interviewer: Kaze Lee, via Instagram

First of all, congratulations on winning the first prize for the romance genre at The Enchanted Garden Literary Awards. Could you start by introducing yourself to our readers?

Hi! I'm Sera Drake (pronouns: they/them/theirs). I'm an independent, self-published writer and graphic artist who specializes in literary erotica with esoteric and occult themes, and my work advocates positivity and enthusiastic consent. My writing is, furthermore, informed by my own autism and kink, and has a special focus on the viewpoints of neuroqueer characters.

I live in the Midwest part of the United States with my husband of 22 years, our children (three live with us full-time, one is away at college studying computer animation) and our pet cat. I have a full-time sales career, because I am not independently wealthy; while I do my best to approach my writing with professionalism, I am not a full-time professional author.

When I actually have spare time I like reading, cooking, gardening, attending performances of our local symphony, and doing target practice with my whips.

What inspired you to write Ancilla?

It was an unholy mix of love and spite.

The spite came from the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. When I started writing the rough draft of Ancilla in 2013, the Fifty Shades books were still amazingly popular, more popular than even the Harry Potter series, and I took that as a personal insult. The prose was terrible, the characters were toxic in the extreme, the relationships as portrayed were unrealistic, the kink as portrayed was neither safe nor sane nor consensual, unless you consider induced Stockholm Syndrome to be a form of consent, and the entire series seemed to be about romanticized abuse... abuse that E L James called BDSM. She even claimed to have done her research!

Oh, no. That simply would not do.

I wanted to set the record straight.

So I set out to write a book with a wholesome dom, a book that described BDSM more or less accurately, and if it occasionally veered off into anything unrealistic, there would be fantastic elements that would make it obvious that such things would not be likely to happen that way in real life. I wanted a strong, intellectual female character who was strong and intellectual with more than just informed attributes. I wanted a book that was sex-positive, a book that positively represented the LGBTQIAP+ community (my protagonist is bi), a book that positively represented the autistic community, a book that celebrated its subject matter rather than making it tawdry.

I was also determined to write something that had literary merit. By golly, I would write better than E L James! Admittedly, that's a low bar to clear.

So. That's the spite. Where is the love?

Ancilla was born from love letters. The love letters just got expanded into something rather more involved.

Was there a specific moment or experience that sparked the idea for your novel?

Not one. Not even several. I do admit to having taken some elements of my past, including a few memories, and incorporated them into the plot and into certain characters. I liken it to sewing a quilt: take the memories of people, places, and incidents, cut them up into tiny little squares and triangles, sew them onto the backing of a plot, and then embroider like mad. The end result looks nothing like the original pieces of fabric unless you squint.

I started with a concept: Write a story about someone's sexual experiences, and about the other aspects of her life. Focus on her character development. Structure the plot on occult themes. Add some interesting, lesser-known tropes - I highly recommend the TV Tropes website, it's as comprehensive as you can get if you are looking for tropes - and then just weave everything together and see what happens.

Ancilla is the first part of what will be a trilogy. It's structured on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It's also themed on the Eros form of love, also known as romance, because The Four Loves is another structure that I used to create my plot. Soror Mystica, the sequel, will be structured on the alchemical process, and although it will still have plenty of erotic material in it, the love theme will be Philia - friendship. The final book of the trilogy, Adept, will be structured on the bardos of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and on randomly pulled tarot cards, and its thematic focus will be Storge - familial love.

So. I started with these concepts. (They are probably overly ambitious). Then I stitched the personal memories in, and the end result was what you see - only a much rougher form of it. I did a LOT of editing.

What does the title Ancilla represent, and how does it tie into the central theme of the story?

Ancilla is classical Latin for "handmaiden" or "servant." The word has since evolved to mean "helper," "adjunct," even "an aid to learning something difficult." My protagonist is called "ancilla" at the start of her apprenticeship to "Magister" because she is his sexual submissive, his ritual assistant, and his helper. She is also "ancillary" to him - she is attached to him without being him. I wanted a word that would incorporate all aspects of her submission, whether sexual or educational, without implying that she was an actual slave.

There is also a famous letter that Heloise wrote to Abelard when she was first made abbess. She calls herself his "ancilla," meaning, his slave. I reference that letter in the "Chesed" chapter. I play with the Heloise and Abelard parallels a bit in this novel. Heloise was Abelard's pupil, and he her tutor, just like "Magister" is "ancilla's" tutor. Like Heloise and Abelard, what starts as a purely educational arrangement blossoms into an overwhelming romantic love, and like Heloise and Abelard, "ancilla" and "Magister" wind up having a secret, private marriage that doesn't turn out as planned.

Did you always intend Ancilla to be a romance novel, or did it evolve into that as you wrote?

I intended it to be erotica. It became something much, much greater when I wrote. I suppose I am living proof that demisexual people should maybe not set out to write smut. What I wrote wound up having erotic elements, but it's so much more than just erotica. It's also more than "just" a romance, although I did intend for it to be deeply romantic. I can't imagine writing erotica without also writing about love.

How did you approach writing the romantic tension between your characters?

This is going to sound strange, but since each chapter and all the activities in that chapter, including the sexual acts, were determined by the meaning of each sephira on the Tree of Life, I meditated and prayed before writing. I asked for inspiration. Then I thought very carefully about the feeling and impressions I noticed in myself after my meditation was done, and I put them on paper, to see how they would fit into an outline.

I am an extreme plotter, not a pantser, to the point where my plot outlines could almost be minor rough drafts themselves. The one way I deviate from this is with my characterization. I can think about what I want my characters to look like, what I want them to be like, but they take on a life of their own and determine themselves after a point. I did not take "Magister" and "ancilla," mash them together, and say, "Now kiss!" They fell in love with each other on their own. It was the plot, but they gave it life. They gave it their own emotions. They made themselves real. Does that make sense?

What do you think makes a great romantic connection in fiction?

Emotion. Pure and simple. The characters must be truly in love with each other. It is then the author's job to portray that, as rawly and as honestly as possible.




Were there any challenges in crafting the emotional depth and vulnerability that romance demands, especially in Ancilla?

Yes. Writing the final chapter absolutely WRECKED me. I cried my eyes out over what I had to do to my characters. I had come to love them, love them as much as they loved each other, albeit in a different way. Hurting them hurt me. However, it was necessary to move the plot forward, and it was the logical consequence of some decisions and actions each had taken earlier in the plot. Actions have consequences... sometimes horribly painful consequences. (Spoiler: Yes, I do get them back together eventually. They have an awfully long wait for their Happily Ever After, but they do get one).

Actually, writing anything that resulted in hurting either "ancilla" or "Magister" emotionally in any of the chapters was difficult, because as their Creator, of course, I want them to be happy. On the other hand, they both did have lessons to learn. Neither of them were meant to be perfect characters. Perfect characters are boring to read about, and perfect humans don't exist.

(I apologize if that was a bit heavy-handed of me, but writing this novel had become, for me, an act of prayer. I learned, while writing it, that as a writer, I was embodying the principle of "ut supra sic infra" - "as above, so below." As I am Creator to my characters, so God is my Creator. As I weave the plot, so God weaves the world. And as I love my characters, so God loves me. When I hurt, God hurts, even when I hurt because I did something royally stupid or wrong, and I am only suffering the natural consequences of that. Writing this novel helped me realize how much God loves me. God is Love itself.

Okay, this is getting massively preachy. I'll stop now).




How did it feel to win first prize for Ancilla in the romance genre? Did you expect the book to receive this kind of recognition?

I never expect to win anything. I am always pleasantly surprised.




What do you think set Ancilla apart from other romance novels in the competition?

Ancilla is unique. Ancilla is so unique that it almost is its own genre. Dark academia magical realism with BDSM erotica and philosophy and mysticism and the main characters are autistic vampires, and vampirism in this world is more a disability than it is a supernatural trait... Oh, and there's a silly, rollicking subplot involving tabletop roleplay. And the main character is bisexual (without being a train wreck, at that)! And none of the characters have proper names - the most important characters get function tags, but that's it... And it's LITERARY. I wrote it in a literary style.

Bonkers.




What do you think are the key elements to writing a successful romance novel in today's market?

Pick an easy, popular, formulaic trope and stick with it. Throw in some kind of conflict in the middle of the book, such as a Great Big Misunderstanding, to keep the plot moving. If your romance is sweet, keep it sweet - nothing explicit. Focus on just twitterpation and maybe kisses and keep it cozy. 

If your romance is steamy/spicy, make sure there is plenty of sex, but make sure it fits in with the rest of the plot and characterization. 

If your romance is dark, have hot sex, maybe even make it kinky, and make sure there's plenty of toxicity to go around - your characters should be yandere/crazy obsessed with each other, possessive to the point of silliness, maybe abusive, and the male should be an "alphahole" for good measure - and if you can work in some organized crime, do it! 

It may also help to write a romantasy - especially if your fantasy characters are horny faeries or horny werewolves. (I have yet to read a sweet, cosy romantasy).

Basically, don't do a single thing I do. Look at Ancilla and write the exact opposite of Ancilla. You'll be a success in no time.




The romance genre is often criticized or underappreciated. How do you feel about that perception, and what would you say to critics of the genre?

Of course romance is criticized and underappreciated. It's a genre that is mostly read, and written, by women. Nobody takes women's literature seriously. The few women who managed to get into the Western Literary Canon or into genres other than romance sometimes even used pen names and assumed the public personae of men to get published (the Brontes, writing as Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell; George Eliot; George Sand; James Tiptree, Jr...) This is pure misogyny, and the critics can go stuff themselves.

What's next for you after Ancilla? Do you plan to continue in the romance genre, or explore other genres?

I generally don't think much about genre when I come up with a story idea. I write a story, and then I edit it over and over until I think it's good enough to see the world. I suspect one reason I'm not a very successful writer is that I don't think much about the genres I use, any more than I think about what audience I want to write for. I write what feels like it needs to be written, and worry about pigeonholing it later. This is not a good business practice. Please, writers, if you want to be successful commercially, if you want to get taken up by a traditional publisher, don't be me. LOL.


Can you share any advice for aspiring romance writers who may be looking to achieve similar success?

I'm successful?