An Interview With Ryan La Sala

going to be sold to like teenagers. But the fact of the matter is is that why stories just center teen experiences and teen characters. But many, many people older and younger read those stories.

story is is on its way. But in this story, you're gonna encounter the Island of Anchors Mercy, which is it's a fictional place, but it's this beautiful island off the coast of Maine, famous for its shellfish and its beaches, and it's like a summer destination for a lot of queer people. There's like a vibrant drag community there, but

it's hiding a very insidious secret. And Ali, the main character, is a teenager determined to figure out what that secret is because all of his life as a resident on this island, he has been noticing patterns of secrecy and shame and sickness, and now his mom is sick and he wants to figure out what exactly is sort of causing this, like what aren't they the adults telling everybody.

But before he can really get too far in his investigation, there's this storm on the busiest weekend of the summer, and up from the ocean washes basically answers, but they take the form of this kind of radiant, supernatural organism that begins to spread itself through the community. And now it's up to Ali to figure out how all of these things are connected while trying to kind of stop it from escaping onto the mainland. And so that's one

side of the story. The other is a scientific researcher who is three weeks in the future writing about their investigation into Ali's story because they think somewhere in Ali's fight to survive is the solution to potentially saving the rest of the world from a similar fate. So it's kind of unclear what happens to Ali. That's kind of the big point of the book. But yeah, that's that's the gist of it.

It can just exist as part of the story. I definitely appreciated that, you know, because so many times you read a story and it's like, hey, folks, look at me, I'm writing a queer book.

And so I kind of was hoping to achieve both with a story like this, where like from Ali's point of view, he was born and raised on this island where it's really normative to have queer people, right, Like his piano tutor is this drag queen who also is a mayor, who also is the person who does like the story time at the local library, like, which is to me a kind of fairly queer ecology where everyone has like nine different jobs and we're kind of all

helping each other put on a big show for one another, and that's based in reality, right Like, there are places that are like this, and queer communities tend to kind of create these sanctuaries, even amongst larger, larger ecologies, like this particular island is based on Provincetown, Massachusetts, where you'll find almost like an exact replica of this particular story or this particular setting. I should say at the same time.

to create sanctuaries. So they're always in dialogue with the tension that sort of asks us to kind of enclose ourselves into these these communities. And so that's also what the story is about, right Like, the second things start to go awry on this island of Banker's Mercy. In the book, there's a quarantine imposed upon the island to

kind of keep things locked down. But like even the act of kind of locking all these people into their suffering, so they kind of have to deal with themselves mimics in many ways, how like institutions often leave in abandoned, marginalized communities to kind of deal with their problems themselves when they don't sort of spread into the rest of the world because it's seen as like a kind of

societal contamination. And so the story kind of has both, where the actual setting is really very normative, but many of the strains that play out in this particular book absolutely arise from kind of the reality of communities and the sanctuaries that they create.

I love that. I also love the idea of, you know, when shit goes down yes, these are drag queens, but they are also people who have like varying skill sets, and so those skill sets get to be put into practical use. That made me seem like, yes, that's right, you would be able to do that, wouldn't you.

And the answer is really simple. I just don't think straight people could cut it in certain scenarios because they don't have it takes. You would need certain skill sets

to survive my books. And that's why, like, of course there are straight people in these scenarios, right, But the main characters they are often the people that have resilience and adaptability and diversity and elasticity, and they also care about their community and they sort of understand that like surviving alone renders you very vulnerable in a crisis, but figuring out how to survive together, which is a huge

theme of this book. Very very very queer philosophy, very sort of marginalized philosophy, And that's the result of my own lived experiences. But I kind of I apologetically tell people that, yeah, you know, I just don't think a straight person has like the skill set or the or the bandwidth or the endurance to kind of make it through some of the stories, because they are horror at the end of it, right.

and underprivileged in others. But if I had to write the story of my childhood, my adolescence, and my like teenage years down, I would have to shelve it in horror, because despite the humor and the love and the compassion that I had the benefit of, the narrative of my life was dominated by knowing that I was vulnerable and that any moment something could hurt me, something could come

out of the blue, someone could turn on me. Society could suddenly perceive me as a monster, and I would have no way of knowing, and I would have to just kind of deal with it and sort of figure out a way out in the moment. And those are those are that's like the major tenet of horror, right, Like the person sort of consents that there's an oncoming monstrosity but can't necessarily identify where until it's chasing them,

like directly behind their back, trying to stab them. And so many queer people, I feel like, resonate with that where they kind of have to hold those two things hand in hand, right, like the joy and the fear of a lived experience. And I think that's that's why I'm drawn to scary stories that also have like a lot of humor and heart in them because it just feels much more real to me.

this encroaching, you know, retraction of society. Right. That doesn't necessarily have a form, it doesn't have like a body, right, it's just something that we can sort of feel happening, which is I think why we turn to horror stories where the monster actually has a form that we can face and that we can sort of either escape from, or defend ourselves against, or fight or even kill. Right, Like, I think that's kind of why we like scary stories.

But it's not surprising to me that, like, you know, now as the world has become much scarier, there's a there's this huge influx of readers looking for a way to kind of deal with their feelings and read about them. Right.

they want as they need to. But it does always amuse me that people sort of decide that they don't like horror until they sort of find the one spooky thing that they really like, and then that's the exception.

One thing I definitely appreciated was that there were no none of the main characters like everyone was smart.

which causes a lot of tension. But I didn't want like oftentimes Ya, especially with like teen casts, gets knocked for being like mostly angst and mostly miscommunications and like problems that adults like to claim that they no longer that they've grown out of, which is debatable but right. But in my stories, I often like to find a way to test characters who are whip smart, who are really logical and who are like highly emotionally intelligent, and

they're still like fighting for their lives. Like that to me makes something feel a lot tenser, because you know, if you're reading this, you're not thinking, oh, I would never do this. You're thinking, well, it's probably exactly what I would do and it's still going wrong. Like that's kind of a better story to me.

in their use for like a narrative, and that's kind of that's it's kind of the horror too, write like sometimes deaf is really swift and we don't see it coming and it's not supposed to happen, but that's part of what makes something horrific. So it's interesting sometimes people have kind of a negative reaction to that, whereas I feel like that's kind of the point at least sometimes. But yeah, I won't I won't say more, right.

of suspense. I can't give you any detail, but I can't tell you, like, the cover's really pretty and a lot of people have sent me dms of them crying, So if that's something you would love to do, like, go for it. But but yeah, that's kind of the it's like the catch shorty too of trying to promote like a horror novel.

to look like. For instance, like Ali as a main character, we don't really have a similar life at all, aside from being gay, right. But the whole setting for the book Anchors Mercy is inspired by going to Provincetown in this case Problemsuth, Massachusetts with my family every summer for like a week, and understanding as a result of that that, oh,

there are communities full of queer people. And also at a certain point, all these people that I'm seeing in the street, like they go home, they're out there in the world, like they go back to you know, whatever flyover state they decided to leave in order to come here, which was amazing. Rite this idea that like we can all come together and sort of go back to our lives, and that there's queer people sort of everywhere as a

result of this exchange. And so a lot of those feelings about like community and the respect that I have for the sanctuaries that like people who had it way worse than me still found the strength to create is like a huge part of like this particular story. But I don't know that like I can point to any singular character and tell you, like, oh, this is a foxy for me. A lot of people have asked because the main character in this book is his mom. Gracie

is like such an important figure in the book. They've they've sort of insinuated that, like, oh, is that based on your mom? And Luckily no, because Gracie, while she's like a great lovely character, and you know, at the very beginning of the book, there's there's a there's a difficulty sort of between her and Ali that like is sort of the central conflict between the two of them. But but her cancer diagnosis, which is like a huge part of like Ali's motivation to solve the problems on

his island. That's not something that I've taken from my real life, but it is it kind of does wrap around my actual fear around like the mortality of my parents, which is a which is a pretty big theme in the book. It's sort of understanding that your parents are people, they're not just like you know, parents are not going to be there forever. They had to make hard decisions in order to defend you or protect you, right, Like, those feelings are very much wrapped up in in like

this Gracie character. But but I'm lucky enough to kind of like I still have my mom and I love her, And much of the love in this book is definitely, you know, from that relationship. But the fight that they're having at the beginning of the book that sort of spans the entire thing is not is not a personal fight that I have with my mom. So I always try to make sure that I that I defend my

mom because people think that I'm writing about her. But the fact of the matter is that she's a She's a lovely, lovely lady, and and I wouldn't want I wouldn't want people to mistake that.

don't know what to do about it. Like that's the major conflict between the two of them, is that she is recovering from the sickness and as a result, has sort of changed her attitude, her outlook towards life, like fundamentally, like she's unrecognizable as a result of this crisis that she's just survived, and Ali is sort of her caretaker and it's fundamentally changed the nature of how they sort of interact, and he no longer has the right to

feel sad about anything because everything should be good, should be positive, right, Like we've made it to the other side of this trauma. But Ali is like seventeen and still sort of left with the inertia of almost watching a parent die and can't sort of shake this gloom that it's given him. And it's totally popped the bubble on his childhood right like now he is almost like having to grow up against his will because of what he's witnessed and what he's survived and now what he

kind of knows about his island. So it's it's a pretty pivotal conflict between the two of them, and it's like the main driving force of his motivation in the book. So I'm not surprised when people are like, yeah, Gracy's kind of crazy, but I love her because I also, as an adult, can understand, you know, the decision that a parent might make to protect their child and to kind of shield them from a darker truth about like

the existence of their home or something like that. So I feel like I understand Gracie, but I can't necessarily defend her because she does make some kind of bombastic decisions in the book exactly.

not really encountered before. Like is this something, Is this a theme an element that that you are already familiar with or they just like pop it out of your head.

there's a few different reasons for this. There's the the just physical revulsion that I have to the idea of like coral or barnacles being able to like grow on human skin, which it can't. So please anyone out there who's like shivering, don't worry, like this is not possible. But I do love the idea of like a marine ecosystem kind of being an act like a threat, right,

and coral is colonial in nature. So it has to exist in these large colonies, because each little polyp of coral is an individual organism, but they live in sort of these large reefs, right. And I wanted to sort of write a monster that was beautiful that you'd never suspect of horror. But the second that something like that can grow on you can spread between like people and flesh, like,

that's much scarier. And I love reveling and sort of taking something light and beautiful and ornamental and sort of

turning it into a force of fear. A lot of my books sort of aim at that particular like inversion, but also the sort of the metaphor behind it for me was that Ali is this like completely isolated kid at the start of the book, and he's turned his back on his island, his best friends to some degree, like his own mom, like, because that's where the fight sort of is located for him at the start of the book, and then the force that he's up against for the rest of the book and then the book

after is this organism that, against your will, will sort of merge you into a much larger system. It'll sort of lock you into a colonial community, right, Like it'll bring you into itself, and now you're part of something, but you're part of it forever, right, you've sort of given up your adit well, your humanity, and you're brought into kind of this like smothering enforced community because it's a reef and it's an organism kind of trying to

build itself out and emerge people together. And there's a moment in the book where Ali is about to get sort of like fused into this monstrosity, and he even thinks, is this really as bad as I think it is? Like is the fear that I have around this, you know, genuine? Or would it be so bad to sort of be brought into a community an embrace that I can never escape, Like is it okay to kind of give up right in this moment? There are fates worse than death, but

maybe this is slightly better than death. And I wanted I wanted something to kind of test them, in part because when we see when we see zombies, and we when we see sort of like the way that they're like typically depicted in media, right, Like there's sort of these like mindless, avid animalistic things falling after you, or they're like a shambling corpse like there's nothing sort of within them any more. They're just kind of like an

automated threat. But I wanted to kind of create a version of them that that still retain their humanity, that still sort of like look like people, but kind of have this like enhancement to them, and instead of them being rabid and scary, they're they're tearful and they're laughing and they're smiling and they're singing, and there's a sort of undeniable joy to the way that they're sort of infected, which just makes me so uncomfortable, right, this idea that

like there could be a pleasure in giving up that's a really seductive thing that I think a lot of people, you know, are uncomfortable with. And so that that's kind of where that's kind of those are the few pieces that kind of fuse together to form like the they're called weepers in the book, if anyone's wondering, Yes, but that's where that's where they come from.

So when I'm picking up the theme of zombies, I'm also looking at like how queer communities have historically dealt with contagion, how we tried to protect each other right from something spreading amongst ourselves. And we have a history

of this. We know from historical records and the survivors of like the AIDS epidemic, what it was like to sort of be within these communities and to sort of sense something spreading and to try to raise the alarm on it, and to be completely ignored and to be abandoned, and to basically have to solve these things ourselves, to create structures ourselves. And so while this book is not necessarily about the AIDS epidemic, it is, it does take place in a world that has endured that, and the

sanctuary in the book is a result of that. And it's clear that these people, the elders in this community have systems and measures to take it sort of against something similar happening. So they try to shut the town down. They go to the drag queens and they sort of spread through the drag network that like something has been

happening to people. They try to keep people home, but in the end it fails because of a bunch of straight people, a bunch of bachelorettes who I love, that decide that right like they they have to have their night out, they have to have their karaoke, it's my bachelorette party, and so they defy the stay at home order.

And it's because of this entitlement of these cultural tourists that can come in are not part of the community but absolutely feel entitled to like the entertainment of it, that this island is absolutely devastated by you know, this this infection, and that's a that's not just that's commentary.

It's not a metaphor whatsoever. It's it's outright critique. And then on the other side of it, the other thing that I wanted to say about this is that like in also dealing with an infection that sort of spreads rapidly, that is that that monstrofies humans. I wanted the main character Ali to figure out that the people who are infected are not necessarily a foregone conclusion. They don't just turn into this force of evil. They're still humans, They're

still in there. Because I wanted to talk about the fact that, like our gut reaction to seeing infections spreading our community like might be stigma and disdain, right, but you know, perhaps if we listened to these people, the ones the actual victims of what's happening, not that people trying to sort of save themselves, with the actual people who are sort of undergoing this transformation or the degradation of their health, like we could learn something and that

actually could lead to the salvation of everybody. And so, you know, not once does AIDS come up in this book, not once, but but it's absolutely sort of built into the marrow of how these characters fighte against this like the decision that they get to make and also like the type of hope that ends up saving them.

oh my god. We thought we were sort of through this, but now here we are there's variants like oh my god, I remember this right exactly right, like oh no, And it was sort of the moment that we realized that, like, oh my gosh, like this is maybe never ending. And in that variant, the Delta variant was it was named and caught because in Provincetown enough gay people exhibited health seeking behaviors to get themselves tested that we were able to sort of figure out that this thing is mutiating.

But as a result of it, the delta variant was blamed on the people of Provincetown and the people that were getting tested. But it's just because of a health seeking behavior, right, And we as queer people often are told that we have a risky lifestyle, but the fact of the matter is is that we often are like very cautious and very protective and we seek out solutions. And the irony is that we then get saddled with the blame for sort of raising the flag on something

that affects everybody. That variant was in every little beechy community that was shirking their COVID guidelines that summer, and it was everywhere, but we just happened to catch it, but then we got blamed for it. And I wanted to sort of discuss what it's like to sort of be the people like raising your flag about something and then having to sort of own it as a result of it.

becomes really important when suddenly, like the navy puts the island on quarantine, tells everyone to sort of like lock up, and like these kids have to kind of slip through these gas to figure out how to kind of travel and figure out what's going on. And so, but their

motto is SuDS stick together. And even when it's like these kids are fighting the entire book, they're at each other's throats, right, Like they're not holding back about the big feelings they have about each other about what's going on, Like they're having real discussions about this, in part because it just annoys me when characters like don't speak over themselves. And so I have now three kids that are constantly yapping and fighting with one another, but they still stick together.

They find a way to sort of prioritize the togetherness, the surviving together part of it, which I think is ultimately why they're compelling, at least for me as a writer, right, Like they understand that surviving individually is ultimately not worth it. Like if you are the last lone survivor of something, like you really haven't lived, you really are not surviving anything, Like you're just the only victim left of something. But if you can find a way to kind of bring

everyone with you to survive altogether. Like that's that's worth it, that's worthy of hope.

how I think about them. But even when you go to these places, right, like Rovin Soon, or like if you go to like gay bars and stuff, like even the physical invasion of a bachelorette party, like all of these people dressed identical. And I'm talking about like the straight bachelorette parties, because you've seen plenty of lesbian bachelor parties roll up and they look fantastic, right, and I'm

glad that they're there. But I'm talking about the like you know, like the Savannah girls, and like they they'll probably be a little bit more at home in like Nashville, right, but they've decided to come to like this gay.

smiling and wooing at them. It's like World War three, right, Like the devastation occur is there's such an irony to that that I think goes sort of unnoticed by by these people when they feel like, you know, why wouldn't

you want me here? You know? And I'm like, well, you know, maybe maybe the people have been fighting for like the right to marry one another for like years and years and years and years and years feel a little bit disregarded when the saying short that they've built for themselves and the people like them is invaded by someone who is here like as a mascot, of like heterosexual union. I don't know, maybe think about it for like two seconds.

Like it's it's how I go through the world. It's the nightlife that I get to enjoy, but it's also like everything else about my day to day because I'm like I'm like a visibly queer. I mean, I'm in like a tank top of a hat right now, but like typically in the world, like I'm very flamboyant, right so I can't really even escape it or step out of it. But that's really different than like the the putting on of like rhetoric to like debate and pick

one another on the internet. So like I know in past times, when like the bachelotte party has come up, like people will swoop in and be like, well, how do you know the sexuality to freak girl on that bachelorette party, or how do you know like that, Maybe they're there because they feel like they wouldn't be safe in like a straight place, and so they're going to like a gay place because they're they're they're protected from misogyny, right And I'm like, Okay, so now we have like

a fictional bachelorette party that is like full of full of diversity, secret hidden diversity that I now need to consider in my discomfort in like that equation of like my actual life. Right, Like I suddenly no longer have a right to just having a reaction, right like you with your drink looking at at a proposal, because I now have to now to calculate into my mental calculus every single just qualification that could come up on like

a Twitter thread, right, Like is that useful? Well, I don't know, because it seems like maybe it's not that useful to do to do math that way, right, That's kind of what happens sometimes.

In the book, Olli is a character who's sort of always had Yeah, like I'm like back to me, Alli is sort of always at the benefit of the supportive community, and he doesn't necessarily know what it would be like to turn his back on it, right, like, because it's something it's a decision that he doesn't even really mean to make. And it's only because of like the darkness of like his mom's sickness and that experience that he

kind of feels uncomfortable in this. But his mom understands like no, no, no, like you're gonna need these people, You're gonna need all of this like once once I'm gone.

But the fact that like you know, you can sort of come and go as you please, that you don't feel desperate urgency to maintain contact with like this Queer Island like in a way is a byproduct of a of a world sort of slowly accepting people, and those barriers of sanctuary becoming orus as a result of it, right, that no longer needs to sort of be strict, And so that's more of a discussion that it ends up in the second book, the one that I just turned in,

so the sequel to the Dead of Summer, there's a clear sort of moment where in a Dragmen actually tries to sort of have a conversation with the character and it's like, you know, I know my decisions in the things that I had to do in order to save myself back in like the eighties and the nineties, Like they're not going to make sense too, but I almost love that they don't, because it means that you as a person are so far removed from the hard decisions

that like basically your ancestors had to make to give you this moment in time right now. And in the context of their conversation, it then turns into but like, but now you have to understand that you, as someone who is in a crisis, you are the ancestor of whoever is going to you know, come generations after, and you need to now make decisions, you know, for the welfare of a community that's going to outlive you, right, because that's what that's what That's what it means to

be an elder in a community. And we don't often have a vocabulary in the Queer community of a lineage or inheritance or elders or ancestors because of you know, the divorce that like the AIDS epidemic has sort of caused. And I think, now I love that I get to be an elder in the Queer community, right, like, and I'm like thirty and thirty four, so not actually like that, yeah, but like you know what I do, I look.

So I don't know, I have a lot of feelings about a lot of feelings about like queer communities and sort of how they how they build each other over time.

But I agree. I'm like a lot of the a lot of the ways that we sort of treat each other on the internet seem to be more about like policing one another than they do about like preserving sort of a larger entity. And so I kind of wonder when that shift will happen, especially now that like real threats have started to become like way more common.

sit tight. And the moment that they put a queer book on the stand for being banned, like you got to stand up for that, right, Like there are real world moments that are way more impactful than sort of like sitting and like nitpicking each other on the internet. And at this point, like the way the algorithms work, like those conversations are self enclosed and they're they're kind of bubbled up, and they're not necessarily bleeding out to sort of make or exert any pressure on people who

are like, you know, against LGBTQI rights. And those people, the ones that are trying to take away rights, like they're not doing it on Twitter, you know, they're doing it in the courts. I think they're doing it in real world scenarios, which is unfortunately kind of where we need to show up to. So if the only way you know how to fight is through a keyboard and online and with each other, you're very much in the way when it comes to having to actually take the

fight like into like a like a real world setting. Right. But I hope that people sort of forge their way back towards their local communities as a result of this, Like that can only really lead to good getting to know like the problems in your area, right, the problems that are going to affect you. Like that's that's a good vocabulary to have. As an activist.

and and there's my books are hard. The characters don't have time a lot of making out right, they're running for their lives half the time. And so my books also end up being put back on shelves quite often, but only after they've gone through like an arduous review that has of course caused some poor librarian or bookseller like a ton of pain. And so people ask those as a result, like well, you know, what can we do?

And showing up in your actual like the fabric of your actual community to like at your bookstores, in you know,

the school meetings. It ends up being really meaningful because it only takes one voice to sort of like cause a book to receive a lot of backlash, right, Like one loan shut in is like I think that this book is teaching children, you know, wrong lessons, right, and suddenly that book has to be pulled into a review and pulled off shelves, and it's creating all this paperwork, right Like, who knows that it'll make it back on to the shelf, right if it's causing all this trouble,

But if there are voices that are already in the room that are like, actually, like I disagree or I'm going to advocate on behalf of this thing before it gets challenged, right, Like, that ends up being really meaningful, and it gives support to the people in the community that end up having to have this fight. Like the fight is not from me, the author. I get to

kind of sit back and keep writing. The fight for book bands, for instance, is often left with like the librarians and the teachers that they can't be if they're embedded in the community. They have to have that conversation with that patron or that parent, so lending them your support, you know, way more meaningful, and of course, like you know, I love your support too if you're linked to this,

like I too appreciate the kudos. But just like you said, like the the like I'm the theory of all this, but the physical, the actual like practical application like that happens sort of outside of my books, right, and it happens like on the shelves where they're put.

this book promotes killing your family members. Like that was the big that was the big crime that I had submitted, or that I had committed, as like the author of this book, and like, I think about that because that's such a crazy interpretation of what happened to the book, which is on page six, the main character is attacked by their sister who's like in a crazy fugue state, and in the ensuing fight, the sister ends up perishing. And it's not a plot twist, it's general. It's like

the app salute, like a lot of the book. It's the thing that sort of launched the rest of the book, And the whole rest of the book is the guilt around like what's happened with this character and investigating their life and sort of trying to understand, like why they

went crazy? Right, Like, And clearly, if an entire book is sort of written around the regret of something, the book itself is not trying to tell people do this right, right, Like, if that happens on page six and the ensuing three hundred and ninety four pages of a four hundred page book are dealing with the alcohol of that, it simply cannot be a promotional tool for homicide.

then it's really really easy. So that's why I try to tell people like, you know, especially with like queer stories, diverse stories, standing up for these things and sort of being in the room to counter these particular debates, it's very valuable. Nice.

I love, like, I love that experience. Yeah. As for books, I'm reading The Deep right now by I think Nick Cutter I want to say, I've only just begun it. But if people really like my book The Dead of Summer we've talked about like a little bit, then I would say, check out Our Wives under the Sea or they Bloom at Night, are both sort of in the world of like marine, transformative, like horror, like science thrillers. Nice. That's our recommendation.

your own community a great thing to do. My local indie that I adore is Books of Wonder in New York City. I signed stock there all the time, so anytime I'm in there, they have a big stack of books for me. To sign. So if you want to sign, be in one of my books. They tend to have them, but yeah, books of wonder they ship all over the place. So I got a website. You can check them out.