INTERVIEW: E L P I D A (rough draft)


As with the Brumous interview, this is just a copy and paste of the interview questions and my replies to them. Due to the fact that I am long-winded and full of hot air, I'm expecting  my interview to be edited. 


1. Tell us a bit about yourself as an author and as an individual.


I'm a middle-aged, genderfluid, pansexual, polyamorous, kinked, demisexual, autistic, Muslim nerd. Probably the most emphasis should be put on the word nerd.


I was reading before I knew how to walk - I actually can't remember a time that I did not know how to read. My mother says I learned how to read from watching Sesame Street when I was a toddler, but I think I had already half figured it out from looking at the books she read to me when I was settled on her lap. It didn't take me long to start writing. The very first books I wrote were love letters to God that I put under my bed every night for angels to collect. I eventually graduated to writing stories about talking animals, stories about plucky Girl Scouts who solved crimes in Nancy Drew style, and stories about summer camp. Oh, and weird science fiction and horror stories that were inspired by the writings of Ray Bradbury. I spent most of my high school years working on a 600-page handwritten fantasy novel about two teenagers who were transported to a magic land that they had to save from an evil wizard...


My stories were all dreadful - yes, including the novel. (We won't even get into the matter of my early poetry).


I got better. Eventually. A few decades of nonstop practice can help even the worst of us.


When I'm not writing, I'm selling insurance, puttering around in the kitchen, tending my gardens, making graphic art collages on Canva, or spending time with my husband and family. I'd love to say I'm actually interesting, but the last time I did anything worth talking about (say, medieval reenactment or epee fencing) was an awfully long time ago.


2. How long have you been writing? And what influenced you to start writing?


I've always wanted to write. It seemed like the natural thing to do as someone who enjoyed reading. Sometimes, after reading something wonderful, I'd find myself lost in a dream, and then I'd have this burning urge to say something. It was also a great way to entertain myself if I was bored and had run out of books to read. No books at hand? No problem, I'll just write my own!


3. Are you a plotter or a pantser?


I am an extreme plotter when it comes to everything except for my characters. My characters mostly write themselves after I've put together vague ideas of them in my mind. They grow more from the plot I throw them into than they do from me.


The plot itself, though? Structure, structure, structure. I decided to theme my Magnum Opus trilogy on different fields of esoteric study (Ancilla on the Kabbalah and on Thelemic magick, Soror Mystica on alchemy, Adept on the bardos of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and on Tarot cards that I plan on drawing before writing each chapter, to determine the events in that chapter) and on different types of love as discussed by C S Lewis in The Four Loves (Ancilla on eros, Soror Mystica on philia, and Adept on storge - not that all three won't have ample amounts of eroticism in them, but the relationship foci will be a little different in each. In Ancilla, the protagonist's relationship with her mentor/dominant/soulmate is central. In Soror Mystica, the focus is going to be on the complicated friendships and romances among a polyamorous love dodecahedron that develops within the protagonist's tabletop gaming group. In Adept, the focus is on the protagonist's close relationship with her chosen family). I research everything, then I outline like mad, determining plot by the components of whatever esoteric field I am using for structure. Oh, and I meditate and pray before writing the rough draft of each chapter, asking for guidance... There is absolutely no room for pantsing in here.


Come on, I'm an INTJ. Do you really think I'd even be any good at pantsing? I am in awe of authors who can pants well.


4. What was the most difficult thing to write in your book? How did you finally pull it off?


The most difficult parts of Ancilla for me to write were the ones that involved traumatizing my characters. The entire "Netzach" chapter was a nightmare. It involved a harsh, brutal initiation ritual that the protagonist felt she needed to undergo to get past some mental barriers in her ascent to gnosis; neither she nor "Magister" (her mentor) enjoyed it one bit. That chapter was the closest I ever got to dubious consent, and I hope I made it clear that "ancilla" did consent, from start to finish, and that if she really had used her safeword, that would have been the end of the initiation ritual. ("Magister" says her safeword is suspended. I don't think he'd be capable of ignoring a safeword. Just for the record). The events of that evening are so overwhelming that "ancilla" gets the psychic equivalent of a bad sports injury, and her soul goes wandering. It was an extremely difficult chapter to write, for all that it was one of the shortest.


The final chapter - the one that has "Magister" and "ancilla" uniting their souls for all eternity in a secret marriage ceremony, only for "Magister" to tell "ancilla" that they will be spending the rest of this life apart, because he's breaking up with her for her own good, was also a beast to write. (Or what he thinks is for her own good, anyway - and given the lack of support kinked, polyamorous couples had in small cities in the conservative Midwest in the mid-1990's, their chances of finding a sympathetic couples counselor who would work with them to help them resolve their problems would have been about nil, so it probably was for her own good). Readers who cried their eyes out reading that chapter may be pleased to know I put myself in tears, too. I hated breaking them apart. However, it was necessary.


5. Who is your favorite author?


I don't have just one. Neil Gaiman, Donna Tartt, Steven Brust, Jacqueline Carey, Anne Rice, Sylvia Plath, Pauline Reage, Mary Renault, Galway Kinnell, Ursula LeGuin, Mary Gentle, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, William Butler Yeats, T S Eliot, W H Auden, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and - for his unique way of seamlessly meshing serious philosophical discourse with sex, not for his libertine philosophy itself - the Marquis de Sade.


6. If you could only take one book with you on an island, which one would it be and why?


I should be virtuous and say The Quran, but really, I don't know. I'm terrible at picking just one of anything. I'd probably find a way to get a massive anthology of something, and that way, get a whole bunch of texts in one volume. An Anthology of All the Major Religious Texts Throughout Human History. There, that will keep me busy.


Alternately, I could be practical and take the SAS Survival Manual.


7. What tips would you give to someone who is just starting out?


Write, write, write. Keep writing. Your first efforts will be dreadful - mine were - but practice makes perfect.


8. What motivated you to write the book that won the contest?


Ancilla started as pure spite. When I started working on it in 2013, Fifty Shades of Grey was at the height of its popularity, and I took that as a personal insult.


Here's this laughably bad writer, whose prose is so terrible that people read it for giggles on YouTube. She's writing what she calls a "romance" - except it's really thinly disguised alternate universe Twilight fanfic about an abusive Edward Cullen stand-in who sexually assaults and abuses the Bella Swan expy until she eventually moves in with him and develops Stockholm Syndrome, and within weeks, they're married. Yikes.


It gets better! There's all this unsafe, nonconsensual, and mostly inadvisable stuff the Edward Cullen stand-in does that E L James had the audacity to call BDSM. And she made her dominant someone who had severe psychological problems, who was turned into the sadist he was by being abused and traumatized as a child...


Ahem. Excuse me, but no. That's totally unacceptable. Real-life BDSM does not work that way. Neither does real-life romance. There is nothing romantic about abuse and sexual assault, no, not even when the abuser is a hot young billionaire with six-pack abs and a tendency to give lavish gifts and give the reader permission to experience orgasms.


And yet this is selling millions of copies - more copies than even the Harry Potter books?
I can write better than that, I thought, and I have experience in these matters. This is my subculture E L James is insulting with her drivel. Time to get to work.


9. Do you experience writer's block? If yes, how do you cope with it?


I don't get writer's block if I have a detailed enough outline fleshed out. My worst obstacle is not lack of inspiration or things to say, but lack of time and energy. My own perfectionism is also a bit of a problem. It took me eleven years to write and revise Ancilla, over and over, until I deemed it finally good enough to see publication.


10. What message or theme did you hope to communicate to your readers through your book?


Love. Love all. We are put on this earth to love.


Love comes in all forms.


Lovemaking comes in all forms, too - and so long as the people involved in it are consenting adults, all forms of lovemaking, no matter how unusual they might be, are valid.


What is not valid: abuse. Abuse is a warping of love. My protagonist had abusive parents; she struggles to deal with the trauma of an unhappy childhood and awful choices she was forced to make, and coming to terms with it over time is a major part of her character arc. She is fortunate enough, once she is away from her parents and on her own, to fall in love with someone who is supportive, affectionate, accepting, respectful, and kind. I did my best to use "Magister" to smash every single stereotype of toxic masculinity, "dark romance," and "natural dominance" that I could. There's just so much toxicity out there.


Toxicity is not love, though - it is the enemy of love.


11. For readers who are unfamiliar with your work, how would you describe your writing style and what distinguishes your book?


I have been told that I write literary erotica and my style/genre is magical realism. This sounds accurate, but I'd like to say that it's entirely accidental. I didn't think about genre when I started writing Ancilla. If anything, I would have said Ancilla is dark academia vampire romance occultist mystical BDSM erotica, and also a bisexual bildungsroman with multiple nerdgasms genre soup (written in a magical realism style, perhaps). Is that even a genre?


I just write what feels good and right, and I do my best to be beautiful about it. Furthermore, I want to put my readers under my spell for the duration that they are reading my work. I want my readers to be immersed in what they are reading, entranced by it, until the very end, and then have them blink their eyes and slowly realize that the book is finished.


12. Are there any particular characters or scenes in your winning book that hold special meaning for you? Why?


Asking me that question is like asking me which of my children is most special to me. I can't go there. They're all special.


13. Do you have any future projects or ideas that you are currently working on or intend to pursue?


I am currently doing background research for the outline for Soror Mystica, the sequel to Ancilla. I'm also trying to get better at my art.


14. What was the most surprising or unexpected feedback you got from readers about your book?


I am always pleasantly floored when I win anything in a contest, or when a reader tells me they love my work. This is especially true when some reader actually engages with Ancilla to the point of saying they experience the events in the book as if firsthand. Hurrah! I did my job right! It worked! It worked the way it was supposed to! This is something I hope for, of course, but I never expect it.


15. Is there a character you created randomly who received more attention than the main character? Why do you believe that happened?


Let's face it, "Magister" steals the show (or so I've been told by people who say he's the perfect book boyfriend...) I wouldn't say I created him randomly, though. He evolved himself after I thought up his overall concept, and threw that concept into a highly structured plot.


16. What do you believe is the most important trait or skill that a successful writer should possess?


Be patient. You need patience to write, and then look for errors, and revise and edit, and do so several times over until you have a story you like. All this takes time and effort. Rome was not built in a day.

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