Ep 56 MEET YOUR NEW OBSESSION! 🥵 This Monster of Mine by Shalini Abeysekara | Author Interview

Today we have a very special spoiler free* interview with romantasy writer and Library Journal’s science fiction / fantasy debut author of the month for February, Shalini Abeysekara! We chat all things This Monster of Mine to celebrate the release of her very first published book!

(*Author interviews will always be spoiler free so everyone can enjoy them and determine whether or not to add these books to our never-ending TBR. So, proceed with absolutely NO caution!*)

Pick up your paperback copy or kindle download of This Monster of Mine now @ Amazon! | * https://amzn.to/3EboNhL

Follow Shalini on Instagram  ⁨@shalini.writes⁩ | https://www.instagram.com/shalini.writes?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

We discuss everything from what inspired Shalini to write a completely unique romantasy story inspired by Ancient Rome, how her background as a corporate lawyer informed her themes about justice and violence, which characters she most and least identifies with, and what it’s like to write a murder mystery in a fantasy world. What are the themes and major takeaways of the book? Is there a sequel in the works? And what part did The Darkling (yes, that Darkling) play in all of this?

And don’t worry, Shalini spills all the behind the scenes intel on her faves and fails, This Monster of Mine edition, and participates in an on-the-spot smash or pass!

Don't be shy, subscribe! New Podcasts every Tuesday!! (And sometimes Friday!…)
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Other Authors & Books Mentioned:
Save the Cat by @JessicaBrody
Seven Faceless Saints by @Mk_Lobb
This Vicious Grace by Emily Thiede @ektwrites

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Ashley
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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Besties and the Books
• 3:15 About Shalini Abeysekara
• 4:35 Fav and Fail This Monster of Mine
• 6:45 Plot and Tropes in This Monster of Mine
• 9:35 What Inspired You to Write this Story?
• 13:01 How Was the writing and publishing experience?
• 17:28 Have You Always Been A Writer?
• 21:51 Who Are Your Favorite Writers and Inspiring Books?
• 24:40 Characters in This Monster of Mine?
• 33:20 Special Themes in This Monster of Mine
• 38:33 Is There a This Monster of Mine Sequel or Prequel?
• 43:17 Unhinged Smash or Pass
• 50:00 Where to Buy This Monster of Mine

Transcript

0:00

[Music] hey guys I'm Ashley and I'm Liz and welcome to the Besties in the Books podcast welcome welcome you guys we have a very special spoiler-free author interview episode for you guys today so we're going to be chatting with Shelini Abyssakara so she is the author of this monster of mine which is her debut romanty novel and library journal science fiction and fantasy debut of the month for February so it is officially available on paperback and Kindle now and as I said before don't you worry this entire episode will be spoilerfree um so you can stick around to chitchat with us to find more out behind the scenes information about this book a little bit about the plot about the characters and tropes to see if it's something that you might be interested in picking up but before we get into all that we just wanted to say thank you so much for being here ah thank you guys so much for being here for another author interview we appreciate your guys' time that you're taking out of your books to sit down and listen to what we all have to say and hopefully introduce you to maybe a new author maybe a new book for you to pick up make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcasts including YouTube you can also follow us on Instagram and Tik Tok at besties in the books podcast everywhere oh we're so excited to share this episode with you guys and make sure all your notifications turned on because we got lots more author interviews lined up as well as like a little deep dive episode giving you all the spoilers for this book so we want to give you guys time to read it pick it up and read it and then we'll dive right in head first to all the things yes so okay so before we bring on Shelini let's just give a little brief introduction um so she is a former lawyer and the creator of this incredibly complex and immersive world inspired by ancient Rome she also said that it's somewhat inspired by repeat viewings of Ben Barnes as the Darkling so I particularly liked that cuz we can all get on board with that yeah justice yeah justice for the Darkling yes um Shelini enjoys using fantasy to interrogate reality and is passionate about writing neurode divergent women of color reckoning with themselves and their place in a world that tells them that they're too much and yet simultaneously not enough um she is a classically trained pianist a hardcore gamer and she'll fight you over a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie so welcome Shellini welcome thank you so much for having me thank you for coming on we appreciate your time so much to come and chat with us about your beautiful book yes i'm ready to pick apart these themes cuz it had so many good ones that I'm just interested in you know so I'm ready to talk about it yes definitely but we're going to put you on the spot over here at Besties in the Books every week Liz and I do a fave and fail sometimes themed whatever but we're going to bring it to you today so fave and fail of this monster of mine edition like what was the best and the worst part about writing this book oh my gosh so many bests and um well the worst were were were not so great um I guess the very best part about about writing this was um it was just a lovely escape from the sort of menial drudgery of being a corporate lawyer um at the time and so I would just write this after work and it was just a nice way to escape from the world and sort of even escape from literally like the sort of political landscape that was going on at the time and so that was it was just a really fun way of um reckoning with sort of my thoughts on my new job as a corporate lawyer and my love for writing and my love for fantasy and just getting to explore that um and I think the very best the very very best part of writing it has to be um when I guess Carter just kind of walked into my head fully formed after I just watched season one of Shadow and Bone and it it was so funny because I think it was just a couple of days after I had seen Ben Barnes as a Darkling Too and I just I could not get him out of my head and then this character took shape and then when the urge hits you to just to to write to write without thinking to just write without stopping um that sort of energy was without a doubt the best part of writing because I have since discovered that it does not happen every time and there are times when writing is a real slog so definitely the best part um the worst part is um okay the worst part without a doubt um was uh one of the side characters um who was somewhat modeled on a person whom I know in real life um the character in question is Harian and um that part was I I suppose the not so fun part about uh about writing in the sense that I'm like oh this is this is someone who exists this in the real world this is someone whom I really definitely want to put in there and I was so frustrated with myself even as I was writing it I was getting so frustrated at the character and so um I'm like you're necessary but oh my god I just don't like writing you i don't hate it so much so um and um so it was that and then just constant self-doubt imposter syndrome is this just the worst thing ever what what business do I have writing a book um that part was definitely definitely not not fun it took me 14 months to finish it so clearly I wasn't the very best at battling that good things take time and it seems like you know I love how you're saying that it's like it was an escape from your like corporate lawyer job but at the same time it had so many of those like law and justice themes and obviously was very set up that way and so you're like I'm going to like interrogate this job that I'm doing during my day job but like in a fun way you know what I mean i love that thank you and it's also so important to talk about like that imposttor syndrome kind of feeling of just like am I enough like that it's just very real and something that a lot of us can grapple with so good job for powering through that because it's a beautiful work it is thank you yeah i think that's relatable to a lot of people too yeah for sure so okay so let's just ask what should people expect if they're thinking about reading your book like how would you summarize the plot in some of your favorite tropes maybe without giving away spoilers for sure um so at Essence this is a story of a former barmaid turned prosecutor returning to the city in which she almost died four years ago uh with the goal of investigating um her near death and finding her asalent whose uh only identifying feature the only identifying feature that she recalls uh is his voice um and so at its core I would say it's a it's a murder mystery and a quest for revenge and tropes wise of course um she finds herself working under one of the ruling four ruling judges of the country who also is her number one suspect as to uh her asalent and so you have that enemies to lovers trope um which is my favorite trope ever it's going to be in everything I ever write and um then um a slowburn romance uh you have cohabitation and um without getting too spoiler spo spoilery I'm going to say um you also have like touch her and die vibes mhm so um yeah I'm going to I'm going to leave that down i'm trying not to get too too spoilery yeah no I feel like that is a good like assessment because I feel like lots of times when we pick up like a quote unquote like you know um romanticy or like even something with like a little bit this could you know be like dark uh academia adjacent almost a little bit too because she does want to you know go to the academy and everything i think sometimes the like murder mystery piece can get like pulled out of it um and we don't really like going into this I didn't get like murder mystery right off the bat and so then once that started unfolding I was like "Oh this is really interesting it has this whole other element to it that I didn't expect when I thought I was just picking up a romanty book." You know what I mean so I thought that was pretty cool i'm so glad yeah no that's I've heard a lot of people pull different elements from it which is which is really nice to see because I don't think I put and I think that's the lovely thing about writing a book is that I don't think I put as much thought into certain portions of it as a lot of readers gain from it and that is it's always the best thing just hearing feedback like that honestly yeah different people will pull from it and highlight in their heads what they are hoping to gain from it too so that's exciting yeah so how did you come up with the idea for this monster of mine like anything in particular with your background in law did it inspire it without like giving any you know crazy details away that would be incriminating nothing like that yeah nothing like that um I um Well I think it was a whole bunch of factors um so I had pretty much so I started writing this very very early into my legal career and um there was definitely a sense of uh disillusionment once I began my career uh I think the reality of um what everyone sees in suits is very different from um from what working in a corporate office is like and then it was just this sort of realization this very rapid realization that um change is a very difficult thing to accomplish um not just on your own but even as a collective just because of the way um the system is set up and so I think it was it sounds so silly to say but I think a lot of the book was born out of my uh frustration with that especially um you know coming home from work and going I have managed to once again do nothing even though I would like to help and so um a lot of the I would say underlying philosophy of the book uh came about then I had always been I'd always been interested in writing my writing journey was a very uh very long one and I I began it at 18 and so you know bit by bit the idea to maybe make something of that to see where it goes um took hold and then I I just started writing and started seeing seeing where it went with I guess the determination of making the main character as different from me as possible just because um it just didn't feel right to like selfinsert everything and so um whenever anyone says "Oh you know the main character is she a lot like you?" I'm like "No." And I think she's a way better person than me if you ask me so absolutely not but um just I guess uh the idea of exploring a sort of form of governance where people had the form to be heard more um frequently and uh where judgments were actually actionable yeah so yeah I guess that's that that planted the seed and I just kept writing awesome yeah I love that i just have to like kind of ask then was it almost like a little bit and we'll talk more about you know some characters later on in the interview but was it almost kind of like liberating then to write about a character like Kadra who's not afraid to you know stand up to the powers that be will say and kind of like enact his own justice in some ways like was that nice to be able to like use that as an outlet yes yeah it it really was that was um I try not to do too much wish fulfillment in my writing but that that felt like wish fulfillment this idea of you know someone who is among the elite but willing to go against the elite and um that yeah it felt very cathartic especially after work i love that so you kind of mentioned it before but so how long did it take you to write this whole book and how was like the actual experience of like finding a publisher and like going through that process oo um I could be very longwinded on this one so just tell me as much as you need to say yours it's your time to speak on whatever you want to speak on okay um so it took 14 months to write from start to finish um and this is actually only the second book I've ever written which is not a testament to my writing progress but more so like how how fixated I was on this for 14 months um it went through quite a few iterations so um I started writing in 2021 finished it i got halfway through in December and then realized it was terrible and I needed to redo the whole thing and it took me like a a full year I I guess yeah a full yearish to redo the entire book and I finished it in November November 13th of 2022 so um and this was just working on it pretty much every single day after work it was just this very sort of obsessive focus on this book and um um yeah it went through numerous rewrites numerous drafts and um I began quering the manuscript in January of 2023 so I guess a bit of a two-month window to sort of let the book settle to um have uh friends and um like beta readers aka strangers from Reddit who kindly volunteered their time to go over the book and tell me if they liked it if they hated it um so that happened for two months and then I started quering it in January of 2023 um and I'm sure a lot of authors are familiar with the term query trenches but for you know your lovely your lovely viewers who aren't um it's this idea that querying can sort of feel a little bit like um you're stuck in the trenches just waiting for a chance to get out um and you essentially summarize your entire novel into about 300 words a 300word pitch a 300 word word very sort of hooky blurb and send it off to agents you're cold emailing them in the hopes that it gets picked up and um after 118 rejections I got picked up in May like yeah May 30th of 2023 you know signed with my two amazing agents Molly and Ginger and then uh yeah we went on submission we got and and and Kayla my lovely editor picked me up from Hotterscape and Molly my incredible uh editor in the US uh picked me up for Union Square and it was just it just kind of felt like dominoes falling in a row and uh it was very nice because I had also quit my job before all of this happened so it was nice to know that I wasn't going to be just death and that was a very good feeling and uh yeah then this the ball got rolling and this and this book just underwent quite a few transformations in my very capable editor's hands yeah that's so exciting it's always just such a like long journey you know i think that that's been one of the interesting things you know doing author interviews is just putting it really into perspective you know it's like how many rejections did you say that you got before you finally got accepted yeah it was 118 yeah so it's just it's like not to harp on that obviously but just to show people that it's like a lot of work and time it's not like you just write this book and all of a sudden it's like amazing and it's out and it's great it's like so much work and time and history sweat and tears yep you know big time yeah so would you say this is off the This is off the books um would you say then you were a bit of a pancer and then plotter yes yeah i sort of learned the value at least for me of plotting um during my experience writing this book i tried pancing it and um I just it it's it was really not for me because I would you know reach chapter six and then realize oh hey I want to add that in oh hey I got to go all the way back to chapter one and add that in oh yeah and so I just I learned the value of good outline and yeah ever ever since I haven't gone back yeah cool cool cool so you talked about you talked about another book that you have written Once Upon a Time so have you you've always been a writer and do you want to talk about other works at all i mean I would I would love to but this one I guess it's just a bit more embarrassing um so when I was We all start somewhere right okay yeah I feel a bit better knowing that it's just it was just one of those things where you know I was 18 i had this idea in my head that I wanted to be a writer no one told my parents that they were they were not too keen on the idea but um and so I like I read this book at 18 and then I started quering it in my first year of university and you know me being like the self-important blabbermouth I am i guess I just like tell my classmates I'm like yeah you know like I think this is going to go well i think it's going to do too well so spoiler it did not in fact do well and um like no agent was like rightfully so no agent was interested in it or anything and so my little my little ego gets crushed and I'm going well I guess this is a sign to just never never write again and so you know my little dramatic 19-year-old uh self just decides you know what i guess I guess I'll go to law school everyone else is doing it and um so that ended up happening for for very I guess silly reasons because I'd gotten rejected and I got in my head that that somehow means that um I shouldn't keep trying mhm which was not a not the smartest idea at the time um but yeah that was that was that first book i am since you know looking back at it revising it seeing what I can do with it um and so I think there's hope for it but and I think the day actually you know if it ever sees the light of day I will be very grateful to that 19-year-old girl but um I think I'm more grateful to my current self who stuck around past the rejection so yeah and honestly if there's anything I could say to any quering writers it would be just cry after you see the rejection email in your inbox and then keep going yeah like let yourself feel it but then move forward yeah um Yeah exactly keep going because people here people here know for years and years and years so that's very inspirational mhm um I just have to ask though can you give us like any little tidbits about what that first book was about like I'm kind of curious oh my gosh for sure i love that book to pieces um so it had like a title and everything but I it was um I'm like trying to properly pitch it in the hopes that some editor will see it but it was this um a female enforcer with no memory of who she is or where she's come from um who serves as a member of a of the private guard in um a closed country so I get I was thinking more um uh almost North Korea-esque like very few people allowed in very few people allowed out and then you have this you know female soldier and with a high rank and um the state's private guard uh who has no memory of how she ended up in said private guard and has sort of been uh having to do all sorts of um in many ways dirty work for 3 years uh while she tries to figure figure out her identity until the um the top military brass uh in the of the country dies and a uh nationwide hunt is undertaken to replace said military uh leader in the form of like um a series of trials and she recognizes one of the her it's one of her only fragments of memory but she recognizes one of the contenders and um said contender has his own agenda for participating in um in the trials and yeah that was that was the book i'm doing a terrible pitch i mean no it's great i'm like let's just put this on the record right now i would read that ashley would you read that absolutely yeah it's giving It's giving like Mulan vibes to me when you're talking about it i'm like there's nothing about that I wouldn't like you know oh my god thank you fingers crossed there's like something else I'm wanting to [ __ ] my editors right now and I'm just like please love me please take this book yeah so if you just had to shout out and it can they can be like famous authors they can be indie authors whatever who are your favorite authors what are some of your favorite books like people who may have inspired you etc um for people who may have inspired me um there were like I'm trying to three books yeah there were three books that I would say were kind of seinal to um my being able to write this book the first was um Save the Cat by Jessica Brody thank you for teaching me everything about plot structure because um my pancing at the time itself was a mess and so Save the Cat is just this incredible sort of um writing bible of how to structure a book um how plot beats work rising action falling action um your character's internal flaws um and how they and how to weave them through your your A plot your main plot and your Bplot your your romance or your sort of friendship arc yeah it was seinal couldn't have done it without her and um I guess the two books that I was just kind of marathoning back and forth while I was writing this um just because their writing styles were so gorgeous like there were they just they weave such an incredible um tapestry with their words and I just whenever I read them I felt the urge to write and normally after like a day of writing as a corporate lawyer um sometimes the very last thing I wanted to do was write but I would just read one chapter of their work and I'm like you know what I just I want to I want to I want to write something anything and um those of those works were um seven deadly saints by MK log um whom I adore and I'm just like embarrassingly fan girly um around and like we live 2 hours away from each other and I know that the day I ever meet her I'm going to just without a doubt make an absolute fool of myself but um I think she's incredible and like the day she commented on one of my Instagram posts like I think I have like that screenshotted like the notification because it was such a moment for me um she's amazing and um the other book was uh This Vicious Grace by Emily Teed um incredible um yeah I would just read chapters like just reread the same chapters on and off just to be like how does she condense so much information into such few lines like this is amazing i need to learn how to do this and and yeah I don't think I'm pretty sure this monster probably would not exist without all three books for sure that's awesome yeah love that it always gives us new ideas for the future too you know cuz we're going to be able to like go Google those after this add a TBR never ending TBR stock let's go yeah they're amazing books they're They really are yeah so let's pivot a little bit to the characters that lie within this monster of mine would you have fallen for codra if you were in Sarai's position 100% i kind of was half in love with him when I wrote him and so I think it probably really comes across that I was like I am having the best time and my poor like my poor boyfriend just sitting in the corner going is everything okay i'm like I'm having the best day but um I think I think absolutely there's um I kept trying to write him to be more evil and then every time I did that I was like never mind I still like him so 100% would 100% would have fallen for it yeah for anybody who wants a little teaser out there he is our morally gray baddie like uh I ate it up i did and when you say like Ben's Barnes is a Darkling justice for the Darkling like that's perfect that reated yeah i definitely like I looked I was just like looking up like random like I'm guilty of it okay i was looking up random guys on Pinterest i was trying to figure out who would fan cast him and I found some good just like randoms you know but when you said Ben Barnes I was like "Okay we'll settle on that that sounds great." Yeah that dark mysterious brooding and like I say morally gray but like dude dude does some crazy stuff in this book so you guys are in for a treat let me tell you was he other than Mr darkling was there anybody else in real life that he was inspired you know to write about in real life oh my god I wish that would be amazing it was just mainly um unfortunately it was just like a lot of TV and um yeah yeah just a lot of TV I was watching so it was primarily Ben Barnes but I was also watching um um a discovery of witches and Matthew Good plays this vampire in there and he's just like very you know tall British um possessive i'm like okay sign me yeah it was just that sort of vibe um definitely did help especially when I was writing the sequel i was just like binging cuz there's there's only two seasons of Shadow and Bone and so I was just sort of binging you know Discovery of Wishes and all those all those seasons to just try to get the vibes right yeah that's the other TBR list that's going on for people like the entertainment visually like okay what's this show let me watch this now you know so what about like let's talk about the female characters so you had said before that Sarai is like very like opposite of you but do you feel like you relate to her at all and if so why um I feel like I relate to her in the sense of um her struggling to sort of find a foothold in an industry that she feels like she cannot morally relate to so I was um I think that was just the tiniest piece of me that I put in her that I was able to connect with because to be honest writing her was the hardest um I guess not the worst part certainly but I guess the hardest part of writing the book was writing her because Kadra was he was easy he comes off the page i'm like I love him this is so easy but so the I wouldn't say writing Sarah was the hardest part uh was the worst part of the book but it was certainly the hardest um in the sense that I wanted her to be equally as compelling as Kadra um while also serving as sort of a foil to him and so um for that reason I couldn't put too much of myself in her but I just I did put that little kernel of her struggling to morally relate to this position that she's found herself in and this position that she thinks she can use to do good in the world but in reality is more used to keep people exactly where they are and um that yeah I could definitely relate to her her frustration her anger her hurt in in in that regard and definitely her disillusionment um but besides that couldn't relate to too much alas um so the I just all I could really hope for was that um other people would be able to sort of see see that despite her um inner turmoil that she's a very steadfast very straightforward person and as someone who was just a very anxious very disorganized and very just timid human being um I guess that those were qualities that I admired about her even if I couldn't relate to them personally yeah i mean I think I would agree with that assessment too because it's not like I necessarily am like I could see myself in her but there are parts of what she's dealing with that I think a lot of us do deal with um you know obviously you're coming from a law background but I'm sure there's a lot of people just coming from all different kinds of backgrounds right where you're young and you're excited to get into whatever that profession is lots of times it's because you have a passion to change the world and help people and then once you get there you're like "Oh this is a whole bunch of bureaucracy and I don't and I don't know." And the dis disillusionment as you said before I think can be really hard for a lot of people um myself included I've experienced that too and I think Ashley has too and so I found that to be extremely relatable for sure so the second part of that question I just had to ask so Cisor her best friend um did you relate to her character at all if so why um yeah funnily enough she was the character I um was able to relate to the most um which is very unfortunate but I think that's why I wrote her in there but um primarily because um when I was younger I lived in a very sort of um closed off community so in Canada um I lived in Winnipeg Manitoba also known as Winterg because it can be like - 50 down there wow and yeah there is there was a day when it was colder on in Winnipeg than it was on Mars so wow the weather is shout out Winnipeg freaking being freezing more right um but it was this sort of closed off community with closed off ideals and the sort of person that it births isn't necessarily the best human being and um certainly not the wisest I would say especially you know like in 2007 and 2008 and you know those years when I was growing up oh my god I'm dating myself here but um it was don't worry you perfect it wasn't exactly the age of information and so I I knew a lot of people who had a lot of diff a lot of terrible prejudices and I certainly held them at that age as well and um uh in Cesare I saw or I've put a lot of that um I guess inability to look past prejudice in there and um I think it's it was unfortunate that as I grew older I got to meet more people like her and so I I did find that relatable because you can just see this person who is unfortunately embroiled in um deep who unfortunately has deeply subscribed to a set of beliefs that are actively harming her although she doesn't realize it yeah totally yeah that right there I feel like you summed that up in that sentence perfectly um because we all have been her i think that that's important and we all know plenty of people who are like her um so yeah I loved her character for that reason because as frustrating as she could be at times you're like well that's life though you know what I mean that's realistic mhm yeah you did it such a good job with these characters that had me like outwardly emoting which is like what I love in a book so it's so hard to remain spoiler-free right now but definitely come back you guys for that full deep dive once you've read her book as well so we can all hash it out together cuz some of these moments had me screaming you know i'm glad yeah so were there any themes that you put into this book that felt extra meaningful to you um I would say the female rage front and central um in real life I am the most timid human being alive and um it was um very cathartic to write a character who was um who who despite wanting to keep her mouth shut refuses to keep her mouth shut and um watching her sort of actively grow over the course of the book um I would say I would say it unlocked something in me but the reality is that I'm still going to be super timid and super anxious in real life but it was sort of nice to explore that and to put that in there so that maybe people who are significantly braver than me can gain more from it and the singular motif that and I'm struggling to summarize this in a way that does not come across as the world's worst sound bite but um I guess the singular motif that I was very um intent on putting in there um had to be the discourse around violence in in the book in the sense that violence is a tool just like any any other tools that are used to reorganize society and that sometimes in the right hands that violence is not necessarily the worst thing i think I think I got that one properly interesting yeah but yeah um so to kind of piggy back off of that I was particularly curious about this i felt like when I was highlighting all the different quotes in this book that I really that really resonated with me it was like the theme of just the overarching theme of justice like what is justice how do we define it so why did you decide to write a book so heavily influenced by that theme yeah I justice does sit front and central in the book um and I um keeping things as spoiler-free as possible and leaving as much of my job out of it as possible i think it was um the book the book is an ongoing dialogue with um justice and violence and the means necessary to achieve an end and my focus on justice was primarily due to the fact that in the legal field uh at least the portion of it that I saw I wasn't seeing a lot of justice and um I had colleagues I had friends whenever I just talked about u my experiences with them I would hear a lot of and they were in the thick of it they were going through it as well and I would just hear a lot of that's normal and it looks like there's not much we can do and Um I saw the book as not necessarily a way to stand on a soap box and preach that oh here here are my thoughts on it everyone but more of a um what does justice look like um to people what what do people want out of justice do they simply want the ability to access it but that nothing actionable actually comes out of a judgment or is it that they they simply want a means to be heard a means for that um for the results of that hearing to actually prove fruitful and um whether it is possible for um justice to I I suppose whether whether it's possible for justice to exist at all within um a system that desperately tries to adhere to nonviolence even while remaining incarcereral and so that those were those were sort of the ideas like rather than offer an opinion that I just wanted to explore because um the two main characters like Sarah and Kadra have different viewpoints on that um him being very much pro violence of course but but yeah more more so just a dialogue to see what what I could gain out of the conversation and what maybe other people could could see within the conversation as well i felt like it would be so preachy to just sit on there and be like"He stabs everyone this is great." Yeah i mean I read it as you know a subtle but effective you know like examination and critique of like yeah what does justice mean who gets to define it who gets to benefit from it who doesn't benefit from it etc you know yeah mhm i appreciated that a lot about it definitely so is there a sequel in the works yeah more than in the works it's already it's already written and we are we are deep into production um I can't make I don't think I can see a give a date definitively but the window we have is summer of next year so cool yeah well at the time of posting this you know podcast we were only a week into your official launch date of the first book so we won't press you too hard we'll sit back and enjoy this one definitely um besides a sequel coming for This Monster of Mine do you have any other book ideas in the works other than you know your original baby um yeah but more than in the works I've almost done um a prequel to the book which is actually like It's actually mentioned in this monster of mine because um it was something that I was working on before Kadra strolled into my head and I was like "Okay I guess I'm going to abandon this book then." And yeah I I um resurrected it afterwards and um the there's a little story that one of the tetrarchs Cassandne tells Sarai in uh about halfway through the book i think it's chapter 17 there's a little story she tells her about a bounty hunter and um a uh debt uh a debt slave and um yeah that one's written as well that I'm exciting praying that someone we're all pulling our books out right now and going to chapter you said chapter 17 okay let's go right into that get a little taster to tie us over that's so exciting so yeah how does that feel to like be building out this whole world especially now that you have these bookends starting you know your prequel and then your sequel it's very exciting um it's yeah that's always been the dream um I when I started writing the very first thing I did was draw a gigantic world map my ambitious 17-year-old self doing that and so it has been sort of the basis for every single thing that I have written because I have like these like multiple countries i'm like I'm going to set one here and so it's just it's kind of fun it's kind of fun to just you know be in a position where I'm like I feel like I can do my own version of the MCU if enough if I sell well and if more editors pick up my book so love it it's It's really lovely so cool so what do your people in real life think of your book who have read it so far i know it's brand new um and like what do you hope that people get from it in general yeah mhm um funnily enough um not I I think maybe one person who actually knows me in real life has read it um I was very private about my writing and about mainly because it felt like such a pipe dream and um yeah definitely not as brave as Sarah i just kind of it was a secret um for the longest time it was a secret until I finished it until I was agented i just I never really told anyone because I never thought it that this could happen to me and um as a result um a lot of people haven't read the plot book and um um the people who have though um just like the Yeah I think it's just one person who's read it um did struggle to reconcile it with their knowledge of me as a person oh interesting but also um they seem to like it i'm very grateful for that um and I think that the the greater joy for me though has been in discovering sort of this gigantic community on on Bookstagram i wasn't really active on Bookstagram before i wasn't you know I just it hasn't even been a year since I made my account but since then I've just gotten um so many people you know just messaging me and talking about the book and it has been that I would say has been the greatest joy um a lot of my circle aren't you know the biggest readers and um they're like "Oh yeah you know I'm going to I'm going to try and get around to reading it i'm going to try and get around to reading it." And then they've worked like three shifts straight at you know the hospital and I'm like "You are tired it's okay." Um so I've just derived a lot of um like I honestly it's as someone who has a lot of imposter syndrome it's been really heartening just getting responses from complete more than friends and family just from complete strangers on Instagram and other platforms saying "I really love your book i'm going to pick up a copy." And I'm like "That means the absolute world to me." And um yeah that that has been everything it is time for our little bookend that we do over here of our Smasher Pass yes okay i've been waiting for this we like to keep it a little unhinged over here so it may not be what you think it's going to be liz shall you do the honors so yeah and Ashley usually explains it too but it's more so like like lots of times we'll do like an either or like you have to choose one person or the other so that's the one that we chose for today and it's just it's a hypothetical smash or pass if you had to pick one and it's smash or pass like the idea like it doesn't have to be like a literal you know smash or pass like just smash that situation pass that situation what have you depending on the circumstances that one's good so if you had to choose between and it's funny because you already kind of gave us a little bit of insight into this between Cisare and Harion who would you choose oh my gosh um yeah no I'm definitely There's hope for Cesar it's there i don't know i'll smash this already harian can leave that yeah I suppose it's just cuz I keep thinking of the real life inspiration i'm like "Oh hell no." But um yeah no I I That was just such a quick answer i'm so sorry no that's good no it is yeah and anybody who's read this book and I'm sure we're all agreeing with you I am so for me I would give the same answer what about you Liz same as frustrating as it might be same yeah for sure yeah those who know you know dude hair on all right okay well I feel like is there any you know are there any more like little tidbits you want to add about this monster of mine or do you feel like we covered a lot of you know your process and what you wanted to say about it oh my gosh you guys were so comprehensive yeah I'm struggling to think of um anything necessarily to cover um no did you I guess I have a question for you guys awesome um so I I guess setting wise um did you find it difficult to relate to the ancient ancient Rome sort of setting i know it's not the most ubiquitous setting in fantasy and there were no dragons unfortunately and I know people I know people love dragons so did you find it more hard to get into the setting because it was less obviously like fantastical um I wouldn't say that it was harder for me to get into it i just had to pay closer attention but there are definitely some books that are like that and I appreciate it because then once you get the hang of it and you get immersed in it then it's all immersive so it's like I just had to kind of like sit down and almost like the way my brain works is I have to like categorize it like okay these are who these people are these are the people who work for them this is the city you know what I mean and I kind of had to just like try to like I didn't have to chart it out but it's almost like that's what I'm doing in my brain where I'm kind of like charting it out a little bit but sometimes it can be like that with traditional fantasy too so I feel like once I kind of got into kind of got the hang of the structure then it was very easy for me to get lost in it for sure yeah for me yeah for me the setting was totally like easy no big deal to jump right into i feel like I got the hang of the setting before so we tend to go into most of our reads fairly blind you know so we were sent this book as an option and we started reading it and we're like boom done we'll do it let's go and it was it's kind of refreshing sometimes too to have a different take so we're talking you know a fantastical element cuz we have the magic systems that you're beautiful at writing into there but it was it was easy you know before I even knew you had some influences of ancient Rome that's kind of the feelings that I already had you know painted in my head like kind of dusty and then you have the towers obviously I think of kind of like that kind of tower like a desert kind of almost feeling to it and I don't know if I'm right but that's the way I felt it in my brain so you know kind of like whatever works it's for me though it's that the meat of the story and the themes for me and the tropes that you're trying to convey in there that I just eat up personally yeah for Oh my gosh thank you for me what sucked me in was like I'm a sucker for like a back in time moment and so that got me like immediately cuz I was like "Okay that means we're going to have like full circle moments happening where we're making connections to the past." and that is my fave and so yeah that is what sucked me in and I also appreciated that sometimes if you're going back and forth in time uh it's not super like I've read books where it's not super clear or even watched shows where it's not super clear and then I'm just like so confused and I feel like the way that you wrote this was very clear um and I really appreciated that cuz I wasn't like "Oh no is this was this four years ago or was this now or like what's happening?" But it was like very very easy to follow but also very gratifying to like put those pieces together yeah agreed totally awesome i'm so glad thank you i'm trying to think of anything else to say about the book but honestly I'm just I'm so glad that you guys loved it i am not the very best when it comes to public speaking but I'm always way better in writing so I'm just I'm really glad that people are enjoying it i'm so glad that you enjoyed it because like I I know I mentioned this earlier but I've heard so much about you guys and so I just like even the chance to appear on here I was like yes like cancel everything not that I had anything maybe like dinner in front of like TV with like watching severance but tell it sorry side note i'm trying to get Oh my god watch it so good i need so good but it is amazing thank you oh my gosh that warms our hearts too so much oh well then I feel like yeah you know we just everyone go pick up your copies of this monster of mine do it now available paperback and Kindle right now it's out how exciting do it yeah let's go do it order your copies run your local bookstore pick it up guys it's time let's do it oh my gosh yeah and definitely local bookstores um Oh my god if I may mention one thing um I have like a release campaign running with like several indie books tours i think we're at 16 across the US Canada and the UK where even after release as long as you know if you just go a copy of the book you get like art prints and bookmarks and signed book plate so um yeah and there's like a lot i stripped a whole ton there so yeah yeah we'll definitely share that to our stories because I was actually perusing your Instagram last night and I saw a couple of those indie bookshops Liz and I just visited down in San Diego when we went to another author interview um you know like panel so we got to meet one of our authors that we previously interviewed there so I was like "Oh my gosh all these bookshops." So we'll definitely share that to our stories so you guys can make sure to try to shop those if you're local if they have online store whatever it may be for sure and while we're at it what is your Instagram handle so everybody can go follow you there as well uh yes thank you so it's Shellini my first name S H A L I N I do and that's perfect and we'll have that all down in the description box for you guys to check out too and just have an easy clickable link there but you guys thank you so much for joining us today shelini thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your like kneedeep in writing and everything that's going on too and the day before your launch is when we're filming this you guys and so it's so exciting big round of applause oh my gosh thank you so much for joining us we appreciate it everybody make sure to follow her over there on Instagram and you can follow us too at besties in the books podcast anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube and you guys we'll see you next time see you next time bye bye[Music]