stories have appeared in Nightmare, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the #1 Amazon best-seller Machine of Death, and more. His new novel is The Ghost of Us. Sutter lives in Seattle, where he's performed with bands ranging from metalcore to musical theater.
My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit James L. Sutter's website.
Titles are both difficult for me and absolutely crucial—I want something that immediately conveys to the reader what the book is about. In the case of The Ghost of Us, I wanted people to know that it's about a ghost-hunter, and also that it's a love story. Of course, there's also a deeper resonance to the title, beyond just marketing: the book is a sapphic YA supernatural romance about a teenage ghost hunter who finds a ghost, but the ghost won't give her the evidence she needs to get famous unless she first agrees to take his little sister to the prom. So the "us" in the title refers to both the romance between the two girls, but also the complicated emotional bond between the sister and her deceased brother.
What's in a name?
Honestly, not that much. Since I'm writing YA, I generally start with the US Census's list of the most common names for the year my characters would have been born in, then scroll way down and try to pick something that's familiar but not too common.
How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?
Extremely! Before making my switch to queer young adult romance novels with my previous book, Darkhearts, I had spent fifteen years focused exclusively on fantasy and science fiction—in addition to publishing two fantasy novels, Death's Heretic and The Redemption Engine, I was also the co-creator of the Pathfinder and Starfinder tabletop roleplaying games, and have done a ton of work in TTRPGs, comics, video games, and short fiction, always with that SF&F bent. My teenage self would have been shocked to find me falling in love with romance novels! (He also would have been shocked to discover I was bisexual—that took another few years to really sink in...)
Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?
I think beginnings are slightly harder, but in truth they're pretty much the same for me. That's because so much of my writing is based on character and relationship arcs—to me, a story is about who the characters start out as and who they become by the end, how they grow and change and become better. Since wanting to write about a particular change of heart automatically implies both a start and end state, I usually come up with the first and last scene at almost the exactsame time, and they rarely drift much. It's everything in the middle that's challenging!
Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?
There's so much of me in my books! While I was never a ghost hunter like Cara, my protagonist in The Ghost of Us, she's still a queer teenage outcast who's desperate for fame and can't wait to escape the suburbs of Seattle, all of which describes teenage me pretty perfectly! (And her relationship with rock-climbing in this book is pretty much my own...)
What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?
I'm influenced by everything, but I think music in particular has been a big part of my writing journey—not so much specific songs or bands, but the experience of being a gigging musician at a young age, booking my band's shows, etc. I learned early how to grind and accept that rejection is an inevitable part of being an artist, and you just need to believe in yourself and keep pushing. As a punk and metal kid, I think I've had an easier time accepting that it doesn't matter if most people don't resonate with what you're making—it's about finding the people who do.
--Marshal Zeringue