V. E. Schwab, GALLANT
[0:01]Hi, this is Ziggy Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:05]Moms don't have time to read books, and speaking of books, I have two of my own books
[0:10]coming out this spring and summer.
[0:12]Princess Charming is a picture book, which debuts on April 19th, and bookends.
[0:17]A memoir of love, loss, and literature comes out on July 1st, and it is truly a labor of love.
[0:24]I hope you'll pre-order, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country.
[0:28]You can find out more at zibbyowens.com or bookendsmemoir.com, and you can follow me on Instagram
[0:35]at zibbyowens, because I always post about everything.
[0:38]Enjoy the show!
[0:41]Victoria V. E. Schwab is the author of Gellant.
[0:46]She is also the number one New York Times best-selling author of more than 20 books, including
[0:51]the acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the villain series, the Cassidy Blake series, and
[0:56]the international bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
[1:00]First kill of the YA Vampire series based on Schwab's short story of the same name is currently
[1:06]in post-production at Netflix, with Emma Roberts's Bellachist Productions producing.
[1:11]When she's not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in
[1:15]Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters.
[1:20]Welcome, Victoria.
[1:21]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:24]We're going to discuss Gellant and Invisible Life in Addie LaRue, and everything you do.
[1:29]I knew.
[1:30]So there you go.
[1:31]Well, thank you so much for having me.
[1:33]It's a pleasure.
[1:34]First of all, the YA Schwab versus Victoria Schwab explain.
[1:38]Yeah, you know, the answer has changed a little bit over the years.
[1:42]Basically, I started out as Victoria Schwab, and I was writing primarily YA and Middle
[1:47]Grade, so for younger audiences.
[1:50]And then when my very first novel for adults came out called Vicious, it had a
[1:54]an illustrated cover.
[1:55]And I just thought to myself, oh my god, I don't want my eight-year-old readers accidentally
[2:00]picking up Vicious.
[2:02]It's fine if they do it with intention, or if it's a family choice, but I just didn't want
[2:06]them stumbling across it.
[2:07]So I was like, it's good to have a little bit of separation of church and state.
[2:11]What I didn't realize at the time when I made that decision was that I was saving myself
[2:16]some grief and creating other griefs because we adult genre industry, which is now primarily
[2:22]where I write, especially 10 years ago, but still to this point, is extremely sexist.
[2:28]Just like shockingly sexist, like the number of times fans have come up to me at events
[2:33]and said, oh my god, I'm so glad I didn't know you were a woman I never would have picked
[2:36]this up.
[2:37]What?
[2:38]I know.
[2:39]I know.
[2:40]It's like shocking to hear.
[2:41]And then I became very grateful for the fact that I had this division.
[2:45]But as I went on and I wrote more books, to be honest, I felt more like VE.
[2:49]It seemed to embody my brand and my identity.
[2:53]It also gave me a little bit of protection because the more public you become as a figure,
[2:58]the more people begin to conflate, you know, the name on the cover with the person behind
[3:04]the book.
[3:05]And I was seeing people talking about author me as if it was person me, as if they knew me.
[3:12]And I realized that I wanted a little bit of separation, a little bit of armor.
[3:17]So I'm Victoria to my friends, I'm Victoria in conversation, but VE on the books is what
[3:22]going forward.
[3:23]It will only be regardless of the age that I'm writing for because I feel like it
[3:28]both represents me, but also like it gives me a chance to have that slight difference between
[3:33]person and persona that always exists, but it's really hard to remember when people
[3:38]are talking about you as if they know you.
[3:41]Interesting.
[3:42]Oh, I like that.
[3:43]I find that fascinating.
[3:44]I actually recently interviewed the man named Jeff Hoffman.
[3:47]And for the hardcover, it's called Other People's Children.
[3:50]They had him be J. R. Hoffman.
[3:52]But then for the paperback, they made him Jeff Hoffman, which I'm fascinating also.
[3:58]And people couldn't believe he was a man.
[4:00]So you just never know, I guess you just never ever know.
[4:03]And it really speaks to a lot of the presumptions that we make as readers about what kinds
[4:08]of people write, what kinds of books.
[4:11]Yes.
[4:12]First of all, shame on whoever is saying those things to you or thinking those things.
[4:15]Like what the heck?
[4:16]I mean, I don't know.
[4:19]Well, that is interesting.
[4:20]I also find it super fascinating, this idea that the author that people feel like they
[4:26]know everything about you because they've read some of your books.
[4:29]And what you put in the book, you're not even writing memoir.
[4:32]You're writing, you know, how could they possibly know?
[4:36]Well, and also I do think it's just, you know, when critique takes a personal bent,
[4:42]which I just think is the nature of having an online identity these days.
[4:45]And also just the nature of the forums for readers, every now and then,
[4:50]both 99% of the time, people are very respectful.
[4:53]And if they take issue with a book or if they're something they don't like,
[4:55]they can find it to the books.
[4:56]But because of the time in which we live, sometimes it'll just become slagging off on the
[5:01]writer of those books.
[5:03]And I feel like it's a little easier for me to remember that there's a fictional version
[5:08]of me that lives in those people's heads, not a real version.
[5:12]And look, I have a social media profile, like, I'm very large on Instagram.
[5:16]That's where I live.
[5:17]And I try to be as kind of honest and transparent as possible.
[5:20]And I think, again, that probably feeds into the idea that people know the totality of
[5:26]me instead of a curated portion of my life.
[5:29]Interesting.
[5:30]I ran into a man I don't really know very well at all.
[5:34]I've met him in passing once, but I was at the Pan-America event.
[5:38]Anyway, and he stopped me and was like, you know, I know everything about you,
[5:42]because I follow you.
[5:44]So I feel like there's this, you know, one-sided intimacy here.
[5:47]So let's just keep talking.
[5:48]And I was like, just trying to get to the bathroom.
[5:51]That's so perfectly put one-sided intimacy.
[5:54]And it's really difficult because the industry tells us to cultivate it.
[5:58]And I want that level of accessibility because I found that over the last 10 to 12 years
[6:03]of being in publishing, when my readers are involved and included in the process
[6:09]and are really seeing what goes into making the book,
[6:12]they feel even more of a desire to champion that work at me because they were there
[6:17]as it was being built, as it was being made.
[6:19]And I like that sense of community and inclusion, but it is a one-sided intimacy.
[6:24]And that I'm, even though I'm being authentic, I'm very much choosing which pieces
[6:29]of myself to share.
[6:32]Yes.
[6:33]When I interviewed Mary Laura Philpott, sorry, I don't know why I keep talking about other authors.
[6:36]We are folks like, I love it, I love it, I love it.
[6:38]When I was just interviewing her about her latest book, Bonshelter,
[6:41]she was like, look, there are 28 chapters.
[6:44]Like, there are basically 28 stories.
[6:47]Those are the ones I picked.
[6:48]That is not a person.
[6:49]That is not a lifetime.
[6:50]And I just found that so compelling because you forget as a reader that what you're reading
[6:56]is a subsection.
[6:58]Like, it's a tiny, tiny portion of what could be shared.
[7:04]You know, I kind of think about it a lot.
[7:06]And this comes up as a theme in The Invisible Life of Adi LaRou, which is a, I actually,
[7:10]like, I appropriated a conversation that I had with one of my best friends,
[7:12]with their permission, who they're a professional photographer.
[7:15]And I came up in Fine Arts, not in photography.
[7:18]We're talking about the presumption that a photograph has more veracity than just like a memoir
[7:24]would overfiction, right?
[7:25]That there's a greater sense of honesty to it.
[7:28]And my friend was breaking out for me because absolutely not.
[7:31]It's entirely fiction because I'm choosing what to include and what to exclude.
[7:35]I'm curating the frame.
[7:36]I'm, I'm lying, essentially, just as much as a painting would
[7:40]in that you can't trust what you see.
[7:43]But I feel like with memoir versus fiction, we're going out of very philosophical.
[7:46]I know, but I feel like there's an illusion of veracity where what you have to understand is,
[7:51]yes, well, the stories are probably hopefully all true.
[7:54]They are being compiled and curated to present a specific image or a particular
[8:02]truth design to make a point or something, right?
[8:05]Also, like, let's not get away from the fact that memoirs are entirely subjective to their own
[8:10]creators, like there is no such thing as like the truth or the history as it happened,
[8:16]only as it was perceived by those who are writing about it.
[8:20]So yeah, I think kind of a shortcut.
[8:22]I have a memoir coming out soon.
[8:24]And in the beginning, I wrote, if you were involved in any of these scenes and remember it
[8:28]completely differently, like you're probably right.
[8:31]Yeah, I'm like, I don't know.
[8:32]This is just how I remember it.
[8:34]But people are always correcting me.
[8:35]I have a terrible memory.
[8:36]I mean, I do my best.
[8:37]You know, this is literally how I remember it clearly.
[8:40]But what if I'm wrong?
[8:41]I could literally never do memoir because, and this goes on with my friends and family all the time.
[8:46]I have this traumatic response to creativity where I have like short-term memory loss
[8:51]about the creative process.
[8:53]So that I'm 24 books in now at this point.
[8:56]And yet every single time I sit down to write, I go through the exact same version of psychosis.
[9:02]And everyone in my life has receipts, right?
[9:04]They're like, here's an email you sent me nine months ago where you
[9:07]word for words said the same thing about your last one.
[9:10]I'd not, it's not a, like a pretension.
[9:13]I don't remember it.
[9:14]Like it's like, I talked to a therapist better recently.
[9:17]And she's like, well, it's a traumatic response that we block out things that,
[9:20]so it's like the same thing that people will say about pregnancy often,
[9:24]which is like if you remembered it accurately, you probably never repeated it.
[9:28]I might feel like in so many ways, like creativity mirrors that same kind of trauma response
[9:34]where if we could accurately remember everything that we felt while going through it,
[9:40]we probably wouldn't be as keen to repeat the process.
[9:45]Wait, I have four kids and my little guys who are now seven and eight were asking me some questions
[9:50]about them and they were let her little or they showed me some video we found on my phone.
[9:53]And I was like, you guys, I literally like don't really remember any of this
[9:58]these entire years.
[9:59]Like, I-
[10:00]I can't even admit this to myself.
[10:01]It's too embarrassing.
[10:02]Obviously, I was there.
[10:03]And sometimes the picture jumps up the memory for me.
[10:06]But when I just try to think of the memories, I'm like,
[10:10]I know I was there.
[10:12]I wonder if it's something unique to artists and writers
[10:15]where there's a piece of our brain that is always
[10:18]occupied elsewhere.
[10:20]So even when I'm present, I think about it
[10:22]with the drafting process, especially that even when I'm present,
[10:25]there's probably about 25% of me that's not.
[10:28]that's trying to keep the plate spinning in my head.
[10:31]So afraid that if I turn my attention fully away
[10:34]from the draft that I'm writing, something will fall apart.
[10:37]Interesting.
[10:39]Yeah.
[10:39]I actually, a couple of years ago, maybe like 10 years ago,
[10:42]really thought I might have some sort of brain disorder
[10:45]because I was forgetting so much stuff.
[10:46]I was even starting to get lost.
[10:48]And I talked to a neurologist about it.
[10:50]And he was like, if you're not paying attention
[10:53]to begin with, your brain cannot imprint something
[10:56]as a memory because you're not even fully experiencing
[10:59]because you're not attending to it.
[11:00]You know, it's like why you can shampoo your hair
[11:02]and then like two minutes later be like,
[11:03]did I even do that?
[11:04]I don't know, because I wasn't thinking about it.
[11:05]I wasn't paying any attention.
[11:07]So if you're literally doing something
[11:09]and paying no attention to it, then it can't be stored away
[11:12]for later.
[11:13]That is so helpful to think about too
[11:16]because I make that joke of like I can keep 1,000 pages
[11:19]of story in my head, but I can't remember
[11:21]like what I ate yesterday.
[11:22]And it's like because I'm not,
[11:23]because I'm not actually present for a lot of the tasks.
[11:25]I'm working on it.
[11:26]I feel like if the pandemic has taught me anything,
[11:28]it's like presence.
[11:29]Yeah, but yeah, brains are weird.
[11:31]Thank you, we're just amazing.
[11:33]Brains are real strange.
[11:34]I have the same thing.
[11:35]I could tell you about so many plots and characters
[11:38]in these books and like why, why do I choose to remember
[11:41]stories and books that I read years ago
[11:43]and not, you know, this kid's friend's birthday party
[11:48]or something.
[11:48]Like why?
[11:49]Why do I know why am I prioritizing that?
[11:51]I don't know what day of the week it is.
[11:53]I'll forget things like I won't remember.
[11:55]Like if I've already done a task and it's because
[11:58]my brain is always sometimes recently,
[12:01]it feels like too, I always say like yeah, lately
[12:04]I felt like butter spread on too many pieces of bread.
[12:06]Like I just don't love that.
[12:08]I feel the same.
[12:09]That is such a great analogy.
[12:10]I'm going to like attribute this to you and use it
[12:13]because I, that is exactly how I feel.
[12:16]There's not enough butter or there's too much bread.
[12:18]There's one of these two things is true.
[12:21]Yeah, just keep like waiting for some,
[12:24]shoot a drop or whatever.
[12:25]Some bread.
[12:26]He's a bread to fatter dough.
[12:28]But I love that you're attributing that to creative people
[12:31]because it's putting a positive spin on this issue.
[12:34]You know, I mean, I think it's a deal with the devil.
[12:37]Like not to themat if they bring me actually like Addie,
[12:39]but I absolutely feel like there are pros and cons.
[12:43]And it's like a choice.
[12:44]I don't feel like I could maintain a measure of sanity
[12:48]if I didn't write.
[12:49]Like it's a way in which I take the snarl of yarn
[12:53]that is my head and make straight lines.
[12:55]But at the same time, I am also that writer who tells people
[12:59]if there's anything else that will make you feel satisfied,
[13:02]do that instead.
[13:04]Just because like it's I'm somebody who doesn't really
[13:07]like to sugarcoat the creative process.
[13:10]And I think it's so lonely.
[13:11]And it's so arduous that unless you go in with like eyes
[13:15]open as to what it's going to claim from you.
[13:18]Like I am, I know why is a society we romanticize artists.
[13:23]And in artists, I obviously like that's an umbrella term.
[13:25]I'm using for like all of us in that are creating.
[13:28]But at the same time, I think sometimes
[13:30]the romanticization of it can make it even
[13:33]lonely or when you're struggling because you start to think,
[13:37]well, everyone else seems to just be having a grand old time.
[13:40]So if I'm really struggling, is that a reflection of me then
[13:44]and my abilities instead of the fact that art is hard?
[13:48]Well, what piece of it makes you struggle the most?
[13:50]Is it the idea generation?
[13:52]Is it the sentences?
[13:53]Like when you find at your loneliness,
[13:56]like what is that?
[13:57]What exactly are you struggling with?
[13:58]The imperfection.
[14:00]So like I love brainstorming.
[14:02]And I love the final polish that I put on my words.
[14:06]The imperfection of a first draft.
[14:09]Knowing that like it's one of the reasons
[14:11]Adi took so long to write is that for five or six years,
[14:16]I just didn't want to ruin it by putting it on paper.
[14:19]I knew I had this idea in my head and as long as it was in my head
[14:22]it was perfect.
[14:23]It was flawless because it was not real.
[14:26]It was just all potential energy.
[14:28]And then the act of writing something down,
[14:30]translates it to kinetic energy and something's lost.
[14:33]And I am so averse to the inevitable failure
[14:37]that is a first draft.
[14:38]First draft is a controlled failure.
[14:39]It is losing something between your brain and the page.
[14:42]And then over the course of revision,
[14:44]you hopefully gain that back.
[14:45]But I struggle so much with my own sense
[14:49]that I'm ruining it by writing it in the first place.
[14:52]And it's like having to come to terms with the fact
[14:54]that I would rather have something exist and be flawed
[14:57]than not exist and be perfect.
[15:00]That's fascinating.
[15:02]It's that it's really unhealthy.
[15:05]No, healthy.
[15:06]No, no, I don't think it's unhealthy.
[15:08]It's just really interesting.
[15:10]I mean, as is the idea that it already lives fully formed,
[15:13]right, that we are just scribes trying to transport something
[15:18]from one place to another as if we're like FedEx messengers
[15:22]or something.
[15:23]I guess I have the proof on paper
[15:25]that I'm capable of doing the thing.
[15:28]And I have the proof that like if I go back and look at it,
[15:31]it doesn't seem like I wrote it.
[15:32]But I'll remember that like I didn't like it in the beginning.
[15:36]But that's the main fight I have with everyone in my life
[15:38]where they'll be like, you felt this way about Addie.
[15:40]And I'm like, no, I didn't.
[15:41]I loved Addie the whole time.
[15:43]And they're like, excuse me, you hated Addie for like nine years.
[15:47]You didn't want to do it.
[15:48]And it's like I retcon my relationship to the first draft.
[15:52]And that's the thing I wish I couldn't, I wouldn't do
[15:55]because if I just had a little bit more sense of presence
[15:58]and awareness as to how difficult the first draft is for me,
[16:02]I also don't know if you do this.
[16:04]I'm sure you do.
[16:05]Everyone I've met does it to some degree.
[16:07]We're in like, I'll even look at something that I wrote.
[16:11]Sure, you never want to look at the finished product
[16:13]versus a first draft.
[16:14]But I'll look at something I really like a week ago or a day
[16:16]ago.
[16:17]And I'll be like, wow, past me was much better
[16:18]at this than present me.
[16:19]Yeah.
[16:20]Like we're the same person.
[16:22]But in my brain, it's like, oh, I can't do this anymore.
[16:25]I did it a week ago, but that was a different version of me.
[16:29]I'm not seeing the world doing that anymore.
[16:31]Yes, I totally understand that.
[16:33]I'm like, I don't know if I could do that again.
[16:35]Like someone read a sentence.
[16:37]I wrote in some random essay.
[16:38]And they're like, this particular sentence.
[16:40]Like this is it for me.
[16:41]It unlocked this side of the thing.
[16:42]I'm like, first of all, I don't remember writing that sentence.
[16:45]Like it doesn't even sound familiar as you read it back to me.
[16:47]I mean, of course, I did, right?
[16:49]And that moment where I was just like, do you do?
[16:52]But second of all, I don't know.
[16:55]Yeah.
[16:56]It's just like this.
[16:56]It's almost like a dissociative response.
[16:58]It is.
[16:59]It is.
[16:59]That's what I'm getting to.
[17:00]Like it is a complete dissociation.
[17:03]And it's kind of like it can be magical if you're not
[17:07]as anxious, I guess, as I am.
[17:08]But my friends who are more able to just lean in
[17:13]and trustful into the creative process
[17:15]are also the friends who are like very willing
[17:17]to delete 50,000 words if it goes in the wrong direction.
[17:20]And like my anxiety, it feels like my determination
[17:26]to not quit stems from like having an end point in mind,
[17:30]having roadmaps along the way that will stop me
[17:33]from abandoning it because like, I will always be
[17:35]the harshest critic.
[17:36]I'm always the one that's like, it's not good enough.
[17:38]I'm like, of course, it's not good enough.
[17:39]You've written 15,000 words of a book that doesn't exist.
[17:42]In my mind, I'm like, it's not good enough.
[17:44]No one's gonna like this.
[17:46]Yeah.
[17:47]I have also noticed having interviewed over 1,000 authors
[17:51]and having anxiety myself and everything,
[17:54]like the prevalence of anxiety disorders among authors
[17:59]is something I find very welcome and familiar.
[18:02]But it's, I think, very widespread.
[18:05]I think there is a high correlation.
[18:07]Oh, right.
[18:08]I also want the reasons like I love memoirs
[18:10]and I specifically like gravitate towards memoirs
[18:13]and interviews in terms of as a listener
[18:15]with creative people, but especially with creative people
[18:18]in different fields.
[18:20]Like I just listened to like an hour-long interview
[18:23]with Harry Styles about his new album.
[18:25]And I feel like what an education in the universality
[18:28]of like the artistic experience of us all,
[18:31]like he talks about like just basically
[18:33]being in that place where you've had a massive success
[18:36]and how do you become liberated by that
[18:39]instead of paralyzed by it?
[18:41]And it's the same thing Elizabeth Gilbert talked about
[18:43]in her interview after E.P. love.
[18:45]And it's like, I just find the,
[18:47]I don't find comfort from my own past experience
[18:49]because I don't trust it,
[18:50]but I find comfort from knowing that other creatives
[18:54]in vastly different walks and levels of experience
[18:56]are all on the minute level,
[18:58]just struggling with like the same, the same neuroses.
[19:03]Yep, really interesting.
[19:06]I know it's different.
[19:07]I'm like in my head like spinning around on this thought
[19:09]because athletes, right?
[19:10]Taken athlete who practices the same thing over and over
[19:14]and the body remembers it.
[19:15]They could still make mistakes, right?
[19:17]They could slip off the beam
[19:19]or they could foot fall or whatever it is they're doing.
[19:22]But their body also like helps them out and remembers it.
[19:24]Whereas I feel like with more creative things,
[19:27]the body is completely useless.
[19:29]It's just a, right?
[19:30]You know, like you can't even remember it.
[19:32]Yeah, no, no muscle memory.
[19:33]I also wonder if just athletes are just far better
[19:36]being present and mindful because they have to be.
[19:39]Like I just, I envy that.
[19:42]I used to be an athlete and like I was like a soccer player
[19:46]for 13 years and I was a competitive fencer for seven.
[19:48]And like the only times I ever messed up
[19:51]were the ones when I was in my own head instead of in the moment.
[19:53]It's like one of the reasons I didn't go further with it.
[19:57]As a fencer specifically, I was like nationally.
[20:00]ranked in things, but I couldn't get out of my head.
[20:05]Like I couldn't just be there.
[20:07]Some part of me was always already analyzing it.
[20:11]So I don't know.
[20:12]Like I say, I don't think I'd be good at other things.
[20:15]I don't know.
[20:16]This is the only thing I've ever found
[20:17]that actually makes me feel crazier than I already am.
[20:22]And I'm crazy in a drug.
[20:24]Like I'm crazy.
[20:24]I have mental health issues.
[20:26]But it is something that definitely doesn't make me feel
[20:29]less crazy.
[20:31]You are not crazy.
[20:32]I don't know what mental health issues you've
[20:34]purportedly had.
[20:35]But I don't feel like you are actually
[20:38]I'm just going to go on a limb and say that.
[20:40]So the creative process certainly
[20:42]augments all of it, doesn't it?
[20:44]Yes.
[20:45]But also, weirdly rewards us for it.
[20:48]Like that's the problem.
[20:49]It's like, well, we're being rewarded for our process.
[20:54]Yes.
[20:55]I know my husband put, we used to play competitive tennis
[20:57]and I asked him, like, well,
[20:59]what are you thinking about when you play?
[21:00]Because I'm always like every shot.
[21:01]I'm like, needs to wreck effect.
[21:03]Did I mean, like, I'm always reminding myself
[21:05]I have a constant dialogue.
[21:07]And he's like, oh, I think about nothing.
[21:09]I only think about, like, I'm right there.
[21:10]I'm like, what do you mean?
[21:12]And I'm also like, that's why I keep interrupting.
[21:14]I'm like, OK, so that flight we were going to take.
[21:16]And he's like, what?
[21:17]He's like, it's like, it's why I can't play golf.
[21:20]I'm like, no, no, no.
[21:22]I can't do these things.
[21:23]It's, yeah.
[21:25]It's too neurotic.
[21:27]Yeah.
[21:27]Well, gosh, I feel so understood.
[21:29]I feel so understood.
[21:34]Amazing.
[21:34]So I don't need a therapist.
[21:35]I just need like a creative support circle, at least once a week,
[21:39]for people just to weigh in on like,
[21:40]what their creative struggle was that way.
[21:43]Totally.
[21:43]Yeah.
[21:44]So helpful and free.
[21:46]You know, I think it's time and money.
[21:50]OK, well, maybe we should at least discuss what you're just
[21:53]talking to that to you in the middle.
[21:55]I don't know.
[21:56]My problem is going to listen to this.
[21:58]She's going to be like, damn it.
[21:59]I'm sorry, I know.
[22:01]It's me too.
[22:02]I'm like, although to be honest, you know,
[22:04]as you were saying, that ownership that readers feel,
[22:07]I believe it extends to just knowing the author more,
[22:11]makes you more invested in the work.
[22:13]So for me, you know, this conversation or now I understand
[22:17]a little more where you're coming from is much more
[22:19]interesting than just hearing about, you know,
[22:22]how much time you spend writing or what
[22:24]your writing process is, like, this is fascinating to me.
[22:27]So I'm hoping people are saying, I don't,
[22:28]I mean, I'm hoping people are saying that.
[22:30]But ultimately, I'm doing this because I
[22:31]want to be, you know, intellectually stimulated
[22:35]and find things interesting.
[22:36]So, you know, I'm sorry, listeners, if this is boring,
[22:38]but I guarantee people are finding this interesting thing.
[22:42]And more willing to read Gallup, so tell me about this book.
[22:45]I'm so gallant.
[22:46]Really a great way to measure the pandemic
[22:48]because it's the first novel that I wrote during the pandemic.
[22:51]And then it came out we were still in the pandemic.
[22:53]Gallant is my first all ages read.
[22:56]I've written middle grade YA and adult.
[22:58]And this is the first one that kind of
[22:59]defied the boundaries of those shelving tactics
[23:03]and which we can talk about in a second.
[23:05]But as far as the story, I like to say it's the secret garden
[23:08]meets Crimson Peak.
[23:10]It is a story of a teenage girl named Olivia
[23:12]Pryor who has spent the vast majority of her short life
[23:15]in an orphanage, nothing of her family
[23:18]except for a journal that was found with her.
[23:21]The journal has entries that seemed to develop
[23:23]from her mother that seemed to evolve into madness
[23:25]and illustrations that make no sense.
[23:26]But at the back of it is a letter from Olivia's mother
[23:30]to Olivia that warns her she will always be safe
[23:33]as long as she stays away from gallant.
[23:36]Three years, Olivia has no idea what that means
[23:39]until she receives a note from an uncle she's never met
[23:42]inviting her to come home to the family estate,
[23:44]which is called gallant.
[23:46]She gets there and she finds no uncle
[23:49]and a house falling into disrepair
[23:52]and a garden with a wall with a locked door
[23:57]that seems to leave nowhere.
[23:59]That's amazing.
[24:00]That's all I'll say about that.
[24:02]I loved your introductory letter
[24:04]where you talk about doors and the fascination
[24:07]how books themselves are doors,
[24:09]but also just how enticing it is to stumble upon a door
[24:13]and how you found one once in a garden in the middle.
[24:15]You were so excited that you couldn't even ruin it
[24:19]by trying to open it and finding out what was there.
[24:21]I just didn't want to be let down.
[24:23]Like if you find a door standing alone
[24:25]in the middle of an empty lot,
[24:27]I just wanted to believe that if I opened it
[24:30]it would lead somewhere else.
[24:31]And I wanted to live in the mystery of that.
[24:33]I think that's probably why I write fiction.
[24:35]It's just to concoct what's on the other side of that door
[24:39]but also to kind of inspire the doubt of the real.
[24:43]Like I just want, those are the stories I loved most
[24:45]when I was younger.
[24:46]It's like the ones that wear the magic
[24:48]and the supernatural is layered so closely over reality
[24:52]that you start looking around at your own world
[24:55]and wondering where the cracks are.
[24:57]And if there might be, like one of the best examples
[25:00]I can ever give is that I wrote an all the called Vicious
[25:02]which is about supervillains better.
[25:04]Their powers are generated by near death experiences.
[25:07]Okay.
[25:08]And so I'll never forget that like three a.m.
[25:10]one morning I got a fan letter
[25:13]an email from a man who clearly was awake
[25:17]because he just needed to know that that's not like
[25:20]a real thing, right?
[25:22]Like he just basically are very long
[25:24]when did way of being like, I just want to make sure
[25:25]like this isn't like a documented but like,
[25:29]and I was like, that's what I want to do.
[25:30]I want to make you wonder and doubt
[25:34]because that I think cracks open the door
[25:37]into much more interesting places.
[25:40]It's, there's almost a lie in the which
[25:42]in the word of vibe to it as well, right?
[25:44]Well, I've always responded more to something
[25:47]like CS Lewis than to Tolkien for that exact reason.
[25:49]Tolkien is a land that you will only ever access
[25:52]through the pages of that book.
[25:53]There is no train from here to there.
[25:55]Whereas portal fiction like CS Lewis, like Galand,
[25:59]like Shades of Magic, another one of mine
[26:02]is offering you a literal doorway
[26:04]and saying if you just have to find it,
[26:06]if you can just go into your world
[26:08]and find the right door, you'll get there.
[26:11]Phantom Tobuth, maybe that's yeah.
[26:13]Yeah, I'm like portal fiction.
[26:15]I've never even thought to describe
[26:17]Is that a whole genre that, okay.
[26:19]Yeah, portal fantasy would be an entire subgenre
[26:22]that just is literally like creates a doorway.
[26:25]So will I in the which in the wardrobe is a perfect example
[26:28]never wear by Neil Gaiman, it's a perfect example.
[26:30]Even Stardust by Neil Gaiman, it's a boundary.
[26:32]Really, it's a boundary.
[26:33]Like you have a physical boundary
[26:35]that needs to be crossed, stranger things,
[26:39]the upside down, like any place where a secondary world
[26:43]sits up against our world is a portal fiction.
[26:46]And your character can go from here to there.
[26:48]Do you feel like that helps you make sense of the current world?
[26:53]I think all fantasy in some way plays with the current world
[26:57]and like how far you want to depart from it.
[27:00]I think what I love about fantasy is that you get to,
[27:03]because you're controlling the rules,
[27:05]you get to control what's normal.
[27:08]And like there's fantasy right that takes one step away
[27:11]from normal and there's fantasy that takes 25 steps.
[27:15]And I love that all of that is fantasy.
[27:17]Like the invisible life of Ali LaRou is a fantasy novel.
[27:21]And a lot of people don't think of it as that way
[27:22]because it's said in our world
[27:25]and like it seems to behave like our world.
[27:27]And I brought the magic into our world
[27:29]instead of taking the reality out of our world.
[27:31]But it's still fantasy.
[27:32]But I would say it's probably one to two steps fantasy
[27:36]where something like shades of magic
[27:38]another one of mine is like 10 steps fantasy.
[27:41]I think Gallant is like three
[27:43]because it's a simple, it's a doorway
[27:45]and a mirror verse basically.
[27:47]And so much of me trying to write this novel
[27:50]was trying to figure out for myself
[27:52]what was on the other side of the door.
[27:53]Like for the first three or four years,
[27:55]I thought I was writing a fairy tale.
[27:58]And that meant okay, fairy tale is like a classic
[28:02]portal fantasy borderline world here and there.
[28:04]And it's really usually the line between the domestic
[28:07]and the wild, the here and the day there,
[28:10]the like cultivated land and the forest.
[28:13]They tend to be like very specific tropes in fairy tales.
[28:17]And I just kept staring at this door,
[28:19]this locked door in the wall at the back of the garden
[28:21]in the house that I wrote.
[28:22]And I just thought it's not fairy tale.
[28:25]And then one day I realized I was writing an underworld tale.
[28:30]And I was like, oh, that's the difference, right?
[28:33]That's the difference.
[28:34]It's not here and there as in domestic and wild.
[28:37]It's here and there as in life and death.
[28:40]And once I figured that out,
[28:42]everything just kind of like clicked like tumblers
[28:44]in a lock into place.
[28:45]But yeah, I'm always just kind of asking myself
[28:48]how many steps do I want to take away
[28:51]from the world as it exists in this moment?
[28:56]Wow, fascinating.
[28:57]And you're turning it into a movie, right?
[29:00]The Netflix something for me.
[29:01]Oh, no, that's a different one.
[29:03]Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's different.
[29:04]So my first Netflix show actually comes out
[29:06]in two and a half weeks.
[29:08]Oh my gosh.
[29:08]It's called First Kill.
[29:10]And it's based on a short story that I wrote.
[29:13]And it was basically because like I'm gay
[29:15]and I grew up, you know, when you grow up
[29:19]in any form of marginalization,
[29:21]you kind of are like looking obviously
[29:23]for your avatars in entertainment.
[29:25]And you usually don't get very many of them.
[29:27]There's like my lesbian friends,
[29:29]I'll be like, we're just going for crumbs.
[29:31]We're just picking up whatever crumbs there are.
[29:33]And that'll often be like subtext
[29:35]or it won't end well or you'll be a side character.
[29:38]And so I essentially wrote the Buffy,
[29:41]the Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I wish I'd had
[29:43]when I was 16,
[29:45]because I jokingly say that if I'd had it,
[29:46]it might not have taken me till like 26 to come out.
[29:50]And so it's basically just a short story that I wrote
[29:53]about a teenage vampire named Juliet
[29:56]who needs to make her first kill in order
[29:58]to like fully come into her band.
[30:00]higher power. And she has a crush on a new girl at her school named
[30:03]Colliope. She decides that Colliope will be her first kill because it's
[30:07]better if it's somebody that you like. And they end up in a closet at a
[30:11]house party and she goes to bite Colliope and Colliope goes to stake her in
[30:15]the heart because Colliope is a budding monster hunter who needs to make her
[30:19]first kill to like be accepted by her family. And it's it's
[30:22]campy and it's fun. And it's it's not about the
[30:27]queerness. Like that's the whole point, right? It's like there's a lot
[30:30]going on in the show. And there's a lot of taboo because it's like
[30:34]monster hunter taboo and families against each other. But the taboo
[30:38]isn't that they're both girls. And so yeah, it comes out on Netflix on
[30:42]June 10th, which is terrifying. It's so like 80 episodes. And it was
[30:46]like my first flight. My but but Addie's in development. I should be
[30:50]getting a script for Addie for as a film any day now. Wow. And you're doing
[30:54]that with bell trees, right? Or without Roberts. Bell trees and Emma are
[30:57]for the Netflix show. And then Addie is with Augustine for Zell and David
[31:04]Lowry and Augustine for Zell did the pilot of Euphoria and David
[31:07]Lowry has just finished the new Peter Pan and he did the green
[31:11]night and it goes story. And it's just they're both
[31:13]incredibly talented. Oh my gosh. Well, now I have my plans for June 10th.
[31:17]So that's fine. And watch some very campy vampires. I'm excited.
[31:25]I'm totally excited. This has been so interesting. Thank you so much, Victoria.
[31:29]This is so fun. And really, honestly, thought for boking will require some
[31:34]further introspection afterwards. And thank you so much. I'm excited
[31:38]for all your exciting new projects. And thank you so much for the
[31:42]chat that was much, much better than the therapy that I pay so much for.
[31:47]Eddie time. I'll be right here at this desk. You just let me know.
[31:50]That's fine. All right. Thank you.
[31:56]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[31:59]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at
[32:03]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[32:07]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every
[32:11]other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the
[32:14]sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[32:18]fantastic intro and out trim music.