Holly Black Appreciates a Good Con

Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.

Melissa Bendixen: Hello listeners, I'm Audible Editor Melissa Bendixen, and I'm here with Holly Black, writer of over 30 children's and young adult fantasy novels, including the massively popular YA series, The Folk of the Air, and the middle grade series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, which she wrote in collaboration with Tony DiTerlizzi. Holly's work has been converted to the big screen, translated into over 30 languages, and won multiple awards like the Nebula and the Newberry Honor. Now for the first time, Holly is coming out with an adult fantasy novel, Book of Night, which I and I'm sure many of her now adult fan base is very excited about. Welcome, Holly.

Holly Black: I'm really excited and kind of nervous. It's definitely interesting to be a debut again, and to be going into an area of publishing that I'm pretty unfamiliar with.

MB: Right. Right. When you wrote your first book, Tithe, you initially thought it was an adult novel, and then you were informed that it was probably a YA. And so now here you are back at the beginning again and writing your first adult novel for real this time. How does that feel?

HB: It felt great to be doing something that was exciting in a new way. It was interesting to be unfamiliar with the conventions and the decisions. There was a real thrill to it and it was also hard. It has been really exciting.

MB: So what did you like most about this, about writing for adults? What was your favorite part about it?

HB: I think my favorite part was probably that there were references that I could make that I didn't have to worry about. Like I could pretty much say anything and not think, "Wait, do I need to clarify this? Do I need to alter this?" I can sit in a lot of the character moments longer. You can slow down the pace, you can extend these scenes, you can luxuriate in these moments, and that was a real pleasure. And then there's just adult stuff that I felt I could put in there that I wasn't able to write about before.

"That's a particular kind of magic I'm always interested in. The stuff that we already have feelings about, but maybe haven't seen literalized in magic."

There's a moment where Charlie, our protagonist, is going back to her house. She thinks she's going to have a fight with her live-in boyfriend. And she's like, "Man, I wish I could put on lipstick for this." And the desire to get ready before a fight and sort of look forward to a fight as much as you're also dreading it, isn't that the adult thing?

I didn't realize either that you could sort of live in those spaces longer, but I think there is a willingness on the part of adults to be willing to listen to longer pieces of dialogue. And not to have that kind of breakneck pace that I think people associate with YA.

MB: Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting you say that because I feel like Book of Night was well-paced.

Let's step back for listeners that are new to the story. Book of Night is about Charlie, a trying-to-be-retired thief and con artist, and her sister Posey, a part-time tarot card reader. They live in a world much like ours, except that the magic of shadows has recently been discovered, or "glomistry" maybe would be the term, where some people have the ability to make their shadow do things like change shape or even take solid form. And the story begins when she gets pulled into a job she doesn't want to do.

So there are so many things that were really fascinating and interesting about Book of Night, but one of the elements that really stuck with me was the con artistry here. I feel like I learned so much about the art of the con from Charlie and I have no doubt all her tips and tricks are things that con artists must actually use. So I couldn't help but wonder, what sort of research and prep work did you do to create such an authentic feeling experience of being a con artist?

HB: So there are actually books about how to do illegal stuff. In particular, guides to different kinds of cons, from picking pockets to picking locks. There's even a book about assassination by a former assassin. It's not a conventionally published book, but you can find it. So I've read a lot of different stuff about crime and criminals, in particular con artists and thieves. I'm fascinated by what makes us fall for the con.

I was in France at some point, and my husband came back and he had this golden ring in his hand and he was like, "I was conned!" And he was so happy because I had been writing a book about con artists. And so he went along with this whole con to see what would happen. This guy dropped a ring so that he would pick it up. And then somehow managed to like sell it to him, even though it was clearly not a real gold ring, but tried to convince him that it was a wedding band.

When you think about picking pockets, that just feels like a sport, and I'm not very good at sports. First, you’ve got to touch someone hard in one spot, and then you’ve got to grab something from another spot. That's too much for me. I'm not really good like that.

MB: Wow. That's crazy. So you put a version of that ring con in the book with Charlie. It was one of her first cons that she practiced.

So, one of your specialties is morally gray characters that are still entirely sympathetic. And you employ that skill beautifully with the characters that inhabit the seedy underbelly here. I'm thinking of Charlie and Vince and even Rand. What do you think it is that's so satisfying for you about creating morally gray characters? And what makes them so satisfying for the listener?

HB: I love when characters make mistakes. I think that it is such a pleasure, because it often launches us into a more interesting place. Ideally, it's the kind of mistake that makes everything more interesting. And so we really enjoy it. There's something I always think of as "ecstatic fall," which is the moment the character is like, "Well, to hell with you, to hell with me." It's a pleasure for them to give into the thing that they've been trying not to give into for the whole book.

And I think we have those impulses. I think one of the things that we really like about flawed characters is that we recognize ourselves in them. They do the things that we are afraid to do.

MB: One thing I really appreciated about Charlie was that she is very self-aware. She makes these mistakes, but she knows, she sees herself making them, and she can't do anything to stop them. And that felt really familiar to me. Where does that character inspiration come from?

HB: I think I am a very restrained person. And so I think that there is always a pleasure in seeing the ways in which I could make big mistakes that I am holding myself back from. There's a real pleasure in having a character not hold themselves back.

She also was a character that was inspired by my life here in Western Massachusetts. And the way that she was living, making ends meet through a bunch of different ways. She's bartending. She previously had a different life where she was hustling in this other way. And a lot of people in her life remind me of people I know up here. And so she came somewhat out of that. I think all characters come out of yourself.

MB: Yeah. I've also been thinking about where you pull your relationship dynamics from. In particular, I've noticed you have a trend of writing about close sister relationships. We have Posey and Charlie here, but also, The Folk of the Air series is centered around a trio of sisters. What draws you to writing about sisterhood? And what do you think you're trying to capture in this kind of dynamic?

HB: I think that sisters are people who have a bunch of shared experiences and shared knowledge, that means you know each other better than anybody in the world. But you also are stuck in a dynamic that is the dynamic of your childhood, and sometimes that is really hard to navigate and really hard to get out of. I think that sisters define themselves oppositionally because that's how you survive in a house, right? You say, "What are the ways in which we are not the same?"

I had a sister, but she died in her 20s, and so I both have the experience of having a sister and also my sister isn't here to read these books and say, "Hey, what are you doing? Is this about me?" It is never about her. But I think about sisters a lot because I miss mine.

MB: Yeah. Man, I felt very attached to the Charlie-Posey relationship because they're the exact distance that I am with my sister right now. It's the three-year difference. And I was just like, "Yeah, that push and pull."

HB: One of the weirdest things that happened after my sister died was, my sister was a big horror enthusiast and I was the fantasy person. And I remember the moment when I realized that if there was something I liked that was horror, there was no one to take that thing. There was no one to have it. And so I had to have it too because somebody had to have it. And I never realized all of the things that I liked that she also liked except when she was gone and I had to like, like them for both of us if someone was going to like them. It was the moment I realized how much we know ourselves in opposition.

MB: So you're carrying on both of those things now. The push and the pull inside of you.

HB: It's a weird thing to know that I didn't know myself as well as I thought I did until she wasn't here to take up a certain things that were ours, but not mine. I think I've certainly opened myself up to horror in a way that I probably never would have were she still here. I think that I write a lot of horror.

MB: Book of Night does have a lot of horror in it. And there were some moments that I was like, "Yep, this definitely couldn't be YA." So let's talk about the shadow magic in Book of Night. You've delved into the sinister and dark elements in your fantasy, but the shadow magic here really does go into horror elements. Some shadows have that ability to smother a person's lungs, or even control what they're saying. Where did this idea come from? And was it recent? Or was it something that you'd been working on for a while?

HB: Something I've had in my head for a while. It came from two different things. There's a piece of folklore that I came across about a woman who fell asleep on a hill. And when she woke up, there was a little man who was cutting away her shadow. He ran off, but she had this terrible feeling that if he had managed to cut away her shadow something awful would've happened, but she had no idea what. And it really stuck with me as being interesting and creepy. And then, walking back from town with my son, he was so fascinated with the way that his shadow would lengthen and shorten and be behind him and be before him.

And I thought, "This is a magic we all understand. This is a magic we all kind of believe is magic. Even though we know it isn't, even though we know it's trick of the light, it feels magic to us." And that's a particular kind of magic I'm always interested in. The stuff that we already have feelings about, but maybe haven't seen literalized in magic.

We have an idea of what "shadow-selves" are. They're the parts of us we don't want to acknowledge. They're the parts of ourselves that we want to shove away. They are our shame, our fear, our desire. And so finding a way to make a magic system in which that is literalized was really interesting to me and was an interesting way to get at some of the things about Charlie that she definitely didn't want to have brought out. But that's the nature of the book, it is to bring out the things that the protagonist doesn't want to have brought out.

MB: Yeah, as I was listening to this, I started actually looking for my shadow and it was something I realized I hadn't paid attention to in a long time. But you're right, it is like the daily magics of life. It does really strike a chord.

So now that you've written an entire magic system based off of your shadow, how do you feel about your shadow? Do you guys have a fraught relationship with each other?

HB: I wish it would do things for me. Why can't it wake up and do some stuff for me? Get to work shadow.

MB: If only it could turn solid and make breakfast for you in the morning.

HB: Or write my book. Come on shadow.

MB: Or write your book.

HB: Get to work.

MB: Let's gush about our narrator, Sara Amini, for a second. This is her debut audiobook narration, but it is absolutely stellar. She captures Charlie's voice so well with that slightly smoky tone and the sardonic delivery. And she doesn't hold back on the vocal characterizations of the other characters too. I particularly like the voices she chose for Adeline and Rand. What was the process for how you went about picking her? What were you excited about with her?

"What does this book sound like? What kind of language creates what kind of mood? Texture is both the tone of the voice, but it's also so much delivery. And sometimes [narrators] understand better than you do how to read your prose."

HB: It absolutely was that smokiness and that she has the kinda noir voice to me. I got to hear samples of different narrators. And when I heard hers, I just thought she was so perfect for this. She just sounds like Charlie to me. It's not just her voice, but her delivery has a kind of noir delivery, right? She seems like she's in a book in which cons and heists could happen.

MB: When you pick out your narrators, how do you know when you've like found the right one?

HB: One of the things I'm getting at, especially when I'm starting a book, is texture. What does this book sound like? What kind of language creates what kind of mood? Texture is both the tone of the voice, but it's also so much delivery. And sometimes [narrators] understand better than you do how to read your prose.

MB: Do you ever go back and listen to your audiobooks?

HB: Never. I am an inveterate changer. I will change bits of sentences all the way to the end. If you send me the book to look at any part, I will be looking at the sentences and tweaking them and messing with them. And so when I hear someone reading it, all I think about is, "Should the sentence be different? Should I have changed it in the following way? Is that one word too many? Is that the right word?" And so it's very hard for me to listen to my own audiobooks. I listen to some of them to just try to hear how the narration is. And then I abandon ship.

MB: You sound though like you do have a very particular vision about what you want out of your audio. Are you a listener yourself? Do you listen to a lot of audio?

HB: I do. I used to only listen to audio in my car when I was driving somewhere, but recently I have realized that I could listen to audio in pieces while I was doing things like cooking, or cleaning the kitchen, or putting on my makeup, or even in the shower.

And when I realized I can speed this up, I know that the narrators must hate this because it absolutely messes with their voices, but your ear does adjust so that they don't actually sound quite as squeaky as immediately it does sound. But I really love listening to it at that speed. It also lets me get through a book in the timeframe that I want to get through a book, because I want to hear enough of a story for it to really be in my mind.

MB: Well, you are a prolific author with a career spanning 20 years, which makes me think you must have a great system down for getting your stories on the page. I'm wondering if you can give us a little snapshot on your daily writing routine, if you have one?

HB: I do have one. I am constantly trying to hack my process. One of the things that I love to read are books about writing.

My central problem is that I love graph paper. I love poster board. I love pens. I love tape. And all I want is to be the kind of outliner who makes this whole big physical thing and then follows it. But I am not that person. Instead, I am a person who makes a plan and then blows up that plan almost immediately when I start writing.

So what I usually do is, I try to write about 1,000 words a day. And I have been recently trying to fast draft in a period of a month, try to write like 3,000 words a day that are just terrible, on the theory that if I'm going to blow up this draft, it doesn't have to be good and I might as well make all my mistakes up front. And that's been an interesting process, although an emotionally fraught one as I look at the monstrosity that I am creating.

"I am a person who makes a plan and then blows up that plan almost immediately when I start writing."

Then I go back through and try to write about 1,000 words a day and fix things, and invariably then tear it all apart and change things. I think I am pretty good at rewriting a book, but sadly maybe not so great at writing a draft of a book. I can fix them, but being a good fixer is a very stressful way to write.

MB: When you meet aspiring writers, what advice do you give them?

HB: To write for your reader self and not your writer self. I think that when we come into writing there's a lot of received wisdom about how writing should work and how writers ought to write. And I think really putting that aside in favor of, “What do you like as a reader? What would excite you if it happened next? What kinds of characters do you enjoy?” Thinking about your reader self first made a huge difference to me.

MB: So now that you have one adult book under your belt, would you do it again?

HB: Well, this is a duology, so I will do it again because we must get the band back together. Charlie has some more stuff to do before she is done. So there will be at least one more, but I would like to write more adult books. I will also write more YA books. I would like to do both.

MB: So there's a great line from Charlie where she talks about the lure of the con saying that, “Though in the end the universe is always going to win, it feels great to win against the universe that day.” So why do you think we all have this desire to test our mettle against the unwinnable universe?

HB: I think all we can do is test our mettle against the unwinnable universe, right? In the end, we all know the universe wins because we have a limited lifespan and we know we can only do so much before that end.

When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know anybody who made their living as a writer. And so, it seemed completely impossible for me to do what I'm doing now. I remember when I saw my first book I was happy all the time. I was happy for like two months. Someone rear-ended me and I was like, "That's okay. I'm so happy."

And then, into that summer, I went into probably the only real depression that I have ever had, in which I became convinced I was going to die. And many years later I was talking to Cassandra Clare, and she said, "Oh, this happens to lottery winners. This is a thing." And I think it was that I had told myself that my goal in life was to sell a book, but I had no other goals. So I always tell people like make a plan to write a second book. In the end the universe will win. But I got one more book out before that.

MB: Just one more, every time.

HB: One more.

MB: That's all we can really do.

Well thank you so much for your time today, Holly. I really appreciate you stopping by to chat about Book of Night.

HB: I really appreciate you having me. Thank you so much.

MB: And listeners, you can get Holly Black's Book of Night on Audible now.