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First Draft Episode #325: Ayana Gray
September 30, 2021
Ayana Gray, debut author of Beasts of Prey, which is being adapted into a Netflix film.
Today's episode of First Draft is brought to you by Tonight We Rule the World by Zach Smedley. With the help of his friends, Owen Turner has found his voice, come out as bi, and settled into his ASD diagnosis. But when the school administration learns Owen's secret, that he was sexually assaulted by a classmate, Owen must scramble to hold his world together.
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Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Ayana Gray, debut author of Beasts of Prey. I so love this conversation with Ayana. I loved what she had to say about being the responsible oldest daughter who had to find a safe place in writing when all her life plans evaporated over the course of one college semester. On the trip to Ghana that changed her life and inspired her debut novel. And we talk about animals, the real ones that inspired Beasts of Prey and the mythological ones she used to flesh out her imagined world.
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Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Ayana Gray.
Sarah Enni: Hi, Ayana, how are you doing today?
Ayana Gray: Hi, I am so well.
Sarah Enni: I'm so excited to chat with you today. I just showed you, beforehand, just so many questions about Beasts of Prey. So I'm really excited to get to that and get into how the story came to be. But first, as you know, I love to go back and learn a little bit more about my guests. So I would love to go all the way back and hear about where you were born and raised.
Ayana Gray: I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and then I moved briefly, came back, and then we actually ended up moving to Little Rock, Arkansas when I was 13, unexpectedly, for one of my parents' jobs. So I did high school and college here in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's a weird thing, now, because I'm kind of from both places, even though I still say Atlanta.
Sarah Enni: I also moved, you said you moved at 13?
Ayana Gray: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: I moved at 12 from Texas to California and then all my family is in Washington, and ends up being kind of a comparable. This is part of why I like the question, it's always sometimes more complicated than you would think. Are you in Little Rock right now?
Ayana Gray: I am. My spouse and I just moved back from Gainesville, Florida, where I was for the last three years back to Little Rock to actually be closer to my immediate family.
Sarah Enni: I would love to hear about how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you, part of your childhood.
Ayana Gray: It was intrinsic. It was just always there. I used to draw, that was my first love was drawing and visual art, and I would draw stories and just staple the pages together and make books that way, because I loved stories and books. And I would present them to like my grandmother or my mom and dad, and they wouldn't know what was happening, they would try to guess. And it frustrated me.
And so I just ended up like, "I need words so people understand what I'm trying to say here." And then I started writing on the family Gateway computer, cause I'm a millennial like the group in the nineties and early two thousands and stuff. And so sort of got into it that way, keeping journals.
I didn't write like real fan fiction, like taking real characters that existed and then writing into that. But I wrote stories that were almost exactly the same storyline, but my own friends and my characters. And I watched As Told by Ginger [chuckles], which is like an early two thousands Nickelodeon show about a girl who loved to write.
And so, yeah, it was a huge part of my childhood, books, writing, all of it. And then I went to college thinking, "Okay, that was fun. But now I have to get a quote 'real job'." Because I grew up pretty middle-class and my parents just always had this like, "You need to have a job to support yourself. As a woman, you need to be able to support yourself." So I went into college planning to be a lawyer because I have a pretty strong sense of equality and justice, it means a lot to me.
And then midway through college was like, "This is not for me." The U.S. justice system is not always as clean cut as we like to think. And I was like, "I don't really want to work in this field." And it was like, "Okay, what now?" Cause I got this degree in political science. And one of my professors said, "Had you thought about African and African-American studies?" And I added that as a second degree.
I still was kind of like, "Okay, maybe I'll do something adjacent, but not necessarily be a lawyer." And then I got an internship while I was in college and ended up stumbling, very much stumbling, into higher-ed advancement. Which is fundraising, and raising money for scholarships, and for professorships, and faculty, and the stuff that tuition doesn't normally cover.
So a lot of people stumble into that. It's not something people just say, "When I grow up, I want to work in advancement."
Sarah Enni: [Chuckles] Right.
Ayana Gray: So that was my life before publishing.
Sarah Enni: I read somewhere that you said, "In my third year of undergraduate study, I took an honors colloquium on political violence that made me begin grappling with how ideas of good and evil can sometimes become murky."
And I know this is maybe one of the roots of starting to think about the story. Can you talk about that class and what would you learned through it?
Ayana Gray: Sorry, I jumped away ahead of what you asked earlier, like the story of my life. But yeah, right around the time I was like, "Okay, what am I gonna do?" I had another professor at college, Dr. Ryan, who was a poly-sci teacher and knew that I really enjoyed political science, even though I wasn't gonna be a lawyer, he knew that I really enjoyed it.
And it's really wild because he teaches a course or, I don't know if he still does, but he taught a course at University of Arkansas called political violence. But it wasn't on the official register, you couldn't sign up for it online. He actually picked 10 students for this class himself. And it met once a week, in a tower, on Wednesdays for three hours.
So we were part of this class and we'd get some reading, and we'd do the reading, and then the next week we would discuss. And we went in with all of our convictions, you know, we're college students so we think we know it all. And he would just twist us and absolutely turn us on our heads.
Because we're sitting there, like, "Of course this terrorist group is bad." And, "Of course this person was evil." And, "Of course this and that." And talking in absolutes. And then he would just say, "Well, were they?" And make us kind of put ourselves in new perspectives. And you realize that the villains and the heroes are manipulated all the time based on who has power and who doesn't have power.
I remember we used to walk out of that class, like, we'd start the class all chatty and la-la-la. And then three hours later, we'd all walk out in silence. All of us were just thinking, thinking deeply. But that class, it really made me think about moral ambiguity, like the ambiguity and moral relativism. And I was like, "I want to write about that. I want to write about a world where it's not quite as clear, what's good and bad." Or maybe, "What's good and bad isn't what we think."
Sarah Enni: And the second part in this interview that you talked about, was a semester abroad, or some traveling abroad and studying in Ghana. Can you talk about what that experience was like?
Ayana Gray: So that class that I took was in fall 2013 and then just a few months later, as part of my other degree in African and African-American studies, a group of us went to Ghana. And again, I just feel really, really lucky because I found some really cool professors. Normally when you study abroad, you find a sister school and you basically stay at the other campus and just do an exchange.
My professor, Dr. White who led the program, he wanted us to have as authentic an experience as possible. So not the polished, pretty, privileged version. We went to Ghana, we flew into a Accra, the capitol. We spent no more than two nights in any given city for a month. So we stayed in the capitol, then we got on a bus and went all the way up to a national park.
And we were staying in like, oh gosh, what's the word? We were staying in these, not reserves, but basically in a variety of different places. Hotels, sometimes places where there wasn't necessarily running water. Sometimes these were really nice five-star hotels. We saw thriving huge cities. We saw villages where there was no electricity or power. We saw the King of Ashanti's gold and his palace and all this wealth. And then we saw extreme poverty.
We were tracing the transatlantic slave trade because what a lot of people don't know is that African slaves were brought from all over the continent to parts of West Africa, because that was the closest port to get to the Americas. So we were tracing that route that still exists. We were also studying de-colonization since a lot of the heart of decolonization in Africa began in Western Africa.
And we were also studying Pan-Africanism, which is a political movement started to encourage unity among different African nations and ethnicities and people. And also, people of the diaspora as well, which I am part of that. So we were studying a whole lot of things in a short amount of time. It was a massive adventure. And I just remember thinking of how magical it was and wanting to write a story that took place in a world that felt like that, kind of magical.
Sarah Enni: That's what I thought of when I read you talking about this trip was like, how any time you explore a world, or a realm, or a place unlike your own, it adds to your imagination. Especially as a young person, studying this and getting not only to be there, but to know so much context about a place.
I was just like, "Ah! What a fertile imagination-expanding trip." I want to hear about how that fed into this story, but I want to just track... had you been doing creative writing through college?
Ayana Gray: Yes, I took one creative writing course in college and really enjoyed it. But again, I just didn't let myself imagine... I'm the oldest in my family, so for me, it's about being responsible and making the responsible choices. And I just didn't let myself think that that was a tenable thing that I could use to pay the bills. So it was something I was gonna do for fun as a catharsis, as something I enjoyed in my free time, but I didn't think I could actually do it as a profession.
And then I was also just writing for fun. Like I had the creative writing course, but then I also had a story that I was just messing with. And it never went anywhere, but it was fun to work on.
Sarah Enni: So there was a consistency in the background of this was a way of expressing yourself.
Ayana Gray: Yes.
Sarah Enni: So I'd love to hear, and we're kind of just like lightning fast getting to this, but I do have so many questions about your debut. You kind of have these really pivotal experiences in college and you're sort of like, "I can just put myself in that place." Your world's expanding. And of course, for us creatives, it's like, "How can I process this? How can I incorporate this into my life?"
And for a lot of us that means imagining a world where we can put these things into kind of a practice in our own way. So how did you figure out, "I'm gonna sit down and write," what then became Beasts of Prey?
Ayana Gray: Oh, um, through panic!
[Both laugh]
Ayana Gray: Through total panic! So again, I'm the oldest, I've always had a plan. And I like to have a plan. I like structure. I like routine. I like organization. So in high school I really was like, "I'm going to be..." And at the time I wanted to be an immigration lawyer. I wanted to work with people who their families were separated. I had a plan, this almost a ten-year plan, unraveled in the course of a semester or so.
And so I graduated from college. And my friends, because I got to surround myself with people who are like me and think like me, I have a lot of friends who are super ambitious and amazing people. One of my best friends is off traveling to Spain. Another friend is preparing for her doctorate, another one's going to medical school, law school, and I was just like, "What am I doing?"
I was just back at home like, "Okay, my plans are gone. What do I do?" So in this sort of weird panic, I just started writing because it was the one thing I knew and had control over. And there were a lot of really good books that came out in 2015. So I had fodder, I had a lot of really cool inspiration, but I just kind of retreated into it. And it calmed me down and it was, again, just something I could control in your early twenties, post-grad, when there's not much in your control.
And I didn't think anything was gonna happen, but I was just having fun writing it. And then over the years, it just slowly, slowly, slowly became a story.
Sarah Enni: I love that and, by the way, one of the most honest answers I've ever had on the show. I appreciate that cause that's an experience not unlike my own. I graduated from college and then had this personal tragedy in my life, my dad passed away. And it was in that moment of, like you say, "I can't control anything." Like, "What is the meaning? What do I believe in? What do I care about?" A story just helps to sort of process that and give you some momentum, or something to work through.
So I know it took you from 2015 to 2019 to get Beasts of Prey into the shape that we will all know now as readers. What was that process like? Because it's not super common, and I know you had written before, but you spent four years on the same manuscript. And that actually is gonna be your debut. A lot of people will write something and then sort of scrap it and move on to the next thing. So I would just love to hear about what the metamorphosis process was like writing this book.
Ayana Gray: My editorial process is really nutty. My editor is really kind to tolerate it because I don't tweak, I just rewrite. I'll write a draft and then she'll give me notes and then I will just rewrite it. I don't rewrite it, like recreate it, but I start with a blank document and physically rewrite it over again, if I have the time. Because it's just the way I think.
And so that's part of why it took so long because every time I'd get a new idea, I couldn't just stick the new idea into an old draft, I had to completely redo it. And also I was just living my life. I also went to go live in Australia for a year because that seems like the responsible thing to do at 23. Years of being the responsible older kid, it eventually just... you break and decide to do something vastly irresponsible, but fun.
So I went and lived abroad for a year. I had my first adult job that I was maneuvering through, and just trying to figure myself out, while I was writing. So another reason this book means a lot to me is because it grew up with me. But it took forever, I'm not a fast writer. And it changed. It changed vastly. And even after I signed with my literary agent, Pete Knapp, who's really editorial and has a wonderful eye for story craft, it changed again. And then when I got my book deal and worked with my editor, Stacy Barney, it changed again. Cause I kept rewriting it. So it's a little caterpillar.
Sarah Enni: I love that. That's so funny cause that is my tendency also, is to be like, "Well, toss it out." You can always print it. You always have it. You can cut or paste a sentence or two. It's not good or bad, of course everyone's process is just their process. But I think it's an act of faith. It's a little bit of a leap, right? Where you're just like, "I got to just trust that I can start over again and just do it again and that it'll be better. Because I'll be more in this world and I have more thoughts and details about it."
So anyway, that's my process too. And it is slow and intense. And some people just curl into a fetal position when they hear you say like, "Toss it out and start over."
Ayana Gray: I mean, I wish I could go into an old version. And I know that Scrivener, specifically, has that option for you to change the color and you can see your changes. And I've tried it, but it just doesn't work for me when I'm doing big edits.
Small edits, yes. But true revisions, I'll have the old version on my left in the left pane, and then my new version and I'm just typing as I look at it. I think it slows my mind down. It makes me really think deliberately about what I'm saying and doing in a way that I couldn't if I was just skimming through an old draft, you know? So yes, it works for me.
Sarah Enni: Well, let's talk a little bit more about, you brought in Pete, and actually selling the book. So you've been writing it from 2015 and I know you competed in the 2019 #DVpit. So tell me about that story and what it was like to prepare yourself and jump in with #DVpit then?
Ayana Gray: So everything's a story with me.
Sarah Enni: I love it.
Ayana Gray: I moved to Gainesville, Florida. I had no friends, nobody. It was the first time in my life where I moved somewhere and literally knew not a soul. And it was kind of hard. It's hard to make friends in your twenties because you don't have school anymore. And you don't have a built-in friend group or place to make friends.
And so I found the writing community online, specifically on Twitter. And it was so cool because suddenly I went from having no friends that were interested in what I was interested in, or very few I should say, to having suddenly lots and people who were into what I was into.
And national novel writing month, NaNoWriMo, was happening. And there were people who were doing it with me, who were encouraging me. Fall #DVpit was happening and I was like, "What's this?" And I saw all these really cool pitches.
And I was like, "Whoa, this is cool. I wish I'd known about this." And I actually messaged Beth Phelon, who is a literary agent and the creator of #DVpit and said, "When is the next one?" And she said, "It's gonna be April, 2019." and this was happening in fall 2018.
And I was like, "Okay, I have to finish this thing that I've been working on for four years by April, 2019, cause I'm not going to be able to participate if I'm not." And that was the very first time in my life that I ever had a deadline, ever. And it gave me pressure. It made me have to keep writing every day. So then I did it. And I was so nervous about it that I literally stayed home from work.
And I watched BeyChella, Beyonce's Coachella performance, all day long because she's just so powerful. I just watched that all day. I sent my pitch, cause what you do for this is, and I think you know this Sarah, but you pitch your book with a hashtag and hope that people like it. So I did it and then I just put my phone down and watched BeyChella all day.
And one of my friends was like, "Have you checked your Twitter? You might want to." And some agents and editors had shown interest, which was amazing. I sent it off [pauses]. I waited, actually, cause I was so nervous. I was like, "What if it's not ready?" So I waited. I sent it off a few weeks later and then sent it off to Pete. And Pete was so sweet, bless him. He responded really quickly and ended up offering maybe a month later after he'd read and given me his thoughts and stuff. So, yeah, I got lucky.
Sarah Enni: I appreciate you kind of outlining how that process works cause I've never participated personally. I know it's out there, but I know listeners want to know how it works and what it's like. So that's interesting that you waited. Were you polishing in that time? Or, what were you doing in between?
Ayana Gray: Polishing, but also trying to do research on literary agents. Because for me there were things that were really important to me and I wanted to make sure. This is my first story. This is the first time I'm ever queering. And I wanted to make sure I was sending my story to people I could trust, and sending the very best story that I could. So I was like, "It's not ready yet. It's not ready yet." But I was like, "Okay, eventually you do have to send it."
Sarah Enni: Ah, those moments!
Ayana Gray: Oh, and I was gonna say, cause I think it's really important to say this, I got plenty of passes. I think I got some RNRs, and offers. So it was a mixed bag. It certainly wasn't just all 'yeses' all the way through. I was fortunate that Pete saw the potential in it cause he told me, "I like this, but I want to work on it with you." And I was like, "That's fine."
Sarah Enni: I appreciate you saying that, that's really important too. And I love hearing that you were empowering yourself by doing your research. It sort of breaks my heart when I hear stories of people who feel like, "Oh my gosh, anyone! Whoever wants my story!"
Know that you are the creator, that you have something that is desirable. You do have power in those power dynamics. And agent/writer relationships can be tricky. But I'm glad that you took your time to know who you were gonna work with.
It's so interesting to me, I did the same thing. My agent was like, "I love your book, but there's a lot we have to do." And her notes just felt right to me. So I felt like I was in good hands. I'd love to hear about what Pete's thoughts were like and what made you know that he was the right person for you?
Ayana Gray: I'm a researcher at heart. It's something I love to do, even for fun. And so when I was figuring out, "Okay, traditional publication, you have to get a literary agent." And I know that some people are like, "Ugh, I just wanted to write and kind of be done." Whereas I was like, "I get to do research?" So I had charts and spreadsheets and I was like, "Okay, well this person represented this author who I like their work. And this person recently said this." And I had a whole thing.
And I remember one of Pete's, it was a hashtag #MSWL, so manuscript wish list, where he said something along the lines of, "As a kid, he really enjoyed drawing maps of fantastical worlds." And I was like, "I too liked doing that as a kid!" I was like, "A kindred spirit."
And fortunately I knew some of his current clients like Maiya Ibrahim and Amelie Wen Zhao. And they had spoken so highly of him and just talked about how he's a great agent, he's a great advocate, but he also just genuinely loves stories and specifically children's literature.
When I started working with him, I remember he gave me a list of craft books and he said, "You certainly don't have to read all of these, but if you're interested, here's some books on craft that I've found to be good." And they were so good and suddenly things clicked and made sense.
And then I got to call him and say, "Pete, what do you think of this?" It really mirrored a real editor, author relationship, actually. And it was long, it was several months. But I'm so happy that we did that because the story that I took out on sub to editors, was way better than what I queried to him.
Sarah Enni: How long was that editorial process after you signed with him?
Ayana Gray: Ooh, I signed with him in July. I got my edit letter in August. I got married that fall.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh! You had a lot going on.
Ayana Gray: And also did Pitch Wars and also like just had life happening. So I was slow anyway, but it was about a year. It was actually an honest year. And then the pandemic happened in 2020 and we went out on sub in July, so exactly a year.
Sarah Enni: That's so wild. Let's hear about the actual sales story and then I'm gonna have you pitch the book formally, and we'll talk about the actual text a little bit more. So you and Pete have worked together. You spend a year really polishing and making it ready for editors. What was that whole process like?
Ayana Gray: Oh, it was a whirlwind. So originally Pete was like, "Let's go on submission in the spring." And this is before the pandemic really took off. So then, obviously, the pandemic happened and March, April, May was just a mess. And at one point I was like, "Pete, I don't think that anyone's gonna want this book right now." We know that creative industries are the first to suffer when the economy tanks. And I'm like, "I just think that no one's gonna want this."
And it was so sweet because not even three hours later, he called me and was like, "Ayana, I believe in you. I believe in this story. We're gonna sell it." Which I was like, "Okay." I still didn't believe him, but I was like, "Thanks." And he said, "Let's go for summer."
There's this weird belief that summer is dead in publishing. And I don't know why people say that. I know people are on vacation, but we went out in early July. And I got really, really lucky. A few days later there was a publisher that wanted to take it to acquisitions. And then that kind of got the ball rolling.
And I had, again, a spreadsheet and it went from zero to 100 speaking to editors. It was really, really hard because I'm a relationship person. So I loved every single editor I talked to and was like, "I want to pick everybody." And Pete's like, "You cannot Ayana."
But I spoke to one editor, Stacy Barney, who just got the references, cause there are some Easter eggs in Beasts of Prey, like historical references, and she got them. And she was excited. And it was a really cool conversation. And to be honest, we were planning to go to auction, actually. And I was like, "Okay, we're gonna do it." And then pretty late at night, Penguin Random House, or Penguin specifically, they preempted and it kind of all came together and we decided to do it.
And it felt so good because that team, the entire Penguin Young Readers team, had been so genuinely enthusiastic. They had plans, they had ideas. And I told Stacy, "I feel like my words are safe with you." Like, "You're going to look after them as though they were your own." And I've continued to feel that way. So it was really funny how it took me four years to write, technically five, and then another year of editing with Pete. So it was this very long process, all for it to kind of culminate pretty quickly.
Sarah Enni: It's a hurry up and wait kind of business. Okay. Let's talk about Beasts of Prey. I have so many questions. I'm so excited to talk about it. But let's begin by having you officially pitch this book and this series for us please.
Ayana Gray: Okay. So Beasts of Prey is a young adult Pan-African inspired fantasy novel, and it follows two Black teenagers named Koffi and Ekon who form a very, very tentative alliance to venture into a magical jungle and hunt down a monster that has been menacing their city for nearly a hundred years.
Sarah Enni: Ooh, good job.
Ayana Gray: Thanks!
Sarah Enni: Talk to us about the origin story and actually going to Ghana and talking about the murkiness of good and evil, but I'd love to just hear you talk about the very purposeful decision to make this a Pan-African fantasy story.
Ayana Gray: So I mentioned before that Pan-Africanism is a real ideology and it was a political movement from the sixties, right around the time that many countries throughout the African continent were talking about considering, and in fact, actively de-colonizing from European powers. And it was a movement that encouraged unity.
So how do you conquer people? You divide them, you point out what makes them different. So Pan-Africanism was the answer to that, like, "No, let's focus on what we share. And also our brothers and sisters who are in the Americas who were taken from this land, they are part of us too. We are United in this." And so that was what that movement was about.
And there were several leaders of the movement, several important figures in the movement. I've actually taken some of their names and put them into Beasts of Prey. The scholars that Ekon reads about in the library, all of them are named after different leaders throughout the Pan-African movement.
But also it's literally Pan-African inspired because this is a story where there's mythology and nods to different countries throughout Africa. So western Africa, central, southern, eastern, the only area that probably is not referenced is northern Africa. But it's truly Pan and Pan means all. So it's a Pan-African inspired story. And I'm African-American so I don't know exactly what part of Africa my ancestors came from, so it's my way of honoring the continent and all of the people of the land.
Sarah Enni: I love that. And I use the word Easter eggs in my note too, about the names and a lot of the fables and myths, which we'll get to in a second. But then I was like, "You know, it is Easter eggs, but it's also just a syllabus, like a hidden syllabus, for anybody." I could just imagine a reader being really curious about it and then Googling these names and going down a bunch of rabbit holes and just sort of learning, you know?
I was that young kid in fantasy novels that was like that too like, "What about King Arthur is real?" And then six hours later and you've just done all this learning. What do you think about somebody engaging with your texts like that?
Ayana Gray: Oh, it's a dream. I think it'd be so cool for someone to do that digging after they have read. I did it as a kid and it was so fun. I used to think that fantasy authors made all this stuff up themselves and then you find out they're actually just pulling from mythology, from here, and here, and here. And so I did that, but with mythology based in the African continent. Most of the monsters and creatures that you see in the story are based from, or taken directly from, mythology and folklore all over.
Sometimes I flipped things and gave it my own spin because that's what we do as writers. But the hope is, and especially a Black kid is like, "Whoa, that was cool." And then they Google - insert Monster's name - and find out, "Oh, it's actually real." Because I didn't know that there was any mythology in Africa, in any country in Africa, until I was an adult.
But as a kid, I loved Greco Roman mythology. I thought it was so cool. All the animals, the Minotaur and Pegasus. And I thought that stuff was cool. And I remember drawing the Greek Pantheon as Black people. I drew a Black Zeus and I drew Black Athena, because Athena was my favorite goddess because I didn't know that there were any Black options. So my hope is that all kids, but especially Black kids, can see your ancestors, and your community, and your people have their own stories and an amazing mythos too.
Sarah Enni: I want to ask about, as you say, the grand tradition of fantasy writers pulling from their inspired texts and myths and fables and old, old, old stories. Within that, you made two really interesting choices that I want to talk about specifically, which is opting to use an actual language with Swahili and then also to opting to not use a real religion.
So let's talk about Swahili and your choice not to use a con-lang, a constructed language, but instead to go for language that actually exists. I'd love to hear your thinking behind that.
Ayana Gray: Yes, and these weren't light choices. I used Swahili because my name, Ayana, is a Swahili name. No one in my family speaks Swahili. I think it was a popular name in the nineties, to be perfectly honest with you. I think there might've been a movement within the African-American community to just start celebrating our ancestry. But to be honest, I was never ashamed of my last name, but I definitely got sick of my name because of people mispronouncing it, misspelling, just butchering it.
And you don't realize how much that impacts your identity as a person to have people constantly call you the wrong thing. It got to the point where people were like, "What's your name?" Like, "Just put A. Don't even bother, because I'd rather you just not say it wrong." And there was even, I think, in sixth grade I just went by my first name instead of my middle name. I'd always gone by my middle name, family, friends, everybody, and I just got sick of it. So I went by a different name for a while.
So there was a long, long journey to being okay with my name. And actually now, I try not to be mean about it, but I'm pretty firm about, "No, my name is Ayana. Please say it correctly. Please spell it correctly. Please don't abbreviate it, please." Like, being insistent about that. And when I meet someone, if I'm not sure, I ask, "How do you say your name?" And they're like, "No, no, don't worry." I'm like, "No, really how?" Because it's basic respect. Sorry, getting off my soap box to say, it was a long journey to learn to love my name and embrace it.
And as an extension of that, I wanted to embrace and celebrate the language that it comes from. Ayana means beautiful or blossoming flower in Swahili. And it's such a beautiful language. If you hear it, it's almost musical. I hadn't seen it in fantasy before. You know, we see other languages twisted and borrowed from, but I hadn't seen any language in Africa used before. So that's why I chose to do it.
With religion, I chose to totally make it up and not use a real religion. And this is a subjective opinion, fantasy authors have different feelings here. But my thing was that these are real faiths that people hold and cherish and that are quite meaningful. And I just didn't feel good about putting it in a fictional space.
It's not fiction for the people who adhere to it. They believe in it with all their hearts and that's part of the real world. So just out of respect, I chose not to.
Sarah Enni: I love that thinking cause it's, as you say, when you are creating a second world, fantasy, part of the world-building is faith, it's such a huge part of it. You created a constructed religion, The Six Gods of Azola? Is that right?
Ayana Gray: Ashoza, yeah.
Sarah Enni: Okay. The Six Gods of Ashoza. You clearly understand... there's so much more than even what's on the page, I can tell, because of how it's discussed and all the ceremonies and rituals. So this religion is absolutely the beating heart behind the world that you've created here. I'm just interested in what you, as a creator, were able to work through, or were interested in exploring, through this constructed religion. It's such an opportunity to think about ritual and what that means to us in our daily lives.
Ayana Gray: I think religion is fascinating and just what you get people to believe in and how that impacts the choices they make. And I've seen so many fantasy authors who I admire have really interesting takes on religion. One fun thing about Koffi and Ekon's world in La Kosa, as a city, and (unintelligible) as a continent, is they actually worshiped the same gods, but in different ways.
So what does religion look like for a persecuted people versus people who have been dominant and maybe been the oppressors in some situations. And there's a moment where Ekon and Koffi are in a temple and Koffi, who has never gotten to be in a temple, is like, "This is all a lot of pomp and circumstance." And Ekon is almost offended because he's like, "Well, what do you do?" And, "Why don't you come?" And she's like, "I'm not allowed to come, Ekon. Duh!"
And it stops to make him think, "Okay, my world is flawed." That's part of Ekon's growth in the story is, he has these very rigid beliefs in right and wrong, and learning to challenge them. Which, at 17, you should be challenging the world you live in and asking questions, and asking, "Why do we do things a certain way?" So it's fun. And I love gods and goddesses interfering. That's just a favorite thing of mine. I'm reading Circe right now and just loving it. So lots of fodder for me.
Sarah Enni: You sort of brought this up a little bit earlier, but I want to kind of hone in on the exploration of inter-generational trauma in this book, as a narrative. And something that, in their own specific ways, and we'll get to this too, all three point of view characters, cause there are actually three, are exploring this and thinking about it in different ways.
In your author's note, you say, "As I wrote and revised the story over the years, it became more than a creative outlet for me. It also became a device of catharsis, a chance for me to explore, reclaim and celebrate heritage that was violently erased as a consequence of trans-Atlantic slavery."
And I felt this so specifically in Ekon's storyline, as you said, and not only his exploring his lived life trauma and PTSD, but the inter-generational trauma that led to it. And that has led to the formation of the world around him.
But Ekon also is deconstructing the coping mechanisms. So I felt through him, a lot of exploration about mental health and how we sort of stay to wellness, and how we have to break that down to further our development. So I would just love to hear more about what it was like to get into his head and deal with those really challenging topics.
Ayana Gray: I'm always really touched when people read my words and I always feel very seen, so thank you for that. Yeah, it was catharsis writing this. I mean, I cried. And that's a weird thing because you're totally in control so you, in theory, make yourself cry. But that's the beauty of it. You're writing and thinking you're just telling a story and then you write words and look back and reread them and you're like, "Whoa, I just put myself very much into this." I'm fortunate. I haven't dealt with the loss of a parent, I'm very thankful not to have dealt with it.
But I have dealt with loss and I think more complicatedly, at least in YA, and this is not a mean critique it's just an observation, when we talk about loss in the YA space, I see a lot of loss and it's like, "I lost my sister, sibling, parents..." Someone who was great, right? Like they were perfect. And it's a profound tragedy that they're no longer here.
And I think about, for example, my grandfather, who in my eyes is perfect. And it's terrible that he's not here because he is perfect. It's easy to grieve somebody like that, right? It's a lot harder to grieve somebody when they messed up, when they were not perfect, when you're maybe even mad at them, and now they're gone. So you have this anger, but you feel guilty for being angry, which makes you madder. It just creates such an emotional mess.
And I didn't see that getting talked about as much when we talk about grief. So with Koffi and Ekon, I kind of wanted them to explore that. With Ekon and mental health, the Black community's relationship with talking about and acknowledging mental health, it's a dire relationship. It's getting better, getting much better, but historically has not been great.
So I wanted to talk about, ultimately, a Black boy, he is a child, who's dealt with trauma and has not been allowed to even deal with trauma. And anytime he shows any sign of grief or trauma, or like a reaction, he's almost scolded for it. And I hope that when people read it, they're like, "That doesn't feel right." Because it's not right. It's me putting the things I want to see, the things I wish I didn't see in my community, onto the page. And also things from my life.
I had some pretty traumatizing events, fortunately not the loss, like a death in my family, but some pretty traumatic events happen when I was a teenager. And the way I coped with them was kind of like Ekon I buried myself in work and the things I could control, and just totally ignored what was happening. And it ended up not actually helping me deal with the problem itself, it just prolongs that until I actually stopped and dealt with it.
Sarah Enni: I'm feeling some parallels between Ekon's moment of [pauses], I'm really trying not to spoil in the conversation, but in the vaguest possible terms, he does get sort of this moment to deal and cope and process. That is part of his journey.
But I'm relating to what you said earlier about being the oldest kid, and having this ten-year plan, and then it being sort of evaporated. That is so echoed in his story line and he's like, "Wait! I had this whole map and now we're not going the right way."
[Both laugh]
Ayana Gray: And I love that because I'm now married to somebody who's more like Koffi, whereas I'm more like Ekon and there's a moment where, again, they have a plan, and Ekon's like, "Right. This is the plan." And then Koffi is like, "We're not doing that anymore." And he gets really mad. And I'm like, "That's me. It's me." Because I get so upset, like irrationally upset, when a plan unravels even though that's life. And that's part of growing is being adaptive and being okay. But, my poor Ekon.
Sarah Enni: It's easier said than done. But to me, as someone who is a huge advocate of therapy and talking things through, I felt like there were some conversations had in the book that I was like, "This feels familiar." Like, "This is very much like an on-the-couch conversation." And it was really wonderful to see it on the page cause that's how growth happens is through conversations like that, which don't need to be in a therapist office. They often are, but they can be with people who love each other or who are growing to love each other.
I do want to ask about how that is explored in Koffi's story. The catharsis that I saw in her story is sort of heartbreakingly her innate [pauses], again, you tell me if we've gone too far to spoiler territory, but there is something special about Koffi that has been hidden from her for her own protection.
And we get to explore, explicitly, how her growth and journey in discovering, understanding, feeling the generations that came before her, who actually make her what she is, was so powerful. I would just love to hear about what that story was like especially knowing, as you said, that the story is based on you are NOT able to know many, many generations. So I'd just love to hear about what it was like to write that.
Ayana Gray: Oh, I'm trying not to be spoiler-y too. Okay, for example, you talk about the, 'who would you love to have dinner with?' Kind of questions? And there are celebrities and, of course, people who I admire. But I told you I liked research. Love research. And a few years ago I did my family tree as far back as I could go in every direction. I did a subscription and I paid to have access to census records.
And on every side, maternal/maternal, maternal/paternal, paternal/maternal, et cetera. I can only go back about six generations. I shouldn't say only because some people can't even go back that far, but each time there was a definitive stop and it was always with slavery. And you realize like that's only into the 1800's. African slaves were brought here as early as 1619. So that's 200 years roughly, or more, of my family, like my family. And I don't know what happened to them.
I found a record of one of my ancestors and her record was with the animals as considered part of the estate. Domestic servant was what she was called. They had lives, they had nicknames, they had jokes, they laughed, they cried, they had wants, they had personalities. Like these were real people and I will never know them. And that hurts. It really hurts.
And not gonna get too heavy, but I think about specifically those of my ancestors who were taken and the question that eats at me, I think about them being put on ships. And I don't know because I'm a writer and I think of stories, I think about them sailing away from the coast and watching it get smaller and smaller.
And I wonder, did they know? Did they know that they were never coming home, that their kids were never gonna get to see their home? That their grandkids and their great-grandkids and 300 years later the language that they speak, the food they grew up with, and the things they knew, they would never know. And it just eats at me and it's made me cry and be really angry. So all of that's there.
So I wanted to write a story where if I had the chance to sit down with my foremothers, these women who have been through so much and just be with them, what would that be like? And so I wrote something like that into Beasts of Prey. And it made me feel better because I'll never get to have that, but I got to write what I imagined it could be like, and I did it. And I was crying as I wrote it. And then this kind of weight came off of me. Really heavy, sorry.
Sarah Enni: Oh, no. I mean, not to be like, "Yay!" But I so appreciate you speaking to that because that is the power, as you and I both know as avid fantasy readers, the power of these secondary worlds and not our world is that it can be so much more real. Clearly, I was so moved by that in the book. So I couldn't not ask that question, even though we were dancing on the line of spoilers. Thank you for speaking to that cause that was just such a powerful part of the book.
But speaking of how fantasy novels can sort of do a lot of this work for us, and how allegories or fables or these sort of skews on the world, I want to use that as a way to talk about the animals in this book because, oh my gosh, it's so clear that you are an animal lover. To start with, I want to talk about Shetani and I have got to ask about this real story that you share in the author’s note about The Ghost and The Darkness. This is like a chilling story and I'd love to hear you tell it.
Ayana Gray: Yes. So that's technically the third inspiration for Beasts of Prey, but I always feel like I need to cut it down to the two. So, it was the story that happened where in Kenya and Uganda in the 1800's the British, because colonization, were trying to build a railroad to connect Kenya and Uganda for trade.
And they set out and they hired a bunch of local and Indian, actually, workers to come work on it. And these two male lions were coming at night and killing the workers. And everything about it was wrong because male lions, if you know basic stuff about lions, male lions aren't supposed to hunt at all. They're really there to kind of just be the large protector. It's the female lionesses that hunt, first of all.
Second of all, male lions do not hunt together. They don't hang out together. Everything about it was odd. Lions don't typically go for humans on purpose. If they attack a human it's because they came into the territory or some freak accident. These male lions, who were brothers, were hunting together and they were deliberately picking off humans and they were not necessarily eating them. They were just killing them. So it was blood sport and they couldn't catch them. They could not catch these lions, and this is a real story.
So they had to bring in a guy, funnily enough his name was Remington, his last name was Remington. And he came up with this very sophisticated way to catch these lions and kill them. And they're currently at, I believe, the Chicago Field Museum and they've been studied and people have tried to figure out why were they doing it? There are theories, but no one's ever been able to conclusively say why they were doing that.
And so I thought about the fear. Lions, in general, are scary. But to be out on the East African plains at night and you can't see, but you know there is something out there and you don't know where it is or when it will come, but it will come. I just thought about the fear that almost what you don't know is scarier than what you do.
And so I was like, "Ooh, this is up my alley." Also The Crocodile Hunter is one of my favorite shows as a kid. Animal Planet was my favorite channel as a kid. And I just thought like, "Animals are something that I think are cool. " And especially the animals that people often write off as dangerous and bad when actually they're not bad at all. They're cool. Komodo Dragons are cool. I stand by that. I had a Komodo Dragon poster in my bedroom for the longest time. So I was like, "Bees are really cool creatures." My mom's like, "You're very strange, Ayana."
But Steve Irwin had such a passion for these misunderstood animals. You could hear in his voice and see in his face, the admiration he had for animals and the respect. And that had a huge impact on me. And so when I'm like, "If I'm gonna write a fantasy story, there have to be animals. There have to be."
In the Night Zoo where the story begins, Koffi is there as an indentured servant, that part's not cool, but she does have a cool job. She's working with these magical creatures, larger than life, amazing creatures. And she's sort of indifferent like, "Ugh, this again." So yeah, I wrote what I thought was cool, what little Ayana would have been so excited about that kind of story.
Sarah Enni: Yes. Yes, oh my gosh. And the Shetani, because it's so pivotal to the plot, can you sort of explain the role that the Shetani is playing?
Ayana Gray: There's only one, the Shetani, which translates in Swahili to demon. And it's, again, going back to The Ghost and The Darkness. The Ghost and The Darkness are the names that the local workers gave to these lions. One was The Ghost, one was The Darkness.
Sarah Enni: So chilling, such great names.
Ayana Gray: I love the lore of it. But thinking about, again, no one has ever seen the Shetani, it's this monster that comes at night and it kills people and it leaves them at the edge of the jungle. So it's not eating them, it's just killing them and leaving them in a horrible, grizzly state for people to find the next morning. And at this point it's been going on for 99 years. People have just said, "Okay, it's going to come." And so you can imagine the stress and the tension and the fear that that would create in a society like that.
I mean, I'm horrible, but I thought, "This sounds fun!" I thought about describing the Shetani saying that few people have seen it, but I think, "No, it's more fun that no one has seen it." And that's part of what Ekon and Koffi, both, are having to get over like, "Are they going to see it?" And then, "What do we do when we find it?" Cause no one's ever gotten to.
Sarah Enni: At some point it's mentioned, and this is a small thing but it was really telling to me about the world, was that in the library in the temple it had been decreed that no text about this creature could be in the library. And I was like, "God, that's just so what humans would do." We just let our fear overtake the importance of knowing, or whatever. It was just like such a small thing.
Ayana Gray: Common sense.
Sarah Enni: Yes!
[Both laugh].
Ayana Gray: And that's what fear does, you know? Perhaps a less kind commentary about [pauses], these are the academic and religious leaders and because they've said something and decreed it, that's it. And no one has questioned it. When in fact we should be questioning it. So yeah, I won't spoil it but a slight Ayana opinion there.
Sarah Enni: Yes. I love it. And the other thing, the Ayana opinion, I want to get to a little bit about the animals and their use. Some of these are based on real animals. Some of them are real animals. And some of them are mythological creatures. Some of them are based in myths that exist. And some of them you came up with.
I would just love to hear what you think using animals and creatures enables you to do as an author that you can't really get at with human characters. It seemed to me it was really doing a lot for you in the story.
Ayana Gray: Oh, yay! I think, and I'm saying this as somebody who's watched lots of Animal Planet, as somebody who has a Golden Doodle puppy, what's fun is that animals can be both predictable and unpredictable. It's hard to get your arms wrapped around them, especially if you are just encountering them for the first time. I like to think that it kept you from being able to quite predict what was going to happen.
There is a character, a West African god named Anansi, who appears as a spider, as a man, in different stories throughout lore. Who is always a trickster and you never quite know what's going to happen when he's involved. And I enjoyed that. I enjoy trickery and mischief.
And Koffi and Ekon have a plan and then what happens when a character similar to that gets in their way? I like the unpredictability, to answer your question in a short way.
Sarah Enni: And animals also seem like they're such ciphers, right? I mean, some of these animals in your story, can speak and make their intent known. But other times, you really have to just listen and pay attention and use these other senses as opposed to us relying on talking so much of the time.
I think that's what I was sensing too, is like, you can know so much about a character based on how they're interacting with these animals, or what they want to do with these animals, or what they think the animal wants for them.
Anyway, it made me feel like it was underdeveloped in other fantasy worlds, so I was like, "Okay, I'll keep that in the back of my mind as a reader going forward." And if I ever write fantasy, this is an important, and really useful thing, to have in your back pocket as a writer.
Ayana Gray: It's fun. Again, I'm probably putting my opinions into it, but not judging by appearance because what seems dangerous may not be, and what seems perfectly fine may not be. You never know.
Sarah Enni: Yes. You sold Beasts of Prey as a trilogy. I would love to hear, book two and three, to what extent have they been developed? Did you have to give a synopsis before you sold? What state is it now? This is a thing I've never done, I'm so intimidated even imagining it. What's your head space going into this next two books?
Ayana Gray: So I know that every agent and every editor does it a little bit differently. Again, Pete is a story person, and I knew that and I wanted that in a literary agent. So before we went on submission he actually asked me to write, basically, one page summaries for books two and three. Which, writing a synopsis for Beasts of Prey actually wasn't that hard. Writing a query letter wasn't hard. I almost pseudo enjoy those things, which is weird.
But writing those summaries was hard because I had just finished book one. I was kind of like, "I think this is the ending." And suddenly, after four years of being in one world, thrust myself into the very far future. And you know, I'm like, "I don't even know if book two is going to pan out the way I'm guessing. And if it doesn't pan out that way, that affects book three."
So I wrote one page summaries and Pete was like, "Look, we're gonna send these with the understanding that, through editorial revisions and whatever, they could likely change. And it's okay. They're not gonna hold you to this." So we submitted all three.
Then Penguin, and Putnam specifically, signed all three. I have kind of my schedule, which is weird. I have a schedule for when I turn in each one. I've technically turned in book two already, but I'm gonna rewrite it.
I've now told you, like, I'm gonna rewrite it, because that was just my ugly draft, my ugly zero draft, that I really didn't want my editor to see. But she was like, "I have to see it." So I sent it to her and was like, "Here it is, don't read too closely." It's with her. She'll send it back to me. And then I'll just keep working on it and probably turn it in at the end of this year, which is a little weird, even though it doesn't publish until next year, mid next year. And then funnily enough, my outline for book three, technically, is due two days after book one publishes.
Sarah Enni: Interesting. Oh my gosh.
Ayana Gray: So yeah, it happens very far in the future.
Sarah Enni: Yes, it's all staggered out. It's so funny as a writer too, it's such an unstructured job until it's not. Until it's like, "Oh, I have deadlines for the next three years." Do you revel in that? Is that a happy place for you to be creative within?
Ayana Gray: It's hard. It's hard and by no one's fault other than my own, because I put pressure on myself. Again, I'm super lucky. Stacy has been like, "Ayana, your words are safe with me, as always." Like, "Don't worry. I'm not gonna rip this apart." But I'm ripping it apart in my head. And this is the first time I wrote on a deadline, like a real contracted deadline. I mean, I can be flexible with it, but in my mind, I was like, "It's on a paper. I signed it. I have to keep to that." So that part's hard.
But on the other hand, I was writing Beasts of Prey and I had to encourage myself because I was like, "Nobody's waiting to read this at the end. You just have to write it for yourself." Whereas now I'm writing for myself, but I also know that there are people who are going to read it. So that's a bit of inspiration too.
And also I'm like, "Okay, I did this once under much harder circumstances, in a lot of ways. I've taken all this skill and all of these lessons learned from writing one and I can apply that now." So it's come together faster actually.
Sarah Enni: Interesting. So the thought of people definitely reading your words, some people get a little stopped-up by that idea, but it sounds like you're actually using that as fuel.
Ayana Gray: Yes, and so far I'm not debuted yet, so it's probably gonna get harder to do this. But I've steered very clear of GoodReads, even though I love GoodReads, and places where people review. Number one, that's not really my space, in my opinion, I shouldn't even be there.
But also, because I want this to still stay my world and not let any outside opinions dictate. If people really respond well to something in book one and really want X to happen, I kind of want to shut those voices out until I'm done. Totally done. So, it's fuel, but I have to be careful how I let it into my life.
Sarah Enni: I think that's really wise. Okay. I want to just talk really quick, because I am such a dork about interviews, obviously this is something I love, you've got this great series of interviews on your website. I would just love to hear about how Inklings interviews came about and what you have learned, or explored, through asking other writers questions about their process.
Ayana Gray: I think it's just me feeding that research habit, again. Between loving research and also loving people's stories, the story within the story, when I was getting into the writing community and making friends, I was just so curious about how many different journeys people had taken to get to where they were. And it's been really cool because, and I didn't do this on purpose, but there were people who I connected with who I was like, "Hey, I, Ayana, would genuinely like to know your story. And while I'm being nosy and asking, I might as well share it." And people were really kind.
It's wild because some of the people who, before they had a book deal, before they had a literary agent, were like, "Sure, I'll share my story. It's not much, but I'll share it." And that's them saying like, "Oh, I don't have much to share." But I thought, "Yeah, you do."
But now they've gone off and done amazing things. You know, written many books, found literary agents, hit bestseller lists. And it's really cool to remember who they were when they were like, "Gosh, I hope this happens. Someday it would be really cool if this happens." And then to watch their story add more chapters.
So short answer, I'm nosy. And I just wanted to know more people's stories.
Sarah Enni: Well, I can very much relate to that. Things like that are a service to other writers. I think it's helpful just to hear how other people have done what they've done, or what challenges they've faced. And maybe they have some advice that will resonate with you. It's always inspiring to me to hear from other writers. So I'm glad that you're adding to the wealth of knowledge out there.
Ayana Gray: Oh, thank you for that. You feel less alone. And it's very funny because I listened to First Draft, like I would listen to my favorite authors and their experiences and be like, "Okay, I'm not alone in this." This person, who I think is amazing, also had doubt, and also got rejected, and also had sadness. And you find community in what you share. So this is cool.
Sarah Enni: Yay! I'm so excited. I love to wrap up with advice, as you know. So I really would love to hear advice, if you have it, for someone who is setting out to tell a big story like this. A story that is going to take three books to tell, a really ambitious story. Do you have any nuggets for those people?
Ayana Gray: Ooh. Just take your time. Take your time and don't hold yourself to anybody else's clock. That's something I did. I felt badly. I felt like, "I write so slowly. This is never gonna come together." But trust me, I can't speak for my own work objectively, but I can say that in the writers I admire, you can always tell when someone gave thought and took their time creating their world, and getting to know it like the back of their hand.
And you can tell when it's rushed and people aren't thinking through the details. It just makes the experience so much richer and so much more fun. It's sort of like a meal. You can tell when someone rushes to mix it. It may be tasty, but quick meal versus somebody who really spent the day cooking, and you're like, "I can tell."
Sarah Enni: As someone who has, in the past, forgotten to strain the macaroni in making mac and cheese, I'm like, "Yes."
Ayana Gray: It's so funny cause I was about to use macaroni and cheese as the example. I'm a cheese person. Look, I love cheese, and I have feelings about macaroni and cheese. And I'll have the 15 minute Kraft Mac and Cheese, and it's good. But then my grandma's recipe, that takes hours, there's a difference, and you can tell. I will stop there, but I have feelings about mac and cheese.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. Okay. Well next time you're on the show we'll get into it. Ayana, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I so appreciate you giving me all this time today.
Ayana Gray: Thank you so much.
Thank you so much to Ayana. Follow her on Twitter @AyanaGray and on Instagram @AyanaGray_. Follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram), and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
First Draft is produced by me, Sarah Enni. 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, ghosts in the darkness, for listening.
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Track Changes Learn how the traditional publishing industry works in the Track Changes podcast mini-series.
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