75. V. E. SCHWAB: Vampires exploring love & hunger | Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

V.E. Schwab is probably best known for her novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Now she's back with a story that falls somewhere between Addie and another one of her hits, Viscious. Buckle up as we dive into why she's terrified of people reading "Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil" and yet, loves it so much. Here come the toxic lesbian vampires.

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BUY THE BOOKS - Bookshop:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Vicious
City of Ghosts
A Darker Shade of Magic

BUY THE BOOKS - Amazon:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Vicious
City of Ghosts
A Darker Shade of Magic

BUY THE BOOKS - LibroFM:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Vicious
A Darker Shade of Magic

Transcript

00;00;06;22 - 00;00;30;12
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to Literary Hype. I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman. And I am so hyped to bring this conversation to you because this this book that we're going to talk about might just be the book of 20, 25 like Ray behind Onyx Storm, because I know that was going to be a big one, but this is going to be up there on the level of people talking about it, and that is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by Vicki Schwab.

00;00;31;12 - 00;00;52;16
Speaker 1
This book, Toxic Female Vampires You're welcome. You're welcome. We don't get to the vampires part because we did run out of time. It's very it's a shorter interview because everybody wants to talk to each other, especially in a place like your office. But they were so gracious in giving me time to discuss Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil with some hints on Addy Leroux.

00;00;52;23 - 00;00;55;27
Speaker 1
So without any further ado, here's my conversation with Vicki Schwab.

00;01;01;06 - 00;01;02;08
Speaker 2
Welcome to Literary Hype.

00;01;02;09 - 00;01;05;10
Speaker 3
It's so exciting to talk to you on so many levels.

00;01;05;21 - 00;01;07;04
Speaker 4
It's exciting to talk to you, Jill.

00;01;07;11 - 00;01;15;29
Speaker 3
So the first thing I want to touch on a little bit is something that came up in the first time I got to talk to you back when I was in news, and I no longer have that footage, so I want to get it on record.

00;01;16;00 - 00;01;16;15
Speaker 4
All right.

00;01;17;11 - 00;01;25;11
Speaker 3
So I have my rainbow bookshelves. And you said when you're not actively reading a book, it is art. Yes. So talk a little bit about what that means to you.

00;01;25;18 - 00;01;43;18
Speaker 4
Oh, so I don't reread. It's not that I don't have a desire to read. And part of it is I don't I don't actually have a desire to read. I like experiencing something for the first time. I also just I'm so keenly aware of that I will die with so many books unread that the anxiety I feel about the books I have yet to read displaces any joy I would get from rereading.

00;01;43;18 - 00;01;59;22
Speaker 4
So I read a book one time, and then I have a book and I choose to make it art. And so all of my bookshelves in my apartment in Edinburgh are color coded. I there are rainbow people are always like one. They're like, How will you ever find the book again? Well, I have a pretty good object memory for colors, and so it's fine with that.

00;01;59;22 - 00;02;15;10
Speaker 4
But also I don't need to find the book again. It is an object of art at that point. And so in my bedroom, all of my fiction is arranged in color as if everything's a rainbow. And then in the hallway is all of my favorite books and the ones I like to lend to people, those are rainbow. And then in my living room, it's nonfiction.

00;02;15;23 - 00;02;19;10
Speaker 3
I love this. So I feel like a kindred spirit and I just love it.

00;02;19;13 - 00;02;33;20
Speaker 4
Well, it's beautiful and it's esthetic, and I want to be surrounded by books at all times, but I don't really need them to be in an alphabetical order or something like that. I just want them to be in a beautiful order. And like, I'm somebody who wears all black but really does enjoy a pop of color in my life.

00;02;33;20 - 00;02;34;28
Speaker 4
And so I feel like I'm representing.

00;02;35;00 - 00;02;39;11
Speaker 3
Exactly. It's just it brings joy. Yes. In a different way than books normally bring. Joy.

00;02;39;12 - 00;02;48;06
Speaker 4
Exactly. It makes me smile. Every time I see it. I walk into a room and my little like even my comics are in a rainbow. Everything just in a little color. Coordination makes me happy.

00;02;48;12 - 00;03;01;04
Speaker 3
So your book, we got to talk about your book. Oh, my goodness. Because I'm obsessed with it already. Oh, dear. Barrier bones in the midnight soil. Yes. Is there anyone who is living under a rock and has not heard of this book yet? Yes. What's it about?

00;03;01;11 - 00;03;21;29
Speaker 4
Ooh. You know, it's actually really hard to say because we've tried very, very hard to keep it as under wraps as possible. I really, truly believe that you will have the best reading experience of this book the less that you know about it. What I will say is it's about three women It is about three women over the course of about 500 years and how their lives and deaths and lives again intertwine.

00;03;22;00 - 00;03;42;16
Speaker 4
It is my ferrall. Yeah. I guess it's technically a fairly younger sister, but feels like an older sister to the invisible life of Addie LaRue, which was a book about immortality and hope. This is a book about immortality and hunger. And I think it will sit really cleanly between the invisible life of Ali LaRue and Vicious, which have long been considered my two most different books.

00;03;42;25 - 00;04;00;16
Speaker 4
So to write a book that is stylistically like Addie and substantially like Vicious has been one of my greatest joys. And I'm also terrified because it is by far the gayest thing I've ever written. And as a gay woman, I feel like so often we just try to make ourselves smaller and more palatable. And this is not a book that apologizes in any way for what it is.

00;04;00;17 - 00;04;04;20
Speaker 3
Oh, absolutely not. When I first discovered you with Addie, LaRue.

00;04;04;20 - 00;04;05;00
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00;04;05;13 - 00;04;13;15
Speaker 3
You had mentioned that you were working on this book, so this has been a long time coming. How long have you been working on this? And what was it about this book that took that time?

00;04;13;21 - 00;04;35;09
Speaker 4
You know, it's interesting. I mean, Addie still holds the holds, the cake, holds the print. I don't know what the what is the metaphor? What is the saying? Holds the the the award, takes the cake. Addie takes the cake. It holds the prize currently for the longest things, because Addie took roughly ten years. So I had the idea for Addie LaRue about six months before my first novel, The New Year, which was ever published.

00;04;35;16 - 00;04;55;10
Speaker 4
And then it came out in 20, 20. Bones, it's interesting because consciously I think it's been about five years, but there's something unconscious about it because in the wake of Addie LaRue, I had this kind of grave, this empty plot in my head, in my heart where that book was. And I kept trying to throw new seeds into it and make things grow and nothing worked.

00;04;55;10 - 00;05;13;10
Speaker 4
And then I left it alone, and something started growing up from beneath, as if it had been there before. I excavated Addie LaRue, and I had to excavate artillery to get down deep enough to get to this one, because I think in some ways it speaks so much to who I was as a teenager, to the things that I love, to the stories I wanted to see and didn't see.

00;05;13;24 - 00;05;30;23
Speaker 4
And at the same time, I don't think I could have written it at a younger age than I am now. And so I think it's been with me for a very, very, very long time. When I look back at the stories that spoke to me in my youth. But I'm glad that I'm writing it now and it's taken about five years to to get it down on paper.

00;05;31;00 - 00;05;41;11
Speaker 3
You're writing process I've heard you talk about it with like viewing it as a skeleton that you're piecing together and adding the layers on to what was the most difficult layer for this book.

00;05;41;18 - 00;06;02;02
Speaker 4
You know, I'm I really love structure, but it is something that I, I challenged myself on purpose. There were three or four different orientations for how this book could be told, for how the actual story, because it's about these three women's stories. And there are different ways to intertwine them and finding the exact way to unfold the narrative, to give you the twists to get.

00;06;02;06 - 00;06;17;27
Speaker 4
There are about five twists in the book. And so I'm I like I'm fine when people spoil like the first twist, but it's really exciting when people don't and when people get to the first twist and they're like, oh, and like, oh, you're not even ready. Like, I'm going to hit you with the twist about every hundred pages until you get to the end.

00;06;18;06 - 00;06;37;23
Speaker 4
And so, yeah, I think figuring out the structure I'm not I'm always very confident in the language in how to tell the story. The voice for this is very me is really poetic, really cadence based. And yet all three women have really different like semantic styles. But the structure, I was like, how can I make sure I pull the ground out from under you each time?

00;06;38;03 - 00;06;50;07
Speaker 3
I love that Maria is a redhead. Yes. Yes. Talk a little bit about crafting her as a character in like this historical time. Yeah. And the research that went into building her.

00;06;50;08 - 00;07;14;01
Speaker 4
Yeah, yeah. Maria is me in so many ways. Maria is one of the more autobiographical characters I've ever written. She's somebody who, you know, it's so interesting. She exists. She's our oldest character. She exists in the 16th century. And that's a time when, like, the concept of queerness is not even exposed to her when she's just being told, you're a woman and here are these roles that you're going to fulfill in your life.

00;07;14;01 - 00;07;36;16
Speaker 4
And she feels so at odds with them. And she's constantly hungry. She's voracious for a life that's bigger than what she's been told she's allowed to have. And I think, like, whether, you know, as someone who was in the closet until I was like 27, you constantly just feel the societal pressure to just make yourself smaller, to make yourself more palatable, to make yourself conform.

00;07;36;26 - 00;08;04;11
Speaker 4
And it was incredibly cathartic to write someone like Maria who just refuses, who's like, OK, this is a prison, how am I going to pick the lock every single time? And she finds herself, you know, she gets out of one prison cell. We're still in the prison. How am I going to pick that lock and it's just she was probably my favorite character that I've written so far in my life because she's really ruthless, but she's ruthless in a way that she understands that there's a system and she has to play it.

00;08;04;11 - 00;08;19;00
Speaker 4
She has to game it. And I think so often that's how it feels to be a queer woman in the world is like, how can I game the system? I remember writing early on in my career just trying to make sure that like, Oh, yes, I'm a female writer, but don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I'll use a pseudonym.

00;08;19;00 - 00;08;31;13
Speaker 4
You won't even notice that I'm a woman. Oh, yeah. I'm a queer writer, but don't worry about it. I'm going to keep it very quiet. You're not going to. And I think I just got tired of trying to make myself smaller. And so Maria is somebody who helped me get bigger.

00;08;31;26 - 00;08;43;12
Speaker 3
So there's a line in here about, like, not all sins are boulders, some are pebbles. And like, she's assigning sins to travelers. Yeah. Have you ever just been, like, making up stories about people walking by? Oh, yeah. That's one of your favorites.

00;08;43;18 - 00;09;07;22
Speaker 4
How do you make terrible stories about everyone that I pass? No, I just I make their lives more interesting. I think their lives are probably very interesting. Like, the weird thing about moving through the world is that where their main character and the one of the I got it is a word that came up in my newsletter. I asked people for their favorite words, and one of the words that came in, and I'm blanking on the actual word, but the definition was the realization that everyone around you is also the main character of their own lives.

00;09;08;06 - 00;09;22;03
Speaker 4
And there's something really grounding in that, in realizing that like it's the same way that I think some people look up at the night sky and get really overwhelmed by the scope of the stars in a bad way. It makes them feel small. I look up at the night sky and I get overwhelmed in a really good way because it makes me feel small.

00;09;22;14 - 00;09;44;28
Speaker 4
And I sometimes love thinking about the the stories that are being lived out by everyone else around me and giving them the same worth. Also, as a storyteller, I think about the fact that every minor character in my books is a main character in their story, and I want every character that you come across even if you only come across them for a page for you to believe that they could be the main character of this novel if we change the perspective just a little bit.

00;09;45;05 - 00;09;58;00
Speaker 4
So yeah, I'm constantly just wondering where people came from. I'm making things up, but I'm guessing as well. I'm trying to use context clues. I try not to like completely revise their story. I just guess if I could, like, look at them, what story I would give them.

00;09;58;09 - 00;10;14;13
Speaker 3
And it's something Alice talked about in one of her early chapters is like, she's at this party and she's so anxious and she's like, But isn't this what fun is supposed to feel like? So yeah, the situation that led you to that realization, because that was fascinating to go, oh, yeah.

00;10;14;23 - 00;10;39;05
Speaker 4
I mean, as a deeply, deeply anxious human being, I am constantly being reminded by those around me that, like, fun, like excitement and anxiety are two manifestations of the exact same energy. And it's just our context. I that's scene is taken directly out of my own life. Alice is in some ways very much like me. Like I would see that one character in the book is All Heart, one character's all head and one character's all hunger.

00;10;39;14 - 00;10;57;26
Speaker 4
Al Alice is all head. Like she is just in her internal landscape at all times. And I have definitely had that conversation with myself when I've been I'll probably have that conversation this weekend at some of the parties and being like, I am choosing to be here and I want to be here. And this is fun. My brain and my heart just are full of anxiety at all times and kind of a performative tension.

00;10;58;19 - 00;11;18;28
Speaker 4
And so I think Alice is trying so hard to start her life over, and I think we've all been in that moment where you're like, just like, do you ever just wonder if anyone's having fun? Like, do you ever just wonder if like everyone at an event is miserable and doesn't actually, like, want to be there and is just perform ing the idea that they do?

00;11;18;28 - 00;11;36;25
Speaker 4
And then we're all performing it for each other. Like, that's what I struggle with. But I have such a performative streak that I can't disassociate from it. I can't just be like, What if I just don't pretend to have fun? Because I would just be such a bummer. So I'm constantly performing. I'm an introvert who can perform extroversion for a very limited amount of time, and I think about that a lot.

00;11;36;25 - 00;11;54;23
Speaker 4
When I was writing Alice, he's somebody who's just like, I just want it to feel easier. And it feels like to her, all the girls around her are actually enjoying themselves and she's not. And it makes you feel kind of broken when you're that kind of person where you just start wondering like, Do I not know how to live?

00;11;54;23 - 00;12;04;20
Speaker 4
Am I too self-aware? It's for therapy. I spend a lot of time in therapy being like, What is performative enjoyment and what is actual enjoyment, and how do I figure out the difference?

00;12;04;24 - 00;12;12;26
Speaker 3
So what is it like for you? You've talked about multiple of these characters being so close to you personally. What is it like for you to release this out to let other people read you?

00;12;13;06 - 00;12;32;26
Speaker 4
It's there. You know, after Addy Leroux, I wrote a character in Addy Leroux called Henry Strauss, who is the most the most autobiographical character. It deals with suicide and depression, and like I gave him a lot of my struggles and I decided after that that I would never do that again. I was like, Well, I'm never people loved him, but I felt fragile.

00;12;33;01 - 00;12;51;27
Speaker 4
It felt really, really dangerous to put something that raw into a fictional character for me, because I knew that when people were judging Henry, I felt judged. And I'm usually pretty good about creating a boundary. So after career, I was like, I'm never doing this again. And then for some reason, I sat down to write Mary Arvedlund, and I was like, What if all of that were me?

00;12;52;08 - 00;13;08;03
Speaker 4
What if all of them were me? What if one was my hunger what if one was my anxiety? One of what was my need to be love? What do I just literally painted this paper with my own blood and it's horrifying. Like, I am so proud of this novel. I think it is the best thing I've ever written.

00;13;08;03 - 00;13;30;11
Speaker 4
I'm really proud of finding a halfway point between Vicious and Addie because they are the two edges of my fandom that often feel the most disparate. But oh my God, we are seven months out and I feel nauseous because I gave way too much myself. Like, I just basically put a whole mirror in this book. So I hope people appreciated.

00;13;30;11 - 00;13;36;05
Speaker 4
I hope people, you know, you don't have to love all three women, but I hope that people see little fragments of themselves.

00;13;36;26 - 00;13;41;05
Speaker 3
It's so beautifully written. So I don't feel like you should be too worried about.

00;13;41;05 - 00;13;45;27
Speaker 4
I'm terrified. It's I, I'm, I'm horrified. But thank you.

00;13;46;06 - 00;13;49;28
Speaker 3
The last question we always ask because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about?

00;13;50;18 - 00;14;11;01
Speaker 4
I'm hyped about so many books. I am looking at my mental to read stack right now, and I'm hype for Maria at Casey's Ordinary Love, which comes out next year. I'm excited for two Abercrombie's The Devils, which also comes out next year. I'm currently bingeing the weirdest book series, Dungeon Crawler. Carl, I don't understand how it made I think Kirsten White recommended it to me.

00;14;11;01 - 00;14;31;19
Speaker 4
And then somehow I'm on like book four. It's on audio and it's one of the weirdest high fives I've ever read, but it has a it has a cat as one of the main characters named Princess Donut. And I'm really into her. I listen to a huge amount of memoir. I'm just starting Didion and Babbitts, which is about Joan Didion and Eve Babits, who are both Hollywood writers and were just extraordinary in their own right.

00;14;31;27 - 00;14;40;14
Speaker 4
If you look at like my online reading profile, it's everything from poetry and memoir and autobiography and fantasy and children's like it's it's all over the place.

00;14;41;01 - 00;14;43;10
Speaker 3
Well, thank you so much for taking time to your very heart.

00;14;43;10 - 00;14;43;28
Speaker 4
Thank you so much.

00;14;43;28 - 00;15;09;06
Speaker 1
It's thanks so much to you, Schwab, for hanging out with me, you, us multiple times. We saw each other multiple times in one day. I promise I was not stalking you. If you'd like to get your hands on barrier bones and the midnight soil or a classic V spy book like the invisible life of Abby Leroux. Links to get those books are down in the show notes for you.

00;15;09;12 - 00;15;26;20
Speaker 1
If you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did, you need to be subscribe to the Literary Hype podcast where we have bookish shenanigans with authors all the time. It is a good time. Just subscribe and give us some stars. Your life will be better for it, or at least more entertained. Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.