Renee Ahdieh, New York Times bestselling author of The Wrath and the Dawn, The Rose and the Dagger, the Flame in the Mist duology, talks about her latest series, which kicks off with The Beautiful, out October 8.
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Sarah Enni: Welcome to first draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Renee Ahdieh, New York times bestselling author of The Wrath and the Dawn, The Rose and the Dagger and The Flame and The Mist duology. We're talking about her latest series a vampire murder mystery which kicks off with The Beautiful out October 8th. I loved what Renee had to say about stealing from her parent's library, her worldbuilding approach of putting half a scene on the page, and writing about a survivor of sexual assault. So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: We've spoken before.
Renee Ahdieh: Yes.
Sarah Enni: So the previous First Draft pod episode, everybody should go listen to that if you haven't yet (Listen to Renee’s previous First Draft episode here), it's where we talk a lot about your bio and your upbringing and how you came to this creative life. We talked so much about The Wrath and the Dawn and that amazing series. And we did talk about beginning The Flame and The Mist series. So I'd like to just talk about having the duology... wrapping that experience up. But for everybody listening, do you mind pitching that series?
Renee Ahdieh: Absolutely. So Flame in the Mist and its sequel Smoke in the Sun is a story about Mariko, a girl who is nearly assassinated on her way to the Imperial City. And when she manages to escape with her life, she decides to infiltrate the band of Ninja who tried to assassinate her to find out why it was they tried to assassinate her. And in doing so, uncovers some uncomfortable truths about who she is and where she stands in the hierarchy of her empire.
It's loosely based on a fantasy feudal Japan and definitely has some nods to Mulan and 47 Ronin. And what I was really trying to do is juxtapose the culture of the samurai, which are again kind of like what you would call Knights, what we in the Western world would call Knights, alongside the Ninja.
Sarah Enni: I have a question. This is like so granular but we talk to authors all the time. You do have to craft your pitch for all of these books. And I feel like that pitch has really evolved from the last time we spoke.
Renee Ahdieh: [Laughing] Well now it's because all these books are written right? And at this point I've had to talk about this book many, many times on many different occasions. They just get a little more polished. I'd like to think of it as honed.
Sarah Enni: Yes, yes. I feel like it's a very visual pitch now.
Renee Ahdieh: Yeah, as opposed to the nebulous, "This is what I think I want to do with it."
Sarah Enni: Well, isn't it funny there's such a process of figuring out what your book even is.
Renee Ahdieh: Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Enni: Even after it's in the world.
Renee Ahdieh: The other part of it is I'm actually not that great at pitching my books. I don't know what it is. I can pitch the hell out of your book, or pitch the hell out of Sabaa's book (Sabaa Tahir, listen to her First Draft interview here), or Traci Chi's book, or Sarah Lemon's book (listen to her First Draft interview here). And I think it's just because probably, we've all as women been conditioned, "Don't talk about yourself." Like deflect, deflect, deflect. Avoid, avoid. So I'm never comfortable doing it. So it always takes the first fifty times to get comfortable with it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's true. It's one of the many things about being an author that's like, "Oh, right!" This unexpected skill you have to develop. It doesn't involve sitting at home alone.
Renee Ahdieh: Exactly, with a bowl of Cheetos.
Sarah Enni: So what was wrapping up that series like? You've done companion books before, but this was a straight up duology. So what was it like writing the sequel? And what was it like putting a close to that series?
Renee Ahdieh: It was a wonderful process. I think because I fell in love with this world, and I fell in love with the characters so much. And the main character, Mariko, is hugely inspired by my younger sister who is a brilliant scientist. And there are a couple of nods in there too, to Hermione Granger.
So I really enjoyed it, and it was great, too, to move away from the world of The Wrath and the Dawn. And I guess the language and the culture around The Wrath and the Dawn. Because The Wrath and the Dawn, my first series, was inspired by ancient Persia. And this series is inspired by a fantasy feudal Japan.
And even the language they use and the behavior they have. I love to read poetry from that specific era. And just read any sort of books that are written around that era because you really have to understand a little bit more of the cadence, the diction. And their speech patterns are different from ancient Persia and the behavior.
Shahrzad from The Wrath and the Dawn was one who would just throw her hands up in the air and wail to the heavens about what's going on, "What are you doing?" You know? Use this incredibly beautiful flowery language which again, to me, is very indicative of Persian culture. That's not gonna happen in this book. So there's more of a reserved language and they're speaking in smaller, shorter, curter sentences. And I really liked that briskness that was even reflected in the pacing. And I loved the soft and quiet nuanced emotion that was going on there.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Right. It is more reserved in that way. I felt like in your writing, the atmosphere was given almost a voice of its own to make you feel all the feels.
Renee Ahdieh: Thank you so much.
Sarah Enni: And that reminds me, I was just going back over our previous conversation and we talked so much in that about music. And that's what I'm hearing, the music of the language. You got to play a different song, if you will. For you as an author, as a step in your career, what was it like to establish yourself in a new world with a new series? I mean, you never know when you're an author, whether the fans of your first series are gonna follow you. What was your experience like?
Renee Ahdieh: Well, obviously there's a lot of trepidation with that. But I really appreciated the challenge of it. I have so much respect for authors who are able to stay in the same world. And I'm hoping to do that with a series that I'm working on now, for a little longer than two books. But what I'm looking for in my writing is a chance to grow, I guess is the best way to describe it. Exercise a new muscle.
And that's what I saw this book as being, because I was writing about a character who was very science driven and very scholarly. And that was not me when I was growing up. I was very much a bookworm, very much into social sciences, on the debate team, all that stuff.
So I wasn't somebody who was really good at chemistry, or inventing, and that's very much Mariko in these books. And getting also to explore an East Asian world. My mother is South Korean and even though there's vast worlds of differences, [there’s] that common root of Confucian thought, the Buddhist thought. Especially Shinto Buddhism in Japan, which is very unique to that culture. It's really interesting to get to explore that, and understand that, and work that, and let it weave its way into the culture and the world that you are building, even in a fantasy novel. So I really appreciate those kind of challenges and I look forward to doing more of them in the future.
Sarah Enni: Did you feel like [pauses] did you have expectations for what it would feel like to have the new book come out? And this is just coming from a place of like, it's interesting to hear people move through their professional lives and shift and change. So yeah. I'm just curious if you had any expectations? Or if you were really waiting to see what happened?
Renee Ahdieh: Well, I tend to train myself in this industry because everything is so unexpected. You don't know what's gonna work out. So I try not to have expectations. I have hopes. I was really excited that Flame hit the New York Times list. That was really exciting for me because again, you think to yourself, these books that you're writing, these characters that you've lived with for such a long time and that you've created in your mind and they're very real to you, you're like, "Are these gonna resonate?"
And especially this trepidation that comes with switching gears [and] not continuing with something that's established. And for all intents and purposes, [it’s] a little safer to continue writing in that world. But I was really happy to see that so many people were interested in coming along for the ride, because they are different books.
I would say that their pacing is different from Wrath and Rose. And I really love these characters and I really love the story that's being told here. Because I write primarily for young kids, even though half my readers are actually crossover audiences, but the idea is we're writing YA books. And so the message, my personal philosophy maybe not so subversively, works its way into the narrative. And writing about girls who they're not just... like Mariko isn't just a fighter.
Yeah, maybe there might be instances where she fights, but that's actually not her strength. And what I really wanted to explore with Flame and Smoke its sequel, Smoke in the Sun, were the different kinds of strengths. Because we often define strength through the male understanding, what it means to be strong. A hunter, a provider, someone who fights, someone who yells, someone who can shoot a bow and arrow. And while I love heroines like Katniss (from Susan Collin’s The Hunger Games), I think that's fantastic. What I was most interested in in this series, is exploring strength of the heart, the strength of the mind. Because there are so many different kinds of strengths.
Sarah Enni: Physical strength is not like...
Renee Ahdieh: The only one.
Sarah Enni: Like step one, and then we can expand our horizons. That's so great and thank you. These are odd questions, but I just think it's interesting to peel the curtain back sometimes.
Renee Ahdieh: Sure, absolutely.
Sarah Enni: And think from that perspective. I guess part of why I'm thinking about it is because with your career, all of the books are very distinctive and different. But I feel like there's such a connective tissue.
Renee Ahdieh: Oh, thank you.
Sarah Enni: There's a lot of similar themes, and of course you're inspired by history. But, and we'll get into it in a second, but it's just fun to see. Some authors chameleonize into new books. And it's a completely different new thing. And then other authors, that's so beautiful cause you're like, "Oh, I can tell that's a Renee book." Like, "Of course." So it's cool.
Renee Ahdieh: Well, all of them are gonna have food, obviously. And they're all gonna have clothes. And I love worldbuilding, it's one of my favorite things to do. And I worldbuild primarily from a sensory experience. So I'm hoping that that resonates with any readers who read any of my books that it's, knock on wood, transportive and a wonderful immersive experience.
Sarah Enni: Yes. Well we're gonna get into all of these elements. So between Smoke in the Sun and then The Beautiful, I mean I'm happy to jump right into The Beautiful, but is there anything else that was going on during that time? Or, were you just writing The Beautiful as Smoke in the Sun was making its way out into the world?
Renee Ahdieh: Yeah, primarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was also, because The Beautiful is actually intended to be four books, so I was writing out the complete narrative of that and planning all of that out, and doing all the worldbuilding for that. Cause I'm definitely, I dislike these phrases but they're the most recognizable; between a plotter and a pantser I'm very much a plotter. So I really like to know where the story is going and specifically character arc. So I spend a lot of time on all that initially upfront.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Before we get into more specifics about The Beautiful, do you mind pitching this series for us?
Renee Ahdieh: Not at all. Not at all. So The Beautiful is a vampire murder mystery set in 1872 New Orleans. It's my homage to Anne Rice, (author of Interview with a Vampire series) whose books made me fall in love with writing when I was 12 years old. And I really enjoyed Twilight, and we can definitely talk about what's problematic in it, but for me it was a story excellently told. It was very captivating. And what I like to write are things I want to read. And what I wanted to do was take the structure of Twilight, which is a paranormal romance, and then put it in this historical world grounded here. And also introduce a cast of characters from all over the world, because that's what I would like to read.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, right. Well New Orleans is the place for that.
Renee Ahdieh: I completely agree!
Sarah Enni: I'm so fascinated by this. So I'd love to hear how this concept evolved for you. And then I really want to know how did it go to fill a whiteboard for four different books? How did you tackle that?
Renee Ahdieh: So what I wanted to do with the series, and it's a little bit of a departure from what I've done before, is all of these books actually... so even though they're continuations, they also stand-alone in their own right. Because I was inspired by Regency romance authors who write series. And they'll have characters in one book, but each subsequent book will be like that one character's story. And it will be a continuation of the narrative and there will be an overarching plot to it.
I think Sabrina Jeffries does this really well with her Hellions of Halstead Hall series. So fun because again, there's an overarching mystery to the whole thing. But you could, and I think there are maybe six or seven books in that, you could come in on book four and totally love it and hopefully go back and be like, "I want to know what happened with these characters."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I had the Ripped Bodice ladies that run that bookstore in LA (listen to their First Draft interview here), they've more than once hand sold me books, like in the middle of a series. Cause they're like, "If this is the kind of romance you're looking for, this is a great way to start." And they're like, "Then you can go back to the beginning and figure out all the other characters."
Renee Ahdieh: Absolutely. Which I really enjoy. And so that's what I wanted to do with this. Because I wanted to have the space to expand out, especially the subordinate characters in the first book. Because character is what drives a story for me. And I love luxuriating and imagining what sort of personality they have. What their backstory might be. I feel like it just grounds the narrative so much more for me. I can literally listen to two people talking in an elevator if they're interesting.
Sarah Enni: So how did the idea come to you? You wanted to have the different characters have their moments, but just from a writing standpoint, did you have the broad strokes first or did that build as you knew what you wanted to explore? How did that develop?
Renee Ahdieh: So actually the seed for this idea came about when I was 12 years old and I actually stole a book from my dad. He had told me I could read any of the books that were in his little library, except for this row of books that was near the top. And of course I was 12. You don't tell me, "Don't do that." I'm obviously going to do that exact thing that night. So I got a little step stool and I reached up and I remember deliberately taking a book with a curse word in the title cause I was like, "Heh!"
Renee Ahdieh: So it was Queen of the Damned, Ann Rice's Queen of the Damned, which is I believe the third book in that entire series of the Vampire Chronicles. And I remember being underneath the covers on my bed with a flashlight that didn't work properly, reading this book until like four o'clock in the morning. Like my eyes... I was trying to keep them open and being so transported. And almost being hypnotized, a little bit, by the whole thing.
And I remember thinking to myself, cause this was the book that made me fall in love with writing, "I want to be able to do this. I would love to be able to tell a story that hypnotized and lulled people into a different world." And that was actually the seed of what I wanted to do with The Beautiful initially. Because I wanted to write a story that was a romance and set in historical New Orleans.
And since then, I've come to fall in love with New Orleans. I've been there like 12 times and stayed for extended periods of time. I love the people there. I love the food. I love the culture. I love the music. And I love just getting lost in its streets. So it's just, for me, a perfect setting. Because it's sort of sinisterly sexy. So it really works. And it lends itself to myth and magic, right?
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Right. Did that you wanted it to be a murder mystery?
Renee Ahdieh: I think inevitably if you're writing a vampire book, there's gonna be elements of death in there. And I've always been partial to mystery. I was a big fan of Colombo. I'm a big fan of (Agatha Christie’s) Poirot. So I was just like, "You know what? This again, just lends itself to..." Cause I didn't necessarily want the onset to be just like, "Oh she meets a vampire and immediately falls in love." Which, even though that's sort of the narrative structure of Twilight, and it totally worked for me, I felt like there needed to be a little bit of buildup. And I wanted her to be intrigued by what these creatures were. That she realizes very early on, "Well, he can't be entirely human. There's something off here." But I want her to, again, be hypnotized into following the white rabbit down the hole sort of thing.
Sarah Enni: Okay. I love that. Although, I mean, that's sort of setting yourself a very difficult [pauses] a historical book, a paranormal book, and a mystery book, each on their own, have so many - not rules - but certainly reader expectations, and a lot of work for you as an author to braid them together on purpose. It feels wild.
Renee Ahdieh: I was in a fugue state. It was actually wonderful. And this was the hardest I've ever worked on a book. But it was a joy to write at all turns, even when it was really difficult. Even when it was really challenging me, because I thrive in atmospheres of challenge, and to make all of that work. Because Celine is the first of my characters I've ever written, she's probably the most like me. And that's thrilling. And it just fills me with trepidation. But it was cathartic to write that kind of a story.
Sarah Enni: I read an interview with you, maybe it was in Entertainment Weekly, I forget now, where you said you were coming from a place of anger.
Renee Ahdieh: Yes.
Sarah Enni: Maybe towards the world a little bit when you were developing Celine. I'm so interested in the fact that this is a character that's the most like you, and it came from that place. Did it feel like giving your feelings to someone else, or were you just channeling as you went?
Renee Ahdieh: A lot of it was channeling. So the inciting incident in The Beautiful is that Celine, who's originally from Paris, is forced to flee Paris. And it's because she murders the boy who tries to rape her, in self-defense, murders him. But again, she's 19th century. And honestly, not much has changed in [the] modern century either. She knows no one's gonna believe her. And the penalty for killing somebody in Paris, at that time, was you were hanged. So she fled Paris, and she's come to New Orleans to begin a new life, and try to erase what she considers the stains of her past.
And I, like many women out there, I am a survivor of sexual assault much like Celine. And there was a lot of anger there for me because I spent so many year - I was young when it happened - I spent so many years demonizing myself and wondering what's wrong with me. And I think we're all indoctrinated to do that. We don't see it as, "This person made a mistake." We're like, again it curdles my spine to think about it but, "Was I asking for it? What did I do?" Like, "Did I send this person mixed signals? Did I do whatever?" And that's very much what goes on with Celine throughout the narrative. And the thing is, she's keenly aware of the fact that she doesn't feel sorry for it. And because she doesn't feel sorry for it, and she's killed somebody, she thinks there's something fundamentally wrong with her.
Sort of wrapping her mind around what the evil within her [is] as society dictates it. That sort of mindset doesn't come to us in a vacuum. Because again, I spent so many years wondering like, "What did I do?" And I think that's a really true and real thing. It's not an experience unique unto me. So it was [pauses] I cried a lot. It was difficult. But it was also beautiful and wonderfully cathartic, because I want us as a society to be open to listening to women and believing them when they say, "This happened to me." So that we don't have situations like this across the board.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And that we also understand everything that you are outlining that you went through, and I'm so sorry you had to go through that, is what we now understand to be a pattern, right? There's some degree of comfort in knowing that when people go through similar traumatic experiences, that the process of grief and emotions and turmoil that they go through afterwards, are similar a lot of the time. So we can recognize that and say like, "Well this..." It's normalizing, I think.
Renee Ahdieh: Which again, the very idea that we must do that. And I agree with you. That's something that has to happen. We can't stigmatize this. We can't shame people into silence because overwhelmingly that's what's being done to us from the get-go. When our society tells us that we're at fault. Something we've done, something we wore, something we said, is the reason something horrible happened or very nearly happened to us.
What we're trying to do is we're trying to shame women. We're trying to shame people of color. We're trying to shame minorities, marginalized people into silence. And I don't want to be a part of that anymore. And if somebody listens to me talk in a podcast, or reads the book that I've written, and says to themselves, "You know what? It's not me. Even if I thought it was me." And even the act of having… when Celine finally does tell somebody what's happened, that this person doesn't question her, to me was a beautiful scene to write. Like automatically this person believes her and is just like, "I'm glad you did what you did."
Sarah Enni: As the author you can model things.
Renee Ahdieh: Yes. And you can idolize things a little bit too. Because she got to do something that I, and many people, don't get to do. She got to fight back.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Right. And not feel shame about that.
Renee Ahdieh: Yes. And not feel sorry.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that, in her heart, she's like, "I know I did the right thing."
Renee Ahdieh: Well, it doesn't happen immediately, cause again she's combating so much indoctrination, so much of society's expectations on her. It's not immediate. She thinks there's something wrong with her. She thinks there's something broken. But not because she did something wrong, it's because she doesn't feel sorry for it.
Sarah Enni: It's so interesting. What made this the right time to delve into that story for you?
Renee Ahdieh: I think for me when I was drafting this, actually in the initial bigger outline of it, the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court situation was going on. And I remember there was just an undercurrent of seething rage beneath my skin that whole time. Because you keep thinking to yourself, when you float beyond what's going on around you and you observe it all, you're like, "We're not going to do Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill again are we?" And we're like, "Absolutely we are." And I'm like, "Are you f'ing kidding me? Are you f'ing kidding me?"
And the thing is, that same mentality that existed in the 19th century, cause Celine is a character from 1872, the fact that we haven't made greater strides. And there's so many things we've made amazing strides on. I mean the fact that I can have this conversation with you, that I can publish a book like this. Amazing. But the fact that, fundamentally, we're still questioning whether or not a traumatic incident happened to a woman. And we're still blaming her for it. Again, seething undercurrent of rage.
Sarah Enni: Yes. That was a time where there was a lot of rage. If was really rough for so many people. It felt like a miasma. It's just like this unseen veil hanging over everything. How did you go about... I understand feeling total rage. How did you channel that into work? Was it easy to do that?
Renee Ahdieh: I think after many thousands of dollars of therapy I should say, I think that all emotions, sadness, happiness, rage, whatever it might be, they can be useful as long as you don't let them overtake all else. And so for me it was a fuel. And it was a fuel to... I hate telling women who share their truths that they're brave. But it is a fuel to have the courage to be like, "You know what? Enough." Never mind what people are going to think or say. Because again, I know from people around me, dear friends around me, my childhood friends. Unfortunately, this is a reality for three out of five women. It's a reality for more women than it is less women. And I didn't realize that until I was much older.
And I would've loved to have heard that when I was fifteen or sixteen. I would have loved to have known that. Not because it's abysmal, that's horrifying that that's a reality. But the fact that so many people out there, they live with this. And they carry on, and they move on, and they grow, and have wonderful flourishing lives. And so many do not. And we have to be able to talk about these things without fear of judgment, without somebody questioning whether or not you're telling the truth. Something that's fundamental, unfortunately, to your psyche. Cause it is an unfortunately fundamental thing to so many people's psyche.
Sarah Enni: I think that's a good point that you bring up as well. I think it was Leigh Bardugo (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here), who on this podcast was like, "Listen, writing isn't therapy. Therapy is therapy."
Renee Ahdieh: Yes, completely agree.
Sarah Enni: But writing is also...
Renee Ahdieh: It's cathartic.
Sarah Enni: It's very cathartic. And of course, for us as creative people, that's the form that our comprehending ourselves, and the world around us, takes.
Renee Ahdieh: That's art. That's what art is. Art in all forms is some kind of political statement regardless of whether or not the intention is there. Your experiences in your worldview weave their way into your art. So it's a political statement.
Sarah Enni: There's no way that it's not. And what was that... there's a quote about it, “Even if you don't think what you're writing is political, choosing not to is in and of itself a political statement.” That's something I think about all the time. I don't want to let you get away with not answering my very whiteboard question.
Renee Ahdieh: Okay, sure, sure, sure.
Sarah Enni: Only because I'm just thinking about this J.K. Rowling type of [series] spanning seven books. I mean four books is not nothing. And for the other writers listening, how do you go nuts and bolts? Bullet points, planning, how do you visualize it?
Renee Ahdieh: So I am, as I said before, I'm a character driven writer. So what I do is I take all of the main characters and I give each of them a white piece of paper. I put their names in the center. I'll use the example I use often when I'm talking about this in craft workshops or whatever. So Shahrzad, from The Wrath and The Dawn, so I'll put her name in a center of a piece of paper, circle it, and start to draw essentially a web.
Sarah Enni: A mind map.
Renee Ahdieh: Yeah, exactly. And I'll say, "Characteristics that I want Shahrzad to embody. Shahrzad is brave." And from these different characteristics I will then conceive of a scene that shows, cause again, show don't tell, show Shahrzad being brave. So Shahrzad in one of the opening chapters of the book, is marching to marry a murderer. She has volunteered to do this because she wants to get revenge for the death of her best friend. So that shows Shahrzad is brave.
And then you do this for every single character. And then I begin to take those little vignettes that I've created, and string them into chronological narrative. And often I'll then find things that are overlapping, or something that's redundant, or maybe a scene that can do the job of two or three of them all at once.
But I carry that character driven plot arc. At the top of each one of these pages I say, "What does Shahrzad want? What does Shahrzad need? Why won't she get it? What does she get at the end?" Then you're always keeping these key components of every character's arc in mind. So I know with the first book in The Beautiful that that's Celine story. So I'm addressing these issues here. With the next book I'll address that character’s issues.
But what you also have to do as a writer is the macro and micro conflicts. So you have a macro conflict over the whole thing, which works out very well. If I'm doing four books, you can have a macro where you're essentially just unspooling twenty-five percent of that. And then these little micro conflicts, and micro narratives, going on underneath it that you might finish. You might close the book on that particular one, so to speak, and then move onto the next one.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Oh my God, I love that. I'm tracking the visual with you as you go.
Renee Ahdieh: People always want to see, but it's just such a disaster. I'm like, "I will never show anybody." Cause I'm essentially like, I don't know, a garbage fire in my head is basically going on constantly.
Sarah Enni: Well it's fascinating to me cause I'm guessing that you are a visual person, or it seems like...?
Renee Ahdieh: Yeah, I would say with plotting, I'm definitely visual.
Sarah Enni: And it's fascinating to see how, as writers, you have the mish-mash [of] everything garbled in your mind, and then to put that somewhere where it can make sense. I mean, everybody's so different. So I just love getting into the details of that. So thank you for answering that. Celine was coming from such a personal place for you, so she was definitely gonna be the first character driving into this story. And then, of course, who she's falling in love with I'm sure was quick to come up. How did you think about the other characters you wanted to explore?
Renee Ahdieh: So I knew I wanted to have an ensemble cast. And I knew I wanted some of them to be from different, cause they're vampires, some of them to be from different times. And what I strive for in everything that I write, is to write an entire character. Nobody should be throw-away. Nobody should be one dimensional.
So I love to give characters layers. And what I do whenever I'm structuring them, even if there's somebody who appears for only a scene or two, I want to give them a three distinct points. Whether they're visual, emotional, backstory, three distinct points. So that you remember this character as being more than just a plot device serving the greater narrative.
Because to me that's the thing that really gets me invested in a story. And you mentioned Leigh earlier, I think Leigh does this incredibly well. In Six of Crows she has this ensemble cast, but by the end of the first book, you're so invested in each of these characters because they've been so wonderfully fleshed out.
I think Sabaa does a great job of this, she is across four books too. And that's what I love. I love this idea that you're only ever, in the first book, getting the tip of the iceberg, literally And there's so much more to be explored in all of them. I love having all these secrets, that I then get to share about all these characters that have been seeded in the first book. And then if you go back and read the first book, you'd be like, "Oh, she always meant to do that." That to me is fun.
Sarah Enni: Oh my God, yes. It's fun as a reader. And then to get the sense that as a writer you're gonna be able to maybe pull that off is like...
Renee Ahdieh: Here's hoping.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, like a magic trick. The other thing we talked about a lot in our previous conversation, was the concept of an id book. I have brought that up in so many interviews since then, and thought about it so often. I just thought it was such a great way to talk about a particular kind of book, and recognize what it is that we're getting from these stories. And as writers, what you're indulging [in] to some extent when you're writing stories like that. But also, that doesn't make it any less challenging to write those kinds of stories. But then I heard you were writing a vampire book and I was like, "Oh, she's doing the ultimate id story."
Renee Ahdieh: This is the ultimate id book. No, seriously. I have literally thrown everything I love; there's food, there's fashion, there's vampires, there's a sexy boy who speaks French, and Spanish for that matter. There's just so many… I mean, it's no-holds-barred with this book. And I kept waiting for the moment when my editor would be like, "You need to pull back on this." And she never did. And I was like, "Bless you. I love you so much." She was like, "In fact, throw in more. Give me more of it.”
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. It's also like when you're combining all the things that you love, it's all id and coming from this joyful, lovely place within yourself. But it's also very specific. Just speaking for myself, I put a lot of personal things from my life in my book that I was like, "This is so strange, a strange combination of things, but these are all the things that are interesting to me." And I think all the specifics is what makes it so unique.
Renee Ahdieh: And real. It's real because you're taking something that's almost got a dream like quality in your mind, but you have to ground it. And those details are what grounds it. And for me, I mean, this book is so wondrously ridiculous. There's literally an entire scene I crafted where she's being chased in a labyrinth, a vine and rose hedge labyrinth, by someone in a bull mask, a minotaur mask. Yes. Yes, yes I did do that. Had so much fun [both laughing].
Sarah Enni: It was such a clear concept for you when we were talking about it. Do you think you were building up to this story in a way?
Renee Ahdieh: I don't know [pauses]. You know what? I think that everything you write as an author… because The Wrath and the Dawn, which is the first book that was published for me, was the fifth book that I had written. And every book taught me something. Even the ones that didn't get published. Especially the very earlier ones that should never be published, let's be clear, they were all learning lessons. They taught me so much. One of them taught me how to do a fast moving fight scene, "How am I gonna work this? What are the intricacies of this?" One of them taught me how to do multiple perspectives, cause all of my books are multiple perspectives.
So each one is a lesson. And I'm always excited to see what, in hindsight, what the lesson is because I don't know when I'm writing it. That's the beauty of it too, because you need to learn that way. Cause that way it resonates with you and you really understand how to make it work for you. Because what works for Sarah, or for Sabaa, or for Leigh, that's not gonna work for me necessarily. So I need to figure it out for myself. I guess, to a degree, I have been working to this. But also I feel like every single series that I've written, every book I've written, I feel at the time that I'm writing it, is the most precious to me. So we'll see.
Sarah Enni: That's a good thing I think. And you said it was such a joy to write this book.
Renee Ahdieh: It was, yeah.
Sarah Enni: Even when it's difficult. And that must be part of the id quality of it right?
Renee Ahdieh: Absolutely, because there's so much in here that's wish fulfillment. And in writing a book that's wish fulfillment, obviously you want to make sure that the narrative makes sense, the plot makes sense. But I also feel that's largely what Stephanie Meyer did with Twilight, and why we love to read it so much. It is an incredibly id book to read. There's that satisfaction that unfurls in you as you're reading a book like this. And the best ones to me unfurl slowly.
Sarah Enni: So we've been talking about Twilight and the Interview with a Vampire series by Ann Rice. There's so many really vivid vampire stories that are out in the ether, even though we've culturally taken a bit of a break from them for a while, they still loom large. How did you think about those stories and want to engage with them, or not engage with them? How did you incorporate that?
Renee Ahdieh: I mean, I think that what I was always keenly aware of, and the ones that obviously stuck with me the most, are Anne Rice early on and Twilight. I love Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels and I really enjoyed True Blood. I thought it was such a wonderful fun hour to watch on Sunday night. It was so, again, very id. Therefore incredibly satisfying.
Sarah Enni: I just the other day was talking to Morgan Matson (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here), and she has never seen them. And I was like, "This is a strange outdated recommendation for a long series." But I was like, "Honestly it was so fun."
Renee Ahdieh: It's so fun. It's so fun. And I remember at turns being horrified, intrigued, and then just bursting out laughing when watching that TV show. So I love what they did with that. So again, keeping those threads there. The wonderful angsty romance that exists in Twilight. That harrowingly haunting setting of Anne Rice's stuff. Then that very fun and at times humorous, the captivating humorousness and absurdity, that existed in True Blood. And you just went along with it. It just showed me that if you can do this convincingly, "Well, you can do whatever you want!"
Sarah Enni: If you commit, your audience will go with you.
Renee Ahdieh: You can't flinch. No holds barred. Kick in the saloon door and just fire buckshot. Just do it.
Sarah Enni: Oh my God, I love that. That's so fun. So it's sounding like there was some elements of being inspired by them.
Renee Ahdieh: Sure, absolutely.
Sarah Enni: I'm really connecting to how you're talking about putting in all the things that you love. I talk about this a lot on the podcast, but I just think that people can't hear it enough. Many people are so concerned with writing something derivative. Or someone else is writing my book. Or there's fears of that out there, right? I think especially for newer writers. And I just want to hug that out of people. And just be like, "Nobody could write your book cause you're you."
Renee Ahdieh: I completely agree. So backtracking a little bit, because I understand the fear, and it is a real fear. Because if you write something, and then for instance, because we unfortunately live in this culture where resources are finite as we're seeing with climate change. So you think, and this is not completely unfounded even though there's an element of absurdity to it, that if somebody buys this vampire book, they're not gonna buy your vampire book. And I understand where that comes from.
But again, a good story, people don't stop reading just one. They're not like, "Okay I read this great vampire book, I'm done now." They want more. And that's the ideal world because again, rising tide lifts all ships. So write your book.
And I completely agree with you. Most of the stories that I love are some sort of redux of The Count of Monte Cristo, or Romeo and Juliet basically. And the thing that makes your story unique, and why your story has never been done before, is because you're writing it. So if somebody is gonna tell me, "Why are you writing a vampire book? This has been done already. A vampire romance." No, it hasn't. Because I didn't write that book. My perspective, the things that I love, are gonna be completely different. You give ten authors one prompt, you get ten different stories. Completely different stories.
Sarah Enni: Which is what half of these anthologies are.
Renee Ahdieh: Exactly. Exactly. So if you're listening to this and you're an aspiring author, a published author, please know that your book will always be different from everyone else's book because you wrote it. And never worry about that all important elevator pitch. The thing that will distinguish your work is you.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And then on the other hand of that is, don't hold back from putting yourself in your work.
Renee Ahdieh: Don't, yeah.
Sarah Enni: You gotta be all in it.
Renee Ahdieh: That's the other thing, and I think a lot of aspiring authors fall prey to this, I know I certainly did early on. The idea that you have to write to a trend. Don't ever write to a trend because by the time you've written the book, if you're noticing the trend, it was noticed three or four years ago. You're already too late. You need to write the book you want to read. Because you're gonna need to read this sucker two to three hundred times. No joke. From the time that you conceive of the idea, to the time it's a book on the shelves, you are gonna get so sick of that bloody book.
So if you don't love it, if you're not like, "I don't care if no one likes this book. I am so in love with these characters. I'm so in love with this world." You've already lost the battle before you've begun. So put all of those things that you love in there. Let the industry tell you to hold back, which I have found, again, they do not because they're there for this.
Sarah Enni: Well you already touched on this a little bit, but I loved this quote in an interview you did recently. "I've always enjoyed juxtaposing love and death in my work, because they are both such all-consuming things." I mean, yeah! But I also was reading that and thinking that's unique for you to have realized so clearly that those are two things that you want to see clash.
Renee Ahdieh: Thank you, firstly. But I think it's also because I've always been a lover of Gothic fiction, and those are very fundamental elements to some of my favorite Gothic fiction. And I think one of the reasons we're so enamored with the idea of vampires, is the idea that if you're dealing with an immortal being. Firstly, how can you decide something is important if you don't have the constraint of time on you? We're told to seize every day. Seize your moment. Live each day to the fullest.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, life is short.
Renee Ahdieh: Because it's finite. And then to take it a step further, which again I think is also very captivating about vampires. Is if life is infinite, can emotions be infinite too? Can love transcend the bonds of time? And that's why I think we love paranormal romance so much. Also vampires are great bad boys, so yeah.
Sarah Enni: They're so great! That does bring me to when you're talking about paranormal, and vampires in particular, they represent so many things. In True Blood there was a lot of LGBT issues that they were exploring. And of course desire, death, sexuality. Do you have a sense yet of what vampires are... how they're operating as a metaphor? Or are they operating as a metaphor within your world?
Renee Ahdieh: Again, I think that they operate largely from this place of wish fulfillment. It's a very common theme. And so much literature that I love, so much art that I love, [is about] mortality. What kind of a mark are you leaving on the world in the finite amount of time that you're [here]? And not just what are you are leaving on the world, what are you leaving on those around you?
And what do you make your mantra in life and your goal in life? And if you were allowed to live forever, would you want to live forever? For me, I don't actually have an answer yet. Because I love life and I love experiencing things. Will there be a time, if I was given an infinite amount of time, that I would feel I no longer wish to experience this. And contemplating our own limitations, and seeing what the possibilities could be if we weren't fettered to that.
Sarah Enni: And I appreciate you exploring those themes through vampires. Because other writers like Somaiya Daud, have you read Mirage yet?
Renee Ahdieh: Yes, I loved it. So much. It's so wonderful.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, that's a very Renee book.
Renee Ahdieh: Yes, such a good book. I loved it so much.
Sarah Enni: I'm obsessed with her. She's so wonderful.
Renee Ahdieh: Somaiya is wonderful.
Sarah Enni: She is great. But she has a personal obsession with robots and AI and living forever in that way. And I am terrified of robots. I hate them. So she was like, "Well, great. The minute that it becomes an opportunity for me to trade my human body and jump on into a steel box, I'm doing it."
Renee Ahdieh: She'll do it? Okay, alright.
Sarah Enni: And she's like, "And I'm selling you under the river to get there." I was like, "Great. I'll go down."
Renee Ahdieh: Does she think though, and again I don't have an answer, does she think that she'll always be enamored by this idea? Will she ever want to know what it feels like in the world to be flesh and blood again?
Sarah Enni: I don't... I would kill to know. So I'm gonna take a note of that and ask her the next time I see her.
Renee Ahdieh: One of my favorite books when I was growing up, another one, was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for this same reason. Can you beat death?
Sarah Enni: Right? I mean, what's interesting is that that question is more relevant now than ever because we truly are... literally Google is funding efforts to beat death.
Renee Ahdieh: Or, reactivate a deceased brain. Which, pun intended, blew my mind!
Sarah Enni: So it feels like a very timely subject to grapple with. We, as writers, are always doing that kind of thing. So often we grapple with it and we're like, "We're talking about… these are the good and bad things." And scientists are like, "No, that would be cool. We'll do that."
Renee Ahdieh: Yeah, yeah. "We'll totally do that."
Sarah Enni: We talked about this with regard to your last books, but research. The clothing, the food. I know you cook stuff for every book, so what were you cooking for this book?
Renee Ahdieh: I mean everything. This was such a joy because, again, I got to explore Creole cuisine, Cajun cuisine, which are two very distinct cuisines in new Orleans. Obviously I get to do an entire thing on French sauces. I'm obsessed with French sauces. They're the best sauces. And then when you get to add the spice that comes along with, especially Cajun cuisine, to it. Some amazing seafood dishes. I learned how to make a killer gumbo.
So the key is I use Andouille sausage and I use chicken thighs, which I usually don't use chicken thighs because I prefer white meat. Which every everybody rolls their eyes when they hear that. It was like, "Oh, it's so dry." I was like, "You're not having it prepared correctly.” But it's so flavorful. So yeah, it's been really, really fun doing this. I fried alligator legs… or not alligator legs, sorry not alligator legs, frog's legs. I also deep fried frog's legs too.
Sarah Enni: Alright, well now I'm disappointed. Listen, please write your Florida book where you have to fry alligator legs.
Renee Ahdieh: There is a recipe, but I can't get ahold of the meat to do it. You can do like gator nuggets which I've tried in Louisiana and they're delicious. The texture of the meat is very similar to a tender calamari. So I've always wanted to try that too. But unfortunately I can't get ahold of good gator meat in North Carolina. [Laughing] “Problems Renee has as she’s doing research.”
Sarah Enni: It might not be legal. I can't imagine, your husband must be so joyous about these research projects.
Renee Ahdieh: He is very excited about all the research projects. Yeah, he's like, "This is great." But then I have this overabundance of cookbooks. I just have lots of books really. Like lots of books.
Sarah Enni: I know. All of our houses are sinking.
Renee Ahdieh: He's like, "Is this another cookbook?" And I'm like, "It's for research, okay!"
Sarah Enni: We covered this a little bit last time, but I love that you immerse yourself in the research, and are so sense oriented. But again, where are the limits? Where do you catch yourself saying like, "I need to not make gumbo. I need to go write my book."
Renee Ahdieh: Well I never tell myself that. I always need to make gumbo! I think for me what I like to do, because I do feel like you don't want to become Dickens. I think that there's a chapter in a Tale of Two Cities where - and he was paid by the word and there are moments that it shows - where he literally describes I believe it was a bishop and the way he liked to take his chocolate. It went on for like three or four pages, which is a little bit long.
The thing that I like to do, is when I'm imagining a scene in my mind, I like to put half of it on the page. The thing that really gets me invested as a reader, is filling in the blanks with my own imagination. So you have to trust a reader to do that. And maybe what they fill in the blanks with isn't what you necessarily pictured. But if it works for them and it lets them... so maybe don't describe the iridescent scales on the fish in the fishmonger stall, but let them know there's a fishmonger stall there. Maybe a passing whiff of the sea or something like that, and let them fill in the rest. You don't have to talk about the man's bulbous nose and his wrinkly brow and all this kind of stuff. Just chill out half of it [and] put it on the page.
Sarah Enni: Laini Taylor, when I got the chance to speak with her (Author of Strange the Dreamer series and The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. Listen to her First Draft interview here) - who of course is a master of worldbuilding as well - she said this very similar thing. And I loved her walking me through it and just saying it's kind of like that Chanel thing. Dare to quote Chanel, she's problematic! But take off one piece of jewelry before you leave the house. As a reader, you love getting into the cracks and filling it with your own life experiences, and your own remembrances of places or things. So yeah, I think that's a really powerful lesson to remember. You can write it all down, but then you might want to extract.
Renee Ahdieh: And the way I extract too, is I try to ground sensory details in an action. And I tell myself, “No more than three lines of direct description.” If there isn't some sort of action attached to it, you've gone on too long with this description.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's smart to have rules for yourself basically.
Renee Ahdieh: Oh, it's always going back and editing. Just write it as you want it to be, and then you have to pull back. And you have to kill your darlings. Go in there and figure out what is the most visual and action-oriented representation of this world that you want. And maybe then you can put that sensory detail, that you can't let go of, into an action later on or something like that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I like that. Looking forward... I mean that sounds nuts to ask you about like, "Well you have three books to write." But actually, first of all, I would like to hear how, within your particular case with this contract, what are your deadlines? And how are you getting in the zone to finish the series?
Renee Ahdieh: I'm working on the second book right now. I'm very excited about where each book is supposed to go. And especially because each one has a new lead character.
Sarah Enni: That's a smart way to keep it really fresh for yourself too.
Renee Ahdieh: I'm hoping so. Because again, if you have people who come in and they're like, "Ugh, I don't want to wait for four books." But they're like, "Does it have a satisfying arc?" Yeah, absolutely. Are you gonna probably want to read the next one? I think so. I hope so.
Sarah Enni: Good, good. Are the deadlines different having these four books in place? Is that different from how you've worked in the past?
Renee Ahdieh: Oh no, no, no. Because I always sold multiple books since I began at the onset with The Wrath and the Dawn. I always sold multiple books. So we always had plans for it.
Sarah Enni: You're in the...
Renee Ahdieh: I'm in the zone right now. I definitely have ideas for other things I want to write. I would love to do something with adults. I would love to do something with middle grade. So I'm just flushing out these ideas a little bit.
Sarah Enni: Yeah Fun! Was there anything else about The Beautiful you want to make sure that we discuss or talk about?
Renee Ahdieh: That's it's coming out in October right before Halloween. And I know that there's going to be, well, at this point it's already out, right? You said this is coming out...?
Sarah Enni: Yeah.
Renee Ahdieh: So there's a great preorder campaign and I will be touring. So I'm really excited to meet everybody. And I hope all my wonderful readers, because again I cannot do this without all these tremendous readers and booksellers and librarians and book lovers everywhere. I'm so grateful for all of the support over the years. And I really hope you fall in love with Celine and Bastion and the world of The Beautiful.
Sarah Enni: And if anyone is seeing Renee on tour, for the love of God, dress up like these characters. Talk about Halloween!
Renee Ahdieh: Oh, please do. Please do!
Sarah Enni: These kind of books just make me want to go to a costume shop and go wild.
Renee Ahdieh: Absolutely!
Sarah Enni: Well this has been such a joy. Thank you so much Renee.
Renee Ahdieh: Thank you so much.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Renee. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @renneahdieh and follow me @sarahenni (Instagram and Twitter) and the show @firstdraftpod (Twitter and Instagram). For links to everything that Renne and I talked about in this episode, check out the show notes which are @firstdraftpod.com. Renee threw out a lot of references to really wonderful stories. Vampire stories, some classic books, and a few other amazing YA writers. So you can always check out easy links to all those things @firstdraftpod.com.
Do you have any writing or creativity questions that you would like me and a future guest to answer in an upcoming episode? I would love to hear from you and I set up a voicemail box to do just that. So you can call and leave your question at 818-533-1998. I'd really love to get a sense of where my listeners are. I know a lot of you are creators in your own rights, so if you have those questions, send them my way.
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