Q&A: Alix E. Harrow, Author of ‘The Ten Thousand Doors of January’

In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut…

Possibly one of the most exciting days for Alix E. Harrow is almost here! Her debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, publishes next week and we had the pleasure of chatting to her about how it came to be, book recommendations, writing, and more!

Hi Alix! Tell us a little about yourself!

I am pleased to report that this question still inspires the same sweaty-palmed blankness it did on the first day of every semester of college. I can suddenly think of nothing interesting or even uninteresting about myself.

However: the inner-flap of my own book helpfully informs me that I’m a speculative fiction writer living in rural Kentucky with her husband and two feral children. My hobbies include gardening, baking, retelling the entire plots of Disney movies to a three year old, and slinking past the library desk hoping that no one asks about my frankly upsetting late fees.

Your debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, publishes on September 10^th. If you could only use five words to describe it, what would they be?

Girl finds door. Adventures ensue.

Let’s hear a little more! What can readers expect?

A girl finds a Door to another world before it’s closed forever. Years later she receives a leather-bound book that reveals impossible secrets about Doors, the forces working to close them, and even her own past. It’s about fathers and daughters and imperialism and power and good friends and bad dogs and the stories we all inherit.

Where did the inspiration for this novel come from?

Like many weird rural kids who read too much, I loved portal fantasies growing up. But I didn’t love their endings–when the Pevensies tumble back through the wardrobe and Alice wakes up and the Darlings fly out of Neverland. You know: the garbage part of the books.

In grad school I studied empire, race, and environment in British children’s literature and found that many of my beloved childhood fantasies were also colonial fantasies. Like, think about Narnia: a fantasy realm in desperate need of four white foreign kids to come rescue and then rule them, populated by talking animals instead of indigenous people.

So The Ten Thousand Doors is in one sense an effort to subvert the problems that plagued my childhood fantasies books. To turn them inside-out and backwards, to make them about home-going rather than conquest.

Is there a certain part of the book that you really enjoyed writing?

I have never not enjoyed a good footnote.

Were there any parts that were more challenging to write?

Mild spoiler alert, but there’s a part of this book that takes place in a turn-of-the-century American asylum. For any readers who don’t already know, turn-of-the-century American asylums were not excellent places in which to find oneself. I found both the research and the writing of that section unpleasant.

What has the road to becoming a published author been like?

Paved with luck, stardust, happenstance, and good people. I had a short story come out in Apex Magazine (which is based in Lexington, Kentucky, just across the county line from me), and an Orbit editor DMed me to ask if I happened to have anything novel-length. I asked for a week to finish polishing it and sent her The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and she liked it and bought it. I am aware that this is the kind of unearned good fortune that makes other people resent me; it’s fine, I deserve it.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

It is very flattering but also profoundly strange to be asked that question. Five years ago I was the one trawling author interviews and blogs and how-to books, looking for someone who would tell me how to do this thing I wanted to do.

I still have no idea. All I can do is report back the most common and practical pieces of advice I found: 1) read, 2) write, and 3) prepare for failure and rejection. That last one, whew. Even in a very lucky, starstruck experience, publishing involves a lot of bad drafts and harsh feedback and thank you so much for submitting to our magazine, but we’ve decided to pass on this one.

I’ve come to believe there’s a crucial follow up to number three: 4) try again. It’s like that montage in Captain Marvel, where she remembers every time she failed and fell—and then remembers every time she stood the eff back up, spitting dirt. The number of times you fall doesn’t matter, so long as it’s one less than the number of times you stand back up.

What’s next for you?

My next book is another standalone historical fantasy from Orbit with a three-word pitch: suffragettes, but witches. Except right now it’s not so much a book as it is a leaky raft made of similes and hope. I’m drifting into the dark seas of revisions right now, so if y’all don’t hear from me assume I sank, all souls feared lost.

Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for us?

I am at all times waiting for someone to ask me this question. If you’re a fan of books about books, I adored The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep (H.G. Parry) and The Starless Sea (Erin Morgenstern, out in November). If you think you’re tired of zombie apocalypses but actually you aren’t, Hollow Kingdom (Kira Jane Buxton) is for you. If you want to see a mostly-girl gang prevent the second end of the world in a god-riddled vision of the American Southwest, Storm of Locusts (Rebecca Roanhorse) was just as good as the first one.

Will you be picking up The Ten Thousand Doors of January? Tell us in the comments below!