We chat with author K. Arsenault Rivera about Oath of Fire, which is a lush and gripping sapphic retelling of the Psyche and Eros legend combines Greek mythology with a fae court feel.
Hi, K.! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Of course! I’m a terminally online turbo nerd of all kinds. For most of my life I’ve lived in New York City, these days with my two partners and my Magic the Gathering collection. Oath of Fire is my fourth book–my debut was The Tiger’s Daughter. I’ve been fascinated by fantasy pretty much my whole life.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Very young. English actually isn’t my first language–when I moved to the mainland, all I spoke was Spanish. There was some pretty relentless bullying at school as a result. Stories were a big way for me to practice my English.
By the time I was in fifth grade, I’d gone from not speaking any English at all to reading anything I could get my hands on. Often books way above my reading level. Even back then, though, I had an abiding love for Greek Myth.
So. . .I was probably always going to write a Greek myth retelling some day.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Lioness Quartet, Tamora Pierce
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: I think my loved ones would be content if I never said the names ‘Carmilla’ or ‘Sheridan LeFanu’ again.
Your latest novel, Oath of Fire, is out August 13th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Contemporary, wistful, resilient, secretive, fantastical.
What can readers expect?
Eros and Psyche have one of the oldest and most interesting stories out there. Psyche becomes one of the very few heroes to travel into the Underworld and come out victorious–and she does that by building a community around her to help. That’s at the beating heart of this version of the story. Psyche starts out in a very lonely, isolated place; one I think a lot of people can relate to. She’s desperately trying to find the place she belongs.
Eros is also looking for a sense of purpose. Being the God of Love isn’t an easy task. For millennia her only interaction with love has been as work. Sometimes very brutal work, at that, which starts wars or long feuds. She wants to find something real again.
The two wind up colliding at a sexy masquerade ball.
Where did the inspiration for Oath of Fire come from?
Before I dropped out of college I took a bunch of classes on Classics. They’d always been one of my great passions and I wanted to learn as much as I could. We must have spent about half a semester talking about Eros and Psyche alone; they really stuck with me as a result. When you think of the people who have successfully journeyed through the Underworld (not you, Orpheus), you’ve really got only three or four people. Hercules is one. . .and Psyche is another.
Combine that with a recent fixation of mine on Fey and stuff like that and it was just a natural thing. Gods in myths are always a little unknowable, and the modern day idea of Fey is very similar. I wanted to give them rules, to make them dangerous beings that could and might harm you at any moment. Which only makes them hotter, really.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
There’s a sequence toward the end of the book that involves a chase through the Prospect Park Zoo and into the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. I made pretty much the same walk every week when I was a kid. Of course, the stakes weren’t so life and death, but it was awesome to be able to have such a nostalgic place be a setpiece in my book!
Can you tell us a bit about your process bringing Oath of Fire to life?
I really focused on the first three chapters. They came first, carefully crafted to draw the reader in just as Psyche was being pulled into the fey realm. I wanted to make sure the sense of decadence–and the sense of danger–were there from the start.
While I focused on that, I also wrote a top level outline of where the rest of the book would go. It was pretty standard after that–I just wrote to my outline. There were a lot of spots I have to fill in, since the you that writes the outline is never the you that writes the book, but that sort of thing is always a fun conversation with yourself.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on the followup to Oath of Fire! You’ll probably also see my name on some other work soon, but I can’t say exactly what.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I loved I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea. The sequel is coming out in November and I’d love to get my hands on it!
