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!
