Author Interview: Exit Ghost by Jennifer Donohue
- Fiction Fans
- Dec 13, 2023
- 33 min read
Episode 118
Release Date: December 13, 2023
Your hosts are joined by Jennifer Donohue to discuss her debut novel Exit Ghost. They talk about witch girls, Hamlet, and witchy-girl Hamlet, along with self destructive characters, sympathetic characters, and prickly characters (and sometimes they're the same!). This episode also features a Wor-ds Are We-ird.
Find more from Jen
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Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:
- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris” - Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Episode Transcript*
*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.
Lilly: 0:04
Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words, too. I'm Lily.
Sara: 0:09
And I'm Sarah, and I am so pleased that today we have Jen Donahue on to talk about her debut novel Exit Ghost with us.
Jen: 0:18
Hello, it's me.
Sara: 0:20
Yay! You finally made it!
Jen: 0:22
Yes. Yes. Ever since I heard of you guys and then, you know, we're mutuals like everywhere. I'm like, I have to be on the podcast. I've been telling people all day. I'm like, I have to go home and go on a podcast after work today.
Lilly: 0:35
Oh, I have the op I'll say like, oh, I have an interview today, and then my friends will go, You're being interviewed? And I'm like, oh, no. No, the opposite.
Jen: 0:44
I told one of my coworkers earlier this week, I was like, Oh, and I'm getting, I'm being interviewed on Saturday. And she got really quiet and she was like a job interview. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm not leaving you for my other career.
Lilly: 0:59
Yeah. I think we also have the delight of being joined by extra dogs on this recording. So we have, of course, Sarah's two pugs. And then what is your Doberman's name, Jen?
Jen: 1:11
Her full name is Ulrike, and we call her Rika most of the time, or variations on that name.
Sara: 1:18
I have definitely been mentally mispronouncing her name this entire time.
Jen: 1:23
That's fine because it's pronounced like if you spelled Ulrike if you look at it, but that's like
Sara: 1:28
That is how I've been pronouncing it.
Jen: 1:30
the German pronunciation. Yeah, which is fine. My husband has named both of our dogs, which we have had serially, not And he, you know, they're a German breed, so they look for like a German name, and he's good at names. He's maddeningly good at names.
Lilly: 1:46
And of course, naming is one of the hardest parts when you're coming up with characters.
Jen: 1:50
very hard. Many brackets are in my rough drafts.
Lilly: 1:56
Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, what is something good that's happened recently?
Sara: 2:00
Something good that's happened. I had a bunch of friends come over from out of town last weekend and they stayed with me. And that was lovely. It was really nice to see them. We had a great time. We went to the Dickens Fair, which was in San Francisco, was a hassle to get to. I would not go again, but I'm glad I went.
Lilly: 2:18
How did you survive the Christmas music?
Sara: 2:20
There wasn't a lot of Christmas music going on, actually. We did go to one, like, acapella group that was singing songs, but they weren't Christmassy.
Lilly: 2:30
Oh, interesting.
Sara: 2:31
There was a lot of songs about beer,
Lilly: 2:33
All right.
Sara: 2:33
and wailing,
Jen: 2:35
And whaling? Or whittling?
Sara: 2:38
and wailing.
Jen: 2:39
Okay.
Lilly: 2:39
Presumably not screaming, but yeah.
Sara: 2:42
Yeah, going to
Jen: 2:43
Like Moby Dick, not a nashing of the
Sara: 2:46
Moby Dick kind of
Jen: 2:46
Okay. It's like, that's a weird thing to sing a song about. What
Lilly: 2:51
Oh, I thought they were wailing instead of singing. That was my immediate, I was like, that's, were they that bad? Wow. Okay.
Sara: 2:58
they were, they were actually quite good. I don't remember their name, but they were, they were good. I would listen to them again. I wouldn't necessarily go to the Dickens Fair to see them, but I would listen to them again.
Jen: 3:07
are things YouTube is for? I recently, I had a story acceptance for a market that I have tried to get into previously and have gotten rejections in, as one does. But it's an early enough acceptance, as it were, that I can't actually say where it was. So it's a story that will be published next year, I believe, and I'm very happy about it.
Sara: 3:28
Well, that's exciting. Congratulations.
Jen: 3:30
Thank you. Yeah, those are great emails to get because sometimes, you know, I'm at work, you know, I have two monitors, one of them has my personal email up so I can obsessively track whether I've gotten a story projection or not, and I got the email and I was like, Oh, this is gonna be, you know, thank you for sending us. No, it was an acceptance.
Lilly: 3:48
I have a two fold good thing. I'm finally trying to clean up some of the You know when you finish a bottle of lotion or whatever, you don't actually throw it away, because you're like, I know there's some left in here,
Jen: 3:59
And you can't just recycle it.
Lilly: 4:00
right? I finally, like, dug up three or four different bottles of skincare stuff and cut them in half. Because they're like tubes, right, not bottles, I guess. And there was so much left in them, oh my god. I've probably been using them for like a week now. just of like the stuff that I've been able to scoop out with my fingers. So A, I'm cleaning up a little bit, and B, there was probably at least 40 worth of skincare that I would have thrown away if I had just dumped those bottles. So I'm glad I hoarded them.
Jen: 4:29
That's amazing. That's why we heard those things. It's really one day we will find out there's actually 60 percent more in here.
Lilly: 4:36
There was so, oh my god, I was, part of me knew it, that's why I kept them, but I was still shocked with how much product was left in those things.
Jen: 4:44
It's like how, uh, with shampoo I no longer buy pump bottle ones because the pump doesn't reach the bottom. So there's always so much, so then you're in the shower like, unscrewing the top and beating it against your hand.
Lilly: 4:57
Yep. Oh, what are we all drinking today? This evening, whatever time it is for everyone. Mmm,
Jen: 5:04
full dark, well about full dark here for me, on the east coast and I am drinking the Walgreens brand French roast coffee.
Lilly: 5:13
lovely.
Jen: 5:14
Which is called Nice, and they do it in this like, diner font cursive. It's very interesting. My Jersey Devil mug.
Lilly: 5:22
Ooh, love it. I'm also drinking coffee, but I poured a bunch of eggnog in mine because tis the season.
Jen: 5:29
Oh, I should have done that!
Lilly: 5:30
It's delightful.
Jen: 5:32
Yes!
Sara: 5:34
I'm participating in a tea advent calendar sip along with some friends. Today's tea is matcha green tea. It is the first tea of this calendar that has actually been good. And by that, I mean, it's definitely not high quality green tea, but it's drinkable.
Lilly: 5:53
Oh no. The things we put up with.
Jen: 5:57
Yeah, I guess expectations are only so high for those Advent things, depending on what they are.
Sara: 6:02
I mean, I was, I was at least hoping that I would like more than one tea in nine days.
Jen: 6:09
Yeah.
Sara: 6:10
Okay, yesterday's chamomile was drinkable, but I probably wouldn't make myself a second cup of it. Everything prior to that, I have poured out before I finished the first mug.
Lilly: 6:21
That's really bad.
Jen: 6:22
Oh boy.
Sara: 6:23
It's not a good, I cannot recommend this calendar. It's bad.
Lilly: 6:27
Now, in the chamomile's defense, you're not a big herbal tea drinker.
Sara: 6:31
It's true. And this is specifically an herbal tea calendar. Um, so
Lilly: 6:36
What?
Sara: 6:37
I'm coming at it, I'm coming at it from a disadvantage. But
Jen: 6:42
You were trying to broaden your horizons.
Sara: 6:44
I'm, yeah, exactly. And the people that I'm drinking it with are herbal tea people, and they have also not liked the teas. So it's not just me.
Jen: 6:54
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Lilly: 6:56
Well, this is not actually a pet and tea podcast, although we should maybe consider switching to that format next year.
Jen: 7:04
You should do bonus episodes of Author Pets.
Lilly: 7:06
Yes, just talk about pets. The thing is, I think that would benefit so much from being more visual.
Jen: 7:12
That's true too.
Lilly: 7:13
Or we could just listen to the various snores and sounds that everyone's pets make.
Jen: 7:17
Right?
Lilly: 7:19
Well, has anyone read anything good lately?
Sara: 7:22
I finished reading the Sarah J. Maas Court of Thrones and Roses series, and it does suffer a little bit from bloat the last couple of books. I think book four should have been a novella. But they remain, they remain fun books. I enjoyed them. They got me out of my reading slump. I don't think her sex scenes are very good, but there sure are a lot of them.
Jen: 7:46
It's sort of what I know about those books. I've watched much YouTube content on them. I haven't read them myself.
Sara: 7:52
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're fun. Like, I definitely enjoyed reading them. They're not great, but they're fun. So,
Lilly: 7:59
I know it's overdone to compare books to food, but they really are just cotton candy, right? Oh,
Sara: 8:05
they are. Yeah, I was gonna say fast food more than cotton candy, but I think, I think it works either way.
Jen: 8:12
Sometimes you just want chicken nuggets.
Sara: 8:14
Exactly.
Lilly: 8:16
See, I feel, well, I haven't read the books, but yeah, I don't know. I was gonna say that's an insult to chicken nuggets, but it sounded like you enjoyed them enough,
Jen: 8:23
I love chicken nuggets so much.
Sara: 8:25
Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think the comparison to chicken nuggets is not an insult to chicken nuggets.
Lilly: 8:31
okay. Jen, how about you?
Jen: 8:33
I read The short story, Imagine Yourself Happy, by Rimi Mohamed, my dear author friend in Canada.
Sara: 8:42
Who will be coming on the podcast in March, I think,
Jen: 8:45
Oh hell yeah.
Sara: 8:46
talk about her new books coming out. So a little plug for us, too.
Jen: 8:50
He's got a bunch of books coming out. Things don't typically make me cry when I'm reading them, but definitely, it's, it's short. I think it's just a thousand. I can't remember what their limit is at that place, market, but uh, you know, at the end of it, I was getting all misty, and I was like, Oh, this is really hitting me, and it's so good.
Lilly: 9:09
We read the
Sara: 9:10
Apple tree throne. Yeah.
Lilly: 9:13
and I remember that being hitting you pretty hard for the amount of words that there are, right? She really has a strong emotion to word ratio.
Jen: 9:22
Yes, yes, very much so.
Lilly: 9:23
Emotional reaction in the reader, not that the story itself was like melodramatic or anything, you know what I mean.
Jen: 9:29
Right, yeah, you know, the stories aren't overwrought, but they are, yeah, they get ya.
Lilly: 9:33
Well, we're here to talk about Exit Ghost, though. Wait, so, Sarah called it your debut novel. Is that just because this is your first novel length? Or is this older than I realized? I didn't do any background research that I probably should have.
Jen: 9:46
No, that's fine. No, no, no, it is, it is my debut novel. It is my first novel length thing that I've published. Because I did try to go TribeHub first with it. I queried agents for a little more than two years, actually. But the problem is I started, well, a problem is I started in 2020, which was not a great time. To be trying to find a literary agent. Everything got slower and more awful and I just kept going because I really wanted to have a marketing team. Because I am not great at that, necessarily. And uh, but then, you know, as with all things, when it wasn't working out, I was like, well, you know, I'm just gonna do it myself.
Lilly: 10:28
And I'm glad you did. Well, I'm glad I got to read it however it got to me.
Sara: 10:33
Yeah, me too.
Jen: 10:33
Well, thank you.
Sara: 10:35
We asked this question for most of our guests, but genre definitions can vary quite broadly from person to person. What genre would you consider Exit Ghost and why?
Jen: 10:46
I do, I think, consider it to be fantasy because it goes from a baseline of the real world. So it's not like i'm doing secondary world fantasy with knights and dragons and all that stuff. But where I rely upon real world for the basic world building all of the fantastical elements on it are indeed still real. Even if they might be ill defined even to the characters. So it's I guess modern fantasy. I mean some people I've called it gothic. It's got sort of horror ish elements to it, but I'm also not really a horror writer and anytime I think, hey, is this horror? I'm like, I don't really think it's horror enough. So it is a very, I think, genre blurry sort of place.
Lilly: 11:32
Before we started recording, I had an entire rambly thing about why I don't think it counts as gothic, but anyone who likes gothic lit would love this book. So I was like, there's enough overlap that I think it's worth bringing up, but I don't think it takes enough boxes to actually count itself.
Jen: 11:50
Yeah, that's, that's fair because like, you know, it does have place as character and it is somewhat oppressive in that place depending on which place it is and, you know, but it's, yeah, I, I think it's just kind of standing at a, where's that intersection, like four points where four United States meet each other, it's
Lilly: 12:06
The Four
Jen: 12:07
standing there in the middle where, yeah, there you go.
Lilly: 12:11
But I did just skip to the who should read this book question and I took it away from Sarah,
Sara: 12:15
Yeah, I was
Lilly: 12:16
brought it up. I
Sara: 12:17
we'll get to there, we'll get to there.
Jen: 12:19
Slow down.
Lilly: 12:21
What was that delightful description, Sarah, that you used to lure me into reading this book?
Sara: 12:26
Witchy Girl Hamlet, which I stole shamelessly from Jen.
Lilly: 12:29
Yeah. That's very good. And accurate.
Jen: 12:33
Yeah, that's, that's, uh, because I'm not great at pitching, I'm not great at blurbing, but you know, that was the driving, uh, thesis of the novel, that it's modern witchy girl Hamlet at the Jersey Shore, so.
Lilly: 12:44
So Hamlet, huh?
Jen: 12:45
Yeah, well, because the other thing like within because you asked about genres, I guess as a writer I have Personal categories where like, you know, I've got my run with the haunted novellas and they're, you know, fun and breezy and you know Dryly sarcastic a lot of the time.
Sara: 12:59
Delightful, and I love
Jen: 13:01
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No those things. Well, I don't I don't like to say that about myself I just like to hear other people say it.
Sara: 13:06
I'll say it for you.
Jen: 13:07
I Appreciate it But with Exit Ghost and some of my short stories, I've got a category where it's my dad died and I'm sad about it. And Hamlet is that Shakespeare, you know. Hamlet's dad died prior to the start of the play, and he's really sad about it. And, because how can you not be? Well, depending on one's relationship with one's dad. But you know, Hamlet seemed to get along okay with Hamlet Sr., so you know.
Lilly: 13:33
There was such an interesting aspect of this story because, you know, it opens with Jules waking up, was it six months later? Is that the amount of time that passes?
Jen: 13:43
Yeah, yeah, like, because I don't even say months necessarily in my, it sort of takes place before Labor Day weekend.
Lilly: 13:51
fair enough. In my head, that's how it got defined.
Jen: 13:54
Yeah, no, no, no, that is about right, yeah.
Lilly: 13:56
And so she is going through all of this fresh grief and processing it, but everyone around her has kind of, seems to have moved on, and that leaves her in such an uncomfortable place. It set the tone, though, because it isolates her so much more from the people around her than she already was.
Jen: 14:14
And that's, I find that that is a thing that can happen with grief, that especially if, because everybody grieves in their own way, and even if the people around them have lost the same person and also love that same person, There's kind of these circles where it's like, okay, well Jules and her mother were the closest to Jules is dead, and in theory they would be reckoning with similar devastations. But again, Jules sort of had that deferred, so she's like hoping that her distant mother would connect with her in some way maybe, but. For her mother, she's, you know, cold, busy businesswoman, and Jules is like, well, I'm just kind of an open wound, and it doesn't, those experiences don't always match. And then you've got people who are sometimes like, well, why aren't you over it already? There's been time. Well, it doesn't work like that.
Lilly: 15:05
It doesn't work like that. And even for her, there hasn't been as much time as for everyone else.
Jen: 15:10
Exactly, like, both calendar wise and, like, in her experiences. Yeah, for her, it just happened, you know.
Lilly: 15:18
So it is, of course, witchy girl Hamlet. Can't forget the witchcraft.
Jen: 15:22
Yes.
Lilly: 15:23
At the beginning of the book, you have a note talking a little bit about how, like, this witchcraft isn't real. Please don't go try to do this, etc., etc. So how did you sort of put together the version of witchcraft that we see on the page?
Jen: 15:37
It's largely vibes. I have other short stories that would be considered like in the same world where, you know, there's a main character who isn't even necessarily defined as a witch on the page, but you understand, oh, this person knows some kind of magical thing and it's always I think in, in my head, because again, because I describe my fantasy or the fantastical elements in Exit Ghost as poorly defined and it's kind of on purpose because the more you try to nail something down, the less mysterious it becomes or evocative necessarily, or the more poorly you're actually defining it. And so I sort of thought that from a, like, real modern world perspective, magic. Isn't, you know, something that everybody knows about. It's not something that you're going to walk into a school and learn, as you might in a secondary fantasy world novel. But there might be, you know, groups of people who have learned it in some way with great difficulty, and it's It's this game of telephone across the ages of people who have figured out, you know, scrabbly ways of doing magic and passing it on to people that they felt close enough to. Or they realized, hey, if more of us are doing something, it gets more powerful and that kind of thing. And then I grew up Catholic and like the ritual of mass and all of the different rites and everything are always very. Well, ritualized, so. So, um, that is where a lot of why I lean into like Catholic imagery so much because there's always like, well, there's a saint for that, there's an icon for that, there's symbology, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
Sara: 17:12
I really enjoyed the witchcraft in this book. Like it's, like you say, it's a little nebulous, but there's enough there that I have questions and want to learn more, which is how I want to feel about a magic system. So I think that worked really well. Something else that you do is you include text messages between the characters. And I wanted to ask about how you decided to format that given that I think so many novels sometimes just tend to kind of like hand wave that stuff away because it is easier just to not acknowledge it.
Jen: 17:47
It's easier not to describe a character, like. In a way, uh, some of that came from my Role playing experience and background where years back a friend of ours was running the cyberpunk game Shadowrun. And in that sometimes we were doing Like via Google Hangouts or whatever, we were having chats away from the table, and sometimes characters would be texting or whatever. And in doing that, I wanted, like, because using quotes didn't work, because that's like what you're saying with your human mouth. And using asterisks didn't work because it just folded the text, like, in the messaging system. So I was like, slashes, that works. And that's what I've just adopted across the board. Because like, that's how people text and run with the hunter too, it's just with slashes. But I think that texting is, and, you know, that kind of messaging is so much of how people communicate now. Like, you don't necessarily call somebody on the phone because that means something bad has happened. Or, you don't call somebody without saying, hey, I'm gonna call you. You know, so, just texts make a lot of sense to integrate into fiction.
Lilly: 18:54
I always make fun of the horror movies that just pretend cell phones don't exist because otherwise it would be hard to write the plot.
Jen: 19:03
It's a terrible problem where you're like, oh, well, I could just, you know, call the police. Or whatever. Um. So, yeah, yeah, so you either have to, you know, address cell phones head on or hand wave them so that, you know, Oh, you're out of service, or whatever, you know.
Sara: 19:19
your phone has exploded, although I did actually like that.
Jen: 19:24
I was gonna say, wait a minute, I did do a thing where I removed somebody's phone.
Lilly: 19:30
It made sense though, it
Sara: 19:31
Yeah,
Lilly: 19:32
It didn't feel like you were trying to get out of a loophole or a plot hole.
Sara: 19:36
yeah, it actually does make a lot of sense in the context of the story.
Lilly: 19:40
I think the first time I saw texting in a book was one of those, it was years ago, one of those YA novels where they put like the actual pictures of the bubbles in the paragraph.
Jen: 19:49
Yeah, and there's a whole series called like TTYL and stuff like that, and I think that's a book that does it, you know. I
Lilly: 19:57
might be what I'm thinking of. I don't recall. It's been a little while. I think we've run through most of the stuff we can talk about without spoiling the book horribly. Although actually,
Jen: 20:09
mean, it is Hamlet.
Lilly: 20:10
Yeah, that's actually a good point, though. There was an interesting experience I had while reading this, where part of me was like, Well, I know how Hamlet ends.
Jen: 20:21
That's true.
Lilly: 20:22
But this book was far enough removed that I didn't feel like I necessarily knew what was going to happen next. So I did definitely still, like, feel tension. Like, oh no.
Jen: 20:36
Yeah, that is true because I didn't make a one for one Hamlet adaptation. Just like how the cat excuse me. What are you growling at?
Sara: 20:48
She does not like the idea of a one to one Hamlet adaptation.
Jen: 20:51
Right? Yeah. Yeah, Yorick would uh, not be a character if that was the case. Because that's the other thing, you know, the characters aren't one for one, the story isn't. Because I, I don't want to say I don't see the value in it, but it wasn't interesting to me to approach it like that.
Sara: 21:08
So, how did you decide which aspects of Hamlet you wanted to incorporate into the story? Like, how did you pick and choose that?
Jen: 21:15
Well, you ask that as though I plan my writing, which I don't. Um,
Sara: 21:22
Well, I guess we can cross that question off of our question list later on.
Jen: 21:27
Yeah, I start at the start and I end at the end. So there are times where even as I'm approaching what is a major story beat in Hamlet, and I'm like, Am I gonna do it exactly like that? Am I gonna disregard it completely? You know. And really, I just, I, I decide as I'm writing it. Like, there, there are definitely things. Because the way I wrote Exit Ghost, or the way this particular, like, draft that then became the book happened, is I took two different projects and kind of shuffled them together like a deck of cards. And one of them was a hand lit rewrite with no magical elements. And the other was a story about two friends who were witches in Asbury Park. In 1979, and I made different decisions from those drafts as I integrated them because I was like, you know, I think that might be predictable and I like this other way better, you know, that kind of thing. So sometimes the writing is in the rewriting, as they say.
Lilly: 22:26
Well, Sarah, who should read this book?
Sara: 22:29
Well, you already answered this question. This book isn't a gothic novel, but if you like gothic novels, you will like this book. If you enjoy retellings, and like Shakespeare and Hamlet, you will like this book. If you want, uh, witchy atmospheric novel where the witchcraft is not really highly defined but definitely there. You'll like this book.
Lilly: 22:54
To avoid spoilers, skip to 4140.
Sara: 23:05
Okay, so I think that I was screaming about this in DMs to you, but Jenner, he is such a creep. I have so many questions about him, not necessarily like specific questions per se, but like Nebulous, like, what is going on with him? Like, are we going to see more of him? Are there, I think you mentioned there was going to be an Una book at one point, fingers crossed.
Lilly: 23:30
My specific questions about Jenner are, what the fuck, and how dare he?
Sara: 23:34
Yes.
Jen: 23:37
Well, those are broad, but also specific. I do have an Inna book that is partially drafted, I want to say. You know, I did a NaNoWriMo draft that's like 65, 000 words or something, but hasn't reached the end of the book yet. And also in the course of writing that, I now kind of know like, oh, this is what Jenner's deal was, because I sometimes do things that, um, I don't necessarily know the answer either, so. So, yeah. But because my point of view character doesn't know, it doesn't matter. Um, because I really love leaning into point of view and what Those characters do or don't know, and what experiences they bring to things, and that kind of deal. So, obviously, he's, he's a certain kind of guy.
Sara: 24:22
He's a douche.
Jen: 24:23
Yeah, yes, yeah. But also, like, um, he's always, in my head, kind of been that, like, very slightly out of place, takes himself too seriously in a way that the people around him don't necessarily understand. Kind of way because he doesn't necessarily tell them either why he wants what he wants or what it is that he wants He just takes advantage of people in the way that he sees fit and then blows out of town
Sara: 24:52
That is definitely what he does in Exit Ghost.
Jen: 24:55
Yeah, and in some ways again because I didn't do Hamlet one for one but in some ways Jenner sort of fills the Rat Trap portion of the play because I named him Jenner from Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Ninh because names are hard and I was like that's that's a name from something to do with rats But he didn't have anything to do with the death of Jules's dad or anything like that. So it's just, you know, one of those, one of those parts of the remix. Because sometimes people call, like, a modern or different take on classic literature a remix. And I don't really know what that necessarily means when it's implemented. Like, I've seen it done, and I'm like, I get what they mean, but I also don't know the parameters of its use, I guess. Like, somebody released a Little Women remix, and that's what it even says on the cover. And I'm like, what? What does that mean? What are you doing? I'm interested.
Sara: 25:49
Publishing jargon. Yeah.
Jen: 25:52
yeah. Maybe if I had an agent, I would know.
Lilly: 25:57
we meet Jenner? as he eventually introduces Una's not quite boyfriend. And I had a terrible experience reading this book.
Jen: 26:06
Oh, no.
Lilly: 26:06
Because I, like an idiot, and it's all my fault, like an idiot, I was reading it between meetings. So I had to just like put it down when the next meeting came. And I had to put the book down as Una and Jules fell into the ocean.
Jen: 26:20
Oh, no.
Lilly: 26:21
So I had that moment of, oh fuck, that's right, Una is Ophelia. Oh shit, oh fuck. And that was a perfect example of, like, well Ophelia dies. I honestly don't know if Oona is going to die in this moment or not. Like, it could genuinely go either way. And then I had to wait a day.
Jen: 26:42
Oh, a whole day. Oh, no. And I'll tell you when I was writing that particular passage in the actual, you know, This is Exit Ghosts, not the other projects that didn't come to pass. I didn't know either. Because right when they fell into the ocean is right when my writing group ended for the day.
Lilly: 27:02
Ah.
Jen: 27:03
And I had to pack up my laptop and help close the library and then do that transitionary, you know, go home, walk the dog, do we have dinner sort of thing. And when I sat down again, I'm like, what am I gonna do here? Because, in the other books, in the rough drafts, she dies. In the other books, that character is Una in the non magical book, and she's Ashley in the magical book, and she dies. But, the draft of the magical book didn't get much further past that, and I was like, I kind of took that as a, you know, I think I made the wrong choice when standing at the crossroads here. And so, I was like, well, what if she does live? And that's, that was the way.
Lilly: 27:44
Oh, I'm glad she lived. She didn't deserve to die after everything she'd been through.
Sara: 27:48
Yeah, I agree.
Jen: 27:50
Well, exactly. Like, justice for Ophelia.
Lilly: 27:54
Yeah.
Jen: 27:55
Because especially, like, when you're reading or watching Hamlet, and you learn about her death, it's as though whoever was supposed to be watching her in fact was watching her and just did not intercede. They're like, oh, she fell in the water and sang songs till she drowned. It's like, how do you know that, bud? Why didn't you get her out of the water? What do you mean? Why did you do that?
Lilly: 28:19
I will say I did want to shake Jules a little bit because at the beginning it's introduced as Una will move in with Ashley Adai, which will be great because then we can keep an eye on her and then never does she actually keep an eye on her.
Jen: 28:33
Which, you know, as I just said.
Lilly: 28:36
Yeah.
Sara: 28:38
Like, I get it, because, I mean, Jules is very deeply traumatized, she makes a series of bad decisions because of that trauma. It's understandable that things fall by the wayside, but I agree, I was like, Jules, get it together.
Jen: 28:51
You know, because Ashley has a job, and Oona's supposed to be going to college, and she's a good girl, so why wouldn't she not be going to college? Or why would she not be going?
Lilly: 29:00
I think that's the tragedy of this particular book, though. Because I totally understand why Jules had too much on her plate to also take on taking care of Una. And I totally get why Ashley didn't take Jules seriously about how dangerous Jenner was. It's like, it's so understandable. But as the reader on the outside, I just wanted to go, What are you doing? Just give him a little, just a little shake.
Jen: 29:25
Yeah, and it's not like, because like, Ashley doesn't completely disregard her, because like, at the beginning, where, because like, Ashley's like, I'm taking that one home, and Jules is like, can you throw that one back? And she just drops it with no question. But also like, you know, they didn't really present a united front and be like, you know, actually this guy is bad and we never want to see him again until, you know, the point at which they were like, you know, this cannot happen anymore. And then, you know, by that point, Jenner kind of transitions away anyway.
Lilly: 29:51
Yeah. I know I really appreciated the, not quite subtextual, but unwritten girl code that we see in this book. Right? With the, when Jules says, this guy, he just has bad vibes. And Ashley says, okay.
Jen: 30:06
Yeah. Yeah.
Lilly: 30:06
And then there was another point early on, before he really has Una like wrapped around his finger, Jules says something about like, Oh, I'm tired. I'm going to go home. Knowing that both Una and Ashley would immediately leave the party. It would be their idea,
Jen: 30:21
Right.
Lilly: 30:21
but they would leave the party to make sure she got home safe.
Jen: 30:24
Yeah. They're like, well, we're not just letting you walk home alone. So, you know, okay. Bye.
Lilly: 30:28
Mm hmm.
Sara: 30:29
think one of the things that, I mean, even as I was frustrated with Jules and Ashley for not doing enough to protect, you know, they also like, by the end of the book, they recognize that. So it's, it's not unaddressed, you know, in the book by the characters. So I'm like, okay, I get it.
Lilly: 30:46
And part of it felt like them just acknowledging Una's agency, right? They're not her parents, they can't just say, you may not see this guy. And so that puts them in a weird position,
Sara: 30:56
You're allowed to make your own bad choices.
Jen: 30:58
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cause like, you know, her dad absolutely would have been like, no, you're absolutely not dating. What do you mean? You're going to college, you're having your classes. And then, you know, her big brother would have been like, no, absolutely. You're not seeing this guy. And it's like, Oh, that's not anybody's decision to make.
Lilly: 31:13
Right.
Jen: 31:14
Even if it's a bad one.
Lilly: 31:15
Mm hmm. And so they, they definitely like, they try to be a buffer more than the voice of authority. And I appreciated that. I, I just wanted to shake them, that's all. Well,
Jen: 31:28
person in their early 20s who's like, I don't know if that relationship is right, but yeah,
Lilly: 31:34
that, that was part of what made Jenner such a great character, is because like, everyone has met him. Everyone knows that 30 year old who hangs out with 18 year olds.
Jen: 31:44
yeah,
Lilly: 31:45
Or knew,
Jen: 31:46
who, and who has that particular, like, oh, well, I know this thing. And it's like, well, actually, I know it too.
Lilly: 31:54
Yeah, it's that smug douchiness, yeah.
Jen: 31:57
Yeah, yeah.
Lilly: 31:58
This is a dumb joke, but I'm gonna make it anyway.
Jen: 32:01
Do it.
Lilly: 32:02
Chekhov would be pretty mad at this book.
Jen: 32:05
Right? That's why I have to write the sequel.
Lilly: 32:08
Yeah. Because you introduced the very cool vintage gun, never fired once.
Jen: 32:15
It's true. It's true. And I knew, and again, that's one of those things where I'm not necessarily always aware of reader expectation as I'm writing something, because again, you know, can't the story take me away? I knew absolutely that putting a gun in Jules's hands either meant she was going to use it on somebody or herself. If a reader was expecting it in a very Hamlet sort of way. And I was like, you know, I don't, I just, that's just not going to happen. I found a different way.
Lilly: 32:45
Yeah, you don't totally leave us hanging because it is used as a focus in a magical ritual, which I think fits with the book so much better, right, because it's not just like a cut and dry murder story. There's magic.
Jen: 32:58
Right? It's not just, and then I fucking shot him. Yeah, it's the other magic.
Lilly: 33:04
It would almost be weird if after all of this magic and like uncertainty and stuff, it was just resolved with
Jen: 33:10
Like the Indiana Jones sword fight scene, you know, where he just watches the guy flourish for a while and shoots him instead.
Lilly: 33:17
mm-Hmm. as we were talking about that, I was like, and I loved how after all of that, uh, you know, the big magical ritual that they were very worried about backfiring worked great. It did exactly what she wanted, and had basically no collateral damage. And there, Sarah reminded me that no Maryanne did die
Sara: 33:35
Yeah. So it has some collateral damage, not a lot maybe, but
Lilly: 33:41
Nah, she should have been there.
Jen: 33:43
Damn it. Marianne died and the estate was lost,
Sara: 33:45
yeah,
Jen: 33:46
but all the dogs were
Sara: 33:47
which is the important thing.
Lilly: 33:49
I loved that you clarified that, yeah.
Jen: 33:52
It's so important to me because really, like, so often in a dark fantasy or a horror narrative, the only reason there is for a dog to be there is for it to die, and I'm not gonna do that. I'm just not doing it.
Lilly: 34:07
It's cheap horror. It's like, yeah, it's gonna make me sad. It doesn't mean the writer did anything cool or interesting.
Jen: 34:14
Exactly. Like, it doesn't help, it just stabs you. It doesn't help the narrative.
Sara: 34:20
I appreciate how clear you've been in all of your talking about this book on social media. Yorick is okay. The dog is fine.
Jen: 34:27
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You're not going to invest, get invested in this, you know, Shakespearean tragedy where everybody dies. York is alive in this one and he's alive at the end.
Sara: 34:35
Yorick is the best boy.
Jen: 34:37
Sometimes he's the one who has it together in the room. But the problem is he's a dog. So, you know.
Lilly: 34:44
So, Sarah, I have a question for you. I guess you've read this twice now. Thinking back to when you read it for the first time. Were you sure that Hector really did do it?
Sara: 34:53
Uh, no. I was not, I was not sure.
Lilly: 34:56
Right? I was like, could that be the twist? It wasn't, and it worked out, but I was very like, especially because so much of this book is around Jules kind of dissociating from the people around her. I was like, is she going to do something terrible because she's been misled? Talk about tension.
Jen: 35:13
Thank you. And it's kind of bad because I've said to some people that my sense of tension in my own work is a little broken. Like sometimes I'll be writing and I, you know, I do mean for there to be tension and escalating tension. And I'm like, I don't really know if this works actually. And then I'll like send it to my first reader and she'll be like, Jen, this is the point where I stopped breathing and this is where I started breathing again. And I'm like, oh good, it did work.
Sara: 35:43
Yeah, but I like, I really enjoyed that ambiguity of not being sure whether or not she was getting the correct information or whether she could believe the information she was getting. And I think that holds up on a reread as well. Like it's not something that only works on the first read.
Jen: 36:00
Because sometimes you read or watch something, and you're, you know, you're dragged along with it, and then you get to the end, and then you start thinking about it, and you're like, wait, that doesn't work.
Lilly: 36:10
Or the, why didn't they just call them?
Jen: 36:13
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Lilly: 36:14
often ruins everything.
Jen: 36:16
Everybody has phones. Yeah, unless yours blew up, you know.
Lilly: 36:20
Unless your dad's ghost blows up your phone.
Sara: 36:22
So we have talked a little bit about how, for example, like Una died in previous drafts and doesn't die in the final version, obviously. Are there any other, like, major changes? Like, how different is the final product from the first drafts? I guess, plural, because you said you mashed up two things.
Jen: 36:41
Right, yeah, in this case, yeah, I mashed up a couple of things. So in the original, untitled, like, I literally just called it Asbury Park 1979, because often title comes after the thing is done. It wasn't Juliet's dad who died, it was like her boyfriend, and as I was, you know, writing the serious draft, as it were, I felt like that, you know, didn't resonate, and because I was combining it with a draft of what had been Hamlet, I was like, well, of course it's her dad, you know, that's the thing. And I didn't have dogs at all in any of the other drafts. And in the very first draft of Exit Ghosts, Yorick was a Mastiff, not a Doberman, because Mastiffs are kind of, you know, if you're looking for an estate guardian breed, it's something like that I think was more In theory, more typically used in our, you know, sense of whatever medieval Europe was. Because Dobermans are more people y dogs than, you know, turn loose on a property dogs, despite the movies with the junkier dogs thing. But, because Dobermans are the dogs I've had as the drafts progressed, even though there was a point at which I was like, Wow, it would be really funny if he was a great game. But I was like, you know, The dogs that I know, the mannerisms, the breed traits, they're Dobermans, so of course it's got to be that. And I think that's pretty much it. I didn't, once I was writing what became one that I published, I, you know, I didn't change a whole lot in between anything other than the dog breed.
Sara: 38:09
Were there any scenes that surprised you as you were writing?
Jen: 38:11
The, the way I resolved, because in the previous draft Suna died, or, you know, the Ophelia character died, so when I decided, you know, actually now, I'm not gonna kill her. The way that I resolved that a little bit, that kind of did. And also, um, when I was writing, like, I don't know if the final ritual is correct necessarily, but when Jules goes back to the estate and after the whole, you know, fell into the ocean thing, and she is doing the ritual to call her dad again, like, again, as I was writing it, that is the point at which I was like, you know, actually, he doesn't answer that time. And then, she's just so devastated, she's like, you know what, I'm gonna just solve this once and for all, even if it kills me, and I'm, I'm gonna do it again, you know?
Sara: 38:56
Bad decision making, but understandable.
Jen: 38:59
Oh, well, yeah, yeah, like, there's a point, you know, cause she is a very prickly character, and kind of abrasive, and isn't necessarily acting. in what seemed like her best interests. It's established very early on that she, you know, got sent home with a bunch of meds because she was in the hospital after having gotten shot in the head and I assume there's a lot of medication to do with that and she's like, you know, I'm just not, I feel so disconnected from everything. I'm just going to stop with that. Except the painkillers. Because in some ways, a great thing about fiction is you can write characters behaving in a way that you would absolutely never. Like, I have never personally self harmed. I can understand intellectually and character wise why you would. And Jules does. And in some ways, it Is just a symptom of what has happened to her. And then in other ways she can use it for magical gains.
Sara: 39:56
What would you like readers to take away from this book? I
Jen: 40:01
Don't do what Jules does.
Lilly: 40:05
Justice for Ophelia.
Jen: 40:07
justice for Ophelia. Don't do what Jules does. Ashley is the best friend you could ever ask for. Haha.
Lilly: 40:15
It's funny. I saw the estate. Being effectively swallowed up by the ocean is a good thing for everybody, but maybe that's just me being crazy.
Sara: 40:26
mean, if they had a nice library, that's tragic. I don't know if they had a nice library.
Jen: 40:32
Presumably they did. Jules doesn't visit it in the course of the novel. But in a way, because one of my favorite books is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, so in a way the estate being swallowed by the ocean is my Manderly brewing. Uh, spoilers. Uh,
Lilly: 40:53
Now, we spoiled Hamlet too, oh well.
Jen: 40:55
yeah, yeah, just everything's ruined. Oh, and that's the other thing, I didn't kill Jules's mother. So sometimes in my, like, marketing, tweeting, we'll call it, I've said that it has a lower body count than Hamlet, but also a higher body count than Hamlet, if you know what I mean.
Lilly: 41:15
And, I mean, Jules doesn't die either.
Jen: 41:17
Yeah, yes, that is true. Yeah, so lots of people are alive.
Lilly: 41:20
Yeah. No one is safe, but also some of them are, surprisingly.
Jen: 41:26
I mean, like, bodily, well, I don't want to say bodily even, they live.
Lilly: 41:31
Yeah.
Jen: 41:33
They live through it. That's, that's the safety.
Lilly: 41:35
Mm hmm. I have a very dumb words are weird.
Sara: 41:43
Please tell us about your words are weird, Lily.
Lilly: 41:45
So words, you know words, and how weird they are sometimes. I had an absolute brain fart while I was reading this book, because I was reading the e book, and is there, there is a physical version, right?
Jen: 41:56
Yes. Yeah, there's a hardcover.
Lilly: 41:57
I just ordered it too late for it to get to me in time, so I read the e book.
Jen: 42:02
Yeah, yeah, ebook and hardcover.
Lilly: 42:03
And at one point, a very wonderful metaphor, the machine made a noise like a dial up modem. It's very, very good. Unfortunately, my phone had a line break halfway through the word dial up, and I just, like, could not comprehend that D I A L U P was the word
Jen: 42:23
Oh no!
Lilly: 42:25
I was like, D A L U P. What's an allop? What is going on? It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.
Jen: 42:34
Oh no! It's just what our brains do with words sometimes, though. You, you counter it slightly differently and it's just gone. You're like, I don't know what that
Lilly: 42:43
Yeah, just like the concept of hyphenating words across lines for some reason just flew out of my mind.
Jen: 42:50
is. Because it doesn't make sense.
Lilly: 42:52
I was just, it was like hieroglyphics. I was like, What?
Sara: 42:57
I, I feel like a lot of times when words are hyphenated because of a line break, it's in a place that makes more sense to the two words. I mean, maybe that wouldn't have helped much in this particular case, but I don't know. I feel like if it had been after the L, it would have been more comprehensible.
Lilly: 43:14
Right, I would have seen the word dial and gone, oh yeah,
Jen: 43:16
Because it would have been actually two words instead of just the computer formatting it going, oh. That's how many characters we have.
Lilly: 43:23
yeah. Oh, and yeah, that was just a, I'm just telling on myself.
Jen: 43:30
It happens to everybody though.
Lilly: 43:32
it's just so like, how a very common word, but you slightly change the context and suddenly it's just like, I don't know, completely different language.
Jen: 43:42
Or that thing where you see a word too much and then you're, like, questioning what that word is, if you actually know it, if it's something else.
Lilly: 43:50
Yeah, semantic satiation. I looked that up once, and now it's, now that is stuck in my head forever, which is useful.
Jen: 43:57
It is.
Lilly: 43:58
But the word dial up fleeing my head when I needed it most was not useful.
Jen: 44:03
Well, and that's also one of those, as time goes on, is less and less familiar to people.
Lilly: 44:08
That's true, but it's such a like, perfect sensory, like, memory. Like, who can't hear that in their head immediately the second you say it? I guess, like you said, younger folk, but for anyone who has ever heard it.
Jen: 44:21
But it was always so loud. And it was coming, like, from the computer itself.
Lilly: 44:26
And grating. Like, they weren't, it's not a pretty sound.
Jen: 44:30
No. No, not in any way.
Sara: 44:36
Jen, thank you so much for coming on. Before we let you go, can you tell us a little bit about any current projects? I know you have your werewolf book coming out in March, which is very good. We've read it. I've read it.
Jen: 44:50
Yeah, so that's like the big publishing thing that I'm doing next year or self publishing thing I'm doing. What we in the business call a rapid release of my werewolf trilogy and I guess kind of by default the trilogy itself is called Learn to Howl because the first book is called Learn to Howl and I didn't think of another like separate bigger name So that's just what it is. And yeah, that's coming out I believe the first Tuesday in March is the 5th, and that's when I'm publishing it. And there will be pre orders when I have cover art, which is soon. Um, I, I have a very talented artist cousin who's doing those for me. And, and also next, you know, Run With the Haunted 7 is also coming next year on its normal day of October 31st. And I don't have a super pitch for the werewolf books, because I'm bad at pitching. So, that's one reason I queried ExitGhost, because I had a query. If I get an agent, I'll, you know, then they'll, they'll help me with pitching. No.
Sara: 45:51
Well, your, your werewolf book is a lot of fun. It's not super, super traditional werewolf, but, and it's, Lily and I were just discussing it a while ago. I don't remember when.
Lilly: 46:02
Long enough ago that I don't remember a lot of the conversation.
Sara: 46:05
Yeah, but, but we, we, we had a, we had a phrase for what it was and I wish that I could remember that, but it's very much like an action novel that just happens to have werewolves as the main characters. So it's, it's a lot of fun. I would definitely, once pre orders are up, I would definitely recommend listeners to go pre order it.
Jen: 46:25
Fantastic. Thank you.
Lilly: 46:26
And where can our listeners find that information?
Jen: 46:29
Well, it will be on my website, which is one of the most terrible words to, you know, try to say online for people to understand, but it's authorizedmusings. blogspot. com. And then similarly on Twitter, because in, you know, 2012 or whatever, when I was doing this, 2015, Having a kitschy little handle and having your branding be uniform was important. So my Twitter and then also my blue sky is authorized musing.
Sara: 46:58
Your blue sky has the G though, right?
Jen: 47:00
Oh, I believe it does. Yeah. Yeah. Blue sky gave you more characters. So I think it is actually authorized musings dot blue sky social, you know, however,
Lilly: 47:11
that long URL is, yeah.
Jen: 47:12
Things work. Yes. Thank you.
Lilly: 47:17
But I like to ask you to say it out loud just to watch authors panic.
Jen: 47:21
I could just spell it with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which nobody but me ever understands when I'm on the phone. No, J A is for Apple. No, Alpha.
Lilly: 47:33
Well, thank you again so much for joining us.
Jen: 47:35
Thank you for having me.
Lilly: 47:37
This has been so much fun. I'm glad to finally have a conversation with you.
Jen: 47:41
Yes,
Lilly: 47:42
And, uh, we'll probably be talking soon.
Jen: 47:44
I hope so.
Sara: 47:49
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.
Lilly: 47:53
Come disagree with us. We are on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, at FictionFansPod. You can also email us at FictionFansPod at gmail. com.
Sara: 48:05
If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.
Lilly: 48:13
We also have a Patreon, where you can support us and find our show notes and a lot of other nonsense.
Sara: 48:19
Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!
