55. NATALIE C. PARKER: How to build your own writing community | The Assassin's Guide to Babysitting

We owe Natalie C Parker a great debt of gratitude for introducing Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone, who now write together. Christmas Notch fans, rejoice!  Natalie has built a successful writing community in the Kansas City area, which is where her newest book is set. "The Assassin's Guide to Babysitting" is dedicated to Keanu Reeves, and you've gotta hear why.

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Come Out, Come Out
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The Assassin's Guide to Babysitting
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Transcript

00:00:01:15 - 00:00:24:21
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to the Literary Hype podcast. I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman. Today's author is one that I have been told multiple times by multiple authors that I needed to meet because we were going to be great friends and get along so well. And we finally made it happen. And that is author Natalie C Parker. She is putting out a brand new book called The Assassins Guide to Babysitting, which is, as she calls it, John Wick meets Baby Sitters Club.

00:00:24:21 - 00:00:43:06
Speaker 1
So I was definitely in just based on that. And this is such a fun book like I cannot wait to discuss this more. Not only does Natalie write in the Y.A. and middle grade space herself, she also edits books. And she is the reason we have a beloved adult romance series because she introduced the authors that write together.

00:00:43:14 - 00:01:03:10
Speaker 1
So you got to hear that story. It is so much fun. So without any further ado, here's my conversation with Natalie Parker Welcome to Literary Hype. It's so exciting to have you on to talk about your new book, The Assassins Guide to Baby. And that's not all. We're going to talk about. We have so much to talk about.

00:01:03:23 - 00:01:10:10
Speaker 2
Excellent. I love talking. And thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here and to meet you face to face for the first time.

00:01:10:14 - 00:01:27:24
Speaker 1
I know that's where we're going to start because we have so many mutual friends. So many people have said, I need to talk to you. First of all, being Julie Murphy and Sierra Sloane, because we all owe you a great debt of gratitude for being the one to introduce them, which has then given us the Christmas notched books.

00:01:28:23 - 00:01:33:19
Speaker 1
Yes. Talk a little bit about how why you decided that those two needed to be friends.

00:01:33:20 - 00:02:00:19
Speaker 2
It's actually quite shallow. Partly the shallowness is like I liked both of them. And so I want my friends to be friends. And we were I was planning a book tour because me and Julian Sierra actually had books on all of our first books came out around the same time, and I was planning a road trip book tour and Sierra and I lived mostly in the same town.

00:02:00:20 - 00:02:16:14
Speaker 2
Julie, of course, was in Texas at the time, but I decided that the two of them, we were going to four people in the car that was going to be me and my wife and the two other people. And I was like, I need two other people who can mostly cohabitate because we're going to be in tight spaces all the time.

00:02:17:03 - 00:02:41:00
Speaker 2
And what I know about my two dear friends, Julie and Sierra, is that Julie snores a little bit and Sierra is narcoleptic. And so this is a match made in heaven. They're going to be a perfect pair. So I basically assigned them the backseat in the car because I was going to be the driver. I'm a little bit of a control freak, and my wife was going to be the navigator, and then the two of them, like that's basically the beginning and the end of the story.

00:02:41:00 - 00:02:46:03
Speaker 2
Like they were in the backseat and now they're now they're Christmas nuts.

00:02:47:04 - 00:03:00:13
Speaker 1
Now, Julie has moved to Kansas City to be closer to Sierra and indeed wonderful writing community that Kansas City has so much fun that you're kind of like the leader of what?

00:03:01:19 - 00:03:06:03
Speaker 2
I don't know that I would call myself the leader, but I am definitely an instigator.

00:03:06:10 - 00:03:21:16
Speaker 1
OK, instigators a good word because I've heard from multiple authors that they've met other authors because of you. So and like you organize a lot of activities for the authors in Kansas City. So why is writing community so important to you?

00:03:21:21 - 00:03:43:01
Speaker 2
There are a lot of potential answers to that. But the the one that continues to be the most important to me is that writing one is kind of an isolating exercise. You have to write alone. I mean, you can write you can co-write with somebody, obviously, but the writing itself and the like, act of creation itself, you do alone.

00:03:43:19 - 00:04:07:13
Speaker 2
Similarly, getting into the writing industry is like a very isolating experience. And before the age of the Internet, it was almost impossible to do that from anywhere other than, you know, being in New York or having some kind of connection to the publishing industry in New York. When I first started to consider getting into the publishing industry, it was you know, maybe 20, ten or so.

00:04:08:22 - 00:04:41:08
Speaker 2
And there was a lot more information that you could find online. But just finding that information and then knowing what to do with it was like a whole different kind of ballgame. And I got invited to a retreat with 26 young adult authors. This was in 20, 11 or 12, and just having the opportunity to speak face to face to these other authors about how did you get your agent and what was that experience like and what is the initial publishing experience like?

00:04:41:08 - 00:05:03:23
Speaker 2
Like just asking those questions face to face allowed me to sort of narrow my own gaps and figure out how I wanted to approach publishing. This is a long way of saying I took that feeling and I really do credit that experience with helping me get an agent when I got an agent because it was within a year of that retreat that I landed my first agent.

00:05:03:23 - 00:05:44:00
Speaker 2
And it's not that any of those authors handed me to their agent and said, You should sign her. I was still a slush pile read, but it was so useful and just so practical that I carried that forward and wanted to see if I could replicate it for other people, especially the people who were struggling to get into the industry at that point were primarily women and people of color or queer people and non-binary, you know, any kind of marginalization, like anybody with a marginalized background was going to struggle more than people who are who were closer to the center of power in the industry.

00:05:44:00 - 00:06:07:10
Speaker 2
So that's why that like that's the long story of why I find communities so important, because I think actually going back to the veil and talking openly about these things can do just an enormous amount to get people through the the very like guarded and lauded gateway of the publishing industry.

00:06:07:12 - 00:06:20:19
Speaker 1
So for anyone who's listening or watching and wants to find a writing community or wants to build a writing community of their own where they live, what are some of your best practices for building and establishing an effective writing community?

00:06:20:21 - 00:06:48:19
Speaker 2
I started off just putting out an all call on Twitter at the time, and it was it was basically a open invitation to anybody within driving distance of my town who wanted to come and discuss the industry. And it was it was an offer like I'll, I'll come and I'll bring all of these other authors that I know I'll drag them with me and you can come and ask your questions or we can go over queries.

00:06:48:19 - 00:07:17:12
Speaker 2
So I think there is still something to be said for putting out an alcohol and saying, Hey, I'm in Minneapolis, I'm in Seattle, I'm in this super small town in Nebraska, and I am looking for other writers to build community I know a lot of people work through their local libraries and build community that way. So I think just kind of putting yourself out there is the first step the second step is knowing exactly what you want out of that kind of writing community.

00:07:18:09 - 00:07:45:05
Speaker 2
A lot of people want feedback. They want to share their work and receive critique from other other readers and other writers. That was not something that I was interested in at the time. I was more industry and interested in being very particular about this industry. We're talking about how to get through the door. We're talking about how to make smart business decisions.

00:07:45:05 - 00:08:04:00
Speaker 2
Once you do get through the door, we're talking about just kind of unpacking. What does it mean once you've sold a book and you're at a publishing house and all of this different terminology is thrown at you, what do you need to be aware of that you're not aware of? So I was building a specific community here that was industry focused.

00:08:04:06 - 00:08:24:21
Speaker 2
It still exists. Twice a year we get together, we have a business meeting where we kind of discuss like, what is the what are the recent big shifts in the publishing industry, which we can do? Because when we started, I would say only 20 or 30% of the members were published and now we're closer to 80 or 90%.

00:08:25:02 - 00:08:47:10
Speaker 2
So we have people who have longevity in the industry and there's a lot of institutional knowledge for lack of a better word, even though it sounds so clinical, but it's true. So we still get together and we unpack big industry questions. We talk about what everybody needs to know and then we move on to wine and cheese as one does.

00:08:48:06 - 00:08:48:15
Speaker 2
Yes.

00:08:49:05 - 00:08:57:20
Speaker 1
Are there any exercises that you guys have found are really effective in helping writers like get past writing block or other ways that you guys help each other?

00:08:57:22 - 00:09:34:03
Speaker 2
There's a lot of complaining. I'll say that there's a lot of when we get together, there is always a moment of somebody being like, I just I can't figure this out or I need some help. My favorite art method is called The Nine Box. This works wonders for a lot of writers, but it's not like one size fits all and it's basically a plotting tool that takes you through like a very basic three act structure with some very interesting prompts so it's just called the nine bucks method of writing a novel.

00:09:35:02 - 00:10:05:23
Speaker 2
And the thing that I think makes it so much fun to do in person and in community, and we do this at retreats where we just have a house of writers and one writer is like, I need help. And so we'll take ginormous sticky notes. I actually have one right here. OK, so we take these the big sticky notes like this, and we find a wall or a massive window or a collection of windows and we make a grid of nine, so three rows of three, and then we write what the prompts are.

00:10:05:23 - 00:10:36:19
Speaker 2
So the prompt goes from like an inciting incident to the resolution with a, you know, all the good stuff in the middle. And then over the course, sometimes of three days, if it's our retreat, we will gather around the nine box and kind of talk through the story or the story beats where the writer is having trouble and everyone gets into it and we just start mapping it out and trying to maybe like work through the knots or add layers if that's what's missing.

00:10:36:21 - 00:11:05:04
Speaker 2
Anyway, I think the nine box method is super fun. Especially because it has that like visual and tactile component and people can come by and leave additional little sticky notes with suggestions or by the end. It just kind of looks like a strange murder board, but it's also portable. So the writer can then take it apart, pack it in their suitcase, and then when they get home, they can lay it all out again or transfer it into some other format.

00:11:05:04 - 00:11:08:10
Speaker 2
But the name box I think is my favorite about those things.

00:11:08:10 - 00:11:21:08
Speaker 1
So much fun. Plus, I love a good sticky note. Yeah. OK, so now we can talk about this book because this is so much fun. The Assassin's Guide to Babysitting. So for anyone who has not yet seen this online or in their bookstores, what is this book about?

00:11:21:13 - 00:11:39:09
Speaker 2
I pitched it to myself when I was trying to come up with like what I wanted to write next. I was I was trying to find ways to make all of my ideas, like, sound more fun or just have like a little more energy. And so I was copying everything to a Keanu Reeves movie. Because I like Keanu Reeves.

00:11:39:21 - 00:12:02:19
Speaker 2
And so it was like, oh, what if I wrote, you know, Cinderella, but it's like Cinderella meets The Matrix, or what if I wrote you know, I just was like, what can I mix with point break? What can I mix with speed? What can I do? And then this one was the Baby Sitters Club meets Chadwick and I felt like, Oh, no, there's a story there, and I love it already.

00:12:03:10 - 00:12:35:09
Speaker 2
So that was like the starting point. But it is the story of true who is a 17 year old teenage teenager with a secret sort of superpower. It's set in Kansas City in a community where a lot of people do have a talent, which is kind of a superpower. But true has one that is not considered safe. And so she's spent most of her life in hiding when she's really young.

00:12:35:09 - 00:13:06:12
Speaker 2
Her parents are killed and she ends up as the ward and trainee of Kansas City's most feared assassin. He's called the Google of Kansas City she calls him up a salad, but his real name is Logan Dyer. She grows up with him training and learning how to be a deadly assassin with the idea of maybe when she's old enough that she can go and figure out who actually killed her parents and maybe she can do something about it, you know, do something like murder.

00:13:07:02 - 00:13:30:03
Speaker 2
Oh, I'm sorry. We call it assassinations. And that makes it sounds better, right? But the story is actually well, it is kind of serious at times. It's has a lot of lightheartedness and it takes off when Drew is on a babysitting gig for some other assassins, because even assassins need babysitters and somebody shows up to kidnap the baby.

00:13:30:12 - 00:13:57:12
Speaker 2
So she ends up on the run with this baby. And as she as this things unfold, she kind of finds that maybe it is more related to her in her past and her parents than she ever expected. So it's a it's an adventure, a little bit of a thriller, a dash of romance and tons of found family, because that is maybe my biggest my biggest trope, love.

00:13:57:14 - 00:14:02:07
Speaker 2
I don't know if that is a thing we say a trope I love. It's like a way better way to say that.

00:14:02:12 - 00:14:11:20
Speaker 1
I mean, this book is dedicated to Keanu. So I definitely was going to go there. What is it about piano that you love so much that made you dedicate this book to him?

00:14:11:22 - 00:14:41:04
Speaker 2
Gosh, I mean, it feels like those could be endless but I was born in the eighties and one of the first movies that I remember seeing Keanu and I was I was very young. It's called Babes in Toyland, which I think that a lot of people have never seen this movie but it was Keanu Reeves, it was Drew Barrymore when she was also like, I don't know, maybe she was only ten or something.

00:14:41:10 - 00:15:10:06
Speaker 2
But Keanu, as a teenager, this is sort of pre Bill and Ted's but not, not much pre. And he had this floppy black hair and he was this like adorable romantic fairytale character that I just like. And it's I don't think I could say that I fell in love with him because I think I was seven or eight, but I just I adored the movie, and I really I loved his storyline.

00:15:10:06 - 00:15:36:10
Speaker 2
I loved his character. And then I guess I just you know, Keanu was like a staple of the film diet that I enjoyed as a teenager and then even as an adult. So I have enjoyed so much of his oeuvre. Which brings me to speed the movie. Now, the drug speed is a perfect movie, and if anybody wants to fight me, I will be on the corner.

00:15:36:13 - 00:15:56:24
Speaker 2
It's fine. I'll go out and meet you and we can have this fight. Speed is perfect, and I was watching that. I was a teenager and I had just moved or I was just about to move to Japan. So I was in like this time of upheaval and this was like one of the movies that I had on VHS that my family was in the Navy.

00:15:56:24 - 00:16:16:23
Speaker 2
This is important because when you move and you're in the Navy, sometimes you get to the country that you're moving to and there's no place for you. So you have to live in what's called the Navy Lodge, which is kind of a hotel. I mean, it is a hotel. It's just not very glamorous. While all of your stuff sits somewhere in a, you know, shipping container.

00:16:17:13 - 00:16:38:11
Speaker 2
So you might spend, as I did, three months of your summer living out of your suitcase and in a in a foreign country trying to figure out, you know, who you are going to be as a freshman in high school and my parents were like, OK, we have got to figure out how to get some some form of entertainment to our kids.

00:16:38:21 - 00:17:05:19
Speaker 2
So they were allowed to go into the storage container at one point. And my mom asked me for a list and I was like, maybe allowed to ask for like five things because she didn't know where everything was packed, you know, was like boxes and boxes in there. And I remember telling her in very, very clear terms the movie Speed, I don't care what else comes back, I need that VHS.

00:17:06:04 - 00:17:35:04
Speaker 2
So this movie was just not only is it perfect, but it is a comfort watch for me. And kind is a part of that. This is a really long answer to why I dedicated this particular one. Didn't want to speak three I just think it's genuinely one of those amazing guys. Every time I see some kind of article about him, it's it's highlighting how he's like a normal human.

00:17:35:13 - 00:17:58:22
Speaker 2
And there's this story that goes around that when they were filming The Matrix which obviously at the time was a mega super hit and made a ton of money, and I'm sure that he was offered a ton of money. There's a story and it could be apocryphal but that he took like all of the extra money that they were making and that he was making.

00:17:59:05 - 00:18:26:02
Speaker 2
And then he turned it around and divide it up to the crew because he didn't need it all. And that's kind of a story that I hear about him that he's constantly divesting himself of too much wealth and I think that that's the kind of energy and the kind of of action that the world could use more of, especially in this this time of just like intense late stage capitalism.

00:18:26:18 - 00:18:50:16
Speaker 2
And there's a lot of greed in the world. And and he seems like maybe he's not. So I don't know him personally, but the idea of him and the storytelling that he has done over the course of my life has been really important. And since so much of this book was inspired by that kind of energy, it felt like, you know what, why not dedicated to Keanu?

00:18:51:07 - 00:18:51:17
Speaker 2
So I did.

00:18:51:22 - 00:19:10:17
Speaker 1
And it feels like there's touches of another beloved fictional character in Logan because he does say, as you wish and he is blunt. And so I was immediately when, you know, there is this a little bit of a nod to Wesley as well.

00:19:10:21 - 00:19:29:23
Speaker 2
You know, somebody else pointed this out and and and it was like it was a review. And somebody said, oh, this nod of Princess Bride. And I went to my editor and I was like, Did I put the Princess Bride in here, too? And we actually had to stop and kind of think about it and was like, Oh, no, you're right.

00:19:29:23 - 00:19:56:08
Speaker 2
It's just that movie is also so seeded into my subconscious that was literally just meant to be a quirk of Logan's personality, that he's so isolated and so internal of a person that he doesn't often speak to humans. And so when he does, it comes out very formal and true, thinks of it as his fairy tale speak, that he's always talking like a prince in the old fairy tale.

00:19:57:09 - 00:20:04:23
Speaker 2
But 100% like that is part of my DNA. Too. So yes, yes and no. As my most honest answer.

00:20:05:04 - 00:20:14:10
Speaker 1
I loved it so much. I was like, Hmm, get a little dread Private Roberts going on here, like running around this person who doesn't quite know what's going on.

00:20:14:20 - 00:20:16:06
Speaker 2
It's it's it really fits.

00:20:16:17 - 00:20:33:14
Speaker 1
And running around in this book is a lot because this is all over Kansas City and very specific references to locations. So did you map out all of these fight scenes and like where you were going to take them or how did you decide what parts of Kansas City were highlighted?

00:20:33:15 - 00:20:55:20
Speaker 2
So I'm a transplant to the region, obviously. I grew up in the Navy. My wife's family is from Kansas City. So I first came to Kansas City in 1997 and that was my first visit. Obviously we have since moved to the area but I really love Kansas City. So this was the book. I knew it from from the very beginning.

00:20:55:20 - 00:21:16:13
Speaker 2
This is the book that was going to be set in Kansas City and I also knew that I wanted to kind of incorporate, you know, there are tunnels beneath Kansas City and they're used for various like storage purposes. But back in the day the story goes that they were used by the Kansas City mob, which of course has very strong ties to the Las Vegas mob.

00:21:16:17 - 00:21:53:18
Speaker 2
So I didn't want to like go too realistic with this. I wanted it to have like a dash of fantasy. I also wanted to use those that tunnel and that sort of mob history that is rich in Kansas City. So that made Union Station kind of an obvious starting point. And from there, I really just wanted to make sure that I was being true to Kansas City, showing off some of the, you know, more well known pieces of it that are amazing, but also showing the parts that people are not as familiar with.

00:21:53:20 - 00:22:14:19
Speaker 2
If you're here, you know, about the river market and you can go down there. But I think it's it's a really special place in Kansas City that not many people know about. So I wanted to take us kind of all over. So I did do some mapping because like you said, there's a fair amount of running and a fair amount of like chasing.

00:22:15:17 - 00:22:41:21
Speaker 2
But I needed to make sure that my directions were accurate and that, if true, is going on, you know, a ten mile run that she can get where I need her to get reasonably without without stretching the truth too much. But yeah, so I got to play with the Plaza a little bit. I really wanted to place a scene there, and that one took a little bit of time for me to figure out exactly what it was going to be.

00:22:41:21 - 00:22:54:10
Speaker 2
And then I was like, Oh no, I've got it. So that one was really fun. And there's a lot of little Easter eggs, I think, throughout. For people who know Kansas City, there's even an Easter egg on the cover. For people who know.

00:22:54:10 - 00:22:55:12
Speaker 1
Kansas City, I.

00:22:55:12 - 00:23:20:20
Speaker 2
Asked for that in particular which is interesting. There are some copyright issues. I don't know. Like I was like, Oh my gosh, you can actually do the whole thing, but you can do like the spirit of the thing. Working with the cover artist was really cool because they asked about the kind of architecture that I would like to see, and I was able to kind of talk to them about why Kansas City architecture is so cool and all the things that I would love to see.

00:23:22:06 - 00:23:46:11
Speaker 2
And of course, the final rendering is not quite as much of a skyline as one of our initial like thoughts. They were very careful with making sure that the buildings that are represented on the cover look like Kansas City as well. So, yeah, I just I picked a lot of my favorite places and then used it as an excuse to get to Kansas City and explore other places.

00:23:46:11 - 00:23:53:05
Speaker 2
And there is a second book which is also set in Kansas City, so we'll see even more locations in that one as well.

00:23:53:12 - 00:24:13:11
Speaker 1
I definitely was like so excited seeing the Western Auto little. So for anybody who's been to Kansas City, you know that that's iconic. And like when it got relit, everyone was so excited to have that back. So seeing that on the book, maybe so helping me do, I even said my husband, I was like, Look, if he's like this so cool, it's awesome.

00:24:14:00 - 00:24:24:00
Speaker 1
But you also touched on the tunnels, which I definitely wanna talk about. Have you gone down into them as part of your research? So like, I've done the paintball part that's underground, but I haven't explored the tunnel tunnels yet.

00:24:24:02 - 00:24:40:09
Speaker 2
No, I mean, I was in them a long time ago, you know, and I always want to do the run. I think it's a five K or maybe it's actually like a half marathon where they use the tunnels, the theaters use them for storage of, of costumes and stuff like that. So I've only been in them just in the most utilitarian way.

00:24:40:14 - 00:24:53:22
Speaker 2
I would really love to get a full tour, but I couldn't find an act of like a good way to do it. When I was writing the book, so maybe, maybe sometime in the future, I can.

00:24:54:10 - 00:25:08:07
Speaker 1
Add another little Kansas City nod that I noticed was a reference to Walsh's barbecue. So we got to talk barbecue, as I have for Julien's there to do as well. What is your actual favorite Kansas City barbecue?

00:25:08:12 - 00:25:37:23
Speaker 2
My wife and her family live right around the corner from I still call it Oklahoma Joe's. Everybody else knows it as Joe's KC now, and that has a very special place in my heart. However, I just I guess in the last year and a half went out and tried slabs. And I really loved it. And I'm a fan of Q 39 as well.

00:25:38:04 - 00:25:52:13
Speaker 1
Q 39 because I had them on my show when they were first getting launched and a bunch of barbecue at like 7:00 in the morning on a Saturday. So they won me. I've not been to the actual location because they had so much delivered to the show.

00:25:52:21 - 00:26:00:04
Speaker 2
Oh my gosh, they're about to open one. What about you? Like in the next year they're going to open a branch in Lawrence and I'm going to have a problem.

00:26:00:13 - 00:26:08:06
Speaker 1
It's the best problem to have. Like there's so many good barbecue options in Kansas City and it could be such an argument with people too.

00:26:08:07 - 00:26:09:02
Speaker 2
Can be.

00:26:10:01 - 00:26:12:08
Speaker 1
Like, as long as you don't say Jack sucks, I'm good.

00:26:13:02 - 00:26:14:19
Speaker 2
Oh, gosh, no. Sorry, Jack.

00:26:15:16 - 00:26:19:16
Speaker 1
Look, cheesy corn is great, but the meat I will go elsewhere.

00:26:19:23 - 00:26:21:12
Speaker 2
Mm hmm. Same.

00:26:21:15 - 00:26:37:17
Speaker 1
And you touched on it being superhero superpowers or talents. What was it like for you to take modern day area where you are pretty close to living and blend in this element of fantasy and decide how this society would work with these powers?

00:26:37:17 - 00:27:04:04
Speaker 2
There are four main talents. You can be a strong arm, which means you're incredibly strong. You can be a bull's eye, which means you usually have, like, perfect team you can be a bombshell, which is more kind of like a berserk. So this is the one where it feels a little bit more magical because they really can kind of explode.

00:27:04:08 - 00:27:23:15
Speaker 2
And then you can be a swift fit. Is that what it's called to wait? Do you know what I call them? Swift Boat at first. And then it was like, I can't have two that start with an S. And so now I'm writing book two and every time I try I type with and then I'm like, no, no, no, no.

00:27:24:01 - 00:27:54:18
Speaker 2
So wingtips are very like graceful and fast. And then there's a secret fifth one that are called bastions and they're kind of in permeable like they're they're just impervious to harm of all kinds. So I wanted each of the, the talents to feel, you know, grounded in a physical body. And at the same time there is that element of magic to it.

00:27:56:12 - 00:28:23:18
Speaker 2
And then it was just really fun to be like, Oh, these fight scenes get a little more complicated if I have to fold in all of the talents. So is this a wingtip versus wingtip fight? Is it a wingtip versus strong arm? And what does that look like? What are their different strengths and weaknesses? Is it like, is this Rock-Paper-Scissors and one always wins or is this more of a is there a scale like can you be a more skilled wingtip?

00:28:23:19 - 00:28:48:13
Speaker 2
I'm more like a stronger, strong arm. Can you actually develop these talents or is it a baseline for everyone? So that was kind of fun. And it is it's more of a scale for folks. Not everybody not all bull's eyes are born equal. And obviously if you never use your talent, then it's not going to grow, which I think is true in life as well.

00:28:48:20 - 00:29:13:08
Speaker 2
So yeah, that one that was just like, I don't know, it just felt like playing in a in a in a sandbox just to see what would happen. And then in within Underhill, there are different kinds of jobs that people can have that are not necessarily it doesn't follow your talent. You can be kind of whatever you want to be within the confines of Underhill.

00:29:13:23 - 00:29:38:21
Speaker 2
And then there are a couple of additional layers of magic. There's the app, of course. So there's Bounty App, which is an in-world secret app that you really can't gain access to if you don't have some sort of affiliation with Underhill or the World of Talents. And the Bounty app allows you to find bounties. It allows you to find work that will utilize your talents.

00:29:39:12 - 00:30:01:05
Speaker 2
Sometimes that work might be an assassination because it is a little brutal. There's also an underground black market in this world. There's like there's so much more world than I got to fully explore in book one. But, you know, hopefully in the future I'll have more opportunities to do that.

00:30:01:23 - 00:30:07:05
Speaker 1
There's all these fight scenes throughout this book. How do you approach crafting a good fight scene?

00:30:07:05 - 00:30:14:12
Speaker 2
I love this question because I actually got the best advice for writing fight scenes from Sierra Simone is.

00:30:14:13 - 00:30:15:20
Speaker 1
Not what you would expect from Sierra.

00:30:16:03 - 00:30:40:23
Speaker 2
I know. And actually, she wasn't talking about fighting. She was talking about the other F-word, but I was writing a series of books called Sea Fire, and it was like all of these, you know, battles at sea. And I was feeling battle weary. I was like, how how am I going to make this a satisfying read? I know on on the screen you have different tools available to you when it comes to fight scenes.

00:30:41:07 - 00:31:10:05
Speaker 2
But how am I going to make reading? You know, there's going to be five battles in this in this one book, and they're all going to happen on the open ocean. How do I make these feel different and feel dynamic and feel like they're earning their place in Sierra? And I were talking about it and she said, you know, my philosophy of writing sex scenes is that I should never be able to swap a sex scene at the beginning of a novel for the sex scene.

00:31:10:05 - 00:31:31:20
Speaker 2
At the end of the novel, but they all you know, it's all sex, it's all fight scenes. It's all like this. There's, you know, action is at the center of this. But the emotional arc of each individual scene needs to build on what's happened previously. So much so that you shouldn't you really shouldn't be able to consider them, you know, interchangeable plots.

00:31:31:20 - 00:32:01:00
Speaker 2
It's not like Legos where you can just like swap them and your structure stays the same and that was just that was so clarifying for me that I watched Mad Max Fury Road and I was like, Gary, I want to see this in action. And I watched Mad Max Fury Road with notebook in hand, and I mapped out each fight scene that was in that movie and then plugged in what the emotional shift was in each fight scene.

00:32:01:00 - 00:32:28:08
Speaker 2
Like, Why are those it's a car chase. There's one long car chase and why is it so compelling? And the reason is that the emotional arc of each fight scene is distinct and carries the characters forward. To a new place. Like you can't swap any of those scenes for one another. So I really learned how to do this in the Firebugs because that was three.

00:32:28:08 - 00:32:53:13
Speaker 2
It was a trilogy of books with a lot of sea battles. There were also some battles that didn't happen on the sea, which was very refreshing, but most of them were on boats and and that is one of the lessons that I carry forward into Assassin's Guide, where whatever is happening in each fight scene, it has to it has to change my main character.

00:32:53:13 - 00:33:18:03
Speaker 2
It has to either change what she knows or what she feels. And yeah, that's that's the approach. Like everything else is blocking. But I never start a fight scene until I know exactly either what is going to change or true in this moment, or what is she going to learn. So yeah, that's the that's my big secret.

00:33:18:08 - 00:33:26:06
Speaker 1
So you touched a little bit on the romance that is in this book. Talk a little bit about crafting a special person for True.

00:33:26:07 - 00:33:54:24
Speaker 2
The romance was really fun because I wanted it to feel a little cat and mouse ish and at the same time let it, you know, spark in that in that kind of true has been longing for this person for a long time. So Lila is her best friend's older sister, and I think that that, you know, the crush on the older sibling is such a familiar trope.

00:33:56:04 - 00:34:14:02
Speaker 2
But Lila is also kind of an ice queen. And even though she is highly regarded in the world of the talents, Tru is pretty sure she doesn't know she exists. Even though she has been Sage's best friend for a couple of years.

00:34:16:03 - 00:34:39:03
Speaker 2
And I wanted there to be I mean, obviously, I wanted there to be a queer relationship, but I wanted this to be a story that had a lot of queer presence without it feeling like it needed to be central to the plot or the novel. Like, I clearly I had just written a novel in which queerness being central to the plot in the novel was the case.

00:34:39:19 - 00:35:09:20
Speaker 2
I wanted this to be a little more just fun, where, you know, queer readers could come in and be a part of that adventure and have that dash of romance without needing to worry that it was going to become a plot point at any at any stage. So there are still some themes about hiding parts of yourself which are I think, very familiar to queer readers and queer people.

00:35:11:02 - 00:35:43:14
Speaker 2
But the romance itself just got to be its own thing. And Lila was my love was really fun because she's so serious. And I don't know, maybe True was kind of falling in love with maybe she has a little bit of a type, you know, like Logan is also kind of an ice queen himself. So more likely to come in and then be a very similar sort of takes herself very seriously, but also has her own secrets.

00:35:43:24 - 00:35:46:22
Speaker 2
So yeah, it was it was just a lot of fun.

00:35:47:02 - 00:36:09:11
Speaker 1
And they both bond over grief as well, which has been such a huge trend in fiction throughout the last few months, years ish, preceding the pandemic. Grief really hitting the fiction. So like giving her that person that really understands what she is feeling about her parents.

00:36:09:11 - 00:37:00:12
Speaker 2
I really like when characters or people in the real world, but characters in particular, I really like when they have similar experiences in the world, you know, they both have lost parents and that gives them some degree of common ground, but it also creates room for maybe assuming that you understand somebody when you really you really don't. So I think it is a nice, complicated way of bringing characters together because experiences that are shared but also will be so unique in how they experience it in the world, the way that Tru and Lila both lost their parents is a shared experience.

00:37:00:12 - 00:37:25:11
Speaker 2
They they have grown up without parents, but the reasons that they lost their parents are very different. And the repercussions of that in their real world have been very different. So giving them that moment to bond over also allowed me to deepen their relationship as they came to understand that about one another. And that was really important to me and an exciting thing to explore as a writer.

00:37:25:17 - 00:37:37:02
Speaker 1
And you've had a little nod in this book to your wife. I like that. So you had a character reading a book by Tessa Gratton, who is your wife. What's it like for you to get to include that little Easter egg?

00:37:37:05 - 00:38:10:12
Speaker 2
That one was really fun because it was such a perfect book for the character to be reading. I wanted something that was fantasy, but also takes kind of a deep dove into some philosophical questions. So that book in particular, it's one of my favorites that she's ever written, and it just fit the scene. So well, I was just giggling as I wrote it in and I was like, I'm not I'm not going to tell.

00:38:10:12 - 00:38:28:21
Speaker 2
I'm going to keep the secret. And then it turns out I cannot keep a secret. And I like within 2 minutes, it was like, get, I just want she was like, OK, tell me when it's like made it past copy edits. And I was like, OK, I will. I will tell you when it's actually a real thing that's going to stay in the book.

00:38:29:07 - 00:38:43:09
Speaker 2
But it did. And I never know if if, you know, an editor or a copy editor is going to be like, Are you sure you want to name check a real book and a real person? But nobody nobody flagged it for me. So now it's it's there forever.

00:38:43:14 - 00:38:54:06
Speaker 1
Your wife is also a writer as we just discussed. What is it like for you to have a partner who understands your industry so well?

00:38:54:09 - 00:39:17:17
Speaker 2
She is so smart enough to start there. She is so smart. It is. It's great. It's a lot of fun. We've had a lot of years now to kind of figure out how our processes do and don't always match up. It can get really tough if we're both on an intense deadline at the same time.

00:39:19:24 - 00:39:44:10
Speaker 2
Early on in our relationship when that happened, I remember one day when, you know, she was supposed to do laundry and I had like put some jeans somewhere that needed to get washed, and I opened the trash can and the jeans were slick, but she was like, Oh no, I got confused. And then one day I think I put like the milk away in the pantry.

00:39:44:10 - 00:40:11:16
Speaker 2
We've found the car keys in the freezer. Like, things just don't get put back in the right space because our brains are at the same time kind of busy doing other things. We've gotten better at that, but we still do fondly remember the the trashed jeans episode of our lives now because we do both right full time. We work from home.

00:40:11:16 - 00:40:32:14
Speaker 2
We have, you know, home offices. I am a talker. I'm a big talker. I like to talk my ideas out and just kind of like throws spaghetti at the wall and try to figure things out that way. My verbal processor tests is not test is like I will not tell you about an idea that I've been thinking about until it's been two years.

00:40:33:02 - 00:40:56:13
Speaker 2
And I have thought about it so much that I no longer have any questions. I just have the actual story idea. But because I am such a talker, I have to schedule time on her calendar if I want to talk to her. Just of course, I'm also just like, Hmm, what if I just popped up to her office and asked her this question real quick and she'll be like, I am in the middle of a thing.

00:40:56:21 - 00:41:26:09
Speaker 2
You can put it on the calendar for 4:00. So that's been a more recent development since the pandemic because, you know, we were at home much more frequently and it was, well, you know, it was intense. But, you know, it's it's kind of great because we both end up with more flexible schedules so we can do things like travel together or, you know, decide today is the day we need to go right in a coffee shop.

00:41:26:09 - 00:41:50:14
Speaker 2
And that's really fun. It does. Again, it also sometimes it's sort of like, well, I guess it's pizza for dinner again because no one of us can break out of our creative funk to make anything else. So, you know, there are things that we have learned how to negotiate over time, but we have been together. We'll see let's see.

00:41:50:14 - 00:41:56:04
Speaker 2
We met when we were freshman in high school, so that was 1995. So here we are.

00:41:56:19 - 00:42:07:00
Speaker 1
So cute. Hello. It's someone who is trying to figure out how to do things with the new husband that is, they might have to steal that. Come back to me later.

00:42:07:13 - 00:42:15:18
Speaker 2
Come back to me later and she's really good and I'm like, oh you're right. I am just barging into your space and prioritizing my brain.

00:42:15:18 - 00:42:21:12
Speaker 1
And one of the characters keeps her shoes and dresser drawers what.

00:42:22:00 - 00:42:22:03
Speaker 2
He.

00:42:22:08 - 00:42:26:16
Speaker 1
Does there is have you met someone who actually does this? Where does this idea come from?

00:42:27:13 - 00:42:57:18
Speaker 2
I don't know. What you know and I know I know what you wear, who you're talking about, and the character's particular and I think that's sometimes the fun part of writing in an ensemble cast like this. Even if you have a main point of view character and you're never shifting point of view. But the fun of having an ensemble is to really discover what makes people unique.

00:42:57:18 - 00:43:26:10
Speaker 2
And sometimes people do weird things, and there's not always a like an explanation for it, but it fits the character. And so no, I did. This isn't something that I've seen any of my friends or family do. And as far as they know, I just I just did it. I don't know. Now, now I'm curious, too, where did I come up with that detail anyway?

00:43:27:02 - 00:43:27:18
Speaker 2
That's that.

00:43:28:04 - 00:43:29:19
Speaker 1
That just made me giggle so much.

00:43:31:19 - 00:43:32:00
Speaker 2
It's.

00:43:32:00 - 00:43:53:14
Speaker 1
So bizarre. But you do have several other books that you have written and are in process. You have you get your hands on a lot of genres. So what's it like for you to this one is more like action with a smidge of romance, comparing that with like some of your horror or fantasy novels and like your process does it change throughout different genres?

00:43:53:21 - 00:44:18:13
Speaker 2
I think that my process changes from book to book, and it kind of doesn't matter what the genre is. There's always something new that needs to happen. Although the really unfortunate part of my process is that I can't really figure out a story until I written it once. So I tend to do I should probably just fix that in my head as like I just have like a trash draft.

00:44:18:13 - 00:44:52:00
Speaker 2
Like it's the clearing of the throat and that has to get done before I can actually really write a draft I guess the only other thing that, you know, that's not even really different, but with horror. So Come out, come out is my most recent. There it is. I see it. My most recent novel came out in August, and that's my first real horror novel for that one, which I did write three times from scratch, which was painful in its own way.

00:44:52:00 - 00:45:20:13
Speaker 2
It was its own kind of horror. I couldn't ever start writing until I knew the metaphor at the heart of the story. So I my favorite kind of horror is horror that is really wanting to say something. I mean, I can enjoy a slasher, I can enjoy horror that is just kind of horror for horror sake. But what if I was going to write and contribute to the genre?

00:45:20:13 - 00:45:45:00
Speaker 2
Then I wanted it to be on point. So I wanted to contribute to the growing genre. Of Queer horror in particular. And I needed that my for my story to be saying something. And I also wanted it to have hope baked in to it so that I call it horror with heart so for whenever I'm thinking about horror, I always start with metaphor first.

00:45:46:10 - 00:46:12:12
Speaker 2
When it comes to action and adventure, I guess I start with concept you know, I start with done with, mixed the babysitter's club, and then I give myself a little more freedom to have fun and play with that than I do with something like come out, come out. So yeah, there's not like a good clean, like clear answer to that question because I do think every time it's different, but maybe, maybe just the approach shifts a little bit.

00:46:12:15 - 00:46:30:10
Speaker 1
And you also do a lot of editing in anthologies with the writer, but who's also been on like literally we have so many. I don't know how it's taken so long to get this amazing. I don't know. But she talked a little bit about editing with you. So what is your process like for editing versus writing it yourself?

00:46:30:18 - 00:46:58:15
Speaker 2
Editing is always so much fun because it's always different, and especially when you're editing an anthology and you have, you know, 12 authors who are all approaching their stories from wildly different standpoints and they're trying to accomplish different things. And I think that my favorite thing about editing is that I get the opportunity to kind of step back and, and think through, OK, what are they trying to accomplish and what are my skill sets that can help them get there?

00:46:58:20 - 00:47:26:19
Speaker 2
I've had the great pleasure of working with incredibly talented authors, and at the same time they frequently are very interested in like a little extra feedback from me and Zoraida. So it's been really fun. It's nice to have a coeditor because we can talk back and forth before we go back to the author and we can, you know, compare notes and then really touch base with one another and decide if we have a good, clear sense of what the author's trying to do.

00:47:26:19 - 00:48:01:06
Speaker 2
And if we don't, then maybe we need to go ask some questions. But it is super fun, and sometimes it involves going in on a line level and working with them on a line level. And sometimes it really is just, you know, handing them the story back with five notes and letting them run wild with it. It's really, really useful to have that kind of moment as an author because I think it freaks me out of my own ruts in storytelling.

00:48:02:02 - 00:48:34:08
Speaker 2
It shows me constantly that there are like 10 million different ways to approach even the same story idea, because Zoraida and I are always working on, you know, our anthologies Center Around Crickets or Magical Creatures. So to see how, you know, Danielle Clayton approaches a vampire is so different from how Julie Murphy approaches a vampire. And then thinking about how how do I approach a vampire and where does it fit in this, this, you know, tableau.

00:48:35:15 - 00:48:40:08
Speaker 2
So yeah, I think I don't know, editing is just it's been a lot of fun.

00:48:40:16 - 00:48:43:07
Speaker 1
What have you learned from editing that has helped you as an author?

00:48:43:11 - 00:49:10:09
Speaker 2
Gosh, so many things it's hard to distill. Maybe the thing that has helped me most is really just reminding myself that there is no single way that authorial voice is powerful and it comes through and that I can trust myself and I can trust my storytelling instincts because I am going to have an editor on the other side as well.

00:49:10:18 - 00:49:47:21
Speaker 2
But I really do think it's just about seeing how many authors can turn in a story, even if we give them the exact same prompt and how all of those stories can ring out in different ways. It's a constant reminder to me that that, you know, we have tropes and we have stories that feel familiar, but it is always in the telling that makes them stand out and makes them feel fresh or unique and every authors is capable of doing that for some readers.

00:49:48:04 - 00:49:55:11
Speaker 1
And you touched on book two of assassins there, too, babysitting what can you tell us about that, the timeline and what else you're working on?

00:49:55:14 - 00:50:26:06
Speaker 2
Book two is called The Assassins Guide to Dating. And I know I really love this title, actually. Julie Murphy is The Genius Behind The Assassins Guide to Babysitting. The title so big thanks to Julie Murphy for titling my book. So Assassins Guide to Dating is, I believe, scheduled to come out probably next January or February. And I'm pretty sure that's about a year apart.

00:50:26:15 - 00:51:07:14
Speaker 2
I am in the final stages of the first big editorial revision of that book. It is going to switch points of view, so I'll tell you that. But it's the same it's our same group of characters, but it will pick up fairly soon after book one. So even though I would probably call it more of a companion novel, it is still very much connected to the story that was started in book one, book one does have, you know, it concludes partly because I didn't know I was going to be able to write a book too when I wrote it.

00:51:07:14 - 00:51:45:16
Speaker 2
So it does stand on its own however, there is one very large question that lingers at the end of book one. So yes, you'll get the answer into and then other things that I'm working on, I'm actually currently Julie Murphy and I are Coauthoring, a book called Making a Splash. And that is a more contemporary room. I don't think if you call it a retelling, it is a remixing of The Little Mermaid and we're having a lot of fun with that one.

00:51:45:16 - 00:52:06:18
Speaker 2
And I believe that that one is scheduled to come out this spring maybe it's summer. Oh, I don't know of 20, 26. So those are the two big things that I'm working on right now. I do have a couple of other things that are coming down the pipeline but are not yet, you know, announced. So, you know, in the future you'll find out about those.

00:52:06:24 - 00:52:15:00
Speaker 1
Darn. And I love a good scoop last question we always ask because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about right now?

00:52:15:10 - 00:52:47:10
Speaker 2
Oh my goodness. What a good question. It's called Recommended Reading by Paul Kasha, our co-chair. I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce his last name, but this one is I'm super hyped about it. It's like a match making book lover. And there's like lifeguard. I don't know it's going to be a really fun, adorable rom com. And then in February, this adorable one is coming out.

00:52:47:10 - 00:53:17:19
Speaker 2
Catty Corner by Julie Murphy I don't know if you can see that it has like where are the illustrations? It has adorable illustrations throughout. She is going to be some, you know, an adventurous young protagonist. Let's see. And I know there's also I am a big fan of Kate Ellis Marshall A Killing Cold by Kate Ellis Marshall. She writes amazing thrillers and is like an autobio for me.

00:53:17:24 - 00:53:34:20
Speaker 2
And then at the end of January, Julian Winters Adult Debut, I Think They Love You is coming out. And I am also just here for anything. Julian Winters has to write. So I think those are some of the ones coming up in the very near future that I'm most excited about. Awesome.

00:53:34:20 - 00:53:40:15
Speaker 1
So thanks so much for taking time to talk to Literary Hope about this awesome babysitting and summer tour.

00:53:41:05 - 00:53:42:22
Speaker 2
Thank you for having me. It's been awesome.

00:53:46:03 - 00:54:03:21
Speaker 1
Thanks to Natalie for hanging out with me and talking all things The Assassin's Guide to Babysitting. If you want to get a hold of the Assassin's Guides babysitting or any of Natalie's other books, check out the links in the show notes. Also there you'll find links to follow Natalie on social media. If you enjoy this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Literary Hype podcast.

00:54:03:21 - 00:54:08:03
Speaker 1
Give us some stories and share it with the friends. Thanks for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.