Anu Recommends #29
Chaos on Olympus: An interview with debut author Bea Fitzgerald
This is the first of three written-in-advance newsletter issues as the Storyteller shifts to a bi-weekly schedule until August 27.
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
If you enjoyed my recent interview with Greek debut author Kika Hatzapoulou (Anu Recommends #22), you’re in for another treat today, because I not only have another mythology-inspired debut recommendation, I have the (also) London-based author of it here for a chat 😊
Before that, here’s my latest football offering. We’d all known it was happening for a while, but when has that ever made something easy?
Farewell, Granit Xhaka: Arsenal Was Richer For Having You
Artwork by the talented Shivani Khot, who else?
https://www.footballparadise.com/farewell-granit-xhaka-arsenal-was-richer-for-having-you
Happy reading!
Now, back to Greek mythology and those of us who love it in all its glory and chaos.
Girl, Goddess, Queen
As stated in her bio, Bea Fitzgerald is an author and content creator. She has worked in publishing for a number of years and has a degree in English Literature from the University of Reading, where she also studied several classes in Ancient History. Bea is passionate about stories and fascinated by the way they endure and resonate through centuries and generations. When she's not writing, she's entertaining her followers on TikTok and Instagram with her mythology-themed comedy account @chaosonolympus. Girl, Goddess, Queen is her debut novel.
Bea also reads and talks about a diverse range of world-mythology-inspired books and authors over on her Instagram—I’ve found it a great place to discover new voices in and around the genre.
Being the mythology nerd that I am, I’d been following her account for a while when I discovered that she had sold her debut book, a reimagining of the Persephone and Hades myth. Girl, Goddess, Queen is out in the world as of July 20, 2023 in all its hot-pink beauty, and I’m so excited to read it!
Here’s a publisher’s blurb (and an excerpt) to whet your curiosity:
To hell with love, this goddess has other plans...
Thousands of years ago, the gods told a lie: how Persephone was a pawn in the politics of other gods. How Hades kidnapped Persephone to be his bride. How her mother, Demeter, was so distraught she caused the Earth to start dying.
The real story is much more interesting.
Persephone wasn't taken to hell: she jumped. There was no way she was going to be married off to some smug god more in love with himself than her.
Now all she has to do is convince the Underworld's annoyingly sexy, arrogant and frankly rude ruler, Hades, to fall in line with her plan. A plan that will shake Mount Olympus to its very core.
But consequences can be deadly, especially when you're already in hell . . .
Let’s see what Bea has to say!
Anu: Welcome to the Storyteller, Bea! Have you always written or wanted to be a writer? How do you juggle your day job and the writing, and does that work actively impact/affect/inspire your writing?
Bea: I’ve always written and always wanted to keep writing but I don’t think I ever had being a writer in my head. Writing is fun and therapeutic for me—to get out of my head and into someone else’s and lay stuff out on a page in a linear way helps quiet the noise in my mind. I like writing things for myself or for my friends and it was only once I finished one particular manuscript that I thought ‘I want people to read this’, but I weighed up for a good while whether I was ready to risk losing my love of writing by trying to monetise it. I work in publishing, and books have always been centred in my life, but there have been times at work where I’ve had to have a break from certain genres or struggled to read for pleasure because it was so tied up with my day job and I was worried about writing suffering a similar struggle. But I’ve found the opposite—the process of publishing has given me new avenues to love writing—for example, before, I’d never worked with anyone else on edits except on the other side, and delighting in refining structure and language and character has made me love it in a whole new way. As for juggling work and writing, I always wrote as a hobby anyway. The deadlines have meant it’s been a bit stressful at times, but I’m lucky in that I don’t have childcare or caring responsibilities so my time outside of work is wholly my own and I can give it to writing—though I should probably learn to relax a little too.
Anu: I should probably learn that too, to be honest! What was the inspiration behind Girl, Goddess, Queen? How much research did you have to do? And was there anything in particular that surprised you? As a retelling/reimagining, how would you say it stands apart?
Bea: I always loved the story of Hades and Persephone when I was growing up and read every reimagining I could get my hands on. When I was older, my love of the ancient world gained a more academic bent, but I’m first and foremost interested in the longevity of stories and the reaching power of them—the idea of tales that have connected with people for thousands of years is so interesting to me. So I wanted to play with the idea of the story that I grew up with but draw in elements of the ancient tale and world too—almost as a connecting bridge between the ancient myth and the version prevalent in the cultural zeitgeist.
One of my favourite parts of the research was looking at Persephone beyond the myth of her marriage to Hades. To look at both how she came to be historically and her different iterations, such as Despoina and Kore, and then in text and other myths too. One of my favourite things about her is that she wields real power and is often the one negotiating with heroes. She’s older than Hades is and existed in relation to the Underworld long before she did, so I had this idea of her having this draw to the Underworld without him.
My favourite is the Odyssey, which is our first time meeting her in text, where she is related as the dread Persephone, and it is her lands, not Hades’, that Odysseus travels to—and when he leaves, it is out of fear that Persephone will send a gorgon head after him, which is, of course, the threat of another powerful woman, in turn. Persephone has this real variation in myth from innocent maiden to terrifying queen, and I wanted to chart that journey and align it as a modern coming-of-age story.
Anu: I love that! As a follow-up question to the above: what draws you, motivates you, to write, or develop the stories that you do? And is there anything you'd like readers to take away from your stories?
Bea: I view writing as a way to connect, not only to readers, but to myself. My work with ancient stories allows an additional connection to the women who came before me that I adore—and it’s something I’m conscious of when I write in other avenues too. The most important thing for me is that readers have a good time reading my works; I want to bring joy and laughter. There’s a lot more beyond that in Girl, Goddess, Queen. I’d love readers to come away having witnessed a healthy depiction of love, encouraged to embrace their own inner power, to fight for what they want, and to find what they love—above all I just want to people to have fun with it. It’s a very heartfelt book, but also at times silly and irreverent, so I hope everyone is giggling their way through it.
Anu: I can’t wait until I get my hands on my pre-order copy 😊 Is there any advice you wish you’d gotten when you first started out? Or just any advice for aspiring authors from your own experience, something that’s really helped you in your writing and publishing journey so far?
Bea: I work in publishing, so had a pretty realistic view of what it was going to be like, though that was reinforced in some hard ways. I’d say all you can control is your writing. It’s a tough industry and rejection can come for many reasons like what’s already on the list, what that editor or agent is being allowed to buy, what the market is doing and even internal politics at the publishing houses. The whole thing needs an overhaul, so if you’re looking to break into this mess of an industry—I love it but a consultant would have a field day—know that it’s chaotic and painful and you have to really fight for it.
Anu: Can you share, in brief, what the agenting, publishing, and writing was like for your debut novel? Was it what you expected it would be like?
Bea: Sure! I started writing Girl, Goddess, Queen for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in 2018 before realising I wanted to do some more research on it. I wrote it between 2019 and 2020, put it aside to work on another book, then came back to edit it and query it in late 2020. I came close to agent offers a few times, then got two offers of representation and signed with my agent in early 2021 and then we went on sub and nothing!
I’d told my agent I didn’t want updates unless it was an offer, but we touched base a couple of times. A few editors tried to buy it by taking it through a process called acquisitions. I should flag that this whole process was especially horrible because I was an editor at the time, so I couldn’t take my mind off, and during every acquisitions meeting I would wonder if mine was at it too, and eventually felt quite bad at my job—clearly I didn’t know my the marker as well as I thought, and if my writing wasn’t good enough who’s to say my editing was. And because publishing runs on whispers everyone knew I was on sub and failing to sell. The editors who tried to buy it couldn’t—feedback was that the Greek myth ‘trend’ wasn’t going to last (a sentiment I despise for many reasons, not least that the Percy Jackson TV show was in the works!) and that half the room didn’t get my humour.
We eventually decided to shelve it, which I didn’t mind as being on sub was agonising, and I had another book ready to go on submission, as well as another Greek myth book I was editing (which will now be my book 2). In 2022, my agent wanted to try again, I told her she was fine to send it out, but I didn’t want to think about it. Then it got an offer. And once it had one, it had five and was at auction. Then Penguin, who had rejected it the year before (a different editor), pre-empted at the second round. To go from rejected and shelved to lead title has been wild and really is a lesson in what I knew from the off—publishing is fickle and the market is volatile. In practical terms, TikTok was on publisher radars so they now had a better idea of Gen Z humour and romantasy and tropey romances were surging. So here I was with my humorous tropey fantasy rom-com, and where it hadn’t been right for the market a year before, it was suddenly a perfect fit.
Anu: I'd love to know about the origins of your chaosonolympus accounts on TikTok and Instagram, and anything you'd like to share about your process.
Bea: I started @chaosonolympus shortly after I signed from my agent as a way to still feel connected to my book and its content but in a much less stressful way— and to take my mind off of being on submission. I’m so glad I did because it’s given me a slight feeling of control in this whole process; my publishing team are amazing but getting to talk directly to readers and have a little bit of a say in how I present and pitch the title to people has been amazing.
Anu: What's your favourite writing/creative and your favourite non-writing part of the publishing process?
Bea: My favourite part of the process is ‘the flow’ and oh how I’d love to get in it more, when you’re writing and time vanishes and you look up and you’ve written an absurd amount of words. I also really love voice. I play Dungeons and Dragons and think playing characters helps me really get into a character voice, and my writing is very voice led (and dialogue heavy, because I love the voice of other characters too). Non-writing has to be the people—not just my amazing publishing team, but the readers and bloggers and champions, the incredible writers who have read and blurbed and who I’ve managed to forge friendships with. Being in publishing, I always felt I had to draw this barrier between me and other writers because I’d feel guilty about not being able to publish them all, so this has all been a very isolated process for me; no writers groups or beta readers. To be on the other side of that and getting to know the incredible people on this side of the process has been incredible.
Bonus questions:
Anu: What's in the works going forward? If you're allowed to, and want to, share, of course.
Bea: I have two books coming out next year: another Greek myth rom-com and SECRET PROJECT. The former is sapphic rivals to lovers, and all I can say on the latter is it’s adult fiction (and not fantasy or myth related).
Anu: Can you share a recommendation or two for the readers of this newsletter?
Bea: Ohh, for Greek Myth, Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopolou and Savage Beasts by Rani Selvarajah are amazing; for other mythology, I really loved Vivi Conway and The Sword of Legend by Lizzie Huxley-Jones.
Thank you so much for taking the time out to answer my questions, Bea!
You can find her at publisher website | twitter | instagram - all of which have buy links for Girl, Goddess, Queen.
As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
Take care and see you in two weeks!
Anu
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You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.