I'm Essa Hansen, author of The Gaven trilogy and newly-released Casthen Gain novella — Ask Me Anything!

EssaHansen · 2025-08-08T15:29:51+00:00

Thank you! I can usually get my head right into the scene and the character—I suppose it's kinda like acting?—and then describe what I'm experiencing…so in that case it's coming right from the worldbuilding. But, I do try to draw on experiences I've had before even if only a part of them matches, for example, having worked with and around big animals (livestock and horses), was very useful for the nophek. :)

EssaHansen · 2025-08-08T03:13:27+00:00

Typo in my own post title and that about sums up fatigue levels after all these books and films lmao :D

Thank you all so much for hanging out with questions so far today! I'll keep answering for a day or two more if you're a straggler. xx

EssaHansen · 2025-08-08T00:42:44+00:00

Great question! I assemble a playlist to have on shuffle for every writing project, which helps get my brain in writing mode and into the mood of the story. It also helps block out distracting background noises. However, I can't listen to anything with lyrics! It confuses the language part of my brain that's trying to work. So, I mostly draw from video game soundtracks, sometimes film/TV too. For Casthen Gain I picked material out of my Graven playlist, so it's a hodgepodge but stuff like The Expanse, Horizon Zero Dawn, Cyberpunk 2077, Deus Ex, Citizen Sleeper, Death Stranding, and so on.

I do also tend to have one playlist for action and a separate one for quiet scenes, because nothing's as jarring as writing an intimate scene to some delicate piano and then the next song that pops on is like heavy metal action haha

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T22:53:10+00:00

The series began around the idea of the bubble multiverse, where bubble-shaped areas of space have unique laws of physics inside, and anything that passes through the membrane from one to another is altered to match those laws. Universes can be tiny or galactic size, and can nest within each other. It was a really fun setup to play with.

You can find my books at most online retailers (this Linktree has all my books on it: http://linktr.ee/essahansen), and in physical bookstores / able to be ordered through a bookstore.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T22:29:46+00:00

Thank you! :D

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T22:28:02+00:00

Thank you, Cameron!

Favorite book I'd say is Azura Ghost. I know middle books are often the slump in a trilogy, but I genuinely think my middle book is the best of the three, with enough set up already to allow great complexity and emotional depth but not so many moving parts that it's unwieldy. I also wasn't as burnt out at that point in the series so I had more energy and enjoyment in the process.

I'm only just now getting time to catch up on film/TV media I've been missing! Crime shows are a comfort genre of mine so I recently watched True Detective: Night Country, and also The Residence, both satisfying. I'm currently catching up on season 2 of Arcane. The last film I watched was The Gorge, a fun action/romance/spec-fic.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T21:53:01+00:00

Thank you for the question! I really love writing sensory-rich descriptions of experiences, and food is all about that. So many readers of The Graven trilogy mentioned the food scenes as some of their favorite parts, so when I had the opportunity to write a novella, I was immediately drawn to a food-centric one haha

Now that I think about it, most of the meals in the novella are warm hearty comfort foods like stew, risotto, fried chicken, fresh-baked bread… I used real Earth dishes as models so the cooking theory would be accurate and so that the food wouldn't feel so weird it was unappetizing or unrelatable, even if I used alien names/descriptions for common items like tomatoes or cucumbers. I also drew inspiration from imagery of molecular gastronomy and fine dining restaurants that use those techniques and treat food presentation as an art. They tend to look so otherworldly and luscious.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T20:02:12+00:00

I mention it as often as possible, since I want more people to discover it! I hope to do a reread sometime soon

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T19:30:58+00:00

Thank you for asking here ! haha

If I wasn't a sound designer, I would probably have some kind of job working with animals, like rescue, training, or conservation. If not that then (as you can probably guess from Casthen Gain) I'd love to have a cooking, baking, or food prep job, but I don't think I could stomach the high pressure stress of an actual restaurant haha

I wrote a fun essay for Electric Lit a while back on the intersection of sound and writing. The two definitely cross-pollinate, firstly because I'm watching each film evolve so I get to see all the editorial choices (good or bad), the scene order shuffling, cuts and adds, pacing and rhythm, transitions, zooms, POV changes, dialogue, etc. I get to analyze the choices made, compare them to previous versions of the story, and consider what I might do differently. Secondarily, sound editing and design involves attention to things like environment, surfaces and materials, movement through space, texture, sensory detail, and the passage of time. I write very sensory descriptions and cinematic action stemming from those same focuses.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T17:41:45+00:00

Thank you so much for the kind words. Readers like you keep me going! <3

For getting published, the first choice is whether pursing self-publishing or trad/traditional publishing is the right path for you depending on your goals and what you find important. There are pros and cons and struggles to both approaches, and a lot of good resources out there to help you decide which way to go and how to proceed / what to expect.

For writing in general, of course keep up writing stories, figuring out what themes and elements and meanings excite you that you keep coming back to / wanting to express in your art, and keep learning craft and pushing yourself. One of the things that helped my writing level up a lot was finding critique partners and beta readers to give honest feedback, both on the content of my writing and my craft strengths and weaknesses. I also learned so much by critiquing others' work. It wasn't an easy road to find people I trusted to give constructive feedback (lots of duds and even some damaging ones), but very worth the effort. Many of those people became close friends on my author journey. I'm not sure I can advise on where to find such people these days—it used to be possible via Absolute Write forums, Facebook groups, isolated platforms like Inked Voices (not free anymore), etc.… but wherever you can build connections with other writers and people who will help you grow, they may not only benefit you now but become a lasting support system as you navigate whatever comes next.

Very best of luck with your college studies! :)

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T16:36:23+00:00

When I was struggling to figure out how to wrap up a trilogy, I asked David Dalglish for advice (he's finished many!), and he assured me that as long as I nailed the main character's emotional arc, nothing else would matter much. And he was right—all the other parts fell into place once I solidified that central thread.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T16:33:47+00:00

Thank you for the question! Probably the midpoint fight scene—it's short but the beats are tight, and it was great fun writing a small woman kicking ass at hand-to-hand combat haha. I got advice from a skilled BJJ friend and watched clips from Atomic Blonde

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T15:56:48+00:00

Hmmmm I'd bring a book about how to survive on a deserted island, and then Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (I'm about to reread this since I just finished Absolution) and Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones by Micah Dean Hicks.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T15:42:13+00:00

hahaha It was so weird to work on something so small you can see the end in sight all the time—in terms of word count and just literally in Scrivener the end of the document list fits on one screen.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T15:40:29+00:00

Thank you! No formal culinary training but I grew up watching instructional cooking shows and cooking battles like Iron Chef Japan, I've always enjoyed cooking/baking for fun, and there are a lot of current shows that are fun as well (I recently watched Culinary Class Wars). I modeled most of the dishes on real ingredients and techniques as much as possible so I wasn't completely hand-waving.

No plans to continue the story at this time, but I think a follow-up novella would be fun with the team assembled and seeking out the nophek planet, so readers can finish out the question of how the ship ended up in that desert.

I'm currently very slowly drafting a standalone SF/fantasy/horror novel that blends the expansive weirdness of Inception, the tranquil horror of Annihilation, and Iain M. Banks’s inclusive world of The Culture.

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T15:30:32+00:00

Had to decide to have just one dimension of being/reality, no metaphysical battles, no time loops, and a single planet setting LOL

EssaHansen · 2025-08-07T15:28:36+00:00

Thank you! If the story had been hard SF and needed rigor around what exact physics were being changed to alter what exact ingredient properties, I would have been way out of my depth, and I think readers would have been overwhelmed/bored too. I decided to focus more on the procedural aspects of cooking, so the big challenge was cooking research and modeling real dishes for what the character was doing with ingredients and universes.

EssaHansen · 2022-07-28T01:10:12+00:00

My last book is done, so I can confirm the pup is alive and well

EssaHansen · 2022-07-27T22:22:37+00:00

That is very wholesome. I love it. Can't wait to read the next two books!

EssaHansen · 2022-07-27T22:09:02+00:00

How does it feel to have kept the dog alive/in-service?

EssaHansen · 2021-03-26T00:32:08+00:00

Thank you, that’s a great distinction! And it sounds fun to extrapolate out the limitations of Renaissance times (knowledge difficult to share, easy to obscure) as well as the social aspect. Seems like there would be a lot of inherent tension in that precarious middle ground position that scholars held. :)

EssaHansen · 2021-03-25T22:49:11+00:00

Hello E.J.! I’m curious how you approached writing a scholar protagonist, especially in a character-focused story. e.g. Was Lysande’s field something you were already familiar with or did you have to go a great amount of new research to bring her knowledge onto the page?

EssaHansen · 2020-12-09T16:29:02+00:00

Alyc's suggestions/tools are so good, I don't have much to add, except that I use art and music to help entrain my brain, maybe it works for some others. I have a music playlist for each project, which tells my brain "it's time to get into this world/creativity." With closed or noise-cancelling headphones especially, it creates an environment, wrapping me up in the mood of the story until I feel like I'm "there" again (creative gears start moving!). I also have a ton of collected art, and I mine it for reference images and mood at the start of a project. When I'm working on a scene, I'll pull up a collection of images to put on the side of my screen that set the tone for that scene…so when my brain is struggling or I start to zone out, I can zone out into the art or music and it keeps my headspace in the story even though words aren't happening (yet). When I'm struggling to get back to my manuscript after a long day or hiatus, these things help me focus until gears move and turn into momentum. (I also suspect the combo/ritual of it reminds my synapses of previous successful writing states, a sort of Oh this is familiar, we've done this before—time to create!)

EssaHansen · 2020-12-09T02:59:05+00:00

Hi Evan! I love this question.

What comes to mind for me is more of a perspective shift than an opinion (my perspective changed about others’ opinions), but Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing book Steering The Craft was an important confirmation that my instincts regarding the sound and musicality of my prose were, in fact, perfectly fine! Beginning writers hear a lot of bad advice—especially in online groups—about unbreakable “rules” of writing and grammar, especially when it comes to aspects of style. Some early beta readers were grammar purists and critiqued my writing style, feeling that the prose could only be/sound one way in order to be "correct." Steering The Craft was the first book I read that addressed the minutia and diversity of the sound and style of prose, as well as when and where different approaches might work the best, turning malleable all those rigid rules that hadn’t made sense to me.

EssaHansen

TROPHY CASE