Vampires & Queer History: A Q&A with V. E. Schwab
Set over 500 years, this tale of three sapphic vampires is a story about hunger, rage and the ways in which women are told to be satiated even when they aren’t. Read on for an exclusive Q&A with V.E. Schwab on writing Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.
Hardcover
$20.99
$29.99
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
By V. E. Schwab
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$20.99
$29.99
The new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger from V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
The new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger from V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
IM: Can you please set up the story of your new novel for us?
VS: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a story about hunger in all of the forms it takes on. The hunger to be loved, to be seen, and to take up space in a world that tries to make you small. It’s a story of three women over the course of 500 years and how their lives, deaths — and lives again — begin to intertwine.
IM: Where did this story really start for you?
“I’ve always been in love with vampires. I think they’re one of the most alluring supernatural entities.”
VS: All of my stories are like a meal, and the ideas that go into them become the ingredients for that meal. Whenever I think about what started a story, it’s hard for me to pick the initial ingredient, but there’s usually three to four that come together to make the base of the meal. One part of this was that I really wanted to write another immortal story after The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I wanted to try and counterpoint; I wanted something darker, angrier, hungrier. I wanted something a little bit more me, because everyone reads Addie and assumes that I’m Addie, but I’m Henry.
I wanted to write something that felt a little bit more like me, and I’ve always been in love with vampires. I think they’re one of the most alluring supernatural entities. They’re also inherently queer — they exist in a liminal space, and they defy definition in a lot of ways. They exist outside of societal parameters; they’re hedonistic. There’s so much potential there for attraction, desire, lust, and also for the transaction. Whether it’s a deal with the Devil in Addie or one with vampires, it’s a transaction. You’re giving something up and you’re gaining something in return. I specifically wanted to look at that in relation to women, queer bodies and femme presenting people because I was thinking about what agency would look like. There’s an inherent danger to moving through the world in certain bodies that feels like they invite violence. I thought one of the most alluring and intoxicating premises would be to know that you didn’t have to be afraid anymore; that you could be the thing to fear. I was really interested in all of these ingredients.
On top of that, I’m an only child and in order to keep me safe, my parents instilled in me not a fear of sex, but a fear of one-night stands. I don’t know what their logic was, but it’s inherently dangerous to have a one-night stand because you’re either allowing a stranger into your bed, or you’re going into a stranger’s bed, and either way, you don’t know that person. I thought that was ridiculous, but I also couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought, how much fun would it be to have that as the kickoff point for a vampire story? Ohh yeah, I’m putting that together.
The last ingredient was that I love the dynamics bewteen Louis and Lestat from Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I was really interested in the concept of the collateral damage left in the wake of an archetypal toxic romance. We fixate on the characters involved in the epic romance, but we don’t think about the damage that they inflict on all of the peripheral tertiary characters.
IM: Let’s dive into these characters: we have Alice, Sabine — who we first met as Maria — and Charlotte. Can you tell me how you found their voices as characters and what helped you form them?
“Alice lives in her head, Charlotte lives in her heart and Sabine lives in her hunger.”
VS: I like to jokingly say that this book is three novellas in a trench coat because it is each of their stories. I structure my books before I write them; first, I structure the book narratively, which is the order in which the reader experiences it, then I shift it to chronological order in order to write it. That means I don’t actually write the book in the order that the reader experiences — I write the book in the order that the characters experience it. I built all three women in chronological order and then found the intersections in their timelines in order to maintain clarity of voice between them. I also like to create a headline for each of my characters; the way I broke it down for Sabine, Charlotte and Alice is that Alice lives in her head, Charlotte lives in her heart and Sabine lives in her hunger. Those become the driving forces for each character in terms of how they navigate the world. Charlotte was the most internal, the most romantic, the most emotional and emotive. Alice was the most neurotic, the most anxious, the most self-aware. Sabine was the hungry, insatiable, and really self-actualized character.
These three women also represented the three stages of my own queer journey. We have Alice, the youngest who doesn’t even know who she is. For her character, that doesn’t relate to her queerness — she knows who she is in that way. She’s 18 at the cusp of adulthood, and she just doesn’t have an identity. Charlotte has an identity that she’s afraid of, and that has consequences. All she wants is to be loved and to be seen, even if it’s by the wrong person. Sabine is the most fully realized in that she’s the least apologetic; she knows who and what she is, and she doesn’t change for anybody else.
IM: I’m so excited for more people to get their hands on this book because one of my favorite parts about character-driven novels is when readers can identify themselves and relate to characters. I hope I see readers debating on who feels more like an Alice, Charlotte or Sabine.
VS: Whenever I watch people be like “I’m such an ‘x’ or a ‘y’,” if it’s the character that I think is the worst of them all, I find it to be so interesting. I think it’s an indicator of where the reader is in their own life.
IM: This book is set in multiple different time periods, so we get to see the world change through many different lenses — you did this too in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. What interests you about digging into history and creating your own kind of mythology?
“I’m far more interested in bringing magic into reality and telling you it’s an art of noticing problem.”
VS: I think it comes down to wanting to bring magic and the supernatural into our world. If you look at Tolkien style fantasy, you will only ever access that story, those characters and that magic system through the pages of the book because it’s completely detached from reality. I’m far more interested by bringing magic into reality and telling you that it’s an art of noticing problem that you might actually encounter. You might have met Addie and forgotten her. You might have loved an artist that did a deal with Luc. You might have stepped into a coffee shop that had a song playing that you couldn’t hear because you just weren’t listening for it. I think it’s about whimsy and wonder, which is an interesting thing to say about a very dark place to write from. I want magic to exist in reality of place, but I think reality of time is just as interesting because our present selves are an amalgamation of everything that’s happened to us. I love exploring the context of history as a tapestry on which to weave extra elements, because I think it’s already such a lush backdrop. It can be fun to look for those intersections — I did this in Addie LaRue with the kind of people that Luc had done deals with. Some of them were fictional and some of them were real. In Bones, Sabine, Hector and Renata are operating at a time when it’s thought to be the plague. Was it the plague in that town or was it them? There’s a lot of fun to be had when you’re playing against a landscape of history and expectation. With Bones specifically, I really wanted to look at the queer context. I wanted to look at what it meant to be closeted at different points in history, what it meant to be queer at different points in history, what it meant to find community at different points in history. I think it’s really interesting that in some ways, Maria and the widow are more liberated than Charlotte is, because Charlotte is in a time period where if you are a “deviant” in any way, you’re expected to mask and just be miserable. I think I was really interested in what queer context looked like and what the challenges were for them in each time period.
IM: There is an emphasis on the power of names throughout the book, like Maria changing her name and identity to Sabine. Can you tell me about what the power of chosen names means to you and why you included it in the book?
VS: Names are always a really big theme in my work. We’re all assigned a name when we’re born and sometimes that name suits us well and sometimes it doesn’t. For many queer individuals, their name is part of something that they use for their own identity and a name can be cast off, a name can be changed. Nicknames are a form of intimacy in the right hands. I am always thinking about names. Every character in the book actually has two names: Maria has Sabine, Charlotte has Lottie, and Alice has Bones. It’s a real indicator for Maria that she’s capable of reinvention, she feels entitled to things that are not hers, and it’s also a commentary on taking what you want as well as what you need, which is what Sabine is really good at. I wanted that to be one of our first impressions of her — she takes that name by force, it’s not given to her. She decides to interpret what the widow is saying in her own way. I always think about names as something that can be wielded against us, and something that we can wield in our power. I always find names — the chosen, the assigned, the erased and the stolen — to be a fascinating marker of identity.
IM: Right now, I think it’s safe to say we’re in a bit of a vampire renaissance as a culture. There has been so many incredible movies, books, TV shows, and it all comes back to these centuries’ old monsters. Why do you think we’re so into vampires right now and what drew you to them in your life right now?
“I wanted to write work that’s in conversation with Carmilla, with Anne Rice, with very adult, unsanitized and violent creatures.”
VS: When you’re writing a project, especially one that takes years, you have no sense of the context and landscape in which that book will be published. I did not expect Addie LaRue, a book about living in an eternal present and defiant hope, to come out in a pandemic. Similarly, when I sat down to write Bones, I didn’t realize we were going to have a vampire renaissance, but I’m very grateful for it. I truly think vampires never go out of style. One of the reasons for that is I think they’re one of the most versatile supernatural entities. We’re in a really cool period where we’re also seeing some nonwestern or non-Eurocentric interpretations of them. I think Stephen Graham Jones’ latest, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is so incredible. I wouldn’t have known to call it a vampire novel if I hadn’t read it. I feel like what we’re in a renaissance of is looking back at vampire media that predates Twilight. I have no beef with Twilight, but Twilight is a highly sanitized version of a vampire story. I’m in conversation with Anne Rice — I wanted to write work that’s in conversation with Carmilla, with Anne Rice, with very adult, unsanitized and violent creatures. Vampires exist as the intersection of romance and horror. The inherent predatory element of them is part of what makes them so intoxicating, and also so toxic and problematic. The hill that I’ll die on is that there are no straight vampires. It’s antithetical to the concept of what a vampire is as a defiant, liminal creation. I know what draws me to them, but I can never say what draws anyone else to them, except that I think they embody all of our desires and all of our fears.
IM: Who are you reading now?
VS: I can’t really read a lot of fiction when I’m drafting, so when I come out of it I just gobble up everything. I’m currently devouring We Love You, Bunny, Mona Awad’s new book. I’m such a Mona Awad fan.
IM: Thank you for being here today and for writing this incredible book.
VS: Thank you so much for reading it.