Q&A: Greer Stothers, Author of ‘Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die’

We chat with author Greer Stothers about Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, which is a hilarious gay fantasy romance following a reclusive sorcerer who is forced to protect a cowardly knight after a prophecy ties their fates together.

Hi, Greer! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hi! Well, first thing’s first, I have an open wound on my head that I can’t stop scratching.

Other than that, I have three cats, but two are so old they hardly count. They just lie around blinking and breathing. The third cat is super young and muscular and a little pumpkin-bellied, and he likes to hunt human beings. I tell people, “Haha, don’t worry about that, he’s just playing,” but they still flinch when he gets them.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

In my prepubescent years, I discovered the roleplay forums on Neopets and fell in love. I then spent two years co-writing an epic fantasy about cursed xweetoks with someone who may have been old enough to drive a car.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Some Scooby Doo thing specifically written for kindergarteners. It sucked.
• The one that made you want to become an author: Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, because she wrote her first novel at thirteen, and I was ten, and that made me passionately determined to write even faster and beat her by a year. Anyway, I’m 32 and my debut novel is out this month.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Throne of Bones by Brian McNaughton. It’s a collection of chronological short stories set in a made-up land, and it’s disgusting, but also beautiful and so, so funny. The main narrative follows a family of ghouls as they commit every gothic horror cliché imaginable.

Your debut novel, Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Old man yaoi, plus elves.

What can readers expect?

They can expect…. to be taken on a journey! Honestly, I think people will have a better time if they let go of expectations and just treat the whole thing like they’re floating down a river on an inner tube. The river will go where it goes. Don’t worry about it. Genre? We don’t care about genre on this river. Is it supposed to be a medieval fantasy romance? Sure, for this stretch, but there’s some rapids up ahead, and you just gotta hold on tight and accept what’s going to happen to you. It’s fine. Don’t worry about the martians.

Where did the inspiration for Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die come from?

As a child, I psychosexually imprinted on Iago from Aladdin. When it came time to write a book, I decided to build upon the homoerotic dynamic Iago had with Jafar, and then add unicorns and a cool witch. I hope that Disney will let me get away with this.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I really liked writing a certain character’s death. I actually had to write it twice, because I accidentally deleted the first version, and it was even better the second time.

Though, my brother recently read the book and said “I was laughing so hard when that character died”, and that threw me for a loop because I thought it was very dramatic and heart-breaking. My brother said “Yeah, when he was begging for his life it was so funny,” and I was just like what the hell, who are you? Why do you think that?

I’ll have to ask more people if they thought it was funny. Maybe I’m not that good at writing tragedy.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

The first draft of Sir Cameron had a fairly low word-count. With fantasy books, you want at least 70,000 thousand words, and I only had 67,000. I decided to solve this problem by adding very long chapter titles. At the time, there were forty-two chapters in the book. Dividing 3000 by forty-two gave me seventy-two.

Some people said that adding seventy-two-word chapter titles that took up half the page was a bad idea, but those people were idiots.

This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?

When I fist shopped Sir Cameron around, I had MANY, many rejections from literary agents. Over a hundred. The main feedback seemed to be, “this is really weird and I don’t think I can sell it.” After a few months of this, I got a single acceptance, and that’s all it took!

What’s next for you?

Currently, I’m writing a romantasy. It’s a tsundere x yandere between a skeleton and his talking sword, and it has me learning a lot about human anatomy. I have to reference so many different bones during the sex scenes.

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?

I’ve got several books on pre-order! Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman, All Hail Chaos by Sarah Rees Brennan, Platform Decay by Martha Wells, Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle.

Will you be picking up Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die? Tell us in the comments below!