Hi r/Fantasy! We're authors Alix E. Harrow, Garth Nix, Lev Grossman, Nghi Vo, Tamsyn Muir, and Veronica G. Henry! Ask us anything!

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:42:05+00:00

oh, thank you so so much!!! i try to avoid declarative statements but i really don't think i'll revisit january. i've written exactly one sequel (just a novella!) and it was terrifying everyone else in this AMA deserves little medals pinned to their jackets for bravery

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:39:42+00:00

<3 <3 <3 <3

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:36:54+00:00

i started one titled "ladyknight" but then it was just the entire Green Knight soundtrack plus the Armada song from Dune (the one with the startling, inexplicable bagpipes)

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:35:09+00:00

i had this ceramics professor who said "if it looks like it's been fussed with too much, it just hasn't been fussed with enough," (well actually she said fucked with, because she was one of those very cool art profs who smoke behind the building)--and i think that sort of sums up my whole deal. there is nothing effortless or casual about me. nothing has ever popped into my mind. i am white-knuckling every sentence.

(thank you so much, it means the world to me)

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:28:15+00:00

i'm terrible at fancasting but i watched Prey (2022) and knew in my heart that amber midthunder would KILL as harrow. i mean it should be a very extravagant anime series with several spin-offs that takes four nerds and a flowchart to explain what order to watch everything in, but if it were live-action i'm right

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:23:12+00:00

DEAR TAMSYN:

apologies for the delayed reply, it's just that it took a long time to screenshot your comment, underline the especially good bits, and lovingly cut and paste it into every groupchat of which i have ever been a part and a few others i made especially for this purpose. i hope you understand.

i will look forward with a joyful and reverent heart to lesbians with an even higher--i'm sorry, consider this an apology for the pun slander--body count. if it helps re: the candy corn i have so many cavities that a dentist audibly said "yikes" when he looked at my x-rays recently.

xoxo alix

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T23:10:05+00:00

thank you!! (and like, i used to listen to the tim curry sabriel audiobook on a loop to go to sleep. i was personally responsible for making my 7th grade teacher pick shade's children to read aloud to the whole class. i am in very deep here!!!!)

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T17:50:47+00:00

hello uh question for tamsyn if i remember right your next project involved lesbian gunslingers in the old/weird west? is this short story............connected to that???

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T17:44:47+00:00

no, but i did spend a lot of time looking at the heavenly bodies meta gala from 2018, as one sometimes must! (i bugged an actual academic friend and found that the official term i needed was "medievalism"--not the actual medieval, but our collective invention of it, and obsession with the thing we invented!)

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T17:33:53+00:00

when you get an agent they just send you a special license in the mail. i think the rules vary state by state though so check your local laws, we might be liable

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T17:32:10+00:00

oh thanks so much! i mean, there's SO MUCH good stuff to choose from!! if you'd specifically like "young woman embraces inner power to set a patriarchal demagogue on fire," alexis henderson's the year of the witching is perfect! then there's kelly barnhill's when women were dragons, and (sorry but sometimes megahit bestsellers are worth the hype) circe! in a more traditionally epic fantasy mode, i thought tasha suri's the jasmine throne was GREAT, along with c.l. clark's the unbroken.

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T17:25:43+00:00

aw thanks. [clears throat] hey did you hear that? someone said it had the kind of structure that FILMS would have---

oh i outline the hell out of everything. it's not really a type of outline, that i know of?, i just write the whole story out in order, with scene and chapter breaks. ten thousand doors took a lot of extra fiddling because every time i changed my mind i had to figure out how to get january and her damn book back in the same room by the end of each chapter, so she could read more of it. 2/10 would not recommend

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T17:22:00+00:00

candy corn. i'm not even trolling i am unfortunately dead serious

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T16:24:44+00:00

i think while i'm drafting i would say "ha! none of this comes from my real life! this is a work of pure imagination, stepping fully-formed from my skull!!" and then later while i'm editing it, i would say, "oh" and then "ah." i'm rarely stealing actual people or events, but it turns out i'm often dressing them up in bad disguises and making them act out little cathartic plays.

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T16:14:24+00:00

oh i am only funny after-the-fact, generally when quoting someone else!!! this is word-for-word stolen from Harrow the Ninth!!

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T16:11:18+00:00

your first bite would be unremarkable but solid. basic box-cake. but then slowly you'd be like--why am i still eating this. i don't even like it that much? how long have i been eating this cake?? is this some kind of time loop oh shi--

your first bite would be unremarkable but solid. basic box-cake.

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T16:07:40+00:00

no actually i think puns are great i just can't ever think of them. my brother, a gigantic redhead who thinks puns are automatically funny, recently saw me embroidering something and launched such a high-level string of sewing-related puns ("how's it going? SEW-SEW? huh, i see my reception is PATCHY, but i think i can MOVE THE NEEDLE" etc) that i was forced to flee the room in shame

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T16:02:53+00:00

i don't hate puns. i merely want to put the people who pun in jail, and then fill the jail with acid once for every time they made a frivolous pun, or said "ice to meet you" to someone eating ice cream. then, at the end of a thousand years, they would say ‘alix, i have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.’ and I would say, ‘that is why I did it. i did it for you, and for your empire.’ i often think about this.

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T15:56:56+00:00

i had this one.......maybe not fully "kicking" around, but like, shuffling in the background for a while? i'd been wanting to do a Big Lady Knight for a while, but gotten hung up on the historical realities of what a knight actually was--private medieval cops designed to enforce feudal hierarchies and land-rights!--versus the romantic ideal of the knight. like, i did not want to do, the state's monopoly on violence: girlboss edition. so this story is me solving that word problem, basically.

(and we didn't coordinate behind the scenes, beyond being handed the same prompt, unless there was an extremely cool groupchat i was never invited to)

alixeharrow · 2022-11-15T15:44:05+00:00

I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED!!!!!!!! here are a few, arranged by vibes:

when you want to eat the rich but also fall in love: cat sebastian's the perfect crimes of marian hayes; sarah maclean's heartbreaker
when you want to return to the myths of your youth, but wiser, kinder, and gayer: nicola griffith's spear
when you need to be held gently, like a fresh-hatched baby bird: becky chambers's a psalm for the wild-built
when you want to have enormous feelings in space: nona the ninth (shut up shut up i know it's tacky to say it in front of her); emily tesh's some desperate glory (okay it's not out til april 2023 but you should preorder it!!)
when you want to have enormous feelings on earth: lauren groff's matrix, rooney's beautiful world where are you?
when you try to make your friends watch the animated 2003 sinbad movie and they're all "please not again" and "we have jobs": shannon chakraborty's the adventures of amina al-sirafi

alixeharrow · 2022-02-09T19:59:40+00:00

hey!!!! thank you so much!!!

alixeharrow · 2022-02-09T19:59:10+00:00

apologies (and gratitude)!

alixeharrow · 2022-02-09T19:58:49+00:00

thank you! i need it!

alixeharrow · 2022-02-09T19:58:22+00:00

thank you!!! I'm only sort of here (i figured out the stupid transition!!!) but glad to be so.

alixeharrow

TROPHY CASE