Interview: Helen Corcoran, author of Queen of Coin and Whispers

What happens to someone when they have a childhood full of dreams of queens, heroines, knights, and adventures, then they grow up to become a bookseller and surround themselves with books?  Since I've just described Helen Corcoran, author of Queen of Coin and Whispers, we get to find out!

Queen of Coin and Whispers came out this past June,  follows an idealistic queen and her spymaster.   Lia has inherited a bankrupt kingdom, and yearns to correct the mistakes of her predecessors. Her spymaster Xania has a violent history and her own goals, the first of which is avoiding the executioner's axe.   Politics, intrigue, banter, flirtations (and flirting through books!), revenge, hidden enemies, and the future of a country in the crosshairs, this sounds like an excellent next read if you're looking for a YA queer fantasy of manners with diverse characters, a slow burn romance, and intense emotions.  

Interested in prequel short stories? Don't worry, the Corcoran and her publisher have you covered! Click here for the free prequel, Three Times a Future Queen Almost Met Her Future Whispers, (And The First Time She Did).

Corcoran lives in Dublin, Ireland, surrounded by books, chocolate, coffee, and friends.  Learn more about her work, her experiences as a professional bookseller, and her search for the perfect latte at her website HelenCorcoran.com, and by following her on twitter, @hcor.  She was kind enough to let me pick her brain about the inspirations for the novel, how she kept track of who was allied with who and who was planning to backstab who, tricks for writing witty banter, and of course how she came up with the "flirting through books" scenes.   

Let's get to the interview!



NOAF: What inspired you to write Queen of Coin and Whispers? How long did it take you go from "I've got this great idea!" to typing "The End" on your manuscript?

Helen Corcoran: I wanted to write about a princess who was ready to inherit the throne, who'd been preparing as best she could, and was aware of the political and economic situations she faced. I'm also fascinated by historical spymasters, and the kind of personalities that suited the role of information gathering.

I got the idea in late 2013 and completed a first draft in January 2015. It took about another four drafts, including completing a revise and resubmit for an agent, before The O'Brien Press offered on Queen of Coin and Whispers in April 2018, and I worked on edits through 2019. So Lia and Xania have been with me for some time!

NOAF:  The characters "flirt through books?" I love books, and I love when characters flirt with each other, so I need some more details on how you did this!

HC: I'd stalled on progressing the romance in a draft, and was trying to figure out how to get one of them to actually admit their feelings! I was part of a bookclub, and I'd mentioned a writer as part of the world-building. Lia and Xania are readers, and it was one of those times when two things clicked together: the writer had written romances, including ones between women, and Lia enjoyed them as comfort reads, showing a relationship she desperately wanted but couldn't have because of being queen. So for her to lend Xania these books, which mean a lot to her, is a safe overture... unless Xania figures out what she's trying to hint at.

NOAF:  Who was your favorite character to write? What made that person so fun to develop and watch grow?

 

HC: I love Lia and Xania, as they're both POV narrators and I've spent years with them, but I love how much Xania changes from her first POV chapter and the epilogue. A lot of her motivations and goal are personal, whereas Lia’s are based more on formality and external factors, and that gives Xania’s plot and emotional arcs a different feel. Xania is (justifiably) wary and distrustful at the start of Queen, and watching her grow both personally and professionally, and seeing how far she comes . . . it makes me very happy, which probably sounds weird as I created her!

NOAF:  The plot has a lot going on - political intrigue, family dynamics, young rulers growing into their roles, characters that have deep backstories, and more. What was your process like to outline everything that happens?

HC: . . . haha.

I didn't really plan out the political intrigue during the first draft, and carried myself through to the end with a dose of naive optimism and the help of a vague outline. Fixing that sort of foundation took . . . a few drafts. At one point I had a flow chart of who was allied with who, who was enemies with who, and who was double-crossing at various points. And then it all had to be carefully woven in to the main and romantic plots! It was hugely satisfying when it all came together, but I leaned valuable lessons about the benefits of a structural outline.

NOAF: Early reviews are already up, and many of the reviewers mention how enjoyable the witty dialog and banter was. Writing good dialog is hard! Have you got any tips for writing witty dialog and making the banter feel fun and funny?

HC: I try to say all my dialogue out loud. And sometimes I'll be thinking about whatever I'm writing and find myself saying lines of dialogue or narration aloud, and I then usually have to scramble for the notes app on my phone, as I'll inevitably never remember them.

NOAF:  Queen of Coin and Whispers is a stand alone. Do you have plans to write more in this world? In general, are you a fan of series, or is your personal preference towards stand alones?

HC: Queen of Coin and Whispers is a self-contained novel, but I hope it won't be a standalone. I hope I'll get to write at least another book, connected to Queen but still standing on its own terms. It's set several years later, with a new narrator (to explain who she is spoils Queen!), but Lia and Xania feature as older characters. It depends if Queen does well, and the publisher would like to buy it.

I'm a fan of both! I especially like separate-but-connected novels that expand upon a fantasy world, like Graceling/Fire/Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore. That way you get stand alones, but you also get to see more of a world you've fallen in love with. That said, there's nothing like loving a novel and realising it's part of a series.

NOAF:  There is a fine line between if a fantasy novel is YA and if it isn't, and I don't quite understand where that line is. What are your thoughts on this? What makes Queen of Coin and Whispers YA as opposed to, well, not YA?

HC: A friend of mine said it best: adult fiction with teenage narrators usually shows them as adults looking back at their teen years; there's a distance in the emotional experiences. Whereas YA fiction usually has teenage characters experiencing everything right in the moment of the novel.

Lia and Xania are teenagers with responsibilities in a fantasy world, but they're still going through things for the first time: attraction and love, and figuring out who they want to be in this world and what they stand for. Who they want to be, beyond the shadow of their families' mistakes and legacies.

NOAF: You are my favorite kind of bookseller (the kind who writes!) and my favorite kind of author (the kind who loves bookstores!). How did your career as a bookseller help guide your path towards becoming a published author? In your mind, what is the connection between loving books, selling books for a living, and creating books?

HC: Bookselling is an emotionally and physically taxing job, and that's before you add in a commute or different types of shifts. I found it better to write in the morning before work, as it was easier to pick it up again during lunch if I already had a word-count, even if the day had turned stressful and pear-shaped.

I think it all boils down to a love of stories and an emotional connection to them. I can't speak for everyone, but I read because I love it; there's always something else I could or should be doing! It's a similar love when selling books (booksellers certainly aren't doing it for the money), though you're usually convincing someone else that they'll love the book you're recommending. It's very easy to walk into a bookshop and get a vibe for whether the booksellers actually read. And I feel that same love has to carry through when writing: again, there's lots of other things I could or should be doing, and writing takes both time and effort.

NOAF: Thank you so much for chatting with me! 

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: S.L. Huang, author of the Cas Russell series

photo credit Chris Massa

SL Huang is an Amazon-bestselling author who justifies her MIT degree by using it to write eccentric mathematical superhero fiction.   She is most well known for her Cas Russell books – Zero Sum Game and Null Set.  The third book in the series, Critical Point, hits bookstore shelves later this month.   If you like math geniuses with memory issues who typically solve problems by punching people,  found families, and gray morals, these are the action packed and snark filled books for you!

Her short fiction has appeared in Nature, Analog, Uncanny, Daily Science Fiction and in multiple anthologies and Best Of collections, and she recently wrote three episodes of the shared world series The Vela on Serial Box.

Huang is also a Hollywood stuntwoman and firearms expert, where she's appeared on shows such as "Battlestar Galactica" and "Raising Hope" and worked with actors such as Sean Patrick Flanery, Jason Momoa, and Danny Glover. Follow her online at www.slhuang.com or on Twitter as @sl_huang.

She kindly answered my questions about the newest novel in the Cas Russell series,  how Cas has developed over the years, the journey from self publishing to getting picked up by Tor, scientific werewolves, how much fun it was to work on The Vela,   the arcane magic of outlines, and more.


NOAF: What do you enjoy most about writing the Cas Russell books?

S.L. Huang: The snark! Nothing gives me greater joy than banter between my characters.
I also really, really enjoy writing characters who are often not nice or who make tremendously bad decisions - but in ways where we want to root for them anyway. They're very flawed but I love them so much. Cas’s impulsivity makes the books speed along, because she's so very likely to try to "solve" a problem by punching people, and then have a fifty percent chance of making things WORSE…


NOAF: Book 3 in this series, Critical Point, hits bookstores shelves at the end of April. What's the elevator pitch for Critical Point?   Without giving us any spoilers, can you tell us what scenes was the most fun to write? 

SLH: The real elevator pitch: "FAMILY! This book is all about family—the family you live with, but also the family you find along the way. And my very prickly main character has a lot to learn about it. Oh and LOTS OF EXPLOSIONS. Truly a staggering number of explosions."

The elevator pitch in my head: "THE ONE THAT IS SUPER GAY!!! Oh and also lots of explosions." As a queer author, it’s delightful to me that it fits this book to put my characters' queerness on the page a lot more than it has in the previous books!

The elevator pitch according to my first reader: "THE PILAR BOOK." I confess this is also something I love: Pilar has been working up in her gun-toting skills since she was introduced, and this is the book where she and my main character become an action duo in a lot of scenes. Two women of color, kicking ass and taking names, one of them who shoots too many people and one of them who is too nice to everybody.

As for the scene that was most fun to write… I adore a lot of the family scenes to the point where I had written many of them before I finished Book 1, because I knew this was where I was headed. Also the explosions. I am fortunate enough to have explosives and fire experts among my friends and family, and there's one rollicking fun explosion near the end that came from my sister, who is a firefighter, telling me: "Use this. This'll be fun!"

And it's SO fun. Well, not for the characters. They're not so happy about it.

NOAF: These are fast paced, action thrillers.  While outlining and drafting, how do you keep the pace of the story so fast? How do you know when to give the characters a break from the action?

SLH: Outlining, ha! I cannot outline. I wish I could. It is arcane magic to me.

I have to "write through" things to figure them out - but after that I'm pretty good at putting together the book by feel. I can usually sense when it starts to stagnate, or when the characters need a breather, and I'll go back and rewrite if the pacing feels like it’s starting to skew.

Then, once the book is done, my editor, Diana Gill, has a fabulous sense of pacing and thriller tension. She totally keeps me honest. If the stakes aren't quite high enough, she makes sure I raise them! I love how great she is at seeing that, and it makes me feel very secure at the publication stage that there's no way the excitement will sag for readers.

NOAF: You originally self published this series, and then the series was picked up by Tor. What changes, if any, were made to your original self published versions?  How was working with Tor different than going the self pub route?

SLH: The first book was changed a lot less - we added a chapter and then I rewrote most of the climax and ending from there, but the first 2/3 were mostly the same. The second book was originally the fourth book, and we tore that one apart pretty thoroughly - largely to make it stand alone more - though the general plot is the same and the characters start and end in the same place. The third book is brand new!

Personally, I love being with a publisher, especially with the fabulous people at Tor. My editor really "gets" the books and her comments only make them better - I'm so much more proud of the Tor versions! I also love not being an island; being with a publisher means a whole team is supporting me, and they're utterly fantastic.

NOAF: As the Cas Russell series continues, Cas has more friends and allies. But that makes her more vulnerable to the emotional weight of those relationships.  How does her character change and evolve through this?  Did you always plan for her to eventually be less of a lone wolf in this way?

SLH: Oh, yes, that was always exactly the plan. She's very much two steps forward, one and three-quarters steps back when it comes to her relationships with people, but I always wanted her to improve incrementally on this front. The character relationships are what make the books for me, so those awkward friendships are some of my favorite bits.

And yeah, her lack of emotional skill - and the conflicts it introduces - was always planned to be a big source of difficulty for her, but at the same time a huge source of growth. Er, very slow growth.

NOAF: Are you planning more novels and/or short stories in the Cas Russell universe?  Where do you see the story going from here?

SLH: As long as readers keep buying and reading them, I will keep writing them! Without giving away the end of Critical Point, the "powered" people in this universe and their intersection with society have so many terrible possibilities to explore. This is all getting bigger - way bigger than the conspiracies in the shadows the characters have dealt with so far.

Not to mention the unanswered questions we still have about the characters' backstories… I know readers have been champing at the bit about learning more of Rio's history in particular, since I've only been doling out bits and bobs of it. You learn more about all the characters in Critical Point.

Oh, and I really want to do a novella in which Rio starts becoming a werewolf. (Scientifically, of course.) That's been noodling around in my head for ages.


NOAF: In 2019, you wrote a number of episodes of The Vela, a  work of serialized fiction from Serial Box Publishing. Other authors involved in the project were Yoon Ha Lee, Rivers Solomon, and Becky Chambers. How was it different to write in a shared universe?  Because the episodes are a standard length and are full audio, were there word or time limits that you had to take into account, and how did that effect how you wrote your episodes?

SLH: I LOVED doing The Vela! The writing team was just so fabulous and I can't say enough good things about them.

Writing in a shared universe - with such fantastic co-authors - was marvelous. Like eating cake. They all had such good ideas, and we would build on each other in ways I could never do as a solo writer. I'm so very proud of the story we wrote. It's jam-packed full of topical themes like migration and climate change even though it's set in a far-flung solar system, and the characters we drew up are such an incredible cast.

The process was certainly more structured than when I'm writing alone - it had to be! - but not in any way that I felt was limiting. I'm pretty good at knowing what will fit into wordage of varying lengths, as I write enough short stories to have a feel for it, so it was never an issue for me to pick a chunk of story that would work out for the size of an episode.


NOAF: You also have a forthcoming novella coming out from Tor.com, called Burning Roses, where Rosa (Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi the Archer join forces.  What more can you tell us about this? 

SLH: Two old queer ladies fight magical things together and angst about their families! In a mix of Chinese and Western folklore!
Also starring:
Goldilocks as an abusive con artist
Beauty and the Beast as a human trafficking story
The Jade Rabbit as a threatening dream guide because it's fun to make rabbits scary
And Puss in Boots because why wouldn't I throw in a cat in boots.
Also morally ambiguous dragon slaying, attempted matricide, birds MADE OUT OF FIRE and two very complicated families.

NOAF:  Thank you so much!  And consider me first in line to read Burning Roses!

Interview: Emily Skrutskie, Author Bonds of Brass

What do you get when you mix a passion for game design, film, computer science? Now throw in a love of space opera, humor, and compelling relationships.  Stir it up, add a few surprises, and you're getting close to Emily Skrutskie's new novel Bonds of Brass, available April 7th.    Everything I see about this book, everything I read about it,  Bonds of Brass just sounds like a joy to read, a book that's filled with everything I enjoy - crushes, banter, scams, quick getaways, politics, explosions, and oh the tension!  

Not sold yet?  Scroll down until you get to the "poster", don't worry, you'll know it when you see it. How can you look at that poster and not smile?    And I don't know about you, but right now I only want to read books that make me smile. And the best news ever? Bonds of Brass is the first in the Bloodright trilogy!

Emily Skrutskie is also the author of The Abyss Surrounds Us, The Edge of the Abyss, and Hullmetal Girls. She was born on one coast of the United States, and now resides on the other, and is currently working on the next two Bloodright novels.  You can learn more about Emily's work on her website, Skrutskie.com or by following her on twitter, where she is @skrutskie. She was nice enough to let me pick her brain about where she got the idea for Bonds of Brass, if she's a plotter or a pantser, music playlists and listening to movie soundtracks for inspiration, the now famous poster, and more.

Let's get to the interview!


NOAF: Tell about Bonds of Brass. What's the elevator pitch? Where did the idea for this book come from?

E.S.: Bonds of Brass is basically Star Wars meets The Road to El Dorado. It’s the story of a pilot on the run with his best friend, roommate, and possibly the love of his life—who happens to be heir to the brutal galactic empire that ruined the pilot’s life. I got the idea for this book in the period of time after The Force Awakens had just come out, when I had also just finished reading Pierce Brown’s Morning Star. I wanted to write a big dramatic space opera with tricks up its sleeves—and I was also deeply inspired by stories about charming con men running elaborate scams. Mush those two things together, and you’ve got the basic ingredients for Bonds of Brass.

NOAF: You had me at "meets Road to El Dorado".  Talk us through how you developed Ettian and Gal's characters. As you were drafting the novel and deciding where the story would go, did their characteristics or goals change?

E.S.: I had a pretty clear vision for who Ettian and Gal would be from the start. Ettian is the pilot, the underdog who came up from nothing, the reserved kid who survived hell and keeps his emotions close to the chest. Gal is the prince, the negotiator, the person the universe is meant to revolve around. As I drafted, I got a better sense of what those qualities meant and how they functioned in action, and figured out all the ways they'd tie the two of them together. The most interesting evolution came when I realized Ettian needed a stronger motivation to put Gal on the throne than "he's my best friend" and as a result had to give Gal a significant anti-establishment streak that promised radical change to the cruel galaxy Ettian grew up in.

NOAF: What was your writing process like for Bonds of Brass? Are you a strict outliner, or do you let the story "write itself"?

E.S.: Outliner all the way! For me, a story is only as good as its ending - first impressions are important, but last impressions last. So I plan a story all the way to the end before I start it, and that way I know what I'm working toward. This really helps me write economically, because everything I put on the page is a building block toward reaching that ending and driving it home in a way that’s satisfying to the reader.

NOAF: What was the most fun part of this book to write?

E.S.: About halfway through, there’s a chase/fight sequence that takes place on a public transit wiretram. To put myself in the mood for the scene and lock into the wham-bam improvisational mindset of the characters, I watched Jackie Chan clips on YouTube for about an hour straight. I really wanted it to feel like a Hong Kong action movie, and it was delightful to slip into that mode for a while.

NOAF: The only thing that looks more fun than the book itself is the adorable promotional poster! This poster is so cute, it looks like doodles you'd find in a high schooler's notebook, notes that would be inside a student's locker, it is just covered in fun everything! Where did the idea for the post come from? Is this how you imaged the promotion for the book would look?

E.S.: The words on the poster were from a graphic I whipped up ages ago to pitch the book - which had its own little viral moment when FinnPoe twitter found it and EXPLODED. That was incredible to watch, and proof that those words did a fantastic job of pitching the book, so my marketing manager, Ashleigh Heaton, designed that wonderful little promo graphic with the handwriting and doodles for us to share. I think we’re seeing a really interesting moment where book promotion is truly adapting to social media, figuring out the most fun way of showing off what a book has to offer an audience in a highly-shareable format. If you want fans, you have to be able to prove both that you have what fans want and that you know how to talk about it in a way that engages them, and for me personally, that’s super fun to do.

NOAF: You recently posted a Bonds of Brass track list on your blog, of the music that fueled your writing. How do you use music as a writing tool? Do you listen to faster paced tracks to write action scenes, for example?

E.S.: I feel like I use music in three main ways when working. Most of the music you find in that playlist is music I use for inspiration - songs that speak to different aspects of the book and guide me as I think about them/develop stuff. Then there’s music I use for motivation - such as the Skydiving track from the Kingsman soundtrack or Storming New Caprica, from the Battlestar Galactica season 3 soundtrack. Those are songs I'll put on to ground me in the mood for a scene and help me focus on how I want to express myself. Then there's music I'll actually write to, which I'm very particular about. I can’t hear English words when I draft, so I usually stick to instrumentals, and I have collections of film soundtracks I rotate between depending on who I’m writing - for example, most of the big Wen action scenes in book two were written to a mix of the Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman soundtracks.

NOAF: I saw this on your blog as well: "WIPs: John Carter Book: Basically if John Carter and The Fifth Season found themselves in the same pot of soup" and OMG YES. Yes please! Why'd you choose John Carter, and why throw him onto an Earthquake planet (other than that it's fun)?

E.S.: Haha, I hope I get to go back to that WIP someday. I'm itching to write something that has John Carter or She-Ra vibes—something that's got the magic and scope of epic fantasy grounded in sci-fi worldbuilding. I feel like that’s really going to push me as an author, since so far I've been strictly science fiction. Developing a magic system has been breaking my brain as someone who understands a little bit too much about physics. But first things first, I have two more Bloodright books to get out the door.

NOAF: Thanks Emily!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.