MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: I’m pleased to be interviewing C.M. Waggoner today! C.M. has four books out so far and my wife and I have loved each one. She grew up in rural upstate New York, where she spent a lot of time reading fantasy novels in a swamp. She studied creative writing at SUNY Purchase and lived in China for eight years before moving with her husband to Albany. Her web page is http://www.cmwaggoner.com.
Let’s start by talking about THE VILLAGE LIBRARY DEMON HUNTING SOCIETY. Where did the idea originate?
C.M. WAGGONER: Way back in 2020 I went on a quarantine-induced Murder She Wrote binge and was struck anew by the absurdity of the common cozy mystery trope that an absolutely unhinged number of murders can occur in an adorable little village/in the vicinity of one specific elderly lady or kindly old vicar or whoever without anyone stopping to ask what on earth is going on here. I considered possible explanations and thought that “something supernatural is afoot” was the most fun, and here we are!
VENTRELLA: That one is more of a mystery than previous books … how was writing a mystery different for you?
WAGGONER: Writing a mystery was really a test of my plotting and organizational skills! It requires a ton of attention to detail and discipline in terms of making sure that all of the clues, red herrings, and suspects all come together by the end of the book, and that the reader neither guessing everything way ahead of the detective nor feels like the author cheated by withholding important information or relying on too many implausible coincidences to make the mystery work. I think writing that book was hugely educational for me, and I’ve carried some of the skills I learned from writing a cozy mystery into a new project that’s more of a political fantasy.
VENTRELLA: Humor also plays a large role in your books. They aren’t comedy novels by any means, but there are certainly light-hearted moments. Some authors find accomplishing that difficult. Is this something one can learn or do you think it comes naturally?
WAGGONER: Humor is one of my favorite things to write, so it tends to leak into even my more serious books! Partly it comes naturally to me, but I think that reading a lot of really sharp funny writing can do a lot to help you understand how to craft a joke that lands on the page, which is a totally different skill than being the funny friend at a party. Voraciously reading authors like P.G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Oscar Wilde taught me a ton about different ways to be funny in writing.
VENTRELLA: Your novel UNNATURAL MAGIC deals a bit with prejudice and discrimination. When you set out to prepare a story, do you have any specific goals about these kinds of issues or does it just flow naturally from the plot?
WAGGONER: Because UNNATURAL MAGIC is so centered on interactions between humans and trolls, I thought that I would have to consider how stereotypes and prejudice would show up in those relationships if I wanted the world to feel real and lived-in. When I’m doing that kind of worldbuilding I try to think about patterns across history and human behavior and how they would manifest in my imaginary world instead of pasting in actual real-world dynamics with the serial numbers filed off. Often that means that things change as I write, and I then sometimes adjust the plot to fit what feels truest to the society I’ve built.
VENTRELLA: THE RUTHLESS LADY’S GUIDE TO WIZARDRY has delightful worldbuilding, including an undead mouse that goes “bong.” I can certainly imagine many more stories in that world, even if not with Dellaria. Is that a possibility?
WAGGONER: As it happens, I recently finished writing a new book set in Leiscourt! It’s about a new set of characters and is kind of a departure in tone, but sharp-eyed readers might recognize a few references and landmarks from my previous books.
VENTRELLA: In the same vein, I note that you haven’t written any sequels to any of your books, unlike many authors. Tell us why!
WAGGONER: I tend to write stories in which the characters go through what feels to me like a complete emotional arc, and so far I haven’t planned any plots that would take multi-book arcs to complete. That said, I try to write endings that suggest an open-ended future for the characters, so if an exciting idea for a sequel to one of my books comes to me one day I wouldn’t be opposed to writing it!
VENTRELLA: Tell us about your latest book, THE SOMEWHAT WICKED WITCH OF BRIGANDALE.
WAGGONER: It’s my most straightforwardly comic book yet, which was exciting for me – I love writing comedy and it was so much fun to lean into that aspect of my writing for this one. The idea for THE SOMEWHAT WICKED WITCH OF BRIGANDALE came from me thinking about the trope of the humble farm boy or girl being the chosen one or the secret heir to the throne, and how comically unprepared said farm boy would actually be to govern an entire nation-state. In the book, a witch named Gretsella discovers that her kind, handsome, and deeply loved (if not particularly bright) adopted son Bradley is the One True King, and then has to follow after him and clean up his mess when it turns out that he’s totally unqualified for the position.
VENTRELLA: My first novel was about the old trope of the “chosen one” as well, and in mine, the problem is that he’s not the chosen one, but everyone thinks he is! So I clearly like those kinds of twists on the story.
Who is your favorite character out of all your books?
WAGGONER: I’m currently pretty desperately in love with a set of three characters from the book I’m working on right now and the male lead of another completed work, so I’m really looking forward to getting to gush about them at some point. From my published books, Delly and Tsira are both pretty close to my heart, and Gretsella from THE SOMEWHAT WICKED WITCH OF BRIGANDALE was a blast to write too!
VENTRELLA: How do you tend to classify your work? I know some authors don’t like being pigeonholed into “romantasy” or “science fiction” or whatever fits on a bookstore’s category. What do you think of when your work doesn’t quite fit any specific genre?
WAGGONER: I feel like even before I debuted I knew that “hard to categorize” was kind of going to be my lane, so I try not to fret about it! I think the biggest throughline between all of my stuff is that I like to take a genre trope and ask, “what if I took this seriously? How does that play out?” In UNNATURAL MAGIC it was the trope of female humans being the romantic prize for non-human beings: I reversed the genders and then asked, “How would this actually feel for the people involved?” In THE RUTHLESS LADY’S GUIDE TO WIZARDRY I wanted to do a psychologically realistic portrait of a “fantasy rogue,” where stuff like class and trauma doesn’t disappear when it gets inconvenient to the plot.
There’s something like that going on in all of my books, no matter how funny or serious the tone is. I love feeling like I’m in active conversation with the stories that came before mine and playing with or pressure-testing genre conventions.
VENTRELLA: I see that you were in China for many years. How does that influence your perception of the world and how does that affect your writing?
WAGGONER: I think that having lived in a very different culture and operated in my second language for a long time (and having married into that culture!) has given me a little bit of a leg up in terms of intuitively understanding what it actually means to move between cultures and languages. A lot of fantasy tends to gesture at the existence of different languages or cultures for worldbuilding purposes but never dig into how stuff like translation or operating in a second language actually works and feels in daily life. I’m constructing a little conlang for an upcoming book and doing a lot of stuff with cross-cultural confusion and misunderstanding on the page, and I think having a living understanding of how that feels has made the writing process much easier.
VENTRELLA: Are you attending any conventions or doing any public appearances we should know about? Do you enjoy doing those things?
WAGGONER: I’m going to be speaking to a book club and appearing at a public library this fall, and I’m hoping to do a local “adult book fair” this year, so anyone interested should keep an eye on my socials for more info. I really love meeting and chatting with readers (and fellow writers!) whenever I get the opportunity. “In conversation” events and smaller gatherings at bookstores and libraries are usually my favorite, and I’ve also enjoyed teaching writing workshops. I’m less of a convention gal personally – they kind of overwhelm me! – but getting to attend and meet so many lovely people is still very cool and special. I just need to lie down for a while after I leave!
VENTRELLA: How much of writing is innate? In other words, do you believe there are just some people who are born storytellers but simply need to learn technique? Can anyone become a good writer?
WAGGONER: I think that anyone can at least be a competent writer, and that the first step is probably just reading a lot. You also need to either have or develop an ability to be a little ruthless in your appraisal of your own work and to fully absorb and consider productive feedback.
VENTRELLA: How do you make your protagonist a believable character? What’s the best way to make the antagonist a believable character?
WAGGONER: I think that the answer is the same for both of these – you have to figure out who this person really is – what she wants, what she fears, how she imagines herself, what lies she tells herself to keep going, etc.– and then constantly ask yourself as you write how this particular person would actually react to these specific circumstances. If I can’t arrive a my planned plot without the character starting to act like a totally different person, then I know that I need to change something – either I need to rethink who this person is or the plot needs to change to fit.
VENTRELLA: Which of your characters was the hardest to write and why?
WAGGONER: I’m currently writing a character who is extremely contained, composed, formal, and careful with his speech, and is mostly speaking in his third language throughout the book. I find myself rewriting his dialogue over and over again to try to get it exactly right.
VENTRELLA: Do you think readers want to read about “believable” characters or do they really want characters that are “larger than life” in some way?
WAGGONER: I don’t think it has to be one or the other! A lot of my favorite historical figures were both, and I also love that kind of character in fiction. For instance, right now I’m creating a minor antagonist for a book who’s loosely inspired by Huey Long. If I made the guy too much like the real Huey I’m pretty sure I would get lots of Goodreads reviews talking about how the populist politician character was way too over-the-top and unrealistic.
VENTRELLA: What makes your fiction unique? In other words, what is it about your stories that makes them stand out against all the other similar stories out there?
WAGGONER: I’m probably not the best judge of this, but readers who email me tend to comment on the humor, very distinct character voices, my interest in class dynamics, and how sort of ambiently/incidentally queer a lot of my books feel.
VENTRELLA: What is your writing process? Do you outline heavily or just jump right in, for instance?
WAGGONER: I usually have at least a loose outline before I start writing, because I’ve learned from bitter experience that if I don’t have a strong sense of how everything will play out I’m pretty likely to never finish the book. I usually don’t outline every single scene beat for beat though – usually things change enough as I go that trying to micromanage things in advance ends up a waste of time.
VENTRELLA: Do you find yourself creating a plot first, a character first, or a setting first? What gets your story idea going?
WAGGONER: I usually have a loose idea or concept first, sometimes just an image. For example, for my current WIP I spent a few years chewing over the idea of a woman who was involved in overthrowing an evil empire years earlier having to travel to the capital to work at a failing institution in the new government she helped to instate. From there the plot, character and worldbuilding all develop pretty concurrently – people are formed by their societies and culture, so you can’t have the person without the setting, and plot is created by the protagonist moving through her world, so you can’t have the plot without either of those. At the same time, the plot is the engine of the book, so you need it to determine what needs to exist in the characters and setting to make it all work. Thus: all at once!
VENTRELLA: Writers are told to “write what you know.” What does this mean to you?
WAGGONER: No one ever seems to agree on what this means, but for me it’s something like: don’t publish a book you’d be embarrassed to let a real expert on the subject read. If you don’t already deeply understand the topic, figure out how much of it needs to be on the page and do your best to make it convincing. If the idea of the real expert reading it makes you think “they’ll know that this isn’t meant to be a realistic reflection of real-world XYZ” or “they’ll be able to tell I did my research,” you’re probably safe. If the idea of the expert reading it makes you feel uncomfortable, preemptively exhausted, or defensive, you might want to reassess the project.
VENTRELLA: What do you do to avoid “info dumps”?
WAGGONER: My strong preference as both a writer and a reader is for the book to just throw you into the deep end and only explain things when it makes sense for the narrator to be thinking about it. Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters, N.K. Jemisin, George R.R. Martin and Susanna Clarke all do this exceptionally well, in my opinion. None of them will sit the reader down and spend two pages to explain that in this society the color of your boots indicates your profession, they’ll just have their protagonist notice that someone is wearing purple boots and think “Oh, he’s a tailor.” The tricky thing is that I sometimes take this too far and annoy readers who want a bit more time to get the lay of the land before I have my protagonist set a city guard’s skirt on fire with her mind.
VENTRELLA: What’s the worst piece of writing advice you ever got?
WAGGONER: I think that most one-size-fits-all advice about the writing process itself is pretty useless. “Never edit as you go” or “write messy first drafts” is apparently very valuable to some people but would do nothing for me but drive me crazy while messing up my workflow. “Experiment until you figure out what lets you finish writing readable books” makes more sense to me. No one cares whether you sat down to write for two hours every morning with a fountain pen at a beautiful desk overlooking the sea, or wrote five thousand words on your laptop at your local Applebee’s once per week, or wrote with your thumbs on your phone in the bathtub (guilty) when they’re reading the finished product.
VENTRELLA: What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever got?
WAGGONER: When I was in college Tony Kushner came to my school to give a talk, and I lined up at the end to get my copy of Angels in America signed and ask him what advice he had for a creative writing student. He told me to go out into the world and have actual experiences that could serve as material. I think I followed his advice, and also think that he was completely right.
VENTRELLA: What advice would you give to a starting writer that you wish someone had given to you?
WAGGONER: Writing books is like any other skill. The more you practice the better and easier it tends to get.
VENTRELLA: Who do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors?
WAGGONER: I read pretty widely, so this is a hard question to answer, but some that come to mind are Charles Dickens, P.G. Wodehouse, Raymond Chandler, Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel, Sarah Perry, Diana Wynne Jones, Kazuo Ishiguro, Terry Pratchett and Erik Larson.
VENTRELLA: With a time machine and a universal translator, who would you invite to your ultimate dinner party?
WAGGONER: I’d want to do a long series of dinner parties to meet all of the people I’d like to talk to, but I’d start things off with an intimate dinner with Hildegarde of Bingen, Oscar Wilde, Zheng He, Julie D’Aubigny, P.G. Wodehouse, Julia Child, John E. Douglas, Attila the Hun, Nellie Bly, a librarian of Alexandria, and a Neanderthal.
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Michael A. Ventrella 