"Feast While You Can" Authors Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta on Writing

Episode Summary

The Magic of Co-Authorship

Building a World Together

Writing a book together as a married couple is not something you hear about every day. Mikaella and Onjuli’s journey began in the labyrinth of early 2000s online culture, meeting through live journals and Tumblr. When they started writing together, it was almost instinctual. They’d bounce ideas off each other, send scenes back and forth, and soon they realized that their voices melded naturally. Their process involves brainstorming, outlining, writing independently, and then merging and editing intensively to create a seamless narrative voice.

This collaborative process requires immense trust and synchronization. They mentioned how editing each other's work became a key part of their routine, turning the drafting process into more of a dialogue than a solitary monologue. One thing that particularly stood out was how they used Google Docs to streamline their process, avoiding conflicts over edits by pretending a robot (not their partner) was making suggestions.

The Transition from Solo to Duo

One interesting shift they highlighted was moving from writing heterosexual romance in The View is Exhausting to crafting a lesbian romance in Feast While You Can. This transition brought about new levels of vulnerability, considering they were putting more of their personal experiences into the limelight. Their different perspectives on marketing and the anxieties surrounding it further illustrated the complex dynamics of being a writing duo.

Crafting Cadenz: A Lesson in World-Building

Drawing from Folklore

One of the most captivating aspects of Feast While You Can is its setting—a small, spooky mountain town called Cadenz. As I learned, Cadenz is a pseudo-Italian town inspired by various small town elements from Australia, the UK, and American folklore. The combination of religious and supernatural elements from Italian folklore influenced their world-building significantly.

Mikaella and Onjuli delved into how they merged real-world isolation with folklore to enrich their narrative. They referenced tales from the Appalachian region and folk stories from Italy, particularly those blending Catholic saints with everyday life, making their monstrous creation both menacing and relatable.

Queer Themes in a Confining Setting

Being a queer person in a small town often feels isolating, almost as if an ancient evil is consuming you—a sentiment both Mikaella and Onjuli wove into their characters' experiences. By juxtaposing a character who wants to escape with one who wants to change the town from within, they explored the broader theme of whether it is possible, or even worthwhile, to transform a place that doesn't accept you.

This nuanced approach doesn’t just speak to queer audiences but resonates with anyone feeling out of place, reminding us of the universal struggle to find belonging and acceptance.

Insights and Takeaways for Writers

Embracing Collaboration

For writers considering collaboration, Mikaella and Onjuli’s journey offers valuable lessons. Their success lies in maintaining clear communication, respecting each other's creative inputs, and finding the right tools to streamline the editing process. They’ve shown that with the right partner, writing doesn’t have to be a solitary endeavor—it can be an exhilarating adventure that brings richness to your narrative voice.

The Power of Editing

Another critical takeaway is the importance of editing and re-editing to refine your work. Mikaella and Onjuli go through multiple drafts, ensuring that every scene seamlessly fits into the overall narrative. They consider editing a formative part of their process, where the true essence of the story comes to life. So, whether you’re collaborating or working solo, never underestimate the power of a good edit.

Episode Transcript

Heads up! Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain errors.

Blake Reichenbach [00:00:00]:
Oh hey everybody. Welcome back to the Inkwell Insights podcast. I'm that stack of books that's on your bookshelf that you bought a year ago and said you were going to read right away but you never did and you've already decided to buy more books. How are you all doing this week? We are at the end of 2024 and actually looking at my calendar. This may be coming out at the beginning of 2025. Honestly, that kind of screws with my head. I don't like it. The passage of time is something very, very strange. But what is not strange is going to be our episode today where we are talking to the co authors of Feast While You Can. Michaela Clements and Anjali Dada. These women are wonderful. In real life they are a married couple and they have just published a spooky, creepy sapphic just mix of delight called Feast While You Can. I think you are absolutely going to love what they have to say. I personally am not someone who could write a book with a partner, especially not like my romantic partner. I think that would be so, so challenging, so, so difficult. But for them it is part of their creative process. It's something that they have learned to do well. And so if you are part of a creative group or you have a writing partner, I think you're going to learn so much about collaboration from unpacking how these two approach their creative process. Now Feast While You Can. Like I said, it's a whole mix match, right? It's sapphic, it's spooky, it's charming. It is such a unique book. So before we get into their interview, I do want to read a little bit about the book itself. So this is going to come straight from Hatchet Books website where Feast While You Can is published. So here we go for readers of Night and we ride Upon Styx, an exciting new hybrid horror romance about queer love in a small town that serves as an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life is a monster ready to possess us all. Angelico was born and raised in Cadence, an ugly little mountain town that's dead most of the year. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother's heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. But on the night of a family party, Angelina runs into the sternly handsome Jagvi, who's back in town for a spell. Upon Jagvi's arrival, an ancient evil is awakened and a monstrous force infiltrates Angelina's life. Only Jagvi's touch repels it. The final trigger for a secret, passionate romance. But this monster feasts on all the passion, heartbreak and mess that makes up a life. And Angelina Sicko's life has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And what will it cost her? Bum, bum, bum. This book is a delight. The authors are even more delightful and like I said, if you are someone who collaborates with others as part of your creative process, I think you're going to get a lot out of this interview. So no more delay. Let's jump in. Let's hear from Mikaella Clements and Anjali Dada. So when I was reading the description of Feast While You Can, the first thing that stood out to me was the small mountain town setting. Like that leapt off the page. And that seems like a pretty big departure from the glitz and glam of your all's previous book. The view is exhausting. So tell me a bit about that and what drew you to creating Cadenz?

Mikaella Clements [00:04:42]:
It kind of just Cadenz showed up almost immediately, like on the very first page. When we first started writing, we knew we were writing about a pair of siblings who had grown up in like, a small town in the middle of nowhere, and the kind of person in their lives who they sort of revolved around in many ways, who had left that town. And I think for it to be a big deal for someone to leave the town, you really need the town to be really important and remote and to be the kind of place that people want to leave and the kind of place that other people are really defensive about the idea of someone leaving. So from the very kind of like, first draft, I think I remember Onge sending me the first pages that she wrote for it. And it was really like these mountains had just appeared. The town was like kind of cupped in the centre of them, like, you know, something that you're holding in the palm of your hand. And Cadenz just came to life really, really quickly. The thing that was difficult for us was trying to work out exactly where Cadenz was. So I'm Australian, Anja's English, we live in Berlin in Germany. And there were lots of things, there were kind of lots of influences that we were drawing on in order to, like, come up with this place. We were thinking a lot about folklore, we were thinking a lot about the small towns that we both grew up in. We were thinking about kind of like some of the American imagery of small towns you get as well. I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this appellation.

Blake Reichenbach [00:06:13]:
Yes. I live in the foothills of the. What we would call Appalachian Mountains. Appalachian, Appalachian, Appalachian. Both are totally acceptable.

Mikaella Clements [00:06:23]:
Okay.

Onjuli Datta [00:06:23]:
It was definitely also an influence.

Mikaella Clements [00:06:25]:
Yeah. We were thinking a lot about, like, you know, stories like Winter's Bone or, like, some of the kind of folklore and kind of images you get from. From the Appalachian regions. And all of those things were kind of coming together, and we didn't really know what to do with it. We had this sort of, like, weird mix of Australian, British, American, European.

Onjuli Datta [00:06:46]:
Not German.

Mikaella Clements [00:06:47]:
Not German.

Onjuli Datta [00:06:48]:
That was the only thing we knew from very early on is that we didn't want to do a German setting just because, like, rural Germany, I think for us, because we're so close to it, would feel like a very specific thing to write. And we also have other things we want to do in terms of writing about Germany. So that was our only compass point stipulation.

Mikaella Clements [00:07:07]:
Yeah. And then what it ended up being was kind of pseudo Italian, so it doesn't actually ever say the word Italy within the novel. A lot of marketing and press material around it has used the word Italy. And it's definitely the biggest inspiration that we drew on with. We also, like. We visit Italy whenever we can. It's one of the best and most beautiful countries in the world. And we were really intrigued, especially by the kind of overlap of folklore and Catholicism in Italy and in regional Italy specifically and in small Italian towns. And that lended itself really well to the kind of supernatural horror element that we wanted to talk about, I think.

Onjuli Datta [00:07:46]:
Yeah, we liked the idea of kind of the supernatural and the everyday overlapping in a way that doesn't feel jarring. And we liked this idea that when you're relating to religion in a small town, actually your closest point of contact with spirituality is your small local saint. And then the level up from that is the church and the infrastructure around it. And then a level up from that, miles and miles away, is God. And we liked this idea of having these layers of supernatural connection that meant that your saint is very close to you. He's someone you chat about and you can gossip about as if he's your friend. And the monster in Cadence functions in a very similar way. There's a real sense of possession and ownership around the monster, and there's debates about whose monster it is or on whose property it really exists in. And so we really liked that. And that was kind of an attitude we came a lot across in a lot of Italian folklore. There's a lot of fairy tales, for lack of a better word, that essentially are about young Jesus and Peter and Paul kind of like as like little boys wandering through the Italian countryside. That was really fun because I'd kind of always seen these figures as these kind of like untouchable biblical figures. And instead they're kind of. You're reading about them getting like scuffed knees and getting called home by their moms for supper and things like that. And that was really like a fun piece of Italian folklore that we liked. And then there's also this book called Christ Stopped at Eboli and by Carlo Levi. And essentially the area where we ended up basing cadence on in Italy is on the southeast side. And it's kind of a grimier and like, what's the word? Rockier version of Italy. The kind of like verdant green hills that you might imagine or like the beautiful beaches that you might imagine. It's very mountainous and very rocky and it used to be somewhere where political prisoners would be sent into exile there. And so there's like, it's quite a depressing book. It's like a memoir of this guy's time spent in political local exile. But he essentially also is very interested in the folklore there. And there's this amazing passage where he's talking about the only women who he can really interact with in this small, abandoned, rocky town is the women who either have been fallen into disgrace or just live slightly outside of society or their husbands have already died. And he's like, yeah, so these are kind of like the wayward women, the outside women, or if you want to use another word for it, the witches. And it's just this incredible like blend of like sociology and like small town politics and magic.

Blake Reichenbach [00:10:22]:
Wow, I love that. And you know, I think the mentions of folklore really stand out to me because I also recently just interviewed Christina lynch, the author of Pony Confidential, and she was talking about the influence of the Odyssey in writing this novel where this pony is a. Essentially a detective. I'm vastly oversimplifying it, but you know, when I hear her talking about the Odyssey and you all talking about Italian folklore, I think it's so fascinating how these like really established and well trodden themes and narratives get woven into new text and made new again. I'm. I'm really, really curious because, you know, like I mentioned small town gay myself, as we've established. Hello from the Appalachians. But you know, growing up I had these moments where the isolation and othering of being queer in A small rural town sometimes felt like an ancient evil was consuming me, perhaps in a slightly different way than, you know, what happens with Angelina in Feast While You Can. But, you know, I would have those moments where I would imagine that the only way to escape that feeling was like, you know, fleeing town or having this storybook romance. And I'm curious if there were specific themes of, like, the queer experience or just the modern experience that you wanted to combine with some of these, like, really, well, trodden paths of folklore as you were crafting this novel.

Mikaella Clements [00:12:06]:
I love that question.

Onjuli Datta [00:12:08]:
Yeah, I think. I mean, yeah, we're both from small towns as well. I mean, Mick's technically from a city, but it's an Australian city.

Mikaella Clements [00:12:14]:
It's an Australian city, so it feels like a small town anywhere.

Onjuli Datta [00:12:18]:
Yeah, But I think, like, in my town is Hastings in the uk and one of the, like, small town folklore things there is called the Hastings Curse, which is what I grew up as a teenager talking about, which is basically the idea that everybody wants to leave Hastings and everybody goes off to make their lives somewhere else, but you always end up coming back, and everybody always ends up coming back. And you'd be kind of talking to the older guys or the Gen X women in the bar, and they'd be like, don't worry, it's coming for you, too. That's the Hastings Curse. And I think there's something of a way that people living in these sorts of areas, turning it into more of a supernatural draw as opposed to just a function of the economy and sociology. And what makes life easier is a way of both acknowledging the limitations of life, but also romanticizing it, I think, and making it something that's more like, oh, the universe has a plan for me. And there's something that's drawing me in. And I feel like with Feast, what we did with the monster specifically is what it feeds on is futures. And what it's interested in is what your future is going to look like and what it can take from it. And that's kind of where its real energy comes from. And it's interested in more than just eating, like, your blood and bones or just killing for no reason. It really focuses on the future as a point of consumption. And I think as a queer kid growing up in a small town especially, so much of your life is really centered around the future, both in terms of, like, what is the future going to look like in this town and, like, in this country? Where are we going? What new kind of, like, strides are going to be made in terms of freedom and agency, but also at the same time, when am I going to get the fuck out of this town? When am I personally going to reach my future potential self where I'm an adult and I'm allowed to be who I am and I'm safe and either in the town or not? And I think for both of the main characters, Angelina and Jagby, their dreams for the future have been very different and gone off in very different directions. Jagby is basically cutting and running the minute she can get out of the town, whereas Angelina's future is really bound in finding her own sense of power in this very small, bigoted place. But I think the way that the monster feasts on that is lying in a very queer fear and anxiety about what the future will look like and what things will change and what things will stay the same.

Mikaella Clements [00:14:42]:
Yeah. And I think Angelina Jagvi have. They kind of encapsulate the two kind of reactions you can have as a queer kid growing up in a very small, conservative place. And one of those reactions is, yeah, let me get out of Dodge. Like, this sucks. As soon as I can, I'm going to move to a glittery city with tons of other queer people who I can kiss.

Onjuli Datta [00:15:06]:
And the other reaction and get my haircut.

Mikaella Clements [00:15:08]:
And get my haircut. And the other reaction is, well, I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna make this a place that accepts me and a place that I can bring queer people to. And Angelina especially, that's the choice that she makes. And she really kind of sees herself as like a queer beacon who, you know, like, you can come to this small, conservative town and I'll look after you. And she spends a lot of energy and time trying to get queer people to come to her town.

Onjuli Datta [00:15:36]:
Yeah. She does a film festival with only daiki movies allowed, a women's only poker night, but only housewives come to it. She gives away free drinks at the bar to all the tourists in the hopes that one of them will be like, oh, there's someone here to talk to you.

Mikaella Clements [00:15:53]:
But I think, like, and we wanted this, like, this major point of tension of, like, can you change your town? Like, can you make it accept you? And is that something that you should do? Like, is it something that's worth doing to be one of the big points of tension between Angelina and Jagvi? Because Angelina is like, yeah, I can make this town accept me. I can make it love me. And Jagby is like, who cares?

Onjuli Datta [00:16:13]:
This.

Mikaella Clements [00:16:13]:
This place is horrible. Let's get out of here. And the fun thing to do with the kind of horror element then was we made them have very similar reactions to the monster. So the town monster, Jagby, is like, this is an evil, supernatural monster with nobody who wants to.

Onjuli Datta [00:16:30]:
Yeah, we should kill it.

Mikaella Clements [00:16:31]:
We should kill it. We need to, like, get this monster. Like, we need to deal with this monster. And Jag and Angelina is like, I think I can make this monster like me.

Blake Reichenbach [00:16:40]:
I can fix her. I promise.

Onjuli Datta [00:16:42]:
Yes, I can fix it. I got her eating the palm of my hand. It's all good. And they're both wrong.

Mikaella Clements [00:16:49]:
They're both wrong.

Blake Reichenbach [00:16:52]:
Well, hopefully not involving any, you know, vows to fix the other person. I do want to shift gears slightly and just ask, like, how you all met each other and when did you know that you wanted to write together? Because that, to me, feels more, like, intimate than getting married.

Onjuli Datta [00:17:11]:
Yeah, we met kind of in the bowels of, like, early 2000s online culture, live journal, Tumblr, all of that. Like, we were both kind of writing at the time, but also just like small, young kids in small. In small towns.

Mikaella Clements [00:17:26]:
Actually, speaking of small towns, on had a really good live journal that was basically just a blog about living in Hastings.

Onjuli Datta [00:17:33]:
Yeah, true.

Mikaella Clements [00:17:34]:
And it was, like, a lot of.

Onjuli Datta [00:17:35]:
Like, playing open mic.

Mikaella Clements [00:17:37]:
I remember reading it before we ever met and being like, wow, this person has such a, like, romantic, interesting life because it was like going to the pub and, like, recording these conversations that she would have with friends. And then like, when you actually go to Hastings, you're like, oh, 17 year old. On. She was really trying to make the.

Onjuli Datta [00:17:51]:
Best out of a bad situation.

Mikaella Clements [00:17:54]:
But we kind of. So we sort of knew each other vaguely online. And then I did the big Australian thing where you go on a really embarrassing, loud trip and make everybody around the world hate you for your Australian accent. I was traveling around the UK and I kind of put a call out and was like, does anybody have bed or a couch for me to crash on? And on volunteered. And I. I went and stayed with her in her uni dorms in Bristol, and the rest is kind of history. But we started writing together almost within days of. Of meeting each other. We kind of. We came from a background of sort of, like, fan culture and stuff like that where it was normal. And we came up with, like, these sort of fresh characters quite quickly. And then we would just write back and forth. And because I moved on from Bristol pretty fast, we would kind of like.

Blake Reichenbach [00:18:41]:
We would.

Mikaella Clements [00:18:42]:
During that first Europe trip, we kind of would see each other Every few cities, I think I talked Onj to coming to Prague with me, and then she talked me into coming and meeting her back in London, but then I had to go back to Australia. And so for the first, like nine months of our relationship, essentially we were long distance. And it's really. I don't know if you've ever been in a long distance relationship, but, like, you have these kind of like interminable. At the time it was Skype calls where you're like, what did you do today? And then the other one's like, well, I went to work and then I went to uni and now I'm calling you. And like, you know, like in the early days of a relationship, obviously you have lots to talk about, but at the same time you kind of run out of ways to relate the day to day to each other. And so we just kept writing and then instead we had these characters that we could talk about and these plots that we could talk about. And it was part of our relationship from the very beginning, which I think made it less scary to start doing it professionally.

Onjuli Datta [00:19:37]:
Yeah, there wasn't really much of a break between us writing these stories back and forth and coming up with new ideas all the time and coming up with new characters. And then there was one email that I wrote to Mick. I think it must have been in like 2014, I want to say I.

Mikaella Clements [00:19:54]:
Think it was 2016.

Onjuli Datta [00:19:56]:
Yeah, you're right.

Mikaella Clements [00:19:57]:
Sorry.

Onjuli Datta [00:19:58]:
Yeah. But I just kind of. It was just an idea I'd come up with about a movie star. I think there was a few different kind of very prominent celebrity romances going on at the time. And I was like, I would like to write about what that would be like to be in a fake relationship as a celebrity. And I wrote this email to Mick, and that is now the first chapter of our first novel. And I mean, it barely changed.

Mikaella Clements [00:20:18]:
No, the real difference with that one wasn't that we were writing together. It was that Ony sent me this one and I was like, oh, this feels like the beginning of a novel. Like everything else, we enjoyed it and it was fun, but it was very like, kind of scrappy and vibesy, and it didn't really have any kind of plot legs to it. Whereas that one, I was like, this one has legs. And then once you've written a novel, it's hard not to see every story in the sense of, does this have legs? We do a lot less of the kind of just vague writing back and forth. But yeah, so it's kind of always Been part of our relationship is the answer.

Blake Reichenbach [00:20:51]:
And I'm curious, how has that process evolved for you all over the years? Presumably, since you're sitting together and on the same computer, the Skype dates are fewer and far between. But I'm curious, like, how, you know, do you still, like, draft passages and chapters and send them to each other? Do you brainstorm ideas ahead of time? What does that look like?

Onjuli Datta [00:21:14]:
We still mostly write quite separately. I have, like, a. My separate little writing cave where I go. And it's interesting because it's different with every novel. And I think there was, like, after our first novel was finished and had come out, we kind of went into the next one with this incredibly structured approach where we were like, okay, now we're like business people, and we're doing project management, and we have all of these Google spreadsheets where we put every single scene and what every single character is feeling throughout the scene. And then the risk with that is that the end product that you end up with is actually just, like, almost like just a blueprint or like, kind of like an AI transcript of a novel. And so we kind of realized that, like, I guess that the magic for us does come from this kind of extremely gleeful writing back and forth and having your writing partner send you something they've been working on all week and having it appear in your inbox and be like, oh, my God, it's here. I finally get to read the thing, and I'm going to leave 100 comments in it. And so that's kind of the style that we stick with, but we just talk about it a lot more. And we do add structure, but the structure is, let's go out for dinner tonight and have a long conversation about what's going to happen in the next chapter. And it feels a lot like we have these kind of close friends that we're gossiping about behind their backs. And then with that material, material that we have, we can then go away, do our writing separately. And then the next step, once we have this kind of very messy pile of scenes all put together, is that we move into the editing process and we try to edit each other's work. So we take whichever scene we didn't write in the first draft, and a lot of it just gets rewritten. We're very big on editing. I think for some writers, editing is not something that they like to do or something that feels like you shouldn't have to do. But for us, editing is really the key. Or, like the diamond in the process.

Mikaella Clements [00:23:01]:
It's Sort of like it feels like the moment when you realize what you were writing about, you're kind of like, oh, here we go. So we edit each other's stuff, and then we switch it again, and we edit that again. And we typically go through, like, at least three or four drafts before maybe even our agent will see it. And in that kind of process, it becomes like a write. Like, because we grew up writing together also, in a way, like, our writing style is already pretty similar. Like, it's not like a massive jarring sort of thing, but through the process of editing each other's work and stuff like that, it really becomes so entwined that most of the time, we can't tell. Like, if you picked up Feast and, yeah, went to a random page and read me a paragraph, I would maybe be able to guess who wrote half a sentence. But, like, it becomes very. It's sort of.

Onjuli Datta [00:23:50]:
Yeah, I think both of our fingerprints are all over all of it.

Mikaella Clements [00:23:53]:
Exactly. So, yeah, it gets really entwined in that sense. And the only other thing I would say about our writing process is that what really helps when you're editing each other's work is Google Docs, which I owe my life to, especially, because when you do the kind of suggest changes edit, you can pretend that it's not actually your wife who's leaving you these edits and comments. It's like a mean robot. Your wife loves everything that you've ever written. And the mean robot has some things to say.

Blake Reichenbach [00:24:23]:
Well, I mean, the mean robot sounds like plays a pretty important role, so there's got to be that common, you know, variable in the equation.

Onjuli Datta [00:24:32]:
Exactly.

Blake Reichenbach [00:24:33]:
And it's so cool that you mentioned that, you know, because you both grew up writing online together. Like, your. Your writing styles aren't that vastly different, because that was one of the things I was so, so curious about is like, what is that, like, normalizing process to go from my voice and my voice to our voice look like. And it sounds like my voice and my voice aren't that far apart to begin with. But then you have this, like, really cool editing process where you're swapping passages, swapping scenes, and then back again and really finding what your voice as a duo is.

Mikaella Clements [00:25:15]:
Yeah, exactly. I think there are some pairs of authors, and often this is not a slam. I often really enjoy this where the point that you have two very different voices is the whole point of the book. You have alternating chapters, or one author writes one character's perspective and the other writes the other one. And I think that can Be really enjoyable. But for us, we always really wanted it to be this very fluid, cohesive voice. We wanted it to be the kind of thing where a reader couldn't pick where we were changing sort of thing.

Blake Reichenbach [00:25:48]:
Have there been challenges writing as a duo versus, you know, writing on your own?

Mikaella Clements [00:25:57]:
I think like a kind of interesting challenge or switch for us in terms of being a duo was writing our first book, the View is exhausting, which has a heterosexual romance, and then moving to write a lesbian romance in Feast While You Can. And when we wrote the View was exhausting. Like, the reasons we wrote a heterosexual romance, partially. It was like, as on says it was somewhere between 2014 and 2016 when we started writing it. The plot of the View is basically a fake dating relationship to attract good publicity. And we were like, well, who would use, like, which celebrity?

Onjuli Datta [00:26:35]:
At the time, it seemed insane to use a queer relationship for good publicity. I think it was still something that would be more. More like, what is going. It was like kind of more like Samantha Ronson, Lindsay Lohan kind of vibe. If that was to happen.

Mikaella Clements [00:26:47]:
Yeah, so it would have been tricky. So that was one reason. The other reason was that we're both interested in heterosexuality. I find it kind of fascinating. It's a cultural phenomenon.

Blake Reichenbach [00:26:57]:
I know. Why did they keep doing it? I don't. I don't understand.

Mikaella Clements [00:27:02]:
They've had so much proof that it doesn't work. But, yeah, so we were kind of interested in writing the power dynamics in heterosexuality and the good and the bad sort of things there. And also, like, the two main characters really kind of strolled into our head and took up residence there. And it was a man and a woman. So we were kind of like, well, here you are. What can we do? But having said all of that and that all being true, I think the thing that we realized while writing Feast While You Can is that it was a very vulnerable experience to be two lesbian women who were married to each other writing a lesbian romance. And I think that is like, there's an element of safety to writing like a heterosexual romance, because you're really being like, you can't find me in this. Like, don't look for us. Don't look for our marriage. And as an author, I think one of the questions you always get, which is like, a fair enough curiosity and is one that I myself have sometimes, is sort of like, how much of this is you? How much of this is your experience? How much of this is, you know, your life and your wants and your. I don't know, Perspective. But because we're a duo and because we're married to each other, sometimes that can get a bit uncomfortable.

Onjuli Datta [00:28:20]:
Yeah, I think it puts. It definitely puts our relationship on the table as, like, a line of questioning or like a focus in terms of, like, the content that we choose to write about, I guess. And I think that's kind of also. I think for us, whenever people find out that we write together, we always hear like, oh, you must fight all the time. It must be this real. If I was writing with my partner, we would disagree about everything. It would be really hard. But I think for us, the working relationship feels very much like being in a band and doing songwriting together and kind of riffing on each other and building on each other's ideas. And that has always come pretty naturally and easily. But when it comes to the job of publishing and the job of being established writers, putting books out, that's when it's trickier because it's a very vulnerable, exposing thing to do, to kind of be doing press and running a social media account and doing interviews and things. And I think that's something where it is trickier to be two people because there's so much boundary negotiation that is needed for that and so much kind of care and effort. And it's also not something that comes as naturally to us as writing does. So I guess that's the other challenge.

Mikaella Clements [00:29:36]:
Yeah. The marketing a book, I think, is hard anyway. Like, every author I know finds it difficult in their own way. But I think when you're two people marketing it and you have, like, different experiences and different, you know, comfort levels, I guess with certain things, it does require a lot of kind of careful negotiation. And also when it's your partner and you're kind of like, hey, the thing that I'm really anxious and stressed about is also exactly the same thing that you're really anxious and stressed about, that can sometimes be like. That's the bit where we both have to kind of be like, deep breaths. It'll be over in three months.

Onjuli Datta [00:30:14]:
Yeah. It's also just the thing when you need to record a video of both of you talking and one of you is really happy with the shot and the other one is not, and it's like, okay, we've got to record it again. And then the other one's happy and the other one's not this type of stuff. But I think in terms of craft, it always feels like a bonus to be writing together. Yeah.

Blake Reichenbach [00:30:33]:
Getting two people to agree on a shot, which, like, yeah, I can only Speak for, like, gay men. But getting two gay men in a photo together, they're both happy about it. That would be a three hour endeavor for the first photo to come out. Right.

Onjuli Datta [00:30:49]:
We actually just had an event with Eliza Clark in London last month, and it was so fun and she's so great to talk to. And it was just mostly about, like, women's writing and writing, queer rights, queer stories and writing horror. But she started the talk with basically a PSA that was like, hey, it's totally fine to take pictures of us. It's totally fine to post them online. Don't post anything unflattering. If you post something unflattering, I won't be happy with it. I was like, thank you so much. That's a great thing to say.

Blake Reichenbach [00:31:18]:
That is really like allyship in action.

Onjuli Datta [00:31:22]:
Yes.

Blake Reichenbach [00:31:22]:
Every event there should be someone on a microphone giving that disclaimer.

Onjuli Datta [00:31:27]:
Yeah.

Blake Reichenbach [00:31:29]:
Speaking of allyship, we did make some jokes about heterosexuals. The Equal Insights podcast does support our heterosexual listeners. I am an ally. I don't know why you make that choice, but I support you.

Mikaella Clements [00:31:42]:
I have a sibling who is heterosexual.

Blake Reichenbach [00:31:45]:
I do too.

Onjuli Datta [00:31:46]:
They're fine. They're fine.

Blake Reichenbach [00:31:50]:
Heterosexuals can be lovely. Okay, so since we are coming up on the end of our scheduled time, I do want to close with like a couple of just rapid fire questions. So both of you just kind of like off the top of your head, what is going to be your gut reaction here? Are you ready?

Mikaella Clements [00:32:12]:
Yes, I'm leaning in.

Blake Reichenbach [00:32:14]:
All right, yeah. Let's all get situated. Okay, so given the setting of feast. First question. Mountain vacation or beach vacation?

Mikaella Clements [00:32:26]:
Oh, mountain.

Onjuli Datta [00:32:27]:
Yeah, mountain.

Blake Reichenbach [00:32:29]:
All right.

Mikaella Clements [00:32:30]:
I'm just already doubting herself.

Onjuli Datta [00:32:32]:
There's mountains by the beach. That happens. It does.

Blake Reichenbach [00:32:36]:
What is one book other than yours that everyone should read?

Mikaella Clements [00:32:41]:
It's not even like blanking. It's like too many.

Onjuli Datta [00:32:43]:
Yeah, there's too many immediately popping into my head, I think for writers. Like, if there's writers listening to this one book that I always return to, especially when I'm feeling very anxious about writing, is David Sedaris Diaries, the first edition. They're called Theft by Finding, I think. But there's long periods of him wanting to be a writer and reading a lot, but also being very a down and out artist. And then you kind of see in real time his kind of career progression, and I find it very comforting. So I recommend that.

Mikaella Clements [00:33:13]:
And I would say if you're looking for more 90s queer horror, you should read now Conjurers by Freddy Koch. It's a YA novel, but it's just so good. I just loved it so much.

Blake Reichenbach [00:33:26]:
Nice. Both excellent, excellent recommendations. When you're writing music or silence.

Mikaella Clements [00:33:34]:
Oh, music. We have thousands of playlists that are extremely obsessed with our playlists, and we share them back and forth.

Onjuli Datta [00:33:43]:
I also listen to a lot of, like, you know, like, lo fi chill beats to study and relax too. That's great for writing during.

Blake Reichenbach [00:33:50]:
I'm getting away from the rapid fire questions because speaking of the lo fi beats during, like, the peak of the COVID pandemic, and I couldn't go to any coffee shops, which is like my favorite place to just sit and write. I'm that guy that will buy like. Yes, yes. There was like, one in particular that's like, coffee shop, rainy day, metropolitan area lo fi beats. It was just so good. They even had like the espresso grinder and everything.

Onjuli Datta [00:34:20]:
Yeah, there was one that was like office vibes and it had like a beeping photocopier every 20 minutes in the background. Yeah, I love that.

Blake Reichenbach [00:34:30]:
All right, final rapid fire question. One's gonna require a little bit of role playing to put yourself in the situation. Like Angelina, you are being tormented by an ancient evil. But unlike her, you can keep it at bay by eating your favorite comfort food. What are you snacking on to keep the evil at bay?

Mikaella Clements [00:34:55]:
Oh, I am quite like Angelina in the sense, I think it would just be endless pasta, like variations of pasta bolognese, but also like just that one that you make like at the end of the week when you've only got, like, garlic and onion and a little bit of, like, cheese in the back of your cupboard. And you're just gonna, like, put all of that in a pot. It would just be a pasta forever. And I would be so happy. I would thank the monster.

Onjuli Datta [00:35:17]:
Mine would probably be, like, really sour candy, like, like haribur tang pasta's candy. And I'm not really allowed to eat it because it gives me such a, like, bad stomach. But I feel like if I was faced with an ancient evil, I would be like, ah, screw it. I'm just gonna deal. But I like that, like, in the book, you know, the Angelina's kind of way to get away from this monster. And the only thing that will keep it at bay is being touched by, like, her hot butch frenemy. And for us, it's just like, pasta and candy.

Blake Reichenbach [00:35:46]:
It felt significantly more inappropriate to ask you, like, which hot butch friend when you all are a married couple. So I felt comfort food was a good alternative.

Mikaella Clements [00:35:56]:
Fair Enough. Very good show.

Blake Reichenbach [00:35:57]:
All right, thank you all so much. If folks want to find out more about Feast or keep up with you all, where can they do that?

Onjuli Datta [00:36:05]:
We have an Instagram account. It's a shared one. It's called Mikandonge M I K A N D O N J. We made some pretty funny amateur real content for Feast, which is super fun. And then I also have this kind of series called Feast Files, which there's a highlight on our Instagram reel, but it's just basically a bunch of memes and funny tweets and pictures that relate to Feast and people send them in and we love sharing them as well. So. So it's fun.

Mikaella Clements [00:36:34]:
That's the main place. But thank you so much for having us. This was amazing.

Blake Reichenbach [00:36:38]:
Yeah, absolutely. And the Instagram account will be linked in the show notes for folks who are listening and want to find them very easily. Additionally, on our website, we will have a link directly to Feast While You Can, so that you can order your own copy. And if you're a podcast listener, you might even have a special discount code at the end of this episode. So stay tuned for that. All right, Mikaella and Anjali, thank you both so, so much. This has been an absolute delight. And I am going to go out in my little rural mountain town and hopefully encounter zero, maybe one ancient evil. We'll see. We'll see how the day unfolds.

Onjuli Datta [00:37:19]:
Maybe someone hot.

Mikaella Clements [00:37:20]:
Anyway.

Blake Reichenbach [00:37:20]:
Yeah, that too could be the same thing.

Mikaella Clements [00:37:22]:
Thank you so much. That was the best.

Blake Reichenbach [00:37:31]:
Didn't I tell you that would be delightful? All right, so maybe in the rapid fire questions, I should have asked which hot butch friend or which hot butch person, rather than which comfort food, they would want to dispel an ancient evil from their lives. But other than that, I think that was pretty, pretty damn fabulous. When I think about my own creative process and how solitary it is, I find it so fascinating when there are people who can engage in this really intimate, difficult act with someone else as an equal collaborator. I think what Mikaella and Anjali have created for themselves in terms of their writing process and their writing routine is so unique and so, so special. I also think if you're involved in a writing group or like, you know, like a, a feedback group, a critique group, there's a lot that you can learn about how they work together and apply that to your own writing group. Obviously, I'm not saying that you should marry everyone in your writing group, but hey, if that is your writing group's vibe, invite me. Baby, I can't believe I just went into that voice. But I think that where they talk about drafting back and forth, or one of them will come up with a concept and they'll just start playing with scenes together and how they go about editing each other's work to kind of normalize the voice so that it's not all Anjali, it's not all Mikaella. It is the Mikaella and Anjali voice. I think that is something that when we are working with our own critique partners, our own writing groups, we can start to take into those conversations and ask ourselves, like, are we giving feedback that helps people develop their ideas? Are we pushing them to shape their ideas in a new and exciting way? Or are we just reflecting back our personal voices and preferences? I think finding a good critique partner, a good collaborator, is so, so difficult because so many people don't know how to give valuable feedback. I think valuable feedback is always going to be driven by curiosity and it's always going to follow those, like, improv principles of yes, and where you're saying, what if? How can maybe this. And putting those ideas together to shape up something that's really unique and really special. All too often I think critique partners are just taking that role of editor and they're saying like, oh, this sentence could be shorter. You know, you have a comma splice here. Heaven forbid you have a comma splice or you use this word incorrectly. And for most writers, that is not nearly as helpful as having someone to bounce ideas off of go down those what if rabbit holes. And so, you know, hearing Mikaella and Anjali talk about what they do, I was immediately excited, but also a little bit sad because I don't have a writing partner like that in my writing life. So maybe that's what I will be on the lookout for coming up in the near future. Anyway, we are closing out 2024 and or starting 2025. I should really learn my publishing schedule a bit better so I can stop estimating either way. We are in the vicinity of a new year. And you know what I think you need for the new year? I think you need some books. See where we're going with this. I think you need more books. So head over to howdycuriosity.com and if you want to pick up a copy of Feast While You Can, I'm going to be offering listeners of the Inkwell Insights podcast a 15% discount code. Just use the code Feast While You Can at checkout. I know the security is awesome. People are never going to be able to guess that the discount code for Feast While You Can is Feast While You Can. But that's what we're going to go with because it's easy to remember. I want you to save that 15% and you know, all one word, all lowercase. Super simple. Also, pretty sure that discount code is going to be in the show notes of this episode, so if you do forget really simple passwords, just read. Just read. Maybe that's the takeaway of this podcast overall is just read in all things read. Well, on that note, I'm going to go begin my quest to find a really, really great writing partner. But I probably won't marry them, so stay safe. Read more. And remember, if you are being attacked by an ancient evil and it is poisoning your life, just find the nearest hot butch friend. Have a great day everybody.