First Draft Episode #222: Ryan La Sala
December 3, 2019
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Ryan La Sala, debut author of fantasy YA novel Reverie. If you enjoy this conversation with Ryan, hear more from him over at the What Book Hooked You? podcast!
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Ryan La Sala debut author of YA fantasy novel Reverie. I loved what Ryan had to say about the power of transformation in anime and in drag, living with chronic illness, and the motivating power of spite. So please sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: Hi Ryan, how are you?
Ryan La Sala: I'm so good. How are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me over. I do love the apartment.
Ryan La Sala: Yes, thank you for coming all the way to summer of Massachusetts.
Sarah Enni: I'm super excited. So you know how I to start these episodes. So I will start with, where were you born and raised?
Ryan La Sala: So I was born and raised in Connecticut and I lived there my whole life. I moved up to Boston for college.
Sarah Enni: And how was reading and writing a part of your growing up?
Ryan La Sala: So it's actually interesting because I was... I actually still am a very bad reader.
Sarah Enni: Really?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. I had to be taken out of kindergarten all the time, I didn't get a nap, cause I had to go learn how to read. And I would do anything I could to avoid reading in these settings.
It wasn't until middle school, really, that I became a little bit better at it. But I had such an urge to tell stories, that I bludgeoned my way through a lot of storytelling. I remember I liked to draw a lot, that was my favorite thing to do, cause it was much more accessible to me.
And then eventually, when I felt like I couldn't render something, or if I wanted to tell a story, I would try to write it out. And I remember one time, my fourth grade teacher saw me writing something and she wanted to read it. And I gave it to her and she handed it back with four post it notes just full of misspelled words that had been horribly mutilated by fourth grade me.
And was like, "I noticed that you're having a lot of trouble..." It was just a constant thing. And even now, everyone makes fun of me cause I'm just full of typos. I can't spell anything for the life of me. I am a very slow reader. But for a long time, reading was tough.
Sarah Enni: And I was gonna ask about drawing cause you are a really good artist. You've posted some of your drawings and they're really amazing. How did that help you tell stories? Or, how was that going into being more serious about storytelling? Was drawing a part of it?
Ryan La Sala: Yep. So I think it was because my family, in general, has a lot of artistry in it, even if people aren't necessarily artists. And so people that could draw, around any family gatherings, there'd be someone with a sketchbook. My older cousin, Doug, actually works in animation in Hollywood now. And so all throughout my growing up, he was constantly showing me how to draw, or bringing me to figure drawing classes. We'd sneak out from Thanksgiving and go figure drawing.
And I was way too young to be doing things like that. But that early exposure towards visual arts was very captivating. And also the art behind video games of that era, this is back in the nineties, so a lot of the Final Fantasy art books were coming out, and he had all of them. But I was so captivated by the character art, the character drawings.
And so I really wanted to draw these characters, and create my own characters. And so I started there. I started by creating characters. And eventually I had to create the worlds to go with them, and creating teams of them. And that's also how I found my way to Sailor Moon. Which is a huge obsession of mine in animation in general, which is now a huge thing. I mean, people can't see this, but we're surrounded by Sailor Moon objects... that whole wall. It's still a pretty big thing in my life.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talk about it like that as, well, an emphasis on character. Everybody accesses stories in such different ways, but it's reminding me of drag queens, and creating personas, and embodying different perspectives. So it's interesting that you were so drawn to the idea of constructing a character and expressing that way.
Ryan La Sala: Well, also, transformation is a really big theme in both Sailor Moon and drag queens. They quite literally transform themselves into a very powerful, oftentimes, indestructible entity. I was very captivated by the transformation sequences in Sailor Moon. If anyone's seen this show, they're these young girls that call upon planetary powers and turn into these miniskirt-wearing warriors. It's the gayest thing in the world.
Sarah Enni: It's amazing!
Ryan La Sala: It's super amazing. But the animation was beautiful. And I used to dance around and practice the choreography. I think my parents actually had a moment of thinking that I was straight, because I was just so captivated by these semi-nude figures dancing around on the screen. So they were like, "Oh, this is normal." But no, I was rehearsing to be a Sailor Scout myself. And yeah, I loved it. I loved the combination of power and femininity.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, right, right. I love that. And it's so cool that you got to see an artist take their work seriously and include you in it. And then, obviously, he goes on to become a professional. Not everyone actually is even in a family where that's taken seriously, or seen as a possibility. So that's pretty neat.
Ryan La Sala: So my father, and his generation of my family on my father's side at least, they're all in medicine. Which is really interesting because all of the kids, my generation, are doing nothing close to medicine. All of us just got too grossed out growing up.
Our parents would try to outgross each other at the dinner table. And my father, who is an ER doctor, it'd be him versus my OB/GYN aunt. It was just a mess. But now my generation is like, I write, we have an animator, we have a musician, my brother's a geologist. He hides underground for half of the day. People do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with [unintelligible].
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about what you studied in a second, but I want to ask about being a young man, and how storytelling in high school, and getting a little bit older, were you still writing? How was it a part of expressing yourself?
Ryan La Sala: So it was like literally expressing myself. I had the worst time telling the truth as a little kid. I had a really weird relationship with just telling the truth. And at any opportunity, I would just compulsorily invent things about myself. I think it was because I figured out that I could tell stories really effectively and convince people of them.
And I just loved to tell people stories. And then that somehow turned into me telling stories about myself. And so at summer camp, or at school, I would just tell blatant lies. In third grade I started this cult where everyone, at nighttime in their dreams, would travel to a wizardry school. This was when Harry Potter was happening as well.
But no one could remember the lessons but me. And so every morning I would tell my classmates what we had studied the night before. And people would get really into it. And we had to figure out a carpool situation at one point, because so many people wanted to be recruited. And then I had to think of curriculum and books and keep furnishing proof of this world. And I did that a lot with different scenarios. Like that summer camp... every year was something different with me.
Sarah Enni: That's very elaborate.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah it was nuts. It was sick psychopath kid.
Sarah Enni: But that, I mean, I love that. That's so like imagination on hyperdrive.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. I spent a lot of time lying to people. I don't know, it was how I felt powerful. And I don't know that I would even consider... I mean, it definitely was lying. What I would actually attribute it to, is what people who really like live-action-role-playing do, or role playing in general. It was all about creating a story with your friends. And also being a very conspicuously queer kid.
One thing about me, I was never in the closet. I just was outed from a super young age by my mannerisms and the fact that I loved Sailor Moon. And so I was very aware that people were treating me differently. And so I think, for me, a lot of the times talking about myself in a powerful way, was gonna convince other people. And it became the major way that I would traffic in social circles. That's as a little kid. I grew out of this. I don't still do this, I'm telling you the truth right now.
Sarah Enni: Okay... great [chuckles]. I'm really, really interested in that. In a couple of interviews, you've talked about Kane, the main character in Reverie...
Ryan La Sala: Also outted from a young age.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And reflecting this feeling you had. Well, you describe it as a loneliness. I mean, was there anyone else in your class that was similar to you? Or identified as queer?
Ryan La Sala: So [pauses] there was. But they would not talk to me. And I did not know who they were because... something interesting about being gay from a very young age... and the other thing I should say, is that I was also pretty confident about this too.
Once I figured it out I was like, "I'm just gonna lean into this." And that has a lot to do with the way that I was raised, and exposure from a very young age about what this was and to be proud of it. So thank you parents. But because of that, because I was the gay kid, the gay child, other kids that were figuring this out... I was just irradiating attention. And they were not gonna come anywhere near that cause it was gonna somehow expose them.
And so people would message me on AIM under dummy accounts and try to talk with me. And it was really hard to tell if those were people that were gonna print out that conversation and spread it around school cause it was just a bunch of guys, or a bunch of girls, at a sleepover. Or, if they were actually people asking for help.
So eventually, I stopped responding to these, what I thought were traps. But now I've debriefed with the people that I went to high school with, and they had this idea of me as someone that just wouldn't take the time to talk with them. But I was terribly lonely. I had no one else that would talk to these moments.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And that's heartbreaking cause of course you had to protect yourself. And dummy accounts? You don't know.
Ryan La Sala: It was also the age of AOL and this was also when cyber bullying became a thing too, and My Space, and this was all through high school as well. It was the time to be skeptical of people just messaging you out of the blue and things like that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, catfishing was like, I don't even think we had that term yet, but it was like, "Yes, be careful on the internet."
Ryan La Sala: A major economy at that point, right?
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Wow. Okay. And I do want to come back to that when we talk about Reverie and how you were specifically bringing that to the book. But I also really want to talk about going from high school into school and studying neuroscience and anthropology. That's intense!
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, I had it in my head that I was a very scientific person. And I do love the sciences. So I looked at schools specifically for neuroscience, and Northeastern University in Boston had a really good program. And I did love it. I thought it was a ton of fun. And for the most part, I knew that I wanted to focus on not even how we think, but why we think what we think, and how that affects the world around us.
So I've always been interested in the way that the mind forms a perceived reality around a person. That's been a pretty big theme for me and my interest for a long time and how that creates our world for us. The issue with neuroscience, and I sort of figured this out halfway through undergrad, is that a lot of the work of being in neuroscience has less to do with these sci-fi thoughts about the way that the world is projected, and it mostly has to do with killing mice and cutting them open.
And then killing more mice in a different way. Or, sea slugs are a big thing in neuroscience, which is all good and well, but it was not what I wanted to spend my time doing.
And so that's when I made the switch. I did get my minor in neuroscience, but then I switched to anthropology because I sort of panned out. Neuroscience is like, "Let's look at this one neuron and how sick it is." Whereas anthropology is like, "Well, let's look at this group of people and the pathology of the way that they behave, and the specific way that intersects with history and an actual reality." Which was much more what I was interested in.
Sarah Enni: Were you writing in addition to that? Or were you focused on school exclusively?
Ryan La Sala: During undergrad I got it in my head I was like, "Oh, I think eventually I would like to write a book." Or, "I think I'd be good at this." Because despite not being a really strong reader, I had always gotten pretty high marks for writing assignments. Basically, anything where I was allowed to imagine. I could imagine my way out of anything, which is very much parallel to me imagining my way through my youth, right?
So I knew that that was a strength of mine, and I really wanted to put it towards some sort of larger project. And for a long time I was like, "Well, I want to write a show and get that animated." Or, "I want to write a comic and get someone to draw that with me," or something like that. And eventually books just became, it's the cheapest thing to produce.
Sarah Enni: You can do it all by yourself.
Ryan La Sala: You can do it all by yourself. Right. And there's such a low barrier to at least getting started, that it seemed like the right place to begin for me. And everything else I was like, "Well, if this is successful, I'll find my way towards these other forms of art." So that's where that began. And it was during undergrad. I figured out that I wanted to do that.
Sarah Enni: The reason I was wondering is cause I feel the art of writing, and especially it seems your book is very explicitly engaging with questions you have about your upbringing in the world. So studying as explicitly as you did in school to also tackle those things, it's like this is a massive preoccupation for you. Then creatively expressing it, academically expressing it, all that stuff. It's great. I think it's cool.
Ryan La Sala: It felt like a mess at the time. I was like, "What am I doing? I'm starting in nineteen different directions at once." And none of it felt cohesive. And all of it felt scatterbrained. But I was like, "Whatever. I'm young, hot, and gay! I'm gonna do whatever I want." I was a mess.
And at the same time I was doing a lot of musicals. That's what I spent most of undergrad doing... performing in musicals. That was where all my free time was too. So I wouldn't consider any of this to be focused, but it did create a very fertile launching point for everything else to come. And as a result, I really wouldn't adjust or change anything. It seems very tuned towards my end goal now.
Sarah Enni: So are you a dancer?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. Got into performance. My high school had a huge art arts budget, which was amazing. And so there was a lot of funding for dance and theater, and specifically the choir, very aggressive choir. It was also the age of Glee, when that show was coming on and everyone was amazed by this, and I was like, "This is like my Thursday evening." Like, "I have to be at rehearsal in six minutes, I can't watch Glee, cause I'm going to be in Glee."
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] "I'm gonna go live it!"
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. The difference was we were like the cool kids.
Sarah Enni: Fun!
Ryan La Sala: Which I say with a massive grain of salt, because I'm sure we thought we were the cool kids, but also the weird social hierarchy of my high school was inverted in a very specific way. People didn't pay a ton of attention to sports or cheerleading and paid a lot more attention to these annual concerts that we would give, and things like that. So that was more of the crowd that I was in.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's awesome. I had something of a similar thing. My high school, the football team couldn't play on Friday nights because the neighbors were like, "No, that's annoying." They played Saturday morning and everyone was just kinda like, "Oh yeah, I guess they're doing that thing." So it was a little bit topsy-turvy which I feel so grateful for.
I want to ask you about having a day job, and if you're down with talking about living with chronic illness.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Enni: Just cause, in particular, I think it's really important to talk about having a day job and writing as well. And making that choice. You have a really interesting story about being really conscious about that. So I'd love for you to take me to graduating and then how you went about deciding, "I'm gonna have a job and I'm gonna write. "
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. So, interestingly enough, that actually has a lot to do with being chronically ill. Cause I was diagnosed when I was in middle school with my illness, which is an immune disorder where my body attacks my digestive track.
Sarah Enni: Oh?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. And with creating ulcers.
Sarah Enni: Fun.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, oh, it's awesome. And because my immune system's a little bit out of whack, which I hid for an entire year from my family until they were like, "You're really sick." And I was like, "Am I though?" And they were like, "You need to go to the hospital."
Sarah Enni: Oh, "Am I though?"
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. And so I got put on a clinical trial. I had to get IVs and, you know, a very dramatic introduction to your adolescence.
Sarah Enni: Also to medicine, by the way. Maybe another reason why you were like, "No thanks!"
Ryan La Sala: Right, exactly. Yeah, especially with my dad being a doctor, I was like, "I'm good." Also, the thing that people... if your father or mother is a doctor, they're the last person to tell you that you're sick. They're like, "You're fine. I have seen so much worse than this."
Sarah Enni: Oh god, that's really true.
Ryan La Sala: Especially, my dad's an ER doctor. So he's like, "Unless you have something protruding from you, you are fine. You're going to school."
Sarah Enni: No, it's not a compound fracture.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, exactly. Please. Oh my god. He would come home with slides from his lectures and stuff, and just put them out on the dinner table. And I had to move over all of these gory images to eat. And he's also a photographer, so he'd frame the most beautiful ones.
Sarah Enni: Oh my goodness. Wow.
Ryan La Sala: And I got sick young, and they were like, "Well, you're gonna be sick forever." So I made peace with that, and it has informed a lot of decisions since then, because I've always had to prioritize my health in a much more rigorous way than I think a lot of people.
When people say like, "Oh, health is number one." I truly understand that because, either my immune system is going AWOL against me, or I am receiving medicine that's shutting down my immune system and then getting a staph infection or something like that. I'm just more prone to these things.
And so now every eight weeks I sit in a chair, I get a drug infusion. It's very glamorous. I've got a nurse squad that is super friendly. They all know who I am. They ask me about my book. They're great. And I have a great network of caretakers, but I just set that up for myself in Boston when I was going to school. And then when I'm thinking like, "Oh, I need to pick a career." Writing presented itself, but not as a real option because, it was also during the recession, this was 2009 when I graduated.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. By the way, I graduated in '07, so yeah, I feel you.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, right. And so suddenly the world is tumbling around us, and I picked what I thought would keep me afloat. And at the time, that's also why I was like, "Neuroscience will be it." And then when I figured out that wasn't what I wanted to do, anthropology surprisingly still seemed more applicable, because it was an actual science as opposed to just writing, or English, or something like that too.
So I was always toying with the dream in the background, but my end goal was always to find something that was gonna stabilize me, and just make sure that I had access to benefits. Or else, I was not going to be able to pursue any of that stuff.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. This is part of why I am really glad that you are willing to talk about it cause, was it a couple of weeks ago? There was some big online conversation about somebody who was like, "Quit your job! You have to..." Whatever. And then everyone was like, "Oh my God."
Ryan La Sala: Oh yeah, "You prioritize your dreams."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It was just a lot of people coming out of the woodwork to be like, "Uh, don't go into debt." That's so stressful to have it presented like that, when for so many people it is absolutely not something you can consider.
Ryan La Sala: Right. And no one's depending on me but me. I talk to people who have families that are depending on them, or children, and it is all I can do to keep myself healthy. And the idea of having one more stressor is backbreaking to me sometimes. And luckily I've gotten to a point, and I constructed my life in a very purposeful way, to arrange these pieces so that they don't inflict damage on one another. But it took me a decade to figure that out.
Sarah Enni: That's a very fine balance.
Ryan La Sala: Extremely fine balance. And all of it is purposeful, every detail.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And having to be so young and to... it's like when someone's like, "I have a gluten allergy!" And they're thirty-two like me, and it's like, “Oh, my god!"
Ryan La Sala: "Oh no! Not pizza!"
Sarah Enni: Having to think about your life with those kinds of limitations and strictures becomes just devastating when you're like an old person who's like, "I used to do whatever I want."
Ryan La Sala: It's like a sense of betrayal. You're not who you thought you were. Right? And I remember that as a little kid being like, "Oh shit. I can't do any of the things that I thought I was gonna do." Because when you're a kid, you have so many dreams, right? And so I felt I had to wind my way through all these doors that were closing very quickly. And that's not the case. I mean, luckily, I found myself in a really good situation now, and many doors are opening up. But it was, I think, very much because I picked a path that was gonna be stable and safe.
Sarah Enni: Well, good for you.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. Thank you.
Sarah Enni: So how did that go with anthropology? How did you, you don't have to talk about exactly what you do or where you work, but I'm interested in how you're paying the bills? And then how you got started with trying to write a book?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. So I graduated from college. And I graduated early, in spite of having this degree mix up too. I don't know how I pulled that off.
Sarah Enni: Overachiever. We get it.
Ryan La Sala: [Lowers his voice] Suma Cum Laude.
Sarah Enni: Oh?
Ryan La Sala: Who said that? Oh my god, the ghosts in here! It's weird that they know my transcripts.
Sarah Enni: It was sitting right under the tap shoes. Listen... [laughs].
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, it's true! , No, I mean, I really fought for that. I am a very oriented person. So I say that I graduated early cause I sort of [unintelligible] from undergraduate in the middle of December. And I was like, "Here I am world! Who's ready for me?" And the world was just like eating pasta in the corner being like, "You're here early." Like, "What's going on? Go away." And so I'm in Connecticut, living with my parents, and I very quickly found myself in this deja vu, cause I picked up my old high school job working at a Ben and Jerry's.
Sarah Enni: Amazing!
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, in the dead of winter in Connecticut. Which was actually my ideal job. I just stood there in a tie-dye tee shirt reading. It was great! An A-Plus job. And the only people that come into a Ben and Jerry's in the dead of winter are complete fanatics that have driven two hours.
Sarah Enni: Right. They're not gonna sit there and sample.
Ryan La Sala: No. But they will hold you at knife point and be like, "Give me the Chunky Monkey." If you don't have it, you're done. But it was great though, because I had all this time to daydream, basically. And finally, I was like, "Well I don't have any excuse but to finish this project that I've been fiddling with."
So over the next four to six months or so in Connecticut, I had a very luxurious time writing, and just finishing what was the first draft of Reverie at the time. And that became the only job, for a little bit, as I then figured out next steps. Cause eventually I was like, "Okay, I need to sort myself out."
So I did a few odd jobs too. I helped my parents out. I worked as a tutor at a detention center for a little bit.
Sarah Enni: Wow! Cool.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, it was amazing. The kids there were awesome, and yeah, they were great. And I was supposed to be teaching biology, but most of it was just getting them to focus on whatever the task at hand was. And when that wrapped up, I then got a job working in Boston as a recruiter, actually.
I just found my way into working as a headhunter in technology. Which was mostly cause I knew people that were doing it, and I really liked the people that were there. And it was awesome. It was actually a really fun job for a year and a half, but it was so emotionally consuming that I didn't write at all when I was doing it.
I was reading a lot and I was reading books and I was like, "Oh god." Spite is like a major motivator for me and I'm very clear about this. Cause I think it is for a lot of people, but I don't think it's a clean thing to talk about. But I was reading books and I was like, "What the fuck? I can do this. I can do this better.”
And it's not even worth naming names, but the big theme of it was that I was like, "This would be so much better if it was gay." Or, "This is gay but not for me." Or like, "This person's dying." It was the thing you hear of like, "People kill their gays." And that trope was just very frustrating.
And I was like, "I don't even want an issue book. I just want a book about a gay hero doing gay things."
Sarah Enni: Yes. Which is what Alex London talks about a lot. (Listen to Alex’s First Draft interviews here and here).
Ryan La Sala: Yes. And so I found Alex London while I was home or something like that. And this is back in that intermediate period as I was leaving college and going into the workforce. And I found Proxy. And it absolutely blew my mind, changed my world.
And it was that, and David Levithan (New York Times bestselling author of Every Day, Boy Meets Boy, and Two Boys Kissing). And other keystone books in the canon that I finally found my way to that were, shocker, written by gay men or queer people, as I broadened my scope. And finally something clicked and I was like, "Oh, right."
Like, I'm sitting here being like, "Oh my God, I'm disparaging these books but I'm not actually doing anything about it, but here are people that have done something about it. So why shouldn't I also join in on this? If it's something I'm passionate about, something that I want to do, why don't I just try?"
And so that's what got me going, and then I stalled out because of this job.
Sarah Enni: Right. But also, in some ways I am always grateful when I hear stories like this cause you can't not be maturing and growing and learning. I'm sure some of the stories and experiences you had through that job were rich fodder.
Ryan La Sala: Oh yeah, they were great. My heart goes out to me during that period.
Sarah Enni: Whew, I know, past self. And you finished the draft and then, especially for a first book, what a gift to have such distance from it.
Ryan La Sala: Yes. Oh my God, no.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, talk about getting back to it.
Ryan La Sala: This is like the renaissance of Ryan at the time. I can't believe I said that. Don't put that in! [Pauses] You can put that in, okay.
So I was in this job, and when I say that I loved my coworkers, they were like family, they were great. But I recognized the emotional exhaustion. And also my health was real rocky during this cause it was a lot of stress. And stress is not something that I do great with. And I finally was like, "Okay, I think I need to make a change." And I made the change because I wanted to focus on writing more, and get serious about it. And so I left that job. I got the job that I'm at currently, which is much more accommodating to work life balance.
The role itself is much more focused on project management. It's a lot of talking with people but it's not so much dependent upon convincing people of things. Which is nice. And I converted all of the media that I was ingesting into things having to do with writing, or the actual books that I wanted to be writing as well. And that's actually how I discovered First Draft.
Sarah Enni: Oh! Yay!
Ryan La Sala: So, I went shopping for all of the things that were gonna help me accomplish my goal. And this podcast was actually one of them, which is why it's so surreal to be on it now. Because it's the thing that got me together and showed me like, "Oh, here are the steps that you need to take."
Because before that I was really just wandering through absolute right. And talking to a few friends that I knew, or a family friend that had written a book. And I didn't really have a diversity of experiences to pull from. I didn't know where to look. And so yeah, thank you for helping me.
Sarah Enni: Awesome! Did you find it through Alex's episode at all, or was that a part of it?
Ryan La Sala: It might've been. I think I did look up him and A.R. Kahler. Yeah, I remember those were the two episodes that I first listened to cause that's what I was looking for at the time. And then shortly thereafter, I listened to Adam Silvera. And then I listened to everything.
Sarah Enni: Oh yeah! It is cool too, because in 2009 about when the economy was floundering and so were we, I found so many blogs. And it's funny to feel like now someone could have that blog experience with podcasts.
Ryan La Sala: Yes. Oh absolutely.
Sarah Enni: Which is really neat cause I'm obsessed with podcasts.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. And I remember I did look at, well you sort of referenced this, but people stopped blogging.
Sarah Enni: It just went away.
Ryan La Sala: It just went way. And so, during that time though, I was still looking. I was referencing Veronica Roth's blog from forever ago, from when she got her first revision letters, or something like that. And that to me was like very biblical in what it meant to me, as I was figuring it out, cause it was like, "Oh it's real. She doesn't even know what's coming." And same thing for a bunch of other authors that are very big names now.
I had to sort of forensically reconstruct their history. And so that's why finding something like this, that seeks to demystify those steps, and those pathways, and seeing the similarities. But also the differences, and what mattered to people, was very changing for my process.
Sarah Enni: Good! So then when you go back to Reverie after you get the new job, you set yourself up...
Ryan La Sala: I reread the book. I rewrote it from the bones out.
Sarah Enni: Did you reread it first or were you just like...?
Ryan La Sala: I... no. No. Cause at this point, I had had it in my head for so long, and it's also the only book I've ever been working on. So I knew what I wanted to keep, in what I had done, and what was valuable. And I had spent so much time chewing it over that, no, I just sat down and got to work.
Sarah Enni: I want to ask about that cause I think it is so fascinating that Reverie is the first book you wrote, and it has been the book that has seen you through all of the learning curves of becoming a writer.
Ryan La Sala: "That ol' girl!" She's truly... [laughs].
Sarah Enni: It's incredible.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, I put that book through it.
Sarah Enni: But I'm interested to hear what you think about persevering with the same book like that. Do you ever look back and think, "Maybe I should have tried something different." Or, did you ever consider doing that? How do you think about that?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, no, it was spite. It was completely spite. I had this book, and it was always very, very gay. And I set out with the goal of centering a queer character doing queer things in a fantastical setting. And for a long time I was like, "Oh, this is not getting any traction because, you know, queer characters don't." And then I was finding Alex London and seeing like, "Oh actually, wait. No. You can do this well and there are people out there that are looking for this. There is a market for this."
But I wasn't gonna let myself give up on this initial idea that I had. And so yeah, it was always... anytime the idea of a new book came up, I was like, "Well I might as well...I've got this book down, I might as well take that next step. Try to query it. Try to get an agent. And maybe it won't happen."
But I was very skeptical of that pathway cause until Reverie actually sold, I was pretty convinced it never would.
Sarah Enni: Interesting.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. I still am absolutely shocked. So I was writing my acknowledgements today, and I was just like, "I cannot believe that I got away with this." But it was only because I was not gonna let myself not get away with it.
Sarah Enni: Interesting. Okay. So let me just see if I can unpack that a little bit. Cause that was really interesting. So you're kind of saying, whenever you had an idea for another book, you were like, "No, I'm gonna double down even more on Reverie. Even though a big part of you was like...
Ryan La Sala: "This book is doomed."
Sarah Enni: "This isn't gonna happen."
Ryan La Sala: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: That's really interesting.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. Well, I was at least thinking I had invested all of this time, and this book mattered so much to me. And I knew there was something there, because the people that read it were telling me it was good. And, you know, my family liked it. So maybe there's some delusion in that too, but I was like, "At least I can kind of use this claymore, this very elegant instrument, to get my way into publishing." And then maybe someone's finally gonna sit me down and be like, "You need to snap out of it. You need to be realistic." And that moment just never came.
Sarah Enni: Wow. Okay. That's really fascinating. Well, let's take a second before we go too much further and just talk about Reverie and get the pitch for it. So that we can talk about it in specific.
Ryan La Sala: This is so funny hearing me talk about my childhood, and now I'm gonna talk about Kane, who's the main character. But they're distinct parallels. Reverie is the story of Kane Montgomery, who's a young gay teenager growing up in Connecticut, who's very alone. He was outted from a really young age, and it created this chasm between him and his peers that he never really found his way to cross.
And so he solves a lot of his loneliness with imagining the way the world could be but he lacks the gumption, for lack of a better word, to actualize it. He's shy and withheld, but he gets into this terrible accident. And the book actually starts as he's trying to figure out what happened to him, this faded night, when he gets pulled out of this river by a bunch of paramedics, and goes into a coma.
And when he wakes up, the world seems very different. It feels very different. And there are people that behave as though they recognize him, and he feels like he's missing a big part of his recollection in the things leading up to this accident. And soon he's dragged into this ongoing war for the fate of reality in which these things called Reveries are taking place.
And in the book Reveries are, they are people's subconscious state dreams brought to life in these dimensions that just swallow the town whole. And it's up to Kane to figure out why these are happening. And to eventually unravel them and return them to the heads of the people that they spawned from. Which is an important task, as it turns out. And eventually that process is imperiled by the appearance of Posey who is a drag queen sorceress who harvests these Reveries for her own use.
Sarah Enni: Mmm! And drag queen sorceress I guess is where everybody must just light up!
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. The short pitch is that it's a young gay kid fighting a drag queen sorceress to rescue Connecticut, the state.
Sarah Enni: I love that.
Ryan La Sala: She's trying to override Connecticut with something much more interesting.
Sarah Enni: The best button for it for Connecticut.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. Yeah. I mean who's trying for that?
Sarah Enni: Ah, I love it! Someone's got to stand for it. First I want to ask you about your relationship to drag culture and what made Posey come up. What made you want to explore that in books? Cause this was way back in college that you had this idea, right?
Ryan La Sala: It was even before that. Actually, the original idea I had as a result of My Space, cause I got into a fight with Jeffree Starr on My Space.
Sarah Enni: Oh my god. You might need to explain.
Ryan La Sala: I wish I could even remember it, and I have looked for this. So if anyone knows who Jeffree Starr is, he's a big makeup artist now. But his My Space presence, to me, was the most incredible thing. Cause I was this young gay kid, and then I found this other young gay person, or queer person, I don't know how he identifies now, that was just so outspoken. I don't really stand with who he is now, and what he represents. But he and I got into this argument on his comments about something, cause I I would try to give him a compliment and it got misinterpreted.
But anyhow, it was through him that I found the world of makeup and drag artistry. This is before YouTube as well. And so it was actual drag queens online, not people just doing tutorials, but it was people like Club Kids on MySpace.com. And so that was my introduction to that world, the world of very conspicuously queer people with something to say.
And eventually the interest in drag was mostly just around... if anyone's seen a drag queen, they're incredible performers. Even someone on their first night out in drag, it changes a person. And I was so fascinated by the way that drag queens could command an entire room.
This was aided by the fact that growing up, my family would go to Provincetown every summer, and my mom would bring us to drag shows. And she would try to go for the more Broadway cabaret style ones, cause they do range in their appropriateness for a little kid. But from a very young age, I was marching on the streets of Provincetown, as toddler, confronting drag queens in the streets being like, "You're a man!"
And they'd turn and be like, "No, I'm a goat. What are you talking about?" It was my favorite thing to talk with them. I was just amazed by them and the attention they could summon from a crowd of bystanders. And so it was a very early fascination with drag specific intersection with being a focal point for the gay community.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's amazing. I love that you were there as a kid so much. That's also reminding me of, and I certainly hope this comes across the way I intend it, but there is something cartoon-esque and animated right? They are putting on this beautiful persona, and they are larger than life, and that's so very Sailor Moon-y, this transformation.
Ryan La Sala: It's always been about that transformation, right? I just love that people can create that power for themselves. And that's actually a huge thing in Reverie too, the characters that are in it. Kane befriends these people that have power similar to them or to him. And discovers pretty early on that pain is the prism by which that power is created for each of them. So their powers correlate to something very painful for them as a means of keeping them in check, as it turns out. I was always fascinated with that conversion I think a lot of queer artists have to undergo.
Sarah Enni: Right. And then where did the idea come from to make Posey the villain of the story?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, so that's a very simple answer. If you've met a drag queen, there's an element of glamor and villainy. And if you look at any anime villain, or really any villain in general, they are always just the most glamorous, self-possessed people.
Sarah Enni: Yes. Especially the female villains.
Ryan La Sala: Especially the female villains, and I was always drawn to them too. And I was like, "Well that's how I could get into that persona... drag." So I actually don't do drag a ton myself. I definitely dress up here and there. I just do not have the nose for it.
Sarah Enni: I love that that's in your bio.
Ryan La Sala: It is in my bio! Yes, oh my god, you're right. I more like to witness it. And it's specifically because of that aura and that power. And I think that there is something so threatening about someone who knows so clearly what they want to do, and how to get things from people. And I thought that that would just make an absolutely fascinating villain.
Ryan La Sala: When I'm thinking about Posey the villain, I call her a villain, but for a lot of the book it's very sympathetic to her end goal. She just happens to be very ruthless, and she happens to jeopardize people that Kane loves. But ultimately her goal is sort of a noble one. She wants to create her own reality that's fashioned after things that she likes, where she'll belong. And I think that's a point that a lot of queer people resonate with. And I think it's something that a lot of drag queens just do by existing in these spaces.
Sarah Enni: Right. That's the power. The true power they have is them commanding a room. It means that you are in their reality for that hour and a half.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, for however long that song's going. It's the art of illusion that they create. But it's a very real thing when you're there witnessing it.
Sarah Enni: This has come up a lot actually recently. It's this Dumbledorian thing of like, "Well, just cause it's in your mind doesn't mean it's not real. There's a lot of the shared experience. And the Yoko Ono quote that leads off Reverie, it's so great for that.
Ryan La Sala: Yes. That's the book that it's from, right there on my nightstand. But it's Grapefruit by Yoko Ono and John Lennon. And the origin of the quote is contestable, but Yoko did say it first. But it's, "A dream you dream alone is only a dream. But a dream you dream with others is reality." Or something like that. But yeah, it definitely hooks back into my original inspiration as a kid, about if we can all dream together, it will be real. And that's the major theme.
Sarah Enni: I love that. Oh, the short pitch for it too, reading back, was Inception meets RuPaul's Drag Race. I don't know how anyone says no to that. That is so good.
Ryan La Sala: So for a long time, I actually didn't tell people that Posey was a drag queen when I was querying it, cause I thought it would completely dissociate them from the content, to be like, "I can't sell this." Because this was at the querying stage. I remember just finally when DVPit came up I was like, "I'm just gonna go for. I'm just gonna basically admit to this and fully show this choice." And it made all the difference. People were much more receptive than I thought.
Sarah Enni: Good! That's very heartening.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, right. Seriously.
Sarah Enni: You talked earlier about having this experience of being the conspicuous queer in your high school and having other people maybe [pauses], it's that Love Simon thing, right? (Based on Simon Versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertali. Listen to her First Draft episode here).
People were looking to him to map their experience, or validate it, and how that made you feel lonely. And you had a quote that said, "The loneliness of a queer adolescence and about how survival often means fighting against those most like you."
Ryan La Sala: Mm-hm. yeah.
Sarah Enni: I feel that's tying into, a little bit, of what you're talking about right now. Do you want to explain what you meant by that?
Ryan La Sala: Absolutely. And this is not something that I realized as it was happening as a kid. But oftentimes a lot of the tension I had with people was maybe created by our similarity, and the risk of being associated. And so you had to put other people down, or put a distance between you and the other "weird person". Or else, if you were seen along the same spectrum, you were doomed. You were both doomed.
And I think knowing that I was this target from a really young age, cause I'm a very flamboyant person, I had a really girly voice and I have a lot of mannerisms. I was keenly aware of the attention that I was gaining because of those things. And I just could not stand one more painful association. Right?
And so I learned from a young age to be the meanest person in the room. To just be able to very quickly, and very wittily, take someone apart. Or, identify someone's insecurity or just basically defend myself in a way that had nothing to do with physical strength, and everything to do with humor and posturing.
And it was definitely a product of the fact that I just felt I needed to survive and figure things out. And I spent my entire life walking back from this defense mechanism that was really important to me. And that was oftentimes deployed against people that probably should have been my friend.
And Kane actually does this in Reverie as well. His number one friend, and this is something that I've been unpacking as an adult for a long time, but his number one friend in Reverie is this girl Ursula. He doesn't really remember their friendship because of the fact that he doesn't remember much, but what he does remember is, he just remembers being mean to her as a means of getting people to pay attention to someone else for once. And starting this terrible rumor about her.
But as he re-meets her, it's actually the beginning of their friendship. It's her first memory of him. And so he's dealt with it in their friendship, but now that he doesn't remember their friendship, he's confronted with the guilt of being that person to her.
Sarah Enni: Wow. That's really fascinating. And very like, did you watch Sex Education?
Ryan La Sala: No.
Sarah Enni: It's reminding me a little bit of that. There are two conspicuously gay young men and they are flamboyant in different ways. And they're just so prickly.
Ryan La Sala: Well, eventually when people were out of the closet, it also became like, "Oh, there are two gays. We have to pit them against one another." It was like Pokemon, right? The girls would have "their gay" and then I would be someone else's gay. And they'd be like, "Well Kevin's a fire type, what are you gonna do against that?" And I'm like, "Well I brought my Evian water."
People do set up these dichotomies between "like people" and I think a lot of people that are the single minority of a specific type, end up finding themselves in conversation with people that they've never met, just because they're similar to them.
Sarah Enni: Right. Yeah. It's definitely something...it's these group dynamics that are fascinating to break down. But very devastating to have to live through, and then untangle that later.
Ryan La Sala: Right.
Sarah Enni: That makes sense. Is there anything else about representing drag culture, or bringing that in, that you want to talk about it? I mean, that's kind of a sensitive thing. It's a subculture, and you want to be respectful of it, at the same time it's so delicious to dive into.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah. One thing that I am very aware of is the fact that I'm taking this sacred art form of my culture, and sort of commodifying it in a very sensational way. The way that I grapple with that is that it is a sensational thing to begin with. It's sensational by definition. That's a lot of the point, it's performative. And I have nothing but respect for people that do this.
And if you're listening to this, there's much more to drag them just RuPaul's Drag Race, which is a great show and a lot of fun. But go out to your local bar. Support your local Queens. They're real. Follow them, watch their tutorials, they're fascinating. And if you can actually get in touch with them, the way that they construct or deconstruct drag is always an individual process. And really something that's great to witness.
So for me though, drag has always been a form of salvation. It's how a lot of people have survived. And if you look at the very origins of the Gay Rights Movement, like Marsha P. Johnson, and other trans people of color that really were at the forefront. And really took the brunt of this battle.
They weren't doing it necessarily for the attention. And then, whether or not they would even consider themselves drag queens or trans, they were playing with gender and they were performing in a way that felt right to them. And that was their salvation. And I did want to tap into... you know, Posey, she roots her power in her ability to change herself and to change people's perceptions of her.
And she takes that power that she gains from being in drag, and she puts it into changing the world around her to match. And she externalizes that exact same exchange. And that was important for me to capture. To not just dress up the villain for the sake of flamboyance, or making jokes about having your wig snatched off, or anything like that. And while that is in there, and it was fun, ultimately what I wanted to do was capture the power that I perceive in the art itself and the origin.
Sarah Enni: And then what does it mean to you to have the protagonist, have Kane reclaiming an objective reality?
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, so I don't know that this is an interesting conversation, but it's definitely a conversation that takes place in my head; where gay communities tend to be insular because they had to be for a long time, right? We had to have our own spaces and we had to create our own realities that took place in nightclubs, or what have you. Just places that were meant for us and created by us. And Posey does really represent that modality of survival. She is there to create a sanctuary for herself and people like her, if you don't fit in, then you're not invited.
And Kane, meanwhile, he's from a younger generation. And his whole thing, his whole character journey, is about learning not to withdraw from the world but instead to outwardly project into the world, and change the world around him. And not necessarily replace it like Posey wants to.
So the tension between the two of them, as while they're very similar, they're both cis-queer men. Or, boy and man. Their whole debate is, how do you fight somebody who is the most like you, when the way that you are trying to accomplish the same thing differs in a really fundamental way.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I think that's just a really fascinating dynamic cause this isn't good versus evil. It's much more complicated.
Ryan La Sala: And Posey's point, for a lot of the book, is that they had a lot of faith that Kane would see their way. It just so happens that one of the Reveries that Posey wants to collect, or actually several of them, happen to be from innocent people who will suffer because they're no longer gonna own their own dreams.
And that can devastate a person too. And if Posey was looking at what they were doing to people, they would perhaps have that empathy. But at that point, they're beyond caring about people that don't really belong in the reality that they're creating. And you know, any reality, any world that is created from the mind of one person is gonna be infested with that person's prejudice. Right?
And I think that's what a lot of people forget when they are the sole creator behind something. And that's what Kane comes to realize when he's looking at this sterile vision for something. Because even though it will be a sanctuary for Posey, and people like Posey, it's exclusionary for a lot of other people that don't necessarily fall into Posey's sympathies, which is dangerous.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Okay. So how about this… I am not going to ask you about DVPit because I'm going to recommend every listener here listen to your Write or Die podcast with Claribel. Because you explained it so well there, and you are online talking about that in a lot of places.
Ryan La Sala: Always and forever.
Sarah Enni: And for time, for this one, I think I will just redirect and I'll link to that in the show notes so that everyone can get to it. But I want to ask [chuckles] I have two more notes here which is; funny and cosplay as the wardrobe.
Ryan La Sala: Oh no! [Laughing]
Sarah Enni: [Laughing] I don't think we have time to get into the wardrobe, but I'm obsessed with the fact that it's actually on your wall still.
Ryan La Sala: I can summarize it really quickly.
Sarah Enni: Please. I wish you would.
Ryan La Sala: In Beauty and the Beast,
Sarah Enni: [Outright laughs]
Ryan La Sala: The wardrobe commits manslaughter, and no one notices. When they break into the castle, the wardrobe hits a beautiful operatic note, flings herself off of the balcony and crushes a man... gay icon. When I was looking at things to be for Halloween, I was looking at the things that really affected me. And of course, just being the gayest kid ever I was drawn to her out of all... like, "Belle who? Do not care about Belle." But the wardrobe? I was like, "Now that's a woman."
Sarah Enni: "She's got a point of view."
Ryan La Sala: "She's got a point of view. She has got an artistic point of view." And I needed to pay homage.
Sarah Enni: It's really a wonderful costume.
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, the doors open. You've seen the photo?
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's so good. And I'll link to that as well. But I was also like, "Damn, that's a good point. We do not talk about the wardrobe enough.
Ryan La Sala: Incredible! She killed somebody. The only person that dies is the one that's crushed by her. It's the most amazing thing to me that no one talks about it. Like, "I just killed a man while hitting on a beautiful high C."
Sarah Enni: See you would need to bring it up. You are, [inaudible]
Ryan La Sala: I am trying! If anything, if I have a platform, it's to talk about things like this.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I am so excited about that. I'm so sad that we have to wrap it up, but we'll just do this again when the next one comes out. But I would love to have you give advice. I try to make advice specific for someone.
I feel I would love to hear you just talk about wanting to write in queer spaces, queer books for queer people in fantasy specifically. Cause there's a lot of [pauses] I want to gracefully phrase this question, but there's a lot of ret-conning with fantasy series that happens because it's been so hetero for so long, right?
Ryan La Sala: Right.
Sarah Enni: So it seems like a ripe world for people who want to jump in.
Ryan La Sala: Right. And it is. It is. I think if you pay attention to anything, fandoms eventually queer up.
Sarah Enni: Instantly!
Ryan La Sala: There are IP's that they're attracted to. And yeah, not even eventually, usually it's very instant. And you spend enough time watching that happen and you think like, "Oh, how much fun would it be to just start there." To not have it be this retcon, or head Canon, or some no-name author from England deciding that.
Sarah Enni: I know. Years after the fact.
Ryan La Sala: Which is fine. I love that, cause that is a major spite move. Like, "He was gay the whole time!" I actually did love it then. Since then it's deteriorated in terms of the bait and switch. But my point being, is that there is a real interest in stories like this. And starting from this point of view and not working your way, after you've gained an audience.
And, yeah, I'm perfectly aware that writing something that is as gay as Reverie is gonna be seen as exclusionary. But for the most part, that content was always gonna be in that book, whether it came out in book two or book three or book one or what have you. And eventually that was gonna be maybe prohibitive for a certain set of readers, but I was never not gonna include it. And so I just figured why not start there? And instead of working my way towards what I want to story in the first place.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I mean it breaks my heart even to hear you talk about when you were looking for your agents and editors and going through the DVPit process. Which again, we won't talk about here but Write or Die, that you felt nervous about bringing up that it was so gay. But I'm glad that it obviously turned around once you started talking about it.
Ryan La Sala: Right. And I think part of that is also the fact that luckily within publishing, queerness has gained [unintelligible] in some places. And I think it's because there have been a lot of really vocal writers and gatekeepers that have talked enough about this that now, you just sort of walk out onto a pitch stage and be like, "My book is RuPaul meets Inception." And have that make any sense to anybody. Three or four years ago probably RuPaul was burgeoning through actual mainstream, but it didn't have the same significance.
It's a new thing where drag has also entered the public eye in a way that is accessible to people who maybe have never been to a drag show, or don't go to gay nightclubs and encounter drag queens very regularly. And so that was very helpful too. But eventually, I realized that people wanted this story, or at least the people that I was talking to did. And maybe I just needed one person to take a chance on me, which is what happened.
Sarah Enni: But for the advice level, I guess, just for young writers that maybe want to tell queer stories, if there's anything in particular that you would tell them?
Ryan La Sala: I would say that we're waiting on you. Please hurry up. I am so excited about all of the amazing queer stories that are coming out, and all of the young queer writers that I talk to, that DM me. I want them to know that there is an expectation that they will do this work. I'm really excited for them.
And I think half of the battle is knowing that someone wants to read this. That someone is asking you for this. That you're not just doing this for self-preservation or for the glory of it. But really there are people that are waiting for this that are clamoring for publishing these stories that are diverse and interesting and have a range of experiences for them.
And so I think that that's my broad advice. I think if I had to give very tactical advice, I think people need to spend time interrogating the inclusion of queerness in their work. I think that if you want to just include gay characters for the sake of having gay characters, that's totally fine. But you're gonna be asked about it like we're talking about it right now.
Like, "What is the intersection of your art and your queerness?" And the thing that really helped me figure that out is, I did sit with Reverie and interrogate why I was including these characters, sort of what that meant to me. And if I had to give one bit of advice to just writers in general, it would be to interview yourself.
Part of what let me access why I was writing the queer characters that I was writing, why I wanted to include them the way that I wanted to, and what sort of helped me, what I hope is create an impactful project, is because I spent a lot of time listening to podcasts like this pretending that I was in them. How would I answer these questions?
And eventually I worked my way towards what was the thesis of what I was trying to say? Or the thesis of this character's inclusion. What's the utility of this? And I think as queerness becomes more common, we're moving towards a space where the idyllic queer story where it has nothing to do with the character's gayness, is becoming popular. Which is fine. But there's a whole range of queer experiences and it's really rare that queerness exists in a vacuum.
So learning how that would exist in your story and not just simply taking it for granted, I think can be a really effective way of getting in touch with what you're trying to write. And then it also helps you present it to people, pitch it to people, and get them interested in what you're writing.
Sarah Enni: I mean, I love what you're saying, especially for young queer artists, but genuinely for anyone to be able to... I mean, I did that with the Tonight Show or whatever, right?
Ryan La Sala: Did you?
Sarah Enni: It was just like, "So when I'm on the Tonight Show..."
Ryan La Sala: Yeah, what are you gonna say?
Sarah Enni: Yeah like, "Then I had a tight five." [Both laughing] And actually my friend Kirsten Hubbard, who is another wonderful writer (author of Like Mandarin, Wanderlove, and Watch the Sky and Race the Night, and more (listen to her First Draft episode here), does this in the car too. She will have on the voice memo and talk things through while she's driving. And it's just something about using that other, you know, as writers we can be silent forever. But then reading it out loud, all those things unlock a lot and you will stumble into stuff that surprises you.
Ryan La Sala: Well when you talk about yourself, you talk about who you are, or who you wish you were. Most of the time people love to talk about themselves. But it's a difference between living your everyday life and [pauses] that I would relate to when you're writing, you're lost in this long scrolling document. But when you pan out, or talk about yourself, or even trying to do a query... you learn about what you wish you would have written, or who you wish you were.
And I think it's always handy to take a look at that and then assess like,"Have I actually done that?" So I tell writers all the time, when you are nearing the end of your first draft, stop what you're doing, write your query and then decide if you've actually written that book. It's a very handy thing to do, to sort of figure out like, "Did you write the book you meant to write?"
Sarah Enni: That's such good advice. Bing, bang, boom. We did it.
Ryan La Sala: Thank you.
Sarah Enni: Yes. Thank you so much Ryan. This was so fun.
Ryan La Sala: Ah, I had a blast. Thank you for coming.
Sarah Enni: Yes, the first of many.
Ryan La Sala: Yes. Oh I hope.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Ryan. Follow him on Twitter @Ryality and on Instagram @Ry_LA_SA. That's RY_LA_SA. You can follow me on both Twitter and Instagram @sarahenni and the show (Twitter and Instagram) @Firstdraftpod.com. If you enjoyed this conversation with Ryan and you want to hear more from him, you should check out his great episode of the What Book Hooked You? Podcast, which is available everywhere podcasts can be downloaded. I really love that show and Ryan's episode was a real treat. Again, that's the What Book Hooked You? podcasts. It's a fun one.
For links to everything Ryan and I talked about in this episode. Please check out the show notes which are available @firstdraftpod.com and while we're talking about the website, I wanted to just draw attention to the fact that in the show notes I link to all the books, not only by the author who's featured, but the books that we discuss in the episode.
I learned from the listener survey that a lot of you are buying books after you hear them talked about on the episode, and that is amazing. If you're interested in helping out the show, while you buy those books, you can shop through the website. You can click on the links that I include in the show notes. That'll take you to Amazon where if you buy, a portion of the proceeds will go back to First Draft and help keep the show free.
I totally respect anyone that doesn't want to shop at Amazon. I get it. But if you were gonna do it anyway, that's one way that you can really help the show. And it has all the links all in the same place. So again, the show notes @firstdraftpod.com.
If you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd like me and a guest to answer in an upcoming episode, you can leave that question at the voicemail box I set up for the show. The number for that voicemail is 818-533-1998. I don't know if you caught the recent episode that was a mailbag episode with Zan Romanov where we answered listener questions and had a good time hanging out.
We also released that episode as an IGTV... I don't know what you call that, a feature, whatever? It was so fun and I'm gonna be recording a bunch more of those and I'd really love to hear from you guys. So go ahead and leave those questions at 818-533-1998.
Another way to help the show is to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening and to leave a rating or review on iTunes. As I said, a bunch on these end credits, iTunes has a whole secret algorithm that none of us can understand, but we do know that the reviews help tremendously. That gets the show in front of the ears of people that might not find it otherwise. So I really appreciate your time and your very, very kind words.
Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large, Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you strong nosed Queens for listening.
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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too; Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.
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