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267 Alexis Hall | Romance, Sci-fi and Urban Fantasy Author
114 Plays3 hours ago
SFF & romance author, Alexis Hall joins us to discuss his new sapphic, futuristic retelling of Moby Dick, what it's like to work with three different publishers and editors at the same time and how he first got a foot in the door of publishing.
Cover art by Radiante Mozzarelle.
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Transcript
The Role of Writing in Storytelling
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer isn't there. So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Introduction of Alexis Hall
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by best-selling author of romance, science fiction and fantasy, Alexis Hall. Hello.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much for coming on. Let's jump right in.
Launch of 'Hell's Heart'
00:00:30
Speaker
um Let's start with your your next publication, which is coming out as of as of us talking, I think. ah Hell's Heart out on March 10th in the US, March 12th in the UK.
00:00:41
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about it. ah A really short version, it's Sapphic Moby Dick in Space. Really long versions, it's it's it's Sapphic Moby Dick in Space. It's ah set in a sort of a post-Earth dystopian deep future um in which we're reduced to hunting psychic space whales for their brain juice in order to fuel the rapacious hyper-capitalist society that we live in.
00:01:07
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Sounding a bit like June in parts there as well with the world building. um Thank you. I do try to be derivative.
00:01:17
Speaker
what um What? I'm absolutely That was a flippant self-deprecating joke. It's absolutely fine to make comparisons. There is nothing new under the sun. um Yeah, that's great. I mean, what's what what was it about? Were you like rereading Moby Dick and you you were kind of inspired to do this? Or what what kind of suddenly made you think, this seems like a cool twist on an
Inspiration from Moby Dick
00:01:37
Speaker
old classic? So there is a... Normally I don't have an interesting book story. There actually is an interesting book story here.
00:01:44
Speaker
um Back in 2020, you might remember there was COVID. Yes, I
00:01:55
Speaker
i'll get a famously long book because i actually the time haven't read moby dick um i think americans always do it in school i think in this country we we don't so much um And what I'll do is I'll read a chapter of Moby Dick every day. And then when the lockdown ends and I haven't finished Moby Dick yet, it'll seem like it went really quickly.
00:02:12
Speaker
ah Yes. Spoiler. That didn't work because Moby Dick has 135 chapters and lockdown was not 135 days. Um, But I read Moby Dick in a chapter a day and I tweeted about, sunday and apologies to people who feel this is disrespectful to the literature, but I tweeted about the silly bits and like the bits that are you know a bit suggestive sounding. um And bits where Melville gets weirdly obsessed with flukes, which happens a lot.
00:02:38
Speaker
um And that wound up being sort of a, this is back when I was still on you know, um the platform now known as X, the platform formerly known as Prince, um which I am no longer on for reasons.
00:02:54
Speaker
And, know, there was a little like kind of group of people who were like reading along with me and we were bantering with each other you know, flukes mostly um and that because i'm ah because i'm a professional novelist i think anytime you consume anything maybe this is just me um you think how would i turn this into a book and i had had the original thought of like well you could do it fantasy and that dragons that didn't really speak to me i was like or you could go completely bizarre with it and do their hunting space whales on jupiter
00:03:27
Speaker
So that's what I did I like it. I mean, that's a it's a very cool, um it's a cool ah it's a cool world building. It's a cool idea. and And it makes sort of sense. It's sort of, it's weirdly historical whilst also being futuristic, if that makes sense. No, that was very
Choosing Tor as the Publisher
00:03:43
Speaker
much the intent. So um yeah one of the things I mentioned when I'm talking about this book is that um' part of the reason I went with Tor is because when I was initially pitching this to my my now editor, um They kind of held up their fingers a triangle and said that they thought what was interesting about the book was that it's, it's like it forms a triangle where you've got the real world we currently live in and Moby Dick and the science fiction world of the book and the book kind of intersects exists as the intersection between those three things.
00:04:12
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's interesting way of putting it. I saw um on your on your press release, Sarah Gailey described it as Moby Dick meets Treasure Planet by way of Fleabag.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yes. yeah that's I'm sorry to interrupt you. That's a great description as well as I was going to say. Just a fantastic pitch. There's some really lovely um ah like but like blurbs for this book. the the one i The one I want to get on a t-shirt is Fae Funny and Extremely Metal.
00:04:43
Speaker
That's This is a way to describe you as ah as a person in general.
Upcoming Book Releases
00:04:48
Speaker
um But am I right in thinking, so this is the first of four books that you have coming out this year? um oh gosh i think so yes i've got a lot of books coming out this year i my my first of i think it's the first of three books i've got coming out this year okay i found so this is this coming out march you've got never after coming out in april yes uh father material coming out in june yes and then the hopeless romantic's guide to enchantment coming september Oh, yes. i Sorry, Hopeless Romantic. Sorry, I've got a short story in the Hopeless Romantic's Guide to Enchantment. That's why I wasn't counting it, because that's that's not my book. That's a an anthology that I have a short story in.
00:05:26
Speaker
but Thank God I thought I'd missed a full-length novel. I have quite a high output, but... I mean, even three novels isnt is is an incredible output. like where I mean, where do you find the time to write
Writing Output & Opportunities
00:05:39
Speaker
that much? So I do, first of all, I do not do this full time. um i think also what i think what counts as high volume varies a lot depending on what subgenre you're in.
00:05:50
Speaker
um So obviously Hell's Heart is science fiction and in the SSF genre then like kind of even one book a year is quite a high cadence. um There are some authors for whom one book every 10 years is quite a high cadence.
00:06:02
Speaker
Whereas i I started out mostly working in romance and in romance, if you haven't written a book in the last six months, people kind of assume you're dead. So I've always just kind of, I've just kind of got used to it. And it's, I'd love, <unk>d I'd love to be able to say something that I'm sure you haven't heard of like a million times before, but you know build a habit right every day. And that's, is genuinely how it works.
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, with I've had lots of romance authors on and like not only is it like the turnover very quick, but it's there's a seasonality to it. And there's a lot of romance authors who write like a Christmas book and then they write a summer book and that continues on every year. not exactly So ah ah this is this is literally the rate at which you write. This isn't like, you know, sometimes there can be various logistical reasons why someone has written several books over the course of some years and then they will come out once.
00:06:54
Speaker
So not going the one like thing I kind of thought was temporary, and I think i i do think my my my cadence might slow down a bit in the coming years, although I've been thinking this for a while, is um so I started out um with the small press and didn't get mainstream published for quite a while and my first like like my first book that really hit with a mainstream audience was boyfriend material and that created a lot of opportunities for me um but particularly at the time particularly because actually again time it was kind of covid era i was very much in this well this is an opportunity that could go away at any moment kind of space um so i frantically said yes to everything and was still in the
00:07:39
Speaker
Backing up slightly, ah prior to that hitting, I was very much in a situation where you would send like 10 queries and get like eight rejections. Sure. To agents we're talking about. Oh, no, no, sorry. No, I had an agent to that point, to um to publishers. Oh, to publishers, right. rare Yeah, or 10 pitches, if you'd rather. um And after Boyfriend Material, it had more of a reputation, suddenly you'd send out like kind of your 10 pitches and get like five rejections, which is still a lot. but And please don't take these numbers as gospel. This is yeah purely for flavor.
00:08:12
Speaker
um But basically it meant that suddenly i was getting a lot more stuff accepted. Whereas previously I was very used to being in like a throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks kind of space. um So I suddenly had a lot of people saying, yes, we'd like to do this.
00:08:27
Speaker
And I was like, well, I better do it now because everything could go away overnight. So you've sort you sort of like committed to it because you were worried it would go, but then you've actually just kind of fallen into that cadence and been like- Pretty much, yeah. Sort of assumed it was the norm. Yeah. um with I mean, your output is rivaling like Brandon Sanderson. I mean, it's a lot of words. To be to to to be fair, I think my books are slightly short so shorter than Brandon Sanderson, but thank you for the fluttering comparison.
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah, his are chunky. I'll give him that. Yeah.
Writing Process & Challenges
00:09:00
Speaker
So, I mean, to keep up this kind of this kind of rate, you must have, I would imagine you have a pretty good process locked in.
00:09:09
Speaker
um Do you, are you someone that plans all of these before you start writing them? Oh, this is the the infamous Plotterpanzer question, isn't it? It is. It's, so one of my most annoying habits is that I'm a very rejected premise person. I,
00:09:25
Speaker
i I really like editors, but the reason I'm in traditional publishing rather than self-publishing is I like having an editor. And so for me, writing is rewriting. And so I don't really see a distinction between having an idea what a book's going to be like before you start writing it and having a book of what a book's going to be like after you submitted the first draft and got heavy demo edits, if you see what I mean. Yes.
00:09:48
Speaker
Because it's all sort of the same thing. Yeah. It does vary a bit genre to genre. I'll usually have i'll have an idea of what a book is about. I'll usually have a really broad scale idea of the plot um in this and the like yeah the the the very rough what happens in it. This will usually include what happens at the end, but won't always.
00:10:10
Speaker
um And obviously, if you're um if you're working in romance, then you kind of know what what kind of editing you're working towards. um Yes. And because i think i think the other thing is that because I am, I'm a big believer in demystifying writing.
00:10:25
Speaker
And so to me, I think it's really important to recognize that the bulk of the work of writing is the graft. It's the, it's the actual words on page. It's um my answer to the, what's the most challenging thing to write question is, is always it's getting someone to walk from a door to a window.
00:10:47
Speaker
because saying Steve, who was standing by the door, went and stood by the window, sounds clunky and awful. And so you say Steve walked from the door. And you can't with like a dozen different iterations.
00:10:58
Speaker
So the the thing about the plot about his pants thing is that it, to me, it places too much emphasis on the big picture stuff. And maybe just because it's, I think it's often hard to value stuff you find personally easy. And I personally find the big picture stuff, you know, write a book about hunting psychic space whales on Jupiter quite easy. Whereas I find the the microcosm, like, you what dialogue tag should I use in this paragraph and can i make sure that these three lines don't all start the same way quite difficult and because i think and i and i value the detail-oriented side of things um and obviously you can't either really plot or pants detail-oriented yeah if you know that makes sense yeah no i understand and it's an
00:11:52
Speaker
Loosely what I think you're you're getting at is, and I've, I've had this discussion with people before where it's like, in some ways you can argue that there is no plotter and pantser. It's just like, you know, if your plan is just your vomit draft, it's just, it has a slightly different form exactly to some degree.
00:12:08
Speaker
Um, when it When it comes to the concepts, obviously it's a little bit different with Hell's Heart, um but do you what the kind of inception point, is it usually like a character or a setting or or does it tend to vary depending on whatever the story is?
00:12:24
Speaker
it very very It varies story of story because, ah for example, if if if it's a contemporary romance, the setting is yeah usually almost always present day England. um I think for me it's less...
00:12:37
Speaker
character or setting than it is premise is what I would, what I'd say. Um, it's, I'd use the phrase high concept, but that's a really technical meaning in publishing, which and a lot of my books aren't particularly what you'd call high concept. Um, so like boyfriend material is, know, it's, it's, it's fake dating is, is what, and it was, how do I do a fake dating rom-com that works for a gay protagonist and evokes the the vibes of what I remember of rom-coms from the 90s.
00:13:15
Speaker
um And then the characters and the settings and the environments all come out of there. For Hell's Heart, obviously, it's sapphic Moby Dick in space. And obviously, a lot of the plot of that is set by, you know, being based on Moby Dick. Yeah. um For um the Mortafolio series, the premise was Queer Magic Bridgerton.
00:13:34
Speaker
And again, and from there you go to, okay, what's, what's this and the, so the reason I don't don't know if you're familiar with the series, but one of the framing devices of that series is that it's narrated by Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream.
00:13:47
Speaker
And part of the reason for that is that I wanted something that had like the vibes of the Lady Whistledown thing in Bridgerton only taken slightly too far because I always take it slightly too far. um And everything kind of span off from there.
00:14:02
Speaker
Okay. So it's, yeah, it's it it's how to best deliver on the the short pitch sentence that i have in my head. Right. Okay. Okay. So everything it sounds like everything comes to you as kind of like a...
00:14:13
Speaker
ah quite a marketable pitch in some ways. It's like a twist on this or it's a twist on that. Pretty much. like I think ah partly because i'm I am not at the stage of my career and I will probably never be at the stage of my career where I can just sell stuff on purely my name alone. So I do have to kind of say that i think there's a selection bias issue in the sense that like...
00:14:34
Speaker
part of the reason it feels like stuff comes to me as a marketable pitch is that anything that doesn't come to me as a marketable pitch doesn't have a marketable pitch and then it doesn't get sold and therefore you'll never read it.
Cultural Nuances in Publishing
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah and I'm sure you know your agent and even like uh editors who who are trying to pitch it to the rest of their team will appreciate that you have you're giving them something that they could quite quickly like um package and and present.
00:14:59
Speaker
That is always the plan. It sometimes works. You mentioned um most of your romances are sent contemporary England, but your your books are published in the US. yeah Do you have a, is there like, um does it sort of work in your favor that there's a sort of the anglified version of that? Like, does that seem like fun to US audiences or do you have to change stuff? I think so. I think, I mean, it's,
00:15:27
Speaker
It's definitely something I have consciously made part of my brand. um It's had advantages and there have been struggles. um Like I had to fight for quite a while to get them to stop like Americanizing my spelling. And even like i've ever even occasionally had situations where like I've had like copy editors correct quote unquote correcting British phrases to their American equivalents which uh I was not a fan of and I've had conversations about publishing with that but in terms of like audience response I do think that yes I think I probably do benefit from the um the I love your accent effect as it were right yeah yeah yeah yeah I get that but I mean presumably
00:16:14
Speaker
changing things like colour and things like that, where where there's like a ah letter or two different, that, is that, are you fighting for it to stay as the English spelling, even in the US program? I like that to stay with the English spelling, personally. And I will i will freely admit that stuff like that, yeah, it's a spelling thing, it matters less, but it's...
00:16:34
Speaker
it's clear what it means i think americans can cope yes yeah yeah sure it's more like when a character is speaking and they say something like sidewalk all of a sudden and that kind of completely takes you out of the geography of the whole thing yeah understand that um am i right in thinking that the the three books you've coming out this year are they all coming out with different publishers ah Yes, so Hell's Heart is, ah partly obviously because I'm, at least two of them work in fairly different
Publishing Strategy & Humor
00:17:06
Speaker
genres. um So Hell's Heart is coming out with Tor, Father Material is coming out with Sourcebooks, and Never After is Monk.
00:17:15
Speaker
Wow. You're really keeping your agent a lot to a lot, keeping her busy. Yes, very much. um We're going to get a bit more into that in a minute, but we have reached the point where I must ask you, um Alexis, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
00:17:36
Speaker
Okay, I have two answers for this because I thought you might reject the first one. um i As you might have noticed, I'm a massive overthinker. Okay. um So even for, I think this is worse for Desert Island, but i think even if, even being snowed in somewhere, I am very much of the opinion that I don't want to associate something I really strongly care about with a negative experience. And I know it's a cozy cabin, so it's less bad than it could be.
00:17:59
Speaker
But so I think I want something that would like occupy my mind for the time that then I'd be completely happy to never look at again. So my first choice, and again, please feel free to veto this, is Creature of Havoc.
00:18:13
Speaker
the fighting fantasy novel where you are a monster. what we i've I've actually not heard of this. Oh, God. Are you familiar with fighting fantasy? ah No. i always said I was just Googling it. Single player role playing game book.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, so Fighting Fantasy, it was ah it was ah like an 90s. It was really, really big in the UK. I'm not sure how much it cracked the state. It was by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston, the guys that also founded Games Workshop. um And there were there were millions of these things. Yeah.
00:18:46
Speaker
And Creature Havoc is arguably the most innovative one. It kind of doesn't entirely work. You start off as literally a monster. like yeah You've been transformed by an evil wizard. um And the way the way these books work is, some so for any Americans in the audience, it's like choose your own adventure, but with dice. okay um And you go through it and you make choices and some of the attack you and you have to fight them with a really tedious combat system um that everyone just cheats on.
00:19:15
Speaker
a Sure. but um But Creature Havoc is bizarre. Like you you start without the ability to to like understand language and everything is written in this sort of not exactly conlang, but sort of a ah code that once they've explained to you how it works, you can go back and you can read it. And even the stuff from the beginning, like you can look at it and it does make sense.
00:19:33
Speaker
um And like you you don't have free will at the beginning. You have to make choices again by rolling randomly, which means that if you roll wrong, the game is just unwinnable. Yeah. Okay. And I have never finished Creature of Havoc because it's a bit of a nightmare. But if I was trapped in a cabin...
00:19:48
Speaker
then actually think that a really good way to pass the time and I'd be okay to never look at it again. i think also the other thing is that um maybe just for me, I find winter a very fantasy code's time. Sure. Yeah, I can see that.
00:20:00
Speaker
like i Like I think if I was like one the things I actually will sometimes do in like kind of in winter is I'll sit down and like draw D&D maps and things. Like if I was pitching a new D&D campaign to my friends, it'll be in the winter. Right. and It will run for months. Yeah.
00:20:15
Speaker
So I think it would actually be quite a nice way to while away the time. Yeah, I can see that. That's cool. And I mean, things like lit RPG having a moment at the moment. So this kind of thing, you know, you never know, it could be coming back into fashion. I kind of, like well, they they are still in print, like, um because they they've they've been lapsing in that print since like the, I think i Rihanna Pratchett did a new one i'm ah fairly recently. um Yeah, no, it's like, like live for for nerds of a certain generation, for um fighting fantasy has this kind of intense nostalgia thing.
00:20:47
Speaker
Okay. okay okay well i i would not reject that that's a very cool and unique choice uh from me but i would love to hear what your other your backup choice was oh so the backup choice uh would have been uh name of the rose by um for okay sort of parallel reasons in some ways in the if you know if i'm locked if i'm locked in a house for an indefinite amount of time then a really dense book that i can go a bit weird with and just spend hours trying to draw maps of the edificium um
00:21:18
Speaker
I think is a good choice. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. but you've You've given yourself, I think these are two great choices because they are expansive and giving yourselves lots of room to like sit with them and like go over them and start, start again, especially with creatures of havoc.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Very unique. I love that. Thank you.
Episode Closing & Promotions
00:21:40
Speaker
Next up, we're going to get into more publishing bits, um like how Alexis got his foot in the door, finding an agent, working with multiple publishers. That will all be in the extended episode at www.patreon.com forward slash right and wrong.
00:21:54
Speaker
I imagine that's probably not what you imagined when you thought you'd be an author and she was she was like well it's been really great and also just because they started as audio only doesn't mean that you know they're not we are going to get the paperbacks and hardbacks out afterwards we're just doing it in a different order than is the traditional route I think no is it if you're if you're open to to you know success might not look exactly how you how you think it might when you first come into this then that that can also open doors because it's an industry where there's constantly seems to be new kind of areas and new directions that you can get into it exactly um awesome that's a great piece of advice um and that brings us to the to the end of the episode thank you so much um for coming on and chatting with me and telling us all about your
00:22:38
Speaker
your kind of journey and your experiences with writing and and publishing. It's been awesome chatting with you. No, it's wonderful. Wonderful talking to you. Thank you so much for having me. And for everyone listening, Hell's Heart is out March 10th in the US, s March 12th in the UK.
00:22:53
Speaker
And if you want to keep up with what Alexis is doing, you can follow him on Instagram at kwekunkweyvolt. Roughly, yes. Don't worry, it's hard to break. No one can pronounce it. I should have picked a more pronounceable Instagram handle. But you can just look, if you just Google Alexis Hall, most likely you'll you'll find him. And you'll also find the website, which is also that ah similarly Latin.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, my apologies. I'm very Google. Google Alexis Hall. To support this podcast, like, follow and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again, Alexis. And thanks to everyone listening. we will catch you on the next episode.