636. Swordcrossed Cozy Romantasy with Freya Marske

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 636 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. If you were listening last week and you heard me misnumber the episode, sorry about that; yes, I did. This week my guest is Freya Marske. Freya Marske’s new book, Swordcrossed, is out this week, and she is joining us from the other side of the planet to talk about what she calls fantasy of manners, mercantile edition. We also talk about cozy romantasy, writing fanfic, and her new favorite show, Interview with the Vampire, so if you’re looking for something to watch, she has a recommendation for you.

I have a compliment this week, which makes me very happy. This compliment is for Lillian M.

Lillian, if asked to describe you, your closest friends would all say you are always dependable, endlessly fun to be with, and consistently the most interesting person in the room.

If you would like a compliment of your very own, or you would like to support this show, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. I don’t want to tell you how many takes I just had to do to get that URL out of my mouth. Wow! I’m having a bad talking day, but fortunately – [laughs] – the Patreon keeps me going when I have a bad talking day, and you also make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone, thanks to garlicknitter. Hi, garlicknitter! [Hi, Sarah! Hi, transcript readers! – gk] We have a lovely Discord, there are bonus episodes, and you get the free, full PDF scan of each issue of RT. If you would like to support this show, we would love to have you in our community. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Support for this episode comes from Lume Deodorant. It is finally fall, which is a season known for the greatest scents and cooler weather; thank goodness. I am excited to be wearing sweaters I haven’t seen since April, bundling up on chilly evenings when I walk the dog. What I don’t love is the unexpected overheating when I go inside a too-warm place or I myself become the too-warm place, which is why I really like Lume’s new sweat-control formula. And I have a special offer: new customers get fifteen percent off all Lume products with our exclusive code and link. Use code SARAH15 at lumedeodorant.com. That’s L-U-M-E D-E-O-D-O-R-A-N-T dot com. I really like Lume’s new whole-body deodorant plus sweat control. It’s the same seventy-two-hour odor control, now with seventy-two-hour sweat control as well, and like all of Lume’s products, it was developed by an OB/GYN and is formulated and powered by mandelic acid. Lume’s also popular with my younger teen, who, as you may have heard, absconded with several of my Starter Pack items. Speaking of, Lume’s Starter Pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant; cream tube deodorant; two free products of your choice, like a mini body wash and deodorant wipes; plus free shipping. As a special offer for listeners, new customers get fifteen percent off all Lume products with our exclusive code, and if you combine the fifteen percent off with the already discounted Starter Pack, that equals over forty percent off the Starter Pack. I do love a stackable coupon. Use code SARAH15 for fifteen percent off your first purchase at lumedeodorant.com. That’s SARAH15 at L-U-M-E D-E-O-D-O-R-N-T dot com. Thank you to Lume for sponsoring this episode, and thank you for supporting our advertisers.

All right, let’s connect to the other side of the planet, all the way from Australia! On with my podcast with Freya Marske.

[music]

Freya Marske: I’m Freya Marske, and I’m an author of fantasy, sci-fi, and romance and books that like to throw those genres into a blender, along with some other fun flavors like murder mysteries and horror and history.

Sarah: Yesss! All of my favorite things! Your incredible publicist wrote me an incredible pitch for this book. I would really love to hear what, how you describe this new book, which, by the way, I put the cover in my Slack for the Smart Bitches reviewers, and they all went the typed version of – [gasps] – Oh my God! It’s such a gorgeous cover.

Freya: Oh my God, the cover is amazing and, like, I could go on and on and on and on – and on and on for that.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: Like, oh my God! Like, I, there’s all this talk now, I think especially in the romance community, about how romance covers have changed and are changing and the, the genre signaling that they’re giving off, and I have lucked out completely with the US cover, because it is a painted clinch.

Sarah: Yep.

Freya: It is a proper, painted clinch cover, and I got to give a heap of input on the colors and the symbolism and the pose itself, so you get this beautiful, swoony thing. The artist is Cynthia Sheppard –

Sarah: Ooh!

Freya: – and I, the first time I saw it I was just like – [sings] – Ahhh! Romancelandia is going to be so happy!…

Sarah: Ohhh, yes, this will! Your, your last few covers, like the cover for the, the [Last] Binding trilogy, the covers for the Binding trilogy were gorgeous, and I think, I think set off a trend, because I’ve seen so many filigree-plus-silhouette covers since your books. I think –

Freya: Yeah!

Sarah: – your books are trendsetters.

Freya: I, I think so too, and I would not have thought that that was something that my books were going to do, but obviously it’s, it’s complete credit to the artist and the designers that there was something about that combination of sort of old-fashioned design, but really poppy colors that has really taken off in a certain type of historical fantasy and historical romantasy sphere, and it, it has become really good genre signaling, which I’m happy about.

Sarah: I, which I love, because I feel like one of the things that really makes readers angry and really upsets them is that the cover doesn’t always signal the interior, and what, what I find so interesting is there are so many readers who are, in contemporary romance especially, where there’s like rom-com-y looking covers with candy colors and fun poppy elements, and then the inside of the book is like, Let me extract your heart slowly through your ribs with a lot of angst. But readers who are into contemporary romance are like, That’s fine; I don’t need the cover to match the interior. But with fantasy and rrromantasy you, you want the cover vibes to match the book. It sounds like readers really want those to mesh, and not only do your covers for the Binding trilogy do that, but Swordcrossed has a clinch with swords! Hot damn!

Freya: Yes! And, like, then my editor, came up with the title Swordcrossed, ‘cause it’s gone through a few different titles. She was like, Look, this might be a bit silly, but it is a bit of a pun, and I was like, It works perfectly because, yes, it sort of, yeah, it, it sort of aligns with the idea of star-crossed, so it’s got that sort of like, you know, these are people who maybe there are some, some things that mean they shouldn’t be together. It’s an homage, a little bit, to Swordspoint, which was one of the earliest fantasy of manners fantasy books, and of course, as we have been telling everybody, the swords do cross repeatedly.

[Laughter]

Freya: So we knew that, like, the cover had to have the swords crossing –

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: – somehow.

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: And, and it does! It’s perfect!

Sarah: Well, I mean, it crosses, they, they cross but are wrapped around each other’s bodies. Like, it’s very, it, it has so much –

Freya: Oh yeah.

Sarah: – tension. The, the illustrator did such a great job. And Bramble’s covers generally have just been like, Wow! Damn!

Freya: Yeah, like, I think they, they know what they’re doing in, in that, in the romance sphere. Like, they’re, they’re really coming out of the gate with a bang, so, yeah! Very happy to be part of, part of Bramble. I think they’re going to be doing some really fun stuff.

Sarah: So what is your elevator pitch for this book? What will readers find in this book?

Freya: Yeah, it is my, is a departure from the Edwardian historical fantasy books that was the Last Binding trilogy. This one is a standalone fantasy of manners which is set in a city controlled by trade guilds and big merchant houses and their allegiance to their patron gods. And it’s about a young man called Matti who sets out to hire a swordsman because he needs a duelist at his arranged marriage to a rich woman who’s going to save his fail-, his failing family business. And the other main character is the duelist who he ends up hiring through a meet-disaster and tragicomedy of errors, Luca, who is an out-of-town con artist trying to make a new life for himself, and Luca ends up agreeing to give Matti sword lessons in the lead-up to the wedding in exchange for Matti not immediately exposing him as a criminal.

Sarah: Sword…

Freya: So that’s the setup. [Laughs]

Sarah: Sword lessons.

Freya: But it’s – sword lessons! Of – yeah, yeah, in quotation marks. So real sword lessons with real swords.

Sarah: Good, good euphemism. Big fan.

Freya: Yeah, but, I mean, I think the romance trope that it came the most out of, honestly, is the I’m engaged to a perfectly nice person, but I might be falling for my wedding vendor.

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: And my fa-, my, my own personal favorite of that is the movie Imagine Me & You? Which was like one of the early sapphic rom-coms.

Sarah: Yep!

Freya: And, Oh no! On the day of my wedding, I meet this really hot florist, and maybe I’m more queer than I thought, but I’m actually married now! I’m just starting that dilemma before the wedding.

Sarah: I mean, it makes, it makes it a little bit easier to undo the, the first part when you haven’t, like, legally –

Freya: Yeah!

Sarah: – committed yourself.

Freya: Yeah, but also does give you this great, you know, deadline by which shit has to get sorted out, and the prospect of having, you know, dramatic, climactic showdown at a wedding, which I always love in a book. Sooo, yeah, that, that’s the backbone of it. It’s obviously, you know, it’s got secret identity, it’s got forced proximity, and it does have a plot that’s, you know, corporate espionage and intrigue in the wool industry.

Sarah: Oh, as you do!

Freya: Yeah!

Sarah: You mentioned fantasy of manners. This is not a term I’ve come across, but I love it very much. I’ve never heard those words together before, and I’m really excited.

Freya: Yeah! Okay, so I think it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no magic, but it often means…

Sarah: Christ, it has its own Wikipedia page. Sarah, you need to get with the program. Beg your pardon, everybody!

Freya: [Laughs] Yeah, look, I have not looked at the Wikipedia page, so my definition may be a little bit different to whatever the official word is.

Sarah: I’m going to like yours best; it doesn’t matter. [Laughs]

Freya: But to me, this sort of ties into what a lot of romantasy is doing at the moment –

Sarah: Yes!

Freya: – where the, I think readers are going to talk about this, about the idea of what makes stakes.

Sarah: Yes.

Freya: Because I think – so this is something that romance as a genre already knows very well, which is that personal and emotional stakes are high stakes to the characters involved.

Sarah: Yes.

Freya: So, like, what if your family business fails? What if you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re ignoring that little voice saying it’s a mistake? What if you let down your loved ones? What if the person you are is not going to be enough? What if you’re engaged to the wrong person? You know, those are huge stakes to an individual. But within the world of fantasy, and especially, like, in romantasy as well, the fantasy side of things comes with different genre expectations. And so how I’m describing Swordcrossed is mercantile fantasy of manners. And I think if you say that, people will understand this is not I must assassinate the crown prince to free my people and not let him know I am a secret prophesized sorceress, you know, or two dragon-riding houses go to war for the fate of the world. You can have romantasy that does that, but those are wider stakes. But I don’t think they are necessarily higher to the characters.

Sarah: Agree.

Freya: So Swordcrossed, like a lot of fantasy of manners, means that a lot more of the worldbuilding, a lot more of the stakes, a lot more of the day-to-day on-the-page stuff is to do with society and individuals than it is to do with politics. I think it will feel more familiar to readers of historical romance than readers of epic fantasy. It’s just that the trappings and the social and the religious worldbuilding in the book aren’t Regency or Gilded Age or medieval; they’re something new.

Sarah: I love that explanation! Thank you very much for making that so clear. But I had, I had never heard that term before to describe something that I’ve read like a million times. I love when a genre term comes up at the end. Like, I feel like rrromantasy – you have to roll the R in my world, because it’s like rrromantasy – one of the things that is frustrating about the term romantasy is that it’s so much of a marketing term that we haven’t really pinned down what it means, and so people have different impressions –

Freya: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – of what that means, but fantasy of manners makes total sense! I feel like I’ve arrived at the term after having read like dozens of them.

Freya: My favorite examples of people say What is fantasy of manners? Is Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, which is like –

Sarah: Yep.

Freya: – again, it’s a sort of sword-y, politics, you know, people meeting and gossiping over hot chocolate.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Freya: And a book called, no, Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton –

Sarah: Yes!

Freya: – is complete fantasy of manners, because it’s, it’s an Anthony Trollope book mashed up with a Jane Austen book mashed up with a Charles Dickens book, but about dragons.

Sarah: With some dragons.

Freya: With some dragons! Like, and the fact that they’re dragons is just, it’s just worldbuilding. The stakes are all Who do I marry? Who inherits this fortune? Can I support my family on this, no, terrible wage. Like, it’s all social, and to me, that is what fantasy of manners is. It’s just the trappings are fantasy.

Sarah: Of course, and who made my scales turn pink?

Freya: Yeah. Oh! I, I love Tooth and Claw so much…

Sarah: Oh, me too!

Freya: – it earlier this year. [Laughs]

Sarah: So, okay, (a) thank you for in-, in-, introducing me to this fabulous term for this thing I didn’t know had a word for it? I love that about genre!

Now, your lovely publicist Caro, who I love so much, wrote in her pitch letter that this book was inspired by the origins of the best man at a wedding. Okay, so first of all, how did you discover this awesome piece of historical trivia that, again, I did not know until I read this pitch letter? I am learning so many things; it’s amazing. How did you discover this cool piece of trivia?

Freya: Now, I wish I had a much fancier origin story for this. I wish I could say I was trolling through the dusty stacks of a library and I picked up a leather-bound book –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: – but the truth is somehow a bit more fitting with the tone of the book, and the truth is I stumbled across it in a BuzzFeed listicle –

Sarah: As you do.

Freya: – about –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: – about where do these wedding traditions come from? Because of that, I do have to ask readers to take the complete truth of this with a bit of a grain of salt. I could be doing a lot of anachronism, but the great thing about fantasy is it doesn’t actually have to be historically accurate; you can just take the idea. And the idea was that the best man was traditionally, back when dueling was a thing, the person among your friends who was the best with a sword, and this was in case somebody else turned up with a sword and decided to hijack the wedding and take the bride away at sword’s point.

Sarah: As you do.

Freya: And so you had to, and you had to have somebody there who would step in with his sword and say, No! This wedding is going to go ahead. And that idea, to me, was so much fun, and I thought, Okay, what kind of society/structural superstition would make that something that was actually – [laughs] – in danger of happening and a required position at your wedding? And if you were somebody who was very busy running a wool industry house and most of your friends were also merchants and nobody really had time for sword fighting, then this would be a job that you hired someone to do. And once I had that idea, the entire book just kind of spiraled and unraveled from there, and I thought, This is fun. This is fun; I’m going to dig into this.

Sarah: Your whole book is based on this little tiny piece of wedding trivia from a BuzzFeed listicle, but it, but it really fits in the, in the context because you have two people who are contractually obligated to each other, but then –

Freya: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – oh darn, there’s pants feelings. Oh crap.

Freya: Ohhh nooo. Exactly! And so I thought, Well, yeah, there’s, there’s the level, the layer of This person is someone I have employed to do something for my wedding –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – but then, due to the nature of how they meet and the nature of who Matti is and what his family’s doing and who Luca is and who Luca is pretending to be, there’s all these extra layers of sort of deception and complication, and when the pants feelings come on, yeah, I wanted it to feel complicated.

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: Like, this was not something that there was going to be an easy way out of. And then I just threw them an espionage plot to, and a sabotage plot, to just, you know, give them a shared project to creep around people’s houses and get stuck in wardrobes and all the fun things –

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: – along the way.

Sarah: Yeah, you know, sprinkle it on like a little saffron. I think that’s one of the reasons why I always gravitate towards books where there’s a lot of internal conflict, because I tend to relate much more to internal conflict between characters to external conflict. Like, I don’t care if the world’s going to end if you don’t bone? Bone or don’t bone! It’s up to you. If the world ends, somebody else should have done their job better. It should not rest on you going to Bone Town. But, like, if I go to Bone Town my world ends? Okay, tell me everything. I want to know all the things.

Freya: Yeah. Absolutely, and so, like, I always knew that Matti was the kind of person for whom the stakes would feel like that, like the last, like, for him, the big thing is, I have always put my family and my, our business first, and it’s not been enough.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: And so now I’m being offered this thing that’s just fun, that might be something just for me, but he has this enormous fear that if he takes this thing that is being offered that is just for him –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – that the world will end! Like, he can’t. That’s, that’s not who he is, and he has to move past that, and then Luca obviously has his own internal problems and misconceptions about himself, and the world will end if he is seen for who he truly is.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: And so you put those two together and then, yeah, everything gets messy.

Sarah: If I’m seen, the world will end. If I put myself first, the world will end. And that’s, I think that resonates –

Freya: Yeah.

Sarah: – with a lot of readers, especially because people who go about the world as women, we, we are, we are taught, like, we have to put ourselves last, last, last. Everyone else comes before us. We must put everything else first –

Freya: Ohhh yeah –

Sarah: – honor and family and –

Freya: – and is no –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – yep, yep. I have been describing Matti as the rare male form of eldest daughter syndrome.

Sarah: Yeess!

Freya: [Indistinct]

Sarah: Exactly eldest daughter syndrome. Hundred percent yeah. Like, if I do not shoulder all of the burdens and put my needs last, then everyone else’s lives will be terrible, and it will be my fault.

Freya: Yeah, that’s Matti to a T, and that’s what he has to work through in order to find love.

Sarah: Oh! I love –

Freya: Or accept love.

Sarah: – love a good internal conflict. Now, what’s interesting is that –

Freya: Yeah.

Sarah: – one of the things that’s repeated so often in this pitch, I think in part to – and if I’m, correct me if I’m wrong – to differentiate this book a little bit from the Binding trilogy, all of the materials stress that it is not high stakes, this book, but it is high emotion. And I wanted to ask you –

Freya: Hmmm.

Sarah: – about that difference, because as we were talking about genre names with rrromantasy, the stakes can vary widely, but I think when readers talk about that, they’re looking for books with incredibly high stakes in the world and for the characters, and what you have is –

Freya: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – a book that is not high stakes, but high emotion. How did you navigate –

Freya: Yeah.

Sarah: – that difference, and how do you perceive that difference? Because, I mean, my impressions of genre could be completely wrong. Like, I just learned what fantasy of manners was like twenty-five minutes ago, so, you know.

Freya: Yeah, and again, I think it is a marketing thing, so –

Sarah: Oh, hundred percent.

Freya: – when I was saying, you know, like, when you say to somebody, Oh, this book is being marketed as low stakes, you know, so there are some people who will look at that and go, Yeah, but if there’s no stakes, that, that means there’s no conflict; that means there’s no tension in the book. It’s literally just people being happy and having tea and falling in love, and there’s no barriers.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: But because it exists under this grander umbrella of rrromantasy, you, saying low stakes is our way of attempting to signal that there isn’t assassination of crown princes; there isn’t fates of the world; there’s no demon king to be defeated. At no point in Swordcrossed really do you fear for anybody’s life. Like, you don’t think anyone’s going to die; it’s not that kind of conflict. The conflict is that romance-focused internal, you know, Who, who am I if I’m not everything to my family? Who am I if I’m not pretending to be someone else? But also, you know, you know, Is it moral of my father to have abandoned our family business in order to pursue very admirable, noble, political goals elsewhere and left everything on my shoulders? Can I blame him for that when I actually agree with everything that he’s doing? And is it unreasonable of my family to expect me to fill this position that I’ve always said I will fill, but I’ve now discovered I’m completely unsuited for, and I’ve coped by running away? Like, it’s all nitty-gritty. The fates are fates of, you know, companies and families and individuals, and it feels enormously high stakes to the people involved.

Sarah: Of course!

Freya: That’s, that’s where it fits in the romantasy genre, and so people have been describing it as cozy, because, I think, cozy is another marketing term for the stakes only go so high when it comes to the wideness of the world.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: And when I wrote it, romantasy wasn’t really a thing. So this book is the first book I ever wrote. When we tried to sell it originally, we couldn’t sell it because romantasy didn’t exist, so we sent it to a lot of fantasy houses that said, Well, there’s not really any magic, and it’s got a lot of sex scenes in it –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: – and the stakes just aren’t really very high, so what is this? And then we sent it to a lot of romance places that said, Well, it’s not historical romance, because it’s set in another world, but it’s not fantasy romance because nobody turns into a dragon. What is this – [laughs] – exactly? Because Legends & Lattes, which really broke open the cozy, low-stakes fantasy space –

Sarah: Yes, it did.

Freya: – which, and again, it came from self-publishing, and it was a self-published book that proved a market and then got picked up by the mainstream.

Sarah: And it was a self-published book that proved a market written by an audiobook narrator who had read hundreds of the other books. Reading a book written by somebody who demonstrates a really high degree of fluency? There’s a lot – like, the minute you can establish, like, okay, this, this author knows what I’m talking about; this, so this person has read the same things that I have. Okay, let’s go in a new direction?

Freya: Yeah, and I think it, it broke out and everyone was like, Okay, this is something that we kind of have seen before, but not like this, and not pushed by a mainstream publisher like this, and now cozy romantasy is such a huge thing, and I think, like, coming from a different part of the internet and a different type of expertise, it is one of the reasons why people will watch a very, like, violent or exciting or, you know, sci-fi show and then go and read a coffee shop AU –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – on AO3, because sometimes you want the internal feelings –

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: – to be as high as the stakes get. Sometimes you’re just not in the mood for life and death or, you know, things like that. You just want the characters to have feelings, and maybe somebody is at risk of losing their coffee shop, and that’s about as high as the stakes are going to get, and that’s what you want, and you know where to turn for that. And this is just publishing finding that niche.

Sarah: Yes! Exactly! One of my favorite little tiny, tiny fics that I’ve seen recommended a hundred hundred times is Steve and Natasha go to IKEA. The stakes are –

Freya: Yeah!

Sarah: – they’re going to IKEA. I’m here for your –

Freya: Yeah!

Sarah: – friendship tension and IKEA! And especially right now, the whole world is so violent. We want that cozy reassurance that our emotions matter and our stakes matter and the things that we’re worried about matter, but we don’t necessarily want to enter a fantasy world where And the Fate of the World Hangs on Whether or Not You Bone!

Freya: Yeah. It’s one of those things that I, I always, I’m thinking back. You know, I obviously didn’t intend to have my debut trilogy come out in a pandemic, and I was someone who had my debut come out in the first year of the pandemic –

Sarah: Yep.

Freya: – and at the time a lot of interviewers asked me, because I was pretty open about coming from fanfiction –

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: – as a background, and I think that’s something that, you know, romance is very used to by now, but at –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – this time in fantasy, especially, it was something that not a lot of people were open about if it was, was their background. And people would say, What is it about your books that you think people mean when they say it reads like fanfiction in a complimentary way?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Freya: And to me it really was that fanfiction fills those little gaps. Like, the MCU movie is not going to show you Natasha and Steve going to IKEA. You know, it’s not going to show you long, you know, a lot of interiority and a lot of focus on these relationships in quiet moments and the sex that might be happening somewhere, whereas my books, I think, because I came from fanfiction, I was very used to filling the gaps, and so everything ends up on page. Like, all the feelings, all the interiority, all the sex. And for fantasy readers, that was something that was a little bit different. For romance readers, that’s normal; that’s what a book is. A book is interiority and feelings and quiet moments and sex scenes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: And I think because it hit during the pandemic, people were looking for stories that had that level of comfort and maybe the stakes don’t have to be too high, and because that was a fantasy trilogy, there were higher stakes. There was, you know, the fate of magic in Britain, and people do get hurt and killed, but Swordcrossed really just says, You don’t necessarily need to fear for someone’s life in order to fear for them. You know, you can be on their side and want them to be happy and see that what they are up against are these obstacles that seem enormous. But it, it has that same feeling of you’re in safe hands –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – that, that fanfic, I think, does give people.

Sarah: So this was your first book!

Freya: Yeah, I wrote it when I was in a bit of a funk thinking that the book that I thought was going to be my first book was never going to work. That one is very much only half started; it’s in a drawer somewhere. I don’t know if I’ll ever revisit it, ‘cause it was much more of an ambitious attempt to write. It was like a contemporary/sci-fi heist ensemble thing. And then I had the idea for this book, you know, coming across the listicle and thinking, Well, that would make a really fun romance, and I thought, Okay. No stakes: you can just write this for yourself; it can be really self-indulgent. Prove to yourself that you can get to the end of a book. Because that, for me, was the big thing, ‘cause I had written heaps of fanfiction. When I was in my teens I had half-started a heap of novels; then I discovered fanfiction and was like, Oh, this can be short. Yes! And so I, I knew how to finish something and put it online and be like, That’s done.

Sarah: Yes.

Freya: And as I, and as I did that, as I wrote fanfiction for fifteen years, my stories would get longer and a bit more complicated.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Freya: Like the AUs that I developed, like, I was having more fun with the worldbuilding and the original characters, and so I, I could feel that I was ready, that I’d given myself enough of a toolkit that I could write –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – a novel. But it still was this big thing in my head, like, finishing a novel. And there’s everyone out there has a, has a novel in them, but most people don’t finish them, and so I thought, I will just come with this, like, relatively silly idea that’s just all fun, and it’s going to be a romance, and I’ll write all the stuff that I love writing in fanfic, and it’ll have sex scenes, and it’ll have, like, silly tropes that I really love, and that will allow me to get to the end of the draft –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – and prove to myself that I can write a book, and that’s what it did! And so I was, I got to the end and was like, Okay! I can write a book. Okay, I’ve proven to myself I can do this. I had a lot of friends who were sort of similar to me, either very early in their careers or trying to make the transition from fanfic to the traditional publishing, and so I sent it to a few of them. I got quite a lot of feedback, I edited it, and I hadn’t, at the time, written it necessarily with the thought that it would be something that I would seek representation for or try to publish, but I got enough positive feedback that that’s what I did, and I did get my agent through it. I had a really good querying experience and got an agent for it, but then, again, we just ran into this romantasy didn’t exist yet problem. But I’m really glad that I wrote it, obviously, and I’m really glad that we stuck it in a drawer and just waited for the market to change, because I think, you know, so much of publishing –

Sarah: You were right.

Freya: – publishing is just luck –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – and timing, you know? Got to have the perseverance –

Sarah: Yes! Absolutely it is.

Freya: – you’ve got to have the ability to finish things, but then after that it’s really just, are you hitting, you know, the double skipping ropes at the right time that you’re not going to get whacked in the head and you’re going to find the rhythm of something? And maybe – so, you know, when I first wrote it, it wasn’t the right time. Maybe if I’d written it five years from now, the romantasy peak would be ending, and it wouldn’t be the right time. So I was just lucky that we kept it in a drawer so that when I had an established relationship with a publishing house, when I had an established readership, it was, just happened to be the perfect time to pull it out and say, Now the world is right, is right for this.

Sarah: I have your rrromantasy here!

Freya: Yes, here you go!

Sarah: And even better because, based on the strength of the trilogy, you, you already have an audience of people who are like, Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh! More, yay! Hurray! I’m here for it!

Freya: Yeah, exactly! And it’s obviously, it’s, it’s very similar in terms of voice –

Sarah: ‘Course!

Freya: – and writing style –

Sarah: Definitely.

Freya: – too! My existing trilogy, because I was writing A Marvellous Light when we were on submission with Swordcrossed –

Sarah: Yep.

Freya: – and getting that feedback about What genre is this? So A Marvellous Light was me still writing the kind of book that I want to write, but directly targeting a particular genre. So I knew that was historical fantasy that we had just slid a very strong queer romance into, rather than it not be –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – sure which one it was.

Sarah: I’m so charmed –

Freya: And now, of course, I can, I can say I have a romantasy trilogy, and now I have this new standalone romantasy; they’re just slightly different flavors.

Sarah: And it’s, it’s truly useful to look at fanfic as muscle-building. You know, you’re, you’re building the mus-, the muscles –

Freya: Yeah.

Sarah: – to write? And, and endurance and you’re, if you’re updating, if you’re writing and updating the, each piece in a serial fashion, you’re learning to, you know, create endurance? But you’re also learning beats, and it’s a wonderful foundation for basically learning how to do this. Like, it makes total sense. Like you said, romance has been very familiar with fanfic writers coming into romance for a long time because, obviously, a lot of places –

Freya: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – leave out the romance part. They just skip from the first meet to the boning, and all of us are like, Waitwaitwait! Nonononononono! We need the, we need the smoochy part! Where’s, where’s the smoochy part? Why no smoochy part?

Freya: Exactly! And then you get all these fanfics that are ninety percent smoochy parts.

Sarah: Nothing but smoochy part.

Freya: And then people, and then people realize, Oh, actually, there is a whole publishing genre –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Freya: – that is ninety percent smoochy parts. And it took me a hilariously long time to realize that, because I was such a science fiction and fantasy girly.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: And grew up –

Sarah: We’re all about the smoochy parts.

Freya: – with a bit of that – yep!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: – that internalized misogyny that was like, Oh no, romance is for silly girls and that’s, you know, they’re just silly books that don’t really have any literary merit. And then luckily here I met some people who are like, No, that’s entirely wrong.

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: Here are some examples. You know, going by the fanfiction that you read and write, I think you would actually like romance, and someone threw a K. J. Charles book at my head and, you know, that was history. The great thing about being somebody who straddles the fantasy and the romance lines is that I now get offered ARCs to do blurbs for from both sides –

Sarah: Woohoo!

Freya: – of that romantasy coin, so I sometimes can sort of, if I see a romance that’s going to be coming out that I can sort of touch my agent gently on the shoulder and be like, Can, can I, can I get in on, on that, please?

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: ‘Cause it is hard in Australia. Like, eBooks is what, I think a lot of people who only just been getting romances as eBooks? My local bookshop has only just in the last couple of years had an actual romance shelf.

Sarah: Wow!

Freya: And even then it’s all the, the UK Commonwealth editions tend to be quite different to the American editions?

Sarah: Yes.

Freya: And we don’t have mass market paperbacks.

Sarah: No, it’s all trade!

Freya: I know that you don’t have as much of it anymore.

Sarah: It’s all trade –

Freya: It’s all trade.

Sarah: – and it’s all like twenty-five bucks!

Freya: Yeah, it’s all trade, it’s quite expensive, and yeah, because there’s no mass market, there isn’t that lower price point. But we also just have less fun covers, I think.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: Like, they, there’s something about the Commonwealth market that they just don’t like people on covers? And they especially don’t like realistic photos. Like, the, the illustrated stuff is really, really much more common. Like Sarah MacLean’s books, she has the most amazing American covers, like especially her, her most recent series; they’re just these incredible photos of these incredible women with these dresses and these poses, and then you, you get the, the UK edition, and it’s just very tame and pastel-y and –

Sarah: There’s a castle.

Freya: – it’ll be like, Oh! It says, and it says Bombshell! And there’s this, like, lady in a bonnet. I’m like, What are you doing?! Like –

Sarah: Where the hell’s the bomb? In her hat? No! [Laughs]

Freya: Where’s the bomb? Yeah, you know. So – [laughs] – look, you can get the books. It’s just, we are just starting to, I think, recognize it as a, as a genre that is worth putting on –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – shelves.

Sarah: Now, I want to ask you about Interview with the Vampire, because I know you have many thoughts on this, and I have not watched it yet, and I would like to ask you why should I immediately start watching Interview with the Vampire?

Freya: Oh my God. It, it’s so incredible. So –

Sarah: This is the section of your notice that has the most bullet points, right?

Freya: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just like…

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: And now rant! Loudly and at length. Yeah, ‘cause just finished watching the second season of the Interview with the Vampire show. So are you familiar with the books at all? Did you ever read – yeah, yeah.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely!

Freya: Okay.

Sarah: Absolutely. And I am, I’m very familiar with the late Anne Rice, who hated bloggers?

Freya: Hated bloggers, hated fanfiction sooo much! [Laughs]

Sarah: Hated fanfiction, hated bloggers, and I read those books like they were going to be taken away from me.

Freya: Yeah. So, look, I think one of my favorite things about the show, like, it’s beautifully made, it’s so queer, it’s so intelligent, but you can tell that behind it all there is this enormous love for how bonkers and how heightened the Anne Rice books are.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: Because it feels like one of the main things that they took from the books as, instead, well, as well as taking the, you know, vampirism as queer sex metaphor and making it What if both? What if there were vampires –

Sarah: Yeah!

Freya: – but they were also having queer sex? Is the fearlessness. Like, you get this sense that I don’t get from a lot of media these days that they are just going to be creatively fearless, and I find it really inspiring. And, you know, again, it, like, smooshes together all these genres. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter discussions about, Oh, you know, this is, is this a romance or not? And I think this is one of those things were you say, Look, it’s not, this is not a simple story. They’re not interested in telling a capital R Romance.

Sarah: No.

Freya: It’s a glorious, Gothic car crash.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: Yeah, there’s a lot of genuine love between all of these characters, but there are no guarantees; there’s not going to be any simple happy endings. It is about messy people doing terrible things to one another. Like the, yeah, the writing’s amazing. The acting and the casting is just incredible across the board. I don’t think it’s a, I wouldn’t say it’s a blanket recommendation, ‘cause it is, obviously, quite violent. There’s probably quite a few trigger warnings in there. If you enjoyed Hannibal, the TV show, you will enjoy this. If you liked Black Sails –

Sarah: Hmm.

Freya: – the TV show, you would enjoy this. It’s just, it makes me very happy, and it’s, it’s the kind of show that is going to reward rewatching, ‘cause it’s doing a lot of things with unreliable memory and unreliable narration, and the framing of it, this idea of the interviewer, is contacted, you know, fifty years later, and the vampire says, Come back; I want a do-over. This time I’m going to tell you the whole story. And so you have this framing device of the interview being redone and the interviewer as an older, older man who’s just taking no shit and gives no fucks and is going to find the holes in the narrative and dig his hands into them and expose them and question them. And –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – it’s just, it’s, it’s so good. And I, I don’t know how they found Sam Reid, the Australian actor who plays Lestat, but he has basically just been waiting his whole life to be the vampire Lestat, and he is having the most fun that anyone in a television show has ever had.

Sarah: [Laughs] More, more fun than all the characters in Our Flag Means Death? ‘Cause they were having a real good time.

Freya: They were, but I think for, for Sam Reid you can tell it’s like this character is the one character of his life. Like, he has always –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – he gives all these interviews where he’s like, I love being, I always love vampires! He’s got pictures of himself wearing tiny little plastic fangs as a kid. He read the books –

Sarah: Aw!

Freya: – like, he was ready. He walked onto that set and became Lestat, which works because Lestat is such a heightened, ridiculous, performative character –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Freya: – that –

Sarah: Lestat is high on his own supply all the time.

Freya: Yep. But, yeah, all the actors are, are wonderful, and I think the fandom is just having a really, really fun time. So you should watch it, and then you should tell me all of your feelings.

Sarah: I, I love watching a fandom watch a show? Like, it’s so joyful. It’s like watching a fanfic proliferate on AO3 or, or watching a fandom on Tumblr be like, I’ve got all the GIF sets! Stay right there; here they come! Watching a fandom online in some, some venue, whether it’s Bluesky or, or Tumblr or wherever, discover a show and be like, You don’t understand! It’s so much fun! That is the most delightful part of being online for me? Like, I love that so much.

Freya: Yeah, and I think my, I’m still, to my detriment possibly, spending time on the site formerly known as Twitter. The algorithm has worked out I am interested in Interview with the Vampire, and there is a small but extremely funny fandom –

Sarah: Yes.

Freya: – on Twitter, and so, like, an, an episode will come out, and there will be this endless stream of absolutely hilarious tweets, and then of course someone will gather them all and put them on Tumblr for everyone else to see.

Sarah: Obvs.

Freya: Yeah. It is the first show in a very long time that has made me want to write fanfiction. I don’t even know what kind of fanfiction yet, but I just, I have this great bubbling sense of that creative fearlessness that the show is doing –

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: – and I want to play. And I know Anne Rice would turn five times in her grave, but I want to play!

Sarah: I also love media that refills your creative well and makes you want to create in response to it? I think –

Freya: Mmm.

Sarah: – there’s no greater compliment than reading something and being like, I want to create in response to this? So when you see something like Interview with the Vampire doing the same thing, having lots and lots of fun within the structure of the original story, it is so exciting and fun! And it’s like –

Freya: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – Oh, this is not made to appeal to a bunch of executives in pleated khaki pants who control the budget. This is like, We’re going all the way out. The chain is long gone; we are off the chain.

Freya: Yeah.

Sarah: We were off the chain like five years ago. It’s so fun!

Freya: I got to why I compare Interview with the Vampire to Hannibal ‘cause I got the same sense. That’s why the fandom had such a good time with that, because you got the same sense that someone had been given permission to just fuck around with the…

Sarah: Yes!

Freya: – material to their heart’s content, and you watched it so, yeah, How did they get away with that? Like, how did somebody not step in and be like, No, no, that’s not allowed. And, you know, they just balls-to-the-wall had an amazing time.

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Freya: And yeah –

Sarah: So much fun!

Freya: So much fun, so –

Sarah: I love that!

Freya: Yep. I think you’ll get that out of Interview with the Vampire.

Sarah: I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you wish to tell people about?

Freya: So I just finished a reread of Alison Bechdel’s three graphic novel memoirs. So I think most people are most familiar with Fun Home, because that’s the one that was turned into a Broadway musical –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Freya: – and that’s her reflection on her relationship with her father and the fact that her father was a closeted queer man, and her own sexuality. She then followed it up with a book called Are You My Mother?, which is about, more about her relationship with her mother. And my favorite of her three is the most recent one, which is called The Secret to Superhuman Strength, and this is her telling a very selective part of her life story through all the decades of her life, up to almost sixty, through the lens of the exercise crazes that she got very attached to, and, like, what was she doing? And she relates, you know, how she was moving her body and the kinds of exercise that she threw herself into, into her creativity and her creative work and her relationships with, you know, the people around her, both her family and her romantic relationships, and she has this incredible gift for not just the art of it, but also the writing, and it’s just, she’s so vulnerable and so honest, but she ties it into these bigger ideas and into the lives of other historical figures, while also, like, doing very funny drawings of herself walking into a Patagonia for the first time and falling in love with ath-, you know, outdoor athleisure wear. And I hadn’t read them for a while. I own all three of them, but just reading them back to back again gave me this incredible feeling of inspiration at the different types of creativity that are out there and the different kinds of storytelling that are possible.

Sarah: Yeah.

Freya: So I really, if you have any interest at all in, you know, interesting memoir and, because they’re graphic novels they’re also very visually interesting, so I recommend those highly.

In terms of books that are recently out that are a little bit more romance-y, I want to shout out Lady Eve’s Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow. I love this book. I read this book – full disclosure: Rebecca is one of my oldest fandom friends, and so she and I sort of came up at the same time. I read this book in its sort of prototypical form before it was published, and then I read it again in its final form. It’s a sapphic screwball romance set in space, and it also has a con artist main character like, like Swordcrossed, who sets out to get revenge on a rich boy who broke her sister’s heart, but instead –

Sarah: Yep.

Freya: – finds herself falling for his sister. And again, it’s all secret identities and mercantile hijinks. There’s a whole subplot about kosher duck. You know, fancy –

Sarah: As you do.

Freya: – hotties in space, motorcycles. It’s heaps and heaps of fun. So yeah, if you, if you like sort of screwball comedy romance and you don’t mind this, the trappings of space opera to give it more fun, I would recommend that a lot.

Sarah: Where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Freya: As I said, I am still on Twitter – which has the other name that nobody uses – and I am on Instagram and Bluesky as well, and all three of those is just @freyamarske – all one word. I do have an infrequent newsletter that’s mostly about new book announcements or new books on sale, and you can sign up for that at my website, which is freyamarske.com!

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this interview. It has been such a delight to talk to you again?

Freya: Yes! Oh, if, if I can have, like, come out of it having made you want to watch Interview with the Vampire, then my work here is done!

Sarah: Well, I mean, it is a, it is a recurring theme that when you show up on a show, or show up on my show, you tell me about watch another show, which is fine!

Freya: What did I get you into last time?

Sarah: So the last time we talked about A League of Their Own.

Freya: Oh! Yes! Oh!

Sarah: Which, which, which got hosed by, by Amazon?

Freya: That’s what…

Sarah: Got hosed?

Freya: Incredibly sad. But –

Sarah: Speaking of shows where people were just balls-to-the-wall having a good old time –

Freya: Mm.

Sarah: – that show was just perfection.

Freya: Yep. Well, at least we know that there are two seasons of Interview with the Vampire, and it has been renewed for a third, and the…

Sarah: Thank goodness.

Freya: – and they’ve said that the third season is going to be The Vampire Lestat, so they’re going to get rock star Lestat.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Freya: It’s going to be fun.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Freya for joining me. I am still thinking about Freya’s comment that the plot of Swordcrossed might seem low stakes to an epic fantasy reader, but very familiar to a historical romance reader because the stakes are internal to the character more than external to the world, and I think that’s such an interesting way to look at differences between fantasy and what we’re calling romantasy and also historical romance. It’s all very interesting.

Also, since we recorded this, Freya has had her first child. Congratulations to you and your family, Freya. I hope everyone is well and healthy and you have a wonderful library ahead of you.

I will have links to everything we talked about, books and television shows, and I will have links to the book that is out if you would like to find your own copy of Swordcrossed. It is out this week!

As always, I end with a terrible joke. This week’s joke comes from DivineKittyCat, and is fabulous! Are you ready?

How do you make a bouncy waterbed?

Give up? How do you make a bouncy waterbed?

You use spring water.

[Laughs] That’s so bad! I like it! Thank you, DivineKittyCat; you’re terrific.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week for ads and features from October 1988. Woohoo!

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

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