Time Travel Plotlines and How We Get Ideas with Kekla Magoon - The Secret Library

Marissa chats with Kekla Magoon about her new middle grade time travel fantasy, THE SECRET LIBRARY. Also discussed in this episode: How secrets can take many forms (goats!), writing stories non-linearly, how creating a timeline can help catch inconsistencies and track continuity, how sometimes you need to write the whole book to feel confident enough to try to sell it, mining old files for potential new projects, and so much more!

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Transcript

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Marissa: Hello and welcome to the happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you for joining me. One thing that is making me happy this week, we finally, finally got to announce one of my secret projects. I was able to squeeze in a really quick last minute sound bite in last week's episode, but in case you missed it, I'm officially a nonfiction writer. How about that? My debut nonfiction book titled the Happy Writer. Get more ideas, write more words, and find more joy. From first draft to publication and beyond. It's a mouthful. It is coming out next January, and it is full of advice and tips and kind of my own personal philosophies on how to bring joy and enthusiasm to the writing process and increase your productivity, increase your creativity, things to help you be a happier writer. I really hope it's going to be a fun and a really useful guide for lots of authors. So anyway, this super cute cover was just revealed. Well, by the time you're hearing this, probably like a week and a half ago, if I'm doing the math right. And it is now available for pre order, so please check out that link in our show notes. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. She is the multi award winning author of numerous books for young readers, including the season of Styx, Malone, the Rock and the river, how it went down, and revolution in our time, the Black Panther party's promise to the people. I definitely practice saying that because of all that alliteration. Her new middle grade, the Secret Library, comes out tomorrow May 7, please welcome Hekla Magoon.

[03:21] Kekla: Hi.

[03:22] Marissa: Hello, and welcome, and congratulations on this fantastic book coming out.

[03:27] Kekla: Thank you. Thank you so much. It's really exciting.

[03:31] Marissa: How have things been going? I know you've been through this a time or two. Like, what book number is this for you?

[03:38] Kekla: This is a book number that is so high, I'm starting to lose track. I believe it is my 18th novel.

[03:44] Marissa: Okay. Yeah, I think I just had my 17th come out.

[03:48] Kekla: And.

[03:48] Marissa: Yeah, right around 14 is when I started to lose count.

[03:50] Kekla: Exactly.

[03:52] Marissa: I have to keep going back and, like, counting them up again.

[03:54] Kekla: Like, is that right? Yeah. Well, I've done some nonfiction in between, so sometimes I'm going, which number of book am I on? Which number of novel am I on?

[04:02] Marissa: Yeah, I know. And then you've also done, like, short stories and anthologies and that sort of thing too, right?

[04:07] Kekla: Yeah, yeah, quite a few, yeah.

[04:09] Marissa: And that it starts to get murky when I'm like, okay, but do I count the. The anthologies? Do I count the coloring book? Do I count the graphic novels? Like, you know, exactly. I don't know exactly. If it's in print and it has my name on it, I'm counting it.

[04:24] Kekla: Exactly. Yep, yep, yep.

[04:28] Marissa: Well, congratulations. I so loved this book, and I'm really excited to talk about it. Um, as I mentioned before we started the recording that this is one of those really fun books that you can enjoy as a reader. Like, it's just a really fun story and great characters. But as I was reading it, my writer brain was also just, like, so hooked because there's really fantastic craft at work here. And I know that it. You made it look easy, but I suspect it wasn't easy. So I'm excited to hear about it.

[05:06] Kekla: Yes. It's never easy. The goal is to make it look easy.

[05:09] Marissa: Yeah. And you did.

[05:11] Kekla: You did.

[05:11] Marissa: It felt very flawless and seamless. But I know, I know there's probably a lot going on behind the scenes. But before we start talking about the new book, I actually want to start by asking about your author origin story. How did you get here?

[05:29] Kekla: So I am somewhat unusual among my peers in that I didn't grow up wanting to be a writer. It was not something that was on my radar. I didn't write many stories as a child, or at least I wasn't conscious of myself as someone who was writing stories as a child. I was going to be a doctor. I was going to be a teacher. I was going to be a health educator. I was going to be all of these different things, and nowhere on my radar was writer. Now. I loved to read. I grew up reading. My mom would take us to the library every week, and I would load up, you know, my backpack or my hands or whatever, just with as many books as I could carry. And, like, I spent what feels like the majority of my time as a kid just diving into stories and all kinds of things. I loved historical fiction. I loved contemporary, realistic fiction about people, you know, making friends and fitting in and solving problems and, you know, trying to sort of find a way to sort of be myself in the world, I think, was part of that. So I was a reader, but not a writer. And so it wasn't until after I graduated from college that I turned toward writing. I've learned over time that writing is something that I turned to in times of transition, in times of stress, in times of kind of frustration or when I don't know what to do with myself or times of loneliness. And so that was basically what happened. When I graduated from college. I moved to New York, and I didn't know anybody yet. And, you know, the world was strange, and I was, you know, going to work and coming home and just writing. Going to work and coming home and writing. And the more that I did that, the more I realized, you know, this writing thing seems like something I'm enjoying. Maybe there's a way to make it more a part of my life. So I went to the master's of fine arts in writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and I got my MFA, and I was living in New York because it's a low residency program. So I was working full time and writing in my spare time and after work and on the weekends, and I just started churning out novels. And from the beginning was fairly prolific just in terms of how much I could produce in a short period of time. And so it didn't take me as long as it took some people to get a novel actually finished and to get it published. So I finished my master's program when I was 23, I guess, and then my first novel was published when I was 28.

[07:59] Marissa: How many novels do you think you wrote from, like, first go at it until the first published?

[08:05] Kekla: The first novel that I really properly completed, ultimately, was the first novel that I published. But at the same time that I was writing that I was writing a lot of different things. So there were probably for other pieces that never quite got actually done, but that were novel adjacent. And then the novel that I wrote right after it while I was trying to get the rock in the river published, which was my debut. That novel is not published, either, so it was definitely sort of an organic process that was happening all at once.

[08:38] Marissa: Yeah, I like the term novel adjacent.

[08:41] Kekla: Yes.

[08:42] Marissa: I had a number of those as well.

[08:44] Kekla: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[08:45] Marissa: There was the idea of a novel. It does. Never quite made it there. And then. Can I ask what. So your original degree, your bachelor's degree, what was that in?

[08:56] Kekla: So I actually got my BA in history, which is funny, because as a kid, I thought history was really boring because of the way that it was taught to me. Typically, I loved historical fiction. It was one of my favorite genres. But the idea that history is story didn't actually click in my mind until college. I went to Northwestern, and they have a really well known and well regarded history department, and the professors are just really good at making the subject matter that they care about an exciting story in their lectures. And so that was basically what was happening is I, you know, I started out pre med in college, and I was so, you know, not feeling. I love science now, but I didn't love science classes in that moment. And the way that they were taught was sort of to weed you out. Right. Because everybody comes to. Everybody comes to college there who. Who's, like, pre med, and they want, you know, to figure out, well, who really, you know, wants to do this and who doesn't. So they make it specifically really hard. And I, you know, I'm sure I could have stuck, get out and become a doctor, but I just wasn't enjoying the process that much. And that's a really long time to be in school and training for something that you're not, you know, if you're not enjoying the process of the training.

[10:07] Marissa: Right.

[10:08] Kekla: So I decided that this wasn't probably the best fit for me, and so I just started taking other classes. You know, I took a psychology class. I took a linguistics class, which I loved, and I took a history class. And I just. History was really the first class I took outside of the sciences, and I was like, this is where I need to be. So I jumped over there.

[10:31] Marissa: Yeah. And I love that because, obviously, this book at least, has a ton of history into it. It's not technically historical fiction, but it's kind of historical fiction in a way. Right.

[10:43] Kekla: Yeah.

[10:45] Marissa: Are you able to weave history into a lot of your novels?

[10:49] Kekla: I would say yes. My very first novel was a historical fiction set in the civil rights era. I wrote a companion to that book. I also wrote a novel about Malcolm X as a teenager, which is set in the 1930s and forties. I wrote the Black Panther party's promise to the people. So revolution in our time is nonfiction history. So that's part of it. I don't know that I've ever done anything like this, because the secret library has time travel, so that's why it has this historical element while also being a fantasy. And so I don't recall having that kind of blending in a novel before. That was one of the challenges of writing time travel is having to study multiple different time periods and trying to put my character in different places in an authentic way.

[11:41] Marissa: One of the many, many challenges of writing time travel.

[11:44] Kekla: Yes.

[11:46] Marissa: Well, I love that. I mean, obviously, having talked to lots of authors, not every writer gets a degree in writing and creative writing. And it's so interesting to me for me to hear what different paths people took. And sometimes someone's like, oh, I have a degree in marine biology, or I have a degree. I studied to become a lawyer or whatever. History is one of those degrees where you're like, oh, yeah, that tracks. You can see how that applies to writing later on.

[12:14] Kekla: Exactly.

[12:16] Marissa: Okay, so here we are. Approximately your 18th book is coming out. Would you please tell listeners, what is the secret library about?

[12:27] Kekla: So this is a middle grade time travel fantasy starring Dally Pete Harrington, who's a very adventurous eleven year old. And when her grandfather passes away, he leaves her a map to a mysterious location. She goes there and discovers a library of secrets, where each book in the library is a portal to another time and place. So this library is a gathering place for all the secrets that have ever existed. And so this library has taken many different forms in different times in history. It's been a vault, it's been some other things, but now it's a library. And so people who discover the library, which are only the people who are meant to discover the library, go inside, and you take a book off the shelf, and you go into the special secret reading room. And when you open that book, boom, you're transported to the place and time where a secret was created or revealed. And so you get to actually live in that moment in the past. And so, through the library, dolly interacts with people in her life. She interacts with some of her ancestors, because secrets have the most power and the most meaning when they're the secrets of people that you know or people that have some relationship to you. So this is a story of, it's an adventure, but it's also a story of learning who you are, where you come from, and also who you want to be.

[13:51] Marissa: I kind of chuckled when you mentioned that the library has taken different forms over the course of history because just, like, spoiler, one of them involves goats.

[14:02] Kekla: Yes. So that's actually, that's actually. I mean, I could talk about that.

[14:06] Marissa: If you go ahead. I love that we have goats. We got goats for Christmas, so I was so excited to see goats in there.

[14:14] Kekla: Yeah. So you've probably heard of the term scapegoat, which we toss around today as somebody who's blamed for something that they didn't do. Right. The scapegoat. And so that term actually originates. It's a historical term or maybe even a biblical term that relates to ancient communities that used to take a literal, physical goat and whisper all their secrets or their sins to this goat and then send it out into the wilderness. And so in so doing, they perceived that the secrets were safe. Right. And that also they'd be absolved of sin. Right. So the goat goes out into the wilderness and is the bearer of these secrets. So that is the scapegoat. Like the person who, the creature who carries all these people's sins and sort of is holding and sort of taking the blame and being the one to carry that now. I love that. Yeah.

[15:09] Marissa: Interesting little tidbit.

[15:11] Kekla: Yeah. So that was actually suggested to me by a fellow writer because we were talking. I was talking about secrets and how they've taken different forms and so forth. And so my friend will alexander mentioned scapegoats, and I was like, what? I was like, I didn't know. Like, I didn't know the history of that. Or, I mean, I had forgotten. And so he. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to have scapegoats in the book. Can I have scapegoats in the book? And he was like, of course. So I put scapegoats in the book. So inside the secret library, there's this courtyard where there are scapegoats that live. And I don't know, it's just when you think about the sort of volume of secrets and the kinds of secrets that have existed in the past, there's just a range of everything. There's everything from your locker combination to, you know, national secrets and trade secrets and patents and secret recipes and family recipes. And then there's, like, secrets from your family, right? Like things that happened in the past that you might have no inkling of, but that have helped shape your ancestors, that thus help shape your parents, and thus help shape you. And so all of that, to have all of that contained in one place is just such a kind of cool and teasing concept to me that I knew I wanted to explore it.

[16:25] Marissa: Yeah, no, and I love that. I loved the different stacks, just like in a library. Like, there's these different sections that hold different kinds of secrets. And I love just like, the little list of different, you know, the white lies section or what was one was like the kept secret for their own good section. It was just interesting to think of, like, oh, the different lies that we tell each other. Or as a parent, how often do you kind of fib or stretch the truth? But it's like. But it's okay because you're the parent and you know what's best. And anyway, it's just fascinating.

[17:03] Kekla: Yeah. There are definitely questions that I asked my parents when I was a kid that I got a specific answer to that felt like, this is the truth, capital t. Right? And then as a teenager, you ask the same question again, or you sort of encounter the same situation again and you get a different answer and you're like, wait, what now? Because when I was seven, you told me this, and they were like, well, yeah, because you were seven, and I was like, okay, wait, wait, wait. So now the real truth is this. This is the capital t truth. And they'd be like, yeah. And then, of course, you're 25 and you encounter the same situation again, and it's, like, completely different also, like, so there's all these layers. And it's not that they lied, but they just. They didn't tell you the full truth or they let you believe certain things because you didn't have the context to understand. Yeah, yeah. So all of that feels important to me. And so the idea that there's a place that holds that information and that.

[18:00] Marissa: You could go, in theory, potentially, and actually slip into these little moments in time, which, of course, brings us to time travel. And you've already mentioned that one of the challenges of writing time travel is that you have to actually know things about the periods of time that the characters are traveling to. And in this book, we have a variety of periods of time. What are some of the other challenges that you encountered with time travel?

[18:29] Kekla: Just the structure of the book becomes really challenging because most books. I'm going to go ahead and say most books are linear in some way, right? This happens first, next, last. And all books are linear in the sense that there's a beginning, a middle and an end physically, to the book. So you have to put the story together in a way that makes logical sense. And so with time travel, there is a lot of jumping around and so I'm also a non linear writer. I don't write necessarily the scenes in order. So for me, the structure of this was a real challenge because I wanted to send Dali back in time. But she needs to be able to go back to last Tuesday, but also back to 1850. Right. And so does she go back to last Tuesday before she goes back to 1850? Or can she go, like, you know, 1850? Last Tuesday, you know, 1970. Right. Like, can. Can she jump around in history? And so for the. For the forward motion of the linear story that is Dolly's present to make sense, she had to go back in time kind of in a non linear fashion. So keeping track of where she has been, who she has met, and what she knows in her presentation based on where she's been in the past, was kind of tricky because I would write a scene, and then it's like, I know that that happened. So then I'm writing later scenes for Dali as though she knows everything that I know, but she doesn't know everything I know because it hasn't happened yet. So there's a lot of that kind of juggling of what does she know? When does she know it? What does the reader know? When do they know it?

[20:08] Marissa: And the other characters, too. Like, you're also playing with other characters who sometimes they have met Dali, and then sometimes she goes farther back and they haven't met her yet and. Yeah. What a tramp.

[20:23] Kekla: Yeah. Yeah. So some of that, like, juggling that and figuring out how to make that work.

[20:29] Marissa: Yeah. So you mentioned that you did not write it linearly. Did you. Did you have any sort of outline, any sort of plan in place? What was kind of the general process that you went through?

[20:44] Kekla: Thank you for believing that I might have had a plan.

[20:48] Marissa: The fact that you didn't write it linearly kind of tipped me off that maybe not, but I'm still curious.

[20:55] Kekla: I knew. So from the very beginning, I knew the concept. I knew that title was the secret library, I knew that it was a library of secrets, and that I knew my protagonist. She just, you know, she's walking up the steps. The first scene I wrote in the book is not the first scene in the book. The first scene I wrote was the scene where she arrives at the library for the first time. And so she's walking up the steps to this stately building and not sure what she's going to find inside, reads the sign on it that says, the secret library. Kind of enter at your own risk. Right. And so that was the kind of spark and I knew. And then I wrote some scenes where she had come inside, and she's meeting the librarian, and she's getting ready to go on her first journey. I knew that I wanted her to go. I wanted there to be some sort of pirate adventure. So I knew that was going to be part of the book, but I didn't know what that was going to look like. And so I was just writing little fragments here and there of like, well, what else could she go back in time and do? Where else could she go? And so I was just making up these little time travel adventures. Not all of them made it into the book, but most of them did. I actually ended up adding more in revision than ticking away because of the way that I write. It's just like I'm throwing puzzle pieces down onto the table until I can see kind of a picture, and then I can rearrange them and see where the gaps are in between and start to fill it in that way. And so it was very much like that. And so with a normal novel, where everything is perfectly linear, that picture becomes really, really clear really fast. And with this, it took a lot longer for that picture to become clear. I ultimately knew the premise and the beginning and what was going to happen at the outset. The middle was just kind of a blur. And then I had this moment of sort of clarity on where the story needed to go. Like, what the. Not the exact ending, but sort of the ending, some concepts in the ending. I knew that these sort of two specific things were going to happen toward the end, and then that became the thing that I was writing toward. So everything that I wrote after that was still distinct scenes, but it was pointing toward this particular end. And so that gave me the shape that I needed to build the structure of the novel. And at that point, I could say, all right, so here is Dolly's linear story that's taking place in the present day, and then here's how I will inject the scenes that she goes to in the past along that. So there's kind of two timelines. There's the real world timeline, and then there's her time travel adventures timeline, because each of those journeys is sort of discreet, but some of them connect to each other. So it ended up being super fun and super complex.

[23:42] Marissa: Do you have an actual physical timeline? Have you actually written it out?

[23:48] Kekla: Yeah. So I actually did it two ways. I did it with post it notes initially because I had a bunch of scene fragments and scenes and didn't know what the order they would go in. So I would write, Dali arrives at the library for the first time on a post it note to represent that scene. And then I would write, Dally has this conversation with the librarian. Dali has this conversation with her mother. Just these specific beats. And so each sort of beat that I knew was going to be part of the story, I would write on a separate post it note. And then all the time travel adventures, I wrote on a different post it note, different color of post it note. And then I laid those all out and would physically move them around along the timeline from the point that I knew was the beginning of the story to the point that I knew was the end of the story. And so that physical timeline was really helpful. And then later, my editor actually did a timeline for me just in a word document, which I hadn't thought to do, but that actually tracked in each chapter, point by point, where Dolly was in the present and what she goes to do, just a single line. And that ended up being really useful in the end for tracking a couple of different aspects of the story.

[25:00] Marissa: Interesting. When your editor got involved and started making that timeline, did that shine a light on different inconsistencies that you hadn't picked up on?

[25:12] Kekla: Yeah, it pointed out some inconsistencies, and it also. It was a more manageable, I want to say Touchstone. It was a more manageable touchstone for just quick reference to be like, I'm looking at this scene, I don't want to scroll through my whole document to find if I'm in chapter 30 and I'm doing revisions, I don't want to scroll through my whole thing to get back to chapter four and see what happened, because then you get distracted by all the stuff and you can't find your place again and whatever. So being able to stay in chapter 30, but just glance over at this paper and see what it said about chapter four, I was able to do some maneuvering that way. And, yeah, we caught some inconsistencies. We caught some. Yeah. Like transition. Little transition glitches. And I feel like there was something else that it was really useful for. Oh, yeah. So it was useful for just for. Just for tracking continuity of information and, like, what Dali knows at different points. Yeah.

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Marissa: I think it's interesting that the ending kind of revealed itself to you partway through the process. And I was gonna ask, did you always know how this was gonna end? Because it's a beautiful ending. It's so satisfying and yet so unexpected. I loved the ending to it.

[28:06] Kekla: Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Yeah. No, I mean, I didn't. So, I mean, the thing with this book was that so I, so the idea, the concept, the secret library concept, this is a library of secrets. And this girl goes to the library, and the scene where she marches up these stately steps like that, all of that I wrote, like, ten years ago.

[28:26] Marissa: Oh, wow.

[28:27] Kekla: Yeah. And I knew that there was something here, and I wanted to tell this story, and I was, like, really excited about it. But initially, I didn't have the time travel concept because it was just like, go into the library, pick a book, and read someone's secret. Like, what is that? Like, where's the action? Right? Where's the adventure? It was just this concept. Pretty quickly, I came to the realization that it needed to be time travel. So it ended up needing the book, ended up needing several ideas. Right. Because the first idea was a library of secrets. Great. The second idea was time travel. Great. You know, put those two things together, you've got something interesting already. But it has to also still be a story, right? And so I had this protagonist who wants to go and do things, and her mom doesn't want her to go and do things because she wants her to prepare for her eventual role as the head of this, their family business. And so there's this tension between, you know, I want to go on adventures, but I have to go to, like, business lessons after school instead. And so all of that was there from the beginning. And once I got the time travel idea, I was like, okay, I'm going to go with this. But then it was like years because I couldn't, I didn't know what was going to happen. I knew I wanted there to be this pirate part, but I didn't know how to make that work. And I didn't know there was just all this stuff that felt like I didn't know. And I now know, in retrospect, that I was waiting for the third idea. Right. What is the third idea? Because we tend to think that a novel is one idea. You get the idea for the novel, and then you're done. Boom. You just have to write it. All the writers out there can laugh, right?

[30:02] Marissa: Yeah.

[30:03] Kekla: But that is sort of how we, on some level, conceptualize it, right. That a novel is one idea. It's not. It's several ideas put together in an interesting way. Right. And so I waited for, like, almost five, six years for that. I would say. Yeah, I would say six years. I was waiting for that second part of the idea or that third idea, right. Because I had the library and I had time travel, but then I didn't have, like, what I was writing toward or what the plot really was. And so it was just this moment of, honestly, panic at the beginning of the pandemic when I had lost all these school visits. And I was scared that, like, publishing was going to change and, like, I wasn't ever going to be able to sell anything ever again. But, like, people were still buying things, right, in the spring of 2020. And so I was like, I have to, like, I have to look and see what I have. Like, what do I have that I can sell right now? Because I was scared that I just didn't know what was going to happen. And so I pulled out all these old documents because we all start stories. We have fragments and we have these pieces and little snippets and scenes and things that just sort of never became anything. And so I pulled out a bunch of those things, and one of them was something that I actually did sell right then and there and is also a book now. But the other thing that I pulled out was the secret library. And I was like, I still love this. I really want to do something with it. I think it could be really cool, but I don't know what it is. And so I sat with the idea for two days, and I was like, can I turn this into a proposal? What would I say? I have the concept, but I still need to know what I would write when I sit down. What's the actual story? Yeah. And somehow in that 48 hours period, I mean, this was like two weeks that I spent looking at all my materials, but I spent 48 hours on the secret library, and I was reading the two scenes that I had written and the little fragments that I had written, and I was just like, this is something. I just don't know what it is. And so I started writing scene ideas on the post it notes and trying to do some kind of little outline. And then it just, like, like, it hit me like, this whole, like, what the ending was pointing toward. And I just realized that I had to write the whole book in order to feel confident about selling it. So despite the fact that I was in the fortunate position where I did pull together a proposal and was able to sell something quickly that spring to make up for the school visit income I had lost, I'm very fortunate that I was able to do that. I also had this idea, and I was like, I can't around and sell this right now because I need to be able to be really, really sure that I can do it and really, really sure that I know what it is when I sell it to somebody. And so it took me another year. That was the main project that I worked on during the pandemic, and it took me another year to have a draft. And that was when I finally submitted it to my editor as a whole book because I was like, I can't. I suspect that I could have written it on proposal, sold it on proposal, but I wanted to be really sure that the editor that I was working with really understood what they were getting into.

[33:23] Marissa: Yeah, no, it's funny how some books are like that, and I have also, like, I've sold lots of books on proposal, but there are definitely ones that it's like, I'm going to keep this one close to the vest for now. I'm not ready to share it, and I'm maybe not super confident that I can pull it off or not really confident that it's going to turn into what I think it's going to. And to have that added pressure of a contract attached to it can freak us out a little bit.

[33:50] Kekla: Totally. Totally. And, you know, and it has, because it's a type of story that has a lot of twists and turns at various points. Right. Like, not just at the ending, but, like, through the story. There are several things that are kind of surprising. I wanted my editor to have the experience of reading to the ending without knowing what the ending was going to be.

[34:10] Marissa: Yeah. That's smart.

[34:12] Kekla: I get that normally. I actually don't think that it is necessary. Like, I think an editor can know what's going to happen and still read it as though they haven't objectively experienced it before. Yeah. Because we end up doing that over and over again. Right. We read. We read. We revise. We read a new draft. We, you know, like, we have to have that skill. But, yeah. Something about this made me feel like I wanted, like, a really fresh pair of eyes to meet it first as a complete thing. Yeah. So I was happy to do that.

[34:47] Marissa: I also appreciate you talking about this. Two weeks of. Okay, I want to sell something right now. Let's dig through the old material and let's. Okay, here's an idea that has potential. Let's sit with it and figure it out. Because I feel like so much credit and so much attention is given to those out of the blue eureka moments. And of course, those are great. And we all love those moments.

[35:14] Kekla: Yeah.

[35:15] Marissa: But we don't really talk a whole lot about those times when you're like, well, here's something. But I don't know what to do with it. Or I don't know where to go, or I need to figure out this plot problem or fill this plot hole or, like, whatever it is. And sometimes you just need to sit with it and actually think about it for the ideas to come.

[35:37] Kekla: Yeah. Yeah. I find that I want to sort of plot like a 15 year graph of sort of when I had the first spark of each idea for books that eventually became novels that are published. Because for the most part, it's not like I had the idea, sold it six months later, and the book came out a year and a half later. That's not how it goes for me. It's much more like I had an idea. Five years passed, I discover it in my computer, and I go, oh, yeah, that still has juice.

[36:10] Marissa: I love this idea. I also want to go plot this out. This would be a fascinating.

[36:16] Kekla: Well, I was thinking maybe would make an interesting lecture, because when I really think about the novels that I've published, in a sense, my first book was kind of the fastest in that way, as well as x, a novel, because that was brought to me by Eliasa Shabazz, who's Malcolm X's daughter, and she had a story she wanted to tell and timeline for it. And I was like, okay, boom, boom, boom. In that case, the characters existed, the story existed. It was about changing the perspective and getting into the mind of Malcolm as a young kid before he knew he was going to be Malcolm X. So that was the fastest book that I wrote that I'd ever drafted, because all the material, the raw material, was right there, and I just had to be literary and lovely about it, which is, surprisingly not the hard part. Right. The hard part is coming up with all the other stuff, right. Inventing those characters, inventing the plot, figuring out what happens, creating the whole landscape of the story. And so doing all of that, for me, takes a lot of time. And so I'm finding that ideas that I had as a spark there is that kind of lightning strike, but it doesn't necessarily start the fire right then and there. It just kind of makes something that's smoldering, right. And then you can go back and you can feed it. Right. But it's just this little. It's just this little fire up until the point you decide that you're going to take that and make it something, and that can happen at any point. There's books I spent time with, theoretical books that I spent time with in those two weeks that I didn't develop, that aren't becoming books yet. Maybe they will someday. So that's not to say they will never transform into something, but it is to say that most of the books that I have actually published, the amount of time it actually takes from beginning to end of actually sitting at the computer writing words, is probably about a year for most of them. But the sort of germ and the genesis and the kind of sprouting or whatever metaphor you want to choose for it, all of that has been happening for a long, long time before the point when I really set pen to paper in a significant way.

[38:28] Marissa: Yeah, no, and it's a great argument, too, for keeping your ideas, which I think most of us do. It's unusual to meet a writer who's just like. Doesn't care about keeping their ideas, although I assume there's probably some out there, because you never know what you might come back to later. And I actually was just. It's fun to be talking about this because just here, like, a week or two ago, I went through my idea folder looking for inspiration for a project. And, I mean, it's so fun reading back through old ideas, and you've forgotten 95% of them, and, like, 90% of them. You're like, nah, probably never going to do anything with that. But then there's that 5% that you're like, there's something there. Um, and it just kind of sparks that excitement all over again.

[39:18] Kekla: Yep. It. It's definitely surprising. Um. It's surprising that you forget, right. You go back and you look at like, I have no memory of writing this, you know?

[39:26] Marissa: Right, right.

[39:28] Kekla: And other times you're like, oh, right.

[39:30] Marissa: That.

[39:30] Kekla: That's so good. You know, what am I going to do with that? And sometimes you. Then you have the answer. I mean, I'm just sort of thinking back through my books, and it's like, yeah, Chester Keene cracks the code. My middle grade mystery was. It was a one page story that I had just written that was like, very. It was just this character's voice, this little kid who's very particular. He wakes up in the morning and he does his, you know, all of his alarms are set for the exact time, and he has, like, two minutes to do his cereal, and he has three minutes to do his shoes, and he has, like, he has this, like, whole little routine worked out. And I was just like, this is like a character study in who this person is. But it just lived in a folder. Like, I didn't have anything for it. And then, you know, oh, I have to do another middle grade novel because I had a two book contract. Let's see what I've got. And I go through the folder and I read that little character study, and I was like, oh, I loved him. Let me see what he wants to do. And so I tried writing a scene with him, and it turned into this middle grade mystery that has this sort of particular little character who likes, you know, he likes his things folded neatly, and he likes, you know, everything timed out well, and he likes his routines and, you know, and so that's the kind of the seed of the story. And, like, yeah, like, half of my books, I would say, have some kind of origin story like that, where it's like, I wrote in a journal this list at the top of the page, I wrote 37 things. I wrote 37 things I like a lot, crossed out, like, a lot and wrote love and then underneath, in parentheses, in no particular order. And then I had numbered the page to 37, but I had not written 37 things. I had written, like, ten or twelve different things, but not the first ten. It was number one, number two, number seven, number 14. It was really a smattering of things. And I was flipping through that journal one day and I looked at it and I was like, I know who this character is and I know what this book is. And so it was like two years after I had written that random thing, I had a voice and I had a character. And that's was my fourth published novel was 37 things. I love. I love it, you know, so it's like, that's just part of my process, I guess, is just to throw things at the page, let them sit there for a while, and then hope that the rest of the spark comes later.

[41:43] Marissa: Yeah, well, I mean, it plays in a lot to what we know about brain science and how ideas are formed. And it's like this idea that you kind of need multiple things to come together in your subconscious to then, you know, spur this great, beautiful new idea. And I think there's times when you might have, you know, one or two of those elements, but you haven't yet learned the third thing or encountered the third thing, experienced it, and then, you know, something new comes into your life that's novel and different, and it collides with those old things and suddenly we have a story.

[42:18] Kekla: Exactly.

[42:19] Marissa: Yeah. That was like very scientific brain sciency of me. That's totally how the brain works, everybody. All right, are you ready for our bonus round?

[42:32] Kekla: Sure.

[42:34] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[42:36] Kekla: Can I give a picture book for this?

[42:39] Marissa: No, no picture books. Of course I can give a picture book.

[42:42] Kekla: Well, it's so funny because, yeah, when I think about books that make me happy, some of the books that just make me smile so much are picture books. And so one that came to mind was one I just got for one of my little cousins. One year old is hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord, illustrations by Derek Anderson. And it's just this little rhyming picture book about this car race that the hamster is in. And the reader gets to participate by deciding, making various choices. It's a linear story, but the story asks the reader questions. And it's just. I've always enjoyed reading it out loud. Really fun.

[43:27] Marissa: Yeah, I love it. I love picture books. Picture books make me really happy, too. What are you working on next?

[43:33] Kekla: Oh, gosh, so many things. I am working on a graphic novel series with Cynthia Leitick Smith. We have co written the first book just came out in March. It's called the Blue Stars series. And the first book is called Mission the Vice principal problem. And it's about. The series is about two 6th grade cousins who become superheroes in their community, essentially by standing up for the needs of their friends and themselves. Like in the first book, the vice principal is trying to cut school clubs and library funding and all sorts of things that felt melodramatic and over the top as superhero villain. As a superhero novel villain. Like five years ago when we came up with this series and now feels very ripped from the headlines as school libraries are being threatened around the country. But basically, these two girls use their different, their very, very different skills. Like Maya is very techy and has all these gadgets and tools. And Riley is very social people person who just wants to bring everybody together and the two of them work together to expose this vice principal's nefarious plot. And then there's a whole series of books that we have planned. So we've written book two that's being illustrated right now. Our illustrator is Molly Murakami and we are working on our revisions for the script of book three. So that's one of the things I'm actively working on. I have quite a few things kind of in the pipeline. I'm doing some chapter books. The next book that's coming out is a picture book or, sorry, chapter book biography of Naomi Osaka. That's part of Chelsea Clinton's she persisted series. So that's. She persisted. Naomi Osaka, that's coming out in July. And the book that will have come out a week before the secret library is my YA novel called Prom Babies, which is the other one of the other projects that I sold at the beginning of the pandemic that was also pulled from, you know, an old file. And it's a story ya about three kids, young girls who go to their prom their junior and senior year and they all get pregnant. And then 18 years later they have raised their babies and their kids are now in high school about to go to their own prom. And so it's a multi generational story where you get to see the mom's experience at their prom and then the kids experience getting ready to go to their prom. And so there's a lot of ya topics that come up in the book, but it's been super fun to work on and it's exciting that it's about to be real.

[46:18] Marissa: Okay. That was a lot.

[46:20] Kekla: Yes, I know.

[46:21] Marissa: So when is the she persisted one coming out? That one comes out in July, March, April, May, June. So am I counting four books in five months?

[46:32] Kekla: Yes. So that was not supposed to happen. It just happened partly because the Bluestar series was supposed to come out in the fall and then secret library was originally coming out next fall, but we got it done early. So, you know, things just kind of shifted around as publishing tends to do. So. Yeah, I have four books coming out, three books out this spring and one out in the summer.

[46:52] Marissa: Oh my goodness. You don't have time to be doing podcast interviews. What are you doing?

[46:57] Kekla: Well, they're all written. I mean, you know, that's why when you ask what I'm doing, that's a.

[47:04] Marissa: Ton and I'm super impressed.

[47:05] Kekla: You ask me what I'm doing next, I'm like, how about I just tell you what I'm doing now? Because, yeah, no, that's. I'm not quite ready for next.

[47:12] Marissa: I get it. I so get it. That was a totally adequate answer. Lastly, where can people find you?

[47:21] Kekla: I am on Instagram ecklamagoon, which is aklamagooni am on Facebook, but I post less often on Facebook and it's author Keclamagoon. Like facebook.com authorcuclamagoon. I do have an x account that I haven't posted on in a long time. I have Bluesky and I have TikTok, which I also haven't posted on because I need to learn how to do it or what to post. You know what I mean? I need to figure out what my thing is on TikTok, but one could follow me there in case I ever figure it out.

[47:57] Marissa: All your books are written, so it sounds like you have some free time now.

[48:00] Kekla: Yes, I'm promoting these books. I'm having fun doing that. I will be writing some other things in the the summer and fall. But yeah, I did take a little time off in December right before the spring rush. So yeah, things are looking good.

[48:19] Marissa: I was definitely joking and I liked your hesitation.

[48:23] Kekla: I was like, do I have free time now?

[48:25] Marissa: Hold on.

[48:27] Kekla: I managed to feed two cats earlier today, so that's nicely done.

[48:32] Marissa: Awesome. Kecla, thank you so much for joining me.

[48:34] Kekla: Thank you for having me.

[48:36] Marissa: Readers, definitely check out the secret library, which hits shelves tomorrow. And while you're at it, check out all of Kekla's amazing books that just came out and or are coming out soon. Of course, we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore if you can. If you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org, shop. Marissa Meyer next week I will be talking with Isabel Greenberg about her new arthurian legend inspired graphic novel, Young Hag and the witch's quest. Please don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app and check out our merchandise on Etsy, Instagram and teepublic. Be sure to follow us on Instagram. Happywriterpodcast until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today. I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.