Hello and welcome to Big Gay Energy. I'm Caitlin. And I'm Fiora. Come along with us while we dive into the fun and nuances of queer media. Representation matters, and we're. Here to talk about it. Cheers, queers. We're back with another super fun interview today. Today we are talking to James L Sutter, the talented author of The Ghost of Us. Welcome to the podcast, James. Hey thanks for having me. We are so excited you took the time to talk to us today about
this really awesome book. And yeah, so for those at home who may not have read The Ghost of Us would be familiar with it, would you mind sharing with them what the book is about? Yeah, so The Ghost of Us is a supernatural sapphic young adult romance all about a teenage ghost hunter who finally finds a ghost. But it turns out the ghost isn't willing to help her unless she first takes his little sister to prom. So it's sort of a supernatural
fake dating. There's lots of hijinks, but also kind of coming of age story. That's one of the best setups of all time. Imagine being blackmailed into dating somebody by a ghost. Like it's just amazing. Right. It's like I when I was just initially pitching it, I was like, OK, so it's like 10 things I hate about you plus Ghost, right. I realized those those references are both pretty dated, but it still works like. Classics OK. Exactly.
And so this is my this is my second queer young adult romance. My first one, Dark Hearts, came out last year and was a gay young adult romance all about falling in love with the boy who stole your chance to be a rock star. Damn, another amazing premise. I thought that one. Thank you. I think we know a book we need to read next. Literally. So what inspired you to write
The Ghost of Us? Well, I mean, so it's interesting because I for folks who don't know my pivot into young adults, you know, queer young adult romance was a surprise to everyone, especially me because I've spent the last I've been writing professionally for 20 years now. And for most of that time I worked in science fiction and fantasy and predominantly in tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. And I was the Co creator of some games called Pathfinder and Starfinder that were pretty,
pretty popular in that space. And then during the pandemic, I had Benio still trying to do science fiction fantasy and I just needed something different. And I was reading all of this queer young adult romance. And so I wrote Dark Hearts, which was in a lot of ways, well, does not autobiographical, strictly speaking. There are a lot of chunks of it that are. It's all about my own sort of coming out process and my experience as a teenage musician
in Seattle where it's set. So that was really just kind of bleeding onto the page, you know, like, and that was super fun. But then when it came time for me to write another book, I was like, well, I already, I did the story. That was kind of the me story. So what am I going to do now? And it really took me a little
while because I had some tropes. I knew I wanted to do something kind of supernatural because I came from fantasy and I also, I kind of like fake dating and like love triangles and all these different things. And I was just sort of trying to smash tropes together and nothing was quite working.
And then one day I sat down and wrote a monologue from the perspective of a teenage ghost about just how much it sucks being dead, being, you know, an 18 year old boy and now you're dead and like, just a lot of sort of griping.
And it was very, you know, funny, a little bit too honest, you know, because of course, Aiden, the ghost in the book is, you know, he's very sweet, but he's also kind of a meathead jock, you know, a, a little bit of a pervert in the way that most teenage boys I have known were, you know. And so it was really, it was fun, but I couldn't figure out where to go with it. Like it sort of, it didn't feel
like the story was his. And then once I kind of put it together and realized that the story was actually a romance between the ghost hunter who found him and his little sister, that's when everything started to kind of come together. And originally behind the scenes fact, I originally thought it was a love triangle between him. You know, the essentially the ghost hunter trying to choose between him and his sister. And the whole first draft was like that.
And it just did not work, did not work at all. And everybody who read it was like, we love the romance between Kara and Meredith, that that's Kara's the ghost hunter and Meredith is the sister. And they're like, we're not buying this romance between Kara and the ghost. Like it's just not happening. And it took me a little while to
sort of accept that. But when I finally realized that actually Kara and Aiden's sort of romance was much better as a bromance, like if they're just like, you know, supernatural best friends, suddenly everything fell into place and it made a lot more sense. And so that's how we got to the book that we have today. Yeah, I like that change, truly. The evolution of their friendship is really is really
sweet. And it's like you kind of don't see it coming in the beginning 'cause there's like, oh, a ghost, I'm a ghost hunter, how can I exploit this? But then it gets very real between the two of them, which is really sweet. And I do love the way you wrote Aiden because, yeah, it was refreshing to read like really a teenager who's like, this is the worst thing ever. And just like his complaining about being dead was was actually really humorous and funny and it felt real. Well. Thank you.
Yeah. You know, it's funny people sometimes a compliment and a complaint that I get about my books is that the characters are just kind of the worst at times. Like, you know, they're, they're self-centered, they're crude, they're all of these things. And I really, I, I don't mind. I like that's something that really matters to me, especially with, you know, Dark Hearts, the book before this, I've been reading a lot of queer, you know, gay young adult romance.
And I just found that a lot of the times the the boys felt too perfect, you know, and sometimes they felt a little bit less like, and this is not a dig on all the awesome straight female writers writing queer boys. But like, sometimes they felt a little bit too idealized and like sort of what maybe a straight woman would want instead of what like a teenage queer boy actually was from my experience.
And so when I wrote that book, I really wanted to get across my experience where it was like, yes, these boys are, you know, they're sweet and romantic and attractive, and they're also crude and horny and sweaty and bad at feelings and all of these things. And they're not perfect. They're, they're still Bros. And so I, I always try to get that element of real teenage realism into my books.
I But of course, the problem anytime you're writing something like this is that everybody's experience is very different. So you can write something that rings perfectly true to you and it's going to sound absolutely false to somebody else. So I think with young adult especially, you just have to find your own truth and roll with it. Yeah, I I agree with that. But it's clear, it's clearly evident that you put a lot of like thought into the characters
that you create. So how do you typically approach like creating a new character and then developing them as the book kind of goes on? Well, so this is, it's funny, I'm actually very not mechanical about it, but I'm very deliberate about it these days where every character to me is based on an emotional arc. You know, I before I have before I can really write a character, I have to know where I want them to end the book and then have them start in a different place.
And that's all about sort of what message I want to send. So every character needs to go on a journey throughout the book. And so, you know, if that's learning how to trust, then I know my character needs to be somebody who doesn't trust anyone at the start and does by the end, you know? And so I will map out in Excel like I'm that nerdy. I will map out every character's emotional arc and the arcs of the romance or any other sort of
relationships. And so I'll break those down into like to get really technical into like 7 beats. And then I'll do that for every relationship in the book, Color code everything, print it all out, cut it up, arrange it on my floor. And that's how I sort of build scenes so that I always know that all of the different character arcs are moving forward. And yes, so for me, the characters obviously take on a life as of their own as I'm writing them.
And I'll find I'll often find quirks and details that end up being relevant where it's like, oh, I didn't know they were so into X or that they, you know, talk like this. But I have to know before the book starts, Like, what is their central wound that's getting in the way of them being happy, you know, getting getting sort of what they need. And they don't have to become fixed over the course of the story. You know, they don't have to heal that wound all the way or even at all.
But I do think it's useful to think about where are they? How are they changing? Because my philosophy, and it's interesting coming from fantasy and science fiction, where so much of it can be about the world building and the explosions and the big sort of cool set pieces.
I still feel like we're fundamentally all social apes and we all want gossip like every we read stories because we want to know like what's going on with these people, their inner lives, who's got conflict with each other. And I think the more you can know that stuff, even in your big action scenes, the better, you know, even when I've done, you know, comic books a while back, I wrote a star Finder comic book miniseries. And that's a whole, you know,
X-Men style team of heroes. And it's very flashy, lots of battles and things. But I still try to in every scene know where every character is at emotionally because I think if you have that big laser gun fight, but you know, OK, well, this character is worried that he's not a very good father. And this character is jealous of this other character. And this character has a crush on this other character. Like knowing that will add depth
to everything. Things will, things will seep out in little ways that make the scene so much richer. And I think that's what we all crave. I mean, that's when I think about even like when I think about Game of Thrones, I don't think about all the plot maneuvering or the battles or whatever. I don't even remember most of that stuff. I remember the character relationships.
Yeah, you know, hit the nail on the head there 'cause then it makes, it puts those, those big moments into context too, 'cause it will influence their behaviors and things like that. So like, I like that you're that detail oriented with the characters. That's what I enjoy in media as
well. Thanks. Yeah. And, you know, it took me a while to realize that I almost feel like I've entered a new phase in my career where, you know, I used to be much more focused on the world building and the cool monsters and, you know, just sort of the wow factor. And it's only been in the last few years that working in contemporary young adult romance where there isn't any of that let me really double down on voice and character and those things that that I really like these days.
Like I really love just soaking in a good voice. And I feel like why a contemporary is the master of that, especially romance, because you already know in any romance basically what the plots going to be. You know, that like the stakes are not going to be super high because it's just do these two characters get together? So it all has to be carried by the voice and the character. You have to love spending time with these people. And so I think, I think it's a really good cross training.
I love that and I loved all the paranormal aspects of this book. I've been telling theor that that's one of my favorite genres and I want us to read it more. So I was very. Excited to see you. So I know you focused more on voice and that story, but when adding these paranormal aspects to the book, how do you define the rules for it? Like for example why Aiden starts disappearing and what he is actually able to do as a ghost.
Interesting. Well, you see, I took a different approach than I would have when I was doing a lot more fantasy work where it used to be when I was doing real like heavy duty secondary world fantasy, I would often sort of craft the world more 1st. And this time I really sort of built the paranormal elements around what I knew I needed from the story. And so there were some things that got decided kind of as I went, but so I knew that there needed to be some sort of ticking clock.
And that was where Aiden's disappearance really came in. You know, I hope I'm not giving too many spoilers about the book, but there is there is this element where Aiden starts fading as as the story goes along. And I just think I needed that sort of pressure. You always need some sort of time constraint, some sort of accelerator when you're writing a story. And so that was part of it. You know, I also sometimes you just pick things and see how it works.
Like, I didn't know for a while whether I was going to have him be able to affect the physical world at all. And so in the end, it seemed like having him not be able to affect the physical world at all was actually really important because it meant that he was tied just to Cara. If he had, because if he had been able to do anything, if he'd been able to lift a pen and write a letter, then he like
doesn't really need her at all. And so it started to become this thing where it's like, oh, what's driving their friendship initially is the fact they truly need each other 100%. And that also created a lot of, you know, limitations. And I think limitations are where story comes from, you know, like the more constraints, the more difficulties you can throw in your character's way, the more interesting and
creative their solutions. So I kind of just ramped his abilities back as far as possible. Although there were some things like the the idea that Kara and Meredith are both kind of amplifiers for his spirit a little bit. That was something that came in a little bit later as a way to help drive some scenes that sort of pull them together, give reasons for a few more dates. And really I was just always trying to build the paranormal element in service of the romance.
And once I sort of realized that, that was sort of my guiding light. I like that you decided that that world isn't like creating things where you can't do with the characters, it's just helping it. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, it was a little bit trial and error. There was stuff where I'd, I'd go One Direction and then go, oh, this, this isn't quite working. And I would go back. But I definitely played a little bit looser with that while I was
writing. You know, by the end, it was very important to me that everything be super consistent because I'm a fantasy nerd, you know, I wanted to make sure that the rules were solid and that nobody ever goes. Well, wait a minute. How come he could do this here and not there like that? Had to be ironclad. But during the writing, I tried to sort of leave things loose for myself until I could figure out what was going to be the
best angle. And then I went back and really locked everything in. So by the end, Aden was just the best wing ghost of all time. But I really I really enjoyed writing them. Like I really enjoy like this book is a lot about friendship. And you know, I think actually all my young adult books are just because like that's where I have the most fun is when these characters really do love each
other. Like they might drive each other nuts, but you know, and they're all complicated characters, you know, they everybody in this book is well, not everybody. Some of them are are just straight up good, but like most of them are a little bit jerky and also really lovable and understandable, you know. So for me, that's that's my favorite. I want somebody who's not perfect most of the time. Holly, the best friend friend
character is pretty perfect. Like she's kind of a sunshine marshmallow character, which was super fun, but even she has her moments. Yeah, it just they humanize. Like teenagers? Exactly, yes, I mean like everybody really like, I don't know, I do. One thing I love about writing YA is because I, I think you can get away with writing characters that are much messier.
Because I think sometimes if you wrote the same attitudes, like emotional extremes in a 40 year old, people would be like, this character has not gotten the therapy they need. Right. But like when you write it in the 16 year old, it makes sense because everything is new. Everything is the first time you're wrestling with this. But Even so, I, I don't think there's as big a difference between young adult and adult in that regard as some people
think. You know, I think some of the best emotional complexity I see in writing is in the young adult space because that's where people are willing to really dig into it. Yeah, I love that aspect of the book. Something else that's really fun is that throughout the book, you use a lot of like pop culture references in like their speech in their inner monologues, just
as like a good descriptor. And so I've seen certain authors have certain takes on using pop culture cause like, what if it like falls out of fashion and like, oh. Yeah, I've gotten dinged for it. So what what makes you decide like I guess what made you decide to to include them in the book First off? And then like, how do you choose what references to use? So with pop culture, pop culture and slang, it's a little bit different for the two of them.
Pop culture for me is just like, what is the point of writing contemporary if you can't write contemporary? You know, like I, that was the thing that really was so much fun when I first switched over to writing dark arts after writing fantasy for so long was the fact that I could make the jokes that I would make in real life. You know, like my young adult voice is much closer to my real life voice, like how I just talk to people.
And I didn't think of myself as a particularly funny writer for most of my career and then, but I think I'm a reasonably funny person in real life. And so when I switched over to writing young adult stuff set in the real world set now, I really was just like, I want to use my own voice. I want these characters to talk to some degree, like I would talk. And it was just so much fun. And part of that is pop culture references and.
You know, and then with the slang, I feel like it can you got to be careful not to end up in that. How do you do fellow kids territory? Because I am not, you know, I am not a teenager. I am not a teacher or a parent who's around them all day. So I tend to just use my own voice. And so any slang that is dropped in there is picked up from just sort of general culture or, you know, sometimes it's out of date, but I sort of don't worry about that.
So my, my philosophy on slang is I think that teenagers understand that basically all media created for teenagers is created by people in their 30s, forties, 50s, like, so they're already used to translating all media they consume into their own language and narrative and worldview. So, like, trust them, you know, they're like teenagers are smart. Like they can take a story and up, sort of apply it to their lives as needed. You don't have to get every bit of slang correct for them to
appreciate the story. But I do think people will say with pop culture or with slang, oh, it's going to date your story. And the way I think about it is like the progress of technology is so fast right now that that's going to date your story just as fast as any slang. Like, think about, you know, it was not that long ago that books didn't have smartphones in it or books didn't have social media
in them. And like in a couple years, the thing that's going to be dating my book is going to be the fact that there's not like an AI powered neural shunt in every kids head and not the fact that I made a reference to Taylor Swift or whatever like this. It's going to be fine. If anything, I hope that people will consider my books historical fiction about this moment in time. So I I think just write the best book you can. Write what's funny to you and don't worry about it.
Same with like with the humor, you're always or humor, sexuality, any of these things that can turn people on or off. Just do your own thing. It's all, it's all you can do because you're never going to please everybody. Personally, I'm hoping that the Taylor Swift reference never goes out of style. I mean, that might be one that
just Taylor Swift for sure. Actually, probably Taylor Swift and Pokémon will be the things that archaeologists in, you know, 1000 years or like, oh, this was very important to them. Like this was one of their primary deities like. The Pikachu. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like I think that people will be, will assume that, well, that will assume that Taylor Swift was like a deity and that Pokémon would be like, you know, like Kami or whatever.
Like these, these were all her servitor spirits like these were. So true. Oh, it's amazing, the things that actually catch on for people. Yeah, it's funny because one of the big inspirations for this book actually was the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, but with the sort of whole dating somebody or, you know, advising somebody sneakily as they try to date somebody, like whispering in their ear.
But I ended up not. I don't talk about that that much because it turns out that like 200 year old play is maybe not like the best comp title when you're pitching modern young adult stories, but like that's definitely in there. But. That's fair. So on Instagram I saw a post where you talk about how the book is mixed with memories from your own teen years. So is there anything you can share about your connection with it? Oh yeah.
I mean, there's lots of stuff. So I mean, both Dark Hearts and The Ghost of Us draw heavily on my own life in as much as Dark Hearts is set in Seattle and based a lot on my teenage musician life and my coming out. And The Ghost of Us is based on sort of where I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle. So it's set there kind of right on that edge between sort of city and farm town where it's sort of in transition.
So there was a lot of just sort of the flavor of the place that was very familiar to me. And then there were things there were things like her experience rock climbing is very much my experience rock climbing or a lot of the locations they go to our places that I loved as a kid, slightly fictionalized. There's also some stuff with in in the over the course of the book, Meredith's car gets named, they attempt to drive into the city. It's very stressful. And the car gets a name that way.
And that was all. That whole story was directly taken from my own life. Like I, you know, had done a similar thing where I drove into the city for the first time to see a concert and it was incredibly stressful. And it's actually funny, an element that I, you know, couldn't get into the book, but that was true of my real life was, you know, I was so stressed, I drove into the city.
Like we got there, we managed to park in this sketchy alley and we were so, you know, terrified but exhilarated. And a funny thing is that a few years later, I was, you know, post college sitting in the shared house I was living in. And I looked out my bedroom window and realized that the quote UN quote sketchy alley where I'd parked was now like the alley behind my house, like my, my parking spot when I was 16 was now my actual parking spot just daily.
And it was this huge moment of revelation of like, Oh my God, look how the world changes as you change, right? Like this same place that was once so terrifying is literally my home now. And I don't know, I, I don't know exactly how to work with that NYA, but that I'm really interested in that feeling of the transitions between how things, how things change as you change.
Yeah, that's such a beautiful, like what a full circle kind of moment as well to feel like this is where I stand, this is where I am now and just like, wow, progress, change all the things you said. Yeah, I feel like that would be hard in Hawaii book, unless there's some kind of time jump or something, but. Right, right. But I mean, I don't know, I'm still, I also enjoy writing adult stuff. So, you know, that's that's where some you can get into a lot more of that, like looking
back on my life. They're too young to be like back in my day because my day is still happening. Yeah, although I don't know, you know, it's funny because when you're in that place, when you are 1718, you do have nostalgia, You do have feelings. Like, I mean, that's a lot of what Dark Hearts is about, is that feeling of being 18 and having already missed your shot, which was very much my experience, you know, as a teenage musician.
Like playing in punk band, in a punk band and like, you know, doing all right for ourselves, but not hitting it big the way I had expected. And then watching, you know, getting a little bit older and watching bands coming up behind us that are really good and starting to get bigger than us and, you know, that sort of thing.
And then getting to that point where you're not even in college and you feel like has been, you feel washed up and that question of what is your identity if it's not what you thought it was going to be? I think actually both of my young adult books are kind of about that question because it's the same with Kara as a ghost hunter. Like, yeah, like what is you have this idea of who you are, whether that's a future rock star, future ghost hunter or
straight, gay, whatever. And then what do you do when you're right, the labels you apply to yourself to understand yourself no longer fit and you're left in this sort of limbo of like, well, who am I? And I feel like that's a question I'm always sort of trying to explore because it was so relevant to me as a team. Yeah.
And I think that with at least Kara's journey in the beginning, it's that is very much her question because not only like the ghost hunting thing is not panning out the way her idols is, but also she's like, I didn't get into the school I wanted to get into like what even is my life? It's it's not what I expected. And that that is a very real
like teenage thing. And like you mentioned, everything is new, but and the feelings are so big and the world feels like it's ending even though their life is just beginning. So she's very much in that, in that kind of like journey at the beginning of the of the book. Well, it's the first time you start to feel doors closing. You know, like there's that age where you suddenly have to make choices in a way you didn't before.
And that for any younger listeners, I hate to say it like that continues your entire life, like the the path continues to narrow and focus in as you make more and more choices. But the first time you confront that, it's terrifying. And also, as you get older, you still question, who am I? So it's not just the kids. Oh.
Yeah, yeah. You know, and that's why I mean, that's why people have midlife crises because you've got you're in this place where you're like, oh, I guess I did make the choices that mean I'm never going to be an astronaut, you know, I'm never going to be a rock star. And like, I do think there's often more, more possibility than you think, depending on what it is you want, right? You know, if you want to write a book, you can do that at any
point in your life. You know, if you want to be an Olympic gymnast, like you may have missed your shot, you know so. Probably, yeah. So you did, you mentioned a little piece of like, like the full circle moment with the parking space, but was there anything else you wanted to add into this story that perhaps like didn't make the cut? Oh, let's see, There was there was a little bit that got cut just in terms of when I was still thinking it might be a romance between her and Aiden.
There were sort of some flirty moments between them, but ultimately it was kind of fine to cut it down. So there's not a lot that got left on the cutting room floor. Because I'm so deliberate and planning out my stories, I fortunately don't usually have to go back and cut a ton.
I mean, probably I would have liked more of a chance for Aiden to go off on his experience, especially there were some things where I think it would be honest, but would have made him seem a little bit too much of A creeper. Where it's like when you really think about it, if you're a teenage boy and you suddenly like, are invisible and intangible, can go anywhere you want, like, you're probably going to be a bit more of a creeper than we really get into
in the book. I And I can't even remember if it's still in there. But him talking about sort of like defending isn't even really creeping if I sort of if I'm dead and don't exist anymore. And Cara being like, yeah, actually, so. So that I mean, I think it could have been fun to get more of his experience, but that just wasn't that wasn't the point of the story and.
That's fair, That's fair. Something I, I think I actually laughed out loud with Aiden's experience is that before he gets attached to Cara, he spends his time visiting different people's homes and watching Netflix with them. Yeah. And I just, I love that aspect. But if this was you, what would you hope that someone's watching in their home so you could join them? Oh my God, let's see, I guess what what series do I really want to watch? I'm trying to think of stuff
that I haven't seen yet. Actually, you know what, I would probably go with a lot of stand up comedy. Like that's, I think that would be the thing that would give me the most joy and comfort. You know, I love, you know, Taylor Tomlinson and Mike Birbiglia and all these different comics I love. Taylor. Yeah, Oh yeah. She's so good. So good. But yeah, so I'd probably go with that or I don't know, maybe a rewatch or something like The Good Place. Like that's I adore that show.
If you can find someone watching that show for the first time, Oh my. God yes, so much fun. Absolutely. Such a good show. Yeah, also, like, what? A philosophical show for a ghost. It's like the afterlife. He's sitting there throwing, you know. And mine's a bad place to. Screen and being like that's not how it. Is. Yeah, I think that show might be one of the smartest shows I've ever seen. Like just everything about that
was firing on all cylinders. I. Agree. It was one of those very meticulously planned out kind of shows too. And it shows. Yeah, but follow up. So on the ghost train. So if if you were a ghost, what would what would be the first thing that you would do once you realized, hey, I'm a ghost, I can float around?
I mean, after I was done trying to figure out if there was any way I could contact people because I'm such a social person that I think I would be constantly trying to find the loopholes that would let me communicate with friends and family. But if I couldn't, man, I don't. I don't know. I think I would. I think it would be very depressing, honestly, but I'd probably go try to just see a lot of natural splendor, you know, go explore, explore the wilderness like during the
pandemic. So we were even more locked down than most people during the pandemic because my wife is pretty seriously disabled, and that's very at risk. And so we had to just go no contact with anybody for quite a while. And so during those years, I spent a lot of time hiking alone and just trying to find the trails. My secret was to go on all the trail apps and find the one star reviewed trails 'cause I knew
that nobody would be on them. And so I just like, would spend, you know, a day, a week just wandering old logging roads by myself in the woods and was surprised at how peaceful I found it. Like for somebody who always wants to be around other people talking in a party, it was really surprising that like, I didn't even want to listen to a podcast. I just wanted to be in the woods with the with the critters for eight hours, so I think that
that part would be nice. I would go float up and spend some time on some nice mountain peaks somewhere. I love that. Good way to spend. Your time, all the views with none of the effort. Exactly. Exactly. Go climb Mountain Everest. Exactly. Were they actual one star trails? Then what did you think? I mean, I thought they were great, but I think that, you know, philosophically, some of my friends who like hiking are really all about getting to the
destination, the viewpoint. And I really like the exploratory angle of hiking. Like I don't need to necessarily get to a particular place. I just want to hike around in the woods and kind of see what's there. And so discovering little things is often more exciting to me than getting to a big amazing viewpoint that everybody knows
about. So like, one of my favorite places that I found was this big working forest where it's just, you know, thousands upon thousands of acres that kind of nobody goes to. And one thing I loved about it is that because it was being actively logged, the roads would change from season to season. And so you would go out there and there would be a new road that wasn't there before, or the old road would already be getting overgrown.
And so it just felt very magical to have this forest where the routes were always sort of appearing and disappearing. It felt like my sort of enchanted forest. So yeah, So. And, you know, occasionally I'd find a waterfall or some interesting weird little. I once I found a weird little government compound out in the middle of the woods, and that was fun. But so, yeah, that kind of thing. I like being surprised. I'm so glad that you had that experience. That's really cool about this.
Enchanted Forest Woods. I mean, that's me romanticizing it. I think a lot of people are about would be like, it's just some woods. And I'm like, yeah, but like, can you, can you find the, the romance in it? Yeah, you're right. Or you're allowed to romanticize everything. Exactly. So you mentioned earlier that you also Co created the Pathfinder and Starfinder role-playing games. How does writing a book compare
to creating a story for a game? Well, it's, it's really different because in role-playing games, a lot of the time you're deliberately not creating the story in as much as like you're creating the setting and sort of the premises and then deliberately leaving it open for the players to make the character choices and create sort of the story.
And like you always, it's a fine balance because you always want to make sure that if you're writing, you know, an adventure that you've got some ability to guide the players to all the things you've created. So it's not just totally open, but for the most part, you're trying to let the players improvise the story as they go. And so with that, it's a lot more about inspiration rather than telling people every
detail. And so my favorite part of game design is world design where I'll go through and just like I love writing the articles where it's just like 50 adventure locations where I'll just have a big map. I'll put dots all over it. And then I'll tell you what cool exciting thing is at each one of those locations that could potentially inspire an adventure.
And I like to work that way also a little bit when I'm writing a story, in as much as those things that can inspire players can also inspire me as an author. But it's just a very different, it's a very different experience because when I'm writing a novel, it's so much about those character arcs. And so I've charted that all out in advance. And so it's almost an entirely different skill set. I mean, that said, there's also still the sitting down and writing, which is the one of the
hardest things to learn. And so that does crossover pretty well. But that is fun though, because I get I it's a different, it's almost like you're, you're in a different headspace when you're just like trying to give people the puzzle pieces for the adventure versus like spelling it out word by word. So that is fun. Exactly. Well, and there's a lot more pressure for me in writing a novel than in writing game material because in the novel, like I need to make sure that
everything works together. So it's almost like building a watch, you know, I'm trying to make sure that every little thing connects properly. Whereas if I'm doing game setting design, you know, and like, rules design obviously is also very fiddly. But if I'm just, you know, writing about the country where the orcs live, you know, I can kind of just go nuts and just spray cool, top of my head details everywhere, which is really fun.
Like I love the improv element of freestyling weirdness. You know, like I I always said that like the best skill I learned or one of them from my years working as a game designer was the ability to produce bullshit on command. You know, just like cool sounding stuff.
Because so often I was on deadline, you know, somebody would say, Oh my God, we've got, you know, this article that is 1000 words short and it's goes to press in three hours, like fill this page, go like just write me some cool stuff. And so I would be in this position of having to just kind of I couldn't afford to get stage fright. You know, I had to just sort of yes, and myself. And so I would sit down and be like, OK, well, maybe, maybe people would like to adventure in.
There's a underwater city built on the back of a gigantic snail that's crawling along a geothermal vent. And the people who live there keep all of their magic stored and their histories stored in this telepathic brain coral that grows all over it. And, you know, but then what? What if that got stolen? You know? And like, it was all just that. It was all spitballing and, yes. Anding yourself, you. Just make that up.
I, I mean, yeah, kind of like, I mean, it's probably similar to some things I've done in the past, but like, that's, that's the job. Like you can, you can give me just about anything and I will come up with an adventure location about it. And that's, that's the fun of that job, right? Like, I mean, give me any monster, any monster you can think of a. Monster. But a monster? A 12 foot. Tarantula. OK, so I'm going to tell you about the city of 12 foot
tarantulas. It exists in this forest where they live in a tenuous peace with the elves who also live there. And their city is all as you might expect, like rope bridges of this webbing everywhere.
And the tarantulas, they they actually record all of their history in these giant web funnels where they once a year they take a sacrifice from the elves and they use their venom to magically implant all of their history and inside the elves veins and then keep him alive, mummified inside the center of their palace where he then telepathically allows them to access. Like this is this is the job. Like that's not. Good. Both a tarantula matrix. I, I have so much fun doing that
kind of stuff. So that was what I, that was primarily what I did for like the 13 years I worked for Pathfinder and Starfinder and Dungeons and Dragons, all those companies. And I still do occasionally work for them as well as occasionally doing comics, video games, all that kind of stuff. But these days my, my biggest love is definitely novels. So this is where my heart is
now. Well, you're just multi talented in many aspects and thank you for giving us that that set up premise for the world's scariest story. Thank you. I'm sure your listeners are like what is even go I got this has gone off the rail. It's. Amazing. No, no, they're used to that. But I, I will, I will say for, for aspiring authors in here, like the more you can take that approach of just yes and yourself, like don't let your
internal editor get in the way. Don't worry about if an idea is good, just roll with it. Whatever you've got say OK, and then what? All right. You'll be surprised how much more writing you get done if you can just go with it and say maybe the idea is bad, but you won't know until it's down on the page. All right. Well, thank you, James, this those are all the questions we had for you today. We really appreciate getting to see your talent improv.
That was such a treat. So for the listeners at home that want to like maybe follow you, support you, how can they do that? Well, you can find everything I've done on jameslsutter.com. Social media wise, I'm on Instagram which is fun and Twitter which is not, but Instagram I'm at just at James under score L under score Sutter. On Twitter I'm still just at James L Sutter and I am active on both of them. So if anybody has questions or wants to chat, you can always
find me there. But really, I would love for folks to check out my novels Dark Hearts and the Ghost of us. So dark Hearts is like we said, two boys, rock star romance and dark hearts is supernatural sapphic romance. Oh, sorry. And the ghost of us is supernatural sapphic romance. And yeah, they're both out now in everywhere, every format. You can get them in hardcover, e-book, audio book. I'm actually very proud.
I for both of them, the publishers let me compose and record the intro and outro music for the the audiobooks. So that was super fun. So yeah, please, if, if any of this interested you, please check them out. Yes, please check it out and thank you again James for being here today and sharing everything with us. We really appreciate it. And for everyone at home, Until next time, hydrate for lesbian Jesus. And get up all over the place. Bye bye. And with that, we've been Big Gay Energy.
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