A Jane Austen-Inspired LGBT+ Romance with Hari Conner - I Shall Never Fall in Love

Marissa chats with Hari Conner about their queer regency graphic novel rom-com, I SHALL NEVER FALL IN LOVE. Also discussed in this episode: a non-typical (is there such a thing as typical?) road to finding an agent, mining real world history and Jane Austen texts for influences, using comics to make historical stories feel relatable, historical research for both text and illustration, the process of drafting a graphic novel, being the mastermind behind creating game books, and more!

Note: The release date for this book has been pushed back to 11/19. 

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa : Hello.

[00:10] Marissa: Hello and welcome to the happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you so much for joining me. What is making me happy this week? You know what time it is? It is, y'all. It is autumn. I know I use this one every year as my favorite thing for at least one episode, but I can't help it. It's my favorite season. I am so ready to snuggle up in front of the fire and drink some tea and be cozy and wear sweaters and have pumpkin spice lattes and all of the thing. I get really, really excited about it. So I know it's kind of cliche. It's not the most unique happy thing, but I just verbal over this time of year. I can't help it. So I hope that you are also a fall lover like me and that you are appreciating these slightly chillier temperatures if you're in the northern hemisphere, if you're in the southern hemisphere, I hope you're enjoying the start of spring, I guess. Yay. Also a wonderful season. All right. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. They are an award winning author, illustrator, and hopeless forest romantic based in Scotland, and they're the creator of the webcomic finding home. And some choose your own path books, including into the tower. Their newest graphic novel, I shall never fall in Love, comes out later this month. Please welcome Harry Connor.

[01:49] Hari : Hello. It's so nice to be talking to you.

[01:52] Marissa: It is so nice to be talking to you also. Thanks for joining me all the way from overseas. What's the weather like there this time of year?

[02:00] Hari : I was actually going to say it was so misty yesterday, there were like dew drops on the spider's webs and it felt very autumnal and exciting.

[02:09] Marissa: I love that. Do you like, have mores? Can you go out on the more? We don't have moors where I live.

[02:20] Hari : I used to when I lived in south west of England. It's more like hills and mountains, actually, up where I am now in Scotland.

[02:29] Marissa: Okay. Is there a castle nearby?

[02:31] Hari : There are a lot of castles nearby.

[02:34] Marissa: Thank you for not crushing that dream of mine. I just imagine everyone in Scotland is near a castle.

[02:40] Hari : Yeah, I think that probably is true. It depends how near you call near.

[02:46] Marissa: Okay, I have to ask a quick question off of your bio. What is a hopeless forest romantic?

[02:55] Hari : I guess like a hopeless romantic for forests. I think a lot of my drawings end up being even when the book has nothing to do with forests, I'm, like, sneaking in, like, a beautiful forest scene with, like, light coming in, dappled light from the trees and stuff. Yeah. You know, like, the romantic poets and things were very into beautiful nature, and I feel like I relate to that. Every time I get out in nature, I want to, like, shout. I'm like, wow, this is amazing.

[03:24] Marissa: I get that. No, there is something about forest. I mean, you kind of come back to, like, the idea of the enchanted forest. It's always the forest that is enchanted.

[03:32] Hari : Yes.

[03:33] Marissa: There's wood elves, there's sprites, there's, I don't know, mushrooms that do something to you all the time. I have to start with a question that I like to ask every one of my guests is, I would like to hear your origin story. What brought you to being an illustrator? What brought you to being a writer? How did you become a graphic novel artist?

[03:59] Hari : Yeah, I think that I always really loved reading, and I loved illustrated books and comics from when I was really young. I was probably a teenager when I kind of realized that graphic novels existed at my local library. They added a shelf for graphic novels. It was kind of just the beginning of them becoming a bigger thing in publishing, and I think the idea of a comic that was book length was just so exciting to me, and I was like, this is what I want to do. This is definitely what I want to do. I used to sit in the back of class in high school just drawing my comics. I did, like, two, I don't know, 250 page graphic novels. Obviously, they were teenage attempts, but I would pass them around, and people would read the newest installment. I'd be, like, coloring them in class. And then when I was a bit older, when I got my first, like, my own computer and, like, a little tablet, I got into webcomics. It felt like, sort of a natural next way to, like, share what I was doing with people. I kind of had, like, part time jobs. I actually went to study astrophysics when I left school because I sort of had been told a lot that, like, writing wasn't a real job. So I'd always thought, oh, I'll be able to do it on the side.

[05:22] Marissa: And astrophysics is quite a plot twist there.

[05:27] Hari : Yeah, I think I actually.

[05:31] Marissa: And then I went into astrophysics.

[05:33] Hari : I was, like, good at maths at school, and I think I was kind of told, like, well, you have to go and do that, right? But I was always like, oh, I'll be able to do comics on the side, and that just, like, wasn't, was not possible. It was very over optimistic. So it was a very full on course and I ended up like staying up past midnight trying to do comic competitions as well as keep up with all of my work. And in the end I was like, actually all of my friends on the course when what they did in their free time was like reading science books and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, what I've always done in my free time is just write hundreds of pages of comics. So I think the people that knew me when I was like, I'm actually going to swap and go and do illustration instead, they were like, yeah, I, that's a good idea.

[06:19] Marissa: We support this choice.

[06:21] Hari : Yeah. So while I was studying illustration, I started doing little like local comic events and really wanted to print my sort of newest webcomic into a proper book. I think I was talking to other people who were doing that sort of indie route, having a webcomic and then using Kickstarter or something to print the book. So I did my first one in about 2017 and it went really well. And after that I think I was a bit more confident. I was like, oh, I could do something more ambitious. So my webcomic finding home I did from about 2017 until last year and is a four book graphic novel series. And I think id just been getting much better at storytelling the entire time and taking it a bit more seriously. And it won a couple of awards and had kind of, instead of tens or hundreds of readers, it was thousands and tens and thousands of readers. So I felt more able to be like, yeah, I am going to dedicate a lot of time to this and get an editor and really try and improve my craft, if that makes sense. I also did these. It's when I started doing the choose your own path books. Like on the side, I'm kind of a big D and D nerd and a sort of fantasy book nerd. And I really liked the idea of making a little game in a book. And I knew fantasy illustrators I really wanted to work with and I, I was like, oh, I'll do it the same as the others. I'll put it on Kickstarter. And it really, I was really excited about it, but it did much better than I expected. And I think it sold like more than 1000 copies in the first day. And I'm actually pretty disabled. And I was like actually worried to begin with because I can't, you know, the idea of packing up a thousand books.

[08:30] Marissa: Right, right.

[08:31] Hari : I was like, oh my God, like, what am I going to do. So it was fine. Like, I hired my friends to come and help and stuff, but I think it was the beginning of me thinking, oh, I can't scale up anymore on my own. Like, I can't. I'm not well enough to drive. So I couldn't get a big warehouse full of books. Like, self publishing was becoming quite difficult. So my first published book was, I got an email from a small publisher, from small midsize, which is Andrews MacNeil, a couple of years later, being like, oh, like, we'd like to publish into the dungeon, which was that book. And it was. I actually went into my spam box, and I didn't see it for, like, weeks after I got the email. Luckily, I checked it, and I was.

[09:18] Marissa: Like, oh, my God, yes, this definitely is a fate thing.

[09:21] Hari : I know. So I was like, oh, my God, yes, please. It was proving really difficult to, like, bring enough books to conventions and stuff, but I actually signed that contract without an agent. I was really trying to do stuff on my own for a long time because I didn't really know about the traditional publishing routes as well. But by the time I finished my big webcomic, I was like, no, I would like to do this properly. I would really like to work with an agent. So that's how it went from self publishing into publishing.

[09:57] Marissa: So how did you so with getting that agent, were you pitching agents based on, like, oh, I did this Kickstarter. I had this webcomic. Things are happening. These gamebooks are, you know, a publisher is interested in these game books, and then an agent signed you based on that, or were you pitching a new project? And then in hindsight, we're like, also, I've got all these other things going on.

[10:23] Hari : Yeah, it would have been smart, I think, for me to go around getting an agent, being like, help me with this contract I'm doing. But it was for, it was for my new project. It was for I shall never fall in love. And I had the pitch packet and got all of that stuff ready and was bringing that to the agent. But also, I was being like, also, do you also rap fantasy? Because I have this other stuff as well. Yeah.

[10:46] Marissa: And I imagine your agent was probably really excited that they were bringing you on at a time when there was kind of a lot going on in your career.

[10:55] Hari : Yeah, I think I was very lucky in a lot of ways, and I think I've had quite a different experience getting an agent to people I know doing kind of prose books. Like, by the time I was looking, I had already been signing contracts and had a lot of stuff going on, so I was in this very lucky position. I mean, less agents represent graphic novels anyway, so it's a bit of a smaller pool. But I wasn't reaching out to that many people, and it was one of the people that I was really excited about got back to me, and that was great.

[11:33] Marissa: Yeah. And then with I shall never fall in love, which is the book that's coming out so soon, did you have it fully written and illustrated? Did you have, like, did you do the first 50 pages? What did you have when you were pitching that agent?

[11:52] Hari : Yeah, I did quite a standard pitch package. I say standard. Obviously, it's completely different for different people, but I think for author illustrators, something like ten to 20 sample pages is quite normal for finished pages because I love books and writing. I almost always have written my whole script before pitching, but that helps me figure out exactly how long it's going to be and what characters are going to be important and all that stuff. The rest of the pitch packet is like, hello, my name's Harry, and this is what I do, and this is why I think it's a good time for this book. And here are the characters and the synopsis and an outline and that kind of stuff as well.

[12:37] Marissa: Okay. I want to come back to that because I'm very curious about the process. But before we do, would you please tell listeners a little bit about this book? What is I shall never fall in love about?

[12:52] Hari : I would say it's a Regency rom.com. so it's a historical setting. Regency is like Bridgerton era, and it's very based on lots of different Jane Austen book plots. And the three main characters are all coming of age, and they're all expected to find a rich husband in high society. And over the course of the book, it becomes obvious that all three of them, for different reasons, are like, definitely not going to do that. They really don't want to do that. And it's sort of finding their own ways to their own happy endings.

[13:27] Marissa: I mean, you make these high society men so appealing. Sarcasm. Okay, so I adored this. I am a big Jane Austen fan, and I didn't go into it realizing that there was going to be kind of these Jane Austen retelling elements and about maybe, I mean, I'm embarrassed how long it took me to pick up on it, but maybe like two thirds of the way through, I was like, I'm getting some really intense Emma vibes right here, and I love that. What is it that drew you to doing a regency story and including kind of the Jane Austen elements in general.

[14:09] Hari : Yeah. I was actually kind of thinking, oh, it'll be a bit like, maybe I could try, like, an adaptation of Emma. But I found that I was really excited to incorporate characters from other Austen books, kind of tropes in this sort of romance genre. And I was making up scenes that definitely didn't happen in Emma. And I was like, oh, that bit's more interesting. Or looking at stuff from real, like, lgbt history. So in the end, I was like, oh, it could just be a big mashup of all of these things. I basically realized that Jane Austen is a long way out of copyright and was. I think I was reading Emma, and there's a sort of page where Emma is describing her friend Harriet Smith. And it's quite intense. It's very like, oh, she was exactly the kind of girl that Emma liked and sort of describes exactly what she looks like. And I kind of went and looked it up, and there are a lot of essays sort of agreeing with me that it almost feels like she has a crush on her friend. And I was like, that's so interesting. And about 2018, there was a british period series, period set series, gentleman Jack, which is about Anne Lister. So she was around at, like, the same kind of time, like a real historical figure. And there was all this stuff when I tried to look up things about her, and if the story was true, they were like, it's really, really based on her diary. She did 4 million words of diaries and, like, secret code. The reason they were in code is because she had a lot of relationships with women. And all of the stuff I read online was like, oh, she's like the lesbian Casanova. And I was like, that's probably exaggerating. I went and read biographies about her, and I was like, oh, wow. No. She really had a lot of relationships with women, and it was just really interesting to me. In the UK, when I was at school, there was a law that you couldn't teach about any lgbt history or anything at all that was only repealed while I was still at school. So I sort of thought that the british past, like, everyone was straight, I guess. And I also had seen sort of period dramas growing up where I thought, well, probably everyone was white, and it was really formal and really stiff and all of these things. And looking at the real history made me think, oh, like, there were loads of different kinds of people around at that time, and there's so much history that we do have. And what I like most almost about Jane Austen is that you can read a character and be like, oh, I know someone like that. You know, it's like describing someone's, like, weird aunt or like, beloved sister, but who's also kind of irritating. And you're like, yeah, this book was written so long ago, but it feels really real. So I love the idea of in using comics to make it feel like the characters were really relatable, including for people who might not normally read something in that time period, people who also are not big Jane Austen nerds, as well as obviously having references that people might like. If you do know those stories really.

[17:23] Marissa: Well, I really, really loved that you incorporated so much real history into the book and that you've got these fascinating little excerpts at the back of the book where you dig into some of the real world history and where the inspiration came from and the research. And that was so great because after reading it, I had questions and there you had answers for me, which I really appreciate. Was it? Because I think a lot of readers will go into this thinking like, oh, queer people in regency England, historical, but there's a fantasy element to it. But then at the end, you're like, no, actually, these people were there. Like, they had stories, blah, blah, blah. Did that feel important to you to write a queer focused story that could still be historically accurate?

[18:18] Hari : Yeah, I mean, it was a really, I was so excited to do those history pages, actually. I didn't really know if the publishers would like them, but I'd done so much reading and I found so many exciting things. I was like, oh, I just want to tell someone one. And so I was like, oh, and also, I kind of want to include this bit at the end. I hope that's okay. And the publishers have all responded to it really well, and early readers have as well, which is so nice, like, for me, because I just felt like I read so much stuff where I was like, oh, I really want to tell someone else about this. And, yeah, I think, you know, when I was a teenager, I didn't really get to read stories with queer characters if I knew, like myself. But until I was a teenager, I didn't think anyone else in the world felt the same as me, if that makes sense. So I was really interested in this time period where people might not know one of the main characters kind of understands themselves, that they're more comfortable wearing masculine clothes. They know that they're attracted to girls, but doesn't have any sort of framework around them to understand that. So that element was definitely based on me as a teenager, I almost think that one of the big reasons I loved period dramas growing up is that sometimes the characters have really big feelings that they're having to keep inside. I love all this yearning and, you know, like, little looks or little bits of conversation that are trying to convey, like, this really big feelings or, like.

[19:58] Marissa: A deeper meaning or, like, a touch can be scandalous.

[20:02] Hari : Yeah, absolutely. And I sort of think that, you know, things have changed a bit now and they were not the same in 1800 as they were when I was a kid, but when I was growing up, I really felt like I had to, like, keep things about myself secret. And so I think a lot of that sort of yearning and emotion really appealed to me in period dramas anyway, so I was definitely interested in, well, I'd like to think about what would someone like me really experience if they were around at that time in this sort of setting?

[20:36] Marissa: Mhm. No, I also love that and it's all very relatable. And I want to talk a little bit more about the research because it seems like you really enjoy research. I mean, clearly put so much research into this book. And I'm curious, when you're researching for things like story or, you know, what, what would the actual experience have been back then versus researching for illustrations like, what would the furniture have been? What would the clothing have been like? Are those kind of two separate processes for you, or does it all kind of mesh together?

[21:14] Hari : They definitely interact. I think what I normally do is I get really excited about an idea and then I write the idea and then I go and research and I'm like, wait, this character can't wear trousers in public. Let me think about, I actually, there's someone called Kaz Rowe who is mostly known for their YouTube videos about history now. But does webcomics, who I like, hired and kind of know a little bit to help me with some of the research about queestry and how the main character might be interacting with the world, who definitely helped point me in the right direction of things to read. And then, so I, the process is like, I come up with the idea with a vague sense of history. I read the history and then have to go back and rework the idea and think about how it works. And then the visual research comes kind of later once I'm starting to get everything together to actually draw. And definitely it's a very big part of it. I think writing prose that's a little bit historical, you can be like, oh, you know, it was a big, beautiful looking house and that's kind of it. And instead I feel like I was trying to get the slope of the roof. I was drawing too high. I couldn't tell what it was, but I was like, this doesn't look like the sort of house you see in a period drama. Like, what's wrong with it? So, like, the style of the windows, the style of the dresses, there are so many small things. I think it obviously helps that it's set in a place that I could visit. It's sort of set, like, just south of London in the countryside, and that it's not impossible to go and see big, fancy houses. A lot of them are actually. A lot of big, fancy houses are of really good for wheelchair access in the UK, like their gardens, because back 200 years ago, really rich people would have gardens where they set out little paths. So when people came over, they would, you know, take a turn about the gardens.

[23:17] Marissa: Right.

[23:18] Hari : And those paths are often maintained for people who come and visit, and so a lot of them have, like, rentable wheelchairs. So it's a good way that I can get out into nature that I can't. I. Otherwise. So I was actually able to go and look at these kind of houses and things from the outside in some cases.

[23:38] Marissa: How many houses did you visit?

[23:39] Hari : Not loads specifically for this, but because there's something I can access there already, something in the back of my mind. And the kind of thing that I did a lot of holidays in England as a kid where we just drove around and my parents would go and, like, look at a nice building that was, like summer holidays for me. But there's. There was actually one that has, like, a carriage museum. So carriages are. So carriages and horses were such a nightmare to draw. I would find myself planning scenes where I was like, does the carriage really need to be in the shop? Can it be cut off the edge? But it was actually so helpful, this.

[24:20] Hari: Carriage, from before into this one, I.

[24:23] Hari : Definitely kept really clear references, and so I was able to go and take photos from lots of different angles and be, like, to see exactly what the carriage would look like. And that helped a lot.

[24:33] Marissa: I think that's hilarious. My husband and I really love history. We really love old houses. And so we also are constantly dragging the kids, like, let's go look at this old mansion now. Let's go here and take a tour here. And they're good sports about it, but I'm always wondering, like, at what point do they rebel?

[24:52] Hari : I think I did a thing that I love people do, which is when I was about 20, I was like, not visiting those places at all. And then the older I got, the less I was, like, trying to push back on what my parents were into. And instead I was like, actually, I love that.

[25:07] Marissa: Okay, good.

[25:08] Hari : That stuff. And like, so I feel like I was, I sort of came back round.

[25:13] Marissa: All right. That makes me optimistic.

[25:15] Marissa : Yeah.

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Marissa: Okay, let's go a little. So your process you mentioned starting with a script. Is that like a legitimate where you kind of plot out the panel? We'll have this, and then here's the dialogue panel, two dialogue, etcetera. Or are you kind of like writing and storyboarding at the same time? How do you go about it?

[27:32] Hari : I actually really do just write it in prose first. So as a just script, like, no little drawings. Although I normally know I might have sketched the characters or the setting a little bit first, I actually really don't use the sort of marvel method. I think if I was working with an artist, I might have a different approach. But because it's just for me and for like, an editor to be able to look at, I almost write scripts a bit like a theater thing, like it's the character it'll be like George, and then in brackets, like looking anguish, and then the line or whatever it is. But it's definitely. I do split it up into panels and pages so that you can get the dramatic page chance at the right moment and plan everything in double spreads. I actually have definitely worked with other comic artists who work in completely different ways. The process. I mean, the same for prose books, right, that it's as different as there are number of different people doing it. So I think sometimes people who come from, like, animation, they do really visual planning, sort of almost storyboards. But I think I'm just such a. I was such a big reader as a kid. I love books so much. I do write illustrated prose a bit as well. So, yeah, I do tend to just write the whole thing out. I mean, I know people who do really bare bones scripts, and I've written like, I would write a 70,000 word script for a 300 page book. Because I also don't want to forget what I was thinking. It'll be like a panel where the view is from high above and this is what it looks like, and this is the landscape and it's this location. And it helps me decide as well. In that case, I need to know how to draw this location from these angles. I need to know what these rooms look like.

[29:21] Marissa: Do you ever feel like it would probably be faster just to sketch this out?

[29:25] Hari: I don't know. I think my health means it's sometimes easier to type than it is to set up and draw. But I'm not really a very visual thinker. That probably sounds crazy. I don't like. I think there was a lot of people talking about it recently that there's like, whether you can, like, picture things in your mind. And it was pretty recently that I realized that's something that other people do. So I'm almost working it out as I put the pen to paper. I don't know, but whatever the process is, it works for me. And I definitely do start planning out what the house will look like and edit the script at the same time. But I think I really love just having the emotions and ideas and the little lines of dialogue down first and then being able to think about the visuals as a next step.

[30:19] Marissa: Yeah, no, I find that really fascinating. You reminded me of this one time, this was years ago, and one of my daughters, who was maybe like, she was maybe like five or six at the time, and she says to me, mom, I have a superpower. And my superpower is that when you read books, to me, I can see them in my mind. It's just like, oh, that's darling.

[30:41] Hari: The superpower to me. So.

[30:45] Marissa: No, I think that's all really interesting because I have a. I am not an illustrator at all. And I kind of just always assumed that most illustrators are very visual thinkers and are more comfortable kind of planning things out visually first. And I'm so glad that you have told me that, like, no, that's not always the case, but one of the things that I love about writing graphic novel scripts is that I don't have to think about, like, exactly how the panel is going to be laid out. I can just say, you know, show this street scene and then all of the details become the illustrator's problem. And I love that.

[31:22] Hari: Yeah, yeah. I hire illustrators for the choose your own books, and I love writing a page of something and then just kind of handing it over. Like, I'll send guidance and stuff, whatever I think will be best for that illustrator. But it's so cool having someone else interpret it or, like, bring a new layout or think about something visually in a way that I wouldn't have. I find that really cool, even though it's obviously a bit different for a whole graphic novel.

[31:52] Marissa: No, I also love that. I love the collaboration aspect and always feel like the illustrators that I have worked with, what they envision and what they end up creating is, like a thousand times better than what I had initially envisioned. And so cool to see it come to life that way.

[32:11] Harieah. I think that sometimes if someone's a really experienced comic artist, that kind of just being like, here's what I want to happen. But you kind of interpret it in your own way can sometimes produce really exciting new elements. I don't know.

[32:28] Marissa: Yeah, yeah. Just kind of a new perspective on things.

[32:30] Hari: Yeah.

[32:31] Marissa: So you write the script, then you go and do research and then rewrite the script. Yeah, I think start drawing, I guess, is my question.

[32:42] Hari: I think I probably, I already have, like, most of the script written, but I'm researching at the same time, most of the time, all the way through. It's probably after the initial idea that I'm researching also, I think when you're working with a lot of editors, like, for a graphic novel with a big publisher, it's really helpful to give them steps that they can understand. So it's great for me to get edits to the script from consultants, historical consultants, editors, all of that stuff before I start drawing, because the drawing is the really. That takes a really long time. The writing might take a few months spread over several years, but the actual drawing is then a full time job for a year and a half or two years. It's quite a normal schedule. And so I really do that in the pretty regular steps, the same way that I think a lot of people do in the industry, just so that the editors know what to expect and they can understand what I'm thinking. So there's a really rough version, which is called thumbnails, because they're really small. And then I'll do pencils where it's pretty much clear what's going on, where the speech bubbles are going to be, and then line it and color it and do all the shading.

[33:56] Marissa: Okay. No, and that makes sense because I can assume that it is a lot easier if you need to make big revisions to, say, the plot or the, you know, the overall story. It's probably a lot easier to do that in script form before illustrations come in.

[34:11] Hari: Yes. Pretty much. Any big plot changes? I really need those to happen in the script. So sometimes if I'm working with an editor that doesn't really know graphic novels, I'm like, this is important that we understand each other. And then when things are in their little rough form, there's definitely, like, lines might change or character designs might change, but by the time you're like, you know, more than a year in, it's no longer a good time to be, like, some major revisions. Actually, what if we just.

[34:38] Marissa: Right. I think I'm going to add a new character.

[34:41] Hari : Yeah.

[34:44] Marissa: Okay. I also wanted to talk about kind of the general design of the book, because it is stunning. And I particularly love the chapter openers, how they have this very, like, antique victorian vibe with these beautiful floral flourishes, and they're just so pastel and pretty and watercolor, they're just beautiful. And I'm curious, is that 100% you, or is there at some point a designer involved with the publisher? Tell me about that.

[35:21] Hari : Well, thank you so much. I really loved the idea of doing a the chapter things as, like, little watercolor looking illustrations that felt very vintage. They're not all exactly like, 1810 or whatever. No. All of the filigree, little twirly bits around the edges of the chapter titles is all stuff that I was really excited about and wanted to do, and publishers let me. But, you know, there is a cover designer involved. There's obviously a lot of feedback on the cover and sometimes I would also kind of hand over, like, sort of little assets. So if I had lots of drawings of flowers that I'd used around the edge, they added those in on the copyright page and stuff. But no, because in self publishing, I used to kind of design my own books. I'm very lucky that all the publishers I've worked with have let me do that either to a greater extent or with a bigger publisher, suggest things. And I, yeah, definitely all of the little filigree and watercolors with stuff where I was just like, this is what I'm doing. I really want it to look like an old book.

[36:31] Marissa: I just really want more twirly bits. Yeah, well, it turned out lovely. It's a really, really stunning graphic novel from start to finish, and I haven't even seen the COVID actually, so I'm gonna have to go because I have a digital copy. I'm like, I'm gonna have to go look and see what the COVID turned out to be.

[36:48] Hari : I actually just got, like, super advanced copies. And the american hardback has a special cover underneath the dust jacket, which does look like an old book. I don't think you can see online or anything. So I'll have to post pictures, but I got to design that pretty much. I was like, what if I made it look a little bit like an old book? And the designers were like, yeah, great, go for it. And so I just did whatever I wanted, and it was, they were sort of like, okay, great. No changes. I was so excited about that.

[37:20] Marissa: So I love that.

[37:21] Hari : Yeah.

[37:23] Marissa: Oh, my gosh. I cannot wait to see it. I'm gonna have to get myself a physical copy just for that. That's my favorite. That's my favorite. When you get a book and it's got the dust jacket with, you know, the, usually an illustrated cover of some sort, and then you take off the dust jacket and there's, like, a surprise there. Oh, I get giddy about that.

[37:40] Hari: Yeah, I think Harperelli kind of lets there graphic novel illustrators do something special. Is that little bit underneath the COVID So I was very excited about it.

[37:52] Marissa: No, it makes the book just feel like, I don't know, just that much more special and just that much more like someone was really paying attention to the details here. Okay, we have a few minutes left before we move on to our bonus round. And I really wanted to save a little bit of time to talk about these game books, um, because I am so curious, and I did not know about them until yesterday when I was preparing for our conversation today, uh, and was browsing your website and came across them, and I am fascinated. I love puzzles. I love escape rooms. Like, just, this seems so dungeons and dragons fantasy, all of it. It's like, well, I will be buying these. Um, where did the idea come from? And, I mean, if you could kind of quickly just tell listeners, what are they? I know you touched on it a little bit earlier, and then how did you go about actually creating them?

[38:47] Hari: Yeah, it was kind of the first game books that came out, I think, in the eighties. So the most famous is choose your own adventure, where you're just, like, making different choices. But there were also these, like, fighting fantasy ones, which were much more like old school dungeons and dragons. Lots of rolling dice, remembering the rules. And when I was a kid, I had those. I didn't. I didn't really understand them well enough. I think I was a bit too young for them, but I really loved them and I loved, you know, you're choosing to go down a corridor and you turn the page and you get, like, a beautiful illustration, or there's something really exciting about your making the choice, even if what you're going in to see is. Might be, like, scary. So I really love the idea of doing that. I think I also, like, really enjoy dungeons and dragons, but I love the idea of doing something that felt like that, but was really easy to get into. If you'd never played it before. You only need a pencil to play, but you could make up your own character if you wanted. And I think something else is that when I played really, this is my age, but when I played really old fantasy kind of games like that, a lot of them were like, you meet a goblin and you stab the goblin. And I was always a bit like, well, what if you talk to the goblin? What if you made friends? What if you could get on that only option? Yeah. So the first book is called into the Dungeon. And I. That's. I actually normally say it's ages ten and up to play for kids to play on their own. But I get pho's sent to me of people playing it with really young kids, and I'm like, there are monsters. Watch out. Obviously, people know what their kids do, actually. And sometimes I get messages from teachers and stuff who read it out to, like, an after school group, like a D and D after school group. And they all put their hands up to vote on the options of which way to go, which is so nice to hear. I. Sorry, I've gone completely off track. I just got excited about the book. I love that.

[40:38] Marissa: No, I also. I love that. And my kids love this sort of thing. And we have a couple of other similar sounding books I want to say they're called escape the room books is the series. And so I'm getting a vibe that it's kind of a similar idea, but I'm definitely going to pick yours up because I know my kids will love them.

[40:57] Hari : I just, I really was excited about the idea of feeling like I sort of classic fantasy dungeon, but also there being lots of options where you're not just fighting, you're exploring, or you might be charming your way or outsmarting your way around it. And into the dungeon is a really short little one. And then into the tower is kind of 14 plus, slightly older, and it's almost like lots of fantasy novellas in one. And that's more of a like, it's like a wizard's tower. There's a lot more magic. It's kind of a fantasy heist. There's a masquerade ball. There's a lot of different things. I really wanted it also to be something that you can play lots of times, but it only takes an hour to read once through.

[41:48] Marissa: I love that you're hitting all my favorite things. Masquerade ball heist. I'm in. I'm sold. And you got to work with other illustrators, too, which I think is super cool. It just sounds like the whole process just sounds really fun.

[42:00] Hari: Yeah. I think I know a lot of illustrators in this indie tabletop game scene, people who do, like, board games or have done things for, I don't know, critical role comics and that sort of thing. So I just love the illustrators that I have got to know doing conventions and being able to hire them and put them in these books is, like, amazing. It's such a fun experience. And so often I'll be, like, thinking for years, like, I know I want this illustrator to draw the page where the world explodes or whatever. So it's so much fun when it all comes together and getting to be on the other side of it a little bit as well.

[42:38] Marissa: Yeah. Yeah. To kind of be on the mastermind side.

[42:41] Hari: Yeah, definitely something. I have to draw these really complicated maps to plan it all out and make sure every route works. And I don't know if anyone looking at the maps would think mastermind. They're very, like, for me, no one else can understand them.

[42:57] Marissa: Masterminds have to have revisions sometimes.

[42:59] Hari: Yeah. Okay.

[43:01] Marissa: All right. Are you ready for our bonus round?

[43:04] Hari: Yes.

[43:05] Hari: What book makes you happy?

[43:07] Hari: I feel like there's so many. Some of my sort of favorite comfort reads that I like coming back to are. I love the first Earth Sea book and my favorite Jane Austen is persuasion.

[43:20] Marissa: I love persuasion.

[43:22] Hari: It's so romantic. There's so much yearning, and there's also, like. There's like one disabled character who's mostly bed bound. And that's really nice for me because I don't often get to read that in books. I actually also really love webcomics. Of course I love webcomics. Someone I now actually know does a comic called Boozer, like b u u z a, which is the name of a kind of dumpling. And it's like. It feels like a slice of life manga or like almost a telenovela, in that it's really easy to read and really engrossing, and it's just people going about their lives in a fantasy world, but the plot builds up so much, and I love all the characters so much. So that always makes me really happy to read.

[44:07] Marissa: What are you working on next?

[44:09] Hari: I always have a lot of stuff kind of on the back burner, I think, because drawing the graphic novel takes so long. I'm coming up with lots of ideas and have more than I can possibly do this, I don't know how much I'm able to talk about it, but I have another choose your own book, which is actually for an adult audience, which is like a vampire romance. I don't know how much I can say, but there'll be news about it next year, I think. And I've also got a couple of other ya things cooking. I would love to do another kind of historical set book that's looking at a slightly different bit of lgbt history. And I would also really love to do a book where the main character has chronic illness like I do, but who gets a really happy ending. I think there are so many stories about severely disabled people that are not really from their point of view or have really miserable endings. And so, yes, I have an idea for a new graphic novel. I say idea mostly because I don't want to count my chickens and we have to see what publishers want and that kind of thing. But that's something that I've been researching, is a big sort of new historical romance.

[45:26] Marissa: Lastly, where can people find you?

[45:29] Hari: Oh, I'm in quite a lot of places on the Internet. Pretty much my handle everywhere is Harry draws. Harry like, h a r I. I'm on Instagram. Instagram is a good place for pictures, and there's, like, links there to. I feel like people have sort of scattered from Twitter. So there's lots of other small places that you can find me where I've got, like, pictures of what I'm sketching at the moment as well.

[45:55] Marissa: Awesome. Hari, thank you so much for joining me.

[45:58] Hari: It was so nice to talk to you. Thank you.

[46:01] Marissa: Readers definitely check out I shall never fall in love coming out here at the end of October. Of course, we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore if you can. But if you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org, shop. Marissa Meyer please leave us a review and follow us on Instagram. Happy writer podcast. And don't forget to check out our merchandise on Etsy. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today, I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.