A Double Feature Most Devious (And Magical)
To kick off November right, authors Claribel A. Ortega and Ryan La Sala join the show to talk about their latest novels, Scepter of Memories and The Dead of Summer
Happy November! To kick the month off I’m honored to share TWO interviews with y’all today one with Claribel A. Ortega about the fourth book in her middle grade series Witchlings, called Scepter of Memories, and another with Ryan La Sala about his latest YA novel The Dead of Summer! The interviews were conducted separately but on the same day so this pair of books, while so drastically different has always had this link in my head. I’m hoping there’s something for everyone here as we get deeper into the fall and I hope you enjoy!
New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author, Claribel A. Ortega is a former reporter who writes middle-grade and young adult fantasy inspired by her Dominican heritage. When she’s not busy turning her obsession with pop culture, magic, and video games into books, she’s co-hosting her podcast Bad Author Book Club. Claribel is a Marvel contributor and has been featured on Buzzfeed, Bustle, Good Morning America and Deadline.
Witchlings (Scholastic) was an Instant NYT Bestseller, a USA Today Bestseller, and #1 Indie Bestseller. Her graphic novel Frizzy with Rose Bousamra was winner of the 2023 Pura Belpré Award for Children’s Text, The 2023 Eisner Award and an Indie Bestseller.
You can find her on Threads, Instagram and Tiktok Claribel_Ortega, writing personal essays on at claribelaortega.substack.com and on her website at claribelortega.com.
Witchlings: Scepter of Memories
Evil dwells in Ravenskill. Seven, Thorn, and Valley are determined to stop Ambert Lophiifor’s plan of taking over the Twelve Towns. With Seven’s Uncle powers and their new coven behind them, surely they’ll be able to defeat him at last.
But strange things are happening around Ravenskill―the Witchlings’ allies are starting to forget them! When the Witchlings are charged with the crime of practicing unnatural and dangerous magic, no one is there to come to their defense.
Without any support, the Witchlings are forced to flee beyond the borders of the Twelve Towns and into the swirling grey mists of the Enchanted Grim, hoping to find the one witch who might have the knowledge and power to help them: Delphinium Larkspur. The Grim is an uncharted wilderness filled with monstruos, where no normal witch would ever be able to survive.
But there’s nothing normal about the Witchlings, their courage, or their friendship. Together with their Nightbeasts, they are determined to find a way to save their home.
Even if it means embracing the monstruos within themselves.
Ryan La Sala is a bestselling and award-winning author known for his genre defying, queer-centered horror and fantasy.
Ryan is the author behind the bestselling cottagecore horror, The Honeys, which is in development to become a major motion picture with Anonymous Content. He is also the author of Beholder, Reverie and Be Dazzled. He has been featured in The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and more. He writes to you from New York, overseen by his cat, Haunted Little Girl.
The Dead Of Summer: Welcome to the Island of Anchor’s Mercy
For generations, Anchor’s Mercy has welcomed visitors from all over the world to revel in the island’s pristine beauty and queer culture. But something is wrong. Very wrong. And Ollie Veltman is going to have to figure it out if he wants to stop his island, and everyone upon it, from drowning within a supernatural, radiant plague rising from the waves.
Take a deep breath...
Told as a kaleidoscopic drama between past and present, narration and interview, text and pictures, The Dead of Summer is a story within a scavenger hunt for truths so dangerous they will make your skin crawl and your lungs ache for air. Get ready to scream!
Split into two episodes you can listen to either (or both) episodes now! click below or keep reading for an exclusive excerpt!
The following is a condensed transcript combining elements of both of the episodes included above. Question order and number is slightly changed for ease of reading.
Q1) If you were a plate, what kind of plate would you be?
Ryan La Sala: I would want to be a tectonic plate… I’ve been thinking about tectonic plates in the continental shelf for this particular book. I think when I was a kid, I became fixated on the idea that there were these forces that wee so massive beneath the crust of the earth, right? Like moving things around. And the idea of Pangea was fascinating to me. Especially now that I write books about deep sea creatures coming up in search of the light that humanity has gotten to live under for so long. I’ve been looking a lot at like the Mariana Trench in places where the plates sort of split apart and reveal the inner tissue of our world. That’s the first thing that came to mind but I’m going to stick with my answer.
Claribel A. Ortega: Not everyone will get this but the first thing that came to mind was Demi Lovato saying “I like mugs” so do with that what you will but when you say plate I just think of a plate full of cheese. I love a charcuterie board. I love cheese. I love crackers. So if I was a plate, I’d be a plate full of cheese.
Q2) If you had to spend a year in a fictional world which would you pick and why?
Claribel A. Ortega: That is very hard. There are so many places I’d love to go, and it’s almost like you have to gage which is the least dangerous place, like where would I actually survive. That is very difficult. I’m gonna go ahead and I’m gonna choose a book that on my shelf right now… the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. They’re not fantasy, they’re like our world with a little sprinkling of magic. some combat, some fighting and some drama which I’m always loving to listen in on.
Ryan La Sala: I think the Hunger Games, because as far as I can tell, all the gay people live in the Capital so I know I’d be well taken care of. And those people look like they have the most ridiculous lives, sort of watching and partaking in what can only be described as one long protracted fashion show. So that’s what comes to mind first, although that’s quite a grim world. And the fact that the Hunger Games happens every year, I wonder if I could time my stay so I get there right after one and right before the next starts…
Q3) How did you develop your opening line/opening moment with this book?
Ryan La Sala: I’m curious to look at the very first draft because this wasn’t the beginning at the start of my process. I rewrote the entire book. I had written it in third person but then I wanted to try it out in first. So plot wise we always begin at this particular point which is Ollie on a ferry bound back to Anchor’s Mercy where he was born and raised and he’s with his mom and has a lot of very complicated feelings as he’s watching the mainland vanish and this boat sort of grudge out into this blue oblivion that he’s dreading. And the question is supposed to be like well, why is this kid who’s going home, whose mom has just survived this ordeal, she had cancer and now she’s survived, why is he so gloomy about this? Why is he so upset? Which is where we kind of get this first line “Smile to big and you’ll end up wth tears on your teeth.” It’s sort of the saying that his mom dispatches from time to time and Ollie is meditating on the meaning of it.
Claribel A. Ortega: I actually am really proud of how I’ve handled book to book [transitions] because a lot of people told me, like “I could actually read this on it’s own because you do such a good job explaining what came before” which is not easy to do. I think that the first draft especially sometimes there is a bit of heavy telling in the beginning that I have to sort of filter through the rest of the story, like where else can I put some of these details so that it’s not so heavy front loaded in the beginning and telling everything what happened in books before. So trying to sprinkle it throughout the narrative so that it feels more organic in the same way that we think about things that have happened in the past few months in our everyday lives… so book 3 ends off where Seven sort of has this revelation [about Delphinum Larkspur] and I wanted to pick up right in that moment for book four and just keep going. I love when I read books that do that in a series so I wanted to do that as well. And I just thought it was such a poignant moment. It would have been a shame to have to see it in retrospect from Seven’s perspective. I wanted to see it in that moment.
Q4) Do you think you and your leads would get along, were you to meet? What about if you swapped places?
Claribel A. Ortega: I don’t know how well I would do in the Witchlings world. There are a lot of things that freak me out. And also depending on what powers I had, like if I had Seven’s powers and I could talk to animals I would be very happy but not necessarily when I had to talk to rats. I am very scared of rats, which is why I always have a rat component in my books. It’s sort of like exposure therapy of me in a way. And I think that if the Witchlings were in our world, the world would be a much better place. I could really use some heroes like them, I would say. But a lot of my readers actually remind me so much of the Witchlings because they’re to funny, they’re so tenacious, and they have so much hope for the future and so many ideas on how we can make the world a better place. And it’s really an honor for me to write for them. So in a way I already have pieces of the Witchlings in this world with me, which is really nice.
Ryan La Sala: I’ve met many kids that are just like Ollie so I think of him as- if you’ve ever been on a beach trip late in the summer and you’re coming home from the beach but someone’s like, “I want to get ice cream” or “should we grab food before we hit the highway cause there’s rush out” or something, I feel like a lot of people have had this experience where they pull over at some roadside place and there’s a bunch of high schoolers running it basically. And that’s Ollie. Like Ollie is one of those kids. He is a local in a tourist trap basically. And he sort of smiles and puts on a good show for the people that are rolling through his life and out but that’s not really him, right? So I think that if I met him, I don’t think that he would register me as someone significant. I think that I’d just be sot of one more random person with a credit card trying to buy a lobster roll.
Q5) What’s on your shelf, what are you reading these days?
Ryan La Sala: I’m looking at my shelf right now. Let’s see, we’ve got a very cracked up version of The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, I’m looking at 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea which I sometimes loved to leaf through when I was having writers block with The Dead of Summer. There’s a Chuck Tingle book, and Adam Silvera book, a Kat Cho book. What’s unfair about this is that the shelf right in front of me is basically where I’ve put books of my friends after getting home from events for their launches. But that’s kind of the nice thing about being friends with authors, that you never don’t have something to read.
Claribel A. Ortega: So I have started Legendborn by Tracy Deonn that is incredible and I’m so mad it took me so long to get to it but what an amazing book. What an amazing depiction of what grief actually feels like. Absolutely just knee deep in that story right now and really, really enjoying it so that’s definitely my recommendation right now.
Q6) What independent bookstores would you like to highlight today?
Claribel A. Ortega: Absolutely, so there are three. Books of Wonder which is in New York City. It’s an amazing children’s bookstore and they have signed copies of Scepter of Memories. We have Split Rock Books that has been my champion since my first book came out there in Cold Spring, New York… and then the last one is Stanza Books, which is in Beacon, New York. They’re fairly new but they’re also an amazing independent bookstore. So those are my three faves.
Ryan La Sala: If you ever need something signed by me, Books of Wonder is on Manhattan Island, which is where I am some of the time but I just got done with a tour through a bunch of indies that I think were all so, so fantastic. Left Bank Books in St. Louis, I loved Anderson’s in Chicago, Politics and Prose at the Wharf, was my first time being in their new-ish location in Washington D.C., they were wonderful. And I didn’t make it up to Connecticut but River Bend Books up in my hometown of West Hartford, I’ll give them a shout out too.
Want to learn more? Check out the full episodes “Evil Dwells In Ravenskill… But We Have the Power to Stop It with Claribel A. Ortega” and “Get Ready to Scream with Ryan La Sala” wherever you listen to your podcasts and make sure to check out Witchlings and The Dead of Summer at your local bookstore or library!
And if you enjoyed this, check out my last post and episode, “Riley S. Quinn Is (Still) Here For The Happy Endings”