In this atmospheric YA fantasy that is Wicked Saints meets There Will Come a Darkness, four teens are drawn into a high-stakes heist in the perilous tomb of an ancient shapeshifter king.
We chat with author Caitlin Sangster about her new release She Who Rides The Storm, along with writing, book recommendations, and more.
Hi, Caitlin! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
For sure! I was thinking about how to answer this question and was like, um, I write books, but I’m assuming anyone reading this will know that. I have always been that girl hiding under something with a book, so maybe it’s appropriate now that when people ask me about myself I still hide behind the books. I grew up in northern California, have lived in Utah, northwestern China, Taiwan, Montana, and most recently in the Chicago area. I love history and languages and travel and being outside and can’t eat the same thing for dinner twice in one week. I’m also one of the hosts of Lit Service podcast, which gives aspiring writers free first chapter critiques from authors, agents, and editors.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I’ve been writing since I was in middle school (though back then it was mostly direct plagiarism of books I liked (Tamora Pierce, wherever you are, I’m sorry!). Luckily, I grew into writing my own stories after I graduated from college and rediscovered the part of writing I liked, aka making stuff up (sorry college, if I never have to write another analysis of how depictions of women in Tang Dynasty art changed under the reign of Wu ZeTian I will be a happy camper. Love reading about it. Give me all your Wu ZeTian articles. Just don’t make me write them!). I love fitting words together, love making up characters and then figuring out what will make them the most miserable, then how to let them be happy again.
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!
Ella Enchanted (first book I remember reading and loving), The Hunger Games (made me want to become an author), and A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness can WRITE).
Your new novel, She Who Rides the Storm, is out September 21st 2021! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Twisty, dramatic, fun, complex, and wry.
What can readers expect?
A friend of mine described She Who Rides the Storm as the center of a Venn diagram with Six of Crows ensemble cast in one circle, Avatar the Last Airbender’s sweeping worlding building in another, and Brandon Sanderson’s twisty magic systems in the third. (Which also happens to be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about anything I’ve written).
The story is set in a magical Venice-inspired city with a seedy underground, with four main characters: a healer who moonlights as a thief and poisoner, a runaway gods-touched boy being haunted by the ghost of his sister, a warrior desperate to escape the life she’s been forced to live isolated from everyone she loves, and a snarky archaeologist desperate to find a cure to his magical wasting disease. All four are all trying to steal the same cursed sword from an evil shapeshifter’s tomb and have to dodge a Warlord, ancient magic, and each other in their quest to get it.
There are some fun romantic elements for readers who show up for the ships (longing! Forbidden romance! Enemies to lovers!) but there’s enough plot and story for people who skip over the romantic stuff to be happy with the story, too.
Where did the inspiration for She Who Rides the Storm come from?
This book has been about ten years in the making, so there are many different things I took inspiration from, but one thing that always comes to mind an episode of Snap Judgment (the podcast). It’s about a man who was struck by lightning. As a result, he’s afraid of the sky and won’t go outside, until finally he forces himself to try to conquer this fear that has destroyed his life. One day while he’s out, a storm rolls in and he can’t escape. There’s audio of him hiding from the storm in his car with raindrops just pounding on the car roof, and it has always stuck with me—I wanted to write something that was that raw and powerful…and terrible. So, while my story doesn’t have anything to do with being struck by lightning, I wanted to make readers feel that helplessness in the face of something so far out of your control, so much bigger than you there’s nowhere to hide, I guess? As I wrote the climax, that’s the feeling I was going for. So much of what I write is based on things I have felt as I’ve listened to, watched, or read something and wanting to find ways to make other people feel something so deeply.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
This book was quite an undertaking. In Brandon Sanderson’s blurb he called it my “most ambitious book yet” which feels almost like an understatement from my end based on how many hours I spent with my brain breaking over this book. I love writing stories with mysteries the characters are uncovering as they go and great twist endings, but trying to do it with four main characters, each with their own backstory, motivation, mystery, and twists to uncover, all as a part of one story was very difficult to hold in my head all at once. I’m very proud of this book—My Kirkus review made me cry because it validated everything I’d been trying so hard to balance: “The worldbuilding, which includes a detailed cosmology, is strong without overreliance on exposition, and the setting’s magic system is well described without getting bogged down in minutiae. The characters are richly detailed, and the prose invites rereading of earlier passages after each flashback or revelatory conversation….Will leave readers clamoring for more.”
It took a lot of patience, attention to detail, and listening to feedback both from critique partners and my editor to get so much character, world, and story to work. And reading. Lots of reading to study how authors I admired managed to write complicated, quickly paced stories from character driven points of view without getting bogged down in details.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I think Mateo—the snotty archaeologist—is the character I enjoyed writing most—I love prickly outside, soft and squishy inside characters who are slightly ridiculous and don’t always make the right decisions the first time. I love that he’s with a lot of pretty physically competent people and despite his physical weakness, manages to hold his own using the strengths he does have. There’s a scene where he is very angrily eating a cinnamon roll that will never not be my favorite.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The worst writing advice is probably any writing advice that is taken as law. Writers all work differently from each other, and even differently themselves from project to project; There is no “right” way. That being said, there’s plenty of great advice out there, it just might not always (or ever) apply to you or the project you are working on.
The best writing advice I ever got was to listen to writing classes/podcasts/panels/lectures or what have you with a specific project in mind that I needed to edit. Most skills taught in those classes are overwhelming to think about while you’re drafting or to think about as a checklist of things you should learn to do better. Applying new craft techniques to something specific gives you a chance to practice in a way that matters and internalizes the information so it becomes a part of your skill set rather than just one more thing on a long list of things you wish you could do better.
What’s next for you?
My debut middle grade fantasy comes out in February. It’s called A Baker’s Guide to Robber Pie and is about a baker who goes into a forest looking for a magical Fel creature to take her on an adventure that does not involve kneading bread and finds a nest of robbers who want to capture her instead.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
New books I’ve recently read: Little Thieves by Margaret Owen is coming out in October and I’m reading Beast of Prey right now by Ayana Gray which has some amazing world building. Some older favorites off the top of my head would be Howl’s Moving Castle, The Poet X, the Chaos Walking series, and the Lockwood and Co. series. I have so many favorite books I’ll leave it at those first few that occurred to me!
You can pre-order signed and personalized copies from The King’s English (by September 19th) or Anderson’s Bookshop (whenever!) You can find Caitlin on Instagram and at her website.
