October 14, 2024 • 33 mins
In this episode, award-nominated author Ciel Pierlot joins me in the Toolshed for a fascinating chat about writing fantasy and writing queer fiction.
Ciel's new book, The Hunter's Gambit, was published by Angry Robot earlier this year. We chat all about the writing of the story, Ciel's writing process as a whole, and crafting characters who are interesting and engaging.
Ciel also discusses her experience of the query trenches and how she found a literary agent.
As always, you're bound to learn something new!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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(00:23):
social media or with anyone who you think may be interested.
Thank you very much for listening.
Enjoy the show. Welcome to another episode of
the Fantasy Risers. So shit.
(00:45):
I'm your host, Richie Berlin, and today I'm delighted to be
joined by the award nominated author CLALOCL.
Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
Oh, thank you very much for joining me.
You've got a brand new book coming out as well in June,
haven't you? The Hunter's Gamble.
Yes, I do. It comes out at the end of June
(01:06):
and I'm very excited about it. It looks awesome.
It's going to be published by Angry Robots and this is going
to be your second book with them, isn't it?
Yeah, this is my second book with Angry Robot.
My first was Bluebird. It came out in 2022 and that was
sci-fi. This one, Hunter's Gambit is
(01:26):
more fantasy. Oh.
Nice little pivot, little pivot there.
So let's get let's get start with the Hunter's Gambit and
then we're going to kind of workback from there.
And, and just about your journeythrough the white bear, the
right in the world. So tell us all about the
Hunter's Gambit. So it's it's a fantasy that kind
(01:48):
of straddles the like romanticy line.
And the basic premise is it's a secondary world fantasy.
It's kind of got like Victorian gothic vibes.
And it's all about vampires. If you don't like vampires, I'm
so sorry. If you do like vampires.
Hello, welcome. You've been off the scene for a
(02:10):
little while, haven't you, vampires?
I'm making a bit of a comeback. Yeah, I know they are.
It's great. I actually tried to to pitch
this book back in 2018, and the feedback I got from agents was
just no one's, no one's selling vampire books these days.
But now they're making a comeback and I appreciate it.
Well, there you go. That that's a great sort of
(02:31):
thing to keep in mind, that it like your book might not just be
like right for the time you justwaste.
Keep finding your time, keep trying.
You never know. Yeah, settings, tropes, they all
come and go in popularity. Like God, you sure as hell can't
sell a dystopian YA novel these days.
(02:54):
Oh yeah. So maybe 10 years from now.
Yeah, you know, I'll just keep older.
So the Hunter's gamma. Tell us more.
So the premise is we have our protagonist, Kazan Korvik, who
is a human blacksmith and she has always been obsessed with
vampires and she's made it her life's work to create weapons
(03:18):
specifically designed to kill them.
However, one night she is travelling through the woods
with a group of other people andshe is attacked and captured by
a clan of vampires. And thus begins our plot.
She finds herself in the middle of a elaborate ritual where she
(03:40):
is put on a fake throne as a fake queen of the vampires as
part of this elaborate ceremony.And there's going to be this
wonderful party for three days. Everyone's feasting and dancing
and having a good time. But of course, at the end of the
three days, she's dinner, so shehas to find a way out or find a
(04:04):
way to get revenge. I'm not going to say anymore
because that's like, you got to read the book for that, don't
you? Oh, that, that's set up
wonderfully there. What's going on?
I'm intrigued by the romantic elements as well, given the.
Yeah, there's she has. There are two vampires who kind
of maybe are going to help her. Are they?
Are they not? Who knows?
(04:26):
You have to read the book and find out.
Nice. So tell us a bit about how you
approach writing this book. It tells that you you worked on
it for a good while, given that,yeah, so.
I I had a first version in 2018 that I tried to sell.
It wasn't, it wasn't a good version.
(04:48):
Only the very bare bones structure was there.
Half the characters didn't even exist or have the same names
that they do now. And I totally put it aside end
of 2018 just because, you know, I was like, yeah, OK, the
vampires aren't selling. And I was realizing that the
book had some major, major problems.
So then I wrote Bluebirds, got an agent for Bluebird, sold
(05:11):
Bluebird. And my agent had actually read
the original version of Hunter'sGambit.
And she was like, hey, you remember that vampire book?
Do you want to try and revisit that?
And I was like, yes, I would love to revisit my vampire book.
And I, I basically completely rewrote it.
It's a completely different bookfrom what I tried to pitch in
2018, but the the general gist is similar.
(05:34):
Nice. Yeah, and then this one sold
because vampires are back in fashion.
I'm sure it's all hardware that you put into it since then.
Like I imagine, I don't know howyou feel like when when you're
writing, like you're always trying to get better and when
you write something one day and you come back to look at it the
next day, there's always something that you can change or
(05:55):
you feel like you can do a better job now.
You think that's a good attitudeto have, but is that did that
sort of help you when you were sort of polishing your story and
going back to it, that you've grown so much as a writer
because you've had that those years of experience in this
week? Oh absolutely, absolutely.
I am definitely a much more skilled writer now than I was
(06:19):
back in 2018. And even though I did most of
the rewrite for Hunter's Gambit in 2022-2023, it, it's still,
you know, and I've, I've grown even more as a writer since I've
read about the campus. But yeah, it, it definitely, it
definitely helped. There's always I, I think as a
(06:39):
writer, you're always better today than you were yesterday as
long as you just keep writing. And so being able to completely
just tear it apart, recreate it,I think it turned out a like
infinitely better than the firstversion.
Nice. So how did you approach it then?
(07:00):
Like do you, I mean, everyone approaches like editing
differently. Don't be.
But what did you do first to thesort of work out what bits
weren't quite work and what was OK?
Did you just like, did you get the help of someone else or did
you just go on it with fresh eyes?
I sort of, oh gosh, what did I do?
(07:20):
I think I rewrote the first 50 pages and the synopsis and I
sent that to my agent. I'm lucky in that I have a very
editorial agent, so my agent sent it back to me with some
notes and I went from there. I think what I ended up doing is
I pretty much, I had the old manuscript open on my computer
(07:42):
and I basically just opened up afresh Word document completely
blank and started the rewrite process.
I sort of pulled it apart chapter by chapter as well.
There were things that needed tobe reorganized.
There were things that needed tobe restructured, a lot of stuff
like that. Yeah, I, I, I sort of broke it
(08:04):
down to the base elements of it,you know, I was like, OK, what
characters am I keeping? What characters do I need?
What part of the plot works? What part of the plot doesn't
work? Yeah.
Do you have a, a favorite aspectof the Yeah, I suppose the
aspect of the craft that you like.
Do you like characters more? Do you like what more?
(08:26):
What more? I think I think there's two of
my favorite parts of writing. One is when you get to the good
bit, all plots. Well, OK, if you're a writer and
you're creating a story, you know that there isn't the good
bits that you want to write. And I write chronologically.
(08:47):
I will start with the first lineof Page 1 and I will work my way
through chronologically. I don't skip around unless I'm
doing editing. When I'm drafting, it's just
straight through. So I'm like, OK, in two chapters
I get to write the good bits andthen I get to write the good
bits. That's that's my favorite part.
My second favorite part is when you find a really good song or
(09:07):
soundtrack that fits your story and you listen to it for like 10
hours straight while I'm like daydreaming about all the stuff
you think would be really cool. It's an important part of
writing. Yeah, I you've got to feel
something I don't think when you're thinking about the story
because it is an emotional journey, isn't it?
And when you're thinking about them big bits like you say, the
(09:29):
bits that you want to write or that then climactic paths, you
want to feel something emotionalyou don't know when you're
thinking about in your mind. So yeah, I get that completely.
That's really good, a good measure and stick of how you've
done. Yeah, yeah.
I, I think that there's, when you're, especially when you're
going through the editing process, there's a point where
(09:52):
everything you've written just becomes like letters on a page
and it's all like completely meaningless.
Your eyes are kind of glazed over and you're just doing like
nitty gritty technical work where you're not really
inspired. And then it's like, find that
good song, find that good, remember why you're doing this.
Yeah. I was.
It was pretty funny that you saythat, though, because I was.
(10:13):
I saw it so on. I don't know if it was like on
Instagram or something like thatand this price.
I was saying that you should when you edit and you should
never ever feel like you hate your story or anything like that
because it shows that it's not going to be a good story.
Asked like, that's such bullshitbecause the amount of time you
have to read that story, of course you're going to hate it.
(10:34):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there is, there have
been scenes where I've, you know, for everything I've
written, there have been scenes where I've read it like 30 times
and I'm like, Oh my God, this isabsolute garbage.
And then I'll like, send it to afriend and the friend will be
like, Oh no, this is good. And I'm like, oh, right.
It it has no meaning to me anymore because I've spent so
long fiddling with it. I know that's it's it's a hard
(10:56):
thing. I mean, I do you ever, I mean, I
used the one who's who's to go quite a lot with imposter
syndromes. You ever experienced anything
like that yourself? I feel like if I say no, it
sounds arrogant, but kind of no.I think I'm, I'm very accurately
aware of where I am as a writer and I, I think I didn't like I,
(11:28):
it sounds so cliche to be like Iworked for what I have because,
you know, the people who say that are normally the people who
didn't work for what they have. Because it's a lot of work.
Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah.
It's like, you know, I, I put inthe work to write a book.
I put in the work to find an agent.
You know, I put in the work to get a book completely ready to
(11:50):
send off to editors. Like, you know, there's I'm, I'm
aware of how much effort everything was.
And I think now that I have one book out in the world, second
book about to come out, I'm veryaccurately aware of, I don't
want to say the Peck where I am in the pecking order because I
don't really think of writers. I think it's kind of rude to
(12:12):
think of writers like that. But, you know, I'm aware I'm not
like a New York Times bestseller, you know, I'm aware
that I'm much more like, you know, I'm, I'm kind of the like
the lead title area for my publisher.
But I'm aware that I have smaller publisher, Angry Robots,
pretty big in the world of science fiction and fantasy.
But you know, they're not like Penguin Random House, which is
(12:33):
massive. So I'm, I'm kind of, I'm, I'm
very aware of where I am. So I'm not like, Oh my God, I'm
a failure. Everyone else is like, you know,
New York Times bestseller and I'm not.
So clearly I'm not a real writer.
Not that it's wrong if writers feel that way, but I I think,
(12:53):
'cause I've always tried to be very accurately aware of who I
am, what I write, who I write for, I don't really get imposter
syndrome. Yeah, that's, that's brilliant.
Yeah, that's good. Doesn't hold you back.
And I can say you has a brilliant career so far and
you've got every right to be confident.
So you don't need to worry aboutkind of things.
(13:16):
So you tell us a bit more about your writing journey.
I mean, was there any challengesalong the way to getting here?
I think the biggest challenge was, so I actually started out
writing fan fiction and at one point I'd written something that
was like a five way mash up between like a bunch of
different media properties and Iwas like, this isn't even fan
(13:40):
fiction anymore. Like what the fuck is this?
And I think for me, the the hardest struggle was having that
first thought of like, hey, wait, I could sell this.
And then the process of getting an agent.
(14:02):
Everyone, all the writers I knowand all the people I know who
are in the query trenches alwaystalk about how brutal querying
can be. Unfortunately, that is true.
Querying can be really rough 'cause it's the first outside
test you face. Like you can set tests for your
(14:22):
own writing, you can set like goals for where you want your
writing to be. But generally, unless you've
hired an outside agent, which I didn't, I am a college student,
I'm broke. An agent is the first person who
is an industry professional thatwill be judging your work.
And it's really difficult to feel both like you're being
(14:45):
professionally judged for the first time while also being
aware that this is the first hurdle you must pass through for
most, if not all aspects of traditional publishing.
And I, I think for a lot of people, that's where they, I
don't want to say give up, but that's where they decide it's
(15:06):
not worth it. And I think that is a totally
fair decision to make. I think a lot of people go into
self-publishing because they were like, I hate the hoops you
have to jump through of traditional publishing.
And that's totally valid. I think a lot of people, you
know, who want to be writers andwho really have the dream of
traditionally publishing give upat the query trenches stage
because they're like, this isn'tworth, you know, the emotional
(15:28):
pain of being told no over and over again, Which again, totally
fair. It sucks.
So I think for me, that was thatwas honestly one of the hardest
parts. Yeah.
And was that a long process for you?
How did you sort of how did thatgo?
So for querying, I queried the first version of my vampire book
(15:49):
for about 6 to 8 months, something like that.
I started in the summer of 2018,and I kind of gave up at the
start of 2019. One of the reasons I gave up was
that I'd started writing Bluebird and I was like, you
know, moving on to the next book.
(16:10):
And for Bluebird, I didn't queryBluebird widely.
What I did with Bluebird is I got really, really lucky.
I had written about the 1st 50,000 words of Bluebird and I
took a class that was on the 1st5 pages and query letter.
(16:31):
Like the stuff you have to perfect for querying 'cause I
was like, you know what? I don't want to write a whole
book and then send it out and have it be like, this sucks.
The 1st 5 pages aren't interesting.
You don't have a good query letter.
So I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to take this
class now and see if there's anything worthwhile in this
book. That class happened to be taught
by an agent that I had pitched the Hunter's Gambit to.
(16:55):
And after I finished the class, she sent me an e-mail that was
like, hey, when you're done withthis, send it to me like this.
You know, the sci-fi book you have sounds really good.
I'm, you know, I'd be interested, you know, send it to
me when you're done. So when I was done, I sent it
right to her. And she did eventually end up
becoming my agent. So I didn't query Bluebird
widely. I went through the trenches with
(17:18):
Hunter's Gambit and failed and failed with that book.
Which I think I think is important to note is that you
can fail in the query trenches for a book and still eventually
get there. Yeah, Adrian Tchaikovsky, when I
was an interview, I asked him the same question and he tried
(17:39):
15 books. Oh yeah.
Before as the 15th book got picked up.
Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, Sometimes it's like that.
And again, sometimes it's not because your book's bad.
It's just because that's not what's being, you know, being
picked up by publishers at this point.
Yeah, sometimes it's also maybe you're pitching like, you know,
(18:02):
a, a murder, like a cozy murder mystery, but that agent already
has like 10 authors that they'vesigned with that are doing cozy
murder mysteries. They might be like, I'm not
acquiring anymore in that area. And you might just not know
that. There's a lot of stuff with
querying that you don't have insight into.
And I think that's also what makes it difficult is that it
(18:23):
can be hard to know why an agentrejected you.
Sometimes you get lucky and an agent will send you a
personalized letter about why they don't like it or why
they're, you know, not interested in picking it up.
Which actually my, my current agent, when she read the very
first version of Hunter's gambit, she did actually send me
like a personal letter that was like, you know, it wasn't a
formal rejection. It was like, here's why I don't
(18:44):
think I could sell this. So I, I think that there's, you
know, because, because you're getting silence, which is, you
know, no response is to no, or you're getting a lot of a lot of
form rejections. It can be really hard to be
like, where am I going wrong? You know, what am I, what am I
doing? Because, you know, you can be a
(19:07):
really, really good writer. You can write, you know, 15
really good books, but if fourteen of those aren't the
right book for the right time, aren't the right agents for the
book, you know, there's just so many things that can get you and
know, and it can be so hard to tell what they are.
Yeah, that's what makes it so hard, yeah.
(19:31):
Yeah, I'm so sorry. If any, if any aspiring writers
are listening to this, I, I believe in you.
I know it's hard. I'm sorry.
They'll pass the game, yeah. A very fun game to play though.
Yeah. So I was going to ask you about
right queer fantasy. I, so I am queer myself.
(19:54):
I'm a very queer person and I'vealways identified as queer since
like, oh gosh, I want to say like high school when I was
first because I, I know a lot ofpeople know that they're, you
know, gay or trans or, you know,other forms of queer from a very
young age. For me, I just kind of wasn't.
(20:15):
I didn't really give a shit. About dating or anything until
high school. And even then I didn't really
like give a shit, but I was like, Oh yeah, am I into people?
Big question mark. And then in high school, you
know, I was like, Oh yeah, I guess I'm just, I don't really
care about gender, OK. I'm still going to be depressed
because I'm in high school and not do anything about it.
(20:38):
So I always, you know, I've, I've, you know, as long as I've
been aware of like, you know, doI want to date and stuff like
that, I've known I was queer. So I've always approached
writing from a perspective of trying to make queer characters
as normalized as possible. And I, I think that with fantasy
(21:03):
and science fiction, you know, obviously if you're writing in
present day, you do have to takeinto account that homophobia
exists, unfortunately. But in a secondary world fantasy
or, you know, sci-fi that's set far in the future or, you know,
different planet or something like that.
(21:24):
I think that one of the hard things about writing queer
fantasy is deciding if you want any form of homophobia to be
present in your work, and if so,why.
And if not, you have to be careful to make sure that you
(21:45):
are not writing in any subconscious biases that we have
as a result of living in a society that is homophobic.
I think that's difficult. And I, I think also there are
points where you have to as wellbalance your own personal
experience that you might want to add versus considering what
(22:06):
readers might want. So for me, I write, you know, I
write secondary world, I write sci-fi.
That's like so far in the future, I've always been like,
you know what? I just want no homophobia.
It's not a thing, you know, people are always going to have
prejudices. That's just unfortunately a fact
of life. But I was like, I just don't
want it to be homophobia. I don't want to deal with that.
(22:28):
But I know a lot of queer writers and queer fantasy
writers have dealt with homophobia and want to show
characters that overcome that. And I think that's also totally
fine. I don't want to police how
anybody else, you know, deals with their sexuality.
But I, I think part of the challenge is making that active
choice of, do you want to include homophobia?
(22:51):
If so, why and how to deal with it?
And then, you know, sort of, yeah, picking, picking it apart.
Yeah, that's a really great approach to take.
And so say if say someone wantedto include it as a way of sort
of critiquing it, how would how would you recommend approaching
that in like respectful ways? You don't want to obviously
(23:13):
subconscious biases and stuff like that.
What would you say are the pit bulls that you've seen people
fall into when you've tried to like, take this on?
I think that a common pitfall can be assuming that the reader
has no familiarity with homophobia.
(23:37):
Because I think often times if you're a queer writer, queer
readers are going to be finding your book and picking it up.
And, you know, readers who are straight are also going to be
reading your book. But if they're reading something
clear, they probably have a general understanding of
homophobia and the forms that itcan take.
(24:01):
And so I think that often times in fantasy, if you sort of spell
out like, I am discriminate, discriminated against for being
queer, Let me explain discrimination and why it
happens. I think that that can make your
novel feel like it's APSA. You know, it's, it's like a, I
(24:25):
don't want to use the phrase morality tale, but I think often
times it can come across as something that feels more
instructive than as a narrative.Yeah, Yeah.
But I mean, I, I will also say one of the reasons I've never
written novels where there is homophobia and characters who
struggle with it is I grew up inan extremely liberal part of the
(24:49):
world. I attended a high school that
was specifically a high school for the arts.
So we were all queer there. And then I have since then lived
in pretty, you know, pretty progressive parts of the world.
I have not really experienced homophobia.
I've been very lucky that I've just, you know, I had an
accepting family. I've had most of my friends are
(25:12):
either queer or totally fine with queer people.
So one of the reasons I haven't written those stories is I feel
like because I haven't experienced really that kind of
discrimination, it's not my story to tell.
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I always like going to
when I go to Fantasy Con, I always like going to the panels
(25:32):
on representation and stuff. And there was a really good one
last time. There was a bit of controversy
as well surrounding a few of thesubjects.
Yeah, it's it's great to see more representation.
But I was going to ask you, do you think that it's getting to
the stage where it's enough or is there still a lot of work to
be done? I think that we will have enough
(25:54):
representation when we stop thinking about representation.
Yeah, that's a great answer. I think once we reach a point
where, you know, having like a, you know, a, a protagonist
that's like a queer black woman is so normalized that no one
thinks of it as representation anymore.
(26:15):
I think that's when we have enough representation.
Like I, I, I, yeah, I, I think anytime you have to focus on it
and be like, hey, maybe we do, we need more of this.
The answer is yes. Yeah, no, I think you've nailed
it there. I think that's the the main
thing to think about. I think it's eight people.
It's just normalization, isn't it?
Yeah. Have you got any good books that
(26:37):
like good queer fantasy books ifanyone wants to read any?
Oh gosh, I actually I haven't read anything new in so long.
What's your favorite book? I'm Oh gosh, you know, I'm
actually just going to recommendJaron Jay Zhao's Iron Widow
because I am a big fan of polyamory in fantasy.
(27:00):
And actually the Hunter's Gambithas some polyamory in it and I
love seeing other writers also put polyamory in fantasy.
So I'm just like, yes, no more love triangles.
Just have them all date each other.
It's fine. There you go also.
It's just a great book. Check it out if if you haven't
already there. You go, good example.
(27:23):
Last question for you. I'm always finish on this one.
What advice do you have for any aspiring authors out there?
Anyone who wants to to give writing a go, what would you?
What would you recommend? Apart from I'm very sorry about
the query trenches, I think the biggest advice I can give is
(27:43):
just keep writing. And I know that sounds really
boring. And I know that a lot of people
do have barriers, you know, reasons why they can't write
every day. You know, maybe they work two
jobs and they just don't have that much time to like, sit down
every single day and write. But I think for me there was a
time like at the end of high school, some point, end of end
(28:08):
of high school. I, I took a gap year.
So end of high school, middle ofthe gap year where I started
writing and I pretty much have never stopped writing since.
I write pretty much every day. The exceptions are if I'm like
travelling or like, you know, something else comes up and even
(28:28):
some days I'm just writing like one word or just like one
sentence and it's not really that productive.
I think having that consistency is a lot more important than
trying to go for, Oh well, everyday I need to hit 1000 words.
So if I'm not hitting 1000 words, why am I even bothering
or whatever? I don't like Nanowrimo.
(28:49):
I know Nanowrimo can be really help for some people.
I don't like it because I, I don't like the focus on word
count instead of quality of words or focus on process.
I think also for me, one of the things that's been really
helpful is I started writing with fan fiction.
I still write fan fiction and one of the things I like about
(29:10):
it is there are no stakes attached to fan fiction.
You can write whatever the hell you want.
No one's going in and editing itfor you.
You know, you're, if you're posting it online and anyone's
like, I don't know if this was very good.
They're an asshole and everyone understands that they're an
(29:30):
asshole. Like, you know, if you publish a
book and someone gives it a negative review, there's often
times an understanding that, youknow, because you're putting it
out as a product to be consumed.People have a right to public to
make their negative opinions public.
But with fan fiction, when you post something, the general
etiquette is that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't
(29:50):
say anything at all. So you generally just get people
who are really into what you're writing and really into writing
similar things. And so being able to just kind
of noodle around with new ideas or new writing styles, post it
to get some kind of feedback andhave some kind of community
because writing can often feel very solitary.
(30:11):
That's really invaluable. And that's really helped me.
You know, there have been days where I didn't work on a
published book other than or, you know, a book that I'm trying
to get published for more than like a sentence.
But I wrote like 1000 words of fan fiction.
And, you know, often times for me, that will be like, yeah, you
know what? I needed to just kind of dump a
bunch of creative energy into something that has no stress
(30:32):
attached with it because, yeah, you know, if, if you're trying
to get something published, you know, there's, there's a sense
of like, it has to be really polished and it does.
I don't want to lie to you. You have to have something that
is incredibly polished before you start querying.
You can't assume that your agentor your, you know, an agent's
going to take a chance on an unpolished manuscript.
(30:52):
You can't assume that an editor is but having, and it doesn't
necessarily have to be fanfic. That's just what works for me.
But having some kind of outlet for your writing that does not
have any stakes attached to it is really important just to put
like practice, like, you know, artists will just draw messy
sketches. I'm also an artist, so I have
(31:14):
many experience with messy sketches.
You know, there's always that like it.
It's kind of like a practice. A practice that helps you get
out all your ideas without feeling like you have to make it
perfect. Yeah, that's fantastic advice.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Yeah, well, thank you very much.It's been wonderful chatting
(31:35):
with you. I really enjoyed this.
Where's the best place to find out more about you and your
books? So I have a website,
itsclpillow.com. You can find summaries for my
books there. You can find links to where you
can buy my books. I'm trying to get a blog up and
(31:56):
running. We'll see if and when that
happens. I also do a lot of, I do some
freelance editing. If you are a fantasy or science
fiction writer out there who wants eyes on your book that,
you know, eyes from somebody whoknows what they're talking about
can maybe give that a check out.Yeah, Put.
(32:19):
The link in the description as well so I won't check out.
Yeah, I'm very easy. All my social media is just my
first and last name. I'm CL Purelo on Instagram.
I'm CL purelo.com. I'm CL Purelo on Twitter.
I make it really easy for you, Ipromise.
Yeah, and be sure to check out the Hunter's Gammas as well.
I'll put a link for that in the description.
(32:40):
And very best of luck for the launch, hopefully all those.
Well, yeah, and thank you very much.
Fingers crossed. Crossed yeah, thank you very
much and yeah, thank you very much for listening at home it's
been.
Thank you for listening to the Fantasy Risers Tool Shed.
If you'd like to join our writing community on Discord and
get access to fantasy writing classes and books on Patreon,
check the links in the description.
And if you don't want to miss any future episodes, be sure to
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quick rating on Spotify or iTunes and share this episode on
(00:23):
social media or with anyone who you think may be interested.
Thank you very much for listening.
Enjoy the show. Welcome to another episode of
the Fantasy Risers. So shit.
(00:45):
I'm your host, Richie Berlin, and today I'm delighted to be
joined by the award nominated author CLALOCL.
Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
Oh, thank you very much for joining me.
You've got a brand new book coming out as well in June,
haven't you? The Hunter's Gamble.
Yes, I do. It comes out at the end of June
(01:06):
and I'm very excited about it. It looks awesome.
It's going to be published by Angry Robots and this is going
to be your second book with them, isn't it?
Yeah, this is my second book with Angry Robot.
My first was Bluebird. It came out in 2022 and that was
sci-fi. This one, Hunter's Gambit is
(01:26):
more fantasy. Oh.
Nice little pivot, little pivot there.
So let's get let's get start with the Hunter's Gambit and
then we're going to kind of workback from there.
And, and just about your journeythrough the white bear, the
right in the world. So tell us all about the
Hunter's Gambit. So it's it's a fantasy that kind
(01:48):
of straddles the like romanticy line.
And the basic premise is it's a secondary world fantasy.
It's kind of got like Victorian gothic vibes.
And it's all about vampires. If you don't like vampires, I'm
so sorry. If you do like vampires.
Hello, welcome. You've been off the scene for a
(02:10):
little while, haven't you, vampires?
I'm making a bit of a comeback. Yeah, I know they are.
It's great. I actually tried to to pitch
this book back in 2018, and the feedback I got from agents was
just no one's, no one's selling vampire books these days.
But now they're making a comeback and I appreciate it.
Well, there you go. That that's a great sort of
(02:31):
thing to keep in mind, that it like your book might not just be
like right for the time you justwaste.
Keep finding your time, keep trying.
You never know. Yeah, settings, tropes, they all
come and go in popularity. Like God, you sure as hell can't
sell a dystopian YA novel these days.
(02:54):
Oh yeah. So maybe 10 years from now.
Yeah, you know, I'll just keep older.
So the Hunter's gamma. Tell us more.
So the premise is we have our protagonist, Kazan Korvik, who
is a human blacksmith and she has always been obsessed with
vampires and she's made it her life's work to create weapons
(03:18):
specifically designed to kill them.
However, one night she is travelling through the woods
with a group of other people andshe is attacked and captured by
a clan of vampires. And thus begins our plot.
She finds herself in the middle of a elaborate ritual where she
(03:40):
is put on a fake throne as a fake queen of the vampires as
part of this elaborate ceremony.And there's going to be this
wonderful party for three days. Everyone's feasting and dancing
and having a good time. But of course, at the end of the
three days, she's dinner, so shehas to find a way out or find a
(04:04):
way to get revenge. I'm not going to say anymore
because that's like, you got to read the book for that, don't
you? Oh, that, that's set up
wonderfully there. What's going on?
I'm intrigued by the romantic elements as well, given the.
Yeah, there's she has. There are two vampires who kind
of maybe are going to help her. Are they?
Are they not? Who knows?
(04:26):
You have to read the book and find out.
Nice. So tell us a bit about how you
approach writing this book. It tells that you you worked on
it for a good while, given that,yeah, so.
I I had a first version in 2018 that I tried to sell.
It wasn't, it wasn't a good version.
(04:48):
Only the very bare bones structure was there.
Half the characters didn't even exist or have the same names
that they do now. And I totally put it aside end
of 2018 just because, you know, I was like, yeah, OK, the
vampires aren't selling. And I was realizing that the
book had some major, major problems.
So then I wrote Bluebirds, got an agent for Bluebird, sold
(05:11):
Bluebird. And my agent had actually read
the original version of Hunter'sGambit.
And she was like, hey, you remember that vampire book?
Do you want to try and revisit that?
And I was like, yes, I would love to revisit my vampire book.
And I, I basically completely rewrote it.
It's a completely different bookfrom what I tried to pitch in
2018, but the the general gist is similar.
(05:34):
Nice. Yeah, and then this one sold
because vampires are back in fashion.
I'm sure it's all hardware that you put into it since then.
Like I imagine, I don't know howyou feel like when when you're
writing, like you're always trying to get better and when
you write something one day and you come back to look at it the
next day, there's always something that you can change or
(05:55):
you feel like you can do a better job now.
You think that's a good attitudeto have, but is that did that
sort of help you when you were sort of polishing your story and
going back to it, that you've grown so much as a writer
because you've had that those years of experience in this
week? Oh absolutely, absolutely.
I am definitely a much more skilled writer now than I was
(06:19):
back in 2018. And even though I did most of
the rewrite for Hunter's Gambit in 2022-2023, it, it's still,
you know, and I've, I've grown even more as a writer since I've
read about the campus. But yeah, it, it definitely, it
definitely helped. There's always I, I think as a
(06:39):
writer, you're always better today than you were yesterday as
long as you just keep writing. And so being able to completely
just tear it apart, recreate it,I think it turned out a like
infinitely better than the firstversion.
Nice. So how did you approach it then?
(07:00):
Like do you, I mean, everyone approaches like editing
differently. Don't be.
But what did you do first to thesort of work out what bits
weren't quite work and what was OK?
Did you just like, did you get the help of someone else or did
you just go on it with fresh eyes?
I sort of, oh gosh, what did I do?
(07:20):
I think I rewrote the first 50 pages and the synopsis and I
sent that to my agent. I'm lucky in that I have a very
editorial agent, so my agent sent it back to me with some
notes and I went from there. I think what I ended up doing is
I pretty much, I had the old manuscript open on my computer
(07:42):
and I basically just opened up afresh Word document completely
blank and started the rewrite process.
I sort of pulled it apart chapter by chapter as well.
There were things that needed tobe reorganized.
There were things that needed tobe restructured, a lot of stuff
like that. Yeah, I, I, I sort of broke it
(08:04):
down to the base elements of it,you know, I was like, OK, what
characters am I keeping? What characters do I need?
What part of the plot works? What part of the plot doesn't
work? Yeah.
Do you have a, a favorite aspectof the Yeah, I suppose the
aspect of the craft that you like.
Do you like characters more? Do you like what more?
(08:26):
What more? I think I think there's two of
my favorite parts of writing. One is when you get to the good
bit, all plots. Well, OK, if you're a writer and
you're creating a story, you know that there isn't the good
bits that you want to write. And I write chronologically.
(08:47):
I will start with the first lineof Page 1 and I will work my way
through chronologically. I don't skip around unless I'm
doing editing. When I'm drafting, it's just
straight through. So I'm like, OK, in two chapters
I get to write the good bits andthen I get to write the good
bits. That's that's my favorite part.
My second favorite part is when you find a really good song or
(09:07):
soundtrack that fits your story and you listen to it for like 10
hours straight while I'm like daydreaming about all the stuff
you think would be really cool. It's an important part of
writing. Yeah, I you've got to feel
something I don't think when you're thinking about the story
because it is an emotional journey, isn't it?
And when you're thinking about them big bits like you say, the
(09:29):
bits that you want to write or that then climactic paths, you
want to feel something emotionalyou don't know when you're
thinking about in your mind. So yeah, I get that completely.
That's really good, a good measure and stick of how you've
done. Yeah, yeah.
I, I think that there's, when you're, especially when you're
going through the editing process, there's a point where
(09:52):
everything you've written just becomes like letters on a page
and it's all like completely meaningless.
Your eyes are kind of glazed over and you're just doing like
nitty gritty technical work where you're not really
inspired. And then it's like, find that
good song, find that good, remember why you're doing this.
Yeah. I was.
It was pretty funny that you saythat, though, because I was.
(10:13):
I saw it so on. I don't know if it was like on
Instagram or something like thatand this price.
I was saying that you should when you edit and you should
never ever feel like you hate your story or anything like that
because it shows that it's not going to be a good story.
Asked like, that's such bullshitbecause the amount of time you
have to read that story, of course you're going to hate it.
(10:34):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there is, there have
been scenes where I've, you know, for everything I've
written, there have been scenes where I've read it like 30 times
and I'm like, Oh my God, this isabsolute garbage.
And then I'll like, send it to afriend and the friend will be
like, Oh no, this is good. And I'm like, oh, right.
It it has no meaning to me anymore because I've spent so
long fiddling with it. I know that's it's it's a hard
(10:56):
thing. I mean, I do you ever, I mean, I
used the one who's who's to go quite a lot with imposter
syndromes. You ever experienced anything
like that yourself? I feel like if I say no, it
sounds arrogant, but kind of no.I think I'm, I'm very accurately
aware of where I am as a writer and I, I think I didn't like I,
(11:28):
it sounds so cliche to be like Iworked for what I have because,
you know, the people who say that are normally the people who
didn't work for what they have. Because it's a lot of work.
Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah.
It's like, you know, I, I put inthe work to write a book.
I put in the work to find an agent.
You know, I put in the work to get a book completely ready to
(11:50):
send off to editors. Like, you know, there's I'm, I'm
aware of how much effort everything was.
And I think now that I have one book out in the world, second
book about to come out, I'm veryaccurately aware of, I don't
want to say the Peck where I am in the pecking order because I
don't really think of writers. I think it's kind of rude to
(12:12):
think of writers like that. But, you know, I'm aware I'm not
like a New York Times bestseller, you know, I'm aware
that I'm much more like, you know, I'm, I'm kind of the like
the lead title area for my publisher.
But I'm aware that I have smaller publisher, Angry Robots,
pretty big in the world of science fiction and fantasy.
But you know, they're not like Penguin Random House, which is
(12:33):
massive. So I'm, I'm kind of, I'm, I'm
very aware of where I am. So I'm not like, Oh my God, I'm
a failure. Everyone else is like, you know,
New York Times bestseller and I'm not.
So clearly I'm not a real writer.
Not that it's wrong if writers feel that way, but I I think,
(12:53):
'cause I've always tried to be very accurately aware of who I
am, what I write, who I write for, I don't really get imposter
syndrome. Yeah, that's, that's brilliant.
Yeah, that's good. Doesn't hold you back.
And I can say you has a brilliant career so far and
you've got every right to be confident.
So you don't need to worry aboutkind of things.
(13:16):
So you tell us a bit more about your writing journey.
I mean, was there any challengesalong the way to getting here?
I think the biggest challenge was, so I actually started out
writing fan fiction and at one point I'd written something that
was like a five way mash up between like a bunch of
different media properties and Iwas like, this isn't even fan
(13:40):
fiction anymore. Like what the fuck is this?
And I think for me, the the hardest struggle was having that
first thought of like, hey, wait, I could sell this.
And then the process of getting an agent.
(14:02):
Everyone, all the writers I knowand all the people I know who
are in the query trenches alwaystalk about how brutal querying
can be. Unfortunately, that is true.
Querying can be really rough 'cause it's the first outside
test you face. Like you can set tests for your
(14:22):
own writing, you can set like goals for where you want your
writing to be. But generally, unless you've
hired an outside agent, which I didn't, I am a college student,
I'm broke. An agent is the first person who
is an industry professional thatwill be judging your work.
And it's really difficult to feel both like you're being
(14:45):
professionally judged for the first time while also being
aware that this is the first hurdle you must pass through for
most, if not all aspects of traditional publishing.
And I, I think for a lot of people, that's where they, I
don't want to say give up, but that's where they decide it's
(15:06):
not worth it. And I think that is a totally
fair decision to make. I think a lot of people go into
self-publishing because they were like, I hate the hoops you
have to jump through of traditional publishing.
And that's totally valid. I think a lot of people, you
know, who want to be writers andwho really have the dream of
traditionally publishing give upat the query trenches stage
because they're like, this isn'tworth, you know, the emotional
(15:28):
pain of being told no over and over again, Which again, totally
fair. It sucks.
So I think for me, that was thatwas honestly one of the hardest
parts. Yeah.
And was that a long process for you?
How did you sort of how did thatgo?
So for querying, I queried the first version of my vampire book
(15:49):
for about 6 to 8 months, something like that.
I started in the summer of 2018,and I kind of gave up at the
start of 2019. One of the reasons I gave up was
that I'd started writing Bluebird and I was like, you
know, moving on to the next book.
(16:10):
And for Bluebird, I didn't queryBluebird widely.
What I did with Bluebird is I got really, really lucky.
I had written about the 1st 50,000 words of Bluebird and I
took a class that was on the 1st5 pages and query letter.
(16:31):
Like the stuff you have to perfect for querying 'cause I
was like, you know what? I don't want to write a whole
book and then send it out and have it be like, this sucks.
The 1st 5 pages aren't interesting.
You don't have a good query letter.
So I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to take this
class now and see if there's anything worthwhile in this
book. That class happened to be taught
by an agent that I had pitched the Hunter's Gambit to.
(16:55):
And after I finished the class, she sent me an e-mail that was
like, hey, when you're done withthis, send it to me like this.
You know, the sci-fi book you have sounds really good.
I'm, you know, I'd be interested, you know, send it to
me when you're done. So when I was done, I sent it
right to her. And she did eventually end up
becoming my agent. So I didn't query Bluebird
widely. I went through the trenches with
(17:18):
Hunter's Gambit and failed and failed with that book.
Which I think I think is important to note is that you
can fail in the query trenches for a book and still eventually
get there. Yeah, Adrian Tchaikovsky, when I
was an interview, I asked him the same question and he tried
(17:39):
15 books. Oh yeah.
Before as the 15th book got picked up.
Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, Sometimes it's like that.
And again, sometimes it's not because your book's bad.
It's just because that's not what's being, you know, being
picked up by publishers at this point.
Yeah, sometimes it's also maybe you're pitching like, you know,
(18:02):
a, a murder, like a cozy murder mystery, but that agent already
has like 10 authors that they'vesigned with that are doing cozy
murder mysteries. They might be like, I'm not
acquiring anymore in that area. And you might just not know
that. There's a lot of stuff with
querying that you don't have insight into.
And I think that's also what makes it difficult is that it
(18:23):
can be hard to know why an agentrejected you.
Sometimes you get lucky and an agent will send you a
personalized letter about why they don't like it or why
they're, you know, not interested in picking it up.
Which actually my, my current agent, when she read the very
first version of Hunter's gambit, she did actually send me
like a personal letter that was like, you know, it wasn't a
formal rejection. It was like, here's why I don't
(18:44):
think I could sell this. So I, I think that there's, you
know, because, because you're getting silence, which is, you
know, no response is to no, or you're getting a lot of a lot of
form rejections. It can be really hard to be
like, where am I going wrong? You know, what am I, what am I
doing? Because, you know, you can be a
(19:07):
really, really good writer. You can write, you know, 15
really good books, but if fourteen of those aren't the
right book for the right time, aren't the right agents for the
book, you know, there's just so many things that can get you and
know, and it can be so hard to tell what they are.
Yeah, that's what makes it so hard, yeah.
(19:31):
Yeah, I'm so sorry. If any, if any aspiring writers
are listening to this, I, I believe in you.
I know it's hard. I'm sorry.
They'll pass the game, yeah. A very fun game to play though.
Yeah. So I was going to ask you about
right queer fantasy. I, so I am queer myself.
(19:54):
I'm a very queer person and I'vealways identified as queer since
like, oh gosh, I want to say like high school when I was
first because I, I know a lot ofpeople know that they're, you
know, gay or trans or, you know,other forms of queer from a very
young age. For me, I just kind of wasn't.
(20:15):
I didn't really give a shit. About dating or anything until
high school. And even then I didn't really
like give a shit, but I was like, Oh yeah, am I into people?
Big question mark. And then in high school, you
know, I was like, Oh yeah, I guess I'm just, I don't really
care about gender, OK. I'm still going to be depressed
because I'm in high school and not do anything about it.
(20:38):
So I always, you know, I've, I've, you know, as long as I've
been aware of like, you know, doI want to date and stuff like
that, I've known I was queer. So I've always approached
writing from a perspective of trying to make queer characters
as normalized as possible. And I, I think that with fantasy
(21:03):
and science fiction, you know, obviously if you're writing in
present day, you do have to takeinto account that homophobia
exists, unfortunately. But in a secondary world fantasy
or, you know, sci-fi that's set far in the future or, you know,
different planet or something like that.
(21:24):
I think that one of the hard things about writing queer
fantasy is deciding if you want any form of homophobia to be
present in your work, and if so,why.
And if not, you have to be careful to make sure that you
(21:45):
are not writing in any subconscious biases that we have
as a result of living in a society that is homophobic.
I think that's difficult. And I, I think also there are
points where you have to as wellbalance your own personal
experience that you might want to add versus considering what
(22:06):
readers might want. So for me, I write, you know, I
write secondary world, I write sci-fi.
That's like so far in the future, I've always been like,
you know what? I just want no homophobia.
It's not a thing, you know, people are always going to have
prejudices. That's just unfortunately a fact
of life. But I was like, I just don't
want it to be homophobia. I don't want to deal with that.
(22:28):
But I know a lot of queer writers and queer fantasy
writers have dealt with homophobia and want to show
characters that overcome that. And I think that's also totally
fine. I don't want to police how
anybody else, you know, deals with their sexuality.
But I, I think part of the challenge is making that active
choice of, do you want to include homophobia?
(22:51):
If so, why and how to deal with it?
And then, you know, sort of, yeah, picking, picking it apart.
Yeah, that's a really great approach to take.
And so say if say someone wantedto include it as a way of sort
of critiquing it, how would how would you recommend approaching
that in like respectful ways? You don't want to obviously
(23:13):
subconscious biases and stuff like that.
What would you say are the pit bulls that you've seen people
fall into when you've tried to like, take this on?
I think that a common pitfall can be assuming that the reader
has no familiarity with homophobia.
(23:37):
Because I think often times if you're a queer writer, queer
readers are going to be finding your book and picking it up.
And, you know, readers who are straight are also going to be
reading your book. But if they're reading something
clear, they probably have a general understanding of
homophobia and the forms that itcan take.
(24:01):
And so I think that often times in fantasy, if you sort of spell
out like, I am discriminate, discriminated against for being
queer, Let me explain discrimination and why it
happens. I think that that can make your
novel feel like it's APSA. You know, it's, it's like a, I
(24:25):
don't want to use the phrase morality tale, but I think often
times it can come across as something that feels more
instructive than as a narrative.Yeah, Yeah.
But I mean, I, I will also say one of the reasons I've never
written novels where there is homophobia and characters who
struggle with it is I grew up inan extremely liberal part of the
(24:49):
world. I attended a high school that
was specifically a high school for the arts.
So we were all queer there. And then I have since then lived
in pretty, you know, pretty progressive parts of the world.
I have not really experienced homophobia.
I've been very lucky that I've just, you know, I had an
accepting family. I've had most of my friends are
(25:12):
either queer or totally fine with queer people.
So one of the reasons I haven't written those stories is I feel
like because I haven't experienced really that kind of
discrimination, it's not my story to tell.
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I always like going to
when I go to Fantasy Con, I always like going to the panels
(25:32):
on representation and stuff. And there was a really good one
last time. There was a bit of controversy
as well surrounding a few of thesubjects.
Yeah, it's it's great to see more representation.
But I was going to ask you, do you think that it's getting to
the stage where it's enough or is there still a lot of work to
be done? I think that we will have enough
(25:54):
representation when we stop thinking about representation.
Yeah, that's a great answer. I think once we reach a point
where, you know, having like a, you know, a, a protagonist
that's like a queer black woman is so normalized that no one
thinks of it as representation anymore.
(26:15):
I think that's when we have enough representation.
Like I, I, I, yeah, I, I think anytime you have to focus on it
and be like, hey, maybe we do, we need more of this.
The answer is yes. Yeah, no, I think you've nailed
it there. I think that's the the main
thing to think about. I think it's eight people.
It's just normalization, isn't it?
Yeah. Have you got any good books that
(26:37):
like good queer fantasy books ifanyone wants to read any?
Oh gosh, I actually I haven't read anything new in so long.
What's your favorite book? I'm Oh gosh, you know, I'm
actually just going to recommendJaron Jay Zhao's Iron Widow
because I am a big fan of polyamory in fantasy.
(27:00):
And actually the Hunter's Gambithas some polyamory in it and I
love seeing other writers also put polyamory in fantasy.
So I'm just like, yes, no more love triangles.
Just have them all date each other.
It's fine. There you go also.
It's just a great book. Check it out if if you haven't
already there. You go, good example.
(27:23):
Last question for you. I'm always finish on this one.
What advice do you have for any aspiring authors out there?
Anyone who wants to to give writing a go, what would you?
What would you recommend? Apart from I'm very sorry about
the query trenches, I think the biggest advice I can give is
(27:43):
just keep writing. And I know that sounds really
boring. And I know that a lot of people
do have barriers, you know, reasons why they can't write
every day. You know, maybe they work two
jobs and they just don't have that much time to like, sit down
every single day and write. But I think for me there was a
time like at the end of high school, some point, end of end
(28:08):
of high school. I, I took a gap year.
So end of high school, middle ofthe gap year where I started
writing and I pretty much have never stopped writing since.
I write pretty much every day. The exceptions are if I'm like
travelling or like, you know, something else comes up and even
(28:28):
some days I'm just writing like one word or just like one
sentence and it's not really that productive.
I think having that consistency is a lot more important than
trying to go for, Oh well, everyday I need to hit 1000 words.
So if I'm not hitting 1000 words, why am I even bothering
or whatever? I don't like Nanowrimo.
(28:49):
I know Nanowrimo can be really help for some people.
I don't like it because I, I don't like the focus on word
count instead of quality of words or focus on process.
I think also for me, one of the things that's been really
helpful is I started writing with fan fiction.
I still write fan fiction and one of the things I like about
(29:10):
it is there are no stakes attached to fan fiction.
You can write whatever the hell you want.
No one's going in and editing itfor you.
You know, you're, if you're posting it online and anyone's
like, I don't know if this was very good.
They're an asshole and everyone understands that they're an
(29:30):
asshole. Like, you know, if you publish a
book and someone gives it a negative review, there's often
times an understanding that, youknow, because you're putting it
out as a product to be consumed.People have a right to public to
make their negative opinions public.
But with fan fiction, when you post something, the general
etiquette is that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't
(29:50):
say anything at all. So you generally just get people
who are really into what you're writing and really into writing
similar things. And so being able to just kind
of noodle around with new ideas or new writing styles, post it
to get some kind of feedback andhave some kind of community
because writing can often feel very solitary.
(30:11):
That's really invaluable. And that's really helped me.
You know, there have been days where I didn't work on a
published book other than or, you know, a book that I'm trying
to get published for more than like a sentence.
But I wrote like 1000 words of fan fiction.
And, you know, often times for me, that will be like, yeah, you
know what? I needed to just kind of dump a
bunch of creative energy into something that has no stress
(30:32):
attached with it because, yeah, you know, if, if you're trying
to get something published, you know, there's, there's a sense
of like, it has to be really polished and it does.
I don't want to lie to you. You have to have something that
is incredibly polished before you start querying.
You can't assume that your agentor your, you know, an agent's
going to take a chance on an unpolished manuscript.
(30:52):
You can't assume that an editor is but having, and it doesn't
necessarily have to be fanfic. That's just what works for me.
But having some kind of outlet for your writing that does not
have any stakes attached to it is really important just to put
like practice, like, you know, artists will just draw messy
sketches. I'm also an artist, so I have
(31:14):
many experience with messy sketches.
You know, there's always that like it.
It's kind of like a practice. A practice that helps you get
out all your ideas without feeling like you have to make it
perfect. Yeah, that's fantastic advice.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Yeah, well, thank you very much.It's been wonderful chatting
(31:35):
with you. I really enjoyed this.
Where's the best place to find out more about you and your
books? So I have a website,
itsclpillow.com. You can find summaries for my
books there. You can find links to where you
can buy my books. I'm trying to get a blog up and
(31:56):
running. We'll see if and when that
happens. I also do a lot of, I do some
freelance editing. If you are a fantasy or science
fiction writer out there who wants eyes on your book that,
you know, eyes from somebody whoknows what they're talking about
can maybe give that a check out.Yeah, Put.
(32:19):
The link in the description as well so I won't check out.
Yeah, I'm very easy. All my social media is just my
first and last name. I'm CL Purelo on Instagram.
I'm CL purelo.com. I'm CL Purelo on Twitter.
I make it really easy for you, Ipromise.
Yeah, and be sure to check out the Hunter's Gammas as well.
I'll put a link for that in the description.
(32:40):
And very best of luck for the launch, hopefully all those.
Well, yeah, and thank you very much.
Fingers crossed. Crossed yeah, thank you very
much and yeah, thank you very much for listening at home it's
been.
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