Will Kostakis and Ellie Marney in conversation!

Titans of Australian YA Will Kostakis and Ellie Marney have new books out – Will returns to the world of Monuments with the gripping urban-fantasy Rebel Gods, and Ellie’s latest page-turning thriller None Shall Sleep has us tracking a serial killer in the 1980s. Both award-winners and popular among teenagers (and adults who love reading about them), Will and Ellie are dropping by The Booktopian today after giving a readers a sneak peek of their work in a sold-out session at this year’s digital Melbourne Writers Festival.

Read on!

Will Kostakis

WILL: Before we begin, Ellie, I have to say, I read two of the books in your Every series before I met you, and they were so good, I didn’t want to meet you because I was convinced you couldn’t live up to my expectations. And then I met you, and you were every bit as awesome as I hoped. You’re one of Australia’s finest YA writers, and None Shall Sleep is your finest yet. If you had ten words to pitch it to somebody, what would you say?

ELLIE: Thanks! And hmm, okay… how about: “YA Silence of the Lambs”. That’s five words and easy to remember, heh. I always find elevator pitches so hard! What’s your ten-word pitch for Rebel Gods?

WILL: “Teen god juggles family and potential end of the world”. Ten words! I win!

ELLIE: I love that we get to explore more about the characters from Monuments … What was your inspiration for Rebel Gods?

WILL: Monuments was always a two-book project. Rebel Gods was the part I was itching to write – it’s a story about growing up and leaving the nest, told through this fun fantasy adventure about killing gods. Monuments is the origin story, the set-up, and Rebel Gods is the pay-off. I fell in love with Connor, Sally and Locky writing the first book, so getting to explore them, and their dynamic together in my first-ever sequel, was so much fun. None Shall Sleep is a stand-alone, you could have written anything … What inspired you to dip into the world of the FBI and behavioural science?

ELLIE: As far as inspiration goes: I am (to no one’s surprise) a murderino – which means I’m into true crime stories. I read Mindhunter by John Douglas back in my twenties, and found it completely fascinating. The details of forensic investigation and the behaviour of serial killers are things I find intriguing, but also the psychology of investigators as well – I always want to know how they handle diving into all that darkness day after day. I listened to a lot of episodes of the Real Crime Profile podcast while writing None Shall Sleep. I find detectives just as interesting as murderers.

I’m also a long-time fan of Thomas Harris, particularly his books The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon. I really wanted to write a YA take on Silence, but for years I put it off, thinking it might be too hardcore for YA audiences … then I decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it!

WILL: And I’m so glad that you did! What stands out to me is how distinct the characters feel, how did you go about crafting them?

ELLIE: I actually knew the basic character tropes I wanted for None Shall Sleep – and I wanted them to riff on Silence, to some extent. But Emma and Travis and Kristin and Simon all wanted to be their own people, and somehow they arrived on the page already living and breathing.

Ellie Marney (Photo by Justine Bernhaut).

I did spend a lot of time researching their emotional journeys – I do a lot of character profile work before and during the writing. One of the best references for that, I discovered, was a book called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma by Alice Ackerman and Becca Puglisi – it contains a whole lot of scenarios and backstories for characters, and gives you some really good insight into character psychology.

But you already knew your characters – Connor and Locky and Sally – very well, didn’t you? What new things did you discover about them in Rebel Gods?

WILL: Monuments is largely set over three days, so we see our characters in one moment – the challenge in writing Rebel Gods was seeing how they might grow and evolve. There’s always been an interesting tension between Connor’s home life and the adventure he’s on – basically, the meat of contemporary novels fighting against the meat of fantasy novels. The fantasy stuff was the focus in the first book, so in this sequel, I brought the contemporary stuff, his relationship with his mum mostly, to the fore. Sally continues her journey towards being more open with those around her – she’s very focused on the past in Monuments, so letting her imagine a future for herself in Rebel Gods was vital. Locky is the love interest in the first book, overwhelmingly charismatic and seen through Connor’s eyes. Rebel Gods allowed me to pull the veil back on his family life, explore why he is as ambitious as he is and the reality of an ambition realised … The big thing I discovered? That saying goodbye after two books is harder than I thought.

You mentioned before worrying None Shall Sleep might be too hardcore for YA audiences … I’m fascinated by how that impacted the writing process. Did you ever second-guess yourself?

ELLIE: Initially I did worry that the thriller elements might be too intense. But then I remembered all the books I was reading at fifteen – Stephen King, and Dean Koontz, and Flowers in the Attic, and The Exorcist – and I thought … Nah, I reckon the teenagers will be fine! Teens are pretty smart and daring readers, and they’re very good at self-regulating. They often abandon books they’re not enjoying. Usually gatekeepers get more nervous about scary or emotionally intense content in YA books than teenagers themselves. I think we should just let teenagers read what they want to read.

I’m also someone who thinks that we need a broad range of content in our reading – comforting, entertaining, frightening, challenging. Scary reads are good at encouraging us to think about resilience – You can get through this, You can overcome incredible odds and survive. I think that’s actually a relevant message for teenagers during this pandemic period of history.

Was there a central message at the heart of Rebel Gods?

WILL: It continues Monuments’ theme of doing what you can to change the world for the better – but that’s often easier said than done. The first book ended with a clear challenge for our protagonists. Rebel Gods is a book that’s steeped in hesitation, second-guessing, doubting, questioning … basically it’s an urban-fantasy Hamlet. The central message? You might only have one moment to do what’s right, seize it. The secondary message? Have a laugh in the meantime. That makes it sound like it was an easy book to write, which it wasn’t … Did you run into any difficulties with None Shall Sleep?

ELLIE: Writing a book in a different time period (1982 is now considered historical fiction, believe it or not!), which was set in a different country, involved a lot of research into era-appropriate locations. I spent hours every day on Google Maps, looking up roads and landmarks in Virginia and Washington DC – and then I had to check that the roads and landmarks existed in 1982.

So the crime aspects and the character aspects and the story aspects were easy – but the setting was tricky as heck.

I was jealous of you, you know, because you only had to research Sydney! But it wasn’t as easy as all that for Rebel Gods, was it?

WILL: Well, I wrote most of it in the early days of the pandemic, so my plan to wander around Sydney and discover locations, and write on location, was quickly scuttled. Google Maps got quite a workout on my end too.

Writing action-fantasy has been a huge learning experience for me, as somebody who relishes writing quiet books like The Sidekicks about characters contemplating stuff. I mean, most of the conversations in Rebel Gods revolve around committing deicide, so having to ground that story in reality was tough. It was also my first sequel, which poses its own hurdles. The pressure is on to make sure you stick the landing, and I felt it as my deadlines loomed. Add to that, wrestling with the general brain fog of March and April? It wasn’t easy, but I challenged myself to find ways to persevere, and keep it fun, and I’m so proud of the writer I’ve become because of it.

Did you learn anything about yourself, or your process, writing this?

ELLIE: I think I learn something with every book I write – with White Night, for instance, I realised how effective using my own history and memories in my writing could be. With None Shall Sleep, I realised that my best writing comes when I’m writing something that primarily pleases only me.

“Write the book you want to read” was something I knew on an intellectual level, I think. But I’d been writing to deadline for so long, I’d kind of got out of the habit of really loving sitting down at my laptop to work. And None Shall Sleep was a book I loved writing – every aspect of it was deeply enjoyable. I haven’t had so much fun writing a book since I wrote Every Breath, to be honest.

WILL: With deadlines in mind, what’s next for Ellie Marney?

ELLIE: Right now, I’m writing the last ten thousand words of the finale for my next book – unfortunately I can’t tell you much about it! But I can tell you it will be releasing in 2021, and if you like the 1940s, and murder mysteries, and plucky girl gangs, and Enigma machines … then this might be the book for you. And Will, I know that you have something coming even sooner than next year!

WILL: I’m lucky to have been chosen as an Australia Reads Ambassador. As a result, I’ll be releasing a special-edition novella, The Greatest Hit, for $2.99 this November. I can’t wait for you all to meet Tessa. People look at her and see her biggest mistake. While everyone else her age is taking their bold first steps into adulthood, she’s just trying to outrun a song that went viral when she was fourteen. But now – an opportunity. A profile as one of The Five Most Forgettable Internet Celebrities of the Decade So Far gives her the chance to right a wrong, and the courage to sing her greatest hit as it was originally written. But will it be enough to win back the person she hurt?

ELLIE: And it’s not your first novella …

WILL: No, my first was I Can See The Ending, a comedy about a burgeoning psychic struggling with his developing powers, that featured in Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology alongside your story Missing Persons … That was a prequel to your Every series, so I have to ask on behalf of fans of that series (myself included), would you ever consider returning to that world?

ELLIE: I had a great time working on that shorter prequel, but I think I’d like to leave Rachel and Mycroft to carry on adventuring in their own little world …

Unless I had a pressing reason to look back – and since the books have been optioned for a TV series, that could happen. I participated in the TV script development process, which was incredibly fun, and a whole different type of writing. If the series is greenlit for production, and I ended up writing a few scripts for the series, I would actually love that!

It’s kind of the dream, isn’t it, to have something you wrote turned into a film or a TV show… What would you like to maintain control over, if Rebel Gods (or Monuments, for that matter) was turned into a screen production?

WILL: Honestly, I would be thrilled to be involved in any adaptations. I relish writing for the screen, and many of my books begin their lives as scripts. But as much as I would love some control, I also know that adaptation is a different interpretation of a story that suits a different medium, so I wouldn’t be precious about preserving my original vision. I just want to be one of the people pulling it apart to create something new. There’s so much about Locky and Sally that’s left unsaid, because Monuments and Rebel Gods are written from a dominating first-person perspective, so I would love to see what other writers did to expand the world of the story. My dream adaptation would widen the scope and spotlight the three protagonists equally. Until then, fan-fiction writers can have at it.

At the moment, I’m pretty content with two books in one year. That’s enough for me. And I’m just trying to catch up to you. You’re a publishing powerhouse, even self-publishing some of your releases. What’s the big difference between the traditional route and going it alone?

ELLIE: With No Limits, and the Circus Hearts series, I was doing everything myself – writing, creating cover copy, contracting cover designers, organising marketing … It was incredibly satisfying and also loads of work. It was nice, with None Shall Sleep, to just hand the book over to someone else and say, “Please tweak this!” and not have to do it myself! You cede a fair bit of control, but it also makes some things easier.

Have you ever considered self-publishing something?

WILL: I have, but I think it will always be a pie-in-the-sky daydream for me. I yearn for that much control, but at the same time, I feel I work best with restrictions. And worrying about ISBNs and marketing and cover designers … I might take my eye off the ball, and I don’t want to risk that. At the moment, I know what a Will Kostakis book is – a story brimming with heart and humour, with a pinch of the sads, informed by my queerness and my small but potent Greek family – and I want to spend the next few years focusing on writing as many of them as I can.

What do you think makes an Ellie Marney book?

ELLIE: Oh, wow, let me think … Okay, how about this: Stubborn, pragmatic and smart female characters; intelligent and supportive male co-conspirators; murder of some kind (almost always!); realistic forensic detail; puzzles and clues; unresolved sexual tension (sometimes it even gets resolved!); pulse-pounding action; dramatic, page-turning finales.

WILL: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next Ellie Marney read.

—Rebel Gods (Hachette Australia Books) and None Shall Sleep (Allen & Unwin) are both available now from Booktopia.

You’ll find both of the books mentioned in this blog post in our Kids Month Top 50 collection!

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