We chat to author Alexandra Christo about her new novel, Into The Crooked Place, 2019 reads, writing, and more!
How did you start working on Into the Crooked Place? Did you start with your characters, or with the plot itself?
I’m usually all about starting with character and begin with a person I think would be interesting and then shape the story around them. But for this book the plot came first! I love magicians and how they can entrance an audience and, even more than that, the idea of magic being a skill. I mulled that over a lot in my mind while watching some old David Blaine clips online: magic being a thing someone could learn, manipulate, and even sell. And so INTO THE CROOKED PLACE was born, set in a world where magic is both a currency and an addiction.
Was there a character that just jumped right onto the page from the beginning?
Wesley. The first thing I wrote was from his point of view, adjusting his bow tie and threatening to kill people as he did it. Wesley was the first character I created, as a man who loved his city of magic so much that he was willing to do anything to keep it safe. Even if it meant breaking every law in the book (and a few necks too). Also, who doesn’t love a character that is supposed to be the most frightening person ever and yet makes total dad jokes?
What was your writing process like for Into the Crooked Place? How does that process compare with the process for To Kill a Kingdom?
Writing INTO THE CROOKED PLACE was a lot more of a challenge because, as a duology, there were so many more threads I had to weave. So many storylines I had to create and then leave to grow and fester. In a standalone like TO KILL A KINGDOM, you have a clear start and a clear end: your characters’ journeys are more of a straight line because they need to get there quicker. With a series, there’s a lot more zig-zagging. It was fun to explore this new world so vividly and make it so big and bad-ass, but it meant a lot more planning and fine-tuning from the very beginning. I had to think, re-think and then think again!
If the characters from your books could meet, which ones would be friends, enemies…or would it just be a gigantic standoff/potential murderfest?
I would love to see Lira (from TO KILL A KINGDOM) meet Wesley (from INTO THE CROOKED PLACE). A killer siren queen meeting the king of puns? Yes please. Though I could see it turning into a huge my magic is bigger than your magic standoff that would end with Wesley adjusting his cufflinks indignantly as he summoned his tricks, and Lira laughing in his face as she harnessed the Eye of Keto.
Probably best to have Elian and Tavia meet instead. They’d wax poetic about killers with big egos and drink rum until the sun came up.
Despite all of the hardship, I loved that part of Tavia is still a bit of a dreamer. What do you think she would be doing if she was part of our world?
Exploring, endlessly. Tavia’s biggest dream is to be free and decide her own fate. I think she’d sail the world, trying to discover the undiscoverable. She’d probably still hunt out magic, even in our world, and sink her teeth into whatever new, and exciting things she found.
Let’s talk about that magic system for a second, when you were in the process of creating it, were there any aspects that stumped you? Do you have any advice for those who might be working through a magic scheme of their own?
I probably got stumped more times than I didn’t, but that’s the beauty of creating a new world from scratch: trial and error, forming and finessing.
My biggest challenge was the Crafters and their gifts. They’re the original creators of magic and every trick and charm in the world came from them first. I had to show how great their power was, while also giving them limits so they weren’t godlike. And then, of course, create different mythology for each of the Kins. Crafters exist all over the world and their magic is different, as well as their own beliefs for where it even came from.
I’d say my biggest piece of advice is to not worry about getting it right the first time. It’ll take draft after draft, and that’s okay. Magic is complicated. The most important thing is to work on your boundaries: what is and isn’t possible, and why?
Could you tell readers a secret about Into the Crooked Place that they might not know about?
I rewrote the first half of the book entirely over a dozen times
I briefly considered naming a character after my cousin Nick, but decided it would be funnier to just trap him in the acknowledgements in all of my books forever instead
Chapter 36 is my favourite
There’s a lot of relationships that I loved, but my favorite relationship was the friendship that Saxony and Tavia share. How did that come about while you were writing?
It actually took a lot of drafts for that to become a thing. They started off as strangers, who were only really connected through the other characters, but the more I wrote (and rewrote!), the more I realised how similar the two of them were: they had lost their families, for whatever reason, and were in a city that they loved and hated equally. And they both needed someone who they didn’t have a complicated and uncertain relationship with. They needed a constant in their lives, and so suddenly it seemed strange to me that these two women with so much in common, wouldn’t have turned to each other. The moment I started writing them as friends and played with scenes of them making magic bets, everything just clicked. Their friendship glued the story together.
Is there a playlist that inspired you while writing Into the Crooked Place?
I don’t really listen to music while I write, because I get distracted really easily, and can so quickly get pulled out of a story by a certain beat, or some well-timed lyrics. I do make playlists for my characters though and usually listen to a song or two before I write to get me into their headspace.
Here are a couple of songs from each of the character’s playlists!
Wesley: King by Saint PHNX / Last Words by Isaac Gracie
Tavia: Black by Kari Kimmel / Secrets and Lies by Ruelle
Saxony: Scotland by The Lumineers / Portrait I by The Howl & the Hum
Karam: Bartholomew by The Silent Comedy / My Blood by Twenty One Pilots
What are some of your favorite reads of 2019 or all time?
I will always love The Raven Cycle series as an all-time favourite. There’s a certain magic in that book (and not just the literal kind). I haven’t read many new releases this year, as I’m trying to tackle all the books on my shelf that I’ve been neglecting, but my favourite books I’ve read in 2019 are: The Falconer by Elizabeth May and The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell. I’m also currently reading The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and it’s beautiful.
