Author Interview: Soman Chainani

If, a few days back, you read our review of Beasts and Beauty by Soman Chainani, and thought to yourself, wow I wish I could find out a bit more about this book and the author, well we have a treat for you today!

And after that, while you wait, you can follow him on twitter, and also preorder a copy of Beasts and Beauty (links can be found here).

Let’s start at the beginning. How did you first get into writing?

I’ve always been a writer. It was my only creative outlet from early in childhood—I wasn’t good at anything else. So I was writing stories from the age of eight or nine, truly wild and ambitious stories, intense murder mysteries and Irish spy dramas and this one particular insane epic about a blind assassin, all of which were terrible, but I just couldn’t get enough. It was clear that this was what I was meant to do with my life, even if it took me a long time to finally admit it to myself.

What are your favourite genres to read and write, and are there any genres or tropes you wouldn’t write?

I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers and horror books, strangely enough, because I find that they surprise me the most in their structure and construction. As a teenager, I read a lot of sensual romance as well, which I think gave me a deep, intrinsic sense of how to use language in a visceral, alluring way. For writing, I think fantasy is where I naturally reside, but I can see myself writing anything, honestly. There’s nothing off-limits.

How do you get inspiration for your books and what’s your writing process? At what point do you let other people read your drafts and who are they?

Living is my inspiration because my life is so crazy. I feel like I’m always having adventures, whether it’s travel or flying trapeze lessons or dating or hanging with my friends. There’s always a story, so the creative well is inevitably full. Sometimes I have too many ideas, honestly, and use meditation and silence to really center myself. As for my drafts, no one reads them except my editor Toni Markiet. I write for my own pleasure and to satisfy my own expectations, so once Toni and I are happy with something… then I’m ready to release it to the world.

Which three authors would you say influenced your writing the most?

Anne Rice, Patrick Dennis, Alan Hollinghurst.

And for something that is also very important to us & what we put a lot of emphasis on when blogging. What does ownvoices LGBT representation mean to you?

I think the LGBT experience is so specific to those who’ve lived it, because from the outside – especially these days – it can look like rainbows and butterflies. But every LGBT person knows that being gay creates this extra level of self-consciousness in you, even if your coming out process was met with total acceptance. You still have to battle that layer of feeling different and it affects your whole life. So when LGBT writers write about being LGBT, there is that true understanding of that shift in consciousness that’s part of having lived the experience. Every book I write has LGBT themes, but more importantly, it’s rooted in my experience as an LGBT human.

What’s one piece of advice you would like to give your younger self?

Don’t try to control your own life. Life is conspiring to make you happy, but if you try to wrangle it and control it in your own direction, it’s going to end up very small.

Summarise your most recent/next book in up to 5 words and a meme.

BEASTS & BEAUTY: sensual, alive, dangerous, provocative, troublemaking

(omg I’m so bad at memes – can you find a good one?!)

If (when!) your books were to be made into movies, who would you like to direct them?

Paul Feig is directing The School for Good & Evil movie, coming to Netflix in 2022. He’s my dream director, so that wish pretty much came true!

Beasts & Beauty, I’d like to be a limited series, with each fairy tale its own episode. Hopefully that wish will come to life too.

If you could have dinner with one member of the LGBT community, dead or alive, who would it be?

Karl Lagerfeld.

Which of your characters would you most want to fight a zombie apocalypse with?

Tedros, OMG. He’s so intense.

Is there a famous franchise or simply a movie/TV show you’d like to be able to write for?

If they need a writer for the Cruella sequel…

Do you have any secret non canon ships in your books you wish people would write fics for?

I always wonder why no one put Hort and Agatha together.

Rec us some great LGBT books you’ve read recently!

Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice is a masterpiece. One of the best books I’ve ever read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Soman Chainani is the New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil series. The fairy tale saga has sold more than 3 million copies, has been translated into 29 languages and will soon be a major motion picture from Netflix, which Chainani will executive produce.

Each of the six books in the series—The School for Good and Evil, A World Without Princes, The Last Ever After, Quests for Glory, A Crystal of Time, and One True King—has debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. Together the books have been on the print and extended lists for 38 weeks.

Soman is a graduate of Harvard University and received his MFA in Film from Columbia University. He began his career as a screenwriter and director, with his films playing at over 150 film festivals around the world. He has been nominated for the Waterstone Prize for Children’s Literature, named to the Out100, and received the Shasha Grant and the Sun Valley Writer’s Fellowship (both for debut writers). Every year, he visits schools around the world to speak to kids and share his secret: that reading is the path to a better life.

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