In her YA debut, Alexene Farol Follmuth, author of The Atlas Six (under the penname Olivie Blake), explores both the challenges girls of color face in STEM and the vulnerability of first love with unfailing wit and honesty. With an adorable, opposites-attract romance at its center and lines that beg to be read aloud, My Mechanical Romance is swoonworthy perfection.
We had the pleasure of chatting with Alexene all about My Mechanical Romance, along with writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Alexene! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello and thanks so much for having me! I am Alexene Farol Follmuth, occasionally known under my pseudonym Olivie Blake as the author of The Atlas Six. Under my Olivie byline I write adult SFF, and as Alexene I write young adult rom-coms, like my forthcoming release, My Mechanical Romance. Generally speaking, all my work is about the fascinating complexities of life and love, even if it sometimes involves magic.
How has the almost first half of 2022 been for you?
The Atlas Six released from Tor in March and I recently returned from touring the UK, so everything has been something of a delightful, imposter syndrome-y blur. Mostly, though, I live my life naptime to naptime—my chaos goblin/child is teething yet again, just in time for his first birthday. (We’re celebrating by going to the zoo.)
When did you first discover your love for writing?
Writing always seemed to be something I gravitated to—my creative outlet of choice, I guess, which is probably the result of being a deeply bookish child. I technically wrote my first book as part of a summer contest for my public library when I was in middle school, then cathartically wrote another “first” book when I dropped out of law school, but I never thought of writing as something I could conceivably do for a living (shout out to my fellow immigrant children whose parents expected them to be lawyers and/or doctors!) until much later. I think most writers will affectionately say that if they could do other things they probably would, but this is the only thing that ever felt right to me, which is a conclusion I came to in my late twenties. The love, however, has always been constant, even if it is only occasionally requited.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
First book that I recall was a children’s version of The Odyssey (Wishbone the dog, hero to nerdy kids everywhere) that I followed up with the actual version. I don’t know that I wanted to become an author because of any single book (see again my first-gen side-rant above) but if there was any book that spoke to my writerly ennui, it was probably I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which I read as a teenager. A book I can’t stop thinking about . . . this answer could be different at any given moment, but for right now I’ll say Fault Lines by Emily Itami.
Your new novel, My Mechanical Romance, is out May 31st! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Nerds, so hot right now.
What can readers expect?
Romance and robots! And little sprinkles of what I wish I’d known as a teen, from how to handle being a women of color in male-dominated STEM subjects to dealing with crushing academic expectations to coping with family problems to trying to figure out your entire future when, sometimes, everything seems so predictably bleak. (And of course the particular trauma of nursing a huge, inadvisable crush.)
Where did the inspiration for My Mechanical Romance come from?
I once wrote a short story about two engineers falling in love—a rom-com, light and fluffy. Unmemorable, or so I thought, until it sparked a conversation I never forgot. Some readers were women who felt invisible in their STEM fields and were excited to find their representations in romance given sensuality and weight. For them, being a woman who “made it” in STEM had required such exhausting toughness in the face of adversity that their portrayals in fictional media felt inherently unsexy, as if their struggle was all that defined them in the end. Other readers were women who felt pushed out of STEM from an early age—for them, the gentler aspects of their experience, like the excitement or curiosity they had as students, were easily trampled by the exact same adversity facing the first group. A case study, basically, in the quiet but unrelenting way that gender constraints had killed their joy. It got me thinking about how many microaggressions we had experienced because we were women, especially women of color, and how many times we had been incapable of seeing ourselves in STEM because we were told, in so many ways, that we didn’t belong. My husband is a high school physics teacher here in Los Angeles, and he was bringing home similar observations about his female students that made me decide that I wanted better for our younger counterparts. It got me thinking that maybe I could write a story where a smart girl gets her happily ever after despite the adversity she faces. I thought I could be honest, but also optimistic, and tell a story where she can do what she loves without compromising who she is.
Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
From a craft perspective I’m what I call a “reformed pantser,” as in I used to fly by the seat of my pants while writing until I ran into the saggy middle problem a few too many times and changed my ways. I’m one of those people who gets bored if I do too much pre-writing, so I’ve learned to work with a skeletal outline that I add to as I go—which was especially critical here, because while I am extremely character-driven as a writer and tend to appreciate quieter plots, young adult pacing moves much faster and YA romance has much lower word counts than adult SFF. I was having to drive the plot forward much more consciously than I normally would, since it’s in my nature to pause for ruminations on the meaning of life. (Which isn’t to say nobody ruminates, of course. Just… not for too terribly long.)
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
The relationship between Bel, our female MC, and Neelam, the only other girl on the robotics team, is one of my favorite parts of this book, and was also one of the most complex relationships to craft. In addition to being on the receiving end of messaging about what was or wasn’t a “girl” interest, I was also very susceptible to the “not like other girls” mindset that positioned other women as my rivals, both romantically and academically. This was so, so unhelpful and false. But I didn’t want to write a story where two girls who hate each other become best friends—that’s not necessarily true to life, and I wanted to explore something much more complicated and dynamic than that. So, Bel and Neelam are two drastically different young women who learn to see each other as allies. They’re not each other’s future bridesmaids, and that’s okay! Feminism isn’t about being best friends with every woman you meet, but about advancing the rights and empowerment of all women. So for these two girls—who, in real life, might always be positioned as rivals because they are scarce in their STEM fields—learning to see and support each other’s strengths is incredibly hard-fought, but well worth it.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
Best: you can’t edit a blank page. The first draft is allowed to be bad. Just write.
Worst… eh, that’s really subjective. Anything prescriptive is generally not worth listening to, in my opinion, even if the person means well. Plus, truthfully, my process changes a little from book to book, and that’s okay. No lesson is ever really wasted.
What’s next for you?
The Atlas Paradox, the sequel to The Atlas Six, comes out October 25. (2022 is an incredible ride! I need a nap! Both can be true.)
Lastly, do you have any 2022 book recommendations for our readers?
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, Book of Night by Holly Black, Strike the Zither by Joan He, and The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean! I got early reads of all of these because I’m the luckiest girl in school and let me tell you, they’re all amazing.
