Inkhorn Interview No. 1: Olivia Dade on Fiction
Olivia Dade is a romance novelist who has found success in indie publishing. Now, she has her first trade paperback release, Spoiler Alert. The book follows an actor, Marcus Caster-Rupp, who is dissatisfied with the direction of his TV show, Gods of the Gates, a thinly veiled analogue for Game of Thrones. Marcus writes anonymous fanfiction as a channel for his disappointment, and, through Twitter, connects with one of his fandom friends, April. April is a geologist, fanfiction writer, and Gods of the Gates fan. When her cosplay receives sizeist trolling, Marcus asks her out on a date, and they hit it off. However, Marcus must come clean to April if he wants to be with her, and his career would be over if his fanfiction was public knowledge. It is a gorgeous book, full of funny banter, steamy romance, and deep questions about adaptation and its place in fandom.
Olivia Dade was kind enough to speak to me about the book, her relationship to fanfiction and the Game of Thrones finale, her writing process, and what’s next.
What drew you to writing about people with public personas, like Marcus? Even April, to some extent, has a public image prior to meeting Marcus.
I saw a comment on a fic [fan fiction] once, that if Jaime Lannister existed in real life he would start shipping wars over himself: that he would basically go online and start wars between Jaime/Brienne and Jaime/Cersei fans. It planted this idea in my head, “What if you did have this famous actor who participated in his own fandom?”
That’s obviously not how I took it; it was based much more on interviews with various actors during the final season of Game of Thrones, when there were all these compilations and memes of the actors doing really awkward interviews about the final season. Genuinely, I think that some of that was just normal awkwardness, and I’m sure that some of them were fond of the final season. But some of the interviews, it could be interpreted that they were not happy about the season, and so I put those two things together.
The idea of him being famous was something I had to add more of throughout the book, and that was something my editor had to push me on: “You need to add more of the ancillary aspects of his fame, like fans or paparazzi.” April is not shy, she’s quite confident, so she’s not going to be overwhelmed with nerves upon meeting him, but there needs to be acknowledgement that this is a big deal.
Marcus is a nuanced, emotional guy. He’s not afraid of intimacy or commitment, but of really sharing himself with another person. How did that come to be in the work?
I go into writing male characters with the idea that they have a full range of human emotions. I think it can sometimes be easier to sort of knee-jerk pigeon hole characters: He is a man, thus he can’t be good with emotions. There are certain stereotypes about what it means to be a man, and I’m not necessarily very interested in indulging a lot of those stereotypes. Part of what my books are about is grappling with and dismantling toxic masculinity in a way that feels realistic to complicated men that I have known and cared about, who are good people and flawed people, and often contradictory, just like the rest of us.
You love rocks. They are all over your Twitter. Did that influence April being a geologist?
April is a geologist because I have already written about most of the careers that I have personally had! I’m just lucky that I know Margrethe Martin, a dear friend who is a geologist. So I asked her whether she’d be willing to let me pick her brain about her job sometime, and she said yes. I spent countless hours on the phone with her, having her walk me through her previous job, as a consultant, and then her government work, and explain the terminology. I do love rocks, but Margrethe is much more sophisticated in her appreciation of rocks. I’m mostly like, “That’s really pretty, I would like to own that.”
This book really has a lot to say about adaptation. Obviously, in some ways, it parodies Game of Thrones. But, it’s also about fan culture and the pitfalls of adaptation in general. Are there other fandoms that inspired Spoiler Alert?
My biggest fandom, and I’ve been very open about this, is definitely the GoT Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth fandom, and I also did some reading about fandom in general. I also think that it’s not an accidental thing that various analogues can be made to Romancelandia [the romance fandom], because in some ways April’s story is not entirely dissimilar to mine.
Through writing, and beginning to write fiction and engaging with writers and readers, I found myself with a real community for the first time in my life. I found a real outlet for a lot of emotions, and ways of working through how I feel about things, as is true for many authors. So the whole idea of a sense of transformation, through reading and writing, the joy of forming a community, and the acknowledgement that those communities often have flaws that need to be actively acknowledged and worked against – those are all true with romance and Romancelandia, as well as with fandom. So while some things are specific to fandom, some things sort of generally have to do with online communities as a whole.
There is some fanfiction in the book written by the characters. How much fun did you have writing the fic parts?
I had a blast. It was really fun for me to differentiate it from my writing voice, because it’s meant to be from different people. I did different verb tenses; I got to use all of the dialogue tags I never let myself use: like, “‘Oh no,’ she gasped. He said vigorously. She said darkly.” It was just fun to write these little snippets of all sorts of different kinds of stories, some more light-hearted, some more angsty. I mean, we got a little ghost action in there. I was excited.
Did writing this book help you get closure over the end of Game of Thrones?
It helped me express some of my feelings about some of the decisions made about character arcs that were important to me, which the showrunners abruptly reversed. Basically, the crux of Jaime Lannister’s character, as I interpret it, is that his act of killing the king, for which he is reviled by many, is probably his noblest deed. Because he saves the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people that would have died, right? He did care, and he sacrificed his honor and his reputation to save these people. To then have him straight-faced say, “I’ve never cared about the innocent.” I was like, “What?”
What’s your relationship with fanfiction? Do you write any?
I have never written fanfiction. I have read a lot, and I am still reading a lot. I read more fic than published work, by a longshot. But I have not written it, in part because it’s a real skill set that I’d have to work on. It’s an amazing skill, but it is not the same skill that I have with creating a character of my own, and only one of those skills allows me to buy food. [laughs]
So, for now, I just enjoy reading other people’s work. A lot of my friends got into writing original published works through fanfiction, but I literally didn’t know it existed until a couple of years ago.
Also, I don’t want to make fanfiction a source of stress. Right now, fanfiction is largely separate from my anxiety. My book blurs the line somewhat because of the inspiration, but it’s really not about Jaime and Brienne. Fanfiction is apart from my career and my anxiety, and I need that space. Reading published books used to be that space, but now that’s within the realm of my career. But maybe [laughs]... Never say never.
Gods of the Gates is a fictional TV show and book series within Spoiler Alert, but have you thought about writing it?
For about ten minutes I did, and then I thought, “Oh, that would be a lot.” I will say that I do basically know what happens. Because of the way I plotted things, I had to think about what the books were about, before I did the TV adaptation.
Part of the story is about TV adaptation, and what shifts. Because I meant the series, the Gods of the Gates books by E. Wade, to be a feminist reinterpretation of mythology, of The Aeneid. So, I did plot out a basic story, and then I had to come up with the TV series, how the showrunners would interpret the books and then end the series.
I was actually really happy with the idea I had for Gods of the Gates, but it would be such an ambitious project, and so different from what I normally do. It’s not like my editor wrote me and said, “You have to actually write this.” So, as long as there’s not a huge call for me to write it, then it will just exist in my mind, and that’s fine by me.
Tell me about your relationship with the social internet. I personally follow you on Twitter (@OliviaWrites). How do you curate a healthy relationship with the social internet, if that’s even possible?
I think Twitter giveth and Twitter taketh away. It is by far my favorite social outlet. Even before I grew cognizant of Facebook’s role in our current political clusterfuck, for lack of a better word, Facebook didn’t really suit my sensibilities as much. Also, my mom was on there!
Through Twitter, I have found a real community, probably for the first time in my life: a tight circle of largely female friends, though not all are female. Some are nonbinary, some male identifying. I can’t stay off of Twitter indefinitely, because then I’m isolating myself. I live in Sweden now, and I’ve been alone with my family in my apartment since March, so if I didn’t interact with people online, I wouldn’t have any interactions.
There are times when I have to limit my exposure, or take breaks, because it can be really hard not to compare your writing or your success or accomplishments, or lack thereof, to the people around you. I have very talented people whom I follow, and many of them are rightfully finding success. “Comparison is the thief of joy” is not a joke; that phrase is very apt.
So, if I find myself growing anxious, or feeling envious, if I feel like being on social media is bringing out the worst parts of myself, I will take a break. I’m prone to depression and anxiety, so there are also times when I’m simply overwhelmed. Sometimes I don’t have the energy, and it has nothing to do with what’s happening online. I take periodic breaks, but I try to always find my way back, because social media is the reason I have a circle of beloved friends. It’s the reason I have a career. It is a daily means of self-expression, and it is a community, and I’m part of it, and I care about it, so I want to be there.
Which authors are your must-buys these days, the ones whose next book is always on your nightstand?
Recently, Jeannie Lin, Joanna Bourne, Therese Beharrie, and pretty much all of my friends who are a part of the He’s Come Undone anthology are all auto-buys for me. So: Ruby Lang, Emma Barry, Cat Sebastian, and Adriana Herrera. Mia Sosa is a dear friend and an auto-buy for me. Also Robin Lovett – I love her Planet of Desire books. I wish Meljean Brook would put out more books. I know she has other stuff out now under new pen names, but I loved all the steampunk she did.
Have there been offers on the Spoiler Alert movie rights? Would you want a movie made?
There has not. I think that almost every author would want to see their work reach a larger audience. I would be terrified [laughs] but I’m often terrified, so that’s no measure of anything. I guess my biggest concern would be to make sure that the things that are important to me about the story are honored. But, of course I would love that. That would be amazing.
There is a second book coming, about Alex from Spoiler Alert. Can you give us any details about Slow Burn?
I think it’s some of my best banter, because I find him hilarious. Alex is quite impulsive, and quite loyal, and he has a huge heart, and all that plays into his decision-making. As becomes clear in Spoiler Alert, Alex gets very into fanfiction, so he’s looking for an excuse to live out as many of his favorite tropes as possible, and I had a great deal of fun with that, and I hope that readers will too. I get to revisit a lot of the cast members I loved writing about. My editor has not told me what she thinks yet, so right now it’s what I call Schrödinger’s manuscript: it is simultaneously amazing and terrible, until you get your editor’s feedback. But, I’m actually really happy with it, and I hope that readers will be, too.
Do you have a release date for Slow Burn?
Avon originally was thinking next June, but they have a glut of books coming out Summer 2021, so they moved it to October. Which is good, because it will give my editor time to trim my book down to the length that it was meant to be!
You had a traditional contract for Spoiler Alert with Avon, and now also for Slow Burn. Will you keep self-publishing?
I would like to continue self-publishing, partially because there are stories that I would like to tell that are not stories traditional publishers want to buy, but it’s important to me to tell them. If it’s not something that traditional publishing wants, I will self-publish it happily. I’ve had a really good experience with self-publishing, so my goal hopefully would be to do both.