INTERVIEW
Hi friends! I am so excited to welcome Rosiee Thor, the author of Fire Becomes Her and Tarnished Are the Stars to my blog today! Their sophomore novel, Fire Becomes Her just released earlier this month with Scholastic. After reading Fire becomes Her and absolutely loving it, I wanted to take a moment to interview the author and get to know them a bit more. Fire Becomes Her is available now, so be sure to add the book to your TBR today!
Flare is power.
With only a drop of flare, one can light the night sky with fireworks . . . or burn a building to the ground -- and seventeen-year-old Ingrid Ellis wants her fair share.
Ingrid doesn't have a family fortune, monetary or magical, but at least she has a plan: Rise to the top on the arm of Linden Holt, heir to a hefty political legacy and the largest fortune of flare in all of Candesce. Her only obstacle is Linden's father who refuses to acknowledge her.
So when Senator Holt announces his run for president, Ingrid uses the situation to her advantage. She strikes a deal to spy on the senator’s opposition in exchange for his approval and the status she so desperately craves. But the longer Ingrid wears two masks, the more she questions where her true allegiances lie.
Will she stand with the Holts, or will she forge her own path?
What’s one myth or misconception about publishing a book that you’d like to debunk?
I think the biggest misconception that I had going in was that once I was an author, writing books would get easier. It doesn't. I've definitely gotten better at some things, like understanding my own process as a writer, or knowing what to expect from the publishing timeline, but there are always new challenges with each new book. Writing one book teaches you how to write that one book, but the next book is a different animal entirely and may require a completely different skill set to accomplish what I set out to do.
What do you hope readers will take away from Fire Becomes Her?
I hope readers of Fire Becomes Her walk away from it feeling uplifted and affirmed. I wrote it in part out of frustration with politics and the ways in which government impacts us all, whether or not we have the power to impact it back. I hope readers feel empowered to take action where they can and to seek out communities that will not only accept them for who they are but encourage them to grow as well.
What sources of inspiration did you draw from when creating the world of Candesce and the magic system surrounding the use of flare?
The idea of flare came to me early on in the process of writing Fire Becomes Her. I wanted a magic that felt not only spectacular, but also essential. In order for magical equity to be such a major theme in the book, I felt it needed to touch a variety of different areas of life for people living in Candesce. With that in mind, I came up with the idea of magic that was the economic equivalent of fuel, the social equivalent of alcohol, and the aesthetic equivalent of fireworks.
If you could befriend one character in Fire Becomes Her, who would it be and why? I think I would get along very well with Alex, personally.
Alex is definitely the one I'd get along with most easily. He's thoughtful and academic and kind--all things I often seek out in friends. I do think it would be fun to hang out with Louise too, though. I don't know that we'd get along famously, but I just lover her attitude.
If readers enjoy Fire Becomes Her, what books would you recommend?
For readers who like the prickly not-always-easy-to-love main character of Fire Becomes Her, I'd recommend checking out Mara Fitzgerald's Beyond the Ruby Veil, and for readers who like the 1920s inspired setting, I recommend Allison Saft's A Far Wilder Magic.
For those who might not be familiar with the term, could you please explain a bit more about what a “queer-platonic” relationship is?
Queer-platonic relationships can take a lot of forms, but in their most basic nature, they are relationships not based on romantic or sexual attraction where queer people form a partnership based on platonic friendship. Just like romantic and sexual relationships, they can be poly or monogamous, with different levels of commitment defined differently by the people in them. Essentially, people in queer-platonic relationships have placed an emphasis on that relationship the same way people might choose a romantic relationship as central in their life. Often, queer-platonic relationships include asexual and/or aromantic spectrum people in them, but not always!
I noticed that Ingrid’s relationship with Linden served almost as a foil to her relationship with Alex over the course of the story. Were those moments where Ingrid seems to compare her feelings for Linden to her feelings for Alex (and thus decide what she wants for the future) intentional?
Definitely! Linden and Alex, while being two distinct people in her life, also represent two futures for her. Linden is very much the expected future, the one that society will be most likely to accept as normative. He represents, in many ways, the compulsory allo-cis-heteropatriarchy, whereas Alex represents the queer found family and acceptance of Ingrid's identity. In my own experiences, I was faced with a similar choice between doing what was expected of me and being rewarded by the social environment I was in vs. detaching from that social environment and choosing to seek acceptance elsewhere. It's a very scary moment, stepping away from the social hierarchy you've known all your life, and it can often feel like giving up, but I also know how rewarding it is to find the people who will catch you when you fall and affirm the choice you had to make for your own well-being. I wanted Ingrid to see those two paths and decide for herself which one she wanted to walk.
What does your writing space look like? Do you have any snacks or candles you like to have on hand while you are working?
Chaos. I... have an office... it is... varying levels of organized depending on whether or not I'm on deadline for a book. I usually write on a fainting couch with a cat in my lap, barely able to reach my keyboard, surrounded by peanut butter jars and gummy bears and--I'm not exaggerating--at least a dozen mugs. I wish I was one of those writers with a really aesthetic space and cute writing rituals, but really I'm a "get the work done however it has to get done" kind of writer.
What upcoming releases are you looking forward to reading?
I'm super excited for Francesca May's Wild and Wicked Things and Emily Lloyd-Jones's The Drowned Woods!
What projects are you currently working on?
I've always got half a dozen WIPs in progress these days, but I'm most excited about an adult contemporary fantasy project I'm working on with lots of puns and murder, and a fantasy short story about the power of friendship in the face of compulsory heteronormativity.
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