Behind the scenes of Emily Wilde: creepy goblins and more!

Hello everyone! It’s been a dark month. So I thought I’d push back the weightier topic I was planning to write about till next month in favour of something lighter.

This is from a subscriber request to talk more about how the Emily Wilde series came to be, not just the world but also the characters. But before I get into that, I thought I’d share the preorder link for book three, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, as well as the fact that we’re now only three months away from the release date! If you’ve already preordered (or placed a hold at your library), thank you so much.

Where did Emily Wilde come from?

I’ve touched on how I came up with the Emily Wilde series before, but not in a substantive way. So I thought I’d talk about the origins of the idea, as well as my inspiration for what I get asked about the most: the folklore and the characters.

The beginning

I often say that the Emily Wilde series began with failure.

I came up with the basic seed of the idea while working on a middle-grade fantasy—or, rather, struggling with a middle-grade fantasy. I was flipping through an academic book about fairies (the story I was trying to write was set in Fairy) and I found myself wondering: what would it have been like to write something like this? And, what would it have been like in a world where fairies are very real?

I gave up on the midde-grade book. I usually know within the first chapter if I’m excited enough about an idea to turn it into a novel, and that just wasn’t the case with this one. But that seed of an idea about a scholar of fairies spent the next several years germinating in my brain, until eventually I felt I had enough of the pieces to start writing it.

I would say that this is true of about half of my books. Sometimes I have an idea and feel ready to write it after only a few weeks. Other times, it’s a multiyear odyssey.

The folklore

Simply put, I’ve always wanted to write a story about creepy goblins. I think this is likely down to my childhood love of Labyrinth, which both fascinated and frightened me (I’m honestly still unnerved by some of those puppets!) So the idea of fairies as both beautiful and terrifying, petty and powerful, which is also how they’re depicted in much of the traditional folklore, wasn’t actually something I gave much thought to. It just seemed natural: these would be Emily’s fairies, too.

My primary research books (which were more like jumping off points for inspiration) were An Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs and, for the first Emily Wilde book, Icelandic Folktales and Legends by Jacqueline Simpson, and several books on Norse folklore, including Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore by Claude Lecouteux.

The characters

Emily was not so much inspired by one specific person as by a character archetype. As long as I can remember, some of my favourite characters have been what I’ve often referred to as socially clueless geniuses: characters who excel at professional or technical fields but are terrible at relationships. Think Gregory House; Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock; Spock; the list goes on. Most of these are men. I wanted to write about a woman with these traits.

Wendell arose from Emily. I wanted him to be Emily’s opposite, but a complementary opposite: someone she would find mysterious but also necessary, because he’s good at the things she’s not (and vice versa). This is what makes them such a strong team.

He’s also somewhat inspired by the Wizard Howl, as many readers have guessed.

I hope that’s a helpful summary! Inspiration is such a nebulous topic that it’s difficult to wrangle into a single essay. Feel free to ask about anything I’ve not touched on.

Q&A

I answer reader-submitted questions at the end of each newsletter; you can email yours to heather@heatherfawcettbooks.com or leave it in the comments.

I'm going to start querying soon (which I already dread) so I was wondering if you have any specific advice as far as the process of getting published goes?

Oof, I’m not sure I’ll have a good answer for this. I’ve sent out a lot of queries in my life, for several different books, primarily during the early-mid 2010s. (Though I actually queried my first book when I was 14, which meant I got to experience the tail end of the paper submissions and SASE era, which will probably mean nothing to anyone querying today!)

The process was different then but the fundamentals were the same. Ideally, your book has a high-concept hook that you include near the beginning of your query. Also ideally, it has a cool title that captures the imagination (some of my favourites: The Midnight Library; A Psalm for the Wild-Built; The Name of the Wind). I know some agents say titles don’t matter at this stage but I don’t believe them. I think everyone is drawn to a good title.

Most importantly: start writing your next book while querying your first. Don’t view your first book as a failure if it doesn’t find an agent. You may be able to return to it later in your career, revise it, and get it published. Several authors I know have done that.

Good luck!

I am wondering how different your first draft of a novel is from the final, and how many times or drafts on average you go through in the process of writing a final product?

Before I answer that, I should preface by saying that writers, in my experience, fall into two camps: those who do the bulk of the creative heavy-lifting during the drafting process, and those who do it during revisions. I don’t really like revising, so I prefer to do most of the creative work in my first draft. I definitely don’t think it’s perfect, but because I’m a slow drafter, I tend to pause a lot to think things through, solving plot holes as I go, etc. Authors who prefer revising to drafting would likely consider this a nightmarish way to write! Neither way is correct; it’s whatever works best for each writer.

So to answer the question, the final versions of my books are different from the first draft, but not vastly so. Most of the structural elements remain the same, but certain plot points or character details are expanded on, condensed, or clarified.

What I’m reading

• Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik is my favourite recent read. I love pretty much everything Novik writes. My favourites in the collection were “Buried Deep” and “The Long Way Round.”

• The Bitter End by Alexa Donne (YA murder mystery) is a page turner and great for cozy season. It takes place at a creepy, remote ski cabin.

• The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Lee Miye is a Korean bestseller and difficult to categorize. Fantasy, I guess? This is the definition of a comfort read. It’s quite a straightforward story without much of a plot, so fair warning if those things bother you, but I found it delightful.

Random inspiring thing

If there’s one type of news I always follow, it’s archaeology news. Here’s an article on the beautiful works of art recently discovered at the ancient Roman site of Pompeii.