I kind of love that though about writing where I'm sure you have experiences too where you're writing something and your subconscious has been working so hard in the background on something.
00:07:10
Speaker
And you reread what you've written and you're like, oh, I thought the story was X, but it's actually Y. I know some authors are very, very good about following an outline and they are in complete control of their story.
00:07:22
Speaker
But I am basically functioning on just like waves of chaos over here.
00:07:28
Speaker
And then it takes me eventually to where I'm going.
00:07:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:32
Speaker
So you're not a planner or a plotter.
00:07:36
Speaker
You're much more a discovery writer.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think I kind of fall somewhere in between now.
00:07:42
Speaker
When I first started, I was purely a discovery writer, and then I kind of forced myself to go back and really learn craft, which is not something I'd had any sort of formal education on, either in university or really, I guess you wouldn't really have creative writing craft in high school, but I really went back and started.
00:08:05
Speaker
That's when I discovered John Truby.
00:08:07
Speaker
I really went back because I wanted to be able to articulate my writing process better than just saying, I don't know, I had this mental image in my head and the character just sort of started talking to me.
00:08:18
Speaker
And so for a while, for a stretch of my career, I tried so hard to be an outliner.
00:08:24
Speaker
And now I have kind of swung back into being a little bit more of a discovery writer.
00:08:28
Speaker
And I think that's
00:08:30
Speaker
where I have the most fun, but I do outline the like couple of chap, like I'll do the next three batch, three chapter batch rather, excuse me.
00:08:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:41
Speaker
So like, yeah, I guess it's like headlights plotting is I think the term that people use for it.
00:08:47
Speaker
I've not heard that before.
00:08:48
Speaker
That's great.
00:08:49
Speaker
So you're kind of driving along and you can see immediately what's in front of you and you kind of know the major stops along the way.
00:08:56
Speaker
But this way it gives me this kind of, this fun that I, this sense of fun that I think I sometimes lack when I have
00:09:04
Speaker
and working just completely off of a very rigid outline.
00:09:07
Speaker
So it's, you know, the character is getting from point A to point B, but you don't necessarily know how.
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:13
Speaker
If that makes sense.
00:09:14
Speaker
So it's a lot of fun for me, but I think it can be kind of intimidating to write that way where you just are like going into a scene and you're like,
00:09:24
Speaker
we'll see where this takes me today and you don't have as much control over the story.
00:09:28
Speaker
But going back and teaching myself more about craft and learning more about craft has kind of given me a firmer foundation to stand on.
00:09:39
Speaker
So my more intuitive writing process can kind of take over and I can trust that I have not gone completely off the rails.
00:09:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:48
Speaker
So you feel like you've been writing for a while now,
00:09:53
Speaker
And you feel like your writing and your style has kind of really evolved since you first started.
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, which surprised me because I think I always, I don't know,
00:10:04
Speaker
My goal with each book is just to write a better book than the last book.
00:10:07
Speaker
Um, and so I will sometimes take a big swing and sometimes it's a big miss, but I am like always trying to push my storytelling.
00:10:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
It's, you know, it's so funny because you never quite know what's going to land with readers.
00:10:20
Speaker
Um, and I never want to deliver the same story to them twice.
00:10:24
Speaker
Um,
00:10:25
Speaker
And so some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this.
00:10:29
Speaker
So it's kind of a gamble, but it's always fun.
00:10:33
Speaker
So a lot of times nowadays, I'm like, how can I have more fun with this story?
00:10:38
Speaker
And it ends up taking me to a really fun place.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I just have to hope that readers will kind of follow.
00:10:43
Speaker
But it did surprise me that looking back, it does surprise me that my
00:10:50
Speaker
kind of writing process has changed as much as it has, but everybody's brain likes to work in such a different
Early Writing Passion and Career Beginnings
00:10:57
Speaker
way.
00:10:57
Speaker
I think it is important to kind of experiment and see what works best for you and be like constantly trying to find a way to streamline this absolutely massive process of writing a book.
00:11:09
Speaker
Well, it's natural just to grow as well.
00:11:11
Speaker
You know, as you get older, you're going to grow and you're practicing more and more.
00:11:14
Speaker
Every book is in theory, practice for the next one, right?
00:11:18
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:19
Speaker
Do you ever flick through your old stuff?
00:11:22
Speaker
And this is something that I've heard is very common.
00:11:25
Speaker
I know Zadie Smith always talks about this.
00:11:27
Speaker
Do you ever flick through your old stuff and go, I would not have written it like that now.
00:11:34
Speaker
You know, this is really embarrassing to say.
00:11:36
Speaker
It's less that and more, I have no memory of having written this.
00:11:40
Speaker
I think the way my brain works is that I will get the story out of me.
00:11:45
Speaker
I will download it onto the page and then my brain immediately dumps that information and it's on to the next project and slowly gathering that information.
00:11:54
Speaker
Wow.
00:11:55
Speaker
That's efficient.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think this is, I very rarely will go back and actually reread something after it's published or even reread sections of it.
00:12:06
Speaker
The only time I've really done it is ahead of writing a sequel, just wanting to like revisit something.
00:12:14
Speaker
But I think it's sort of like, and I also cannot listen to my books on audiobook either, even though I have such a respect for the readers.
00:12:24
Speaker
And I have had some really wonderful audiobook readers, and I feel very lucky over that.
00:12:31
Speaker
But I think it must be somewhat like how some actors can't watch themselves on screen.
00:12:37
Speaker
I feel like if I go back and reread something I've written or I listen to something I've written, I will just be cringing and get really bad secondhand embarrassment and be like, oh, I could have written that much better.
00:12:48
Speaker
So I guess yes and no, I kind of agree.
00:12:52
Speaker
But I think I just am so avoidant when it comes to that, that I don't put myself in that position of going back and rereading.
00:13:01
Speaker
That's probably healthy.
00:13:02
Speaker
You're focused on the present and the future and you're just going to keep writing and writing more and better stuff.
00:13:07
Speaker
That's great.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:08
Speaker
I mean, honestly, the further I get into my career, the more I think that that is actually the secret to having a long career in publishing is just to be able to move on to the next and kind of
00:13:23
Speaker
Learn what you need to learn from having written the book before and jump into the next story and just keep going.
00:13:30
Speaker
Even if you have a stumble where readers don't particularly love a certain book that you've written, it's like the recovery from that and pouring your love into a new story.
00:13:39
Speaker
That's what continues to carry you forward and generates that forward.
00:13:43
Speaker
forward momentum over the years.
00:13:46
Speaker
So that's why it's so shocking to me to look back and be like, oh my gosh, I've now published 14 books at this point.
00:13:55
Speaker
I've gone through this process 14 times and it's just been like pure inertia carrying me forward.
00:14:01
Speaker
Well, speaking of looking back, let's dial this back a bit.
00:14:05
Speaker
So I know that you sold your first book when you were still in college.
00:14:11
Speaker
So I'm guessing that was, was that the graphic novel?
00:14:18
Speaker
That was the original book that the graphic novel was based on.
00:14:25
Speaker
And what ended up happening was that
00:14:28
Speaker
Um, I sold my, that book, brightly woven, the novel version, my senior year, my second semester of senior year.
00:14:35
Speaker
And, um, it went on to be published the next spring.
00:14:39
Speaker
So 2010, and then it was with a small publisher.
00:14:44
Speaker
It was Egmont's USA brand, Egmont USA.
00:14:47
Speaker
They started up like, I guess a smaller American North American arm, um,
00:14:54
Speaker
shouldn't even say North American.
00:14:56
Speaker
It was really the United States arm.
00:14:57
Speaker
There we go.
00:14:59
Speaker
Um, it's like trying to like change the way I, I'm trying to like get rid of saying something is American when I really mean the United States, because obviously there are other countries in North America.
00:15:13
Speaker
Um,
00:15:14
Speaker
So Egmont USA just very sadly went out of business.
00:15:20
Speaker
They decided to fold that US arm.
00:15:23
Speaker
And then the rights reverted back to me.
00:15:26
Speaker
And I felt like it was such an odd publishing experience where I had an editor who...
00:15:34
Speaker
And I was really young at the time, 21, 22, trying to get this book into shape and trying to achieve this dream of being published and make a career out of it.
00:15:43
Speaker
So I really deferred to this editor a lot on what to cut and
00:15:49
Speaker
the edits and I sort of looking back on it was like, I don't even really recognize my writing as much in this book.
00:15:57
Speaker
So I sat on it for a really long time and then decided if we were going to republish it or if we were going to sell the rights to it to a new publisher, I wanted to either really revise the book or I wanted it to come out in a different way.
00:16:13
Speaker
different formats.
00:16:14
Speaker
So at that point, it had been pirated so much as the novel that I was like, I feel like maybe what I actually really want to do is to kind of experiment with bringing it into a graphic novel format because it is a standalone.
00:16:29
Speaker
I think it can be... It now feels very middle grade rather than young adult because of how kind of dark and mature YA has skewed over the last 13 years.
00:16:43
Speaker
And I was like, well, I feel like we should kind of experiment with aging some of the characters down and just bringing it out in a different format.
00:16:51
Speaker
And it was really fun to play around with the story that way and see that it could be retold in a completely different format.
00:16:58
Speaker
So we had...
00:17:01
Speaker
someone come in and adapt it from the actual novel because I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm going to learn from this process the best I possibly can.
00:17:10
Speaker
And yeah, it was just, it was such an interesting journey though for, for that little book with the little publisher.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker
That's so cool that you wanted to bring it back, but in a different form, in a different iteration.
00:17:25
Speaker
I think that's also very, that feels very brave as like one of your first kind of like things to do.
00:17:30
Speaker
You know what?
00:17:31
Speaker
Actually, let's change it up.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny too, because it had, at the time, Brightly Woven had its little fan base.
00:17:41
Speaker
It still amazes me to this day.
00:17:43
Speaker
I think that was one of the reasons why when I swung just a completely different direction with The Darkest Minds, I went from Brightly Woven to The Darkest Minds.
00:17:52
Speaker
A lot of people think The Darkest Minds was my debut, and it wasn't.
00:17:57
Speaker
Those readers were very loyal and followed me from this sweet fantasy book into this futuristic sci-fi dystopian world of darkness.
00:18:08
Speaker
That was one of the reasons why I think that book was able to get a little bit of word of mouth.
00:18:13
Speaker
Um, you know, just right off the bat.
00:18:16
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it was, it felt like a worthwhile experiment to me because I also knew the readers who had loved Brightly Woven would feel like a little bit nostalgic about it and would maybe want to see it in a different format too, to kind of bring it, you know, next to the original book on their shelves.
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:35
Speaker
So as you mentioned, you were very young when you signed that publishing deal.
00:18:42
Speaker
I'm going to guess off that, that you've been writing or wanting to be a writer from a very, very young age.
Becoming a Writer: From Dreams to Reality
00:18:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:50
Speaker
This is, I don't, did you have this experience where you knew from a very young age that you wanted to be an author or you wanted to write stories?
00:18:58
Speaker
Was that true for you?
00:18:59
Speaker
I didn't actually.
00:19:00
Speaker
I knew throughout all of my teens that I was going to be a rock star.
00:19:04
Speaker
So it was a different experience.
00:19:07
Speaker
It hasn't panned out yet, but you know, fingers crossed.
00:19:10
Speaker
Never say never.
00:19:12
Speaker
I mean, I feel like anyone can become a rock star with TikTok in the picture.
00:19:16
Speaker
Like you just have to go viral.
00:19:20
Speaker
But it wasn't an author.
00:19:21
Speaker
That came later.
00:19:22
Speaker
Oh, see, I love that.
00:19:23
Speaker
I feel like that's true for a lot of my friends.
00:19:25
Speaker
It really is kind of a mixed bag when we talk about this, where some of us, including myself, knew from a really young age.
00:19:33
Speaker
I remember being in second grade and thinking to myself,
00:19:38
Speaker
I, this is what I'm supposed to do.
00:19:39
Speaker
I'm supposed to write books for four kids.
00:19:41
Speaker
Like it was that specific of like, and I think honestly, it was just the thought process there was, I loved reading.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I was like, if it's this fun to read, it will be this fun to tell stories.
00:19:54
Speaker
And that was, I think second grade or third grade maybe was when we started having these little creative writing units in school.
00:20:04
Speaker
And they would have us write these little short stories based on
00:20:08
Speaker
whatever science unit or history unit we were learning about at that time.
00:20:15
Speaker
So I remember one of my first books was a story about how the asteroid belt was formed, and it involved jealous planets or something.
00:20:24
Speaker
I love how you remember these books, but you don't remember the published books.
00:20:27
Speaker
Exactly.
00:20:28
Speaker
I was like, before my memory was broken.
00:20:33
Speaker
Before I had to like, you know, memorize so much stuff in school.
00:20:38
Speaker
But it's also like, our memories are so strong when they're attached to a very strong emotion, right?
00:20:44
Speaker
So yeah, I think when I was young, reading and writing just filled me with so much joy that I really remember some of those like early days of
00:20:54
Speaker
writing fan fiction and like publishing it under a pen name on fanfiction.net and getting reviews and learning from the reviews.
00:21:02
Speaker
But honestly, writing fan fiction really got me in the habit of writing consistently and meeting deadlines because I would promise like I'm going to upload the next chapter of this, you know, by next Friday or whatever.
00:21:16
Speaker
And so I would try to meet that deadline up so I wouldn't disappoint readers.
00:21:20
Speaker
And that is honestly like once you kind of get in the habit of writing daily, it,
00:21:24
Speaker
you know, it carries you through writing a whole novel eventually.
00:21:28
Speaker
That's great.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, I was, I was definitely one of those really annoying kids who had this shining sense of purpose of what she was supposed to do with her life.
00:21:36
Speaker
And I feel so, so, so lucky that I have been able to make a life and career out of it.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:43
Speaker
What, um, what was your fan fiction?
00:21:47
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:21:48
Speaker
I almost don't want to say because I think it's still on fanfiction.net.
00:21:52
Speaker
I don't know if there's been any sort of purging, but there was some Star Wars.
00:21:57
Speaker
There was a little bit of Harry Potter back in the day.
00:22:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
I think there was some Sailor Moon fan fiction.
00:22:08
Speaker
It was all over the place really.
00:22:11
Speaker
So from this, from all of your cutting your teeth in fan fiction as a teen, was Brightly Woven, was that the first novel, the kind of full novel that you wrote and then submitted and sort of put out into the world?
00:22:26
Speaker
It was actually the second novel that I wrote.
00:22:30
Speaker
The first one that I wrote was for National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.
00:22:36
Speaker
It was my freshman year of college because it was not already hard enough to go to university across the country to be trying to double major.
00:22:45
Speaker
I was like, I'm going to finally write my novel because I had just heard about this novel thing called NaNoWriMo.
00:22:51
Speaker
And so I wrote a book.
00:22:54
Speaker
I wrote a novel that shall never see the light of day.
00:22:57
Speaker
It is really, really bad, truly bad.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I, at the time though, was convinced of my own genius, which is honestly like another really important trait to have when you're first starting out.
00:23:10
Speaker
You almost have to have this like slight delusional belief in yourself because that is the thing that is going to carry you through, you know, getting feedback, harsh and like, you know, other gentle, you know,
00:23:24
Speaker
Like it just is the thing where you have to like believe in yourself and believe in your story first and foremost before anybody else will.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so I think I had delusion more as like an 18 year old than I do now at 36, literally half a lifetime ago.
00:23:40
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I wrote it and I was, I was like, maybe I will try to get it published because at that point this would have been like 2006, I think.
00:23:53
Speaker
There was a lot more information online about like how to find an agent and how to query and all of that.
00:23:59
Speaker
And so I was like trying to query as I was, you know, going to school and absolutely nobody wanted this book unsurprisingly.
00:24:07
Speaker
And of course I was crushed.
00:24:09
Speaker
And thank God nobody wanted this book.
00:24:12
Speaker
And so to kind of like ease back into writing, my friend who had helped me really edit that book, I wrote a new book that was like for her birthday.
00:24:21
Speaker
And that was what eventually became Brightly Woven.
00:24:24
Speaker
So technically, it was the second thing I tried to write.
00:24:28
Speaker
And yeah, it just it had like a very special feeling about it.
00:24:31
Speaker
I think some writers kind of downplay their intuition when it comes to storytelling or they...
00:24:40
Speaker
I don't know, they're not quite as... I really think it always benefits writers to kind of like listen to what your intuition is trying to tell you.
00:24:48
Speaker
Like if your intuition is saying, this is a special idea, you should run with it.
00:24:52
Speaker
Like you should continue to develop it, even if it feels hard.
00:24:55
Speaker
Like that's an important voice to listen to in yourself.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:59
Speaker
Not to get too woo-woo with you.
00:25:01
Speaker
But I think like, I think we do have this voice in us as like all creative people do.
00:25:07
Speaker
All people really have that kind of intuition.
00:25:10
Speaker
And it's just a matter of like whether or not you're willing to listen.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, I understand that.
00:25:17
Speaker
So once, once you, you were, you were feeling good about this book, was this the, the, was it straight to the, the small publisher or did you, would, did you submit to agents and then it was through your agent?
00:25:29
Speaker
So I then, gosh, this is like one of the memories that I have such a vivid memory of.
00:25:35
Speaker
I was like, yeah, I was in bed.
00:25:37
Speaker
One of the things that have not been deleted yet, I was an RA.
00:25:42
Speaker
I was like a resident advisor.
00:25:45
Speaker
And so I got a room, I had a dorm room to myself my sophomore year, which was awesome.
00:25:49
Speaker
Nice.
00:25:50
Speaker
And so I remember I was in this little like slightly roach and cockroach infested room.
00:25:55
Speaker
And I was laying in bed and I was about to fall asleep.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I sat up and I just like immediately knew how to write the query letter.
00:26:02
Speaker
And I wrote it all in one go.
00:26:04
Speaker
And that was the query letter I sent out.
00:26:06
Speaker
Um, and I started getting, I know.
00:26:09
Speaker
I mean, I, I lightly edited it, so I wouldn't embarrass myself being like half asleep having written it, but it was, it was this really weird moment.
00:26:18
Speaker
Um, and then, you know, I sent it out and maybe, you know, within a week or two, I started getting requests and I was like, wow, like,
00:26:27
Speaker
this is amazing.
00:26:28
Speaker
I'm so excited.
00:26:28
Speaker
But I think at the time it was like midterm.
00:26:31
Speaker
So I was also very stressed.
00:26:34
Speaker
And I remember like I hadn't been coming, I had been taking one of my midterms and I had a missed call from a San Diego area code.
00:26:44
Speaker
And obviously a lot of
00:26:46
Speaker
Publishing in the US is based out of New York, but I knew that I had submitted to an agent who had a San Diego... I had submitted to Writer's House here in the US, and they had an office in San Diego at the time, and I had submitted to one of the junior agents out of that office.
00:27:02
Speaker
And so it ended up being...
00:27:05
Speaker
that agent calling me to offer representation and just to chat.
00:27:08
Speaker
And it happened, this is again, like one of those really obnoxious stories, but it was my 21st birthday.
00:27:13
Speaker
And so I took, we like, I talked to her at my birthday dinner that I went out to, um, at this little Italian restaurant with my
Navigating the Publishing World
00:27:21
Speaker
friends.
00:27:21
Speaker
It was very magical moment.
00:27:24
Speaker
Um,
00:27:25
Speaker
But yeah, so I did find an agent after being rejected by quite possibly every single agent in the young adult kid lit world with that first attempt at a book.
00:27:37
Speaker
And then I still got plenty of rejections for Brightly Woven.
00:27:40
Speaker
And she and I worked on this book.
00:27:44
Speaker
We edited it for months and months.
00:27:46
Speaker
I'm trying to remember...
00:27:48
Speaker
how many months it ended up coming down to.
00:27:51
Speaker
But I would wake up really early in the morning before classes and I would go to one of the nearby computer labs and I would work there rather than on my laptop.
00:28:05
Speaker
because I could go to the vending machines and buy a Coca-Cola and a package of Cheez-It crackers for breakfast because it was before the cafeteria woke up.
00:28:15
Speaker
The poor custodial staff is like, exactly, exactly.
00:28:19
Speaker
I mean, I basically, if I am not
00:28:23
Speaker
my default setting when it comes to food consumption is like raccoon.
00:28:27
Speaker
I will like eat anything.
00:28:31
Speaker
So my health habits in college were not great.
00:28:36
Speaker
And so I would just wake up really early every single morning.
00:28:39
Speaker
And there's an arcade fire song that was my...
00:28:44
Speaker
phone alarm at the time, keep the car running.
00:28:47
Speaker
And so every single time I hear this song, I like get this little jolt of like almost panic because of like when you first wake up in the morning and you hear that first couple of notes, you're like, yeah.
00:28:57
Speaker
Um, so it takes me right back to my roach infested dorm room.
00:29:00
Speaker
Nice.
00:29:01
Speaker
Um,
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, so, and then, you know, by finally, you know, second semester, senior year, the book went out on submission, got rejected by some publishers, and then we ended up accepting this nice offer from Egmont because, you know, it was going to be one of their first lists.
00:29:19
Speaker
They were really excited about it.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
And so...
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:24
Speaker
I mean, from there, it really was a wild ride and that little, um, well, I couldn't write full-time straight out of college having sold that first book.
00:29:33
Speaker
And obviously that is the reality for most writers.
00:29:36
Speaker
You cannot just like quit your day job or immediately go from school to writing full-time.
00:29:42
Speaker
I, um,
00:29:44
Speaker
I was very grateful to have that, like my advance as a initial kind of nest egg of savings when I was living in New York and working as an assistant in publishing and making like no money in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
00:30:00
Speaker
What a time.
00:30:03
Speaker
So you were working as a, was an editorial assistant.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:09
Speaker
My very first job in publishing was as an editorial assistant.
00:30:12
Speaker
I had done a program called the Columbia Publishing Course, which is sort of like this intensive publishing boot camp that you kind of go through for five... I'm trying to remember how many weeks it was.
00:30:25
Speaker
It was a couple of weeks, but they would have speakers come in, you kind of form your own little mini publisher and you learn about all the different
00:30:33
Speaker
aspects of like the many different jobs within publishing like sales and managing ed and editorial and all of that.
00:30:39
Speaker
And really the reason why people did this course and why I did the course was because they have a big job fair after.
00:30:48
Speaker
And when you went through this course, your resume would be, you know, worked on within the course with a coach and you would, you know, your resume would go out with everybody's all of these various different
00:31:02
Speaker
HR departments at publishers.
00:31:05
Speaker
And which is sort of, you know, looking back, I was like, wow, that's really unfair that you have to like pay for this.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah, not inexpensive course.
00:31:15
Speaker
And I just like very randomly my school, I went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
00:31:21
Speaker
And
00:31:22
Speaker
Just like so randomly, they had a scholarship to one of the publishing courses.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I was able to get, I think I split the scholarship with another student who went to the publishing course, I think in Denver, maybe NYU.
00:31:35
Speaker
But anyway, this is a very roundabout story.
00:31:37
Speaker
Sorry.
00:31:40
Speaker
But yes, my...
00:31:42
Speaker
I was like, I know I do not want to be an edit.
00:31:44
Speaker
The one job I do not want in this industry is as an editorial system, because I know I will not have time to write my own books.
00:31:50
Speaker
Because so much of being an editor, editorial assistant is taking your work home with you, taking your reading home with you for submissions, doing a lot of editing work, and also
00:32:02
Speaker
at the time, I was like, my strength is in drafting, it is not in editing.
00:32:06
Speaker
Those are like two very different parts of your brain.
00:32:09
Speaker
But the kind of wonderful thing about coming into the publishing industry is that you really do start almost no matter what department you enter, you start in an administrative position, really.
00:32:21
Speaker
And it's an apprenticeship industry, in theory, where you are like taught everything you need to know as you advance up through the ranks.
00:32:31
Speaker
So
00:32:32
Speaker
Naturally, the first job that I was called in to interview for was an editorial assistant.
00:32:38
Speaker
And I was like, I better take this job because we're several weeks in now to me not having a job and having to pay for this apartment out of my savings.
00:32:46
Speaker
So I took that job.
00:32:49
Speaker
I had a very old school boss too.
00:32:51
Speaker
And I was just like, I...
00:32:53
Speaker
I will stay here for a year.
00:32:54
Speaker
I will do this job for a year and learn as much as I possibly can.
00:32:58
Speaker
And then I will move into a different area of publishing.
00:33:00
Speaker
So that's what I did.
00:33:02
Speaker
Eventually I moved into a branch of marketing at Random House Children's Books.
00:33:08
Speaker
That's what you would call like school and library marketing, where it's marketing geared towards, um, you know, educators and librarians and you do a lot of presentations and book talk and you, um,
00:33:21
Speaker
BookTok, talk, not BookTok.
00:33:24
Speaker
BookTok wasn't a thing then.
00:33:25
Speaker
I was like, wait a second.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, BookTok didn't – It was just a twinkle in somebody's eye at the time.
00:33:36
Speaker
And yeah, it was such an interesting job.
00:33:38
Speaker
It's sort of like somewhere in between being like a marketing person and a publicity person because you also did all of the library shows and educator shows like
00:33:47
Speaker
American Library Association show, you would have a booth and you would do more book talking there and hand out arcs, galleys, that sort of a thing.
Managing Dual Careers and Adaptation Success
00:33:56
Speaker
So it was great.
00:33:58
Speaker
And even though that job ended up having a lot of travel to it, I was still able to kind of reclaim most of my weekends.
00:34:06
Speaker
And I wrote pretty much the entire Darkest Mind series exclusively on the weekends.
00:34:12
Speaker
And I had an absolutely insane, truly insane drafting schedule for those books.
00:34:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
where it's like amazing.
00:34:22
Speaker
I still have like functioning organs because I lived on Mountain Dew.
00:34:28
Speaker
That was like every Friday night I would go home, buy some, buy like a Chipotle meal, go to the CVS, the pharmacy that was on the corner of my street.
00:34:40
Speaker
And I would buy like three bottles of Mountain Dew and that would carry me through the whole weekend.
00:34:44
Speaker
And I would stay up until I would write from like
00:34:47
Speaker
6pm on a Friday until like four o'clock in the morning, go to sleep, wake up at nine or 10, right all day Saturday until like, three, four o'clock in the morning, go to sleep, right all day Sunday.
00:35:00
Speaker
And then I would be like back to day job Alex during the week.
00:35:03
Speaker
But that was what I was willing to I know it.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:07
Speaker
Are you okay, Alex?
00:35:10
Speaker
You're reliving the trauma now.
00:35:12
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:35:13
Speaker
Just thinking about it kind of blows my mind too, because I'm like, nowadays, if I'm not in bed by 9pm, I'm like grumpy.
00:35:19
Speaker
I'm like, I want to go to bed at 9pm.
00:35:22
Speaker
But I had no creature to take care of.
00:35:25
Speaker
I had no children, no dog.
00:35:27
Speaker
My dog has like forced me to have normal human hours.
00:35:30
Speaker
So that's great.
00:35:31
Speaker
Now I work a typical nine to five, but it was worth it for me because that was really the series that ended up kind of changing my life and eventually enabled me to write full time.
00:35:40
Speaker
But
00:35:41
Speaker
I think, yeah, it was pretty much the entire Darkest Mind series I wrote with that schedule on the weekends.
00:35:48
Speaker
It was really bad.
00:35:51
Speaker
I don't recommend that schedule.
00:35:54
Speaker
That wild life that you used to lead.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, my wonderful party days in New York City of like being home.
00:36:00
Speaker
My like roommate, my poor roommates were like so good, so good to me.
00:36:04
Speaker
They would like come check to make sure I basically was still alive, that I had not like consumed so much Mountain Dew my heart had given out.
00:36:11
Speaker
Yeah, they would kind of check in and be like, are you sure you don't want to like come out with us?
00:36:15
Speaker
And I'm like, no, I'm writing my book.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny.
00:36:20
Speaker
Well, as you said, Darkest Minds is something that really took off and exploded and very excitingly was made into a movie.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:36:31
Speaker
Was it sort of surreal and wild to see that kind of story and those characters realized in live action?
00:36:41
Speaker
Yes, it was surreal is honestly the perfect word for it.
00:36:45
Speaker
The thing that I think really surprises people is that I had pretty much nothing to do with the movie.
00:36:52
Speaker
I had, they were, I don't know if they had been like,
00:36:56
Speaker
they'd had like a really bad interaction with an author in the past, but it was, it was really interesting because, um, if I had not befriended the screenwriter and he, his name is Chad Hodge, he's a wonderful human, wonderful writer.
00:37:12
Speaker
He is someone who is like, writers have to stick together, whether you're like a screenwriter or a novelist, because Hollywood just like does not respect writers for the most part.
00:37:21
Speaker
Um, they are not treated especially well.
00:37:24
Speaker
Um,
00:37:25
Speaker
And he would send me the script or tell me what was going on.
00:37:31
Speaker
He was the one who was feeding me all the information because I was really out of the loop.
00:37:35
Speaker
And so even though it took years, and this was back in the time where now it's a little bit more common when you option things.
00:37:45
Speaker
a project, like you can usually like finagle your way into like getting an executive producer credit.
00:37:52
Speaker
And like, you can be a little bit more involved and negotiate those terms.
00:37:56
Speaker
But like, this was back in 2011.
00:37:59
Speaker
And because it was really only this one production company that wanted to option it, there was like...
00:38:04
Speaker
No, no real way to negotiate.
00:38:07
Speaker
So it was like, you either accept it or you don't.
00:38:10
Speaker
And for me at the time, the option was a ton of money.
00:38:14
Speaker
And I was like, everyone kept telling me like, this will never get made.
00:38:19
Speaker
So like, it is essentially free money.
00:38:21
Speaker
For the time being, like, as long as they keep renewing the option, it is sort of just like this additional income that you can use for your savings and whatnot.
00:38:29
Speaker
So I was like, great.
00:38:30
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:38:31
Speaker
Except then years later.
00:38:32
Speaker
It's something like one in 10 book options actually get made into films or television.
00:38:37
Speaker
I would be shocked if it's even like that percentage.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's so unlikely, isn't it?
00:38:43
Speaker
especially back then because it was kind of, you know, I, I don't know if you happen to know this off the top of your head.
00:38:51
Speaker
I was like, when did the last Twilight movie come out?
00:38:54
Speaker
Because there had been enough success with like, yeah, Twilight, the Hunger Games that, um, Divergent, Hollywood, yeah, Divergent, Hollywood was like really going through buying up and optioning a ton of YA stuff.
00:39:06
Speaker
So it seemed even less likely at the time that this would get made.
00:39:09
Speaker
And I was just like, again,
00:39:11
Speaker
free money because that is the reality sometimes.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:14
Speaker
A writer where you're sort of like, well, if I do want to be able to write full time and make a career out of this, I have to like build savings in order to count me through the years and not, you know, right.
00:39:27
Speaker
Keep raccoon hours on the weekends.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:33
Speaker
But like on the whole, like, so for example, I really did not know who was cast in the movie until for some of the roles, I didn't know who was cast until they announced it.
00:39:44
Speaker
Chad, the screenwriter told me at least who the main characters were.
00:39:48
Speaker
So I knew that before it was announced.
00:39:50
Speaker
But I, like I said, I don't know if they had a really bad experience with an author coming in and like,
00:39:54
Speaker
causing a lot of problems about changes.
00:39:56
Speaker
I thought I was actually fairly relaxed about the whole thing because I personally am not so precious about my work that I think it is flawless and shouldn't change at all because the reality of transforming a story from
00:40:11
Speaker
the page to the screen, like you were going to have to make some changes.
00:40:15
Speaker
And so I was like, you know, like, great, like, we can talk through different things.
00:40:19
Speaker
I can give you my opinion on what I know the fans love and what they'll be really unhappy if you change and so on and so forth.
00:40:26
Speaker
But
00:40:27
Speaker
This was the other thing that absolutely killed me was they would not let me come visit the set.
00:40:33
Speaker
They would let my publisher come visit the set.
00:40:37
Speaker
So my editor and some of the people at my publisher got to visit the set, I want to say like a month before I did.
00:40:46
Speaker
They only let me come for like the last two days of filming.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:49
Speaker
It was very strange.
00:40:52
Speaker
But I loved the actors who played the main characters.
00:40:57
Speaker
I think the movie is super fun.
00:40:58
Speaker
It has a very different vibe from the book itself, so it helps kind of separate the two in my mind.
00:41:04
Speaker
Sadly, the movie really did not perform well.
00:41:07
Speaker
And even though at the time I was like, free money.
00:41:10
Speaker
I was like, oh, now as someone who is not like –
00:41:15
Speaker
23, 24 years old who is trying to build her career.
00:41:18
Speaker
Now I'm a lot more protective about who gets involved, you know, like, and just a lot more weight sort of to carry now.
00:41:28
Speaker
Right.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:29
Speaker
I think there was kind of this overall sense of powerlessness in terms of that first film option and then eventual movie.
00:41:38
Speaker
It still blows my mind that they actually made the movie.
00:41:41
Speaker
It just like kept going and going and going and like every single time.
00:41:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:48
Speaker
Just kidding.
00:41:48
Speaker
We were never making it.
00:41:50
Speaker
Exactly.
00:41:52
Speaker
I know.
00:41:53
Speaker
And really, because it can fall apart pretty much until they start filming.
00:41:57
Speaker
And sometimes it can even fall apart as they're filming, I guess.
00:42:01
Speaker
So I was like, until it's fully in the can, I'm not going to assume that this is really happening.
00:42:06
Speaker
But on the whole, I really love the people involved.
00:42:10
Speaker
I love the director.
00:42:10
Speaker
I loved the actors.
00:42:12
Speaker
I love the whole cast and crew who just like, when I did get to visit the set, made me feel so welcome and were so wonderful.
00:42:19
Speaker
And so
00:42:20
Speaker
Now when I think about the film, which again, sadly, completely bombed, I think it actually set a record in the United States for like the biggest second week theater drop.
00:42:31
Speaker
Like that's the level of it bombing.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:38
Speaker
So sometimes it can be like, wow, that was like,
00:42:41
Speaker
the worst best thing to ever happen to me you know um but i i do appreciate that experience and it was really surreal to be able to go to like san diego comic-con and promote it and just get a glimpse into the hollywood side of things which is definitely a lot more glamorous and um
00:43:01
Speaker
so fascinating compared to publishing publishing feels so old school compared to Hollywood in some ways.
00:43:06
Speaker
But yeah, I, I like don't mean to sound ungrateful because I am really grateful that film happened.
00:43:11
Speaker
And it's, it's still to this day is bringing new readers to that series.
00:43:14
Speaker
They're finding it.
00:43:15
Speaker
I think it, it airs every once in a while on FX here in the United States.
00:43:20
Speaker
And so, but like,
00:43:23
Speaker
The price of my like free money mentality now is I get asked every single day if there's going to be a second movie.
Genre Discussions and Personal Preferences
00:43:29
Speaker
I'm like, no, there's not.
00:43:31
Speaker
I'm so sorry.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's the tax I pay on having this film made.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
Well, you've got other series and other books.
00:43:39
Speaker
I mean, you have a brand new book coming out, so you never know.
00:43:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:42
Speaker
Fingers crossed.
00:43:43
Speaker
Something goes there.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:47
Speaker
So before we get to the final question, I do have a question from a friend of mine and a fellow YA author, Melissa Welliver, who would like to know, as someone who's written and published both sci-fi and fantasy, do you think it's right that those two genres are often lumped together?
00:44:06
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question.
00:44:08
Speaker
You know, the interesting thing about YA is that I've always felt like, and maybe this is changing a little bit now too because of how...
00:44:17
Speaker
indie publishing has really expanded.
00:44:20
Speaker
And I think with BookTok especially, it brings a lot of those indie books which might not have been right for a traditional publisher looking to put it into a specific genre because it blended so many genres.
00:44:36
Speaker
BookTok now gives them an avenue to be brought into a physical store like Barnes & Noble or Waterstones.
00:44:44
Speaker
I think YA, though, in particular, has always been a little bit freer in terms of blending genres.
00:44:52
Speaker
And so it's never bothered me that sci-fi and fantasy get lumped together.
00:44:58
Speaker
But I think it's really...
00:45:00
Speaker
it kind of comes down to the heart of the story.
00:45:03
Speaker
Because I think if you're thinking about like Star Wars sci-fi, which was really my main avenue to Star Wars.
00:45:12
Speaker
So I had a very early introduction to Star Wars and I always thought of it as like fantasy more than science fiction.
00:45:17
Speaker
And I think some people would agree with that.
00:45:19
Speaker
It is fantasy.
00:45:20
Speaker
I think it's fantasy more because there's no real science.
00:45:23
Speaker
For me, science fiction has to have a scientific explanation and there isn't really one in Star Wars.
00:45:27
Speaker
Exactly.
00:45:28
Speaker
So something like The Martian to me is hard sci-fi, but then Star Wars is sci-fi fantasy.
00:45:35
Speaker
So I think for certain projects, it is fair to say something is sci-fi fantasy, but I think it's really the heart of the book, almost less so than the window dressings.
00:45:48
Speaker
I think Star Wars has sci-fi window dressings, but it really has this core hero's journey, myth, legend,
00:45:56
Speaker
kind of like fantasy heart to it, I guess is how I would describe it.
00:46:00
Speaker
That's a really fascinating question.
00:46:02
Speaker
I really want to think about that a little bit more too, just because maybe if I were like, I don't know.
00:46:11
Speaker
I really don't know.
00:46:12
Speaker
But like I said, the one thing I've always really loved about YA and why it's never really bothered me to kind of, to have some people say a book is fantasy and others say it's sci-fi, like The Darkest Minds.
00:46:24
Speaker
is just because I was like, well, yeah, there are elements and tropes that kind of pull from both genres.
00:46:29
Speaker
So sometimes I think it's fair to have them blended.
00:46:31
Speaker
And then other times I'm like with the Martian, I'm like, this is not fantasy.
00:46:35
Speaker
This is science fiction.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:37
Speaker
I think as soon as you attach the prefix hard to it.
00:46:40
Speaker
So if you say hard sci-fi, you're thinking like the Martian or something like that.
00:46:44
Speaker
Or interstellar.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:47
Speaker
Or like high fantasy.
00:46:49
Speaker
Like high fantasy.
00:46:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:51
Speaker
Like Lord of the Rings, no one's saying Lord of the Rings is never going to be science fiction.
00:46:55
Speaker
You know, it's always going to be high fantasy.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:57
Speaker
Why did we go with high fantasy and hard sci-fi and not, why isn't it like high, high sci-fi?
00:47:03
Speaker
High fantasy and low sci-fi.
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:05
Speaker
I was like, high sci-fi somehow like doesn't, is the rhyme there like doesn't work hard sci-fi I think does work better.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:13
Speaker
High sci-fi.
00:47:13
Speaker
More rigid genre lines.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:18
Speaker
Awesome.
00:47:18
Speaker
Well, that brings us to the final question, which as always is, Alex, if you were stranded on a desert island and could take a single book with you, which book would it be?
00:47:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:31
Speaker
So when I saw this question, when you very kindly kind of send it ahead, wait, am I breaking the fourth wall here?
00:47:37
Speaker
Should I not have said that?
00:47:39
Speaker
No one knows.
00:47:40
Speaker
It's a big secret.
00:47:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:44
Speaker
Take two.
00:47:46
Speaker
So she didn't know.
00:47:47
Speaker
She's making it up.
00:47:50
Speaker
So I actually just recently rewatched the entire series lost.
00:47:57
Speaker
Did you watch lost back in the day?
00:48:00
Speaker
I started watching Lost, but I never made it to the end and everyone used to nag me about it.
00:48:05
Speaker
And I felt so vindicated when everyone hated the ending.
00:48:08
Speaker
It's not a good feeling when you're like, I knew my intuition was like, bail out now.
00:48:14
Speaker
It can only get worse from here.
00:48:16
Speaker
Like I watched it when it was good and people liked it.
00:48:18
Speaker
I will say like the first three episodes of Lost are such good, compelling storytelling to me.
00:48:25
Speaker
Like I love going back and rewatching that pilot because it's like so well constructed and all the character work is so compelling.
00:48:33
Speaker
But having just rewatched Lost and now I'm watching Yellow Jackets, which is a different plane crash in the middle of the wilderness.
00:48:40
Speaker
Have you seen Yellow Jackets at all?
00:48:42
Speaker
I've not, I see the billboards everywhere for it.
00:48:45
Speaker
It's fantastic.
00:48:47
Speaker
And again, I'm not really a horror person.
00:48:50
Speaker
At least I didn't think I was, but it has like a slight element of horror, horror fantasy ish.
00:48:57
Speaker
It's, it's really good.
00:48:58
Speaker
Um, but so now I've watched these two survival shows.
00:49:01
Speaker
So immediately my brain goes to like, okay, the one thing, my main takeaway from lost is how boring it would actually be most days to be trapped on a desert Island.
00:49:09
Speaker
So I would want a really long book.
00:49:12
Speaker
Um,
00:49:12
Speaker
I would want a book that talked a little bit about hunting and trapping so I could potentially pick up some tips.
00:49:18
Speaker
And then I would also want a book that was long enough that I could, if it really came down to it, use a lot.
00:49:24
Speaker
It would have a lot of pages, so it would be good kindling.
00:49:27
Speaker
I could use it over multiple days.
00:49:29
Speaker
So I have settled on The Lord of the Rings.
00:49:31
Speaker
Nice.
00:49:32
Speaker
As long as it's a special edition with an appendices on it or appendix.
00:49:36
Speaker
Appendix, it would just be the one, right?
00:49:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:39
Speaker
Well, someone else sometime ago picked Lord of the Rings and managed, and I made them prove it to me after the episode, they managed to find, there's a copy on Amazon you can buy, which is all three books like welded into one massive time.
00:49:54
Speaker
I think I had a bind up of all three books and even some of the appendices that were attached to it.
00:50:01
Speaker
And I was like,
00:50:02
Speaker
As I was thinking about this just now, I was like, well, yeah, I could like, especially if the appendices were there, or at least a section of like one of them, I think there are six different.
00:50:11
Speaker
Well, I was like, maybe I could teach myself elvish to like pass the time.
00:50:14
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:50:15
Speaker
Like, really, like, I guess I have a fear of being bored.
00:50:19
Speaker
But yeah, yeah, sounds like it.
00:50:21
Speaker
I was like, I wish I could have told you it was like some amazing book of my heart that I could reread a thousand times over, but I am not someone who can just like continue to reread the same book.
00:50:33
Speaker
And honestly, every single time I've tried to read The Lord of the Rings, I don't think I've ever fully made it through the first books.
00:50:38
Speaker
I always get stuck at when Tom Bombadil comes in.
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:42
Speaker
I knew it was going to be some of the songs and that.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:46
Speaker
I'm like, what am
00:50:47
Speaker
what am I doing here?
00:50:49
Speaker
Like, cause at that point you've read so many pages about like describing the scenery and like, and everything is like, and then he sings another song and it's more, but like when you have all the time in the world while you're waiting, waiting to be rescued on a desert island.
00:51:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:04
Speaker
You'd finally get past Tom.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:05
Speaker
You'd finally get past Tom.
00:51:07
Speaker
I think, yeah, I think that's what I'm going to go with.
00:51:10
Speaker
I mean, it's a classic.
00:51:12
Speaker
It's, it's, you know, the grandfather of most fantasies.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's true.
00:51:16
Speaker
Every once in a while I think about writing something and if I'm like, Oh, Lord of the Rings did something similar.
00:51:21
Speaker
If I can't improve on it, I'm not going to write it like, or twist it in an interesting, compelling way.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yes.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:29
Speaker
I do.
00:51:30
Speaker
I do love the world of the Lord of the Rings, but I don't know that I've, now that I've said this, I don't know that I've ever fully finished the first book.
00:51:36
Speaker
I like jumped ahead to the second and third book.
00:51:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:40
Speaker
I was like, I don't need Tom Pompadil.
00:51:42
Speaker
I will get the like recap via film, extended film editions.
00:51:46
Speaker
And then I will jump to books two and three.
00:51:48
Speaker
I can't do Tom again.
00:51:50
Speaker
I can't meet him like this again.
00:51:51
Speaker
Amazing.
00:51:54
Speaker
Well, it's a great choice.
00:51:55
Speaker
It's always going to be a classic.
00:51:57
Speaker
Thank you so much, Alex, for coming on the podcast and chatting with me.
00:52:01
Speaker
We've gone way over time.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so sorry.
00:52:04
Speaker
It was great.
00:52:05
Speaker
I didn't even notice.
00:52:06
Speaker
I was having so much fun.
Closing Remarks and Follow-up
00:52:07
Speaker
But thank you so much.
00:52:07
Speaker
It's been so great chatting with you and hearing about all of your experiences.
00:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, it was wonderful.
00:52:12
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:52:13
Speaker
I really appreciate it.
00:52:14
Speaker
Such a pleasure.
00:52:15
Speaker
And for everyone listening, if you are wanting to keep up with what Alex is doing, you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at Alex Bracken.
00:52:23
Speaker
You can also find her on Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.
00:52:26
Speaker
The brand new book, Silver in the Bone, is out right now, so you can go and get it.
00:52:31
Speaker
And to make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:52:36
Speaker
For more off-the-wall bookish discussion, check out my other podcast with YA authors Melissa Welliver and Naomi Gibson.
00:52:42
Speaker
That's The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:52:44
Speaker
Thanks again to Alexandra, and thanks to everyone for listening.
00:52:46
Speaker
We'll catch you in the next episode.