September 23, 2025 • 46 mins
Leigh Bardugo is one of the most prolific fantasy authors of our time. And yet, the powerhouse behind Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows, and the Alex Stern trilogy, didn't get published until she was 37. After many years of false starts, Leigh found the confidence to put pen to paper and in that uncomfortable journey, facing doubts and failure, found her voice. The so-called "Goth Auntie" has enraptured fans ever since with the immersive universes she creates. And now she wants you to do the same, to face your discomfort in the name of making art. This is your master class in tapping into your inner creative.
Book Mentions
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi.
I'm Danielle Robe. Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club.
Have you ever wanted something so badly but thought maybe
it's too late? Yeah, I definitely have, like learning Spanish
or keeping a plant alive for more than three weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Kidding sort of.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
But this week we're talking with one of the most
prolific fantasy writers of our time, Lee Bardugo, the powerhouse
behind Shadow and Bone six of Crow's and the Alex
Stern trilogy. And she reminded me of something I didn't
even realize I needed to hear, so I thought you
might too.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm Elie Blumar right, published at thirty seven. There are
people who don't publish until they're in their forties, in
their fifties, and guess what, that doesn't change the success
they have Now. I know it feels.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Urgent because our culture loves youth and it always has
it always has, like, oh, we love the feeling that
we've discovered a book.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Oh we found a gifted child. How fabulous. But if
you have a story to tell, it's a story nobody
else can tell, and the idea that that story is
somehow less valuable when you're forty eight than when you're eighteen.
Is a game the culture plays on you, and we
need to not fall for that. That's a calm today.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Lee pulls back the curtain how she found her voice
in her thirties after years of false starts, how a
dark season pushed her toward her first novel, and how
she built one of the most beloved fantasy universes by
turning discomfort and failure and doubt into fuel.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
This isn't self help jargon.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
It's a brutally honest look at the messy process of
making art and why the hard part is exactly where
the magic lives. So if you've ever worried you're behind,
or wondered if you've missed your moment, then you're in
the right place. Let's turn the page with Lee Barduco.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Lee Bardugo, Welcome to the club.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Thank you for having me here.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I've interviewed some really brilliant people over the course of
my career, but I'm going to embarrass you for a second.
You might have the highest IQ of anybody that I've interviewed.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
How do you know what my IQ is?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, you went to a school for gifted kids which
requires an IQ of over one thirty eight, and just
for reference, for everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Listening, one thirty is considered gifted.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
So Merman students are absolutely off the charts.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I cannot believe you did this deep dive. I cannot
be be aware of journalists message here.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Wow, well, okay, we try to be good at our jobs,
but genuinely without embarrassing you too much.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm truly curious what it.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Was like to grow up being told that you were gifted.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Was it empowering? Was it overwhelming?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh? This is a good question in general. I think
the problem with praising kids around intellect in that way
is that you get an idea in your head that
you are special because you're young and smart, as in,
you know you're doing something exceptional for your age, and
(03:14):
there will be a point where you stop being the
smartest and youngest person in the room, and the question
is how will you handle the world after that. I
had very few experiences with failure in the sense that
I was a kid who could cram for a test
the night before and write a paper or the night
before and still do well. Again, not in math and science.
Let's not talk about that, but that was what got
(03:37):
me through even through college. Then you enter the real
world and the reality is that most things worth doing
actually take small steps, small progress, and the willingness to
fail regularly. I had no chops in that, and it
took me a long time to develop them.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well, it's no surprise to me that you're one of
the most prolific fantasy writers publishing right now. What was
a little bit of a surprise to me is that
I learned that before you were a writer, you were
a makeup artist.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
I was. I was a makeup and effects artist. Yep,
not a very good one, but I did my best.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well, you spent fifteen years sort of doing these different
jobs that work. They were still sort of creative pursuits.
But deep down you had always wanted to write. And
I read that while you were doing makeup, you were
sort of dreaming up this story in your head. What
was it about the makeup process that allowed you to
(04:30):
imagine these fantastic worlds in your books.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Well, I think the truth of it is that when
I was writing copy for a living, I found that
I was sort of burned out. It was like you're
using the same muscle that you're using to write a novel,
or at least an adjacent muscle. And I felt very
burnt out by that in terms of creative impulse. And
I didn't really even realize that until I was doing
(04:56):
these makeup jobs, where you know, I would be on
my feet for ten twelve hours and sort of constantly moving,
constantly working. But then I would come home from that
and I would still feel energized to begin this creative work.
And I think it was just a question of letting
that muscle rest. And also, I am a big believer
in the subconscious doing work for you. So what I
(05:17):
always tell people is, if you're a mom, if you're
working full time, if you are caring for anyone and
you have limited time to write, use your fifteen minutes,
use your thirty minutes, but end that with a question
in mind for what you're going to do next, or
an idea of what you're going to do next, because
your subconscious will be working on it even if you're
not consciously working on it, and that means you're not
starting from zero when you sit down again. And I
(05:38):
think I was embracing that practice without even realizing it
when I was working in makeup and I think there's
also certain things with makeup and effects that hold true
for fiction. You know, you are trying to create a
seamless illusion. You're you're if somebody knows, if somebody can
see the hand behind the art, then something has gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
What's interesting to me is that there's so much lore
around how you became an author, Like there's not just
lare about these worlds that you've created, but there's law
about you. And you set a deadline for your thirty
fifth birthday.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
What was it?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
What was going on in your life that made you
want to finally start writing these adult fantasy novels that
had been in your mind for so long.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I mean I had been trying to write a book
since I was a teenager. Really, I mean, if we
really want to go back, I wanted to be a
novelist by the time I was a kid, and I
would start. I was great at starting. It was great
at first chapters, great at first acts. But I didn't
know how to outline, and I didn't know what my
process was, and so I would just hit a wall.
(06:43):
And I had kind of grown up on these visions
of writing that we see in culture that are very
much like you get the idea and then you just
roll right. The inspiration is with you and that will
drive you through to the end. I'm not that kind
of writer. I need structure. I need it badly. That's
my security blanket. So when I would start and lose momentum,
every time that happened, I would lose a little more
(07:04):
faith in myself. And by the time I was in
my thirties, I thought, well, this is it. You know,
the tombstones are going to read had potential like this
is like, oh, look, she went to a gifted school
when she was a kid, and she went to a
fancy college. Good for me. What does that actually add
up to in the end, not a whole lot. And
I felt very lost. I was in a very bad relationship.
I had switched careers and I wasn't really thriving as
(07:26):
a makeup artist. And when I got the idea for
Shadow and Bone, which was my first novel, I did
not get up and think, Okay, this is the one
I'm going to write this, It's going to be amazing.
I actually put it aside because I thought this is
going to be one more thing you try and fail at.
And then I got on the phone with my friend Michelle,
(07:47):
and she was saying, you need to apply to the MFA.
You're supposed to be writing, like this is what you want,
you should be pursuing that. And I remember standing in
my closet. I was sort of organizing things in my
closet and saying, I don't want to go to the MFA,
and I can't afford to go to the MFA. But
what I do want to do is write a book,
and I am going to outline this. I don't know
(08:10):
why it had never occurred occurred to me before, right,
like it had never occurred to me I'd taken a
screenwriting class when I was younger. Why did I not
use this structure for a book? Right? It's right there
in front of you, Lee, Like, if you put this
in a movie or a book, people would be like
that Lady's just that she's a little dumb. So I thought,
I'm going to get off this phone call and I'm
(08:30):
going to go outline this book and I'm gonna I'm
going to finish it before I turn thirty five. And
it took me a few months after that to actually
get it into shape where I wanted to send it
to agents. But I just pushed myself through that first draft,
or what I call the zero draft, the draft no
one's going to see. And I played a little game
with myself because I used to when I you know,
when you work in the arts, you know the first
(08:52):
draft is usually garbage. But in my brain, I didn't
really understand that. I didn't understand how iterative art was,
and so I would just think, this is terrible, this
is why are you even trying? And I used to
respond to that by being like, oh, well, it's not bad,
it's great. Well it wasn't great. It was bad. It's
a first draft. And so instead I would say, you're
so right voice in my head, but no one's ever
(09:12):
going to see this. This is just for me. I'm
going to learn how to write a book, and then
the next one will be better. And that's what drove
me through that first draft.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Hearing you say that you almost put shadow and Bone
aside is so wild because the public numbers and correct
me if these numbers are off, but the public numbers
are that this book alone has sold two and a
half million copies in the English language editions and the
Grishiver's books No I have sold twenty million copies worldwide.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, we're now up to twenty five, which is nice.
But yeah, that's actually for all my novels across the board,
I believe, but I don't actually know what my English
language sales are by book or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
So and you almost didn't do this, And thank god
to that girlfriend of yours.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I mean, that's my girl, Mish. We've been supporting each
other since we were in college, and she was one
of my first readers for Shadow on a Bone. Her
and my friend Josh. Neither of them were novelists, but
they were both writers and are both writers. And I
brought them this book and put it in their hands
with a lot of vulnerability, and they gave me great notes.
But none of us knew. We didn't know where this
(10:21):
was going. I didn't know where the publishing market was.
I had no idea. I was just desperate to do
this thing I had wanted to do my whole life.
I just wanted to finish a book. And then you
finish and you're like, well, now I just want to
get an agent, and then I just want to sell
a book, and then I just want to sell the trilogy.
So that goalpost moves and moves and moves.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Now that the goalpost is so far on the other
side of things, would you go back and do anything
differently in your writing career.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I mean, I would love to say I would start
it earlier. You know. I think if I had known
what the process was, understood how much I need an outline,
how much I need structure, and if I had learned
you know, I've talked about this a lot recently, how
important discomfort is to the process of art. I think
I would have been in a different position that said.
(11:12):
I think that the jobs I worked, the experiences I had.
This is easy to say, right, It's easy to say
when you've arrived it was all worth it. But I
can't say anything else because those jobs, that scarcity, the
fear that went along with all of those things, of
paying the rent and paying off loans and not knowing
(11:34):
where I was going, I think that made me a
better writer.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I want to go back to something you said about
art and discomfort, because you actually just did a TED
talk on that topic. One of my favorite questions to
ask people at a party as an icebreaker, like, if
the conversation is getting boring, I'll throw out if you
were to get on stage right now and give a
ten minute ted talk.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What are you talking to me about? What are you sharing?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
What a great question.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Well, it's kind of fun because you get the inner
workings of what's really on, what's important to somebody. But
you chose discomfort and art. And I am dying to
know why. Out of all the things you could have shared.
You're an expert in so many things, why about like
discomfort and art?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Because if you look at my on paper, I look
like exactly the kind of person who would become an author. Right.
She went to merm and she went to Yale. You know,
I want a poetry contest, you know, like great. But
I graduated in nineteen ninety seven, and I didn't publish
until I was thirty seven. That's you know, it takes
(12:42):
a while once you sell the book to come out.
That's fifteen years. I think that's fifteen years. Again, don't
ask me to do math. But I wanted to know
what had kept me from that for so long. And
I remember being at my first book event EVERT was
my own little signing that I organized the night before
I was about to go on tour for Shadow and
Bone for the first time, and I talked about how
(13:04):
I was in a dark place, that I had been
in the grips of the year's long depression when I
wrote Shadow and Bone, that this book and this shift
was my way out of all of that. And someone
in the audience was like, what made it possible after
all of these years? What made that possible? And I
didn't have an answer. I didn't really have an answer.
And so for me, understanding the role discomfort plays and art,
(13:26):
excavating that and understanding it has been a fundamental part
of how I work and how I communicate to new authors,
and I wanted to talk about that. And I also
think we are now living in a time where discomfort
has not just been erased from the making of art,
but the consuming of art, the way our expectations of
(13:48):
what we consume have changed have shifted, and even in life,
I think we shy away from discomfort, from conflict, from
anything that takes us away from our sort of well
worn tread. And I think that's a huge loss.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
I never thought about it in consuming art as well.
I'm wondering how the discomfort shows up for you, How
do you recognize it now?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
So I used to look at discomfort as it was
like a red flag to me, Oh no, I'm having
this feeling I should step away from this. And I
can say that this was most acute, of course, in
the writing of my first book. And then you have
to write your first sequel, which is its own terrifying thing,
and then you have to conclude a trilogy for the
first time, also very scary. So there's always something new
(14:32):
that is going to be scary for you. But when
I was writing Six of Crows, which I think I
can accurately say is the book that changed the trajectory
of my career, I sold that book on proposal and
I knew it was a great idea. I knew it
was a great pitch, But while I was writing it,
I just kept thinking, Oh my god, somebody smarter than
I am should be writing this book, Like I don't
(14:53):
have the chops. My first trilogy was all written in
first person POV Aside from the prologues and epilog this
was third person, five different povs, flashbacks, cons heists, you
name it, I have packed it into this book. Great,
I don't know how to do this well. The only
way you learn is by doing, and the only way
(15:14):
out is through. So for me, I have to look
back on that experience and see the way that shifted
my career and say, oh, discomfort when I experience that,
When I have that feeling, instead of turning away from it,
I'm going to open my arms and I'm going to
turn toward it. I'm not putting, I'm not going to
pick up my phone. I'm not going to clean out
(15:34):
my closet. I'm not going to shift to something else easier. No, no, no,
I am going to acknowledge that, and I'm going to
ask myself what is scary about this and how to
walk towards that with some confidence, And that I think
is the way interesting work gets done.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
There's a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.
It's a very thin, short book and he talks about
deep practice. And I'm not great with science, but he
does talk about something that happens in your brain with
milein and the friction is actually what triggers the brain
to grow. So there is scientific backing to everything you
(16:13):
are talking about in terms of discomfort and art and practice.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
The analogy I always uses athletics, right you would, or
you could use this for musicians. Too. You never see
somebody who is a concert pianist or an athlete standing
on a podium and you'd think, oh, I got But
they got there never practicing. I bet they got there,
never experiencing discomfort. We know fundamentally, we know in our
bodies that to train is painful, to try a new
(16:40):
skill is scary, right, but those things are fundamental to
achieving something that other people can do. If art were easy,
everybody would do it right. And now you have AI
that comes along and says, oh, guess what, we'll make
it easy. And Ted Schang is one of my favorite
people too. He's a wonderful author, but he's also just
so brilliant on AI. And he used the analogy of
(17:02):
using AI to write is like using AI to lift
weights for you, like using a forklift to lift weights
for you. The weight got lifted, Did you get any stronger?
Did you get any better? And you know, within the
writing community, we tend to talk about AI in terms
of copyright theft. They've stolen our ip, they've stolen our copyright.
It's unethical, yes, but they're also stealing the experience of writing,
(17:23):
of creating from creators. You are missing out on the
opportunity to wrestle with something and create something new. You
are missing the satisfaction of that and those good days
that we have as writers, as artists, those good days
are so fantastic, that feeling of had a flow is
so spectacular. Well, guess what, You're never going to actually
(17:44):
get that by using these tools that are supposed to
make you smarter, better, faster, but tend to just give
you the easy way way through.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
So well said, it's cheating on a test, cheating on
a person, You're really cheating yourself. You're cheating yourself out
of the hard conversation or the growth all of it.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
And the deliciousness. Like, yes, we talked so much about
the hard work of art, but art is fun to make.
It's gratifying to make. It's when I'm having like a
good writing week where I've been working every day and
I can feel the progress that I make and I
can see the shape of the story. It's like I'm
on a high, like my husband can tell when I'm
walking around the house like I'm amazing. And it's not
(18:22):
that every word I'm writing is brilliant. It's that I
am in the state of creating and I am proving
myself with every problem I overcome and every word I write.
And that is so deeply satisfying, and I think it
gives us a sense of purpose as artists.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
That to me is why we're in it.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
We have bookmarks to get a masterclass in LIEB or
do Goo brilliance. So, now that you've sold twenty five
million books, there's so many aspiring writers listening. How does
somebody take the first step? What do you say to them?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
The first step is to finish a draft, okay, and
to find your way through that draft, so you will
learn more from a flawed beginning, middle, and end. Then
you will learn from a thousand perfect beginnings or perfect paracrafts.
Once you finish that draft, find readers you trust. That's
the next hoop that you have to jump through, because
you will not be able to see problems in that
draft that other people will or you need to. If
(19:33):
you cannot find those things, if you don't have that
community or you can't build that community, then you step
back work on something else, let your brain recover from
that so that you can sort of regain clarity when
you come back to it. Because I call it going
page blind, like you literally can't see the patterns that
are in front of you. Then then there's the hoop
(19:55):
of exposing yourself to critique, right, exposing yourself to crit
and to not being where you want to be. It's
also you need to get used to that because guess what,
You're going to have to do that with agents, and
then you're going to have to do that with editors,
and then you're gonna have to do that with readers
and all the people online who want to tell you
how you didn't write to write the book. So all
of that is part of the process. But the most
(20:17):
important thing I can say to aspiring writers is there
is no expiration date on your talent. Okay again, we live.
I'm a late bloomer right published at thirty seven. There
are people who don't publish until they're in their forties,
in their fifties, and guess what, that doesn't change the
success they have. Now. I know it feels.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Urgent because our culture loves youth and it always has
it always has, like, oh, we love the feeling that
we've discovered a wunderkin.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh we found a gifted child. How fabulous. But if
you have a story to tell, it's a story nobody
else can tell, and the idea that that story is
somehow less valuable when you're forty eight than when you're
eighteen is a game the culture plays on you, and
we need to not fall for that. That's a colm.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
One of the things I've noticed is that your esthetic
is as recognizable as your pros or your writing. Dare
I say it's even very Stevie Nicks, with like a
gothic lean, dark lipstick, bold outfit, maybe love of all
things gothic?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Really, how do fans describe your style?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I mean, my favorite description has been goth auntie, like
that's that's that's where I like to live. And I
always say I have two settings. I have pajama and drama.
Like I had to go to a meeting a Netflix
once and I was like, I literally have nothing to
wear because I either am in like, you know, a
T shirt and jeans, or I'm decked out because I
(21:43):
love I love I love clothes that feel like an event.
This is probably because I had to wear uniforms when
I was a kid, and now I'm like, I can,
I can wear all of the lace and fringe that
I wish to, But for me, That's always been an
aesthetic that I love, and I always get happy when
I when I see people in all black in my line.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
You absolutely cannot go on book talk without seeing one
of your titles recommended. Has there been any elements of
stories or characters or ideas that you've actually incorporated into
your books that came from fans.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, And I know that's probably not a popular answer,
because and to be very clear, I have probably I think,
I mean not that I'm biased, but I think I
have an absolutely phenomenal fandom. I do, and they're sort
of different fandoms, like the fandom for Ninth House is
considerably different from the fandom for Six of Crows. But
I'm grateful to have anybody who wants to read my books. So,
(22:40):
but for me as a writer, I don't want to
be influenced by criticism or praise, right, And this is
I think something that has been lost in the age
of social media. One of the things that I think
is most important for writers and artists is to keep
something special for yourself, to let an idea. You know,
(23:00):
I don't know if you guarden at all, but if
you take a seat and you expose it to sun
too soon, it won't grow. It needs time in the dark,
it needs time to gest state or I don't actually
know the right words. Science again terrifying, but that is
that's a fundamental part of the process, and I think
we've lost that because people are so eager for likes
(23:21):
and follows that they will put art out there before
it's really ready and until they feel real ownership and
certainty around it. So you get praised for one thing,
you just keep reinforcing that you're not going to try
something new. You get criticized for something you're going to
shy away from that as opposed to sort of asking yourself, Okay,
what's an interesting place I can go with this? So
I try really hard to shut those voices out, and
(23:42):
it's why I struggle so much. It's kind of you
to call me prolific, but I know there are many
authors who are more prolific. And when I'm touring, when
I'm doing a lot of podcasts, when I'm promoting a
lot on social that is when I am at my
least productive creative. I have not learned how to do
those things. At the same time, that awareness of the
(24:05):
public self really messes with.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
My process It's almost like there's an avatar of who
you are that's online, but you are active on substack
and on Instagram, so it is important to you have
to have this connection with your fans. Do just think
about it more so as leebard do go having that
connection and less as like entertaining ideas and fan theories.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I think I think of it as, again, this is
something that I'm still trying to navigate, and I imagine
you are too. You know, when I wrote The Familiar,
and I was writing about a woman whose ambition makes
her visible, right, and the danger that then comes with
that visibility. And I think anybody who is trying to
make something and put it out in the world has
(24:53):
experienced this, but I think it's particularly acute for women,
this sense of the more visible become visible. I become,
the more popular I become, the greater, the bigger the
target that's on my back. And that's something I've been
sort of keenly aware of in the social media space.
But to me, you know, Instagram is fundamentally a marketing tool.
That said, we've been celebrating the six of Gross tenth
(25:14):
anniversary and people have been posting their tattoos and their cosplay,
And to me, that's like this beautiful reminder of we
don't know where our work will be in five years
and ten years. We don't know where we'll be in
five years or ten years. But seeing people take the
time to do these things or to mark their bodies
in this permanent way, to me, that's the most beautiful
(25:37):
positive side of all of this. And it's something we
didn't get to see as writers and creators before social
media existed. So I can't say that it's without purpose
or beauty.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I think so many of those tattoos and illustrations and
fan work or fan artwork is because you have built
these worlds that feel so real.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
How do you keep track of all the threads? What
is your process?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I kind of imagine it like as your office looking
like this Charlie Days string map in that episode about.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
There's a lot of truth to that. Actually, well, I
always I always start with a new notebook right where
all the notes are going in. I use a program
called Scribner that I found incredibly useful for keeping track
of research and ideas. But my attitude toward tools for
writing and for tracking worlds is whatever works for you.
(26:30):
I know, people who do everything digitally. I know people
who do everything analog. When I was writing Six of Crows,
I even would when I was building the heightst I
would plug things into Google Calendar because I had to
keep track of where everybody was at the same time.
And then for but I like picked a year way
out in advance, and so with then like two years later,
I would get this notification like just Burne wiln Er
on the roof, and I was like, okay, So for me,
(26:52):
it's whatever it takes.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I love a whiteboard. I literally have a character in
Ninth House that all whiteboards are magical, and they are
because they're a way of finding clarity. But yeah, I
still though I don't have I don't have a big
Bible somewhere with all of everything you need to know
about this world in it. My publishers have an equivalent,
(27:14):
and after we did the adaptation for the show, that
was kind of necessary because they needed that kind of
resource for it. But I don't reread my work. I
did reread the trilogy before I wrote The King of
Scars Duology because I had been away from the Greace
Reverse for a long time, and that was wise because
I had made some errors that I needed to correct.
(27:35):
And I also re read Ninth House in Hellben in
preparation for writing the third and final book in that series,
which is hopefully can come out in September.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Of next year. There are a few people that I
learned to ask questions from, some in person, some virtually,
like who I considered great journalists.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Who taught you how to world built? Was there anybody
that you studied.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I didn't study. I just read Kopia. You know, I
grew up reading a ton of science fiction and fantasy.
But I'll also say I think we tend to think
of world building in terms of genre, when the reality
is that world building happens in every piece of fiction
we read. So if you're reading a spy thriller set
in DC, chances are I you know, maybe you haven't
(28:21):
been to Washington, d C. And certainly you haven't worked
in a spycraft or I don't know, industrial espionage or
whatever it's going to be based on. You read about
a murder in a small town. Okay, well maybe you
grew up in the big city and all of these books.
And when I'm telling people how to learn about world building,
I'm like, pay attention to everything in genre and outside
of genre, because what you're doing is you're just trying
(28:42):
to origent the reader. You're trying to give them a
sense of how power operates in your world so that
they can orient around that, and you're trying to give
them a sense of place. So the textures of this world,
how economy works in this world, and all of those
things start to merge together and then begin to feel
like the actual world or the culture of the world.
(29:03):
And so to me, we can learn a lot more
from non genre writers and genre writers. But I will
say George R. Martin was somebody who I discovered as
an adult and who I think really taught me that
geography was destiny and it's that you know. To me,
he writes squalor like nobody else. So I really enjoy
(29:25):
the way he world builds, and I think that definitely
had an impact on the way I thought about my world.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I read that you wrote that you wrote fifteen books
in fifteen years.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Is that true? I don't know. I'd have to look.
I mean, not all of those if that's true, not
all of them were novels. I have a book of
short stories, I have a book of saints' lives I have,
so they're not all novels. So I don't know if
I can say that, but I think it's a good
(29:57):
sign that I've lost trek.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I appreciate your humility, but fifteen books in fifteen years,
my brain cannot even process that level of productivity. Has
your work and your word choice and your dialogue and plot,
has it evolved over time?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Would you say it's even improved?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Yes, I hope it has. I've worked really hard on it.
And I think if you read Shadow and Bone and
then you read Six of Crows, or if you read
Six of Crows and then you read Ninth House, or
if you read Ninth House on the familiar like, you
will see I think. I think I became a better
writer when when okay, I actually I can point to
(30:38):
I became a better writer for I think two big reasons. Okay. One,
I had an amazing editor on my first five books
who was such a curmudgeon and so hard to impress,
and so she pushed me, like if I was coming
up with some you know, frilly fancy metaphor, she'd be like,
what does this mean? What does it mean? Not quite
there yet, not sure what that, and but when you
got it, she would let you know, like, Okay, well done, beautiful.
(31:01):
And I am somebody, you know, I was a grade grubber.
So I'm like, I'm going to get that a I
don't care what I have to do. So she taught
me to push harder and harder on the sentence level
and on every paragraph, and to really dig deep on
the work. And I think that's so important. The other
thing was I wrote short stories in between each book
(31:24):
in the Shadow and Bone trilogy. And I think working
in shorter form, working in short stories, working in poetry,
even working in picture books, I think gives you an
opportunity to pay much closer attention to language and to
and it forces you to be economical in a way
that novels don't. A short story will not tolerate you
(31:44):
wandering around in circles for a few chapters. It just
will not. And so I think that made me a
better read.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
There you go, you're working in short form, but you're
not wrong, Like you have a certain amount of space
to make a point, to have a beginning in middle
and an n and to leave people with a strong
impression like these are important skills.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And I found that really effective in becoming a better author.
But I think I don't know, Like you know, I'm
always hesitant to say this because I know people will
be like, well, I thought this book was my favorite
book of yours or that book was your my favorite
book of yours, and people, what's your favorite? And my
answer is the last one I wrote. If it isn't,
then I'm not doing this right. Then I'm not embraced.
(32:26):
I am not approaching this career that I'm so lucky
to have with the same degree of passion that I
began it with. If I do not love the last
book the best.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
You've now had two big page to screen adaptations, Shadow
and Bone, which was a Netflix series, and more recently
Ninth House, which you're set to executive produce. What did
you learn the first time around that you're going to
be doing differently in this new adaptation?
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Who I think I learned how much I wanted to
be involved and where I wanted.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
To be involved.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I was very fortunate to have a good adaptation experience
with They took Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows
and mushed them together to create the Shadow and Bone series,
and I learned very quickly that I think the best
lesson I can give to people who are potentially getting
involved in adaptation is one, if you can get it
(33:17):
in your contract that they have to keep the title
the same do I didn't, but I got lucky. They
probably won't let you unless you're a big superstar, but
always had something to ask for. And two that you
have to pick your partners wisely and then trust them
to do what they do best. And sometimes that works
well and you'll be happy with the results, and sometimes
it doesn't, but you at least will continue to respect
(33:38):
the people you're working with, and that I think is
sort of the most important part of the process. But
with Ninth House, I wanted to be involved in co
writing that pilot that was important to me, but with
the familiar were working on that adaptation and that was
when I knew I needed to step back from because
all the people who were interested in it were interested
in it for TV, and that meant expanding that story,
(34:01):
and I was like, I know, I'm too close to this,
I'm too on the heels of writing it to see
big picture potential here.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Lee, I love asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week.
It can be a weird fact, a fun quote, something
you saved on Instagram, something you texted your best friend about.
What have you Lieberdugo bookmarked this week.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
I just the other day sent a Yates quote to
a friend because she was sort of being pressured to
take a project public sooner than she felt it was ready.
And it's a quote. It's one of my all time
favorite quotes. And it's be secret and exult because of
all things known, that is most difficult, And to me,
(34:45):
that's sort of the heart of I believe the title
of that poem is to an artist whose work has
come to nothing, or to a friend whose work has
come to nothing, which is not to say her work well.
I think her work will very well. But I think
that that's so important. Again, at time when we seem
to measure our worth in likes follows the number that's
(35:08):
attached to your advance, the number of books that you selled,
you're slot on the bestseller list. To remember that, we
to know your why and to know what you care
about in the creative process, so that you can hold
tight to that when you don't get all the accolades
and perks.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Now, the Alex Stern Trilogy, which is ninth House. Hellbent
and the twenty twenty six upcoming novel, which you jokingly
call Tokyo Drift. It's all about secret societies and dark
magic and murder set among the IVY League elite. And
you went to Yale and you were a member of
the Wolf's Head secret Society. The only thing I know
(36:04):
about secret societies is from Gilmour Girls, and that happened
to be at Yale. Actually, Sous, I'm dying to know
what it's really like, Like why is it secret? Is
it just sort of like a marketing mechanism or is
there really something dark and magical happening at these IVY leagues.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
So if you go walk around the Yale campus, okay,
and you can follow my map, all of the structures
are real that I talk about in the book, and
all of the tombs of these secret societies they're called tombs,
but they're really just clubhouses with no windows. Are littered
across campus. So you can see the big Tutor mansion
that Wolfshead lives in. You can see Skull and Bones,
(36:46):
you know, home to many US presidents and publishers and
secretaries of state, you name it. They've had them in
that hall. It's built to look like an old Egyptian
temple built out of red rockets. Right there on High Street.
You can walk right by it. And these are what
are known as the Ancient Eight or the land In societies,
there's societies that have these big, sort of glorious buildings
(37:06):
and that have been around for a very long time.
I think Scrolling Key, Wolf's Head, and Skull and Bones
were the first three, and they're very proud of that.
But as a student going there, I was obsessed with
these buildings and what they signified, and this bizarre attention
of we're a secret but we're going to build a
giant temple in the middle of campus. So it has
this vibe that's like look at me, but don't look
(37:27):
at me. Look at me, but stay away. Like it's
this very cooi game that is played by the societies.
And they started as basically Phi Beta Kappa did not
start out as an academic honor society. Phi Beta Kappas
started out as basically a drinking club, right and these
were it was all dudes and mostly white dudes who
(37:48):
were in university at the time. Started out as a
drinking club and they were secret and then this thing
happened in the United States where this guy published a
book on the Masons, and all of a sudden there
was this like really intense anti Masonic sentiment like what
are they doing in there? What conspiracies are they doing?
Like what evil culty things are they doing? And so
all of these societies and clubs stepped away from secrecy.
(38:11):
So by Meana Kappa comes to Yale and they're like, well,
we're not going to be secret next year, and a
bunch of guys where they're like, we want to be secret.
We've been so excited to be secret. We want our
secret drinking club. And they were the people who founded
Skull and Bones. So that's what it grew out of.
Now there are I think hundreds of quote unquote secret
(38:31):
societies are now called senior societies at Yale. Some of
them have a room they meet them in, an apartment
they meet in there's a thing they do where it's
called personal histories phs or bios, where you essentially tell
your life story to the group. I actually found it
to be an incredibly positive thing. This forced me to
hang out with a lot of very different people from
different backgrounds, which I loved. When you spend hours listening
(38:53):
to someone's story, you find places of commonality that are
really beautiful. Now, is all of this in this book
in this series. No, it's about a cult, magic and
economic influence, social influence, essentially magical influence, just being one
more thing that certain people get to hoard in elite spaces.
So for me, those books were about hyper mystifying the
world of the societies as opposed to demistifying. That much,
(39:14):
I think is really boring.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, that's the journalism of it, and you're building a
fantasy world.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I was reading and watching some of the tour celebrating
Six of Crows, which has its tenth anniversary this year,
and the book is in the Grishiverse, which comprises over
ten novels. You've said that the world started with a
map and a question.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
My one question for you.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
That I'm hoping you will feel comfortable sharing, is what
was the question.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
What if darkness was a place? When I was working
as a makeup artist around Halloween, you get real busy,
right because all of your friends are suddenly like people
you haven't talked to in forever, like I would like
to be mistake. Will you paint me blue for free.
The answer is no. But my solution to this was
to run away and to leave town. And I got
invited to a Halloween party in the Mammoth area up
(40:08):
in the mountains, and when I arrived, I discovered that
I would pay for this by doing makeup for not
just the hosts, who I had happily volunteered for, but
for a number of their guests as well. So my
Halloween was sort of not a great one and I
was totally wiped out after that. And the next night,
everybody went to dinner and I stayed home to read
(40:30):
and I don't remember what I was reading, but I
fell asleep and when I woke up, the house was dark,
and I mean not city dark, country dark where you
can't see your hand in front of your face. And
I was terrified. I was sure that, you know, the
serial killers always wait for you to wake up, obviously,
so I'm sure there's somebody in the house with me.
I don't know where the lights, whiches are. When I
finally calmed down, find the lights, etc. I'm getting ready
(40:52):
for Ben. I can't stop thinking about this. What if
darkness was a place? What if the monsters you imagine
there were real what if you had to fight them
on their own time territory? There was just sort of
question after question after question, And that was what led
to I mean, because then the next question is, okay,
well there's a dark territory crawling with monsters. Why would
you go in there? Like, maybe just don't go in there?
(41:14):
End of story. And so then I had to come
up with an idea of okay, well, maybe this country
has been torn in two and this is the way
they access their coastline in ports. And so that then
led to the creation of a map which is literally
east and west at a line cutting down through it,
which became the shadowfold. But that's where a lot of
ideas begin. They begin with something small and awkward and clumsy,
(41:39):
but that excites you. The best ideas, I think are
the ideas that keep providing those questions and that you
want to sort of stay up all night talking with.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
And you followed that thread. There was something it was
gnawing at you.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I follow the thread. I think what I had to
get used to was sometimes I wasn't going to know
the answer to the questions, but the important thing was
to know the question and to then let your brain
do that thing and to have the confidence to know that.
And look, the thing that an outline. The gift that
gave me was Okay, I don't know what goes here,
(42:13):
I'm going to put a place folder or I'm going
to put the questions, and then I'm going to move
on to the next thing. And I'm going to keep
my momentum through this project and I don't ever have
to feel that feeling of running off the cliff and
your little legs working, you know, to keep you afloat
while you're trying to learn how to fly. Instead, it
was okay, I'm going to build a bridge goes from
this spot to this spot to this spot, so I
know where I'm headed, even if I don't know where
(42:35):
every plank goes on this particular structure. And for me,
that's the way I build. I have friends who revise us.
They go right, they revise as they go. They write
a chapter, then they revise it, they revise it, they
revise it. They need to have those things really honed
in order to move on to the next thing. Everybody's
process is different, and you have to find yours.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
All right now, I want to do speed read with you,
which means I'm putting the sixty seconds on the clock
and we're gonna see just how many rapid fire literary
questions you can get through. Your brain fires so quickly,
I feel like you're gonna get through a lot.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Are you ready? I should have had more coffee. Okay,
let's do this.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Okay, three?
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Two?
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Which one of your characters are you secretly the most like?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I mean, there's a little bit of me and everyone
I don't know. I'm occasionally Megela Moniacle, so maybe I'm
secretly like the Darkling.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
If you could live vicariously through one of your characters,
who would it be?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Oh gosh, probably Darlington because he's brilliant, he has a
thousand skills. He lives in a crumbling mansion. Yeah, and
he and I share very much the like, surely magic
is around the corner, feeling like I think I built
my desperate love of a desperate need for magic into
(43:58):
into him.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
A book shape the way you see the world.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Oh gosh, what book shape? Honestly, Dune Dune was my
high school survival guide. It was like, be prepared, be brave.
It's full of all the instructions of his tutors. I
think that that was really important to me, so maybe doom. Yeah,
and also it was sort of the first world I
fell into and did not want to come out of.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
M that's a great statement. We thank you so much
for joining us. You are as smart as you are,
funny as you are, insightful and sincere.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
And I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
You are delightful, and thank you for all the amazing questions.
This was really fun and challenging. I like that I
have a comfort to you.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, we went through the discomfort together.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
We did.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
We did.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
We ended up on the other side.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
And if you want to little bit more from us,
come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's Book
Club on Instagram serving up books, vibes and behind the
scenes magic. And I'm at Danielle Robe Roba y come
say hi and df me.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
And if you want to go nineties on us, call us.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Okay, our phone line is open, so call now at
one five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
That's one five oh one two nine one three three
seven nine. Share your literary hot takes, book recommendations, questions
about the monthly pick or let us know what you
think about the episode you just heard, and who knows,
(45:39):
you might just hear yourself in our next episode, So
don't be shy, give us a ring, and of course,
make sure to follow Bookmarked by Reese's book Club on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your
shows until then, see you in the next chapter.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Bookmarked is a production of Hello.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Sunshine and I Heart podcast Its executive produced by Reese
Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe. Production is by A Cast
Creative Studios. Our producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schleid,
and Darby Masters. Our production assistant is Avery Loftus.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Jenny Kaplan and.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Emily Rudder are the executive producers for A Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Kristin Perla, Kelly Turner and Ashley
Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry
and Lauren Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi.
I'm Danielle Robe. Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club.
Have you ever wanted something so badly but thought maybe
it's too late? Yeah, I definitely have, like learning Spanish
or keeping a plant alive for more than three weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Kidding sort of.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
But this week we're talking with one of the most
prolific fantasy writers of our time, Lee Bardugo, the powerhouse
behind Shadow and Bone six of Crow's and the Alex
Stern trilogy. And she reminded me of something I didn't
even realize I needed to hear, so I thought you
might too.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I'm Elie Blumar right, published at thirty seven. There are
people who don't publish until they're in their forties, in
their fifties, and guess what, that doesn't change the success
they have Now. I know it feels.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Urgent because our culture loves youth and it always has
it always has, like, oh, we love the feeling that
we've discovered a book.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Oh we found a gifted child. How fabulous. But if
you have a story to tell, it's a story nobody
else can tell, and the idea that that story is
somehow less valuable when you're forty eight than when you're eighteen.
Is a game the culture plays on you, and we
need to not fall for that. That's a calm today.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Lee pulls back the curtain how she found her voice
in her thirties after years of false starts, how a
dark season pushed her toward her first novel, and how
she built one of the most beloved fantasy universes by
turning discomfort and failure and doubt into fuel.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
This isn't self help jargon.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
It's a brutally honest look at the messy process of
making art and why the hard part is exactly where
the magic lives. So if you've ever worried you're behind,
or wondered if you've missed your moment, then you're in
the right place. Let's turn the page with Lee Barduco.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Lee Bardugo, Welcome to the club.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Thank you for having me here.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I've interviewed some really brilliant people over the course of
my career, but I'm going to embarrass you for a second.
You might have the highest IQ of anybody that I've interviewed.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
How do you know what my IQ is?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, you went to a school for gifted kids which
requires an IQ of over one thirty eight, and just
for reference, for everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Listening, one thirty is considered gifted.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
So Merman students are absolutely off the charts.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I cannot believe you did this deep dive. I cannot
be be aware of journalists message here.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Wow, well, okay, we try to be good at our jobs,
but genuinely without embarrassing you too much.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm truly curious what it.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Was like to grow up being told that you were gifted.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Was it empowering? Was it overwhelming?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh? This is a good question in general. I think
the problem with praising kids around intellect in that way
is that you get an idea in your head that
you are special because you're young and smart, as in,
you know you're doing something exceptional for your age, and
(03:14):
there will be a point where you stop being the
smartest and youngest person in the room, and the question
is how will you handle the world after that. I
had very few experiences with failure in the sense that
I was a kid who could cram for a test
the night before and write a paper or the night
before and still do well. Again, not in math and science.
Let's not talk about that, but that was what got
(03:37):
me through even through college. Then you enter the real
world and the reality is that most things worth doing
actually take small steps, small progress, and the willingness to
fail regularly. I had no chops in that, and it
took me a long time to develop them.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well, it's no surprise to me that you're one of
the most prolific fantasy writers publishing right now. What was
a little bit of a surprise to me is that
I learned that before you were a writer, you were
a makeup artist.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
I was. I was a makeup and effects artist. Yep,
not a very good one, but I did my best.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well, you spent fifteen years sort of doing these different
jobs that work. They were still sort of creative pursuits.
But deep down you had always wanted to write. And
I read that while you were doing makeup, you were
sort of dreaming up this story in your head. What
was it about the makeup process that allowed you to
(04:30):
imagine these fantastic worlds in your books.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Well, I think the truth of it is that when
I was writing copy for a living, I found that
I was sort of burned out. It was like you're
using the same muscle that you're using to write a novel,
or at least an adjacent muscle. And I felt very
burnt out by that in terms of creative impulse. And
I didn't really even realize that until I was doing
(04:56):
these makeup jobs, where you know, I would be on
my feet for ten twelve hours and sort of constantly moving,
constantly working. But then I would come home from that
and I would still feel energized to begin this creative work.
And I think it was just a question of letting
that muscle rest. And also, I am a big believer
in the subconscious doing work for you. So what I
(05:17):
always tell people is, if you're a mom, if you're
working full time, if you are caring for anyone and
you have limited time to write, use your fifteen minutes,
use your thirty minutes, but end that with a question
in mind for what you're going to do next, or
an idea of what you're going to do next, because
your subconscious will be working on it even if you're
not consciously working on it, and that means you're not
starting from zero when you sit down again. And I
(05:38):
think I was embracing that practice without even realizing it
when I was working in makeup and I think there's
also certain things with makeup and effects that hold true
for fiction. You know, you are trying to create a
seamless illusion. You're you're if somebody knows, if somebody can
see the hand behind the art, then something has gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
What's interesting to me is that there's so much lore
around how you became an author, Like there's not just
lare about these worlds that you've created, but there's law
about you. And you set a deadline for your thirty
fifth birthday.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
What was it?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
What was going on in your life that made you
want to finally start writing these adult fantasy novels that
had been in your mind for so long.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I mean I had been trying to write a book
since I was a teenager. Really, I mean, if we
really want to go back, I wanted to be a
novelist by the time I was a kid, and I
would start. I was great at starting. It was great
at first chapters, great at first acts. But I didn't
know how to outline, and I didn't know what my
process was, and so I would just hit a wall.
(06:43):
And I had kind of grown up on these visions
of writing that we see in culture that are very
much like you get the idea and then you just
roll right. The inspiration is with you and that will
drive you through to the end. I'm not that kind
of writer. I need structure. I need it badly. That's
my security blanket. So when I would start and lose momentum,
every time that happened, I would lose a little more
(07:04):
faith in myself. And by the time I was in
my thirties, I thought, well, this is it. You know,
the tombstones are going to read had potential like this
is like, oh, look, she went to a gifted school
when she was a kid, and she went to a
fancy college. Good for me. What does that actually add
up to in the end, not a whole lot. And
I felt very lost. I was in a very bad relationship.
I had switched careers and I wasn't really thriving as
(07:26):
a makeup artist. And when I got the idea for
Shadow and Bone, which was my first novel, I did
not get up and think, Okay, this is the one
I'm going to write this, It's going to be amazing.
I actually put it aside because I thought this is
going to be one more thing you try and fail at.
And then I got on the phone with my friend Michelle,
(07:47):
and she was saying, you need to apply to the MFA.
You're supposed to be writing, like this is what you want,
you should be pursuing that. And I remember standing in
my closet. I was sort of organizing things in my
closet and saying, I don't want to go to the MFA,
and I can't afford to go to the MFA. But
what I do want to do is write a book,
and I am going to outline this. I don't know
(08:10):
why it had never occurred occurred to me before, right,
like it had never occurred to me I'd taken a
screenwriting class when I was younger. Why did I not
use this structure for a book? Right? It's right there
in front of you, Lee, Like, if you put this
in a movie or a book, people would be like
that Lady's just that she's a little dumb. So I thought,
I'm going to get off this phone call and I'm
(08:30):
going to go outline this book and I'm gonna I'm
going to finish it before I turn thirty five. And
it took me a few months after that to actually
get it into shape where I wanted to send it
to agents. But I just pushed myself through that first draft,
or what I call the zero draft, the draft no
one's going to see. And I played a little game
with myself because I used to when I you know,
when you work in the arts, you know the first
(08:52):
draft is usually garbage. But in my brain, I didn't
really understand that. I didn't understand how iterative art was,
and so I would just think, this is terrible, this
is why are you even trying? And I used to
respond to that by being like, oh, well, it's not bad,
it's great. Well it wasn't great. It was bad. It's
a first draft. And so instead I would say, you're
so right voice in my head, but no one's ever
(09:12):
going to see this. This is just for me. I'm
going to learn how to write a book, and then
the next one will be better. And that's what drove
me through that first draft.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Hearing you say that you almost put shadow and Bone
aside is so wild because the public numbers and correct
me if these numbers are off, but the public numbers
are that this book alone has sold two and a
half million copies in the English language editions and the
Grishiver's books No I have sold twenty million copies worldwide.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, we're now up to twenty five, which is nice.
But yeah, that's actually for all my novels across the board,
I believe, but I don't actually know what my English
language sales are by book or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
So and you almost didn't do this, And thank god
to that girlfriend of yours.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I mean, that's my girl, Mish. We've been supporting each
other since we were in college, and she was one
of my first readers for Shadow on a Bone. Her
and my friend Josh. Neither of them were novelists, but
they were both writers and are both writers. And I
brought them this book and put it in their hands
with a lot of vulnerability, and they gave me great notes.
But none of us knew. We didn't know where this
(10:21):
was going. I didn't know where the publishing market was.
I had no idea. I was just desperate to do
this thing I had wanted to do my whole life.
I just wanted to finish a book. And then you
finish and you're like, well, now I just want to
get an agent, and then I just want to sell
a book, and then I just want to sell the trilogy.
So that goalpost moves and moves and moves.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Now that the goalpost is so far on the other
side of things, would you go back and do anything
differently in your writing career.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I mean, I would love to say I would start
it earlier. You know. I think if I had known
what the process was, understood how much I need an outline,
how much I need structure, and if I had learned
you know, I've talked about this a lot recently, how
important discomfort is to the process of art. I think
I would have been in a different position that said.
(11:12):
I think that the jobs I worked, the experiences I had.
This is easy to say, right, It's easy to say
when you've arrived it was all worth it. But I
can't say anything else because those jobs, that scarcity, the
fear that went along with all of those things, of
paying the rent and paying off loans and not knowing
(11:34):
where I was going, I think that made me a
better writer.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I want to go back to something you said about
art and discomfort, because you actually just did a TED
talk on that topic. One of my favorite questions to
ask people at a party as an icebreaker, like, if
the conversation is getting boring, I'll throw out if you
were to get on stage right now and give a
ten minute ted talk.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What are you talking to me about? What are you sharing?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
What a great question.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Well, it's kind of fun because you get the inner
workings of what's really on, what's important to somebody. But
you chose discomfort and art. And I am dying to
know why. Out of all the things you could have shared.
You're an expert in so many things, why about like
discomfort and art?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Because if you look at my on paper, I look
like exactly the kind of person who would become an author. Right.
She went to merm and she went to Yale. You know,
I want a poetry contest, you know, like great. But
I graduated in nineteen ninety seven, and I didn't publish
until I was thirty seven. That's you know, it takes
(12:42):
a while once you sell the book to come out.
That's fifteen years. I think that's fifteen years. Again, don't
ask me to do math. But I wanted to know
what had kept me from that for so long. And
I remember being at my first book event EVERT was
my own little signing that I organized the night before
I was about to go on tour for Shadow and
Bone for the first time, and I talked about how
(13:04):
I was in a dark place, that I had been
in the grips of the year's long depression when I
wrote Shadow and Bone, that this book and this shift
was my way out of all of that. And someone
in the audience was like, what made it possible after
all of these years? What made that possible? And I
didn't have an answer. I didn't really have an answer.
And so for me, understanding the role discomfort plays and art,
(13:26):
excavating that and understanding it has been a fundamental part
of how I work and how I communicate to new authors,
and I wanted to talk about that. And I also
think we are now living in a time where discomfort
has not just been erased from the making of art,
but the consuming of art, the way our expectations of
(13:48):
what we consume have changed have shifted, and even in life,
I think we shy away from discomfort, from conflict, from
anything that takes us away from our sort of well
worn tread. And I think that's a huge loss.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
I never thought about it in consuming art as well.
I'm wondering how the discomfort shows up for you, How
do you recognize it now?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
So I used to look at discomfort as it was
like a red flag to me, Oh no, I'm having
this feeling I should step away from this. And I
can say that this was most acute, of course, in
the writing of my first book. And then you have
to write your first sequel, which is its own terrifying thing,
and then you have to conclude a trilogy for the
first time, also very scary. So there's always something new
(14:32):
that is going to be scary for you. But when
I was writing Six of Crows, which I think I
can accurately say is the book that changed the trajectory
of my career, I sold that book on proposal and
I knew it was a great idea. I knew it
was a great pitch, But while I was writing it,
I just kept thinking, Oh my god, somebody smarter than
I am should be writing this book, Like I don't
(14:53):
have the chops. My first trilogy was all written in
first person POV Aside from the prologues and epilog this
was third person, five different povs, flashbacks, cons heists, you
name it, I have packed it into this book. Great,
I don't know how to do this well. The only
way you learn is by doing, and the only way
(15:14):
out is through. So for me, I have to look
back on that experience and see the way that shifted
my career and say, oh, discomfort when I experience that,
When I have that feeling, instead of turning away from it,
I'm going to open my arms and I'm going to
turn toward it. I'm not putting, I'm not going to
pick up my phone. I'm not going to clean out
(15:34):
my closet. I'm not going to shift to something else easier. No, no, no,
I am going to acknowledge that, and I'm going to
ask myself what is scary about this and how to
walk towards that with some confidence, And that I think
is the way interesting work gets done.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
There's a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.
It's a very thin, short book and he talks about
deep practice. And I'm not great with science, but he
does talk about something that happens in your brain with
milein and the friction is actually what triggers the brain
to grow. So there is scientific backing to everything you
(16:13):
are talking about in terms of discomfort and art and practice.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
The analogy I always uses athletics, right you would, or
you could use this for musicians. Too. You never see
somebody who is a concert pianist or an athlete standing
on a podium and you'd think, oh, I got But
they got there never practicing. I bet they got there,
never experiencing discomfort. We know fundamentally, we know in our
bodies that to train is painful, to try a new
(16:40):
skill is scary, right, but those things are fundamental to
achieving something that other people can do. If art were easy,
everybody would do it right. And now you have AI
that comes along and says, oh, guess what, we'll make
it easy. And Ted Schang is one of my favorite
people too. He's a wonderful author, but he's also just
so brilliant on AI. And he used the analogy of
(17:02):
using AI to write is like using AI to lift
weights for you, like using a forklift to lift weights
for you. The weight got lifted, Did you get any stronger?
Did you get any better? And you know, within the
writing community, we tend to talk about AI in terms
of copyright theft. They've stolen our ip, they've stolen our copyright.
It's unethical, yes, but they're also stealing the experience of writing,
(17:23):
of creating from creators. You are missing out on the
opportunity to wrestle with something and create something new. You
are missing the satisfaction of that and those good days
that we have as writers, as artists, those good days
are so fantastic, that feeling of had a flow is
so spectacular. Well, guess what, You're never going to actually
(17:44):
get that by using these tools that are supposed to
make you smarter, better, faster, but tend to just give
you the easy way way through.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
So well said, it's cheating on a test, cheating on
a person, You're really cheating yourself. You're cheating yourself out
of the hard conversation or the growth all of it.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
And the deliciousness. Like, yes, we talked so much about
the hard work of art, but art is fun to make.
It's gratifying to make. It's when I'm having like a
good writing week where I've been working every day and
I can feel the progress that I make and I
can see the shape of the story. It's like I'm
on a high, like my husband can tell when I'm
walking around the house like I'm amazing. And it's not
(18:22):
that every word I'm writing is brilliant. It's that I
am in the state of creating and I am proving
myself with every problem I overcome and every word I write.
And that is so deeply satisfying, and I think it
gives us a sense of purpose as artists.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
That to me is why we're in it.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
We have bookmarks to get a masterclass in LIEB or
do Goo brilliance. So, now that you've sold twenty five
million books, there's so many aspiring writers listening. How does
somebody take the first step? What do you say to them?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
The first step is to finish a draft, okay, and
to find your way through that draft, so you will
learn more from a flawed beginning, middle, and end. Then
you will learn from a thousand perfect beginnings or perfect paracrafts.
Once you finish that draft, find readers you trust. That's
the next hoop that you have to jump through, because
you will not be able to see problems in that
draft that other people will or you need to. If
(19:33):
you cannot find those things, if you don't have that
community or you can't build that community, then you step
back work on something else, let your brain recover from
that so that you can sort of regain clarity when
you come back to it. Because I call it going
page blind, like you literally can't see the patterns that
are in front of you. Then then there's the hoop
(19:55):
of exposing yourself to critique, right, exposing yourself to crit
and to not being where you want to be. It's
also you need to get used to that because guess what,
You're going to have to do that with agents, and
then you're going to have to do that with editors,
and then you're gonna have to do that with readers
and all the people online who want to tell you
how you didn't write to write the book. So all
of that is part of the process. But the most
(20:17):
important thing I can say to aspiring writers is there
is no expiration date on your talent. Okay again, we live.
I'm a late bloomer right published at thirty seven. There
are people who don't publish until they're in their forties,
in their fifties, and guess what, that doesn't change the
success they have. Now. I know it feels.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Urgent because our culture loves youth and it always has
it always has, like, oh, we love the feeling that
we've discovered a wunderkin.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh we found a gifted child. How fabulous. But if
you have a story to tell, it's a story nobody
else can tell, and the idea that that story is
somehow less valuable when you're forty eight than when you're
eighteen is a game the culture plays on you, and
we need to not fall for that. That's a colm.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
One of the things I've noticed is that your esthetic
is as recognizable as your pros or your writing. Dare
I say it's even very Stevie Nicks, with like a
gothic lean, dark lipstick, bold outfit, maybe love of all
things gothic?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Really, how do fans describe your style?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I mean, my favorite description has been goth auntie, like
that's that's that's where I like to live. And I
always say I have two settings. I have pajama and drama.
Like I had to go to a meeting a Netflix
once and I was like, I literally have nothing to
wear because I either am in like, you know, a
T shirt and jeans, or I'm decked out because I
(21:43):
love I love I love clothes that feel like an event.
This is probably because I had to wear uniforms when
I was a kid, and now I'm like, I can,
I can wear all of the lace and fringe that
I wish to, But for me, That's always been an
aesthetic that I love, and I always get happy when
I when I see people in all black in my line.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
You absolutely cannot go on book talk without seeing one
of your titles recommended. Has there been any elements of
stories or characters or ideas that you've actually incorporated into
your books that came from fans.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, And I know that's probably not a popular answer,
because and to be very clear, I have probably I think,
I mean not that I'm biased, but I think I
have an absolutely phenomenal fandom. I do, and they're sort
of different fandoms, like the fandom for Ninth House is
considerably different from the fandom for Six of Crows. But
I'm grateful to have anybody who wants to read my books. So,
(22:40):
but for me as a writer, I don't want to
be influenced by criticism or praise, right, And this is
I think something that has been lost in the age
of social media. One of the things that I think
is most important for writers and artists is to keep
something special for yourself, to let an idea. You know,
(23:00):
I don't know if you guarden at all, but if
you take a seat and you expose it to sun
too soon, it won't grow. It needs time in the dark,
it needs time to gest state or I don't actually
know the right words. Science again terrifying, but that is
that's a fundamental part of the process, and I think
we've lost that because people are so eager for likes
(23:21):
and follows that they will put art out there before
it's really ready and until they feel real ownership and
certainty around it. So you get praised for one thing,
you just keep reinforcing that you're not going to try
something new. You get criticized for something you're going to
shy away from that as opposed to sort of asking yourself, Okay,
what's an interesting place I can go with this? So
I try really hard to shut those voices out, and
(23:42):
it's why I struggle so much. It's kind of you
to call me prolific, but I know there are many
authors who are more prolific. And when I'm touring, when
I'm doing a lot of podcasts, when I'm promoting a
lot on social that is when I am at my
least productive creative. I have not learned how to do
those things. At the same time, that awareness of the
(24:05):
public self really messes with.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
My process It's almost like there's an avatar of who
you are that's online, but you are active on substack
and on Instagram, so it is important to you have
to have this connection with your fans. Do just think
about it more so as leebard do go having that
connection and less as like entertaining ideas and fan theories.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I think I think of it as, again, this is
something that I'm still trying to navigate, and I imagine
you are too. You know, when I wrote The Familiar,
and I was writing about a woman whose ambition makes
her visible, right, and the danger that then comes with
that visibility. And I think anybody who is trying to
make something and put it out in the world has
(24:53):
experienced this, but I think it's particularly acute for women,
this sense of the more visible become visible. I become,
the more popular I become, the greater, the bigger the
target that's on my back. And that's something I've been
sort of keenly aware of in the social media space.
But to me, you know, Instagram is fundamentally a marketing tool.
That said, we've been celebrating the six of Gross tenth
(25:14):
anniversary and people have been posting their tattoos and their cosplay,
And to me, that's like this beautiful reminder of we
don't know where our work will be in five years
and ten years. We don't know where we'll be in
five years or ten years. But seeing people take the
time to do these things or to mark their bodies
in this permanent way, to me, that's the most beautiful
(25:37):
positive side of all of this. And it's something we
didn't get to see as writers and creators before social
media existed. So I can't say that it's without purpose
or beauty.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I think so many of those tattoos and illustrations and
fan work or fan artwork is because you have built
these worlds that feel so real.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
How do you keep track of all the threads? What
is your process?
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I kind of imagine it like as your office looking
like this Charlie Days string map in that episode about.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
There's a lot of truth to that. Actually, well, I
always I always start with a new notebook right where
all the notes are going in. I use a program
called Scribner that I found incredibly useful for keeping track
of research and ideas. But my attitude toward tools for
writing and for tracking worlds is whatever works for you.
(26:30):
I know, people who do everything digitally. I know people
who do everything analog. When I was writing Six of Crows,
I even would when I was building the heightst I
would plug things into Google Calendar because I had to
keep track of where everybody was at the same time.
And then for but I like picked a year way
out in advance, and so with then like two years later,
I would get this notification like just Burne wiln Er
on the roof, and I was like, okay, So for me,
(26:52):
it's whatever it takes.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I love a whiteboard. I literally have a character in
Ninth House that all whiteboards are magical, and they are
because they're a way of finding clarity. But yeah, I
still though I don't have I don't have a big
Bible somewhere with all of everything you need to know
about this world in it. My publishers have an equivalent,
(27:14):
and after we did the adaptation for the show, that
was kind of necessary because they needed that kind of
resource for it. But I don't reread my work. I
did reread the trilogy before I wrote The King of
Scars Duology because I had been away from the Greace
Reverse for a long time, and that was wise because
I had made some errors that I needed to correct.
(27:35):
And I also re read Ninth House in Hellben in
preparation for writing the third and final book in that series,
which is hopefully can come out in September.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Of next year. There are a few people that I
learned to ask questions from, some in person, some virtually,
like who I considered great journalists.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Who taught you how to world built? Was there anybody
that you studied.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I didn't study. I just read Kopia. You know, I
grew up reading a ton of science fiction and fantasy.
But I'll also say I think we tend to think
of world building in terms of genre, when the reality
is that world building happens in every piece of fiction
we read. So if you're reading a spy thriller set
in DC, chances are I you know, maybe you haven't
(28:21):
been to Washington, d C. And certainly you haven't worked
in a spycraft or I don't know, industrial espionage or
whatever it's going to be based on. You read about
a murder in a small town. Okay, well maybe you
grew up in the big city and all of these books.
And when I'm telling people how to learn about world building,
I'm like, pay attention to everything in genre and outside
of genre, because what you're doing is you're just trying
(28:42):
to origent the reader. You're trying to give them a
sense of how power operates in your world so that
they can orient around that, and you're trying to give
them a sense of place. So the textures of this world,
how economy works in this world, and all of those
things start to merge together and then begin to feel
like the actual world or the culture of the world.
(29:03):
And so to me, we can learn a lot more
from non genre writers and genre writers. But I will
say George R. Martin was somebody who I discovered as
an adult and who I think really taught me that
geography was destiny and it's that you know. To me,
he writes squalor like nobody else. So I really enjoy
(29:25):
the way he world builds, and I think that definitely
had an impact on the way I thought about my world.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I read that you wrote that you wrote fifteen books
in fifteen years.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Is that true? I don't know. I'd have to look.
I mean, not all of those if that's true, not
all of them were novels. I have a book of
short stories, I have a book of saints' lives I have,
so they're not all novels. So I don't know if
I can say that, but I think it's a good
(29:57):
sign that I've lost trek.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I appreciate your humility, but fifteen books in fifteen years,
my brain cannot even process that level of productivity. Has
your work and your word choice and your dialogue and plot,
has it evolved over time?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Would you say it's even improved?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Yes, I hope it has. I've worked really hard on it.
And I think if you read Shadow and Bone and
then you read Six of Crows, or if you read
Six of Crows and then you read Ninth House, or
if you read Ninth House on the familiar like, you
will see I think. I think I became a better
writer when when okay, I actually I can point to
(30:38):
I became a better writer for I think two big reasons. Okay. One,
I had an amazing editor on my first five books
who was such a curmudgeon and so hard to impress,
and so she pushed me, like if I was coming
up with some you know, frilly fancy metaphor, she'd be like,
what does this mean? What does it mean? Not quite
there yet, not sure what that, and but when you
got it, she would let you know, like, Okay, well done, beautiful.
(31:01):
And I am somebody, you know, I was a grade grubber.
So I'm like, I'm going to get that a I
don't care what I have to do. So she taught
me to push harder and harder on the sentence level
and on every paragraph, and to really dig deep on
the work. And I think that's so important. The other
thing was I wrote short stories in between each book
(31:24):
in the Shadow and Bone trilogy. And I think working
in shorter form, working in short stories, working in poetry,
even working in picture books, I think gives you an
opportunity to pay much closer attention to language and to
and it forces you to be economical in a way
that novels don't. A short story will not tolerate you
(31:44):
wandering around in circles for a few chapters. It just
will not. And so I think that made me a
better read.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
There you go, you're working in short form, but you're
not wrong, Like you have a certain amount of space
to make a point, to have a beginning in middle
and an n and to leave people with a strong
impression like these are important skills.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And I found that really effective in becoming a better author.
But I think I don't know, Like you know, I'm
always hesitant to say this because I know people will
be like, well, I thought this book was my favorite
book of yours or that book was your my favorite
book of yours, and people, what's your favorite? And my
answer is the last one I wrote. If it isn't,
then I'm not doing this right. Then I'm not embraced.
(32:26):
I am not approaching this career that I'm so lucky
to have with the same degree of passion that I
began it with. If I do not love the last
book the best.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
You've now had two big page to screen adaptations, Shadow
and Bone, which was a Netflix series, and more recently
Ninth House, which you're set to executive produce. What did
you learn the first time around that you're going to
be doing differently in this new adaptation?
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Who I think I learned how much I wanted to
be involved and where I wanted.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
To be involved.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I was very fortunate to have a good adaptation experience
with They took Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows
and mushed them together to create the Shadow and Bone series,
and I learned very quickly that I think the best
lesson I can give to people who are potentially getting
involved in adaptation is one, if you can get it
(33:17):
in your contract that they have to keep the title
the same do I didn't, but I got lucky. They
probably won't let you unless you're a big superstar, but
always had something to ask for. And two that you
have to pick your partners wisely and then trust them
to do what they do best. And sometimes that works
well and you'll be happy with the results, and sometimes
it doesn't, but you at least will continue to respect
(33:38):
the people you're working with, and that I think is
sort of the most important part of the process. But
with Ninth House, I wanted to be involved in co
writing that pilot that was important to me, but with
the familiar were working on that adaptation and that was
when I knew I needed to step back from because
all the people who were interested in it were interested
in it for TV, and that meant expanding that story,
(34:01):
and I was like, I know, I'm too close to this,
I'm too on the heels of writing it to see
big picture potential here.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Lee, I love asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week.
It can be a weird fact, a fun quote, something
you saved on Instagram, something you texted your best friend about.
What have you Lieberdugo bookmarked this week.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
I just the other day sent a Yates quote to
a friend because she was sort of being pressured to
take a project public sooner than she felt it was ready.
And it's a quote. It's one of my all time
favorite quotes. And it's be secret and exult because of
all things known, that is most difficult, And to me,
(34:45):
that's sort of the heart of I believe the title
of that poem is to an artist whose work has
come to nothing, or to a friend whose work has
come to nothing, which is not to say her work well.
I think her work will very well. But I think
that that's so important. Again, at time when we seem
to measure our worth in likes follows the number that's
(35:08):
attached to your advance, the number of books that you selled,
you're slot on the bestseller list. To remember that, we
to know your why and to know what you care
about in the creative process, so that you can hold
tight to that when you don't get all the accolades
and perks.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Now, the Alex Stern Trilogy, which is ninth House. Hellbent
and the twenty twenty six upcoming novel, which you jokingly
call Tokyo Drift. It's all about secret societies and dark
magic and murder set among the IVY League elite. And
you went to Yale and you were a member of
the Wolf's Head secret Society. The only thing I know
(36:04):
about secret societies is from Gilmour Girls, and that happened
to be at Yale. Actually, Sous, I'm dying to know
what it's really like, Like why is it secret? Is
it just sort of like a marketing mechanism or is
there really something dark and magical happening at these IVY leagues.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
So if you go walk around the Yale campus, okay,
and you can follow my map, all of the structures
are real that I talk about in the book, and
all of the tombs of these secret societies they're called tombs,
but they're really just clubhouses with no windows. Are littered
across campus. So you can see the big Tutor mansion
that Wolfshead lives in. You can see Skull and Bones,
(36:46):
you know, home to many US presidents and publishers and
secretaries of state, you name it. They've had them in
that hall. It's built to look like an old Egyptian
temple built out of red rockets. Right there on High Street.
You can walk right by it. And these are what
are known as the Ancient Eight or the land In societies,
there's societies that have these big, sort of glorious buildings
(37:06):
and that have been around for a very long time.
I think Scrolling Key, Wolf's Head, and Skull and Bones
were the first three, and they're very proud of that.
But as a student going there, I was obsessed with
these buildings and what they signified, and this bizarre attention
of we're a secret but we're going to build a
giant temple in the middle of campus. So it has
this vibe that's like look at me, but don't look
(37:27):
at me. Look at me, but stay away. Like it's
this very cooi game that is played by the societies.
And they started as basically Phi Beta Kappa did not
start out as an academic honor society. Phi Beta Kappas
started out as basically a drinking club, right and these
were it was all dudes and mostly white dudes who
(37:48):
were in university at the time. Started out as a
drinking club and they were secret and then this thing
happened in the United States where this guy published a
book on the Masons, and all of a sudden there
was this like really intense anti Masonic sentiment like what
are they doing in there? What conspiracies are they doing?
Like what evil culty things are they doing? And so
all of these societies and clubs stepped away from secrecy.
(38:11):
So by Meana Kappa comes to Yale and they're like, well,
we're not going to be secret next year, and a
bunch of guys where they're like, we want to be secret.
We've been so excited to be secret. We want our
secret drinking club. And they were the people who founded
Skull and Bones. So that's what it grew out of.
Now there are I think hundreds of quote unquote secret
(38:31):
societies are now called senior societies at Yale. Some of
them have a room they meet them in, an apartment
they meet in there's a thing they do where it's
called personal histories phs or bios, where you essentially tell
your life story to the group. I actually found it
to be an incredibly positive thing. This forced me to
hang out with a lot of very different people from
different backgrounds, which I loved. When you spend hours listening
(38:53):
to someone's story, you find places of commonality that are
really beautiful. Now, is all of this in this book
in this series. No, it's about a cult, magic and
economic influence, social influence, essentially magical influence, just being one
more thing that certain people get to hoard in elite spaces.
So for me, those books were about hyper mystifying the
world of the societies as opposed to demistifying. That much,
(39:14):
I think is really boring.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, that's the journalism of it, and you're building a
fantasy world.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I was reading and watching some of the tour celebrating
Six of Crows, which has its tenth anniversary this year,
and the book is in the Grishiverse, which comprises over
ten novels. You've said that the world started with a
map and a question.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
My one question for you.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
That I'm hoping you will feel comfortable sharing, is what
was the question.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
What if darkness was a place? When I was working
as a makeup artist around Halloween, you get real busy,
right because all of your friends are suddenly like people
you haven't talked to in forever, like I would like
to be mistake. Will you paint me blue for free.
The answer is no. But my solution to this was
to run away and to leave town. And I got
invited to a Halloween party in the Mammoth area up
(40:08):
in the mountains, and when I arrived, I discovered that
I would pay for this by doing makeup for not
just the hosts, who I had happily volunteered for, but
for a number of their guests as well. So my
Halloween was sort of not a great one and I
was totally wiped out after that. And the next night,
everybody went to dinner and I stayed home to read
(40:30):
and I don't remember what I was reading, but I
fell asleep and when I woke up, the house was dark,
and I mean not city dark, country dark where you
can't see your hand in front of your face. And
I was terrified. I was sure that, you know, the
serial killers always wait for you to wake up, obviously,
so I'm sure there's somebody in the house with me.
I don't know where the lights, whiches are. When I
finally calmed down, find the lights, etc. I'm getting ready
(40:52):
for Ben. I can't stop thinking about this. What if
darkness was a place? What if the monsters you imagine
there were real what if you had to fight them
on their own time territory? There was just sort of
question after question after question, And that was what led
to I mean, because then the next question is, okay,
well there's a dark territory crawling with monsters. Why would
you go in there? Like, maybe just don't go in there?
(41:14):
End of story. And so then I had to come
up with an idea of okay, well, maybe this country
has been torn in two and this is the way
they access their coastline in ports. And so that then
led to the creation of a map which is literally
east and west at a line cutting down through it,
which became the shadowfold. But that's where a lot of
ideas begin. They begin with something small and awkward and clumsy,
(41:39):
but that excites you. The best ideas, I think are
the ideas that keep providing those questions and that you
want to sort of stay up all night talking with.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
And you followed that thread. There was something it was
gnawing at you.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I follow the thread. I think what I had to
get used to was sometimes I wasn't going to know
the answer to the questions, but the important thing was
to know the question and to then let your brain
do that thing and to have the confidence to know that.
And look, the thing that an outline. The gift that
gave me was Okay, I don't know what goes here,
(42:13):
I'm going to put a place folder or I'm going
to put the questions, and then I'm going to move
on to the next thing. And I'm going to keep
my momentum through this project and I don't ever have
to feel that feeling of running off the cliff and
your little legs working, you know, to keep you afloat
while you're trying to learn how to fly. Instead, it
was okay, I'm going to build a bridge goes from
this spot to this spot to this spot, so I
know where I'm headed, even if I don't know where
(42:35):
every plank goes on this particular structure. And for me,
that's the way I build. I have friends who revise us.
They go right, they revise as they go. They write
a chapter, then they revise it, they revise it, they
revise it. They need to have those things really honed
in order to move on to the next thing. Everybody's
process is different, and you have to find yours.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
All right now, I want to do speed read with you,
which means I'm putting the sixty seconds on the clock
and we're gonna see just how many rapid fire literary
questions you can get through. Your brain fires so quickly,
I feel like you're gonna get through a lot.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Are you ready? I should have had more coffee. Okay,
let's do this.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Okay, three?
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Two?
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Which one of your characters are you secretly the most like?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I mean, there's a little bit of me and everyone
I don't know. I'm occasionally Megela Moniacle, so maybe I'm
secretly like the Darkling.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
If you could live vicariously through one of your characters,
who would it be?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Oh gosh, probably Darlington because he's brilliant, he has a
thousand skills. He lives in a crumbling mansion. Yeah, and
he and I share very much the like, surely magic
is around the corner, feeling like I think I built
my desperate love of a desperate need for magic into
(43:58):
into him.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
A book shape the way you see the world.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Oh gosh, what book shape? Honestly, Dune Dune was my
high school survival guide. It was like, be prepared, be brave.
It's full of all the instructions of his tutors. I
think that that was really important to me, so maybe doom. Yeah,
and also it was sort of the first world I
fell into and did not want to come out of.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
M that's a great statement. We thank you so much
for joining us. You are as smart as you are,
funny as you are, insightful and sincere.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
And I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
You are delightful, and thank you for all the amazing questions.
This was really fun and challenging. I like that I
have a comfort to you.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, we went through the discomfort together.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
We did.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
We did.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
We ended up on the other side.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
And if you want to little bit more from us,
come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's Book
Club on Instagram serving up books, vibes and behind the
scenes magic. And I'm at Danielle Robe Roba y come
say hi and df me.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
And if you want to go nineties on us, call us.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Okay, our phone line is open, so call now at
one five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
That's one five oh one two nine one three three
seven nine. Share your literary hot takes, book recommendations, questions
about the monthly pick or let us know what you
think about the episode you just heard, and who knows,
(45:39):
you might just hear yourself in our next episode, So
don't be shy, give us a ring, and of course,
make sure to follow Bookmarked by Reese's book Club on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your
shows until then, see you in the next chapter.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Bookmarked is a production of Hello.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Sunshine and I Heart podcast Its executive produced by Reese
Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe. Production is by A Cast
Creative Studios. Our producers are Matty Foley, Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schleid,
and Darby Masters. Our production assistant is Avery Loftus.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Jenny Kaplan and.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Emily Rudder are the executive producers for A Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Kristin Perla, Kelly Turner and Ashley
Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry
and Lauren Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
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