Speaker 1: Good morning, Sasha. How are you doing?
Speaker 2: Good morning? I'm fabulous. How are you?
Speaker 1: Absolutely excited to talk with you because you have done
something here that I wish a lot more authors would do,
and that is creating the Cliffhanger. My wife, when she
finished this book, she goes, it can't be over. It
can't be over. What am I going to do? I
need another book? And I kept telling her it could
take two years. Lee, come on stop. But yeah, I mean,
I just love the way that you go into this
whole entire storyline knowing there has to be a continuation.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah. Well, the good news is for those
who have read The Cliffhanger, I finished the first draft
of the sequel last night, so we have a cook beginning, middle,
and end of the next book. So it should be
out next year. The wait will not be too terribly long.
It's funny. I actually went into this book hoping to
only write a standalone. I'd written a duology in my
first series and didn't want to write another series. I've
gone to urt one book, and then this idea came
to me and I started to map it out, and
I went, oh, no, it's two books, and I know
exactly where it is.
Speaker 1: There's so much going on inside the story that the
thing is is that, but it makes it it's so
interesting to keep going to the next page, because this
is one of those where you say, Okay, I'm gonna
put the book down after this book, after this page,
but you don't. You go three more, you go four more.
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate compliment as a writer. Thank you
so much. That was my goal. My favorite thing is
when people say I finished this in one sitting. I
finished this in one day. I really set out to
write a fun popcorn book.
Speaker 1: What is it about our love affair with two guys
falling in love for the same girl? I mean, this
was even on the Brady Bunch, So how is it
that we still are in love with storylines like this?
Speaker 2: Oh? I feel like it's the ultimate fantasy. I mean
I write for young adults, so I do feel like,
you know, there's such a crossover because you never fall
in love the same way you do it's seventeen or eighteen,
and that feeling is universal. But I write primarily for
young people, and it's that fantasy I think is being wanted.
You know, it's seventeen and eighteen. I think what you
want is for somebody to see you and to see
that you're special and that you have something, And that
fantasy of two people seeing it is so fun. And
I also think in young adult literature, you're being presented
with two different versions of yourself. You know, you're not
necessarily choosing between the boys. You're choosing you know, do
I want to be, you know, a sweet, good wife
or do I want to be the most powerful, fiery
version of myself? And using romance as a tool to
explore the interiority of the main character is always really fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sasha, you talk about it being for young adults,
but the thing about it is, though, is that there
are a lot of adults reading your work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that a good story
is universal, Yeah, and a fun story is universal. And
I am an adult who still reads young adult fiction.
I think that there's something so fun, particularly about young
adult fantasy, with the pacing and the world building that's
just so inherently readable that I've never been able to
move on from it.
Speaker 1: But you create a description here that I've never heard before.
But I'm waiting for Hollywood to pick it up. Romanticy,
Oh my god, what that totally describes what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like it's become you know, the
portmanteau of the last couple of years, these books that
are you know, they're fantasy in their world building, but
the story is being driven by love, which are my
favorite kind of books, you know. And we have these
massive blockbusters like a Court of Thorns and Roses and
Fourth Wing and they're these you know, great grand magical worlds,
but the heart of the story, you know, I don't
really care who ends up on the throne at the end.
What I care about is, you know, is she marrying
the guy that I want her to marry. Are they
going to kiss when I want them to kiss? Or
is the battle happening? I find this something so so
compelling in page journey about a love story that I've
never been able, you know, to get away from. You know,
from the first time I read Enchanted at twelve, I've
always been rooting for a handsome friends.
Speaker 1: Now, what did you do in order to get yourself
into the mindset of where this book and the story
takes place, Because it's not in twenty twenty five, no,
So the.
Speaker 2: Rosebargen takes place in eighteen forty eight London and an
alternate history where the Queen of England is a fairy
who tricked her way onto the throne four hundred years
earlier during the English Civil War. And so we have
this really fun kind of mishmash of a fantasy world
where you know, the queen is a fairy, so what
would that look like. They're having rebels and bonfires and
there's a tree growing through the middle of Kensington Palace.
And then we also have all of the rigidity and
manners and ball gowns of Victorian England. And so I
got to have a lot of fun, you know, combining
those two aspects, As with all things I read. I
read a thousand regency romance novel like everybody. I was
swept up in the Bridgerton craze, and I love Lisa
clay Pass and Beverly Jenkins and all of intessadaire. And
you know, I read so many regency romance novels, and
you know, there's only so many times you can read
somebody kissing in a carriage before you really want to
try it out yourself.
Speaker 1: That's why we have the Biltmore Estate here in the South.
We go there for our little romans, and we feel
like we're in England is what we try to do.
Speaker 2: There's something so compelling about it. I get it.
Speaker 1: There's one thing that happens inside the storyline that I thought, whoa,
it's been going on for centuries. Fake dating?
Speaker 2: Yes, also there yeah, I mean, I love a trope.
And when you know, in all books are tropes, there's
no trope free book. But when I sat down to
write this book, I was really sad. I was in
a kind of a dark place in my life, and
I decided that this book was going to be my lifeline,
and so I threw all of my most favorite tropes
into this, like really sparkly fantasy world and I love
I love you know, fake dating as a trope where
you have to you know, of course, we have to
leave the kiss for the good of the country, and
you have this this plausible deniability as you're falling for
somebody that makes it kind of safe to do things
that you wouldn't ordinarily do. I think it makes you know,
characters a little braver. We also have the just one
bed trope. We have a lot of longing across a
crowded ballroom. We have a Kissing for Practice Trope book.
I just had so much fun writing this book, and
so to hear that readers are also having fun with
it is the best thing.
Speaker 1: Don't you wish you could put a camera inside your
imagination when you're when you when you're putting this thing together,
because we see it as writers, we see it all
coming to play, and now we've got to put it
on a page and it's like, Okay, did it identify
itself as such as it did inside my mind?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? I am a very visual plotter. I am seeing
the movie in my head and so trying to translate
that into something that feels just as vivid, but it
also doesn't slow down the pace thing Like I could
write about a ball goam for hours, but at the
end of the day, we've got to have some action.
So I absolutely agree with you trying to create that
sense of place in the ways of challenge.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you
and how we're going to stay connected with you because
this story, like you said, you finished it last night.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Sequel coming out soon, so I promise you
don't have to wait too long. I'm on Instagram at
Sosher Peyton Smith and my website at Sashapasmith dot com.
Speaker 1: I love it. Please come back to this show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you, Miss Sasha.
Speaker 2: I'd be delighted.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant?
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you so much for your time.