Q&A with Margaret Owen, author of PAINTED DEVILS!

Delighted today to bring you a Q&A with Margaret Owen, the author of sseveral YA fantasies including The Merciful Crow duology and the Little Thieves trilogy. This past Tuesday on May 16, Margaret launched Painted Devils into the world.

It’s the sequel to Little Thieves and it promises chaos and shenanigans as the main character accidentally starts a cult and things just spiral out of control. I won’t give too many details on the story as if you haven’t already read Little Thieves, you should absolutely do that first. I will simply tell you that my conversation with Margaret left me feeling so ridiculously excited to pick up these books and dive into the world she’s crafted.

For those who aren’t familiar with Margaret, a brief sketch of a bio based on her official bio: Margaret was raised in Oregon, moved to Seattle, and spends her days writing stories and wrangling her characters. She studied Japanese and has a degree in it, which I just think is super fascinating as far as life tidbits.

So! Without further ado — let’s dive into the Q&A, shall we?

Why do you write — what drives your creativity?

I think one of the things that I’ve found is that no matter what other job I tried to do, I would go back to drawing things, to writng things. That’s what I would do with my free time…I just put [full-time writing] off. If I wanna do this, it’s a lot of work for a while before it’s sustainable. That turned out not to be the case — it was a lot of work, but it was significantly faster than expected.

Why I keep doing it, apart from always coming back to it — is I enjoy the feeling of putting an emotional experience into words in a way that I know is going to resonate with somebody else. That moment of “yes I have said what I am trying to say.”

I was always the kid doing outrageous things with her Barbies, making up stories. I’m glad that my barbies did not suffer for nothing.

How do you find that your artwork influences your writing, and vice versa?

Both positively and negatively. I have a very clear mental image of a scene usually and what I find is that because I have a perfectly clear ivsual of it I will skip over the details thinking…we’re all on the same page here.

But on the flipside, visualizing what the light is & what it is doing, how it impacts the scene, also really helps. It’s been very useful for me to say, I feel stuck in this scene, it isn’t clicking. I don’t know where I’m going with this — to take a step back and draw some things about that scene. Figure out what people are wearing, what things look like. Concept art to figure out what I’m trying to convey.

Gesture drawings is a practice technique — you have 10 or 30 seconds or a minute to sketch someone real fast before they move. I would sit in a coffee shop window and draw people going by — it trains you to figure out what to focus on to convey a person in as few lines as person. You do a similar thing in writing — [a character is] just passing by in a scene, but you want them to feel like a real person in a place — what do you focus on to convey that.

The equivalent thing for authors and writers who want to try — sit in a cafe and watch people pass and think of two sentences to describe them real fast. Don’t overthink it, push yourself to very quickly describe someone in a specific setting is a great way to build those skills.

What are you most looking forward to in publishing Painted Devils?

warning: this answer includes slight spoilers

This is my first trilogy, my first book two in a trilogy, [and it has] an Empire Strikes Back dynamic. There’s some “Margaret Owen answer for your crimes” responses and that just adds year to the life. I’m looking forward to every angry message.

It’s also a fun book to unleash on the world — more polarizing than Little Thieves — there’s been some interesting convos about how sex is handled in YA. This is a book where a part of the plot is that the main character’s boyfriend has been picked to be a virgin sacrifice — we could disqualify you but we didn’t want to rush this…how do we handle this? I didn’t approach it as…we’re going to talk about what this means as teens. From the POV of people who aren’t experienced — this is something that’s completely new to them and they’re figuring it out together. It’s very rooted in the teen experience, discussion about sex and virginity and that has made some adult readers kind of uncomfortable.

What has been the most fun part of writing this as a sophomore series?

One of my personal favorite things about writing a series — my personal hell and my favorite thing — you will go back into a book that you wrote five years ago and be like “oh you thought this was coincidence — I was laying the groundwork for something that’s gonna come back and bite so many people in the ass.” I love breing the Yu-Gi-Oh master who’s played a trap card.

With a duology — I was able to bring in stuff from the first book but I had to wrap everything up in two books — Acts 1 and 2 of the story. You don’t get to lay as much groundwork as in a trilogy. I’m [writing] the third book now and we’re taking that purse that we’ve built up and emptying it on the table, and the book three purse — you thought you lost that battery charger, you thought you didn’t need that cable from book 1? You did!

If you could share one thing that’s not commonly pitched about the book but you think would hook a new reader, what would it be?

There’s a couple things that are — yes, there’s a cult about the main character who accidentally started a cult with a god she made up.

The subplot that is the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal. That brought me a lot of joy.

There’s a haunted doll — a walking search engine as a doll. She’s haunted by the ghost of an ancient king’s mistress and she’s just all kinds of fun.

There’s a buff lady who leads the wild hunt and is just the biggest Chad. She is one of my favorite characters too.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Usually, yes. I would say — the thing at the top of my mind right now is that I see a lot of chatter about how [in] publishing … different books have to fit into these specific tropes, fulfill these tropes, fit into these formulas to get publisehd by a big five publisher. That is simply not true. [The discussion] comes from a place of people frustrated with not getting through — it is a very difficult process right now. [But] the idea that you’re going to get a publishing deal by checking off a list of tropes is disastrous. On two levels: you’re going to waste your time on a thing that doesn’t sell and get further disillusioned with publishing. It comes through in the writing — if you are not madly in love with what you’re writing, it comes through. You have to figure out how to make it something you’re in love with, that sets you on fire.

It’s gonna come through. I’ve read books where I’m like — this was written by someone who is just ready to be done with this book. This is them jsut meeting a word count. Everyone who is telling themselves I’m not getting published because I’m not marketable enough — it’s bullshit.

There is no easy path in publishing. If you’re having a hard time, that doesn’t mean anything bad about you or your writing. Don’t fall back on the idea of your work being not marketable enough to be an excuse. [There may be] something that you could be improving craft-wise.

The nutshell version: marketability is not an obstacle. Big takeaway: they might see some tropey stuff on BookTok or self-pub that has carried over to trad pub. That is a very rare occurrence. For the most part, editors are getting a lot of subs, agents are getting a lot of submissions, they’re seeing a lot of different trends. If you’ve written something weird and innovative and fun, if it’s not landing, take a look at craft. Sometimes it’s okay to put the book down [and realize] I’m not the writer I need to be to make this work for publishing.

Every creative person goes through a period where you have to be real bad at something before you get really good at it. And you’re okay but you’re not quite reaching and seeing how you need to improve. Move to the next thing.

Do you have any books to recommend?

My favorite book for voice is Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik — if you ever want a masterclass in how to do voice, that’s it. A book with six different narrators, all in first person, same time period. There are two different POVs both from young women in the same village and the same time period who know each other — you can still tell them apart even though there is no identifying name at the start of the section. That is mind-boggling. That is aspirational.

Is there anything else you’d like to add? Something I should have asked?

There’s a lot of thoughts about how to make a living in writing — it’s deliberately obtuse, a complicated system because of how — for both legit reasons and not — the complications of making money in publishing are like reverse taxes. At the heart of it I would say, in today’s climate, if you are approached with an offer for a book, take the amount they are offering and divide it by three or four, look at that — is that enough for you to live on for a year? If not — don’t quit your day job.

Sometimes you might not get that last chunk until a year after the book is out. If you’re looking at moving into publishing, plan for each payment to be at least nine months apart and keep an eye on that when determining if you are ready to go full-time. It’s okay to not be. Be very mindful about leaving your job for writing.

Oh, and don’t do enamel pins preorders unless your publisher is paying for it. You’re looking at thousands of dollars — more than your book royalty to do this. Enamel pins are for your publisher and only your publisher.

This interview has been edited and condensed for publication in this newsletter.