We chat with author A.C. Wise about Ballad of the Bone Road, which is an utterly original dark fantasy tale of faith and fanaticism, doomed love and desperate bargains is perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Ava Reid.
Hi, A.C.! Welcome back! What have you been up to since we last spoke for the release of Out of the Drowning Deep?
Thank you for having me back! Time really does fly, doesn’t it? It simultaneously feels like Out of the Drowning Deep just came out yesterday and a million years ago. That said, I’ve been busy working on this latest novel, as well as drafting some new stuff, and keeping up with my regular reviews, among various other things.
Your latest novel, Ballad of the Bone Road, is out January 27th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Oooh. Let’s see: fae, haunting, glamorous, sad, hopeful.
What can readers expect?
As with Out of the Drowning Deep, there’s a bit of genre-mashing going on in Ballad of the Bone Road. It’s a ghost story, but the fae are also involved. It’s a story about the families people are born into and the ones they choose. There are a few touches of horror here and there, but overall, I’d say it skews more dark fantasy. There are sexy bits, some romance, but also tragedy tempered with hope.
The story is set in a sort of alternate history/fantasy version of New York City, where hauntings abound and the fae once roamed the streets. A young couple sets out to spend an extravagant weekend in a glamorous hotel, and accidentally find themselves caught up in a very complicated haunting. Enter Brix and Bellefeather, specialists in the paranormal, who each bring their own personal hauntings to the investigation, further complicating things.
Ultimately, readers can expect characters who often make bad choices in response to trauma, but mostly try to do right by each other in the end.
Where did the inspiration for Ballad of the Bone Road come from?
I usually have a terrible time with character names, but the names Brix and Bellefeather popped into my head one day and seemed like the perfect name for a pair of paranormal investigators, so that’s one part of it. Similarly, the line “When I was twelve, I met the Devil in an oak tree,” popped into my head, and while it didn’t survive exactly intact, I knew it was a key part of Belle’s backstory. Then a misheard song lyric sent me off on a tangent of imagining a young couple in a hotel room summoning up the ghost of a movie idol and becoming a throuple. Then, I had to figure out how all the pieces fit together, and the result became Ballad of the Bone Road.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I want to try to avoid spoilers, but I’m really fond of the last two chapters. They felt like a nice opportunity to have the characters grow as a result of their experiences, while also gaining a whole new set of emotional baggage even as they find some closure in other aspects of their lives.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
One of the things I struggled with during the editing stage was striking the right balance between revealing enough information to make the characters’ actions and choices feel motivated and understandable without either giving too much away or bogging down the story with unnecessary detail. Luckily, my editor is very patient and helped me work through what to cut, what to keep, and where to reorder certain elements. Having an outside set of eyes on a piece of work is so valuable! It’s easy to think you’re communicating clearly when you have the whole story more or less in your head, only to realize that a reader may be seeing something totally different than what you intended.
Your debut novel published almost five years ago! What are some of the key lessons you’ve learnt when it come to writing and publishing since then?
Eep! Time! How does it even work?
One of the key things I’ve learned is something I’d heard authors talk about before, but which hits differently having experienced it first hand: writing a novel never gets easier. By which I mean that every story has its own set of needs and you have to learn how best to write this particular book, rather than that particular book. That’s not to say that certain things don’t carry over, but there isn’t an automatic moment where you go “Aha, I now know how to write a novel and this will be a breeze!”
Another thing I’ve learned, or internalized now that I’ve experienced it, is that there’s only so much of the process you can control as an author. All you can do is tell the story you want to tell and hope it resonates with people, but you can’t guarantee that people will find your work or how they will respond to it if they do.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently drafting a new novel that is more horror focused. Fingers crossed that it comes together the way I’d like. I’m also working on a handful of short stories, and I have another handful slated for publication later this year.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
I’ve started keeping a running list of upcoming titles that look intriguing so that I don’t lose track of them. A few that I’ve added recently are: The Scarlet Ball by Nghi Vo, On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Schofield, Nightjars by Michael Wehunt, The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang, and Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker. I also want to shout out a few upcoming titles that I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at: The Iron Garden Sutra by A.D. Sui, Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo, The Night Parade and Other Stories by Stephanie Feldman, and The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendoyln Kiste.
