On the Cusp is a regular series I do on this blog, comprising an interview with another writer who’s about to become a debut novelist. I send them the standard list of ten questions and ask them to please pick five, and to also answer the bonus question.
This week we have the Seattle-based Natalie Leif, who I know via an online writing group. Their queer young adult horror novel Take All of Us will be out in June. Pre-order it here!
Why did you pick traditional book publishing? Why not self-pub or even some other art form, to tell this story? Interpretive dance, perhaps? A computer game? A series of sculptures? Why a novel, with a publisher?
Funnily enough, I did consider this a lot! I love drawing and experimenting, so I’ve got a lot of story ideas I’d like to see someday as comics, computer games, and more. (What about a serial podcast? What about a pixel RPG?). I even had a hard limit to how much I was allowed to query agents unsuccessfully before I had to accept the loss and try a new tactic.
Ultimately though, the reason TAOU isn’t in another medium is because then it would be a different story. The medium is half of the message, so there’s no sense in neglecting its tools or treating it like a ‘consolation prize’ for whatever medium you really wanted. You have to be willing to adjust and reshape a story into the best version of itself for the medium it’s in. So TAOU-as-a-comic, for example, would’ve maybe had some of the same characters and settings, but it also would’ve had less internal dialogue, more set pieces, more action … and probably been a lot shorter, to save my wrists.
Was it a long road to get here? Do you have drawers full of previous manuscripts?
So many! At least seven full manuscripts, and that’s not including the half-finished ones, the short stories, the comics, the RPG-maker scripts … I really like writing, but I kinda hate querying. Looking at forms makes my eyes glaze over. I got very lucky with TAOU in that it happened to find the right publisher unusually quickly, before my patience ran out.
What do you wish you’d understood better beforehand about the business?
I wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry to be published when I was in my late teens and early twenties. There’s a lot of pride and glamour in being a prodigal student with achievements straight out of college, but also I was very stupid then, and I wouldn’t have been able to handle marketing or critical feedback. A surprising amount of pre-publication is just resisting the urge to say something controversial on Twitter and then delete your accounts forever, which is something I can do much better as a tired 30-something than I could’ve done as a heated, opinionated 20-something.
How nervous are you, on a scale of 1-10 (I’m currently sitting at 5) and how are you dealing with that?
My resting heart rate qualifies as a panic attack.
It’s probably fine, though. At some point it’ll max out like an old pinball machine and roll over back to serene acceptance.
What’s next?
We’ll see! The last manuscript I sent to my agent involves an ex-viral indie band, a Wisconsin tourist trap, and a whole lot of digital ghosts, so hopefully y’all will see that soon! And if I’m very lucky, TAOU will sell 999,999 copies and I can write a sequel to tie up some loose ends. Otherwise, I’ll just keep on drawing my D&D characters.
Bonus question: Is there anything else you wanted a chance to talk about?
Support your local library! Requesting new titles counts as sales for the author and helps them out! It’s a great way to support authors without spending tons of money, and keeps me at my day job.
Lisa Tirreno 