A Literal Journey
Step into the world of stories with A Literal Journey, a weekly podcast/show hosted by author Seth Adam Smith. Each episode features thoughtful conversations with beloved and emerging authors about reading, writing, and the stories that shape who we become.
In every episode, Seth talks to authors about the stories that sparked their love for storytelling, their path of writing and publishing, and the lessons they've learned on their own "literal journey." Because, in the end, we don't just tell stories, we become the stories we tell ourselves.
So whether you’re a reader searching for your next favorite book, or a creative searching for inspiration and encouragement, A Literal Journey will help you move forward!
A Literal Journey
Maybe The Answer Is Under Your Socks? 🧦 Jacqueline West on Writing The Books of Elsewhere & Black Point
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How do you learn what is your heart is TRULY hungry for?
In this episode of A LITERAL JOURNEY, I sit down with Jacqueline West, the New York Times bestselling author of The Books of Elsewhere, The Collectors, Last Things, Long Lost, and her latest: Black Point.
Guys, I gotta admit: I REALLY enjoyed this conversation. (Jacqueline's"author origin story" resonated with me.) Long before she was a bestselling author, Jacquline West was *secretly* writing stories and hiding them in her sock drawer. She did that for years until one day she realized that being an opera singer wasn't what her heart was hungry for. She didn't want to sing the words that other people had written, she wanted to write them (talk about a plot twist)!
During our conversation, we talk about the novel she almost deleted (but eventually became the start of The Books of Elsewhere), a very real (very creepy) house that inspired the series, why she finds setting so important to her stories, and her new folk-horror novel Black Point—a story laced with the unsettling idea that maybe human beings are far scarier than any ghosts we may encounter...
But, no spoilers! You'll have to listen to the FULL episode to learn more!
Whether you're a reader, writer, parent, teacher, or someone trying to find out what their heart is hungry for, I hope this episode encourages you to open a book (or pick up a pen) and embark on your own literal journey.
About JACQUELINE WEST:
Jacqueline West is the author of the NYT-bestselling middle grade series The Books of Elsewhere, the Schneider Family Award Honor Book The Collectors, the YA horror novel Last Things, the Minnesota Book Award-winning middle grade mystery Long Lost, the recently published YA horror novel Black Point, and several other odd and twisty books for young readers. Her poetry and short fiction for adults appear in a variety of publications. She lives in Red Wing, Minnesota.
💀 ORDER "Black Point" here: https://amzn.to/4wyccdr
📚 CHECK OUT other books by Jacqueline West here: https://amzn.to/4hAF3u6
🌐 Visit Jacqueline West's website: https://www.jacquelinewest.com/
🎧 LISTEN on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1CvEfBcK1xALUswAkOwlNf?si=98cea0829ca145e6
🍎 LISTEN on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-literal-journey/id1839517342
🎥 WATCH more episodes of A LITERAL JOURNEY: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRTQ34vyf-9NkrTcSH0KEwXPOhdVqZRVZ
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to A LITERAL JOURNEY for more exclusive author interviews, book recommendations, and thoughtful conversations about the stories that shape us. 📖✨
#horror #author #aliteraljourney #halloween #suspense #socks
What I do have to remind myself, and I hope I've gotten a little better at this, is like the one thing you can control is the work. And that's what you love anyway. I mean, that's the whole point of all of this. Is just like, does the idea of getting to sit somewhere quiet for an hour and write still make you deliriously happy? Yes.
Seth Adam SmithAnd today's guest is author Jacqueline West. From her bio, Jaclyn West is the author of the New York Times best-selling middle grade series, The Books of Elsewhere, which I read the first one to my daughter, the Schneider Family Award honor book The Collectors, the YA horror novel Last Things, the Minnesota Book Award-winning middle grade mystery Long Lost, the recently published YA horror novel Blackpoint, and several other odd and twisty books for young readers. Her poetry and short fiction for adults appear in a variety of publications. And she lives in Red Wing, Minnesota. Now, long before Jacqueline West became a New York Times best-selling author, she was actually secretly writing stories. And I mean that very literally. She was secretly writing stories. In fact, she would hide them underneath her pajamas and socks while she was pursuing a completely different creative path. And she did that for years until one day she realized that being an opera singer wasn't what her heart was hungry for. And that was a quote, she said, it wasn't what her heart was hungry for. With all that being said, this is my conversation with Jacqueline West on A Literal Journey. Well, Jacqueline, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show. It's an absolute honor to have you here.
Jacqueline WestOh, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about stories with you.
Seth Adam SmithI'm good. And forgive the technical issues. We had quite a few uh coming into this interview, but um I'm glad we've we've persevered. We've gotten to this point. Um, for listeners or viewers who may be discovering you for the first time, just give us a little bit of background on your story. What is your story and what got you into storytelling?
Jacqueline WestSure. So um I have been a full-time writer now for 16 years, which sounds incredible even to my own ears. I um and my first published books were the series The Books of Elsewhere, which is a five-book dark fantasy mystery series that was published by Penguin from 2010 to 2015, uh, and that are amazingly still in print, still finding readers. Uh and since then I have written several other middle grade and young adult books, um, including The Collectors and its sequel, Digging Up Danger, uh, which I wrote with the Story Pirates, uh, Long Lost, which is a middle-grade mystery ghost story, um, the YA horror novels, Last Things, and my latest is Black Point, which was just released on July 28th. So it's still my brand new book, baby. Um, so that is me. And as for how I got into storytelling, I've always been a bookish kid, a story kid. I grew up in a house full of books. My mother was an English teacher who took a break from teaching to essentially be a teacher for just the couple of us who were at home. Um, and so I grew up just enthralled with stories, uh, just assuming that they were, you know, unfolding everywhere around me, and that if I I imagined and if I found the right costume, I could put myself into my favorite stories. So I spent a lot of time as a young kid wearing a costume I made out of castels and tinfoil and whatever we had in the basement, and then I was Wonder Woman or I was Alice in Wonderland or I was Dorothy or whatever fairy tale character I was obsessed with at the time. Um, and so even though I lived that kind of like book saturated childhood, I did not ever imagine myself becoming a writer. Uh, I think because writers were so miraculous to me. They were like these wizards who created these worlds that I believed in so completely. I thought they must have, you know, some kind of magical power to make that possible. And I did not. I wish they did, but I didn't. Um and also so many of my favorite writers, um, especially the ones who who wrote about wanting to be a writer, people like Joe March and Little Women or Anne and Anna Green Gables, um, were obviously the author, you know, recreated as a character, and the story had this foundation in their own lives. Or I knew that Alice, you know, from Alice in Wonderland had been a real girl or Christopher Robin was a real boy. And so I thought, oh, you must have to have the kind of life that would make an amazing story to be a writer. And I thought my own life was not worthy of that. That's why I wanted to live everybody else's stories. Um, so I did not imagine myself as a writer, I did not plan to be a writer, but started to write stories just because I couldn't help it as a kid. I started to get ideas that would not leave me alone. Um, but then I wrote completely in secret, all the way from childhood through the end of high school, hiding my stories literally under my pajamas or under my socks in my dresser drawers. So nobody knew what I was doing in my spare time. Um, and then when I went off to college, it was for something far more practical than creative writing of I was gonna be an opera singer.
Seth Adam SmithWow.
Jacqueline WestYeah, which I had also done all along. And then I went to grad school for opera. My family's very musical. And when you are a singer, it's so external. You know, it involves all this performance and competition, and it's very addictive and it's it's also very frightening. But it that is part of, I think, the addiction is that cycle of like trying and failing and getting it and then needing the next thing. Um, and so there's all this external validation for being a singer, whereas for writing, none of that because nobody knew. And so finally, when I was in grad school and realized I I don't want to be an opera singer, I'm not even sure why I have gone this far down this path. Um, I finally like took a step back and looked at my life. And the thing that I had loved all along and had dedicated every spare moment to was writing. And so I realized, oh, this is really what I'm supposed to be doing. I need to have the kind of work that lets me share stories. And so I finished my English degree, got my English teaching certification, and I was working as a high school English teacher. I was just in my second year of teaching when I got my book contract.
Seth Adam SmithWow.
Jacqueline WestSo I took a very like sudden, yeah, rightward turn, or maybe leftward, I don't know, a turn at some point. Um, yeah, that led me here, and I feel so lucky that I finally figured it out. So yeah, that's how I got it.
Seth Adam SmithThat's amazing. I mean, I I've Alyssa Palambo, uh, she was a singer and she was in her master's program. And yours seemed like, was there a specific like uh kind of like a lightning bolt, or was it more gradual?
Jacqueline WestIt it was quite lightning bolt-y. Um so I had been a double major all through undergrad in music and English, so I always had that, you know, still keeping me company, even though I wasn't thinking of myself as a creative writing person. I was still getting to talk about books all day. And then at my master's program, suddenly it was only music. And I realized this is just not fulfilling me. It's not feeding me the way that like that, it's not, it's this all sounds so flaky. It just was not what I emotionally like what my heart was hungry for. I just felt like I am, I am not not the person for this. I'm I'm not getting to create the story. You know, I I still love music and have huge admiration for for people in that world, but I wanted to be the one writing the words, not just the one singing, you know, someone else's words. And yeah, it it was there was a moment in, you know, like my second month of my master's program after a master class where I was just like, this is not how I want to spend my life. I I took around a step somewhere and I need to go backward a little bit. Yeah. And so it was abrupt, but then it was at least like the answer was right there and had been there all along. So I didn't feel like I had to look hard. It was just like, oh, look in those drawers where you hit all those stories. Maybe that's that's the answer.
Seth Adam SmithWell, I'll I'll tell you what I think, and I mean, this is gonna be public. I just said don't tell other authors this, but I think your origin story is my favorite origin story. I I like that the most because what you said rings true with something that I've experienced, but that what you're doing is not what you're I wrote it down. It was not what your heart was hungry for. I love that because you know there's been quite a few things I've pursued that just haven't fulfilled me as much as say doing this where I interview authors. I love it, and I can't explain it. Like there's just something that the heart wants what it wants, and it takes a long time before you sometimes you have to go down the wrong path to know it was the wrong path. Absolutely to really appreciate the right path.
Jacqueline WestYes, and and that's why I don't regret it. I mean, at first I just wanted to kick myself, like, oh, you wasted all this time and all this money, and you could have gone to an MFA program instead. Like, there was literally a day where I had sent applications to uh MFA programs for poetry, sounds right poetry, um, and to uh English teaching certification programs. And I got my acceptance letter to my top choice on the same day from both places, which was lovely, and I didn't expect it. And I chose the English teaching route because I knew that if I went the MFA route, I would still not know what I was gonna do with my life on a day-to-day basis. You know, it was gonna be a paying job for a poet. I needed to have some some way where I was getting to share and talk about stories and hopefully foster a love of reading. And yeah, suddenly teaching seemed like, no, that's that's now clearly the path. And I'm again really glad I got to experience that. That did give me a whole bunch of skills and and tools that I draw on now as a writer and as a as an author in schools. So yeah, all the zigzags have definitely, yeah, given me the tools and the resources that I that I use now. And I'm really grateful. Although, like I said, at the time I thought, what a waste.
Seth Adam SmithYour origin story is really resonating with me, and I'm sure with a lot of people are gonna listen to this because I get a lot of aspiring authors who listen to the show, and it's just it just it always feels like something is off, something's not there, and and you persist in something that is otherwise good, but then you're like, I but I don't, my heart's not here, it's not here, it's somewhere else. It's somewhere my heart's somewhere where I know I'm not gonna make as much money.
Jacqueline WestYeah, and if you know, I mean, in a field of any of the arts, if you know that you do not have that complete feeling of love, of passion, of commitment to it, why try to do it? It's something that you know it's gonna be so hard to manage, no matter how lucky you are. Um, that yeah, if you if you can't just feel it in your bones that yes, this is what I have to do with my life. Yeah, it's and I I feel lucky that I finally found that spot. And I think you do recognize it the moment you you step into it, where you're like, oh yeah, this is the work I could do forever.
Seth Adam SmithWell, I structure these interviews around Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey where um there's a protagonist who's living in an ordinary world, and he or she feels the a call or a poll to go into the unknown, go on an adventure, and have uh this incredible experience, encounter resistance, meet friends and allies and enemies, they go through an abyss, they learn something very important, and they either bring something physical back or something they've learned back to the ordinary world they lived in and change everything. And I notice, you know, while authors are are following you know that structure in their writing, in their stories, they're following the same thing in their own lives. You just see it. It's amazing. Like once you see it, you can't unsee it because they're they're living in an ordinary world, and then they feel like this idea for a story, and they can't get it out of their minds, and so they have to go through this very literal journey to get that book published. And there's a lot of resistance along the way. And you know, you had mentioned you were working as a teacher when you got your book deal, but I'm I'm curious to know what was the resistance that you were encountering in that stage of you had an idea for a story and you were writing it. What was the resistance you were encountering, either internal or external, and how did you overcome that?
Jacqueline WestOh boy. Uh I've been at this long enough now. I feel like I've had every kind of obstacle, which again mostly makes me feel lucky because then you figure out how to persevere in spite of each one. Um, but so I guess the earliest ones were I started writing what became my first published book, The Shadows, volume one of the books of elsewhere, when I was a college student. So when I was going to school for voice and I was working at a dinner theater, that was my college job. So doing, you know, between six and eight shows a week. And then I would literally hide in the basement dressing room doing intermission scribble. Should have figured it out sooner. Anyway, I started writing the book back then. Um, and it was the first thing I had ever written. I mean, that that I had ever written for young readers. And it was also the first thing that I had written that was novel-shaped that I genuinely believed in. Like I had started many books before as a younger writer and just realized I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't know how to build this book yet. But with this book, I was so excited and it felt so natural, like everything was just falling into place. Everything that I loved as a young reader myself, I was getting to play with in my own new colors and my own ways. And I was halfway through writing the book when a friend loaned me her copy of Coraline, which had recently come out. So I read the book and I went, oh great, because my book had a creepy old house, a talking cat, an 11-year-old girl, and another world inside the house that she could go into. Just like Coraline.
Seth Adam SmithOh.
Jacqueline WestEven though I had written this thing with no awareness of Coraline and had, you know, started it based on ideas that have been living in my brain since middle school, like this house in my hometown, my friends' cats, all this stuff was tangled up in there. But I thought, oh, there is no point finishing this book, even though it's the first book I've ever really believed in that I was writing. And so for three years, I didn't work on it at all. I almost deleted it from my computer that first day. I was so frustrated. And instead, I just, you know, shut it and I worked on other things and I went to grad school. And then one day, cleaning out the old files on my computer, I went back to this old draft and opened it and read it and realized how different it was from Coraline in so many important to me ways. And it didn't have an ending. And I really wanted to know what was going to happen. So I finally wrote one. But after that three-year gap, um, although that gap ended up being a huge gift as well, because I could come back to the book with so much objectivity and you know, fresh eyes and a, I hope, a stronger set of writing skills, and then finally finished the book. But that was the first huge obstacle and the reason it almost didn't become a book at all. And so then, of course, when it came out, and it did inevitably get some coralline comparisons, each one was like a little old job, where I'm like, nope, nope, coincidence. I'm sorry. Um, but that was the first hurdle. Then when the book was done, I mean, this is back in like 2007, 2008. This is long enough ago that to query agents, you were still sending like actual postal letters with a self-addressed stamped envelope in it. It sounds so antique now.
Seth Adam SmithWhat year was that?
Jacqueline West2008 when I started querying.
Seth Adam SmithIt doesn't, you know, that doesn't sound so far away, but it is like so much has changed.
Jacqueline WestYes, yes. I still had to use the actual paper books of you know, poets and writers' markets, and I would go to borders, which also doesn't exist anymore and sit in the border shop. Oh yeah, all the antique stuff. So uh so that's how I went about starting to look for an agent, is in this very slow, very, you know, what's the word? Non-technical, I mean, no email uh way. And the even bigger hurdle was I didn't know anyone else who was doing what I was doing. Um, because I was, you know, a music and theater person all along, I didn't have a writing community. I didn't know anybody else who was writing until in grad school I joined a poetry workshop that was full of incredible writers who were all there for their MFA, and I was the one little person who like squeaked in somehow. Um but that was inspiring and helpful. But of course, they were all very serious poets, very intellectual and academic, and here I'm writing my creepy middle grade story that you didn't tell anyone about. Um so I didn't have anyone to ask. Like, is this normal? What do I do now? I had to figure it all out in the, you know, what I could glean from people's blogs. And there were a few authors and a few agents who kept up fantastically useful blogs at the time that I just poured over, learning how to write a query letter, learning how the whole submission process worked. But I did it in this like very, yeah, no actual human contact way, um, just gathering what I could from from strangers. And so that was slow. And it took me about two years to find an agent because I didn't know because I didn't have anyone to ask, that you should send out a bunch of letters at a time. So I would send one and then wait for like five or six months for that envelope to come back in the mail. Yes, not efficient. Um, but there again, I got super lucky. I uh I sent a query to an agency that sounded like a good fit for the book, and my query ended up on the desk of an intern, and he called me. Uh, and I became his very first client. I am what made him a junior agent instead of an intern. And so we both took this leap together, like brand new writer, brand new agent. And I'm, I mean, I again, because I didn't know how this was supposed to go. I didn't know what was normal, I didn't know all the questions to ask of an agent, and I'm just incredibly fortunate that it turned out that he was everything he seemed to be. He was honest and brilliant and kind and you know, doing what he was supposed to do, and found me the perfect Tom for the book. Um, so that the finding the agent was another big hurdle. Um, but from then on, like I have been, I mean, I've had all the the the usual dips. You have the books that die on submission, you have the books that go out of print, you have the books that just don't find the readers you hope they're gonna find, and the ones that just kind of quietly go out there into the shadows, and uh and then you have the high points as well. So yeah, I've got a lot of ups and downs, but but those first first couple of hurdles were the biggest.
Seth Adam SmithYou know, while you were talking, you were trying to describe what it was like, the process of of sending it in in an envelope out to the publisher. The word that came to mind, which is so funny to think, because I'm 40 now, but I'm I'm thinking about this. It's that's analog. That's the analog way, analog way of doing it. Yeah, and I'm like, oh, is that is that an old way of doing it? Can't be an old way, can it? Is it an old way of doing things?
Jacqueline WestApparently it is, yeah. No actual paper anymore.
Seth Adam SmithAnd you said borders, and you know, like I the last week I drove by where it used to be, and it's just this old abandoned building. I'm like, oh everything's changed.
Jacqueline WestOh time, yes, yeah. Um I wrote a huge amount of my first book at my my near to my college borders, where I also read The Tale of Despero, which it like showed me what kind of things were being done in current middle grade, and just was like, oh, I I I'd love to do this. I yeah, absolutely fell in love with it all over again.
Seth Adam SmithSo talk to me about the books of elsewhere. Um, you kind of mentioned it um and gave kind of an idea, but but but give our listeners an idea of what the story is about, I guess, without uh giving away spoilers. And then I want to talk just a little bit about the idea, what inspired it.
Jacqueline WestSure. Um, so the books of elsewhere, like I mentioned, is a five-book Dark Fantasy series about a girl named Olive Dunwoody who moves into this strange old stone house with her parents, who are both mathematicians and see the world through a very, very scientific, very logical lens. And Olive is very different from them, very creative, very lonely. She's an only child and they've moved around a lot, and she's always felt kind of out of place. And so in this new house, where once again she's alone a lot, she starts to explore and begins to notice things that her parents just don't notice. It's not their interest. Um, most importantly, she notices that all of the paintings that have been left hanging on the walls by the former owners, that there's something very strange about them. Like out of the corner of her eye, she can see things inside of them moving. And eventually she finds a pair of antique spectacles hidden in a drawer upstairs. And when she puts them on, all of the paintings in the house come to life. And she finds that she can even climb inside of them and talk to the people in them and explore these worlds where everything is made out of paint. And it turns out some of the people in those paintings are portraits of the house's former owners who might not want her and her family there. And others are something else. Others need her help. And so that's that's elsewhere, that that painted world inside of the house. And yeah, that's where it all started.
Seth Adam SmithWell, and I I had read it actually quite a few years ago, and I really enjoyed it. I read it to my daughter, um, the first book. And um, I will say I we like Coraline. We like Coraline a lot, the especially the animated uh version, the claymation one. I never made that comparison. I never made it, I never it never clicked. I was like, oh I guess. I mean, with the cat, you know, but the the old house thing, and there's a mystery with the old house. That's that's common. So I didn't, I didn't I didn't even see that.
Jacqueline WestBut I like hearing that. Thank you.
Seth Adam SmithAnd there was and there was a really good, um I don't know if I could say this is a good twist. Oh, good. There's a really good, I really enjoyed it. And I thought I did not see that coming. That was good.
Jacqueline WestSo oh, thank you so much. Good. Yeah, it was such a delight to write. I was just going back to all the things that I loved as a young reader myself, all the books I read out loud to my little brothers. We all loved the the mix of creepy but funny. We wanted like set in the real world but full of quirky and impossible things. Uh so yeah, writing it just felt like such a treat for my child self and for my my brothers in my head. Yeah.
Seth Adam SmithSo, what do you feel like was the real driving inspiration behind that idea?
Jacqueline WestSo it all started with the setting. So many of my books begin with a location. And I think I for me, I feel like I need to know a town or a house or whatever the specific spot is before I can understand the people who live in it. Um, and so with the the books of elsewhere, Olive's house is tremendously important to the story. I mean, it it it contains most of the story. The entire first book really takes place in the house itself. Um, and it doesn't go far beyond that. In the rest, the house is is really central to all of it. Um, there was a house in my hometown, which is quite different from the one I ended up describing in the book, but it was across the street from my middle school when I was a kid. And it was this, you know, three-story Victorian wooden mansion, now kind of falling apart, paint peeling off the boards, and the windows were always dark, and the yard was all leafy and overgrown. And um the man who owned the house was a retired doctor who, in his retirement, became an inventor. And so his yard was full of all these weird wind-powered machines, like with moving, whirling parts that he had built. And then out in front of the house, there was still the rusty sign that read, Dr. Pennington, physician and surgeon, because the house was old enough and he was old enough that there had been no clinic in the town back when he arrived. And so people would actually go to this haunted Victorian mansion and have surgery in its basement office. Like there was this little side door letting you. And I have I have since, of course, talked to many people who have lived in the house over the years, it became a rental place. And they were like, Oh yeah, that basement is terrifying. Oh, and the attic is full of like medical equipment too. No. So, but it all began with that. Like I wanted this haunted looking, eerie setting full of really eccentric mathematical, logical people, you know, really out of place. I wanted that collision. Um, and so that's where Olive and her family came from. I wanted that creepy house and then these mathematician folks in it to see what they would notice and what they wouldn't. Yeah.
Seth Adam SmithSo, so okay, okay, okay, all right, we're gonna back up here. So it they said it's creepy. Did they say it's haunted? That's this is an important thing. Is it haunted?
Jacqueline WestThere are not literal ghosts in the books of elsewhere.
Seth Adam SmithHowever, no, no, no, no, I was talking about the house that you that inspired.
Jacqueline WestNo, the the actual inspired house. I have most people have not said they felt any ghostly presences, but like surgical tables and so on are to be worse.
Seth Adam SmithIt was very successful. Your the first book. I mean, what was your reaction to the reaction? I mean, at what point did you start to think, oh my goodness, this is actually uh taking off?
Jacqueline WestSo the before the first book had even come out, my editor said to me, So you're gonna write a sequel, right? And I went, Sure, because I had not even let myself imagine that far ahead. I was so sure no one would want one book from me, because it was my first, let alone more, that I I genuinely had not imagined it. However, I think I had subconsciously been writing the start of a series because I did not have to change the structure of the story to make it the start of a series. All of these doors were shut but not locked, all of these characters were left in terrible situations, like I clearly needed to continue the story. So uh very quickly we decided, okay, there's definitely gonna be a sequel. And then again, even before that first book was published, we were talking about making it a series. And my editor is the one who said, How about five volumes? And again, like because I was brand new to all of this, I hadn't the hubris apparently to be like, sure, I can write without a without a plan, um, which is how I do everything that I'm writing. I'm not an outliner, I'm not a pre-planner, I have to figure it out as I go along. Um, but that was a gigantic undertaking, and I'm just lucky I somehow did manage to figure it out as I went along. Uh, because yeah, that's how it unfolded. Is I'm so lucky that they believed in me from the start. I know how much rarer that is now that anyone is offered, you know, a sequel, let alone a series. And because I knew I was gonna have, you know, five books, a book a year for five years, and I had never written anything that fast, I knew I would also have to make the leap to being a full-time writer in order to complete that. There was no way I could be a decent teacher and do this. Absolutely not. Um, so yeah, it was life-changing, like completely transforming to go from thinking of myself as, you know, uh an English teacher and a secret writer to no, I'm an author now. It and if the imposter syndrome was gargantuan. I mean, it's I of course I think we all still feel it, but that I really felt like I have tricked somebody. Like they they don't know what they're getting into, but but I I learned a tremendous amount through that journey, and I'm so grateful that I was given the chance. But yeah, that's how that's how that began. And again, because I didn't know what normal was when amazing things started happening for the shadows, like when it hit the New York Times bestseller list. I I it's one of those things I wish I could go back and experience again because you don't realize how rare that is and how, yeah, how what a big moment. I should have been just tearing in the street, and instead it was just part of the weird blur of all of it because everything was new, everything was strange.
Seth Adam SmithWell, you say I didn't know what normal was. Who knows what normal is? Normal is a moving target these days, is whatever, you know. That's that's amazing. Five book deal. Like it wasn't like, well, let's let's explore with two, maybe three. It was five books. Yeah, that's a lot, that's a lot of faith. That's incredible.
Jacqueline WestYeah, no, I'm so so lucky that they took that that chance on me and gave me that trust. So lucky.
Seth Adam SmithWell, let's shift gears a little bit and and skip ahead. You've written several books, but I really wanted to talk today about your newest book called Black Point. Um, again, without giving any spoilers, talk to our listeners about what that book is about, and then we'll get into what inspired it.
Jacqueline WestSure. Uh so Black Point is set in a tiny fictional town in Wisconsin along the upper Mississippi River, a town of fewer than a thousand people that's built right on the bluffs here that that overhang the water. Um, and so it's a place that economically and environmentally is really starting to struggle. It's a place people leave instead of moving to. Um, climate change, especially increasing flooding year by year, is really beginning to damage the town. And so it's just kind of struggling to hold on. And my main character, Lucia, has grown up there. Her family goes back there for generations, all the way to some of the towns, you know, Scandinavian settler founders. Um, and all she wants is to hang on to it, like to help preserve it, to keep her town alive. Um then some outsiders, some people from Minneapolis, uh move down and buy the local hotel, the landmark, Black Point Hotel, which has been empty for decades, um, you know, no longer needed in a town where trade and tourism are not happening. Uh, but as those newcomers move in and start renovating the hotel, they discover some things inside of it that reveal secrets about the town's past that many locals would have preferred would stay hidden for good. And now that those secrets are starting to rise to the surface, things are not going to be good for anybody. So that is Black Point.
Seth Adam SmithThat's and I I immediately was drawn to it because like I said before the interview started, I lived in Illinois, very rural part of Illinois. And I remember driving through, and I mean, just so much of that area, the Midwest, has really been, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it abandoned, but a lot, like you said, like a lot of it's small towns, a lot of people have left and come in to a lot of those areas. And so I immediately pictured that kind of the bluffs of the Mississippi River. Um, so it was that image you you were talking about, setting being critical, that image was really just drew me in. What was it that inspired you to write this story?
Jacqueline WestSo this one, like so many of my others, began with the setting. Um, like I said, Black Point is fictional, and even if it weren't, I would not recommend anybody go there. But uh but there are several little um Wisconsin riverside towns that kind of tangled together in my mind, many pieces of them built Black Point. Um and so yeah, there are several that are these beautiful, small, but now clearly kind of yeah, decaying or slowly shrinking. Um and sometimes you see, you see like someone coming in and trying to start something up again, and often it kind of struggles and fails because while they are really beautiful, um, they're also very insular. They're far enough away from any large city, and locals tend to not like change and not like it when an outsider comes in and thinks they get to build something brand new or take something over that has always belonged to someone, you know, from there. Uh and I live in a small, smallish riverside, I mean 17 times larger than Black Point in my book, but a smallish riverside town in Minnesota. And even here you can see that that mindset of like who is a real insider, who's actually from here, who belongs, and who isn't, and who is never going to be completely welcome. And so that the tension of the setting and the characters who might come into contact with each other in a place like that is where it all began.
Seth Adam SmithYeah, I and I I like that. I mean, we live in a smaller town, but you know, a lot of people kind of during COVID moved into smaller towns or smaller areas, and and that theme is pretty strong. Like you can, and and then in some ways you can understand it because hey, we grew up here, we're here for you know generations or whatever. This is how things are done, this is how we've lived in in to an extent you can understand it, and then but for new people coming in, you're like, well, let's let's bring in some new stuff and revitalize things, and then that I I see the pushback. I see the pushback in small towns. We grew up in my wife and I met uh we grew up kind of on the other side of Utah, and it was rural at the time, but it's exploded, and we couldn't, we couldn't possibly afford to live there now. So we came out to something that's a lot smaller, but it's so crazy just to see that dynamic. Um that dynamic being very, very tangible, I guess, I think for a lot of people. But with your story, is there is there a supernatural element or is there is it more of a mystery, would you say?
Jacqueline WestOh, there's a supernatural element for sure. Uh I I tend to classify this as folk horror. I think that's probably the the best label for it, but I've also already seen it called a mystery and a thriller, and honestly, whatever people want to call it is fine. But no, the the haunted hotel is genuinely haunted in this case. However, um the ghosts are they end up being a little more benevolent than some of the other forces that are at work in this novel. Um, so yeah, I I find I find the things that humans can do scarier than anything any creature or ghost can do. You know, that idea of the way that humans can make each other not human, you know, the the way that we can decide to classify or treat someone as not like us, and therefore it, you know, almost what we do to them doesn't count. Like they're not they're not real, they're not from here. Uh and so that was kind of one of the the big threads that I was weaving through this one. But yes, there are ghosts.
Seth Adam SmithWell, that was, yeah, and that's Stephen King had always, or at least I remember the a quote of from Stephen King talking about how humans were the scariest things that he would write in stories and how they would more often than not turn out to be the real monsters or the real antagonists in the stories. And that's that's true. I had I had said in my email to you that my favorite scary story was uh young Goodman Brown, just because of what it teaches about human nature. And I just I think it's so it's it's it's way more meaningful to read a story where you learn about yourself rather than just simply be entertained. You go, oh that I do act this way, or I do or or culture or the society does behave this way, and how can I not follow a negative trend?
Jacqueline WestRight. Yeah, yeah. No, you mentioning young goodman brown, and because of yeah, what it reveals about yourself, when you sent me that question, I immediately thought of my favorite short, scary story, and it's it's one of the foundational pieces for me as a writer, is the lottery by Shirley Jackson. Oh, yes, uh, which I think of as like the pinnacle of folk horror. Um, and I think, yeah, the thing that is so eerie about that is, you know, the banality of all of it, almost the sweetness of all of it. Here's this little small town with their little ritual, and then the the reveal where you realize, like, no, you as a person could so easily have been part of something like that. Because it's all of us. It's just human nature to you know accept the rules of the group and to go along and to want to be inside and and to not protest until you you're the one suddenly on the spot. So yeah, the the lottery is a huge influence, and yeah, for the same reason that you said, because it really does reveal humanity.
Seth Adam SmithYeah, without giving away spoilers, um uh the lottery is a short story about a town that comes together, I think, uh in the fall or something. Yeah, every year come together, draw a lottery for someone to do for something to happen. And and you find out, and it it is very chilling. So, like you're you're going along with the story as you're reading it the first time. You're like, oh, okay, what are we doing? What's the prize? And then yeah, then you get to the prize, and then then it it's horrifying, and then you go back and you read, and you're like, how can they how can they just chat about this? It's so grotesque.
Jacqueline WestYep, yeah.
Seth Adam SmithGood, good, a good choice of a scary story, yeah. The banality of evil. So talk to me about your other book, Last Things. What is the the premise behind that story?
Jacqueline WestSure, last things is um one of my my personal favorites because it was so much fun to write. Last Things is my modern day Minnesotan metal reimagining of the um legends of the musician who might have sold his soul to the devil. So I got to use a lot of my my musical background, although I was never like a rock band guitarist, unfortunately. But it's still music is music, and um got to draw on a lot of that while writing it. And then it's told in alternating viewpoints between this 18-year-old guitar prodigy named Anders, who lives in a tiny northern Minnesota town, who has gained this increasingly, you know, like rabid fan following for his band, Last Things, and he is the songwriter as well as the lead guitarist and singer. Um, but Anders knows that the inspiration for the songs that he is writing and the skill which he's now able to play, he feels like he might not have earned them, that someone may have given them to him, and now this force is coming to collect what it's owed. And then the other point of view in the book is Fia, who is a a newcomer in his town, who is his number one fan, slash maybe stalker, slash maybe something else. So again, the two of them are are telling the story piece by piece to the reader who gets to put together who do you believe and who do you trust. And yeah, this one was a a delight to write because I got to put so many of my favorite things in it.
Seth Adam SmithWell, uh you say favorite fanslash stalker. I immediately thought of Stephen King's up with what was that?
Jacqueline WestOh, misery? Is that like that's a fandom? Misery. Misery.
Seth Adam SmithYep, that's exactly. I'm your number one fan. Like that's immediately what I thought of. You never you want to avoid number one fans. Um so was this were you mostly doing um, I guess, books from middle grade, and and then was this your first foray into maybe an older audience?
Jacqueline WestThis was my second YA. My first YA is called Dreamers Often Lie, and it is my only book so far that has gone out of print. It was an odd little book, and I feel like it didn't quite know what it was and never quite found its readers. And that's all right. I'm glad that that I learned what I did by writing it. But no, last last things was that was the book I wrote for me. You know, I had three books under contract with Harper, all middle grade. And then this is what I was writing in between, just because I had this story I wanted to play with, and all these characters I was already like just in love with. Um, and so when I finished it and showed it to my agent, and then my my editor took that one too. I was just delighted. But yeah, it was the one that I I was again writing in secret, like I'm very comfortable doing, writing just for me. Yeah.
Seth Adam SmithYou said that that one came out before COVID, kind of when everything fell apart for a lot of people during COVID. How did you manage to move forward during that that time in the writing?
Jacqueline WestThat was a very strange time, wasn't it? Um I I am lucky in that I have a spouse who has health insurance and a steady paycheck, and I'm the one who has the the weird, erratic, undependable job because I've, you know, everything, yes, just kind of stopped for a while. Everything in publishing slowed down. Uh, and I also had a baby right before lockdown began. She was three months old when suddenly the world went away. And so um, so mostly at those couple of years were, I don't know, I probably would have spent them in a similar way anyway, like in our house in pajamas, because you have a newborn, but uh but writing definitely took a backseat for a while. And then when finally things started, you know, opening up again, the world started to come back, I had all this pent-up ideas and energy that's like suddenly just like had happened before with my older child, where he went to preschool for the first time and suddenly I could write again. Um, a whole bunch of work got got finished very quickly afterward. Uh, but no, those were a couple of very odd and lonely years. My book, Long Lost, my most recent middle grade, came out in 2021 when things were still pretty strange. So there were no you know, release parties for that, no school visits, no, no tour, of course. It was just kind of like sending it out into the world and hoping it's gonna find some welcoming hands. And I'm I'm really lucky that one did, but it was a very strange release experience. Yeah.
Seth Adam SmithWell, let me wrap up the interview with with this question. Um, because I I didn't I didn't realize I hadn't asked you about your family, but how many how many kids do you have? I have two. You have two kids, and and can I ask what their ages are?
Jacqueline WestOh, sure. Yeah, it's I have an 11-year-old and a six-year-old.
Seth Adam SmithWow, okay, okay. I I didn't put that together. My oldest is 10. And then it just goes down from there to the my youngest is is three. And I I find I find it extremely challenging to write anything when uh when you're a parent. I mean, it's just there's just constant something. Exactly. Um and so it's actually it's very encouraging to hear, you know, you've written all these things and you've continued to write, even though there was COVID and you have kids, and I'm sure there's a whole lot of other drama and whatever going on in your own. In your own life, or feel like all of us. The question I would ask you is how have you managed to find the time to continue to move forward? What what advice would you give to an author? But someone like me, like I don't right now I can hear them screaming, and I have to go I have to go. Is that is that a pain scream or is that just a whiny scream? It's a whiny scream. Yeah.
Jacqueline WestLike, oh no, awesome game. Don't interrupt us, mom. Like yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Seth Adam SmithBut I look at you, I look at you, and you've been so prolific. You have been so accomplished. And I mean, everybody I everybody I know was this was a big deal for me because I was able to talk about Jacqueline West, because everybody I know on the author side, they were all posting about your new book. They're so excited for you. You're so successful. And I guess my question is what advice would you give to writers who are who are also hiding their writing in underneath their socks?
Jacqueline WestAnd that's so kind. You know, it's this is my my first book, Blackpoint is my first in five years. So it's for me been a huge gap. And my first book since I've had, like, I haven't had release events since 2019. So again, a huge gap. And in a in a writing career, it's scary when suddenly you have a hole like that where it looks like, well, what have you been doing? Um, and of course, you're doing all the work behind the scenes, but a lot of that is just waiting for someone else's decisions. And so I guess a huge thing that I've learned from all of this is how much of it is out of your hands and it's all the infuriating stuff. You know, it's it's every contract and it's every review, and it's how the book looks and where it's shipped and whether it sells. All of that is just so far out of your control. And I'm a control freak. I don't like that. I want to be in control. Um it's so what I do have to remind myself, and I I hope I've gotten a little better at this, is like the one thing you can control is the work. And that's what you love anyway. I mean, that's the whole point of all of this. Is just like, does the idea of getting to sit somewhere quiet for an hour and write still make you deliriously happy? Yes. I mean, even if that's all you're getting, and all it is, is maybe once a week, like when my kids were tiny and it was COVID and we had no childcare. I I had no writing time. So I would, I would wake up half an hour to an hour before everyone else in the house woke up and tiptoe downstairs in the pitch black and sit under the lamp and write. And it was my my one little gap of time where I wasn't even writing anything that has turned into a book. I was often just writing what I thought of as like this is a an exercise. This is my attic notebook that no one's ever gonna see. But it let me still feel like me. And it let me still feel like, okay, I can I can put words together and someday this is gonna come back. And it does. There are just there are hard patches in life and being a little bit easier on myself. Like I'm not I'm not good at being easy on myself, but I would tell any other writer, like, be easier on yourself, be kinder, you should. Like, you're a person, you are gonna have have like moments in your life where other people and people you love need you, and the writing will still be there.
Seth Adam SmithThat's that's wonderful. I again favorite author origin story, and the other authors I've interviewed can just suck it. I mean, that was good. They did a great job. I I really this one resonated with me uh a lot. So thank you. Thank you, Jacqueline. Thank you for, I mean, a find your gap. It is a big gap, but I mean, thank you for getting back into it.
Jacqueline WestOh, thank you. Now I'm just lucky that I get to keep doing this. This is my dream job, and I'm so lucky that I keep finding readers. Yeah, grateful.