Happy Wednesday, Everyone!
If you're looking for my Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop, you can find the link at the top of the blog or here.
Today I’m excited to have debut author Christopher Roubique here to share about his MG fantasy, Mythspeaker. It sounds like an action-packed story based on Indigenous folklore, and I’m excited to read it.
Here’s
a blurb from Goodreads:
For
fans of Race to the Sun and the Aru Shah series, this epic fantasy adventure
inspired by Indigenous American mythology follows a band of misfit children who
must pull off an impossible heist in order to save the world!
Thanks to a prophecy revealed when he was
little, thirteen-year-old Kyta always knew that he was destined to save the
world. But waiting for that moment has kept him on edge his whole childhood,
preventing him from having fun like other kids in his tribe. So when the ground
quakes and the trees whisper that something is wrong, Kyta leaps into action,
desperate to fulfill his destiny.
He is horrified to find that the precious Egg of
the World Turtle, on whose vast shell everyone and everything lives, has been
stolen by invaders. The Turtle is angry and grief-stricken, threatening to
upend the very land under their feet. The invaders refuse to heed the warning
of the tribes and return the Egg . . . so Kyta comes up with a plan to steal it
back!
It's risky and dangerous . . . but abandoning
the Egg is certain doom. Kyta assembles other kids who could sneak into the
invaders' fortress and pull off the heist, but getting four very different
personalities to work together is harder than he thought. And when they discover
that the Egg is being guarded by an evil collector, his savage ogres, and a
beast so terrible that it defies description, their odds seem all but
impossible! Will Kyta be able to fulfill his destiny, or did he set himself up
to fail . . . and the world to fall?
Inspired by the Indigenous American folktales,
this thrilling and heartwarming fantasy shows the importance of teamwork,
respect for nature, and believing in yourself.
Before I get to Christopher’s interview, I have my Insecure Writers Support Group Post.
Posting: The
first Wednesday is officially Insecure
Writer's Support Group Day.
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
The
awesome co-hosts this month are: Melissa Maygrove, Cathrina Constantine, Kate Larkinsdale, and Rebecca Douglass!
Optional Question: If you have a playlist
(or could put one together) that either gets you in the groove to write or fits
with one of your books, what is it? What type of music or what songs?
I don’t use a playlist or listen to music before or while I’m writing. I concentrate better when in silence.
Interview With Christopher Roubique
Hi Christopher! Thanks so much for joining us.
1. Tell us about yourself and how you became a writer.
Hi! Thanks so much for having me! I’m Christopher Roubique (said roo-beek), a lover of fantasy and science fiction, a gamer, a husband and dad, and collector of books about monsters. I’ve been trying to get a book traditionally published for around 14 years at this point and still can’t believe it’s actually happened!
I became a writer after I wrote a poem in 2nd grade about wolves. I have this vivid memory of finishing it and rereading it and finding the whole idea of writing so magical. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to take a blank page and create anything you want on it. I was solely a poet through my school years until I tried writing a novel out of sheer boredom at my first adult job, which is when everything clicked. I realized books were what I always had been wanting to write. I’d just convinced myself I couldn’t do it up to that point.
2. Where did you get the idea for Mythspeaker?
Mythspeaker came from two things, really. The first is that I always wanted to write an Indigenous fantasy adventure. I’m a huge lover of fantasy stories: The Lord of the Rings, Broken Sky, and The Chronicles of Narnia all meant the world to me as a kid. But there were very few characters in those stories that represented certain parts of me I was looking for, especially my Indigenous heritage. And I think that kind of quietly became this thing in the back of my head waiting for me to finally decide to write books. Because when I did, a story like this was the first thing I wanted to figure out how to write.
The second thing that made it all possible was some encouragement from my wonderful agent, Melanie Figueroa. At the time, she had challenged me to figure out “high concept” pitches: basically, a unique but relatable pitch that can grab someone in a sentence. It took me a long time to work out how to do that, but when it finally clicked, the very first high concept pitch I figured out was a high fantasy heist . . . and when I fused that with the Indigenous fantasy novel I really wanted to write, I suddenly had more ideas than pages to put them on.
3. It’s great that your agent helped you come up with your story’s idea. Once you came up with your idea, what was your plotting process? Did you just start writing, plot out your story, or flesh it out in another way?
For me, I always start with what the book is about. Not in the nuts and bolts “it’s about a kid who goes on a heist to save a special egg” sense. But in the sense of what am I trying to say? What’s the point of this book? So in Mythspeaker, it started with wanting to tell a story about the importance of faith when facing life’s challenges, and the fact that we don’t have to tackle life alone.
From there, I got to my favorite part, which is worldbuilding! Basically from the ground up, I figured out how the entire physical world worked for this novel. Then I narrowed in on the specific settings I knew I would need—like Tlera Tana and New Collum—and then I built the main characters as part of that setting in that world. For me to keep going, everything has to fit together. I don’t need to know everything, but I do need to understand the basic rules of how the world works.
Once that was done, I just started writing. I’m not an outliner or a plotter. I like to discover the story as it goes along. Follow where the characters lead me. It’s a ton of fun!
4. You have an interesting process. Your story is inspired by the Indigenous American folktales. In your author note, you mention that this book was a way for you to connect to that part of your heritage. What research did you do to learn about this part of your story and your life?
Not merely for this book, I’ve spent a lot of time reading Indigenous American mythology, trying to understand the style of storytelling, the themes and lessons, the way stories were (and are) shared across tribal cultures over time. My goal with this book was to capture that feeling of a story being told to you by someone. A story that had the weight of history behind it and also that feeling of interconnection with the greater world it’s a part of. Things that really help when dealing with this sort of old folklore is finding old sources. Recordings of old storytellers. Books written at the time. Modern presentations by historians and experts. They all have so much value.
My connection with my own heritage is complicated, and my journey to finding myself in that is still ongoing. It might always be. And that’s okay! The time I’ve spent in study and consideration brought me to what I describe in the author’s note. I’ve seen a few reviews of Mythspeaker that said they used my fictional story as a jumping off point for reading and discussing real Native folktales, culture, and history with their kids, and that’s absolutely amazing. All I could ask for, really.
5. Share about your main character, Kyta. Did you discover surprises about him as you wrote his story?
Oh absolutely! Kyta is the son of a powerful figure—the sole Mythspeaker in the city of Tlera Tana—and also the (unfortunate?) recipient of a huge destiny. A figure of myth told him, when he was five, that he would have to save the world one day. Not how. Or when. Just that he would have to find a way. And that burden has rested on him ever since.
I think the biggest surprise to Kyta that I hadn’t entirely foreseen when I started writing the book is how much of his life has been turned inward. In the earliest drafts, he had a best friend who was always there with him, but I realized as I considered his story that . . . no Kyta doesn’t have a best friend. He doesn’t have room for one. His whole life has been eaten up by this destiny he didn’t ask for. He feels fundamentally alone. And the full breadth of that realization brought me to a whole new set of discoveries for his character that made the book better.
7. Melanie Figueroa is your agent. How did she become your agent, and what was your road to getting your publishing contract like?
My story to getting an agent is . . . unique. Like most, I wrote a book and started querying once I’d edited it. All the agents I queried said no. (That part isn’t unique.) But I’d fallen in love with writing books, so I kept writing. I didn’t get a single full request until the 5th manuscript. But of the 15 or so I received, they all said no. It hurt, but I was determined to keep learning and improving. Yet when I started querying my 6th manuscript, it only got one full request that happened to be from Melanie.
And she said, “No.” Well, more specifically, she said she enjoyed the story and understood what I was doing. She just didn’t know how to sell it because it didn’t pitch well. But she enjoyed it enough to say, “If you ever write something else, please send it my way.”
So I sent her that 5th manuscript, which was my favorite thing I’d ever written at that point in my life. And she asked for the full, read it, and then said the same thing: “This is beautiful, but I don’t know how to sell it.” Same exact problem. I thanked her and moved on to my 7th manuscript.
Months passed. I was just sending out queries on the 7th when I got an email out of the blue from Melanie asking if she could call me. Thinking that maybe she’d had an idea for one of the manuscripts and wanted to do a Revise & Resubmit, I accepted. But that’s not what the call was about. She told me that she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my writing “voice”. She knew I didn’t have a book she could sell and that this sort of thing is never done for a variety of good reasons, but she believed in the way I wrote so much that she wanted to represent me anyway.
Of course, I said yes.
I queried with 7 manuscripts and got rejected more than 200 times over 8 years before I finally landed an agent without a book at all.
But things weren’t instantly rosy. Sure, I had an agent . . . but I didn’t have a book! At least, not one that she felt had a chance of landing a publisher. Melanie focused me on the thing she said my books lacked: a high concept. An irresistible hook. My 7th manuscript didn’t have one. I tried to make one work with my 8th manuscript but I still didn’t understand what “high concept” really meant or how to meld it with the books I wanted to write. Years passed. Melanie was always encouraging, but I felt like I was failing her. And then one day, I had it.
Over the course of a week, I came up with 6 high concepts, and the very 1st of those became Mythspeaker.
But I still wasn’t done. I’d spent so long in the trenches that my writing style and voice had gotten muddled by my desperation to be what agents were looking for. Melanie read the first draft of Mythspeaker and said it was great, but she could tell I was holding back. She asked if I could try it again and do it exactly how I wanted, not for anyone else. So I rewrote the whole book.
A lot of that next draft is what’s on shelves right now. 3 years after she became my agent, we went on sub. And though it took more than a decade to finally get there. . . we were only on sub for 30 days before getting an offer. I still can’t believe it.
8. What a story of perseverance and following your dreams! What is something you learned about the craft of writing that made Mythspeaker stronger from working with your editor?
One thing that really struck me is that it’s okay for a book to be little bit longer if what you’re adding is of real value to the story. Every author knows the hardship of making a book fit into a word count. We cut and wedge and squish trying to get the absolute most out of whatever hard cap we’re working with. And those caps and counts do matter! Books can only be so long and audiences have certain expectations, after all. But after so much time in the query trenches, I’d become hyper focused on keeping everything under a particular hard cap like my life depended on it. So I was flabbergasted when my (terrific) editor at Viking asked me to add another chapter to the book.
I remember asking if she was sure because it seemed wrong somehow. But she told me that it was okay for the book to get a little longer if those words made the whole story better.
I’m still blown away that the biggest edits I was asked to make were to add to the book rather than subtract from it. And she was right. It’s much the better for those additions. Word counts are guidelines and they matter, but there are times when it’s okay to break them a bit.
9. Being asked to add to a story is unusual. How did you celebrate the release of Mythspeaker? What are your plans to promote it?
The day Mythspeaker came out, my wife took off from work, we packed our toddler in the car, and spent most of the day going from bookstore to bookstore looking for copies out in the wild. I signed every one we could find. It was amazing. I highly recommend it as a way to spend a launch day.
As far as promotion, I’ve appreciated the opportunity to do interviews like this with amazing sites like Literary Rambles. I’ve also done a public radio interview, an elementary school visit, and we had a book launch event at a local library! There’s more coming, too, including some events potentially happening this Fall. I’ve made an effort to visit and meet librarians at the libraries in my wider area along with local bookstores. It’s funny; the biggest impacts I’ve seen haven’t been the massive outreach attempts on social media or elsewhere (though those really do help!). They’ve been the personal connections I’ve made with people who are passionate and excited about books in the world.
10. What are you working on now?
So many things, heh. I’m currently editing a new MG fantasy adventure while I wait for an edit letter on an unannounced (BUT VERY COOL) MG project. And then I’m also worldbuilding two new novels, one YA and one adult. I have so many stories I want to tell, I just need more hands to type them. Or more time, but more hands seems like a more realistic ask.
Thanks for sharing all your advice, Christopher. You can find Christopher at @Dreamertide on Blue Sky and Twitter as well as using @christopherroubique on Instagram.
Giveaway Details
Christopher’s publisher is generously offering a
hardback of Mythspeaker for
a giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower of my
blog (via the follower gadget, email, or bloglovin’ on the right
sidebar) and leave a comment by April 11th. If I do not have your email
(I can no longer get it from your Google Profile), you must leave it in the
comments to enter the contest. Please be sure I have your email address.
If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or
other social media sites and/or follow me on Twitter or Bluesky or follow Christopher
on his social media sites, mention this in the comments, and I'll give you an
extra entry for each. You must be 13 years old or older to enter. This book giveaway
is US.
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday is hosted by Greg Pattridge. You can
find the participating blogs on his blog.
Upcoming Interviews, Guest Posts, and Blog Hops
Monday, April 6th, I have an interview with Jill Tew and a giveaway of her MG Rayana Johnson’s Giant Leap
Wednesday, April 8th, I have an agent spotlight interview with Saritza Hernández and a 45-minute Ask-Me-Anything giveaway
Monday, April 13th, I’m reviewing Jennifer Nielsen’s MG The Free State of Jax and Magnitude with a book giveaway
Thursday, April 16th, I’m participating in the Rain Drop on Roses Giveaway Hop
Monday, April 20th, I have an interview with Van Hoang and a giveaway of her MG Auntie Q’s Golden Claws Nail Salon
Monday, April 27th, I have an interview with Gareth P. Jones and a giveaway of his MG Solve Your Own Mysteries
Wednesday, April 29th, I have an agent spotlight interview with Erica Bauman and a query critique giveaway
I hope to see you on Monday!