Hello and welcome to Big Gay Energy.
I'm Caitlin. And I'm Fiora.
Come along with us while we dive into the fun and nuances of
queer media. Representation matters, and
we're. Here to talk about it.
Cheers, queers. We're back with another super
fun interview today. Today we are talking to James L
Sutter, the talented author of The Ghost of Us.
Welcome to the podcast, James. Hey thanks for having me.
We are so excited you took the time to talk to us today about
this really awesome book. And yeah, so for those at home
who may not have read The Ghost of Us would be familiar with it,
would you mind sharing with them what the book is about?
Yeah, so The Ghost of Us is a supernatural sapphic young adult
romance all about a teenage ghost hunter who finally finds a
ghost. But it turns out the ghost isn't
willing to help her unless she first takes his little sister to
prom. So it's sort of a supernatural
fake dating. There's lots of hijinks, but
also kind of coming of age story.
That's one of the best setups of all time.
Imagine being blackmailed into dating somebody by a ghost.
Like it's just amazing. Right.
It's like I when I was just initially pitching it, I was
like, OK, so it's like 10 things I hate about you plus Ghost,
right. I realized those those
references are both pretty dated, but it still works like.
Classics OK. Exactly.
And so this is my this is my second queer young adult
romance. My first one, Dark Hearts, came
out last year and was a gay young adult romance all about
falling in love with the boy who stole your chance to be a rock
star. Damn, another amazing premise.
I thought that one. Thank you.
I think we know a book we need to read next.
Literally. So what inspired you to write
The Ghost of Us? Well, I mean, so it's
interesting because I for folks who don't know my pivot into
young adults, you know, queer young adult romance was a
surprise to everyone, especially me because I've spent the last
I've been writing professionally for 20 years now.
And for most of that time I worked in science fiction and
fantasy and predominantly in tabletop games like Dungeons and
Dragons. And I was the Co creator of some
games called Pathfinder and Starfinder that were pretty,
pretty popular in that space. And then during the pandemic, I
had Benio still trying to do science fiction fantasy and I
just needed something different. And I was reading all of this
queer young adult romance. And so I wrote Dark Hearts,
which was in a lot of ways, well, does not autobiographical,
strictly speaking. There are a lot of chunks of it
that are. It's all about my own sort of
coming out process and my experience as a teenage musician
in Seattle where it's set. So that was really just kind of
bleeding onto the page, you know, like, and that was super
fun. But then when it came time for
me to write another book, I was like, well, I already, I did the
story. That was kind of the me story.
So what am I going to do now? And it really took me a little
while because I had some tropes. I knew I wanted to do something
kind of supernatural because I came from fantasy and I also, I
kind of like fake dating and like love triangles and all
these different things. And I was just sort of trying to
smash tropes together and nothing was quite working.
And then one day I sat down and wrote a monologue from the
perspective of a teenage ghost about just how much it sucks
being dead, being, you know, an 18 year old boy and now you're
dead and like, just a lot of sort of griping.
And it was very, you know, funny, a little bit too honest,
you know, because of course, Aiden, the ghost in the book is,
you know, he's very sweet, but he's also kind of a meathead
jock, you know, a, a little bit of a pervert in the way that
most teenage boys I have known were, you know.
And so it was really, it was fun, but I couldn't figure out
where to go with it. Like it sort of, it didn't feel
like the story was his. And then once I kind of put it
together and realized that the story was actually a romance
between the ghost hunter who found him and his little sister,
that's when everything started to kind of come together.
And originally behind the scenes fact, I originally thought it
was a love triangle between him. You know, the essentially the
ghost hunter trying to choose between him and his sister.
And the whole first draft was like that.
And it just did not work, did not work at all.
And everybody who read it was like, we love the romance
between Kara and Meredith, that that's Kara's the ghost hunter
and Meredith is the sister. And they're like, we're not
buying this romance between Kara and the ghost.
Like it's just not happening. And it took me a little while to
sort of accept that. But when I finally realized that
actually Kara and Aiden's sort of romance was much better as a
bromance, like if they're just like, you know, supernatural
best friends, suddenly everything fell into place and
it made a lot more sense. And so that's how we got to the
book that we have today. Yeah, I like that change, truly.
The evolution of their friendship is really is really
sweet. And it's like you kind of don't
see it coming in the beginning 'cause there's like, oh, a
ghost, I'm a ghost hunter, how can I exploit this?
But then it gets very real between the two of them, which
is really sweet. And I do love the way you wrote
Aiden because, yeah, it was refreshing to read like really a
teenager who's like, this is the worst thing ever.
And just like his complaining about being dead was was
actually really humorous and funny and it felt real.
Well. Thank you.
Yeah. You know, it's funny people
sometimes a compliment and a complaint that I get about my
books is that the characters are just kind of the worst at times.
Like, you know, they're, they're self-centered, they're crude,
they're all of these things. And I really, I, I don't mind.
I like that's something that really matters to me, especially
with, you know, Dark Hearts, the book before this, I've been
reading a lot of queer, you know, gay young adult romance.
And I just found that a lot of the times the the boys felt too
perfect, you know, and sometimes they felt a little bit less
like, and this is not a dig on all the awesome straight female
writers writing queer boys. But like, sometimes they felt a
little bit too idealized and like sort of what maybe a
straight woman would want instead of what like a teenage
queer boy actually was from my experience.
And so when I wrote that book, I really wanted to get across my
experience where it was like, yes, these boys are, you know,
they're sweet and romantic and attractive, and they're also
crude and horny and sweaty and bad at feelings and all of these
things. And they're not perfect.
They're, they're still Bros. And so I, I always try to get
that element of real teenage realism into my books.
I But of course, the problem anytime you're writing something
like this is that everybody's experience is very different.
So you can write something that rings perfectly true to you and
it's going to sound absolutely false to somebody else.
So I think with young adult especially, you just have to
find your own truth and roll with it.
Yeah, I I agree with that. But it's clear, it's clearly
evident that you put a lot of like thought into the characters
that you create. So how do you typically approach
like creating a new character and then developing them as the
book kind of goes on? Well, so this is, it's funny,
I'm actually very not mechanical about it, but I'm very
deliberate about it these days where every character to me is
based on an emotional arc. You know, I before I have before
I can really write a character, I have to know where I want them
to end the book and then have them start in a different place.
And that's all about sort of what message I want to send.
So every character needs to go on a journey throughout the
book. And so, you know, if that's
learning how to trust, then I know my character needs to be
somebody who doesn't trust anyone at the start and does by
the end, you know? And so I will map out in Excel
like I'm that nerdy. I will map out every character's
emotional arc and the arcs of the romance or any other sort of
relationships. And so I'll break those down
into like to get really technical into like 7 beats.
And then I'll do that for every relationship in the book, Color
code everything, print it all out, cut it up, arrange it on my
floor. And that's how I sort of build
scenes so that I always know that all of the different
character arcs are moving forward.
And yes, so for me, the characters obviously take on a
life as of their own as I'm writing them.
And I'll find I'll often find quirks and details that end up
being relevant where it's like, oh, I didn't know they were so
into X or that they, you know, talk like this.
But I have to know before the book starts, Like, what is their
central wound that's getting in the way of them being happy, you
know, getting getting sort of what they need.
And they don't have to become fixed over the course of the
story. You know, they don't have to
heal that wound all the way or even at all.
But I do think it's useful to think about where are they?
How are they changing? Because my philosophy, and it's
interesting coming from fantasy and science fiction, where so
much of it can be about the world building and the
explosions and the big sort of cool set pieces.
I still feel like we're fundamentally all social apes
and we all want gossip like every we read stories because we
want to know like what's going on with these people, their
inner lives, who's got conflict with each other.
And I think the more you can know that stuff, even in your
big action scenes, the better, you know, even when I've done,
you know, comic books a while back, I wrote a star Finder
comic book miniseries. And that's a whole, you know,
X-Men style team of heroes. And it's very flashy, lots of
battles and things. But I still try to in every
scene know where every character is at emotionally because I
think if you have that big laser gun fight, but you know, OK,
well, this character is worried that he's not a very good
father. And this character is jealous of
this other character. And this character has a crush
on this other character. Like knowing that will add depth
to everything. Things will, things will seep
out in little ways that make the scene so much richer.
And I think that's what we all crave.
I mean, that's when I think about even like when I think
about Game of Thrones, I don't think about all the plot
maneuvering or the battles or whatever.
I don't even remember most of that stuff.
I remember the character relationships.
Yeah, you know, hit the nail on the head there 'cause then it
makes, it puts those, those big moments into context too, 'cause
it will influence their behaviors and things like that.
So like, I like that you're that detail oriented with the
characters. That's what I enjoy in media as
well. Thanks.
Yeah. And, you know, it took me a
while to realize that I almost feel like I've entered a new
phase in my career where, you know, I used to be much more
focused on the world building and the cool monsters and, you
know, just sort of the wow factor.
And it's only been in the last few years that working in
contemporary young adult romance where there isn't any of that
let me really double down on voice and character and those
things that that I really like these days.
Like I really love just soaking in a good voice.
And I feel like why a contemporary is the master of
that, especially romance, because you already know in any
romance basically what the plots going to be.
You know, that like the stakes are not going to be super high
because it's just do these two characters get together?
So it all has to be carried by the voice and the character.
You have to love spending time with these people.
And so I think, I think it's a really good cross training.
I love that and I loved all the paranormal aspects of this book.
I've been telling theor that that's one of my favorite genres
and I want us to read it more. So I was very.
Excited to see you. So I know you focused more on
voice and that story, but when adding these paranormal aspects
to the book, how do you define the rules for it?
Like for example why Aiden starts disappearing and what he
is actually able to do as a ghost.
Interesting. Well, you see, I took a
different approach than I would have when I was doing a lot more
fantasy work where it used to be when I was doing real like heavy
duty secondary world fantasy, I would often sort of craft the
world more 1st. And this time I really sort of
built the paranormal elements around what I knew I needed from
the story. And so there were some things
that got decided kind of as I went, but so I knew that there
needed to be some sort of ticking clock.
And that was where Aiden's disappearance really came in.
You know, I hope I'm not giving too many spoilers about the
book, but there is there is this element where Aiden starts
fading as as the story goes along.
And I just think I needed that sort of pressure.
You always need some sort of time constraint, some sort of
accelerator when you're writing a story.
And so that was part of it. You know, I also sometimes you
just pick things and see how it works.
Like, I didn't know for a while whether I was going to have him
be able to affect the physical world at all.
And so in the end, it seemed like having him not be able to
affect the physical world at all was actually really important
because it meant that he was tied just to Cara.
If he had, because if he had been able to do anything, if
he'd been able to lift a pen and write a letter, then he like
doesn't really need her at all. And so it started to become this
thing where it's like, oh, what's driving their friendship
initially is the fact they truly need each other 100%.
And that also created a lot of, you know, limitations.
And I think limitations are where story comes from, you
know, like the more constraints, the more difficulties you can
throw in your character's way, the more interesting and
creative their solutions. So I kind of just ramped his
abilities back as far as possible.
Although there were some things like the the idea that Kara and
Meredith are both kind of amplifiers for his spirit a
little bit. That was something that came in
a little bit later as a way to help drive some scenes that sort
of pull them together, give reasons for a few more dates.
And really I was just always trying to build the paranormal
element in service of the romance.
And once I sort of realized that, that was sort of my
guiding light. I like that you decided that
that world isn't like creating things where you can't do with
the characters, it's just helping it.
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, it was a
little bit trial and error. There was stuff where I'd, I'd
go One Direction and then go, oh, this, this isn't quite
working. And I would go back.
But I definitely played a little bit looser with that while I was
writing. You know, by the end, it was
very important to me that everything be super consistent
because I'm a fantasy nerd, you know, I wanted to make sure that
the rules were solid and that nobody ever goes.
Well, wait a minute. How come he could do this here
and not there like that? Had to be ironclad.
But during the writing, I tried to sort of leave things loose
for myself until I could figure out what was going to be the
best angle. And then I went back and really
locked everything in. So by the end, Aden was just the
best wing ghost of all time. But I really I really enjoyed
writing them. Like I really enjoy like this
book is a lot about friendship. And you know, I think actually
all my young adult books are just because like that's where I
have the most fun is when these characters really do love each
other. Like they might drive each other
nuts, but you know, and they're all complicated characters, you
know, they everybody in this book is well, not everybody.
Some of them are are just straight up good, but like most
of them are a little bit jerky and also really lovable and
understandable, you know. So for me, that's that's my
favorite. I want somebody who's not
perfect most of the time. Holly, the best friend friend
character is pretty perfect. Like she's kind of a sunshine
marshmallow character, which was super fun, but even she has her
moments. Yeah, it just they humanize.
Like teenagers? Exactly, yes, I mean like
everybody really like, I don't know, I do.
One thing I love about writing YA is because I, I think you can
get away with writing characters that are much messier.
Because I think sometimes if you wrote the same attitudes, like
emotional extremes in a 40 year old, people would be like, this
character has not gotten the therapy they need.
Right. But like when you write it in
the 16 year old, it makes sense because everything is new.
Everything is the first time you're wrestling with this.
But Even so, I, I don't think there's as big a difference
between young adult and adult in that regard as some people
think. You know, I think some of the
best emotional complexity I see in writing is in the young adult
space because that's where people are willing to really dig
into it. Yeah, I love that aspect of the
book. Something else that's really fun
is that throughout the book, you use a lot of like pop culture
references in like their speech in their inner monologues, just
as like a good descriptor. And so I've seen certain authors
have certain takes on using pop culture cause like, what if it
like falls out of fashion and like, oh.
Yeah, I've gotten dinged for it. So what what makes you decide
like I guess what made you decide to to include them in the
book First off? And then like, how do you choose
what references to use? So with pop culture, pop culture
and slang, it's a little bit different for the two of them.
Pop culture for me is just like, what is the point of writing
contemporary if you can't write contemporary?
You know, like I, that was the thing that really was so much
fun when I first switched over to writing dark arts after
writing fantasy for so long was the fact that I could make the
jokes that I would make in real life.
You know, like my young adult voice is much closer to my real
life voice, like how I just talk to people.
And I didn't think of myself as a particularly funny writer for
most of my career and then, but I think I'm a reasonably funny
person in real life. And so when I switched over to
writing young adult stuff set in the real world set now, I really
was just like, I want to use my own voice.
I want these characters to talk to some degree, like I would
talk. And it was just so much fun.
And part of that is pop culture references and.
You know, and then with the slang, I feel like it can you
got to be careful not to end up in that.
How do you do fellow kids territory?
Because I am not, you know, I am not a teenager.
I am not a teacher or a parent who's around them all day.
So I tend to just use my own voice.
And so any slang that is dropped in there is picked up from just
sort of general culture or, you know, sometimes it's out of
date, but I sort of don't worry about that.
So my, my philosophy on slang is I think that teenagers
understand that basically all media created for teenagers is
created by people in their 30s, forties, 50s, like, so they're
already used to translating all media they consume into their
own language and narrative and worldview.
So, like, trust them, you know, they're like teenagers are
smart. Like they can take a story and
up, sort of apply it to their lives as needed.
You don't have to get every bit of slang correct for them to
appreciate the story. But I do think people will say
with pop culture or with slang, oh, it's going to date your
story. And the way I think about it is
like the progress of technology is so fast right now that that's
going to date your story just as fast as any slang.
Like, think about, you know, it was not that long ago that books
didn't have smartphones in it or books didn't have social media
in them. And like in a couple years, the
thing that's going to be dating my book is going to be the fact
that there's not like an AI powered neural shunt in every
kids head and not the fact that I made a reference to Taylor
Swift or whatever like this. It's going to be fine.
If anything, I hope that people will consider my books
historical fiction about this moment in time.
So I I think just write the best book you can.
Write what's funny to you and don't worry about it.
Same with like with the humor, you're always or humor,
sexuality, any of these things that can turn people on or off.
Just do your own thing. It's all, it's all you can do
because you're never going to please everybody.
Personally, I'm hoping that the Taylor Swift reference never
goes out of style. I mean, that might be one that
just Taylor Swift for sure. Actually, probably Taylor Swift
and Pokémon will be the things that archaeologists in, you
know, 1000 years or like, oh, this was very important to them.
Like this was one of their primary deities like.
The Pikachu. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Like I think that people will be, will assume that, well, that
will assume that Taylor Swift was like a deity and that
Pokémon would be like, you know, like Kami or whatever.
Like these, these were all her servitor spirits like these
were. So true.
Oh, it's amazing, the things that actually catch on for
people. Yeah, it's funny because one of
the big inspirations for this book actually was the story of
Cyrano de Bergerac, but with the sort of whole dating somebody
or, you know, advising somebody sneakily as they try to date
somebody, like whispering in their ear.
But I ended up not. I don't talk about that that
much because it turns out that like 200 year old play is maybe
not like the best comp title when you're pitching modern
young adult stories, but like that's definitely in there.
But. That's fair.
So on Instagram I saw a post where you talk about how the
book is mixed with memories from your own teen years.
So is there anything you can share about your connection with
it? Oh yeah.
I mean, there's lots of stuff. So I mean, both Dark Hearts and
The Ghost of Us draw heavily on my own life in as much as Dark
Hearts is set in Seattle and based a lot on my teenage
musician life and my coming out. And The Ghost of Us is based on
sort of where I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle.
So it's set there kind of right on that edge between sort of
city and farm town where it's sort of in transition.
So there was a lot of just sort of the flavor of the place that
was very familiar to me. And then there were things there
were things like her experience rock climbing is very much my
experience rock climbing or a lot of the locations they go to
our places that I loved as a kid, slightly fictionalized.
There's also some stuff with in in the over the course of the
book, Meredith's car gets named, they attempt to drive into the
city. It's very stressful.
And the car gets a name that way.
And that was all. That whole story was directly
taken from my own life. Like I, you know, had done a
similar thing where I drove into the city for the first time to
see a concert and it was incredibly stressful.
And it's actually funny, an element that I, you know,
couldn't get into the book, but that was true of my real life
was, you know, I was so stressed, I drove into the city.
Like we got there, we managed to park in this sketchy alley and
we were so, you know, terrified but exhilarated.
And a funny thing is that a few years later, I was, you know,
post college sitting in the shared house I was living in.
And I looked out my bedroom window and realized that the
quote UN quote sketchy alley where I'd parked was now like
the alley behind my house, like my, my parking spot when I was
16 was now my actual parking spot just daily.
And it was this huge moment of revelation of like, Oh my God,
look how the world changes as you change, right?
Like this same place that was once so terrifying is literally
my home now. And I don't know, I, I don't
know exactly how to work with that NYA, but that I'm really
interested in that feeling of the transitions between how
things, how things change as you change.
Yeah, that's such a beautiful, like what a full circle kind of
moment as well to feel like this is where I stand, this is where
I am now and just like, wow, progress, change all the things
you said. Yeah, I feel like that would be
hard in Hawaii book, unless there's some kind of time jump
or something, but. Right, right.
But I mean, I don't know, I'm still, I also enjoy writing
adult stuff. So, you know, that's that's
where some you can get into a lot more of that, like looking
back on my life. They're too young to be like
back in my day because my day is still happening.
Yeah, although I don't know, you know, it's funny because when
you're in that place, when you are 1718, you do have nostalgia,
You do have feelings. Like, I mean, that's a lot of
what Dark Hearts is about, is that feeling of being 18 and
having already missed your shot, which was very much my
experience, you know, as a teenage musician.
Like playing in punk band, in a punk band and like, you know,
doing all right for ourselves, but not hitting it big the way I
had expected. And then watching, you know,
getting a little bit older and watching bands coming up behind
us that are really good and starting to get bigger than us
and, you know, that sort of thing.
And then getting to that point where you're not even in college
and you feel like has been, you feel washed up and that question
of what is your identity if it's not what you thought it was
going to be? I think actually both of my
young adult books are kind of about that question because it's
the same with Kara as a ghost hunter.
Like, yeah, like what is you have this idea of who you are,
whether that's a future rock star, future ghost hunter or
straight, gay, whatever. And then what do you do when
you're right, the labels you apply to yourself to understand
yourself no longer fit and you're left in this sort of
limbo of like, well, who am I? And I feel like that's a
question I'm always sort of trying to explore because it was
so relevant to me as a team. Yeah.
And I think that with at least Kara's journey in the beginning,
it's that is very much her question because not only like
the ghost hunting thing is not panning out the way her idols
is, but also she's like, I didn't get into the school I
wanted to get into like what even is my life?
It's it's not what I expected. And that that is a very real
like teenage thing. And like you mentioned,
everything is new, but and the feelings are so big and the
world feels like it's ending even though their life is just
beginning. So she's very much in that, in
that kind of like journey at the beginning of the of the book.
Well, it's the first time you start to feel doors closing.
You know, like there's that age where you suddenly have to make
choices in a way you didn't before.
And that for any younger listeners, I hate to say it like
that continues your entire life, like the the path continues to
narrow and focus in as you make more and more choices.
But the first time you confront that, it's terrifying.
And also, as you get older, you still question, who am I?
So it's not just the kids. Oh.
Yeah, yeah. You know, and that's why I mean,
that's why people have midlife crises because you've got you're
in this place where you're like, oh, I guess I did make the
choices that mean I'm never going to be an astronaut, you
know, I'm never going to be a rock star.
And like, I do think there's often more, more possibility
than you think, depending on what it is you want, right?
You know, if you want to write a book, you can do that at any
point in your life. You know, if you want to be an
Olympic gymnast, like you may have missed your shot, you know
so. Probably, yeah.
So you did, you mentioned a little piece of like, like the
full circle moment with the parking space, but was there
anything else you wanted to add into this story that perhaps
like didn't make the cut? Oh, let's see, There was there
was a little bit that got cut just in terms of when I was
still thinking it might be a romance between her and Aiden.
There were sort of some flirty moments between them, but
ultimately it was kind of fine to cut it down.
So there's not a lot that got left on the cutting room floor.
Because I'm so deliberate and planning out my stories, I
fortunately don't usually have to go back and cut a ton.
I mean, probably I would have liked more of a chance for Aiden
to go off on his experience, especially there were some
things where I think it would be honest, but would have made him
seem a little bit too much of A creeper.
Where it's like when you really think about it, if you're a
teenage boy and you suddenly like, are invisible and
intangible, can go anywhere you want, like, you're probably
going to be a bit more of a creeper than we really get into
in the book. I And I can't even remember if
it's still in there. But him talking about sort of
like defending isn't even really creeping if I sort of if I'm
dead and don't exist anymore. And Cara being like, yeah,
actually, so. So that I mean, I think it could
have been fun to get more of his experience, but that just wasn't
that wasn't the point of the story and.
That's fair, That's fair. Something I, I think I actually
laughed out loud with Aiden's experience is that before he
gets attached to Cara, he spends his time visiting different
people's homes and watching Netflix with them.
Yeah. And I just, I love that aspect.
But if this was you, what would you hope that someone's watching
in their home so you could join them?
Oh my God, let's see, I guess what what series do I really
want to watch? I'm trying to think of stuff
that I haven't seen yet. Actually, you know what, I would
probably go with a lot of stand up comedy.
Like that's, I think that would be the thing that would give me
the most joy and comfort. You know, I love, you know,
Taylor Tomlinson and Mike Birbiglia and all these
different comics I love. Taylor.
Yeah, Oh yeah. She's so good.
So good. But yeah, so I'd probably go
with that or I don't know, maybe a rewatch or something like The
Good Place. Like that's I adore that show.
If you can find someone watching that show for the first time, Oh
my. God yes, so much fun.
Absolutely. Such a good show.
Yeah, also, like, what? A philosophical show for a
ghost. It's like the afterlife.
He's sitting there throwing, you know.
And mine's a bad place to. Screen and being like that's not
how it. Is.
Yeah, I think that show might be one of the smartest shows I've
ever seen. Like just everything about that
was firing on all cylinders. I.
Agree. It was one of those very
meticulously planned out kind of shows too.
And it shows. Yeah, but follow up.
So on the ghost train. So if if you were a ghost, what
would what would be the first thing that you would do once you
realized, hey, I'm a ghost, I can float around?
I mean, after I was done trying to figure out if there was any
way I could contact people because I'm such a social person
that I think I would be constantly trying to find the
loopholes that would let me communicate with friends and
family. But if I couldn't, man, I don't.
I don't know. I think I would.
I think it would be very depressing, honestly, but I'd
probably go try to just see a lot of natural splendor, you
know, go explore, explore the wilderness like during the
pandemic. So we were even more locked down
than most people during the pandemic because my wife is
pretty seriously disabled, and that's very at risk.
And so we had to just go no contact with anybody for quite a
while. And so during those years, I
spent a lot of time hiking alone and just trying to find the
trails. My secret was to go on all the
trail apps and find the one star reviewed trails 'cause I knew
that nobody would be on them. And so I just like, would spend,
you know, a day, a week just wandering old logging roads by
myself in the woods and was surprised at how peaceful I
found it. Like for somebody who always
wants to be around other people talking in a party, it was
really surprising that like, I didn't even want to listen to a
podcast. I just wanted to be in the woods
with the with the critters for eight hours, so I think that
that part would be nice. I would go float up and spend
some time on some nice mountain peaks somewhere.
I love that. Good way to spend.
Your time, all the views with none of the effort.
Exactly. Exactly.
Go climb Mountain Everest. Exactly.
Were they actual one star trails?
Then what did you think? I mean, I thought they were
great, but I think that, you know, philosophically, some of
my friends who like hiking are really all about getting to the
destination, the viewpoint. And I really like the
exploratory angle of hiking. Like I don't need to necessarily
get to a particular place. I just want to hike around in
the woods and kind of see what's there.
And so discovering little things is often more exciting to me
than getting to a big amazing viewpoint that everybody knows
about. So like, one of my favorite
places that I found was this big working forest where it's just,
you know, thousands upon thousands of acres that kind of
nobody goes to. And one thing I loved about it
is that because it was being actively logged, the roads would
change from season to season. And so you would go out there
and there would be a new road that wasn't there before, or the
old road would already be getting overgrown.
And so it just felt very magical to have this forest where the
routes were always sort of appearing and disappearing.
It felt like my sort of enchanted forest.
So yeah, So. And, you know, occasionally I'd
find a waterfall or some interesting weird little.
I once I found a weird little government compound out in the
middle of the woods, and that was fun.
But so, yeah, that kind of thing.
I like being surprised. I'm so glad that you had that
experience. That's really cool about this.
Enchanted Forest Woods. I mean, that's me romanticizing
it. I think a lot of people are
about would be like, it's just some woods.
And I'm like, yeah, but like, can you, can you find the, the
romance in it? Yeah, you're right.
Or you're allowed to romanticize everything.
Exactly. So you mentioned earlier that
you also Co created the Pathfinder and Starfinder
role-playing games. How does writing a book compare
to creating a story for a game? Well, it's, it's really
different because in role-playing games, a lot of the
time you're deliberately not creating the story in as much as
like you're creating the setting and sort of the premises and
then deliberately leaving it open for the players to make the
character choices and create sort of the story.
And like you always, it's a fine balance because you always want
to make sure that if you're writing, you know, an adventure
that you've got some ability to guide the players to all the
things you've created. So it's not just totally open,
but for the most part, you're trying to let the players
improvise the story as they go. And so with that, it's a lot
more about inspiration rather than telling people every
detail. And so my favorite part of game
design is world design where I'll go through and just like I
love writing the articles where it's just like 50 adventure
locations where I'll just have a big map.
I'll put dots all over it. And then I'll tell you what cool
exciting thing is at each one of those locations that could
potentially inspire an adventure.
And I like to work that way also a little bit when I'm writing a
story, in as much as those things that can inspire players
can also inspire me as an author.
But it's just a very different, it's a very different experience
because when I'm writing a novel, it's so much about those
character arcs. And so I've charted that all out
in advance. And so it's almost an entirely
different skill set. I mean, that said, there's also
still the sitting down and writing, which is the one of the
hardest things to learn. And so that does crossover
pretty well. But that is fun though, because
I get I it's a different, it's almost like you're, you're in a
different headspace when you're just like trying to give people
the puzzle pieces for the adventure versus like spelling
it out word by word. So that is fun.
Exactly. Well, and there's a lot more
pressure for me in writing a novel than in writing game
material because in the novel, like I need to make sure that
everything works together. So it's almost like building a
watch, you know, I'm trying to make sure that every little
thing connects properly. Whereas if I'm doing game
setting design, you know, and like, rules design obviously is
also very fiddly. But if I'm just, you know,
writing about the country where the orcs live, you know, I can
kind of just go nuts and just spray cool, top of my head
details everywhere, which is really fun.
Like I love the improv element of freestyling weirdness.
You know, like I I always said that like the best skill I
learned or one of them from my years working as a game designer
was the ability to produce bullshit on command.
You know, just like cool sounding stuff.
Because so often I was on deadline, you know, somebody
would say, Oh my God, we've got, you know, this article that is
1000 words short and it's goes to press in three hours, like
fill this page, go like just write me some cool stuff.
And so I would be in this position of having to just kind
of I couldn't afford to get stage fright.
You know, I had to just sort of yes, and myself.
And so I would sit down and be like, OK, well, maybe, maybe
people would like to adventure in.
There's a underwater city built on the back of a gigantic snail
that's crawling along a geothermal vent.
And the people who live there keep all of their magic stored
and their histories stored in this telepathic brain coral that
grows all over it. And, you know, but then what?
What if that got stolen? You know?
And like, it was all just that. It was all spitballing and, yes.
Anding yourself, you. Just make that up.
I, I mean, yeah, kind of like, I mean, it's probably similar to
some things I've done in the past, but like, that's, that's
the job. Like you can, you can give me
just about anything and I will come up with an adventure
location about it. And that's, that's the fun of
that job, right? Like, I mean, give me any
monster, any monster you can think of a.
Monster. But a monster?
A 12 foot. Tarantula.
OK, so I'm going to tell you about the city of 12 foot
tarantulas. It exists in this forest where
they live in a tenuous peace with the elves who also live
there. And their city is all as you
might expect, like rope bridges of this webbing everywhere.
And the tarantulas, they they actually record all of their
history in these giant web funnels where they once a year
they take a sacrifice from the elves and they use their venom
to magically implant all of their history and inside the
elves veins and then keep him alive, mummified inside the
center of their palace where he then telepathically allows them
to access. Like this is this is the job.
Like that's not. Good.
Both a tarantula matrix. I, I have so much fun doing that
kind of stuff. So that was what I, that was
primarily what I did for like the 13 years I worked for
Pathfinder and Starfinder and Dungeons and Dragons, all those
companies. And I still do occasionally work
for them as well as occasionally doing comics, video games, all
that kind of stuff. But these days my, my biggest
love is definitely novels. So this is where my heart is
now. Well, you're just multi talented
in many aspects and thank you for giving us that that set up
premise for the world's scariest story.
Thank you. I'm sure your listeners are like
what is even go I got this has gone off the rail.
It's. Amazing.
No, no, they're used to that. But I, I will, I will say for,
for aspiring authors in here, like the more you can take that
approach of just yes and yourself, like don't let your
internal editor get in the way. Don't worry about if an idea is
good, just roll with it. Whatever you've got say OK, and
then what? All right.
You'll be surprised how much more writing you get done if you
can just go with it and say maybe the idea is bad, but you
won't know until it's down on the page.
All right. Well, thank you, James, this
those are all the questions we had for you today.
We really appreciate getting to see your talent improv.
That was such a treat. So for the listeners at home
that want to like maybe follow you, support you, how can they
do that? Well, you can find everything
I've done on jameslsutter.com. Social media wise, I'm on
Instagram which is fun and Twitter which is not, but
Instagram I'm at just at James under score L under score
Sutter. On Twitter I'm still just at
James L Sutter and I am active on both of them.
So if anybody has questions or wants to chat, you can always
find me there. But really, I would love for
folks to check out my novels Dark Hearts and the Ghost of us.
So dark Hearts is like we said, two boys, rock star romance and
dark hearts is supernatural sapphic romance.
Oh, sorry. And the ghost of us is
supernatural sapphic romance. And yeah, they're both out now
in everywhere, every format. You can get them in hardcover,
e-book, audio book. I'm actually very proud.
I for both of them, the publishers let me compose and
record the intro and outro music for the the audiobooks.
So that was super fun. So yeah, please, if, if any of
this interested you, please check them out.
Yes, please check it out and thank you again James for being
here today and sharing everything with us.
We really appreciate it. And for everyone at home, Until
next time, hydrate for lesbian Jesus.
And get up all over the place. Bye bye.
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