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First Draft Episode #312: Tanaz Bhathena
July 8, 2021
Tanaz Bhathena, author of A Girl Like That and The Beauty of the Moment talks about her fantasy series, Hunted by the Sky and its sequel, Rising Like a Storm.
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Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week, I'm talking to Tanaz Bhathena, author of A Girl Like That and The Beauty of the Moment, about her fantasy series Hunted by the Sky and its sequel, Rising Like a Storm, which is out now.
I love what Tanaz had to say about writing rebellious characters so she could live vicariously, on the surprise of public reaction when your book finally goes out into the world, and how writing her fantasy series brought magic back into her life.
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Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Tanaz Bhathena.
Sarah Enni: Hi Tanaz, how are you doing today?
Tanaz Bhathena: I'm doing great Sarah, how are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing well. I'm so excited we could finally connect and chat. I'm so excited to get into it. I've tons of questions about Rising Like a Storm and The Wrath of Ambar series, but I am going to start by going way back to the beginning and ask you about where you were born and raised.
Tanaz Bhathena: I was born in Mumbai India, and when I was very young, maybe about a year old, my parents moved us to Riyadh Saudi Arabia, where I lived for about 10 years. And then we moved to Jeddah where I lived for another five years. By the time I turned 16, we immigrated to Canada. So that's where we've been living in the Massaga area since then.
Sarah Enni: All right, amazing. And how was reading and writing a part of growing up for you?
Tanaz Bhathena: I was always a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. I was always drawn to stories, like my parents would tell me stories, I was always drawn to that. And I remember vividly being five-years-old and my mom was reading a picture book to me and I really loved the picture books. So I told her, "Can you keep reading it to me?" And I made her read it three times in a row, poor thing!
So she got exhausted and what ended up happening was that she said, "You know, I think the next time you should read it." So I said, "Oh, well, okay." I was a little bit annoyed that I had to read this. And I'm like, "You know what? Okay, fine." I started reading it and suddenly it was as if my mind lit up and I thought, "Oh my God, this is awesome." And I just kept on reading after that.
I never asked her to read me stuff, I started reading on my own. And in terms of writing, I think it evolved organically, because I think reading a lot led me to want to write stuff and just make up my own stories, and things like that. Also, there was an annual magazine that our school ran, and the cool kids got published there. So I wanted to be published there too. And so that's what got me started into writing.
When I was eight, I wrote this story, and I also illustrated it, about three girls who went to see a witch on a mountain. I don't know what happened to them because I never finished the story. But I think after that, I wrote a lot more, I experimented with stuff.
And then finally I started writing complete short stories. By the time I was 11 or something like that. And by the time I was 13, I was decided, in my head, that I wanted to write books for a living. Of course, my parents had a completely different idea in mind. I remember being in the eighth grade and my dad came up to me and said, "Okay Tanaz, in two years you're gonna be in grade 11, which means that you're going to have to decide which stream of college you'll be going into. So have you decided, so far, what do you want to do in the future?" And this is me being 13 years old and I'm like, "Uh, I have no idea."
And then he just started asking me, "Do you want to be a doctor?" I said, "No, I don't like science." "Okay. Do you want to be an engineer?" "No, I hate math." "Okay. Then what do you want to be?" Then, finally, I just very, very quietly said, "I want to be maybe a writer." And then my dad looked at me for one long moment and said, "Okay, you'll be an accountant." And that was it, it was decided. For the next few years that's exactly what I was planning to do.
I had no rebellious streak and I guess that's why my characters are so rebellious, I'm vicariously living through them. But yeah, for me, I continued studies, and I have an Econ with a specialist in Accounting and it was not until my fourth year in university that I really began to feel frustrated with the career path that I had chosen. And I thought that I really want to give this writing thing a shot.
And so I had a chat with my parents that I do want to pursue this part-time also, if I can. So they said, "Okay, if you can even get admitted into a college on a creative writing program, then it's on you. You try it." And so I did, I applied to a correspondence course for creative writing at Humber College in Toronto, and I got in.
And so that sort of convinced my father, "Oh, how did they let you in?" Like, "How did they let you in? So it's fine, okay, you can do this thing on the side, as long as it doesn't interfere with anything else." So I started working full-time at an export company and I also would write part-time, which means that I would get up at five in the morning and write for two hours, or three hours, and then I'd start work. And that's been my schedule even now.
Sarah Enni: So interesting. I have a few questions about that. I love getting accountant as being like, "We'll find a middle ground somewhere, somehow."
Tanaz Bhathena: [Laughing] "We will!"
Sarah Enni: When you were feeling unhappy and deciding to go back to your creative roots, did you pick back up with the short story form that you had, it sounds like, been doing when you were younger? You have to submit writing samples for programs like that, and it sounds like you had kind of taken a little time off. How did you get you get back into it?
Tanaz Bhathena: Well, that's a great question, actually. So, when I entered university, for the first year I would write short stories. So I continued writing until my first year of university. I would submit stuff to magazines and journals, and things like that. But in university I sort of stopped for almost three years and I didn't write anything at all. So I had to go back to it.
And then I thought, "What do I write?" I started going back to the short story form because that was something that I was most comfortable with, and I thought that what I could do was also do a collection of short stories. Because the one advantage is, having a short story means you can submit to literary journals. And I knew, to get published, you had to have an agent. To get an agent, you had to have a platform. And how do you build a platform? You get published, right?
And the easiest way was writing short stories for literary journals. So I said, "Okay, let me start doing short stories. If I have enough stories, I can maybe do a collection and then we can try to sell the collection." So that was my grand plan back in the day. So that's something that I started doing.
For me, I think the biggest breakthrough happened when I started reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I thought, "This is a really cool way of writing a book where you have a dead character looking down on the world." And I thought, "Okay, this is really a cool way of structuring your story." And I thought, "What if I use that technique and started writing a story, but instead I set it in Saudi Arabia and I make my character a Parsi girl?" And for listeners who are not aware, I come from the same community.
And so, I had not seen many Parsi characters in fiction with the exception of books like Thrity Umrigar (Parsi author of The Space Between Us) and Ruhinton Mistry (Parsi author of A Fine Balance). And they were all adult writers. So at once I knew that I wanted to target the adult market because I'd never seen Parsi characters in teen fiction or in even kid lit.
So I said, "Okay, this is what I was gonna do." I was gonna write the story about a dead Parsi girl looking down on the scene of her accident. And that's where the story began. And this story, after 10 years, became a book called A Girl Like That.
Sarah Enni: Amazing, 10 short years later!
Tanaz Bhathena: 10 short years later.
[Both laughing]
Sarah Enni: I'm so interested in that. And actually, before I get into too many more questions about A Girl Like That, do you mind just officially pitching the book? You just described it a little bit, but just give us the official pitch for that book.
Tanaz Bhathena: So A Girl Like That is about a girl named Zarin Wadia, she's 16 years old, a student. She's a troublemaker known for her romantic entanglements throughout her class. But when she's found dead on a highway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the religious police arrive on the scene and everything everyone thought they knew about Zarin is brought into question. And as her story unfolds in multiple perspectives, you learn that she was a lot more than just a girl like that.
So this story really began as a short story called Crossing the Chinvat Bridge. And the Chinvat Bridge is basically the bridge that Zoroastrains cross after death to get to either heaven, or they fall down into purgatory. Because we don't have a permanent hell, we do have purgatory in that faith. So basically, that's where the idea came from.
And it was her and Porus, who is another character in the book, the boy she's found dead with. And so how they ended up there was the story. And it went through many, many iterations before it actually became the novel. So, that's where it all began.
Sarah Enni: First, I just want to ask about writing a teenage girl, because it's interesting to me that you're saying you hadn't seen yourself represented in fiction for teens, but of course, it ended up being a debut YA novel. I'm interested in how that evolved.
Tanaz Bhathena: For me, what I noticed overall when I was reading books, a lot of books in Canada and from the U.S. and from India, was that teen novels did not seem to feature a lot of protagonists of color and also no Parsi, or a Zoroastrian protagonist. However, I ended up seeing a lot of Parsi characters, or even younger brown characters, in adult fiction. They could be children as well.
So I was thinking about Rohinton Mistry's short story collection, Tales from Pharaoh Shabbat, which is a collection of short stories set in a Parsi colony in Bombay. And so what I was thinking that I could do is, I could write a collection of short stories set in Saudi Arabia, and all of them would be based around a specific school.
Because I grew up in Saudi Arabia for 15 years, I went to an Indian school over there. And so I was very, very familiar with how it was to grow up, and what it was like to go to such an academic environment. For me, that's where it all began in terms of writing the story. And it took me four years to write these short stories and make them into a collection.
And then I queried for an agent. It took me a year to find an agent. And then she told me that it could be difficult to sell this, but we're gonna try anyway. And we did try to sell it to several editors, but very quickly we found out that, while editors liked the writing, they wanted me to write a novel. And so my agent said, "You'll have to write a novel." So again, to make these short stories sync as a novel, and stories was very difficult, it wasn't working.
So an editor told me, "Why don't you just start from scratch? Take one story and just start from scratch." So I looked at the story that felt the brightest, I guess that's the way to describe it for me. I felt that was like the brightest story, the one that resonated the most. And that was the Zarin's story and the very first story that spawned this collection, so I started writing from there.
And that's where I started expanding in terms of the narrative voices. I had about eight narrative voices in that, eight point of views. And it was an adult novel that I eventually submitted to my agent. My agent loved it and she said, "Let's submit it." And this time we, again, sent it out on submission. Again, we got rejections, but this time it was a little bit different because none of the editors could seem to agree on why they didn't like the manuscript.
Some people said, "Why is this manuscript set in Saudi Arabia? It should be set in India." And I would be like, "Why would you do that? It doesn't make sense." And then there were other people who said, "Why do the characters die in the beginning? It's such a sad story. It's so dark. Why is it so dark?" And I thought that adults could handle darkness, right? And it was like something weird.
And so I said, "You know what? None of these comments really merit another revision. So why don't we resubmit?" And my agent said, "Okay, let's resubmit." But this time, what she did was that she also submitted to a couple of YA editors. And one of them, Susan Dobinik who was working at FSG at the time, she's now at Bloomsbury, she came back to Eleanor, who's my agent, and she said, "Why doesn't Tanaz change it and make it a YA novel?" And she actually asked to speak to me on the phone, which is kind of rare. I didn't expect an editor wanting to speak to me.
And we had a nice conversation. And she said, "This is what I was expecting you to do." Which was basically change the adult voices to teen voices. And I asked her the one question, the trick question, "Do you care that they die at the beginning?" She said, "I love that they die at the beginning," the two main characters. So it was like, "That decided it." And she's like, "I love it. I absolutely love it." And this is how a book that adult editors deemed too dark for the adult market ended up in the hands of teenage readers.
Sarah Enni: That is incredible. Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. That's really wonderful that you found an editor who got what you were doing and was ready to go with you there. Besides just changing ages for some of the characters, I'm interested in the process that you underwent to make it a YA book.
This is one of those nebulous, interesting things that we always talk about. What really is the difference between adult and YA? And there's so concrete things, but there's also a tone, or a vibe. So I'm just interested in what your process was in making that shift.
Tanaz Bhathena: Well, in my case, it was actually not very difficult because a lot of the characters in my book were teenagers because it was very much school oriented, but the adult version also explored more of Zarin's family life. So it had her aunt and her uncle's perspectives and their life in India. And so it gave you a background into how she came to be, and why they were behaving the way they behave in the novel.
And so for me, I had to sort of integrate that backstory without their perspectives. And that was the tricky part. And I had to do that through Zarin's point-of-view most of the time. Or sometimes through Porus's point-of-view when he came to visit them. So he would observe the way they acted and things like that. You have to sort of explain what happened in the past, through their actions in the present.
So a lot to do with body language and their dialogue, and sometimes just by eavesdropping on their conversations with people back home in India that, "Oh, okay. You know, this girl she's like her mother and this and that, and, you know, drama, drama, drama." But yeah, that was the kind of stuff that was happening. And so it was really very much based on real life. I thought to myself that as a child, how did I discover things, and family secrets, you know? Mostly by eavesdropping, come on! I mean, I'm a writer, right? That's how I learned stuff, I eavesdropped.
So that simply played out into the process of changing and converting things. And also, obviously because it's a YA novel, I had a bunch of swear words, which my editor absolutely refused to let me put in. She said, "No, your book is dark enough as it is. You need to tone it down in this sense at least." I'm like, "Okay, fine, I'll tolerate that."
But other than that, I don't think it was that difficult of a shift. I actually realized that I enjoyed the teen voice a lot and that's something that my agent told me early on when she signed me on that, "You really have a good grasp on these teenage voices and you get their mindset".
And I think I did in some ways because as a teenager, some people would tell me that, "I'm like a four-year-old hiding in a 16-year-old's body." And now I'm turning into the opposite right? A 16-year-old in the 30 something-year-old's body. That's what's happening right now. It's like the opposite. But yeah, that's how my process was for A Girl Like That.
Sarah Enni: That is fascinating. I love that. And I think the strengths of A Girl Like That is that the characters are so well drawn and the world feels so lived in. So I'm not surprised to hear that you had all of that backstory and you had written much more than ended up on the page.
We talk about that a lot on this show, no words are wasted, right? You get into the nooks and crannies with all the characters, even the side characters, and even if that stuff doesn't stay, it adds to the richness of the final product, I think. There's no way it doesn't.
A Girl Like That is not autobiography, but it does have some very notable similarities to your experience growing up in an Indian ex-pat community in Saudi Arabia. There's also conversations about misogyny and mental health.
I'm just interested in what it was like to explore those very personal aspects of your growing up in this story. And how, or were you, able to find a separation, especially when the book comes out and is public, people will assume things or read into things. I'm interested in how that was for you.
Tanaz Bhathena: I was not prepared for public reactions to my book because I was writing in my little cave for about 10 years, not expecting to get published. For the longest time, I'd almost given up on this book and suddenly, we had this offer on hand and I thought, "Okay, this is gonna be great." Because so far the only criticism I had received was about the actual writing. And now it was about the subject matter that I was exploring.
And so I got quite a bit of mixed reviews for this particular book. Very early on I got a very harsh critique from someone I knew. And I couldn't sleep that night because I was worried, "Oh my god, I'm gonna lose my contract at this rate." I was so nervous, but then two days later I got a starred review from The School Library Journal (read its starred review for A Girl Like That).
And then that's when it clicked to me that different people, even from the same community, are going to have different reactions to this book. And as the book came out and more reviews started coming in, obviously, I got those critical reviews, but I also got a lot of positive reviews, especially from people who were living in that region, Muslim and non-Muslim.
So for me, that was super important. When I saw this amazing review in Dawn, which is the newspaper in Pakistan, and this reviewer, she got every single thing that I was writing. Even the criticism that she made was the one I had personally made internally about the book. And she made that criticism, I was like, "I agree with you there." So that was something that was amazing and incredible. I think it's something that I'm more prepared for now as my fourth book comes out in June, but it was not something that I was prepared for initially.
I went off social media for three months because I was so freaked out by what kind of reaction I would get. But then I started coming back. I saw that there will be people who love the book. There will be people who hate the book. But the thing is, readers bring themselves to a book. And oftentimes if they don't see something that they're familiar with, they're disappointed, or they feel that we're writing a stereotype or something like that.
But the problem is that someone else's stereotype, may be my reality, and if I'm portraying that, it is because, in my case, at least, I can tell you that this is not the story I could have told living in Saudi Arabia. I could have been jailed for writing this in Saudi Arabia. So when I started writing this book, I decided I would write a book with complete honesty and with as much care as possible.
And this is something that most people who've read the book have seen, that I've written this book as a critique of a particular society and its treatment of women, not about religion. This book is not a critique on any religion. Please do not come to me and do not ask me about that because I'm not going to even tolerate that. This book is a critique about a particular society at a particular time, especially about women. And this is something that I'm more comfortable talking about now than I would have been maybe in 2018 when the book came out.
Sarah Enni: Right, which is so interesting. And to your point of it takes place, I believe if I have this right, A Girl Like That takes place in 2014. Because there have even been changes and adjustments in Saudi Arabian society since then. So it's a very particular moment in time, which would more accurately reflect how it was when you actually were living there.
Tanaz Bhathena: Absolutely. Now there are changes that have been made. Women can drive. So I'm guessing that if that was happening, Zarin would be driving and getting into trouble on her own. I mean, she would be doing that sort of stuff.
But yeah, there are lots of things that have changed, I think for the better. There are still improvements that are needed in that society, but then that is true for any society. But I'm, as a whole, pleased to see the changes that are coming forward and the progress that is being made as well.
Sarah Enni: I appreciate you speaking to that because that is something I am always interested in, especially when you are writing a story like this, that is not only personal, but also there are not a ton of stories like this. So your book is unfairly, I think, being asked to serve an audience that just deserves more than one book, of course.
Tanaz Bhathena: I agree entirely. And if you want another book, why don't you read Driving by Starlight, by Anat Deracine who is a Saudi and she's written this book. There is Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsenea. There are so many other Saudi authors who have written books. So I think if you look more into that region's literature, I'm sure you can find stuff because I was finding stuff back then.
And now there's more and more stuff coming out of the middle east and by people who actually live there. So I think you should look into that as well. If you're interested in Saudi Arabia and that region, don't just look at my book as the only example. It's too much responsibility, come on, I'm not the spokesperson for Saudi Arabia.
Sarah Enni: And I will put links to those books in the show notes as well so people can check those out. I want to lead us to Hunted by the Sky and its sequel, Rising like a Storm, which is coming out. But I understand that part of the origin story of this duology, is a book that didn't work. And I wonder if you could tell us about that experience.
Tanaz Bhathena: How Hunted by the Sky came about; I loved reading fantasy as a child. I remember being completely obsessed with stories about werewolves, witches and vampires. My very first short story that I mentioned briefly when I was 11, was about a werewolf at a girl's boarding school. And that was inspired by me voraciously reading R.L. Stine's Fear Street series, and Fear Street sagas and Goosebumps, and stuff like that. I was reading those books.
And so I was really into fantasy. I wanted to write fantasy, but at the same time, whenever I tried to write more than maybe a small, short story, I always felt as if things weren't working out. My Pixies didn't look like Pixies or sound like Pixies. My goblins were off. Something was off.
Because I was growing up in an Indian school in Saudi Arabia and a lot of my influence was Indian. So I would watch a lot of Indian TV shows and a lot of Indian fantasy, which I also love too. So I'd watch shows about Indian mythology and history, like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which were great Hindu, epics, and Akbar-Birbal, which is about the Mughal emperor Akbar and his court advisor Birbal. And those were amazing stories that I grew up watching and reading and all these things were there.
Many years passed by and I thought that I didn't have the imagination to write anything in fantasy. And by the time I finished copy edits for A Girl Like That, which was maybe in 2016, I thought to myself, "Okay, I really need to do something other than contemporary, I'm kind of exhausted with it." So I thought, "Okay, what should I do?" I was still too intimidated to write fantasy.
So I thought, "Okay, let me try and write a science fiction, dystopian novel set in a completely different world. Fantasy adjacent, but not fantasy. It's still quote unquote realistic, you know?" And then I wrote something with 50,000 words of utter trash [chuckles], like the whole book. It had great characters, I loved those two characters, but the plot and the setting were both skeletal.
And I could see that, just reading it, that it was not good. So I put it aside and I went back to something else that I had been working on and abandoned. It was another contemporary, which became my second book, The Beauty of the Moment. And then once that was done, I was like, "Okay, what next? What do I do?"
Then I went back to that old sci-fi dystopia. One of my friends, Carlie Sorosiak, who's also a writer, she told me that, "What if you added magic to this book?" And I thought to myself, "Yeah, at this point, why don't I add magic? What have I got to lose? Nobody's gonna see this except me." And then I decided to add magic, but I also decided to change the setting to one inspired by India, more specifically, medieval India, a historical period that I was obsessed with as a teenager.
I remember being in history class and being entirely bored for so many historical time periods but whenever they started talking about the Mughals and the Rajputs and the Maratha's and all these crazy kingdoms that rose and fell in the 15th and 16th centuries or short period of time. These huge labyrinth and palaces, elaborate courts, the politics and the drama and the intrigue, I was completely obsessed. And this is something that I suddenly wanted to bring in.
And the moment that fell into place, it was as if a door had unlocked and the whole world started unfurling before me. The story was moving faster than I could write it. And that's how Hunted by the Sky was born.
Sarah Enni: I am so interested in this origin story for the way that you found your way to writing fantasy. I also write contemp, but have always read fantasy and I'm obsessed with it. I hope one day to get the bravery, or whatever it is, to move into that realm. Because I agree with you, it's very intimidating.
But I am just so fascinated by how you describe it, that you were concerned that you didn't have the imagination for it. I would love to hear a little bit more about that. I mean, it's wild because, of course you do. I mean, now, you've written two of them, so we know that you had the imagination for it. But what do you think was causing that feeling?
Tanaz Bhathena: Because I had not seen a lot of Indian fantasy in books growing up because, as writers, we tend to imitate what we read, a lot of us, we do that. Some writers look towards movies, they look toward video games, which is a lot cooler, I think, where they're getting those inspirations. For me, I was the typical textbook writer. I was looking toward other books as inspirations and learning from that.
And so, for me, the sort of stories that I was reading that were set in fantasy were by Western fantasy authors. And so I did not feel I could do that really well, or whenever I did do something, it was always not working out. It didn't feel authentic. It didn't feel right. I mean, trying to write about wizards and using white characters, first of all, I cannot write white characters properly, okay?
If I write them, they will sound fake so that's why you will see brown characters in my book only. Sorry, that's my thing. So I started writing realistic fiction. I started writing all these teen angst stories because I was a teen going through angst in school. So I was writing that sort of stuff and I was setting them in schools. I was doing all that other stuff, which was mostly featuring these brown characters.
In terms of fantasy itself, I did dabble sometimes in fantasy, but I would get rejected if I sent out a fantasy to a literary journal. At one point, someone told me that, "Maybe you should try something else. This is not really the genre for you." And I made the mistake of believing them. It was only later that I began to see a lot more fantasy coming out of India, which was really a retelling of mythology.
But that was, again, something that I did not want to do. Because I feel that mythology, the re-tellings that were coming out of India and the re-imaginings, were so much more sophisticated than anything that I could personally come up with. So I thought to myself, "These things are already being done by better authors. I don't think I can add much more value to that canon of literature." But what I really did want to do is something that I discovered after watching The Game of Thrones. And George R.R. Martin, where he mentioned basing his world off the War of the Roses and the Tudors.
And I thought to myself, "What if someone actually bothers to do that for Indian mythology?" Because the Mahabharata is fricking Game of Thrones by itself. And it's really, really amazing. And I thought, "What if someone did that for the Mahabharata?" And then I thought to myself, "What if I do that?" Not at the scale of a the Mahabharata, that book is really, really immense, but something on a smaller scale.
And that's when my wheels started turning that I wanted to write a more secondary world of my own imagining. I wanted to create my own myths and base them off, not only Hindu mythology, but also Zoroastrain mythology, and stories from the Shahnameh, which I also grew up listening to. I wanted to bring in those creatures and magical beings and sort of incorporate them into my world, so it kind of mish-mashed in a way.
My Indian upbringing and my Persian heritage mashed together in this particular series. And it worked really well too, because if you look back in history, Persia had a huge influence on medieval Indian culture. Persian was the language of the Mughal courts, even during Emperor Akbar's time, texts like the Mahabharata were translated from Sanskrit into Persian. So somehow I felt like I belonged in this world and I was like, "Yes, I was meant to write this particular story."
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that! And thank you, there's something so satisfying hearing fantasy writers talk about the different worlds and traditions that they bring into their work. And I think that you just illustrated exactly why I wanted to kind of poke a little bit at the idea of not having enough imagination. Because I do think that maybe newer writers feel intimidated because they think they have to create something from nothing.
And what you've just illustrated is the beauty of taking all the different, wonderful traditions and stories, and myths and folklore that we all uniquely grow up with, and transforming that and putting that through the sieve of our lived experience. That's what makes truly original work.
It's never going into a white wall room and just creating something that has never existed before. That's, arguably, never been done. But it feels like that's what you're supposed to do until you get into it.
Tanaz Bhathena: And that's what I did for my first contemporary. I went into the white for the dystopian. I went to the white walled room and I'm trying to create this freaking world. And I was like, "Okay, this really is bad."
[Both laughing].
Sarah Enni: "This is not it."
Tanaz Bhathena: "This is not it!"
Sarah Enni: I realize we're getting into the book so much that I would actually like to have the series pitched for us so we can get a better sense of it, please.
Tanaz Bhathena: Okay, so Hunted by the Sky and Rising Like a Storm are both a part of a YA fantasy duology set in a world inspired by medieval India. The story revolves around a girl named Gul, who's prophesied to be the downfall of a tyrant king. When Gul's parents are murdered by the king's soldiers, she barely manages to escape and is rescued and taken in by a group of rebel women called the Sisterhood of the Golden Lotus who train her in warrior magic.
By the time she turns 16, Gul has only one thing in mind, and that is revenge. She eventually infiltrates the King's palace with the help of a reluctant stable boy named Cavas who has some dark secrets of his own, but the palace has its own secrets. And what Gul and Cavas don't realize is that there was more to their burgeoning relationship than just a romance. The bond between them and the magic, they realize, maybe the only way to end their kingdoms tyrannical rule.
And in Rising Like a Storm, they come across a new tyrant who is deadlier than any ruler they've ever known. So to summarize this, this duology contains chosen ones, and enemies to lovers, romance, fierce female warriors, magical creatures inspired by Indian and Persian mythology and some very cranky ghosts.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that. Oh my gosh what a great pitch. Yes, sign me up! I loved reading these books so much and they're so rich. And really, nothing is more satisfying than a fantasy book that makes you want to go back and research and learn more about the things that are referenced. So this was very transportive and definitely made me feel that way.
I want to talk about Gul as a character. You said earlier, you are writing rebellious young characters in a vicarious way. I'm interested in the contrast of writing rebellious young women in a contemporary setting versus, I mean, in Hunted by the Sky and Rising Like a Storm so much more rebellion can be had, and so much more sort of visceral victories can be had. And you kind of get to amp it up to this wild degree. What was it like to broaden what your characters could do in that way?
Tanaz Bhathena: It was awesome, really so much fun. Like, I have this character who can do explosive magic, but at the same time, her magic takes a toll on her. It has its price. She has very little control over whether or not she can access it, at least in the first book, especially, it is difficult for her to access her magic. And so, her magic emerges only during moments of fear, or when she's desperately trying to save herself. And so that is what happens, and when she does perform magic, especially death magic, or magic that's used in battle, it really takes a toll on her body.
And that is something, overall, that I really wanted to bring across in this particular world and in this particular magic system is that, it's not all easy if you have special powers. Because then there would be no story because even in the real world, whenever you want to get something, there's an opportunity cost, right? So you have to give up something.
And what is this character giving up to get to this point in the book? And that's something that is true, even for contemporary fiction, what are you giving up to get to this point in the book? So that is something that I was really playing with, but on a more magnified level, especially with fantasy, because you can do a lot more, but you can also impact a lot more people.
So your responsibility is a lot higher. It's like everything is magnified. Like the devastation you can cause this is a lot worse and you're responsible for a lot worse. So I think that is something that I really enjoyed writing because it was sort of liberating, in a way, to be able to do these things and to put these characters in really, really dangerous situations and have fun with it as well. Because you knew you could make them do stuff that they wouldn't be able to in real life. And that's what was really, really fun about playing in this fantasy universe.
Sarah Enni: I read somewhere, and maybe this is true or maybe I misread, but was this originally conceived of as a trilogy?
Tanaz Bhathena: Yes, it was, it was conceived initially as a trilogy. Because I thought that that's how YA fantasy sold, it sold as trilogies and that's what I thought. I actually did not want to pitch just the idea. My agent loved the idea and the first couple of chapters I sent her, but I said, "No, I want to finish the whole book because what if I don't have a series? What if it's just one book and then we sell it as a trilogy and then I have to write two more books?" That's scary.
So instead I finished one whole book and I sort of had an idea of what the next two books would be. We pitched it, my editor loved it, but they wanted to buy a duology. Shocker! Now we have to change things around. And it was like, "Okay, we're selling this as a duology, that means I have to shrink the whole world."
So initially when I had plans of Gul and Cavas traipsing through all four kingdoms of [unintelligible] instead, now I have to confine them to Ambar and have this whole war taking place there. And so, that was something that was pretty challenging because I had to shrink my ideas down. But at the same time, it was a good exercise in brevity because you have to actually narrow down your world. It's like you're razor-focused and you have to really look into the fine details of that particular world and that particular kingdom.
And I realized, after the fact, when I was writing the second book, how glad I was to not have a third book to write, or not feel like I was writing [pauses], you know how, when you're a writer, you have a saggy middle in a novel? I was writing an entire saggy middle novel, instead. That's what I felt like. I felt very, very liberated in that sense that the series is coming to an end in two books, and I think I can satisfactorily do so without having to do a whole other book. So I was really happy about that.
Sarah Enni: That's good, I'm glad it ended up being a good experience. That is a little intimidating to say like, "Ah, I've got to shrink this by a full third." So I want to talk about the writing of this book. I read something, I think this was perhaps on Instagram or GoodReads, where you wrote, "This book brought magic and ferocity back into my life when I thought I'd lost both." And I just wanted to ask what you meant by that, or what the experience of actually writing this book was like for you?
Tanaz Bhathena: I'm very interested that you actually read that and you're asking me that. So you're a good journalist! That talks to your background, right? Journalism. So, when I was writing Hunted by the Sky, I was going through some major health issues. I was just diagnosed with IBS and I was struggling really to just function day-to-day, because I had not been diagnosed at the time. I think I was just figuring things out.
And finally we reached a diagnosis and then trying to figure out how to eat, what to do, how to exercise to reduce symptoms, what medication to take. And I was really feeling low. And then I had this book that I had to write and I felt like Gul's ferocity drove me on. While I was writing this extremely determined and extremely ferocious girl who was ready to just go in and do whatever and kill people. And when I was feeling low, I kind of channeled some of that energy.
So I took on some of her energy. Usually, as a writer, you are putting in your energy into your characters, but this time I was drawing energy from my characters. And that is something that brought magic back into my life, this particular book as well. Because also, in terms of the research, in terms of what I was doing, these worlds I was exploring, which I had never had the opportunity to do.
It was like going back to my childhood, but not quite. And also researching and reading up historical fiction and non-fiction, especially about India and Mughal India, and coming across all these crazy stories about all these medieval Kings who had these elephants crushing people's heads with their feet and all these really, really crazy things. So I was absorbed. I was escaping into a different world, and I was escaping my own reality.
At the same time, I was also becoming more determined about following a schedule and becoming healthier and trying to get my life back on track. And that was something that really, really moved me forward and brought magic back into my life. So I think, in a way, writing keeps me sane, but it also keeps me pushing forward.
Sarah Enni: I'm so intrigued that you are still writing with a full-time job and you just mentioned routines and having a format. So I'd love to hear about your process and what an average writing day is like for you. And also whether or not that has had to shift over the last year as you are still in lock down as we talk today, actually.
Tanaz Bhathena: So my typical schedule is, I wake up at five in the morning. I start writing, especially if I'm on deadline, or if I have a project in mind that I want to pitch something. So if I'm writing or revising, and I have something on schedule, I wake up at five. Write until about seven or something. And then at 8:00 AM I start working for my job. And this is something that I've been following regularly.
So every single day, without fail, I do this. Weekends, I take Sunday off because everybody needs a day off and you need to recharge. And that's what I do. I sometimes don't even read when I'm drafting a new novel. Especially I don't read books within the same genre because I feel it sort of impacts my writing when I do that.
I tend to, if I'm writing fantasy, I will read contemporary romance because that will still keep me reading, but it's a completely different genre and it's something really enjoyable. So that's something I will enjoy. If I'm writing contemporary, then I'll read fantasy instead, because completely different genre again. So that's something that I tend to do all the time. I'm always switching over to opposites.
And in terms of schedule and everything, I try to be pretty disciplined in what I do. And more recently I submitted a draft of my fifth book to my editor. So I took like two months off writing completely. And I didn't feel the need to go back and write, which told me that my brain was completely exhausted.
So basically for this particular series, so I was writing Hunted, then I had to write Rising. And then while I was writing Rising, I had to copy edit and do edits for Hunted. And then again, when I started editing Rising, I was writing the new book.
So I've pretty much drafted like five books in five years sort of thing. So I feel that exhaustion now, at this point, and I really feel the need to recharge. But at the same time, now, I feel like I'm ready to go back into revisions, especially for book five. And my editor has mentioned that she'll be dropping an edit letter anytime in my inbox. So I better be prepared.
Sarah Enni: You're on notice.
Tanaz Bhathena: I'm on notice.
Sarah Enni: What a well-earned two months off, no joke. That is a really grueling schedule. But I like how you're phrasing that. I do think giving yourself regularly one day off and trying to take care with what you're reading at the same time, you can kind of create a consistent schedule as opposed to the crash and burn. Or sprinting right at something and then just getting burn-out and having to recover so extremely. So a consistency is probably key. And do you think having a day job helps with that as well? Sometimes it's nice to have a foot outside of publishing, right, to keep a balance.
Tanaz Bhathena: Absolutely. I mean, if I get tired of words, I can go to spreadsheets. I mean, that's kind of fun to do, right? I mean, that's my thing. I feel like it does help to have something else because you don't want to be just focused on the whole writing and publishing thing. Because it's so immersive and it's so time-consuming, and you just get engrossed in the world. I want to have a life as well, at some level. I want to be able to go out and chat with friends and family about other things than just my books.
Sometimes, especially during promo season, I feel like that's what I'm only doing. I'm talking about the book, the book, the book, the book, the book. And I really feel like I'm getting annoying. But at the same time, this is something that I've also accepted as part of my job.
It's my job to sell the book. It is my job to be the spokesperson of the book. And when I have to promote, I have to promote the book and I have to be shameless about it. Because if I'm not gonna do that, nobody else is going to do that. So the shamelessness took a while to come. It's still a work in progress, let me just say that much. I'm still sometimes very awkward about promoting my work, but then I'm like, "You know what? I need to sell a copy of this damn book."
Sarah Enni: Yes, that is a journey I think we're all on, just leaving the apology behind. Cause how can we be sorry that we have to do this stuff? This is our job.
I'm curious, I know you can't say too much, but I'm curious about having given yourself the freedom to explore fantasy. I wonder if you feel like you prefer that genre writing, or do you think you still have contempt stories to tell? Or, how are you thinking about that balance in your career going forward?
Tanaz Bhathena: That's a good question. I usually know pretty much what I am doing next, vaguely. But I like both genres. I like both contemporary and fantasy. So I do have a couple of baby ideas brewing in my head for both genres. Now, I don't know which one will take, so I'll have to try and experiment and play around and see which one is stronger at a certain point in time.
Sometimes it may just be a short story, but it's still something. It still is a product that I'll put out there. Maybe it will not be a whole novel. Maybe it'll just be something like a flash fiction that I might get published online or something like that. But this is something that I try to keep moving forward with. Even if it is something small, it's the writing that keeps me sane day-to-day.
Publishing is great, but it can sometimes really suck the soul out of you. So it's really the writing and the art that gives me joy. When I'm sitting on my computer, staring at a blank page, and I'm diving in to a completely different world. Whether it's in Jeddah or whether it's in Mississauga or whether it's in Ambarvarty, it doesn't matter. It's always a different world and I'm always immersed. And by the time someone taps me on the shoulder, I'm emerging, it's like coming out from under water and you're like, "Oh, where am I?"
That's the kind of experience that I enjoy. And that is why I write. I want to escape. I want to explore. And then I emerge, and then I feel like, "Okay, I understand the world better." But sometimes I really understand myself better. And I think that is something that is so beautiful about writing books, and writing fiction, especially. Because we're always seeking out the truth behind the lies.
Sarah Enni: Yes, that's so well said. I love that. Yeah, that "flow state" where you're really engaged in something. There was just a New York Times article about languishing, which is a term that I think mental health professionals are using, especially in this moment where everybody has had to be inside, or really significantly curtail activities, because of COVID.
And they were saying that one of the things that's present is it's not depression, but it's languishing. And a lot of people are experiencing that. I was obviously reading this article and relating to it in a big way. And one of the things that they recommended for that, if you felt like you were in that state, was finding projects to just immerse yourself in and to get into that flow state and to build things.
And it was really helpful for me to read. Cause I recognize those are some life-affirming moments when you get into that phase. And for us, we do that with books and it's so integral to our lives in books. But I was reading the article being like, "Maybe I also need to do that with some other things, like, maybe I'll just go play with the Lincoln logs. Or do something, build something in another realm, just to free up the mind and be in a different head space for a while."
So that's what was coming to mind while you were describing that. It's a really important part of life, finding meaning in these other versions of creative expression.
Tanaz Bhathena: Absolutely.
Sarah Enni: This has been such a wonderful conversation. I'm so grateful to you for giving me all this time. I like to wrap up with advice. You have given a lot of really, really wonderful perspective. I wonder, I'm gonna ask you this and let me know if you think this is an interesting avenue for advice. But I do actually get a lot of feedback, especially in the First Draft Instagram, about writers who are not based in the United States, engaging with traditional publishing in the United States.
I wonder if you have any advice for people like yourself, who you're based in Canada, and a lot of other people are in Mexico or in Brazil, and they're interested in publishing alongside the authors that they know and love, which would be in the U.S. If you have any advice, or if there's been anything that has been difficult for you because you're not in the U.S. I don't know if that's been something that's come up for you.
Tanaz Bhathena: I think if you want to get published in the U.S. it's useful to have an agent who is actually based in the U.S. because, typically, that will really help you get to American editors. I know that a lot of Canadian authors told me that if you have a Canadian agent, they are better connected to Canadian publishers and editors and things like that.
But if you have an American agent, the pool is much wider because there are a lot more publishing houses. So the U.S. is a huge English language market, so I think it's better to approach American agents. And one thing that I do appreciate very much about American agents is that most of them tend to reply very quickly, whether or not they want to read a manuscript. But then my experience with Canada, back in the day when I was queering, there were only about five established agencies, five or six, usually I'd not get a response, or I'd just get a form rejection.
So that's when I was like, all the fire extinguished. I'm like, "You know what? Let me just go and start submitting to U.S. agents." And my whole spreadsheet was like about 115 agents that I queried before I actually found one. But yeah, that is something that I absolutely think you should try. And I don't think you should let any rejection stop you, or any naysayers stop you. I don't think you should let anyone tell you your story is not important.
I remember early on when I was querying, this agent told me that, "Oh, this story looks very similar to something that's already been published." And I was like, "Are you accusing me of plagiarism?" Because that is really weird, you know? And that was so freaking weird. And then my cousin said, "Oh, have you read this author? This story sounds like something he would write." I'm like, "I have not read this author. How can I write his story? This is a different story. What are you talking about? My writing style and his writing style is completely different!"
And the funniest thing is that author she was talking about was a French Algerian author whose work was translated. So how in hell can I copy? It's so weird. I think it's because it was set in this middle east kind of setting, you know? Anything set in the middle east is like one homogenous blob.
So that's something that I actually had to face a lot of struggles with. So someone who did not understand the region that I was writing about, and things like that. But nowadays I think with more and more publishing professionals and agents who are diverse and who have background and experiences from different regions, they're aware of what's going on. I think it will be a lot easier.
When I was queering, it was a lot harder. You had to really climb through walls to be understood, or just to have your story understood. I think, at one point, there was an editor who sent me an email saying, "Well, have you read books by Rohinton Mistry and (unintelligible), who are two Canadian Zoroastrian authors. And I said, "Yeah, why?" And he's like, "Oh, maybe you should change your book's setting to India." And I said, "Why would I do that? I grew up in Saudi Arabia. This is about Indian diaspora kids in Saudi Arabia. Why would I change this to Bombay? I didn't grow up in Bombay. I mean, I'm not my parents. What are you gonna do?"
I mean, I was struggling too with the same thing that north American kids were struggling with, that, "We are not our parents. We do not have their stories. Our stories are different." And I think we should own those stories and take power from them and also push forward. That,, if not this agent, than someone else.
I had only one bit of advice and that's something that I used to do. I used to get one rejection, and I used to send out 10 more submissions. That's how I used to go. Like very, very brute force attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. That's how I used to go. And whenever I give this bit of advice to other writers, they're like, "You're really aggressive aren't you?" I'm like, "Yeah."
Sarah Enni: No shame in that, absolutely. I love that. No, that's great advice. And it sounds like you never settled for anything less than a respectful conversation, and that's really unfair to have to ask of you, but I'm glad you did, because it sounds like you ended up with people that respected and understood your stories. And I'm so glad.
Tanaz, this is such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for all your time today. This was a joy. Thank you.
Tanaz Bhathena: Thank you. It was wonderful having this conversation with you too. It was just like a natural flow and ebb, you know?
Sarah Enni: Yes. I love it.
Thank you so much to Tanaz. Follow her on Instagram @bhathenatanaz and follow me on both Twitter and Instagram @SarahEnni, and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). Thanks again to our sponsor, The Great Godden, the new novel from National Book Award finalist, Meg Rossof, out from Candlewick Press now.
As I mentioned at the top of the show, leaving a rating or review on Apple podcasts is a great way to support the show and help new listeners find us. Ratings are amazing, but reviews I get to read in the credits, which I'm gonna do right now. I'm gonna read a recent review that was left.
This review was left by LeeLovesSo. LeeLovesSo - it's a really fun name - LeeLovesSo says, "A much needed link to community. As a person who loves the writing community and lives far, far away from any. I consider this pod a lifeline to missives from the outer world. I find I always learn something unexpected, but more importantly, I feel connected to other writers and artists attempting to do the same thing as me. Because I feel like I'm settling down to a conversation with friends, I don't feel so all alone. Even better, I always wind up inspired and a little more joyful and seen than I was at the start. Thanks so much to Sarah Enni for being such a thoughtful and authentic host."
Thank you LeeLovesSo. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to leave that review, incredibly kind review. And that's literally the entire goal and dream that I had for this podcast was that despite geography, or where people were in their writing journey, that they could connect to other people who are engaged in this, out in the arena as it were. And I'm so grateful that you're here and thank you for taking the time to be so kind.
Today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to social media director, Jennifer Nkosi and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.
And as ever, thanks to you, shameless and proud for listening.
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