Anu Recommends #35
An interview with debut author Ciera Burch
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
Those of you who saw my Instagram story about it on Sunday are aware of why you’re receiving this newsletter on a Wednesday instead, but to catch up the others: due to a technical issue, emails were not sent out even if the post was published. With the issue now resolved (fingers crossed), I’m resending what you should have enjoyed with your Sunday cuppa. After this, you can look forward to issue #36 on the usual day at the usual time 😊
Now, I do have some updates about paid subscriptions, but I’m awaiting more info before I can confirm, so will save those for Sunday. As of now, if you haven’t caught up on issue #34 and all the changes coming to the newsletter, you can do so here (and if you missed reading the referrals email, this has the details). And if you have any questions, you know where to find me!
Today, I’m delighted to welcome debut author Ciera Burch to the newsletter. This one’s particularly special since we’re both Emerson alums. We were on different programmes—MFA in Creative Writing for her and MA in Publishing and Writing for me—but our paths crossed outside of class (we even worked together on the Boston Book Festival YA planning committee last year). As you can imagine, I was thrilled to celebrate her book deal when it was announced, and even more so to get a chance to read said book—Finch House, a middle grade horror—in advance.
Here’s a publisher’s blurb for Finch House (as well as an excerpt):
Encanto meets Coraline in this spooky middle grade story that deals with family ties, fear of change, and generational trauma as it follows a girl who must convince an old, haunted house to release its hold on her and her family.
Eleven-year-old Micah has no interest in moving out of her grandfather’s house. She loves living with Poppop and their shared hobby of driving around rich neighborhoods to find treasures in others’ trash. To avoid packing, Micah goes for a bike ride and ends up at Finch House, the decrepit Victorian that Poppop says is Off Limits. Except when she gets there, it’s all fixed up and there’s a boy named Theo in the front yard. Surely that means Finch House isn’t Off Limits anymore? But when Poppop finds her there, Micah is only met with his disappointment.
By the next day, Poppop is nowhere to be found. After searching everywhere, Micah’s instincts lead her back to Finch House. But once Theo invites her inside, Micah realizes she can’t leave. And that, with its strange whispers and deep-dark shadows, Finch House isn’t just a house…it’s alive.
Can Micah find a way to convince the house to let her go? Or will she be forced to stay in Finch House forever?
Here’s a bit more about our lovely interviewee before I hand it over to her 😊. According to her website bio:
Ciera Burch is a lifelong writer and ice cream aficionado. She has a BA from American University and an MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in American Literary Magazine, Underground, the art and literary journal of Georgia State University, Stork, and Blackbird. Her work was also chosen as the 2019 One City, One Story read for the Boston Book Festival.
When she’s not reading or baking, she can be found listening to true crime podcasts, eating ice cream, and advocating for diverse kids lit. While she is originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, D.C with her stuffed animals, plants, and far too many books.
Ciera has her YA debut slated for April 2024 with Something Kindred, a “magical realism meets Southern Gothic” tale about “true love, the meaning of home, and the choices that haunt us” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)—a book I’m immensely looking forward to. I’ve shared Ciera’s cover reveal post for the same below.
For now, here’s the author herself!
Anu: Welcome to the Storyteller, Ciera! To start us off today, can you share a bit about yourself and your reading journey?
Ciera: Thanks for having me, Anushree! Sure, of course. I’m Ciera, I’m a middle grade and YA author who’s pretty obsessed with ice cream and Dungeons & Dragons. I live in D.C, which is great because I get to explore a ton of museums and indie bookstores. My reading journey is your typical bookworm’s journey—I’ve been devouring books since I learned how to read and have always gravitated toward stories with deeply developed characters, and especially books focused on or around family or found family.
Anu: I’m with you on books focused on or around family or found family! Let's talk a bit about your journey to the written word. Have you always written or wanted to write? You have a day job in publishing—how do you juggle that and the writing, how do they connect/impact/inspire/affect/react or play off each other?
Ciera: Yes! Writing has always been the best way for me to express myself and I’ve always wanted to create stories that other people can see themselves in too. Working in publishing is nice because you get a sort of insider look into everything but, at the end of the day, it’s a pretty normal day job like most others. I write during lunch breaks or on the train if I’m out and about, and I especially write at night since I’m a big night owl.
Anu: Your debut Finch House is a middle grade horror book. As an exclusively YA writer before, was this shift planned, especially as a debut? How did you have to adjust and change your writing style, process, and perspective when you were working on this—did the story change from first draft to final version?
Ciera: Not quite planned, no, but I did always want to try my hand at writing middle grade and my agent was really encouraging and suggested I just go for it! I’ll forever be grateful for that nudge. There wasn’t much of a change in my process, but in terms of writing style, I really had to try and find a voice that felt good to me in the middle grade space without talking down to my readers or overly describing things to the point where I could lose someone’s attention. It was nice because writing a character so much younger than myself really gave me a chance to check in with my inner child and to remember more about my own middle grade days.
Of course, the story did change from first draft to final. My ideas on Finch House were a bit all over the place at first in terms of how the house functioned and what happened to the people who were sucked inside it, and I like to think I got more of a handle on that in the end. I also had to cut some parts my editor, Kate, thought might be too scary!
Anu: What would you like readers to take away from Finch House? As well as a more general question of is there anything you'd like or want readers to take away from your stories. Anything you'd like to share, specifically, about both questions?
Ciera: I’d like for readers to take away the idea that change isn’t a bad thing and neither is feeling the way that you feel about it. Change can be overwhelming or scary or frustrating but it’s not all bad and you never how you might grow as a person or learn new things because you or your surroundings do have to go through change. We all experience it and all we can do is control how we react to it.
More generally, I hope they take away that people are flawed in so many brilliant ways and if you love my characters or see some of your own flaws in them, I hope you can learn to love them in yourself too.
Anu: I love that, especially that last takeaway. In Finch House, the haunted house itself plays an important role as a separate character. How did you create the spooky atmospheric elements? Can you share what went into the creation of the house?
Ciera: I’ve honestly always just loved Victorian houses and have been perpetually creeped out by my poppop’s basement in his house and I sort of mashed those two things together in my imagination—okay, what would going in this house feel like and why is the dark so scary and what can be unsettling without being overwhelming or falling into whatever a written version of a jump scare is.
Anu: What draws you, motivates you, to write or develop the stories that you do? Going off of that, why do you think diverse stories are important?
Ciera: Oh, lots of things! It’s always hard to pinpoint just one but my main motivation is creating a breadth of stories for black and brown kids to see themselves in, especially as the main character and especially in more supernatural or magical realistic stories. All kids deserve magic. In terms of why diverse stories important, if you never see yourself in anything or only see people like you portrayed in a certain way, as villains or sidekicks or anything else that’s not a main character, how can you know all the amazing things you’re capable of doing and being part of?
Anu: What is your writing process like—are you a planner and plotter; do you find that this process changes depending on the project or story you're working on?
Ciera: It really depends, honestly! In my day-to-day life, I’m definitely a big planner and that holds true for my YA and some of my adult work, but with certain stories, like Finch House, I find that they’re best told if I just sit down and let myself start writing and figuring out where I end up. I feel like the voice I’ve cultivated for middle grade is a little more brave and curious in its wandering and won’t be tied down to an outline.
Anu: 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.
Ciera: Um…not really! I think finding out things on my own through experience is a way that best serves me and any advice I’ve found useful has usually been after I’ve done the exact opposite. The advice I can give is just to keep writing and not to compare yourself to any other writer out there. They are them and you are you and only you can tell a story in the exact way that makes its yours and full of your voice.
Anu: Can you share, in brief, what the agenting, publishing, and writing was like for Finch House? As a debut, was it what you expected it would be?
Ciera: I hate to say it was pretty simple but…it was pretty simple! I’d already had my agent who I’d queried for my YA, I wrote a draft of Finch House in just over a month, she loved and it made a list of editors, and it actually ended up in an action between two different editors/houses before I made the choice to be at Simon and Schuster. It was much, much different than I expected it to be mostly because my expectations tend to run a little on the pessimistic side, just in case! But, no, it was a wonderful, surreal experience that was so much faster than my YA or even short story publications I’ve had so far.
Anu: What's your favourite writing creative and your favourite non-writing part of the publishing process?
Ciera: My favourite writing part is probably just the writing! Learning the characters, narrowing down their personalities and having them all interact in my head is always fun with a new book and a new cast. My favourite non-writing part is probably creating playlists that go with a certain tone or chapter or character and recognizing why I picked a certain song for something and drawing inspiration from it.
Bonus questions
Anu: What's in the works going forward? If you're allowed to, and want to, share, of course!
Ciera: I’m currently working on my second middle grade that’s about the Jersey Devil and a pretty suspicious summer camp set in the heart of the Pine Barrens.
Anu: That sounds amazing! Can you share a recommendation or two for the readers of this newsletter?
Ciera: Sure! How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix is a bit on brand and very fun for adult horror lovers. Hendrix is brilliant at writing horror that’s not too over the top but manages to be funny, engaging, and suspenseful all at once. And for a younger rec, the graphic novel Squad by Maggie Tokuda is a lot of fun, especially for werewolf lovers and fans of the movie Mean Girls.
Thank you so much for taking the time out to answer my questions, Ciera!
You can find her at website | instagram - both of which have buy links for Finch House.
As always, please feel free to 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 a few days!
Anu
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You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.
Hi Anu. Really enjoyed the interview with Ciera. I am getting know such diverse topics and young promising authors because of you. Really refreshing.