Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Emily Hornburg, author of The Cursed Queens book one of which The Night’s Chosen came out October 6th of 2020. So Emily is no stranger to pandemic publishing, I can't even imagine. And with your debut too, am I right?
Emily: Yes.
Mindy: So I can say I had a book come out in 2020 and it did okay. I think it was essentially my 10th book and so I had a readership built in and that was lovely and I'm sure helped me out, but I saw the impact of that pandemic. So, I would love to hear about publishing as a debut author. I know that you also have mentioned to me that your query journey was just difficult. It was a slog through the trenches, which it is for many, many people myself included. But then to debut during Covid, I don't know if you could just tell us, tell us a little bit about both those things, tell us about your publishing journey and then also that almost anti climactic or maybe super climactic - however you want to look at it - time of debut.
Emily: It’s definitely been a journey. I mean, I've always wanted to be an author and so I really started pursuing that in my mid twenties when I was finally figuring out how it actually works, like what it took to write a book, to get published, what the query process was and all of that. You actually critiqued one of my queries. It was for an urban fantasy and you gave me really great feedback but I remember you saying - just a heads up, No one is taking urban fantasy right now and guess what? You were totally right. No one wanted my book.
So after that, after I got a million rejections for that one, which that was a few years between writing it and querying it, I went back to the book I have published now which is an adult fantasy Retelling of Snow White and the rest of the books are going to be other fairytale retellings as well. That one also kind of had an interesting journey and so I was very hesitant to start querying it because I was just gonna put all this effort into this book and now no one's gonna want this one. And so I kind of was slowly querying it out, but then I decided to get ready for Pitch Wars and so I worked really hard on it and getting it polished up and getting it ready to go over to Pitch Wars and I was not chosen that year.
I did make some connections with one of the mentors that I submitted to, Paris Winters, and she and I emailed back and forth a lot during the Pitch Wars process. I remember on Twitter, like she was very interested in my book when I would mention it. After the fact she told me - you don't realize how close your book was to being picked, like you did very well. So please don't feel like this is a failure by any means. But she kind of took me under her wing even though I wasn't actually one of the people who she picked. Like once Pitch Wars was over and that whole process was done. But several months later she was willing to look over my book again and helped me through that revision process.
And so then she actually met an editor for City Owl Press at the Romance Writers of America conference and she was like you know, I think you would really like this book. So she in a way acted like my agent and pitched it to this editor. They had me send it out to her and then I waited several months later and by that time it was time for the next Pitch Wars. I'll go ahead and just submit my book again because I definitely changed a lot since last year. So I submitted it again and I did terribly. I was like well maybe I just need to scrap this book too, no one's wanting it. And then December 1st, I got the letter from my editor saying that they wanted to bring it on.
Mindy: Just to be clear. You went through this whole process to publication without an agent, correct?
Emily: Yes. I queried some agents and when I got the email from City Owl Press and that they want to take my book on. I did the standard two weeks where I emailed the people who already had my query just to let them know, hey, I have this publishing house who wants to take my book, anybody interested? All of them said, hey, that's awesome. Best of luck by and I was like, all right, cool. Which was fine because all you need is the one. So that was really exciting. And then originally, my book was supposed to be published this year In 2021, but they hadn't given me an exact date yet. It was beginning of 2020, early spring. I just emailed them. I was just like, Hey, like, do you even have, like, a general idea? And they're like, actually, yeah, do you want to publish it in October of this year? And I was like okay.
Mindy: And then, of course, you had no idea that you were agreeing to publish right when the world had kind of shut down. So, did you have any plans in place in terms of promotion? Like signings or public appearances that ended up getting canned? Like, did you have to suddenly rearrange all of the promotional things that you had planned?
Emily: You know, I had been planning for it to come out the next year, so I hadn't even begun that process yet. So at least in that sense it was kind of nice because I didn't have to rearrange things, but it did make it very challenging to get that promotion process even started because even now, even though things are opening up as I'm trying to reach out to local bookstores. Because I live in the Chicago area and like you know we have tons of bookstores and a big art scene around here. And so even now trying to reach out to these bookstores because it's a small press and so um you kind of have to ask them to carry your book. They say, we would love to carry it, but just because this was such a hard year we are literally only ordering the things we know what you are guaranteed to sell, maybe like approach us again when things open up even more and like we're a little bit better on our feet.
So that has been a struggle, Or like my local Barnes and Noble, I go to all the time. One of the managers was super excited about the book. But because of Covid they weren't able to do their usual local author stuff that they do. She was going to invite me to. So, it's a bit of a struggle. Just kind of trying to even just locally get my name out there. There was one thing I was going to do with my local library because they do like a mini comic con and my local library and I was going to do a little writing workshop. But of course that had to get canceled.
Mindy: It’s hard. I'm traditionally published with a big press, but honestly the tried and true methods of doing those local appearances and showing up and shaking hands and beating the pavement. That is what actually I think has had a real impact. When I say local, I mean like tri county area, you know, I do events at libraries. I'm very fortunate to be living pretty much right in the center of Ohio. So I can go anywhere in my state Pretty much a three hour drive. So I always tell people if you're in Ohio, I'll drive to you, we'll work something out. And so when I was first getting on my feet, I sometimes charged. For the first year, I charged absolutely nothing. Just, I just wanted to show up and say, hi, I'm Mindy and I wrote a book and I'm from Ohio.
And you know, now I charge for appearances, but I keep it within the realm of possibility for all socioeconomic levels just because I grew up very rurally. And I didn't meet an author until I myself was published. So it's like I want to be able to put myself in front of kids and adults anywhere. It makes a huge impact doing those events, doing local library things, doing village festivals, that's what I do. I do Christmas in the village and that kind of thing. And I do it in my hometown and I do it in the next town over. It’s just really those here I am, and you know me and I wrote a book. It gets people excited and it works and not being able to do that, not being able to have that grassroots startup available to you as a debut. I think that would be really crushing.
Emily: Yeah, it was really tough because the area of Chicago that I live in, I live in the southwest suburbs. And so even just in my area because most of the bookstores like the independent ones and stuff are more on the north side. And so even just reaching out to them with like, you kind of feel awkward like reaching out to them because like their local. But by the same time like in Chicago, like the difference between the south side and the north side, like it could be like a three hour drive. It's kind of odd even just reaching out to them because it's like I'm local but not really.
Mindy: In Ohio I just say local means of the whole state.
Emily: There's even one bookstore that has three branches and the closest one to me was maybe like a half hour away, which wasn't too bad. But that one ended up closing during covid of course. And that was one of the few people who was like, yes, we would love to carry your book. And then they closed and I was like, ugh. But they had even restrictions on their local author program on your mile radius that you could be in for the store. And so thankfully at least for the next closest one. I'm like just within their mile radius, it's been tough. So I'm really hoping now that things are opening up a little bit more because my next book is supposed to come out in March of next year. So I'm hoping that even though I'm not stopping promotion for book one at all, it's kind of like almost starting from scratch with book two and leading up to book two that way. Like people can kind of read book one in preparation for book two. And that's kind of what I'm hoping for right now.
Mindy: Of course. Of course. Well, I would think that as an indie author in a fairly densely populated area - where I'm from is tiny, there are two or three people who have gone like the Indy route or self published and that's like in a not dense population. So I can't even imagine trying to not only stand out in a bookstore in general, but even to stand out within a certain mile radius when the population is so dense.
Emily: There's a lot out here and it's like in the suburbs and in the city of course. And so it is difficult to like to make yourself stand out a little bit more. I have had a really great support system and like one of the perks of being with a small press is they really help you get to know the other people that are published with your press. And so we have a little Facebook group for like all of the authors. And then we have a facebook group for all the authors as well as all the editors and all of us. So that has been really really helpful just to be able to have that support system. So that way, all the others who were also having their debut novel published in the same year, we could kind of all support each other and be there for each other.
Mindy: I know that even among debut groups in the traditional publishing world we do form groups that are debuting in the same year. So I came out in 2013. So there was a general group of YA and middle grade authors called The Lucky 13s. And then there was a smaller group called the Class of 2k13, which is actually where both of those groups - I've met, some of the people that are my critique partners now and friends that I talked to every day. And like you're saying just other people in the publishing industry that you can say, hey, did you run into this or what do you think I should do with this? Or hey, let me bounce something off you? Or you know what, I just booked an event and I showed up and literally zero people came, which has happened to me Actually three times. So having a traditional publisher, even being with a big publisher, doesn't mean that the red carpet is rolled out for you and everything is fine. I can say that for sure.
Emily: Hopefully I'll be able to do more in person stuff soon, because I think that's gonna be a really big help.
Mindy: For sure. I think in person. I mean I love it. And some authors aren't necessarily comfortable in front of crowds so they're not good at public speaking. A lot of people don't like to do readings and things like that and I am like I don't care. I will juggle fiery knives whatever you need from me. I am here and I will entertain you.
Emily: I was a theater major in college so I'm hoping that'll help me out.
Mindy: It’ll help. trust me. Not a lot of writers are good speakers. So any type of stage experience actually helps a lot
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Mindy: You also are someone that I wanted to talk to about disability representation in fiction and in the media. You yourself have a physical disability that you were born with. So why don't you tell my listeners a little bit about that and how will you use that to inform your fiction?
Emily: I have a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta. We all just call it OI because that's a really big mouthful. Essentially. It's a brittle bones disease. You probably know it. There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy where she was pregnant with of course the most severe case of OI ever invented to make it really dramatic. I think there was an episode of Bones about it once which I felt like they didn't use as much as they could have. And it was very disappointing. And I think there was an episode of Call the Midwife. I think they had an episode in case people want to look them up.
Yeah so basically I have very fragile bones. I was diagnosed when I was about a year and a half. Essentially the doctor described at the time my bones were like a stick of butter. It was how fragile they were. And so I also have very short stature. Not everybody with OI has a short stature, but it's very common. So I'm only about four foot two, which is the first thing people usually notice, but I don't have the same body shape as someone with dwarfism. So Ii kind of confuses people a little bit. Yes, but by the time I was 11 I had like At least 20, we call them hips spike cast, which is essentially a cast that goes from like your feet up to your chest because at the time that was the best way to keep like your femurs still, when you were a kid and it was broken. So I broke a lot of femurs that I got like rods and all my bones because my bones suck at being bones. So I had like long leg braces for a long time. I used a walker for a long time. I graduated to no braces and no walker, but then I used a wheelchair in high school, not because I couldn't walk, but just because it was like, hey, you have to carry heavy books that weigh more than you and battle really crowded hallways. So this will probably be safer for you to navigate those things. And I still use a wheelchair on occasion for things like long distance stuff. So I call myself a wheelchair part timer.
But I remember as a kid, I kind of dreaded seeing kids with disabilities on TV or in books and movies and stuff just because it was all so badly done. Like I remember growing up wanting a wheelchair, not necessarily because I needed one, but just because I was like, well that's what everybody thinks disability is. And so therefore if I have a wheelchair, I will be like all the other disabled kids and it will make sense. And it was always this very important message episode and like, oh the kid in the wheelchair is here to teach you a very special lesson. I just kind of got used to being the weird one.
So when I got older I remember reading The Fault In Our Stars. And even though obviously kids battling cancer and someone having brittle bones are completely different things, but just like the discussion the character had about being a kid and being a teenager in the hospital and those experiences or the way people would stare at them or even just the things of like this is the part of being sick that nobody wants to talk about, but this is my reality. I just really connected with it and I had never had felt like that before reading or watching something and that was kind of when I started thinking more about like, wow, like this was really cool that someone actually kind of gets it. I don't have many main characters who have a disability. Later in the series I'm working on who has a disability, who's the main character. Right now she's a side one and so on, but I really want to try and have them in the books, even if there was a side character just existing. Like, I never want to write something where I'm like, I'm going to write a great American novel about someone overcoming the disability and making it this big thing. But just a person who has it, being there.
Mindy: Having not read The Fault in Our Stars. I was a librarian when The Fault in Our Stars came out, all kids would walk in and be like, I want to read The Fault in Our Stars. I'm like okay here you go. I don't need to promote The Fault in Our Stars. Like I can, I have to go read things that they're not going to ask for and then I can pitch it to them. But I know the experience of not seeing things done correctly or your own experience being represented poorly. Like I said, I grew up in a very rural, pretty economically disadvantaged area and you know, very Midwest. I just kind of rail against most media and books, film tv portrayals of essentially country rural dwellers. They're always like racist, sexist, tobacco spitting assholes. And it's like, you know, I grew up here and those people are here. They're also in the city, maybe not the tobacco, but it's there. I never see a good representative, very rarely do I see a good representation of, you know, small town rural without it being kind of tongue in cheek dumb hick side eye. I can't speak to, you know, having a disability or seeing that portrayed in like you're saying the very special episode of Blossom. And that was always a thing. It was very othering. It was very much like we're gonna give some space to this and then uh, you know, give ourselves a gold star.
Emily: Exactly. And like because even the tv show Glee, which I will fully admit, I am the last Gleek. Everyone is welcome to judge me. I judge myself. It's okay. They had the character Artie and they're like, there was so much potential with that character and in some ways they did him really well because he was the one in the wheelchair. But almost every time there was an episode that focused on him as the main character, the plot line had something to do with his wheelchair and with his disability and it was just kind of disappointing. I was like, oh man, like you have so much potential with this character. He sings and he has all these other interests and he's kind of a jerk, but in a way that's refreshing because he's not just the inspirational kid. It wasn't until a later season, which is when most people dropped off of the show, but they didn't get to see like there was a great episode when he got to college and he was magically a ladies man where he hadn't been when he was in high school and he had an STD and that was what the episode was about. And I was like, this is awesome. Finally! I’m not cheering on STDs. But like it was finally, he had a plot line that wasn't necessarily related to the wheelchair.
Mindy: He just had a college kid problem.
Emily: Exactly.
Mindy: My First STD, that would be a great, very special episode.
Something that people do talk to me about occasionally, but not all that often representations of faith specifically in my case, Christianity in YA fiction. So again, when we speak of what I usually see in YA fiction, Middle grade, I can't speak to as much, but definitely in YA fiction. Usually when there is, for example, a minister, they're usually not someone you would want for a dad or a mom. Like they're just not. There's usually something either controlling or downright shady and gross going on. One of my best friends was a preacher's kid and his dad was awesome and just a great guy. He was our minister, but he was also just like everybody's dad and like a cool guy. You’d go over to their house and he'd be like, you know, making hot dogs.
I find myself becoming very frustrated whenever I see a character that is defined by their religion and they don't swear and they've never been to a party or if they go it's played for laughs, right? I grew up a Christian and I don't even, I don't even want to share how much I drank like my weight before I graduated from high school, right? They are real people. It's so frustrating to me that, you know, you can't be a Christian - and this is of course true everywhere - but you can't be a Christian and also, you know, have sex or drink or you know basically have any fun or swear.
You have a degree in theology. I have a degree in comparative religions and I’m so glad that I do. I can't say that it landed me any major jobs but you know I'm glad I have it. Talk a little bit about your degree in theology and you know... I myself - some people have seen it. Some people have reached out and pointed it out to me or said that they noticed it. I slip nods into my writing and I think that you mentioned you do too.
Emily: So I grew up in a pretty conservative christian household. We’re Lutherans which in the Christian world Lutherans are like unicorns were always just like very excited when we find another Lutheran. I just want to throw that out there.
Mindy: I’m a Lutheran.
Emily: Oh my God seriously!! You just made my day.
Mindy: Yeah!
Emily: Yeah, so I grew up LCMS.
Mindy: I’m ELCA.
Emily: So you're like the super liberals!
Mindy: It's funny. I've been dating someone new for a little bit now and I was at a gathering like, a graduation and it was really funny because the guy I’m dating came to a family event. It was one of his first family events and you know the crowd kind of started to filter out mid afternoon. I looked around and I was like okay - we can crack out the beer now, it's just the church people and he's like what??!? And I was like no we're good. It's everyone from church drinking is fine now.
Emily: That’s hysterical, I love it. Oh my gosh I actually was a youth director. That was like my degree was director of christian education and then included in that was a required minor and theology and then I had concentrations in youth and theater ministry, so I was an overachiever and did all the things. And so I was a youth pastor for a little while after college until I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do and part of it when one of the many reasons was writing and I was like, well I can't really write what I want to write and still be a youth director. That's a problem.
And so, but I never wanted to villainize religion. Religion plays a pretty big part in my book The Night’s Chosen, but it's definitely not a Christian religion at all. It's like multi gods and they dedicate themselves to a god and get magic from it and all that stuff. But I never wanted to make the religion itself villainized. But there's definitely critique of religion because I definitely am a fan of critique and like to talk about, you know, where things go wrong, like where we can improve and all of those things.
The representation sometimes of faith and the negative connotations is definitely there, it's like there's still so much more than just that. And so I never wanted to villainize the religion itself, but just point out that maybe some of the ways that we've twisted it, which was really fun and actually like building the religion was like one of the most fun parts of it. And so the people who have read it and know me and my family but they aren't like religious leaders. Like they're the ones who end up being like, oh, like I don't I don't know how I feel about reading about a pagan religion. Yeah. And I'm like, it's not real by the way, like, this is all made up. I'm not telling you to believe this because this is pretend like this is, it's fantasy. Like none of this is real.
Mindy: Like I said, I was a librarian for a long time in a school. Harry Potter came out and some people were having fits about it and I talked to, I didn't really ever have any official complaints, but you know, there were conversations and someone, a parent had said something to me about witchcraft and I was like - Well, this is what I want you to do, I want you to go home and I want you to try one of the spells and if it works, let me know, then there's a problem.
Emily: That’s a great answer. I love that.
Mindy: You know, it's like, I freaking wish the accio worked, I would just lay around and call things to me constantly, but it doesn't. So it's like, that's, that's the kind of thing. You're right. There's a couple different things going on there where, you know, you can write about a, create an entirely new and different religion and that scares people because they're scared. Like, just even the concept is a little bit scary to them because it's not known. And the other thing is, if you use an already existing religion, that also can just be a minefield.
So I find myself very, very carefully whenever I do use any type of mentioning actually like religion outright or some nods that maybe only somebody with a really deep steeping in symbology is going to understand. It's what I was raised in and it's what I grew up in and you know, really, really formative for me and while I still live in the community and I still go to the church that I grew up in and was baptized and was confirmed in and was married and… I wasn’t divorced in the church. I wish they did that.
Emily: That would be great.
Mindy: But you know, everything else. And it's just such a part of my life tha tends to surprise people when I talk about it because, you know, I write about very, very dark things and I write about things that are really scary to a lot of people. I write about addiction and I write about rape culture and I write about violence. When I do identify myself as a Christian, a lot of people are very surprised and I'm like, well, it's because I'm a human guys, It's a weird corner that I find myself in. And one of my exes used to tell me - you know, you don't exist, right? Because you're a liberal christian.
Emily: It feels like that sometimes doesn't it?
Mindy: But I told him I was like, there are more of us than you think. it's just that we're not yelling. We don’t have TV shows.
Emily: That's true. That's very true. We don't have tv shows. If they did have tv shows, I would be very skeptical.
Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your first book, The Night’s Chosen and when they can be looking for the second as well.
Emily: You can find me pretty much anywhere online with EE Hornburger, so ee then HO R N B U R G That's my username on Instagram, Twitter, all of those things. I'm mostly on Instagram, that's where you'll find me the most active. So my website is Emily Hornburg dot com there, you can get my newsletter and find everything about my books. You can find The Night’s Chosen. It's definitely on amazon, but even though it's not in physical bookstores, if you go to Barnes and Noble dot com or like your favorite bookstore website, you can still purchase it online, which is great. So I always encourage people to use bookshop dot org if you want the physical copy particularly since it will support your local indie bookstores.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.