Episode 84: Tasha Suri Interview

Travis interviews author Tasha Suri about The Jasmine Throne, the first book in her now Burning Kingdoms trilogy from Orbit Books. This epic fantasy features a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne and a priestess searching for her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.

Tasha and Travis discuss what makes a compelling romance, drawing widely on history and mythology, and taking the leap into writing an epic fantasy trilogy.

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About Tasha Suri

The Jasmine Throne

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Transcript:

The transcript for this interview was generously provided by the wonderful Jacqui, who you can find on Twitter as @Blackwingjac.

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Intro:

[The Fantasy Inn intro music begins]

Step aside farm boys. It’s time for scheming princesses, unstoppable mothers, and magical priestesses. They’re here, they’re queer, and they’re ready to burn down the patriarchy. 

Welcome to the Fantasy Inn, where we share our love for all things fantasy and discuss the broader speculative fiction industry. I’m your host, Travis Tippens.

This week’s interview is with author Tasha Suri. Her latest novel is The Jasmine Throne, the first book in the Burning Kingdoms trilogy from Orbit Books, which is out today! Tasha and I discuss what makes a compelling romance, drawing widely on history and mythology, and taking the leap into writing an epic fantasy trilogy. Alright, let’s see what Tasha had to say.

Travis: Welcome to The Fantasy Inn, Tasha. It’s so great to have you on the podcast.

Tasha Suri: It’s so great to be here.

Travis: Okay, so jumping right into it, I did see that your bio casually mentions that you live in a mildly haunted house, but doesn’t go into any more detail. So, I have to ask for the story behind that.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs] Well, I kinda put that in there and ever since then people have been very curious. So, it’s not so much that it’s haunted as it should be, like, it’s the kind of house that is definitely made to be in a horror film. So, it’s a lovely house, don’t get me wrong, but it’s quite old and creaky, and everything was wrong with it when we moved in, but the people who used to live here would sell collectable toys. So, antique, vintage toys, and they also kind of hoarded them, so when they left, they left a lot of the things that they would usually have sold in the house, and I would occasionally just find them.

So, I think the most creepy incident was when I went down to the basement for the first time – because of course there’s a basement – it was completely dark and you could only access it by going through the garden. And I went into the basement, I put the light on, and directly in front of me was a torn silk chair, on the chair was a realistic latex mask of a face. So, I switched the light off –

Travis: Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs] I switched the light off. I think I literally said, “Oh, hell no.” Put the light off, closed the door, and went back upstairs. And didn’t go back down for a very long time.

Travis: Yeah, I think I would, uh, brick up the basement in that situation.

Tasha Suri: Yeah, there’s also like a weird void in the basement that looks like it leads to eternal darkness. I’ve never looked in that either. I assume that’s fine and just leads to more “under house” stuff. But it’s that kind of vibe, it’s that kind of house.

Travis: Yeah, so, uh, when we were starting looking for houses for the first time, the one thing that my wife made me promise was: if she ever thinks that the house is haunted, I will allow us to move, no questions asked. Because we’re not going down like a horror movie.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs] I think that’s a very reasonable decision. I comfort myself by thinking that, you know, ghosts are usually exorcised? Is that how you call it? Like an exorcism? Um, with like religious stuff, and I assume, and usually that’s Christian or Catholic, and we’re Hindus, so I always think that if there are ghosts, they just get really confused by all the Hindu statues in the house and they don’t really know what to do. They’re like, “Do we… can we fight this? Can we not? That’s a really big elephant, I think I’m just going to go back to the basement right along.”

Travis: There you go, travel through that dark void into the neighbour’s area.

Tasha Suri: Yeah, exactly. They can deal with it.

Travis: [Laughs] Okay, well, I guess looking way back then, can you remember what first made you fall in love with fantasy and science fiction?

Tasha Suri: I think I’ve always loved it. I’ve loved science fiction and fantasy pretty much since I could read, ‘cause I loved, like, fairy tales and, you know, the typical kind of Disney princess stories that a lot of kids love. But I found by pure accident, um, some fantasy novels when I was trying to… I think I was trying to buy my mom a gift and I ended up in the fantasy section.

I was very young, so obviously I wasn’t buying this gift on my own, I think I must’ve had my dad with me in retrospect, and I saw, I think it was David Eddings’s Elenium series, because the cover of the first one has a woman on a crystal throne and I think is in fact called The Crystal Throne, don’t quote me on that, and I thought it looked really pretty and I wanted the book, so we bought the book and I read the book, and it got me into fantasy. That and, um, Terry Pratchett.

So, it was just all the stuff that I would’ve, that I consumed when I was younger. And, of course, anime.

Travis: [Laughs] Yeah, anime is one of those areas that, uh, I’ve been wanting to break into but I’m kind of intimidated by. So, I mean, I’ve seen a couple of the big ones, but that’s about it.

Tasha Suri: To be honest, I’m intimidated by it. I kind of watched certain things when I was really young, and then I fell out of it, and then I went to university and there was so many people who were really into it and knew all the different animes that you should be watching. And I just thought “It’s too much, I can’t deal with it.” And I never really got into any after that.

So, the ones I like are all the stuff I watched as a kid, like Sailor Moon and Escaflowne or Dragon Ball Z and things like that. I don’t know anything about the new ones.

Travis: Yeah, fair enough. I saw, I think, maybe three or four episodes of Dragon Ball Z, but I had some friends who were very intense about it and that scared me off.

Tasha Suri: I was probably one of those people at one point in my life.

Travis: [Laughs] I mean, I’d be a hypocrite though if I said that was a bad thing, ‘cause I’m definitely intense about some of my fandoms now.

Tasha Suri: So, what are some of your fandoms, out of curiosity?

Travis: Oh wow, putting me on the spot. Um, I guess, uh, one fandom I have is… I… this is getting away from television though, but I definitely stan all of Claire North’s books. Um, big, big fan of them and I will chuck them at anybody I possibly can.

Tasha Suri: I love her books, so I don’t blame you for that.

Travis: Yes, and I always like to mention to people that they’re the opposite of everything I would put on paper as my normal tastes, but they’re just so, so good.

Tasha Suri: There’s something about her writing, right, that’s just, it sucks you in, and she’s one of those authors that, I’ve had friends who are not into science fiction and fantasy, and if I say “Read a Claire North book,” I know they’re going to enjoy it.

Travis: Mmm, yeah, very literary.

Tasha Suri: Yes, but –

Travis: Whatever that means [laughs].

Tasha Suri: – in a good way. Yes [laughs].

Travis: Yes. That’s an important qualification. But yeah, so, uh, speaking of literariness, I did see that you kind of have a formal education in English and creative writing. So, how would you say that’s helped your career as a writer?

Tasha Suri: Uhhh [laughs].

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: It’s complicated. Um, on one level, I’m not sure that it did, because everything I learned about the industry, I learned way after I finished my degree, so, like, at the point I got published, which was when I was twenty… twenty-eight, I think? Time has no meaning anymore.

Travis: Nope.

Tasha Suri: Nope. And I left uni at twenty-one, so that’s a big gap. Um, and at university we never learned about how publishing really works, and all of that was, um, a bit more of a shock to me or a trial by fire, but, like, not in a serious or worrying way, when I entered the industry.

What the degree focused on was a lot of stuff around writing short fiction and poetry, and workshopping that with other people. And I wasn’t really interested in short fiction, I wanted to write novels, but no tutor wants to read thirty novels [laughs] by a bunch of undergrads, so we never really did that kind of work.

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: But it also was the time when I think I learned about what really mattered to me in fiction. It was the time I started getting angry about stuff. Anger’s a really good motivator for me, and I started noticing the lack of diversity in fiction, and I started thinking about what I wanted to write. So, it was a really good point for me to start thinking about writing, but then I also wonder whether I needed to pay three-thousand plus pounds a year to think about writing when I could’ve done it at home.

But then again, the, the actual experience of being [able to write/around other writers? 8:47] was really good, and studying English was really good, and I read things that still really matter to me now, like I read Louise Erdrich for the first time, who I love, and I read a lot of women’s fiction that I never would have actually had access to, and I learned a lot about post-colonial theory. So, that’s a really rambling way of saying that in some ways it didn’t help, and it didn’t necessarily get me published, but in other ways it was very helpful because it was an important time in my life.

Would I tell anybody to get the degree? Mm, I think it’s up to you. I gather that if you do things like the University of East Anglia Masters in Creative Writing, that can really help you to get published and find agents, but I’m not sure about the use of that qualification to get you published if that’s why you want to do it, if that makes sense.

Travis: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense, um, and it’s sounding a lot like my decision to get a masters degree in engineering, that does not directly translate into my actual career whatsoever. But there’s still a lot of very useful things that I got from that. Sounds like that’s kind of not an industry-specific thing.

Tasha Suri: I mean, I would’ve thought a masters in engineering would have been really useful [laughs].

Travis: It depends, right? Because you specialize in, like, a certain area, and then whatever job you’re doing is probably more general than that, if you’re on, like, the industry side of things rather than the academic side of things. And so, I definitely use pieces of it, but I don’t know if I use, like, all twelve classes or whatever. I use maybe one or two.

Tasha Suri: Oh, that’s really interesting. So, I guess a lot of qualifications are more about transferable skills and getting a stamp on a piece of paper than they necessarily are about getting you into particular jobs.

Travis: Yep, absolutely. And in the US at least it’s a very expensive stamp on a sheet of paper.

Tasha Suri: Oh, trust me, I don’t think it’s as expensive here, but it’s still very expensive. It went from… I think I was paying three-thousand eight-hundred pounds a year, to nine-thousand a year, um, which is a lot more money. So, I wouldn’t be doing another qualification now.

Travis: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s quite a bit still. So, having read a few of your novels now, I think part of what makes a Tasha Suri novel a Tasha Suri novel is a compelling romance. So, I just want your opinion: what do you think makes a romance great?

Tasha Suri: Ooh, um.

Travis: Easy question, I’m sure.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs] I should have thought about this earlier. Um, I think what makes a romance great can be a lot of different things, but often it’s that two characters… all people, all characters have particular flaws and vulnerabilities and strengths. What makes a romance great is that the strengths and flaws of those characters do interesting things together.

So, it’s not necessarily that they’re flawed and strong in complimentary ways, like, one of them’s messy and the other one tidies up, to take a very superficial example, but that their flaws make for really interesting interaction. So, maybe one of them is really tough on the outside, but is actually quite a vulnerable person, and the other one appears to be vulnerable but is actually very cunning. That makes for something quite interesting as a dynamic.

I also think a good romance can just be something that pings people’s ID in a specific way. So, I think often, like, um, in certain circles you joke about “Oh, there’s only one bed” or “Oh my god, they were roommates.” I guess this is fanfic circles, but that you have a particular interaction that pings on people’s particular fantasies, or particular desires, or things they just like to read about. That can also help to make a good romance.

Travis: Yeah, that’s true, and I feel like the whole fanfic classifications where you can tag things with all the specific tropes, I really wish that, like, traditional publishing would adopt that as well.

Tasha Suri: Oh, me too! I guess in a way, romance kind of does that, like if you pick up… if I say “This is a clean, quote unquote, regency romance,” you kind of know what you’re picking up. You know it’s going to be low on heat, quote unquote, and it will be in the regency era and it’ll have a certain tone and it will have a certain kind of characters, etc. So, you kind of get that, but it’s not as specific as fanfic is.

Travis: Right, yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah, so, most, if not all, of your novels seem like they’ve had a fair degree of research that went into them. So, how do you normally approach your research process?

Tasha Suri: Ooh, so I usually buy a ton of books and then I read them in a really chaotic way.

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: [Laughs]. So, for example I bought a bunch of books on Indian history, of course, to write fantasy inspired by historical India, but I don’t have the time, patience or interest to read the book cover-to-cover, especially because you may do that and then find that you’ve only picked up a few important pieces of information, and then you’re going to have to go read another book. And how much time do you really have?

So, I do a lot of looking at indexes and going “I want to know about what women wore in this particular era.” I find where that is in the book, I read it, I write it down, and then I move on. So, I’m quite directed in that way, but it’s also vaguely chaotic because I don’t always know what I want to know until I know, so then I’ll be picking up five books at once, going “One of these will contain the information that I need.” And sort of [furtile? 14:02] through it.

The nice thing about writing fantasy, of course, is that I can just make stuff up if I can’t find it, um, which is great, um, because it’s fantasy. It’s more complicated when you write historical fiction, because you know even if you can’t find the information, somebody out there will know it, and they will inevitably read your book, and they will tell you that you got it wrong. So, that’s a joy [laughs].

Travis: [Laughs] Yeah, I can imagine that’s such a joy. Especially, I mean, for someone like you, you seem to not take direct historical elements? I know you’ll have some characters who are influenced by historical figures and, I guess, at least some, like, certain cultures and clothing and foods, but it’s not like a one-to-one analogue.

Tasha Suri: Oh no, not at all. Um, I definitely take inspiration, but I’m not… so The Books of Ambha, Empire of Sand, Realm of Ash, were set in like a Mughal-inspired world, but they were definitely not, like, in a perfect recreation of the Mughal era at all. I changed huge amounts of things to fit the story. And the Jasmine Throne is not in one particular time period, I just mashed a bunch of different things together that I like to create a fictional, fantasy world.

So, all of that was quite a free process. I didn’t have to be very specific on the history, which is quite nice.

Travis: Yeah, and that mashing a bunch of things together that you like seems to be a time-honored tradition of fantasy writers everywhere.

Tasha Suri: Doesn’t it? [Laughs].

Travis: [Laughs] Um, but yeah. So, you said… I was reading a Reddit AMA you did a few months back, and you said that you wished you had more confidence and knowledge of your audience when you were just starting out as a published writer. Uh, I was just wondering, has that changed for you in years since?

Tasha Suri: Uh, I feel a lot more confident, um, in what I do. I think the weird thing is that when you… some people get published and they really know who they are. Not who they are as a person, you know, ‘cause people are complicated, but who they are as an author, who they are as a, a kind of tiny, mini public figure. They know what they’re writing, they know what their audience want, they know who their audience is, and they produce that and they give that to the world.

I didn’t really know, so I didn’t know if I was writing romance or fantasy, or what kind of audience that particular kind of fiction would have. I remember kind of wondering whether fantasy was a very, like, male-dominated space, because I wasn’t really sure, and it was only after getting published, or in the process of getting published, that I realized that my audience was quite diverse. Like, it wasn’t particularly just men or just women, but that they like a good romance, they like fantasy, they like diverse fantasy, and that there is an audience for that.

So, that’s a bit rambly, but essentially, I didn’t have confidence: one, that the audience existed, or two, that I knew how to reach them, and now I feel much more secure in what I’m doing. I know what my work is, or I think I know, I might be wrong. And I know who my audience is. So, I feel a lot happier with that.

Travis: Yeah, that’s good, and, I mean, for someone still, I guess, relatively early in your career so far, I think that’s good to get to that point early, rather than, you know, ten, fifteen years down the road.

Tasha Suri: I mean, I was saying that, and I might just be completely wrong, like, now I’ve said it, like, I’m confident, I’m like “Am I? Am I? Am I right about what I’m thinking?” But we’ll find out.

Travis: Yeah, uh, you’re welcome for that little crisis right there.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs].

Travis: Okay, so, uh, for a very, very, highly relevant writing question: what are your favourite whiskeys? I think I hear you might be a scotch fan?

Tasha Suri: So, I really like, um, what do you call them? Yeah, I do like a scotch. I like, I think they’re called, like, Hebridean whiskeys? Like the Islay whiskeys that you get from – they’re very smoky, they’re very peaty, they’re all Scottish.

I really like, uh, see now, I should remember the name of the brand and I do not. The Ardbeg, that’s it. Ardbeg produce a bunch of different kinds of whiskey and I love all of them, because they’re very smoky flavored and peaty. I’m not really into the kind of, like, whiskeys that are not like that essentially, but recently I got a bunch of Japanese whiskey, which is really lovely as well.

Travis: Okay, I do have a store near me that has several of those that you’ve mentioned, so I might have to try those.

Tasha Suri: So, I’m trying to remember which Ardbeg it was that I really liked. If you can hear me typing, it’s ‘cause I’m looking it up. So, I had one that I cannot pronounce, but it’s spelt U I G E A D A I L (uigeadail) if you know how to pronounce that, um, please do.

Travis: I do not [laughs].

Tasha Suri: Okay, well, that one’s really nice, so I can recommend that one. It was given to me as a gift, like, two years ago, ‘cause it was quite expensive for me. It’s not, like, the price of some whiskeys, and it lasted me about two years, so that one’s a really good one.

And the whiskey that I have from Japan is the Nikka whiskey, which I really like, and got at Christmas, and is now half-finished, so that one’s gone slightly faster. But it’s also a smaller bottle.

Travis: Yeah, I’ve definitely seen some very small bottles. And, I guess, so for the sake of completion I should probably also ask you what your favourite tea is, as well. Which only seems right, given your twitter name is tasha drinks tea, and your official author photo has a cup of tea in it.

Tasha Suri: It’s actually a coffee, but don’t tell anybody [laughs].

Travis: Oh, is it? Okay, no, you see I’m actually more of a coffee person than tea, so I support that.

Tasha Suri: Well, see, I love coffees too. Um, I can tell you my favourite coffee as well if you like, but um.

Travis: Oh yeah, please!

Tasha Suri: Ethiopian mocha, really love it. 

Travis: Okay.

Tasha Suri: There’s a really nice, uh, Cornish tea and coffee company that I order from and they do, like, really lovely Ethiopian coffee, so I always get that. But yeah, in terms of tea, I’m quite dull. Usually, like, I just like a straight-up English Breakfast PG Tips in a bag, but if I’m being fancy, um, I like, hmm, probably an oolong, a Formosa oolong is one of my favourites.

Travis: Okay, as someone who is not a tea connoisseur, that does sound fancy. 

Tasha Suri: It is, it is fancy [laughs]. I actually bought, like, a fancy mug with a strainer that’s all glass, so I can see my tea in it recently, so.

Travis: Oh, very cool.

Tasha Suri: That is quite nice.

Travis: I know, I think the fanciest tea I’ve ever had, uh, have you seen like any of those flowering teas, where you, like, drop it into the pitcher and it kind of blooms while it’s steeping?

Tasha Suri: I love those.

Travis: Yeah, very cool, uh, very fancy, and I think I’ve only done it once.

Tasha Suri: I’ve had them a few times in restaurants, but of course I haven’t been to a restaurant for a while [laughs].

Travis: Yep.

Tasha Suri: But maybe one day I’ll get that again.

Travis: Yeah, that sounds like a good thing to look forward to.

Hang tight, we’ll be right back to this episode after a quick message from our sponsors.

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Travis: Well, okay, so, we’ve been talking for long enough, let’s dive into The Jasmine Throne. So, do you have a pitch for us on the story?

Tasha Suri: Yes. Um, it is – it’s a slightly long pitch, ‘cause I’m not very good at a pithy pitch.

Travis: That’s okay.

Tasha Suri: Let’s go for it. The Jasmine Throne is a multi-POV epic fantasy set in a world inspired by the myths and epics of India, about a captive, vengeful princess and a maidservant with a secret past, who must work together to bring down a despotic emperor and set an empire ablaze. Also, they’re gay.

Travis: [Laughs] Only dropping that at the very end, that’s one of the main selling points.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs] Yeah, as I spoke, I was, like, ugh, didn’t mention it earlier.

Travis: [Laughs] Uh, yeah, and my understanding is that The Jasmine Throne was actually originally intended to be part of your Books of Ambha series, so what went –

Tasha Suri: It was.

Travis: – to you creating this new trilogy?

Tasha Suri: So, um, it was kind of Orbit’s fault, um, my publisher, but [laughs].

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: So, I pitched, um, another book in The Books of Ambha and I thought – in my head, I didn’t tell them, maybe I should have – um, I thought, this will be book three, and then there’ll be a book four about Mehr’s daughter from Book one. And I thought I’d quite like to figure out what’s going on with one particular character from Realm of Ash, and maybe follow her story a little bit further, but she can be a background character and I’ll do a, you know, a straight romance as the main thing, and we’ll follow that along. And then I started planning the story and there was just this strong lesbian energy coming off one of the characters –

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: – and I was like, oh, this book wants to be gay, this is meant to be a lesbian love story, and I went to my agent and I said, “Do you think Orbit would be okay with that?” You and I know, of course, that Orbit would of course be okay with that. They don’t have any issue with queer content, but I just had never written or published it before, and I was concerned, so. My agent said, “I’m sure they won’t care.”

So, I planned this story, which was about a captive princess falling in love and trying to take a throne, and I did a pitch, put it together and sent it through my agent to Orbit, and Orbit got back and went, “So, this doesn’t feel much like The Books of Ambha. This feels like it has a very different tone.” Which it does. It was less focused on the romance, it was less intimate in a lot of ways than The Books of Ambha. There were other differences. And they said, “We’d like you to try and see what this book would be like if it was the start of a three-book trilogy. A big epic fantasy.” And I thought, “Okay, let me think about that.”

And I thought, “Hey, if it’s going to be a big epic fantasy trilogy, I’m going to do all the stuff that I didn’t do in The Books of Ambha that I really want to explore. Like, there are so many other aspects of Indian, in particular, Hindu, mythology that I didn’t use in The Books of Ambha, that wouldn’t have fit there. And there were things I was angry about or wanted to critique that I couldn’t do in The Books of Ambha, so I took all of that and put that into The Jasmine Throne.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, I’d love to hear more. What were some of those things?

Tasha Suri: So, I have a lot of feelings about the Hindu epics. I am Hindu and I grew up watching all the, kind of like, slightly kitschy recreations of the epics on Indian television with my grandma, and those epics are long and complex, and very important to a lot of people, but they have a lot of stuff about casteism, and about empire, and about war, and about honor, and about women that I wanted to explore.

And a lot of the stuff that happens to women in those stories made me angry, and much like, I think, with any religious narrative in any culture, that stuff kind of has echoes that resonates into the larger culture, and I wanted to explore that a little bit. So, for example, in the Mahabharat there’s a woman who is shamed in front of this audience of kings and princes, and she vows vengeance, and I always thought that she was a really character who had a very interesting story, and I took that as inspiration for Malini the princess in The Jasmine Throne.

Travis: Yeah, I can, uh, definitely see where that inspiration comes from. Definitely feel like Malini reps that pretty well.

Tasha Suri: I’m glad. I mean, the princess in the Mahabharat was married to five different men, and, um, at once, and had a very different story overall, but that was kind of the little seed that set me off.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, I guess going back to that whole drawing lots of inspiration rather than following directly.

Tasha Suri: Yeah, yeah. Like, and I think that there have been really interesting retellings and investigations into those stories by people who are not me. Like, there’s one called, I think it’s The Palace of Illusions. Gonna look it up, because I should stop saying things without knowing what they’re called [sound of tapping a keyboard]. Yeah, The Palace of Illusions, which looks into that particular character’s story in a really contemporary and interesting way. So, I didn’t want to do that directly, I wanted to do something slightly different.

Travis: I’m also curious, just, how much changed for you? ‘Cause I think this is your first, like, three-part story over three novels that you’re doing. You’ve mostly done, like, standalone in the same universe.

Tasha Suri: So, how much changed in the story itself, or how much changed as I was writing it?

Travis: Uh, either way? I mean, I’m interested on a process level of just what it was like for you knowing that The Jasmine throne is book one of three, rather than wrapping everything up. And then, I guess, I know you originally had it as a standalone, so how much did that change for you?

Tasha Suri: Uh, well, the standalone that I came up with kind of had an open ending, which I think is partly why Orbit were like, “Hang on a second.” Um, so, they asked me to rework the first one and also come up with vague plots for the second and third. And the nice thing, I guess, about reading a lot of fantasy is that it’s easier to work out what you would do in a three-part trilogy, because you read so many, right? So, it wasn’t that hard to rework it. I might think differently when I start working on book three, of course. I might change my mind about how well I did on that [laughs]. But working out a three-part story was pretty straightforward.

The actual process of writing it was interesting, um, because I had a quite tight deadline. I think, three or four months? It might have been slightly longer, I can’t remember anymore, I blanked it from my brain, and it was gonna be longer and more epic, and I knew it had to be multi-POV, and I was worried that I didn’t have the chops to do that, um, kind of epic storytelling. And that worried me, I suppose? But I just decided that I would write it the way I wanted to write it and then my editor could worry about that later. So [laughs].

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: Which she did. So, I wrote all the different points of view in a kind of chaotic way, just the one I wanted to write at the point in the story I reached, and had lots of little points of view come in, a few of which are still there, and just told the story. And actually, I think that worked pretty well. It had to go through some serious editing, but I think most books do, and in the end I found out I could write a multi-POV epic fantasy, which was quite nice.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, this is definitely way too early to be making that decision, I feel like, for you, but is that where you see the direction of your writing going from now? Now that you’ve done it. Or do you think you prefer the, kind of, standalone

Tasha Suri: I really don’t know. I really don’t know. I think I might feel differently by the time I reach book three… again [laughs].

Travis: Yes [laughs].

Tasha Suri: I think there are benefits and drawbacks to both. So, with a standalone, you kind of have to make, well, you have to make that a complete story in and of itself, of course, which is really nice, and I think with something more epic and three-part, it’s nice to have a bigger sandbox to play in, but I do wonder what it feels like to write the book one in a trilogy and that not to sell well or not to have a lot of… not to have a good reception and have to write two more books.

So, I obviously don’t know at this point how people will react to The Jasmine Throne. I hope positively, but I’ve, you know, spoken to authors who’ve written longer series who’ve been contracted for them and didn’t get the reception they’d hoped, or fell out of love with the series for some reason when they were working on it, and then they’re stuck, and I can see that there’s a lot more freedom in writing a once-shot novel than there is in writing a trilogy.

So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know, we’ll have to see. Maybe I’ll finish three books and I’ll be like, “No, I’m going to write a standalone. I need freedom.” Or maybe I’ll be like, “No, five books, that’s what I really need.” But we’ll have to see.

Travis: I mean, why not go all the way, right? Fourteen books.

Tasha Suri: Oh yeah, definitely. That sounds great.

Travis: [Laughs] Oh yeah. So, you have said before that The Jasmine Throne is even less, kind of, directly drawing from history when compared to The Books of Ambha. So, I’m curious, like, if you approach that differently or what specific little bits of mythology and history you worked into this book. I know you talked about the inspiration for Malini, but I’m curious about what others are there.

Tasha Suri: So, the funny thing is when I researched The Books of Ambha, I read, like, a lot of different things. As I’ve told you, my process was fairly chaotic, and a lot of that stuff never ended up in the books, so in a way I didn’t have to necessarily research as much, because I had lots of random pieces of information in my head already.

Thinking about what inspired me, I think I did use some of the Mughal imperial structure, which was kind of cheating, I suppose, but was quite helpful. I used stuff from the Delhi sultanate, I looked at things like the Chola empire, the Gupta empire. I looked at stuff to do with Shivaji, who was like a rebel against the Mughals. Um, a lot of stuff from mythology, I didn’t have to research because I knew it, because I grew up with it.

So, in terms of things that inspired me around, like, women’s roles in stories, that stuff was already in my head. So, I guess it was a less intensive research process. I have found that for the sequel to The Jasmine Throne, I’ve had to do a lot more research of war and military stuff, which has been a nightmare and I blame myself entirely, um.

Travis: [Laughs]

Tasha Suri: [Laughs]

Travis: Is that more into, like, uh, basic strategy and logistics and things like that? Or is it more in the historical angle?

Tasha Suri: So, um, I accept that I’m not a good military strategist. That’s fine, not everybody has to be. So, it was more, kind of, reading about historical battles that took place and, um, mythic battles as well, because one of the biggest events that I don’t want to spoil in The Jasmine Throne was inspired by a particular incident that happens in the Mahabharat. I think it’s called The Palace of [Lack 32:30 Can’t find a google result for this] and I wanted to use that kind of inspiration in the second book as well, so I had to do a little bit of research into things like that too.

Travis: Okay, that’s fascinating. I’d love to see, like, an in-depth article or something from you sometime on, like, all of these little tidbits, like easter eggs that you’ve worked in.

Tasha Suri: Oh, maybe one day, but the problem is I’ve forgotten a lot of them. Like even now I’m sitting here going, “What, what did I use? What did I use?” and I don’t know anymore. I know I did do, like, a – I riffed on Terry Pratchett at one point, which I don’t think anyone’s noticed, but –

Travis: Oh, now I’m trying to think where that would have been. I’m not nearly familiar enough with Pratchett though, I’ve only read a handful of his books.

Tasha Suri: I think he’s got – I think it was something to do with the turtle moves, like, it’s turtles all the way down? And I did something similar to that, but don’t worry about it.

Travis: [Laughs] Yeah, I love that though, and I’m also, kind of, a sucker for magical diseases, and you’ve written a properly terrifying one with the rot. So, how did that particular monstrosity come about?

Tasha Suri: Ooh, well… God, do I even remember how that came around? I just think, God, do you know, I don’t know. I don’t know how I came up with the rot. I think that bodies are weird, and you know when you’re, this is a bit gross, but you know when you get a cut or something and you have to watch it heal up, and it’s almost unnatural how it looks?

Travis: Right.

Tasha Suri: Like, the skin goes so strange and sometimes you’re like, “Oh, it kinda looks like bark.” I think that probably had some influence on me. And it’s interesting as well, and this is also morbid, how much flowers and perfume are involved in death.

So, I’ve been to funerals in my life, as many people have, and, you know, there’s a lot of throwing petals and garlands, and using, sort of, perfume and ghee to mask scents before cremation (this is in a Hindu context) and I think it just got me thinking about bodies and flowers and growth and things like that. So, it’s not any kind of direct thing that inspired me, but it’s just general creepitude that lived in my brain, somewhere, that influenced me.

Travis: Yeah, no, and it’s definitely creepy too, because I normally don’t think of plants and flowers and vines and bark and all of that as really ominous, but it definitely takes on a new light.

Tasha Suri: I think flowers are super ominous, like, um, I love botanical art, I don’t know anything about nature, just FYI, but I do love looking at botanical art, and it’s really interesting to look at dissections of flowers and fruit, because they look so strange. When you actually look at something closely, it’s almost like flesh, and I used to work as a librarian, and I worked in a medical library, and we had a book from the Wellcome Trust – this is going into [unclear 35:09]

I realise – but we had a book from the Welcome Trust called The Sick Rose, which contained a bunch of anatomical art from history of people who were sick or dying or had horrible diseases, and a lot of that art is a lot like botanical art, but it’s of people, and that can be quite dizzying, like, you’ll look at it and you’ll just feel really sweaty and weird, because it’s almost unnatural, even though it’s perfectly natural, it’s literally science, and, I guess, yeah, everything’s creepy if you look at it closely enough.

Travis: That sounds like a fascinating, yet terrifying book, and I feel like you have a decent background there for a horror writer, if you ever wanted to switch genres.

Tasha Suri: Oh no, I’m – I can’t watch horror films. I’m absolutely terrified of horror.

Travis: Yeah, I’m kinda the same way. I think it’s the jumpscares that get me. Jumpscares and gore, not a fan of either one.

Tasha Suri: Yeah, I really don’t like jumpscares. I think I could cope with gore, though I wouldn’t be fan of it, like, I would just cope with it, but the whole ‘waiting for something to happen’ I’m really not a fan of.

Travis: Hard agree, but yeah. Okay, so, in a past interview you said that you intentionally wrote Malini and Priya to be less likeable women than some of your previous protagonists, so I’m curious just what went into that decision?

Tasha Suri: So, at the time I was writing it, I was thinking about what kind of romances I liked read and what I want from romance, and I kind of joked about this before, but in a straight romance, I think I really want to see people talk about consent and communicate and be vulnerable with each other, because I think that I’ve read plenty of romances and, again, this is not tarnishing all of romance with the same brush, but I’ve read some where that just doesn’t happen, and that recreate kind of, like, nasty patriarchal dynamics, so I like to work away from that.

But, what I hadn’t read as much in, sort of, lesbian or sapphic romances, were women just being absolute trash to themselves and to each other.

Travis: [Laughs]

Tasha Suri: And I wanted to read more of that. I always feel like I’m kind of reacting against something, so I think that I… in straight romances I’m reacting against some kind of toxic patriarchy thing that I don’t want to deal with, but then I think with a lot of sapphic fiction and a lot of queer fiction, there’s a kind of pressure to tell stories that are good representation, or that are very pure by some standard of purity that somebody came up with somewhere, so that they say something good about us to someone else.

I don’t want to say something good about us to someone else. I want to read a romance that taps into the Id the same way that any romance should. I wanna read trash and I wanna write it, but to put that in a more literary way [laughing] I want to read about women who are allowed to be monstrous and do monstrous things, and also have love and have a kind of complicated, difficult love that you would have if you were trying to make difficult decisions and preserve your own power in a world where, as a woman, you’re not meant to make difficult decisions or preserve your own power. You’re meant to sacrifice.

So yeah, on that basis I wanted them to be difficult, complicated, often monstered or consciously monstrous women who still fall in love and have a complicated relationship.

Travis: And I think I’ve seen you advertising it as the morally grey lesbians angle, and I have to say I really like this kind of morally grey, because I feel like when I first learned of that term, it was almost exclusively like this one specific anti-hero, like dark and gritty type.

Tasha Suri: Oh yeah, I know what you mean, like, oh, I kill because I must, or, like, I want power or something, I don’t know, but…

Travis: Pretty much, yeah.

Tasha Suri: Yeah. I talked to C.L. Clark at one point in an interview, and we talked about women and how they’re depicted in fiction. Like, for example, you don’t get a lot of butch women in fiction. But I also think that you very rarely get the feminine woman who is not vilified for doing… well, you know, like Cersei Lannister, right? That kind of figure, getting to be the heroine of a book. And I wanted to do that. So that’s what Malini is.

Travis: Yeah, alright, Malini I’ll think of as Cersei Lannister then.

Tasha Suri: I mean, there’s less incest, so that’s good.

Travis: [Laughs].

Tasha Suri: But I didn’t… Oh, why did I say that? Um…

Travis: [Laughs] Less incest is definitely an interesting description.

Tasha Suri: Significantly less incest. One might even say no incest.

Travis: Oh, yeah, okay.

Tasha Suri: Yeah.

Travis: [Laughs] Um, so yeah, I’ve also… we talked a little bit about this earlier, but I’ve heard you say that you like to use fanfic tropes in your writing, so how many of these made it into The Jasmine Throne?

Tasha Suri: I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of hurt-comfort, which I think is a really good fanfic trope. It’s enemies-to-lovers, I guess? Or enemies-to-reluctant allies-to-lovers. There’s a lot of, like, let me just yearn over you while washing your hair. Daggers. I think these are all fanfic tropes, I’m sticking with that, and… yeah, and there’s only one bed, except one of them sleeps on the floor, so that kind of defeats the whole there’s-only-one-bed thing.

Yeah, so there’s a fair few fanfic tropes, I’d say.

Travis: Yeah, and I don’t know if this classifies as a trope, but I did definitely recognise the “Oh.”

Tasha Suri: Okay, yeah, that is a trope I would say. Um…

Travis: [Laughs]

Tasha Suri: I can’t believe I got away with that, but I’m very pleased that I did.

Travis: Yeah, and I’m not even particularly familiar with fanfic, but I still definitely noticed that.

Tasha Suri: I think that “Oh” is very eloquent. It’s a good trope and I’m glad that I brought it into a published novel.

Travis: Says a lot with just two letters, it really does. So, this is where I’d usually ask you to, uh, tell us about any upcoming projects you have, but I do know in particular there’s a wuthering heights remix slash reclamation that you’re working on, so I’d love to hear more about that.

Tasha Suri: Yes, there is, and I’m writing it at the moment, so hopefully it’ll be good. So, Feiwel & Friends are doing a YA remix series, so a bunch of different authors are taking classic novels and remixing them into new stories with a more diverse cast usually.

I am doing Wuthering Heights, which I love, it’s a book I adore, but it’s interesting – Wuthering Heights does a kind of typical gothic fiction thing, where it brings in the outsider, the cuckoo in the nest, who is ambiguously ethnic and ruins everything by being there, and I wanted to make Heathcliff’s – that’s a character – Heathcliff’s race explicit, and also explore, I guess, empire, the British Empire at the end of the seventeen hundreds, and the way that intersected with India in a YA novel.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve remixed Wuthering Heights so that Heathcliff is the son of a Lascar sailor, so a South Asian sailor, and Cathy is actually half Indian. But in many ways, it’s still very similar to the original book and I’ve tried to draw very concretely on real history as much as possible to show that Britain was pretty diverse, but also kind of awful in a lot of ways.

Travis: [Laughs] That sounds like a good description of Britain, and, I mean, not that I have a leg to stand on as an American.

Tasha Suri: I mean, we can all be terrible together, I guess.

Travis: Yay.

Tasha Suri: Yay.

Travis: [Laughs] But yeah, I think I’ve seen, uh, some of your process on Twitter about, like, your research process for the novel. I know you were struggling to find pictures of what eighteenth century labourers would have worn, not too long ago.

Tasha Suri: Yeah, it’s been a lot of, um… it’s been an interesting insight into inequality of information. So, if I was still a librarian, let’s say, if I still had access to a university collection, but of course I would not use it for my personal gain, I would be able to access a huge number of academic research papers about history, and some of those might include papers about Lascars or about working-class Britain in the eighteenth century.

When you don’t have access to an academic collection like that, a lot of that information is just inaccessible, because you just, you either have to get it illegally or it’s just not available, or you have to pay, like, eighty quid for it, which I’m not going to do, because I’m not made of money and I’m cheap.

So, it’s interesting trying to write, in particular, a story about working-class people at the end of the seventeen hundreds, many of whom are not white. So, I might find something like… I found a reference saying there was a large Chinese community in Liverpool around the time that I’m writing a story set in Liverpool. I was like, “That’s great, where did they live?” Can’t find out where they live. I know where the communities moved to in the late nineteenth century, but I don’t know where they existed in the seventeen hundreds.

How big was the community? I have no idea. I found a reference, only one reference, one article talking about the fact that Lascars had a language, which makes sense because they came from across South Asia and Southeast Asia and from the Middle East, that they would come up with a shared language, but the only references I could find to it were in this one particular article.

So, it’s stuff like that, where you’re just finding little bits of information, but there are huge gaps, and I gather that the British Empire and the East India Company didn’t necessarily keep records of certain pieces of information, and that makes things really difficult. I’ve had to make a number of assumptions about history that I wouldn’t have to make if I were writing about lords and ladies in the regency, because we have a lot of information about that, it’s all written down.

That was a bit of a rant, but, yeah.

Travis: No, I love that, that’s such a fascinating and informative rant. That’s the best kind.

Tasha Suri: Oh, thank you. I mean, I know there’s someone out there who has this information, but I don’t necessarily have access to them. Also, the book’s due in May, so I don’t have time to find them, and all of that makes it a little bit more complicated.

Travis: Are there any specific books or anything that you did find some useful information in, that you can recommend if people are maybe interested in learning more about this?

Tasha Suri: Uh, yes, and I think I have two in front of me, so let me have a look. Uh, I found a really cool book that I really enjoyed, called The Liverpool Underworld: Crime in the City 1750 – 1900. It’s mostly about nineteenth century Liverpool, but it’s still very interesting and it talks a lot about things like navy press gangs, which I think is fascinating, that the navy would just be like, “We’re just gonna kidnap you to work on navy ships, because that’s a normal thing to do.”

Also, a book that just came out recently, by Ian Mortimer, is the Time Travellers Guide to Regency Britain, which is mostly about a later period than I’m working on, but is also about the Regency and is very interesting. So, both of those are really good books, and there’s also a book by… I’ve forgotten the name of the author, but it’s called Ayahs, Lascars and Slaves, and it’s about the history of South Asians in Britain, and I’m going to look up the name now [tapping of keyboard].

Um, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, sorry, and it’s by Rozina Visram, and that’s a really good book and talks all about the history of South Asians in Britain, and she did a lot of research in archives that I don’t think anybody else has really done. Um, so that’s a really cool book.

Of course, all of them contain huge amounts of racism, so, you just have to kind of go with that.

Travis: Yeah, I guess that’s, uh, an unfortunate side-affect of researching particular time periods.

Tasha Suri: Mmm hmm.

Travis: But yeah. So, I mean, you said the book is due in May. Does it have a working title yet?

Tasha Suri: It has a title but I can’t tell you what it is yet, or I’ll get in trouble.

Travis: Okay, fair enough [laughs]. I guess outside of research books, are there any, just, books for fun that you’ve read lately and you’ve enjoyed?

Tasha Suri: Um, I’ve read The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid and I thought that was so beautiful. Like, it’s that perfect combination of “let’s critique ethno-nationalism” and “Man tortured, kneeling sexy”. So, it kind of meets all my interests in one book [laughs]. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, which is like, again, really beautiful historical fiction with “Tortured man kneeling”. So, there might be this theme.

Travis: [Laughs] I’m actually reading that one right now, so yeah, highly enjoying it.

Tasha Suri: What do you think?

Travis: Oh, I love it, I love it.

Tasha Suri: So good, right? I just –

Travis: It really is.

Tasha Suri: I just, when I read it, I was like, “I’m offended by how good this book is. What am I meant to do now?”

Travis: [Laughs] Yeah, no, I’m a big fan so far.

Tasha Suri: Think, is there any other book that I’ve read recently that I really loved? I think, I think those are the two that I’m going to go with for now. I read Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers, but that’s not fantasy or science fiction, it’s just contemporary, but it’s beautifully written and I really enjoyed that one as well.

Travis: I’ve actually heard about that recently. I’m trying to think about where I heard that. I think maybe –

Tasha Suri: Did you hear it from me?

Travis: Actually, probably indirectly from you, yes [laughs].

Tasha Suri: [Laughs]

Travis: Okay, yeah, well, one of the ways I like to close up these interviews is just asking: what’s one thing you’re excited about right now?

Tasha Suri: Uh, one thing I’m excited about right now. Um, I think the IGNYTE awards were just announced and I was really excited about their picks. It was really nice to see such, like, a cool (core? 47: 59) list of authors getting recognition. Is that what you meant, because [laughs] that’s what’s exciting me. Oh, and I –

Travis: Oh, I mean, sure, anything.

Tasha Suri: – watched Shadow and Bone as well, and um –

Travis: Yes! Yeah.

Tasha Suri: – loved that. Had such a good time watching that. Everyone wore great coats, um.

Travis: [Laughs]

Tasha Suri: [Laughs] They did, and, um, it was nice seeing, like, the Six of Crows cast come to life, so, yeah. That was wonderful.

Travis: Yeah, I’m six episodes in, I believe, so, hopefully I’ll be able to finish that in the next couple of days.

Tasha Suri: It’s really annoying that, like, I imagine that if there is a series two, and I hope there will be, it’s going to be really delayed because of COVID. I mean, that’s not the most annoying thing about COVID, but it’s one of the things that’s irritating me.

Travis: Yes, so many excellent, uh, TV shows that are being delayed.

Tasha Suri: I guess we’ll get loads of TV shows at some point, though probably when we’re all outside.

Travis: Yeah, yeah.

Tasha Suri: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah, that seems to be the way it’ll work. I am looking forward to more time outside in public.

Tasha Suri: Oh yeah, that’ll be great. I’m, I’m excited that… excited slash nervous that lockdown has kinda eased where I am, um, so bookshops are open. So, I can go to bookshops, which has been really nice.

Travis: Yeah, no, that is good. That is one of the things I’m most looking forward to. I guess what I’m excited about: bookshops and coffeeshops.

Tasha Suri: Yes! Yes. Coffeeshops. I remember those.

Travis: [Laughs] Back in the day.

Tasha Suri: Back in the day.

Travis: Back in the before-times.

Tasha Suri: [Laughs]

Travis: Okay then. Tasha, that’s all I have for you. This has been a delightful conversation, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Tasha Suri: Thank you, thank you for letting me ramble at you. I had a really good time.

[Outro music]

Travis: You can find Tasha Suri on Twitter as @tashadrinkstea; at her newsletter, tashasuri.substack.com; or at her website, tashasuri.com. The Jasmine Throne is one of my favorite reads this year and it’s out today! You don’t want to miss this start to an epic new fantasy series.

As always, you can find us over at thefantasyinn.com, or click the invite in the show notes to join our Discord server. If you enjoyed this interview, consider supporting us on Patreon! Or take a minute of your time to leave us a review online. It really means SO much. And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can catch all our future episodes! That’s all for this week. Until next time. 

[Music fades out]