Gabriella Buba

Gabriella Buba is a mixed Filipina-Czech author and chemical engineer based in Texas who likes to keep explosive pyrophoric materials safely contained in pressure vessels or between the covers of her books. She writes epic fantasy for bold, bi, brown women who deserve to see their stories centered. Her debut Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a Filipino-inspired epic fantasy out with Titan Books. Saints has been named one of Spotify’s Best Audiobooks of 2024, and Buba a Spotify Breakout Author of 2024, and Saints was one of Reactor’s Reviewer’s Choice: Best Books of 2024.

Buba's new novel is Daughters of Flood and Fury.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I know some people think its overdone, but I have a real soft spot for blank of blank and blank title formats for epic fantasy, so Daughters of Flood and Fury does a great job setting genre and tone expectations for readers before they’ve even opened the first page. I want you to read the title and immediately think Southeast Asian seafaring Fantasy Feminine Coming of Rage.

What's in a name?

To be entirely honest I’m not very good at names! My character’s names change a lot. Four times for the whole cast in Daughters of Flood and Fury. The only reason I don’t get accused of lazy naming is not that many people know Tagalog. I often share about my FMC Lunurin’s name meaning “to drown” in Tagalog, one of the few names I developed myself rather than pulling from 17th century baptismal records/census naming/and ship manifests, but I didn’t stop there. My MMC Alon Dakila has an equally symbolic and matched name to his wife, Lunurin. Alon in Tagalog means wave, which is especially fitting for my tide-touched healer. His last name Dakila means great or noble, what better name for the family of the Lakan of Aynila (their chief of chiefs).

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are very difficult for me. I often have to give myself permission to write the worst beginning in order to start in on the story and actually make progress. My motto is that anything can be edited better, but only once it exists, so my beginnings also change the most, as I work to make the worst beginning that got me started a good beginning. I usually go into my drafts with a pretty clear vision for the end already.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Oh yes, I don’t actually believe that a writer can divorce themselves from the characters they write. What I like to do is to take one facet of my personality and dial it to 300% and then watch the plot hit the fan. Lunurin has the most of me, my anger and my grief. Alon has all the stubborn damned inconvenient morals and none of the internal snark monologue. Inez is very much the wounded inner child who doesn’t want peace, she wants to create problems, and I support her.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Many of my inspirations are historical. For Daughter of Flood and Fury I drew on the sinking of the Spanish Armada, the history of piracy and karakoa raiding in the Philippines from Luzon and the South China Sea down to the Sulu Sea. I’m a big believer that reality is weirder than fiction. And for some more fun pop-culture hits I was absolutely influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, because it sent me down the research rabbit hole on Piracy in Asia, and Trese, a Filipino Netflix Anime and before that a komik that was my first pop culture interaction with Filipino folklore outside of family stories.

Visit Gabriella Buba's website.

My Book, The Movie: Daughters of Flood and Fury.

Writers Read: Gabriella Buba.

--Marshal Zeringue