- So Leigh, welcome to Audible.
Thank you so much for joining me.
We're gonna dive straight in to "Hell Bent".
How would you describe this new book?
- I like that you're like, we're going straight to hell.
(Holly laughs)
So "Hell Bent" is really a journey to the underworld.
I wanted to write something that would startle people
and in some cases, discomfort them,
because I didn't want it to be a comfortable book.
I think there are elements of it that become almost cozy
but I also think there's quite a bit of urban fantasy
or paranormal fantasy.
- And introduce me to Alex, the main character, Alex Stern.
- Alex Stern is a young woman who does not belong at Yale.
That's where the story takes place.
She has the ability to see the dead.
And so she's been drafted into the Ninth House
that oversees the occult activities
of the secret societies at Yale.
Those societies are very real,
although the magic they practice in the book I imagined,
and it's Alex's job and her mentor's job
and all of the members of the Ninth House
to make sure that things don't get out of control.
You put a lot of power into the hands
of a bunch of college students,
things could get dire very quickly.
So that's her job but she's ill-equipped to be at Yale.
She's kind of the ultimate outsider.
She comes from quite a difficult background
and she's just trying to keep her head above water
and get through.
- Yeah. And so how does it compare
writing about a place that's real
versus writing about a world that you've created?
Like the Grishaverse?
- I wanted that parity with reality to be there.
To me, that raised the feeling of magic
just being another kind of power.
In the same way that social influence
or economic influences, the magic becomes more real
because you know this city and all of the decoration,
all of the buildings, all of these secret places are real.
- Mm. And so tell me about those secret societies.
What is their purpose?
What do they do in in the real world?
(Leigh laughs)
Because for me, I'm like, a secret society.
That in itself seems like something that is in fiction.
- I mean, look, (they laugh)
the societies at Yale are secret
because way back when, Phi Beta Kappa,
which is now considered just an academic society,
it wasn't, it was also a social society.
And then there was this major movement
in the United States rejecting anything masonic.
It was considered elitist.
It was considered dangerous.
And so anything secretive
or associated with those kinds of rituals,
it was, that was out.
And so Phi Beta Kappa says, "We're not secret anymore."
And a bunch of guys at Yale were like,
"But we like being secret." (Holly laughs)
"I was promised I was gonna get to be a secret."
And so they founded Skull and Bones.
And so the societies since then are essentially,
they're networking clubs
and they have evolved now to be places
where you really do have the opportunity at their best
to come into contact with people who, you know,
after four years at school,
you probably have closed in that social circle.
And I got to meet people
who I don't think I would've met otherwise.
We had differing interests, we had differing majors
and we got to know each other very well.
And I'm still very close to the people
who were in my society.
But the reality is they occupy
a very strange space on campus.
There are eight societies
that are considered the Ancient Eight.
And they have these elaborate tombs
that are essentially clubhouses
but they are massive, windowless buildings.
They're built in these whimsical architectural styles.
Skull and Bones is a giant Egyptian temple
built in red stone on the campus.
Book and Snake is a massive white marble mausoleum.
Okay. Like they want to be looked at.
So they're essentially announcing their presence.
And yet they said, you know, "Look at us, don't look at us.
Look at us, don't look at us." You know?
So that, to me, that tension is very fun.
And when I first started to understand what they were,
as a student, I just became obsessed with them.
- Mm. How did you get in
- Had to do a few murders.
(Holly laughs)
I don't honestly know.
So at least from my society
we had a rule where we had to look
at literally everybody who was in the class beneath us.
And I guess I had done enough interesting things
that somebody said, "Oh, I think she would be fun."
I don't know, maybe I met somebody at a party
and they liked me.
And they take you and they interview you.
And I remember them saying,
"Well, would you want to be in this?"
I said, "Well, I'm not gonna say I love you first,
(Holly laughs) you have to say you love me
and then I'll tell you if I love you."
But yeah, I consider myself very fortunate
because I got access to this world.
But I also understand, there's no question,
and I think my relationship to the societies and to Yale
is very much paralleled by Alex.
And that I fell in love with this place.
It was so different from any place I'd been before.
It was, it had a very deep magic to it
and I wanted so desperately to belong to it.
But you have to ask yourself,
in that desperation to belong,
what compromises you might be making?
- Hmm. And before we depart from talking about Yale,
what would you say is the most surprising thing in the book
which is actually drawn from
a real experience you had at Yale?
- Oh, that's an interesting question.
I mean, I will say that people might be startled.
If they go down the rabbit hole,
many of the stories I tell about Yale and New Haven
are 100% true.
So when I talk about the fact
that there are thousands of bodies
still interred beneath the New Haven Green, that is true.
And when I say that, after a hurricane,
a skeleton was found tangled
in the roots of one of the trees
haven risen up through the soil.
That is true.
So I invite people to, if you come across
a little bit of New Haven lore or Yale lore,
to see, to find out,
to give it a push and see if it's real.
- And what about people-wise?
Did you know anyone like Walsh Whitely?
(Leigh laughs)
So, he's a professor in the book
- Actually, yes.
Professor Walsh Whiteley may seem very extreme to people
but in fact, the society that I was in
was the last to accept women.
And in one of my early interactions
with one of the alumni from the Society,
he turned to me and said, "Well, is there any
hanky panky at the hall?"
And I tried so hard not to laugh at hanky panky and failed.
But what I really thought was,
"Do you think there wasn't before?
Do you think there had to be women there
for there to be hanky panky in the hall, sir?"
So I definitely met people like that.
And there are definitely stories and people who,
if not, who were maybe not direct parallels
but were certainly inspired by people I met.
- And how has it felt to kind of move
from hanging out in kind of early 19th century Russian
kind of influence and stuff to moving to America?
How has that kind of felt in writing those different places?
- I think, I mean, I love research
because it's really just learning stories
and learning history.
And for me, I think I've been moving closer
and closer toward a particular kind of research.
When I created the Grishaverse
I used Czarist Russia of the early 1800s and mid 1800s
as a kind of cultural touchstone.
That was a point of departure to build the world from
and to start building these other cultures from.
When I was working on "Ninth House",
I was really zeroing in on something specific
that I wanted to adhere to as tightly as I could,
in terms of a time period
and in terms of the environment there.
And now I'm working on my first historical fantasy
and that also, it's set in Renaissance Spain.
And I am having to research very heavily.
I've hired a research assistant for the first time
because I'm definitely in deeper waters here.
But I think all of that has been building toward this moment
where I feel, maybe I'm hesitant to say
confident to write the work
but where I at least feel like I,
I don't think this is a book I could have written
as the first book in my career.
- Mm. And how did "Shadow and Bone",
that first book in your career come about?
- Well, (laughs)
I used to work in makeup and special effects
and I ended up accidentally volunteering my services
to someone for Halloween.
And after being exhausted by this
and we were staying at their house in the mountains.
And that was supposed to be the payoff
for all this free work.
Well, the night after Halloween, I stayed behind,
everybody went to dinner
and I stayed behind to read my book.
I can't remember what book it was.
And I fell asleep.
And when I woke up, the room was pitch black.
And I mean, not city dark, it was country dark
where you can't see your hand in front of your face.
And I, of course, was sure
that somebody had come to murder me,
because, as you know,
serial killers wait until you're awake to kill you.
- Yeah. - And, and I woke up
and I was terrified and my heart was pounding in my chest,
but nobody, you know, attacked me.
And so I went around the house turning on every light.
And as I was getting ready for bed that night
I could not stop thinking about the fact
that no matter how old we get or how wise we get,
our fear of the dark never goes away.
And I began to ask myself, "All right, well,
what if you couldn't turn the lights on?
What if darkness was a place
and the monsters you imagined there were real
and you had to fight them on their own territory?
Why would you go into that territory?
What would've created it?"
All kinds of questions kept presenting themselves
and that became the seed that would eventually
become "Shadow and Bone".
- Hmm. And a lot of people will have discovered that
and discovered your writing through the TV series.
So "Ninth House", that's gonna be a TV series too.
How do you feel about that process?
Second time round, maybe slightly different.
- It is a little different because I've actually
been lucky enough to be involved in writing the pilot.
I've been a little bit more hands-on.
We are at a different stage with that.
And you know, the wheels of Hollywood do turn slow.
But for me, I definitely feel more comfortable.
And the thing I've learned is that
adaptation is all about trusting your partners.
And it is always a gamble.
You might like somebody starting out,
but you may not like them a few weeks
or a few months or a few years down the road.
So you do your best.
You vet people, you try to trust your gut,
you try to have conversations about the things
that are important to you,
and then you move forward in good faith.
And there is a point where you have to let go.
I was heavily involved in season one
and then I sort of took my hands
off the wheel for season two
because I needed to get back to writing books.
- Yeah. - Yeah. This is my dream job
so I need to keep doing it if I wanna keep it.
- Yeah.
And in all of the things you are working on,
should you have time to pick up a book yourself and read,
what are the books or a book recently
that has made you kind of, you know,
wanna get to the next page, wanna get to the next chapter?
You know, racing through it?
- I'm gonna give you two.
One is YA and one is Adult.
The YA is called "That Self-Same Metal".
It is by Brittany Williams.
And it is about young woman who can forge magical weapons
and she works for, essentially for Shakespeare's players.
It's a historical fantasy.
And there's Fae and there's magic.
And it's just, she's an actress herself
and has done so much research into the theater history
and it's fantastic.
And then the other is a book
that's not coming out for a while,
it's called "Long Live Evil"
which is just maybe the best title I've ever heard.
And it's by Sarah Rees Brennan,
and Sarah herself had a fight with cancer.
And this is a story about a young woman
who is losing her fight with cancer.
And she is given the opportunity to step
into the fantasy world of the books
she and her sister have been reading
and potentially gain herself a new life.
But what she discovers is
she thinks she's going to be one of the heroes of this book
but she's actually one of the villains.
And it is such a funny, smart, satisfying story.
It's about narrative
and about the way women are viewed in narrative
and what it means to be a villain
and the things you can get away with
if you happen to walk that line.
And I thought it was just a delight
and I cannot wait for it to be out
because I read an early draft.
And ever since I read it
I've just been desperate to talk about it with someone.
It's so different from anything else I've read
and I think we will be such a pleasure for people
who are readers and lovers of fantasy,
but have asked themselves some questions
about it in the past.
- Mm. That's very exciting.
You mentioned the title there, so I do wanna ask
is "Hell Bent" your favorite title yet?
And if not, what is? (Leigh laughs)
- I do love the title "Hell Bent"
because it has so many different meanings
and I actually wondered if we would run into trouble,
if people would be like,
"We're not gonna put that in the window."
But it's been fine.
So yeah, for me, that's a fun one
and I absolutely love the cover.
I know it creeps a lot of people out
but that delights me too. - Yeah.
Well, Leigh, it's been such a pleasure to chat about it.
I loved the book, thank you so much.
- Thank you.
(pages ripple) (pen scratches)
(gentle jazz music)