Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.
Today’s guest is Lana Harper, the New York Times bestselling author of Payback's A Witch, and From Bad to Cursed from Berkley Books. Writing as Lana Popovic, she is also the author of YA novels Wicked Like a Wildfire, Fierce Like a Firestorm, Blood Countess, and Poison Priestess. Lana studied psychology and literature at Yale University, law at Boston University, and is a graduate of the Emerson College publishing and writing master's program. She was born in Serbia and lived in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania before moving to the United States, where she now lives in Chicago with her family.
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
Payback's A Witch had an unusual origin point. Normally, my ideas seem to coalesce out of the ether; I’ll get a little nugget of a notion from… somewhere nebulous, and then begin to free associate more and more details until I have a very rough outline. For instance, for my first book, Wicked Like a Wildfire, I remember thinking how interesting it would be if a girl—specifically, a witch born to be beautiful and magically enticing—were promised to Death as a romantic partner. The rest of the story grew from there.
Payback's A Witch, however, was much more intentional. I’d been revising a thriller in the hopes of making a leap from young adult to adult fiction, and my agent called to let me know that editors in New York seemed to be looking for witchy rom-coms, and would I maybe like to write one? From there, we brainstormed premise ideas, and the one that made it into book form was actually hers, just a one-liner of a concept—John Tucker Must Die, but everyone is witches, and two of the women fall in love! I was immediately and absolutely stoked to write that book, and dove right into building Thistle Grove, defining the magical competition, and brainstorming the four witchy families and their gifts.
From Bad to Cursed , on the other hand, was much more conventional of a process for me. I introduced demon-summoning necromantic witch Isidora Avramov and her love interest, green-magic healer Rowan Thorn, in Payback's A Witch, and it got me thinking—what if they were archenemies, thrown together to investigate a necromantic curse leveled against Rowan’s family? How interesting and sexy would it be to develop their relationship and personal self-discovery within that framework? (Also, enemies-to-lovers is hands down my favorite trope. The tension! The banter! The spice! I’m there for all of it and wish it would happen to me IRL. A hot archenemy has yet to materialize.)
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
With From Bad to Cursed , I began with a rough outline—just the most basic plot beats I could think of, maybe a page’s worth. I needed to know: 1) who the culprit behind the curse was; 2) how Issa and Rowan would investigate the case (and each other’s faces, from very close up); and 3) what sort of emotional journey Issa needed to traverse throughout the book. So those were the first elements in place. I also like to build these Thistle Grove stories around a pagan Wheel of the Year holiday, and in this case it was the fertility festival of Beltane, which gave me a nice framework of celebrations around which to build the rest of the story.
From Bad to Cursed was extra fun because I got to explore the concept of envisioning and building an immersive haunted house, inspired by such experiences as Sleep No More in NYC. I love immersive entertainment—everything from medieval manors to renaissance faires to any kind of haunted happening—so Issa’s development of the Arcane Emporium’s haunted house functioned as a neat metaphor and touchstone for her own emotional journey and growing romance with Rowan.
I also like to make little character sheets for my main cast before I start writing; personality traits, hobbies, preferred turns of phrase. Anything I can think of that allows me to consider my characters fleshed-out human beings before I even begin the story.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
Every. Damn. Time. Never have I written a book that unfolded exactly how I thought it would when I first set out to write it. When I say “rough outline,” I do mean rough. Once I begin writing, I often don’t know exactly what the next scene will be until I finish the one I’m working on, and sometimes what I thought was going to happen becomes clearly wrong for the story once I actually arrive at that point. Occasionally a scene will be a complete surprise, sometimes so shocking it’s a little unnerving, like, where did this even come from, surely not my brain?! (See for example, the voyeuristic ghost scene in Payback's A Witch. I had no clue that there was going to be a make-out session in a gnarly haunted forest interrupted by creepy spectral onlookers until I started writing it. And now it’s one of my favorite scenes I’ve ever written.)
So I suppose I’m a half-pantser, half-plotter. Or like, one-fourth plotter, three-quarters pantser, more realistically. (As an aside, it’s embarrassing how many times I had to reread those fractions to make sure they were correct.) I don’t like to overanalyze the pantser part too much, lest it stop happening and I forget how to write—an actual fear that I have every time I start a new book.
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
There are some bigger, more ambitious concepts that I’ve been sitting on for years, waiting for the right time to write them; I like to think they’re marinating, and will be nice and tender and ready when the time comes to bring them out into the light—and maybe by then, I’ll have practiced and grown enough as a writer that I’ll be able to do them justice. I also sometimes have little pops of ideas at random times, such as in the shower or right before I fall asleep. A couple of times, I’ve had very vivid, cinematic dreams that I thought would make for really cool story ideas. When it comes to books in a series, such as The Witches of Thistle Grove, one book seems to very organically give rise to the next, so that’s been a really fun experience.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
It’s been mostly a matter of pragmatism for me—what would serve me best in terms of my career. As I mentioned, I already had a completed thriller written when I switched focus to Payback's A Witch, because my agent and I both thought that was the smarter move. I tend to fall in love with my projects very readily, so even if there’s a different idea I’m very excited about, I don’t mind setting it aside to focus on something that I’m either contracted to write, or think would be the wiser choice for my next project.
I have 6 cats (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
Six cats!!! I love cats, but that is impressive even by my standards—are you some kind of feline goddess surrounded by familiars? I hope you are. Please teach me some cat spells.
I prefer to write completely uninterrupted. No buddies, no music, as few distractions as possible. Occasionally I’ll co-write with a friend—specifically Jilly Gagnon, who has an extremely cool literary thriller coming out next year—and that can be really fun, but I don’t think I could do that as a regular practice.