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Hannah Kingsley: Soul Hate and Battling Your Fate · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I run
• 0:18
  the activities of our centre, but I'm also an author in the other part of my life.
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  And one of my favourite things is to talk to fellow authors, and I've been joined today
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  by Hannah Kingsley, who is producing, is it your debut title Hannah? Yeah, it's my debut,
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  which is called Soul Hate, which is coming out in February 2025. But for those of you who are
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  watching this on YouTube, I'll and I'll describe for those who are listening. Hannah also has another
• 0:53
  extraordinary skill, which is, well, do you call yourself a book maker, bookbinder? I kind of
• 1:02
  give book makeovers. I suppose you could kind of makeover her. Yeah. And she produces the most
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  wonderful artistic versions of books, which hopefully we can talk about a little bit later.
• 1:17
  So the first question I have for you, Hannah, is what I very often ask guests on this podcast is
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  who was your favourite fantasy author growing up? Did you have like an entry author who made you
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  think, yeah, I want to do that. I want to read those kind of books. I mean, I fell in love with books
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  so young. My mum's a bookworm as well, so I fell in love with books so young. So when I was
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  when I was thinking about this, I think two names really like stood out to me from like childhood,
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  and it was Angie Sage with the Septimus Heaps series. Oh, yes. Yeah. I loved those books. I devoured
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  them. In fact, I still have my very worn, tattered copy in my parents' house.
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  And then the other book was probably like the Rangers Apprentice series by John Flanagan.
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  So yeah. We had those books. My son has still got them, and they were beautifully bound, weren't they?
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  I did, did you get the howl bound versions or did you get the hardback versions or did you get
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  the paperback? Because I remember they were first published in hardbacks, which weren't that
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  expensive. So you know, we missed them. Absolutely, we missed them. There was a stage in the
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  two early 2000s when hardbacks weren't that expensive. Yeah, so they're wonderful presentations.
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  No, we, yeah, as I'll say, we got them paperback, and I think by that point, like book 5 or
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  book 6 was already published by the time I got my hands on them. So I would love to hardback
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  version. I have to go snooping on eBay or something for that later. Yeah. Well, they're in,
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  they're in my attic. By son still wants them. Must get them out. So your story, so hey,
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  is really a sort of reposter and answer to the fated lovers' trope in fantasy of, you know,
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  well, it's also in romance, isn't it, of all sorts. The idea that you have a soul mate,
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  who is out there, I've actually produced a whole series of books, 17 books,
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  under my just sterling name, which uses this idea of you have a sort of fated person.
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  And I also like you, I was interested in what happens if the person turns out to be awful.
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  You know, what's, yeah, you know, this is, and I don't know, there's some, that was later on in
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  the series that initially I started with the idea thinking, oh, in Finding Sky, this,
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  this sounds like a wonderful idea and very romantic. And then by the time I got to about book 3,
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  I was thinking, actually, it all can be horribly wrong and evil and yeah. So I would very much
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  appreciate it finding your spin on this of soul hate. So do you want to just outline the sort of
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  legend or the myth underlying the soul mate, soul hate dichotomy that you have in your world?
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  Yeah. So in this world, there exists, this bit is the fact, this is the bit that doesn't matter
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  what continent you are, every single person has a soul hate and a soul mate. So soul mate being
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  a traditional love of real life belong together, the other half of the soul, perfect pairing,
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  supposedly, you know, in its very much that love at first sight, soul mate idea. But then on
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  the other side of the coin, you know, every, every thing in nature has balances and checks and
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  opposites. We've got the soul hate, which is the enemies at first sight, that instant, instead of
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  instant, you know, adoration and love and you've got instant repulsion and hatred and
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  an urge to kill them. And supposedly it's your your fated worst nemesis. This is the person
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  that is going to destroy you and everything that you love. And that is determined by fate,
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  who is very much a godly figure. And he has two daughters, the sister of love, sister of hate,
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  and between three of them they control these bonds. And everybody has them, and it's known,
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  but it's a matter of chance if you meet them. The statistic, I think I threw out there once in
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  the book is like you have a one in ten chance of meeting one of your fated. So it's not, it's
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  common enough that people know that it happens, but you also can't waste your life waiting for it to
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  because it could just never happen. That's interesting. So did you have a think about the size of
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  your population when you were trying to work out your one in ten, when you're undoing the world
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  building underlying logic of your world? Yeah, yeah, no, I had to think, I thought long and
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  half about how how the fated system really works because what I didn't want is what everybody has
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  a soulmate and a soulmate and everybody meets them all the time because that leads to a very
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  different world or like a society. And I think it downplays the role that the choices we make
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  throughout our lives has on the outcome of our lives as well. So when I came up with that one
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  in ten figure, I wanted it to be sort of like common enough that, you know, everyone's like,
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  yeah, it happens, it could absolutely happen, but also not so common that you're going to be waiting
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  around because your soulmate is very likely to be around the corner. And just it should say that
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  this set up, this mythic set up is not the, it doesn't stay in the work realms of gods and
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  fated and things. It's very much a story about people living in them. Yeah, very much. Yeah,
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  this, yeah, the fates are, there's something that people know about, you know, it's their
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  religious structure as it were, but this is very much about stories of people dealing with the
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  fallout of a soulmate or a soulmate. And the way I pitched this to my agent was, well, the PG
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  version is what if fate was a jerk and just lived for the drama. And she liked that pitch.
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  I mean, absolutely, it's cruel, cruel, but also the idea of being just liking to see suffering
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  has a very long standing tradition, doesn't it, in the Western canon,
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  snipping the, the threads. Yeah, fate doesn't have a very good press.
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  What stood out for me in your book is actually having a heroine, Renza, who is basically a serious,
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  she has a serious role in society. It's like I thought it would reminded me of being a young
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  senator in ancient Rome, for example. She's part of the governing structure. She's trying to
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  reform society. She's trying to find funding and she's interested in what budgets are available
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  for things. These are all crunchy issues. It's not like the princess whose next thing is the
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  ball. It's very much that she is engaged in society in a way where she has influence over events.
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  Do you have any thoughts? I was wondering if you arrived at her being that kind of person
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  because you have been annoyed by other fantasy heroines or
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  I mean, what was the thinking about her? So my thinking for women in general in this book,
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  in particular, is that women can be strong in any number of ways. There is not one way to be strong.
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  I think I have read a lot of books where a strong woman can kick a man's ass nine ways from
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  Sundays. She's just a ninja with a sword and I love it. Don't get me wrong. That's really
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  engaging to read about. I really enjoy it. I have definitely written books in my drawer where
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  that is a skill that the character has, but it is not the only way that a woman can be strong.
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  I really wanted to write a wide range of women being strong and the skills that they have
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  being the skills that are required to save the day. When I came to Renzer,
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  I wrote her as someone, you know, she's a young person who's idealistic, intelligent,
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  passionate, actually wants to go out there and change the world. As a lot of young people,
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  I think, do want to do. You know, a lot of people have these ideas, but feel like they can't act
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  on them. So I think by giving Renzer that position where she could go and act on them,
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  probably a little bit further up your text. It's more than just a sort of campaigner. She
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  seems to enjoy the politics of horse trading and she understands the point of view of somebody else
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  who may want the budget for, let's say, the police, the equivalent of the police force,
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  but she wants to fund the science and technology artists. And so it feels like she gets a lot of
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  pleasure from being part of that system, like a young MP or a young senator might do.
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  That struck me as being refreshing to read in a fantasy book that you bothered to actually
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  imagine somebody running the society. Yeah, this is how it's run. This is how it's run. This is
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  until we come up with things in this world. Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the things when I was
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  world building was, again, I've read a lot of fantasies where the political structure is very
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  much based off of medieval Europe, you know, kings and lords and barons and all of that. But when I
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  was writing about police, one, I wanted a world without sexism because I was writing
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  police as an escape. And I didn't want sexism in the world where police was an escape. So that's
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  just not a thing. But I also thought, okay, well, this is my fantasy world. What would I want the
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  political structures look like? Okay, there would be a democracy of some shape or form. And the people
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  in that democracy should probably be passionate about what they're doing, which would be quite nice.
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  So yeah, I mean, giving, giving Renzer, I mean, yeah, I don't know someone who is,
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  I'm trying to think how best to say it. Like all of my friends in their various different
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  jobs in real life do it because they love it. So they don't shy away from the details. And I didn't
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  think, once you'd Renzer, the injustice of the same, if that makes sense. You also have two main
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  heroes, as I read it in this in this book, Nouris and Idris. Yeah, you avoid a love triangle,
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  cliche. Tell us a little bit about, I'm going to let you do this job because I don't want to reveal
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  too much. I'm terrible for that. Anyway, tell us a little bit of what you were thinking as you came
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  up with these two people who are in relationship with Renzer. Yeah. So I guess one inspiration
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  for one of the figures. Again, I'm not sure how much is a spoiler and so much isn't. But one was
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  the very much the classic star cross-lather Romeo and Juliet Montague capsula forbidden
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  Rome. For a written relationship aspect, the one that society frowned upon, the one that
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  you shouldn't have. And then the other being the boy next door that the friends to, are we going
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  to be more than friends? The one that everyone's rooting for as it were. I think that both
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  playing to their own romantic tropes within fantasy genre or the romanticy genre.
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  That's probably an inspiration behind them. I definitely kind of deliberately didn't want a love
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  triangle. Again, that's just not a trope that I felt. I do enjoy the romance love triangle
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  trope on occasion. But it just didn't feel like that would sit with Renzer and who she is as a
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  person. She's a very decisive person. She's someone who very much stands on principle.
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  And she wouldn't string two people along. I don't think. Not intentionally anyway.
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  She's sort of one of those people that's like, I don't have time for this. I'll just make a
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  decision and move on. But yeah, I guess that was the inspiration behind those two men.
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  I don't think it's a plot spoiler to say one of them is in this situation of being the
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  fated one in a way. So hey, so stopping there. Yeah. But just I'm packing this idea of
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  soul hate. Do you feel that there is an application to things you see in in our real world?
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  I'm not talking that it's not like not going as far as an allegory, but I found that I was applying
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  it to situations like to see and who to or various sort of unthinking prejudice you might have
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  against somebody from another religion or race or even next, you know, and the next town over
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  or a different football team. I found myself thinking of those parallels where we have a
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  this urge in us just when somebody shows themselves to be different to attack that difference.
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  Consciously, that's not what I wrote, but I am certainly not mad if that's how people have taken it
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  because yeah, like now you mentioned it again does apply. I think consciously the way I wrote it
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  was, well, I'll bring it down one second. It was more about for me firstly, it was about
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  overcoming bad first impressions and not letting first impressions linger. And then for me,
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  it was more about fighting or your principles, you know, in a world that wants to change you.
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  The world says you got to do X. That's not who I am. You know, the world is giving me an excuse
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  it's saying it's okay. It's saying that this is the thing I've got to do. It's giving me the easy
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  out. But I'm not going to do that. That's against who I am. That's not what I stand for. This is who
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  I am. And another part of it, maybe when I worked a corporate job, I was very much in the only
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  woman in a very male dominated space. I used to work with a lot of coding. And there were times
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  as any woman who's ever worked in a workspace will experience when you get frustrated.
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  There are people that you don't get on with. And you just, you remind yourself that you're not going
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  to act on how annoyed you are and keep smiling and keep doing your job and get your head down and
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  get it done. And everything is better off for it. So those were sort of lots that's my conscious
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  input into it. But I think what you said also does apply. So I'm glad for that. Yeah, good. I think
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  you know, Tolkien has a famous phrase where he says that he doesn't like allegory because that's
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  in the control of the author, but he likes to click ability because that's in the control of the reader.
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  So I love that. I mean, I deliberately leave some stuff open-ended for the reader to decide
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  what happens. So yeah, my authority stops on the page. Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to give too much
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  away because the joy of reading it is finding out all the shocking twists and turns, which it
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  definitely has as a novel. But I was interested in your process. Are you someone who sits down and
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  right, I'm going to plot this out or are you one who writes to discover your plot as on your on the way?
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  I'm kind of a mixture. My mum has a nickname for me and it's chaos. And that would definitely
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  apply to my writing process a little bit, particularly at the beginning stages. So I will just
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  get random ideas for maybe it's a scene, maybe it's a character, maybe it's a concept,
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  maybe it's just just like what would you do to really make this trope entirely different or
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  you know, that those sorts of things. And then I start sort of combining different ideas. I've
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  got like sticky notes everywhere. Like if you look to the other half of the office, it would just be
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  a wall of sticky notes. So yeah, so it starts kind of with me just writing whatever the scene is.
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  Maybe fleshing out the character, maybe fleshing out a little bit of a world building, adding
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  bits in. In this case, it was fleshing out Renza and that first opening chapter. So
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  police and the high chamber and who she was. And then what she cared about. And then the idea
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  all sort of coming together. So once I had fleshed out the main characters, what their goal was
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  or the things that were important to them, it was very easy for me to then work out, okay,
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  well, how do we threaten that? And to then once I had all of those groundwork sort of bricks in place,
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  stop, plot and go back. And then inevitably work out that the plot doesn't work and change
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  your halfway through. Yeah, revision, revision. Yes, chaos is definitely the main way I work,
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  but that's generally the very loose, loose way I work. Yeah. So the politics of your novel remind me
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  very much of the city states of Renaissance Italy and the what she's running or helping run is
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  something that's like, yeah, on that kind of size, you know, it's not a whole vast continent
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  or anything, it's yeah, it's that kind of thing. But and that also goes along with the suggestion
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  in the names and the level of technology they've reached. So it's a sort of mid-rune, you know,
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  that's all. I would say a Renaissance kind of technology. You can do tell me if I'm wrong,
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  but that's why. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah. But also you've taken the decision to have
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  vocabulary that's consciously modern in the dialogue. People say, you know, they snark, which is,
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  you know, Americanism and they say, okay, and they say kid, what was your decision behind that
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  blend and do you have a sort of idea of where your world is or is it just and not if it doesn't
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  matter and you don't need to define it, it is what it is in the book. Yeah. So the main decision
• 21:27
  that I wrote it that way is readability. I think, well, first of all, sole hate started off as a YA
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  and readability is obviously very important, particularly for the younger end of YA, which is
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  where it originally started. Obviously, it is no longer YA for anyone listening. It is definitely
• 21:47
  adult now, where the brilliant suggestion of my editor. And yeah, it's started that way for
• 21:58
  readability, but also I think it's important for maybe people who are new into the fantasy space.
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  So, romanticity is drawing, which is probably what this book would be defined as. It's drawing a lot
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  of new readers into the fantasy space. And I think readability, unfortunately, for fantasy books
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  can be a big turn off for people. The fantasy, like, fantastic, like truly, fantastic books,
• 22:26
  like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings can be quite difficult to read, particularly if it's
• 22:32
  the first time that you're reading a fantasy book and that could end up putting you off the
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  genre, which would be a crying shame. So, I think by having that modern vocabulary throughout,
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  just sort of invites you in a little bit closer and makes it easier to immerse yourself in the world.
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  So, yeah, that's what that came from. Yeah. And you also clearly value artisans
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  in your world. Was it called The Garden? The Garden. Yeah. The Garden.
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  The market is the other one. I've conflated my head. I'm sorry. So, do you want to tell
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  us a little bit about your own creativity? And also, perhaps choose which way around you do this,
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  the place of creatives in soul hate, because it's very much a described, all-nate, embellished,
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  decorated, artistic worlds that you've created. Yes. So, I guess I'll start with my own creativity.
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  You know, I am very creative as this will probably show. Yeah, just so those who are listening,
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  as I mentioned at the beginning, behind Hannah is the most wonderful range of books, which
• 23:57
  as I'm looking at it, the ages you've decorated, you've turned the other way, and you've decorated
• 24:04
  the pages as they face outward, is that correct? Yes. So, my business specialises in digital spray
• 24:10
  ledges. So, I do lots of very intricate design work on spray ledges, limited editions,
• 24:17
  but I also do cover foiling like with that. What book is that? That is fourth wing.
• 24:27
  So, I do all sorts for special editions. But, you know, I didn't obviously start out doing this.
• 24:35
  My mum is creative as well. I grew up and she was always painting with her watercolours and
• 24:41
  I was in art lessons from being a piano lessons too. And, you know, so my mum always fostered
• 24:52
  my creativity. I'm the girl that always said that she wanted to be a writer from when she was
• 24:57
  a little girl. I always knew what I wanted to do. I was the girl that was begging my mum,
• 25:02
  so let me on computer to write my story because if my mum didn't, you know, limit my screen time,
• 25:09
  I'd be writing my story all day, every day until four o'clock in the morning.
• 25:15
  So, yeah, I mean, I've got lots of different outlets for creativity. But one of the ones that,
• 25:21
  I think they'll lead on through in a minute is that I also, to know in fact, I have a chemistry
• 25:27
  degree where I had a focus on quantum chemistry. And that also required a degree of creativity.
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  And I think oftentimes the STEM subjects like engineering, physics, chemistry,
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  architecture, all of those sort of like STEM subjects, scientific subjects.
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  There's a perception that they don't allow for creativity, which I think is a crying shame because
• 25:54
  problem solving is creativity. You know, it's you're working within the rules of your science,
• 26:02
  your subject matter, as much as an artist works within the realms of their medium.
• 26:07
  And that's kind of, I guess, where I wanted when I was building the garden. I wanted to have
• 26:15
  women in particular, but artisans of all kinds, STEM and art, you know, whether their music,
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  their writers, their jewelers, their architects, their engineers, whatever it is they're doing,
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  they're still artisans, they're still creatives, they're still important. And how what they give
• 26:36
  when nurtured just makes a place just more beautiful than it was before. So I guess that's
• 26:46
  kind of kind of what I did with the birds. As far as I should ask you at this point,
• 26:51
  in case someone is looking at this and thinking, wow, I'd really love to get an edition of these.
• 26:56
  So are you doing these for publishers or is it like single commissions by fans of the book
• 27:01
  who send you a hard back? How does it work? The business? Oh, yeah, sure. So I do work for
• 27:07
  publishers as well. Sometimes they'll want like a limited run of a book because I can work to a
• 27:12
  minimum of one. So I can also do custom commissions straight for readers, but I also do my own designs
• 27:16
  that I put up the sale that people can buy from my website. So yeah, there's sort of a mixture.
• 27:24
  So if there's a particular book, say that's just really meaningful to you when you want to
• 27:28
  compete in a unique special edition, you can hire me to give it a complete makeover,
• 27:32
  or you can look at the titles I've got available on my website and buy one of those,
• 27:37
  or keep an eye out on your favourite publisher. Yeah, I make sure I include that as a link in the
• 27:42
  show notes. I always think a fantasy is very good as framing difficult things in thought provoking
• 27:50
  packages. You know, you can move into a fantasy world, things that trouble you in our real world
• 27:56
  and have a look at them. So where are you going next on your writing journey? Have you got plans?
• 28:03
  I'm sure you have told me you were the little girl who was always writing.
• 28:07
  As per my contract book two and three, so I've got to write the rest of the trilogy first,
• 28:15
  which is fine because I'm 80% of the way through book two at the moment and
• 28:19
  raring to go for book three. After this, who knows? Definitely more writing. I have lots of
• 28:30
  to say I have lots of ideas as probably an understatement. I think there's still a lot that could be
• 28:35
  explored in this world with this concept of soul hates and soulmates that just even three
• 28:40
  books is not enough to get through it. I think there's a lot there. I'd love to explore
• 28:47
  feminine rage. I'd love to explore that as a theme. The bonds of sisterhood. I'd love to
• 28:54
  explore that as well. Maybe pay with some other trope, some other well-loved ideas or concepts
• 29:04
  in the fantasy space. Yeah, unpack the dark Lord. Yeah, exactly. You know, unpack the chosen one,
• 29:12
  you know? Okay. What if the chosen one is the wrong chosen one? What if they got it wrong? What if
• 29:19
  he fails? What if I quite like the fact in the Harry Potter series that it could also have been
• 29:25
  level? Exactly. Exactly. I love that. One of those ones, okay. And what if everyone thought it was
• 29:32
  Harry all this time and then Neville just comes out here, surprising everybody. He is kind of
• 29:37
  too because, you know, without him, but it failed. So I like the fact that she actually undercut
• 29:42
  the chosen one miss at the end. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's one of those, all of those, there
• 29:47
  are so many tropes out there and they've been done so well for so long for a really good reason
• 29:53
  because they're great tropes. So let's see what else we can add to it. Let's see what other spins
• 29:59
  we can do for it. Give it something a bit, a bit different because we know at them and we love
• 30:03
  them and they're always going to be absolute classics. So we can absolutely play with them a little
• 30:07
  bit. Yeah. Do you have a fantasy tip for listeners, something that they might want to read or watch
• 30:16
  or do as a creative? It's kind of boring but like read and what widely, not just within your genre,
• 30:26
  definitely take steps outside of your genre. If you are a strictly fantasy, you know,
• 30:33
  forsake of argument, medieval fantasy, that's your thing, you love it. Read some sci-fi, read some
• 30:40
  horror, read some speculative because that will broaden your horizons. It will introduce new,
• 30:49
  maybe not necessarily new ideas because I feel like fantasy can apply almost everything.
• 30:57
  But it may put it in a different light. But the other thing is I like to play games with what I'm
• 31:02
  watching or reading. So it will be games like, okay, what's a strangest thing that could happen
• 31:10
  right now and how would I rewrite what I've watched so far so that it makes absolute portable sense?
• 31:17
  Or I would take a character from one TV show, but like, right, he is now in this, he understands
• 31:24
  the rules of the game. How does it change having this character here? Or how does it change to have
• 31:30
  this muguffin suddenly here? And just play sort of that game in my head of, okay, well, how would that
• 31:37
  change the story? How would that change the narrative? And sometimes it can be hilarious,
• 31:42
  sometimes it can be unexpected. And it's a great way to pass the time if you're waiting for the
• 31:47
  bus or if you're on a journey or if you're in a, like, a long car journey with some other
• 31:52
  creatives and you're looking for a way to pass the time, can, yeah, it's, yeah, those are the
• 31:58
  kind of things that I play. I have long conversations with my eldest son about things like the Marvel
• 32:05
  Universe. Yeah. You know, how, what characters you might, because he's in deep into the lore of
• 32:11
  the comics. Yeah. What would make it interesting, if there's been a Marvel film that failed in
• 32:17
  some way, which of course there has been a few? What would you do to make this work?
• 32:23
  That's, that's sort of thing. Like, how would you change it? You know, okay, so
• 32:29
  going back to Harry Potter. Okay, cool. Iron Man is now a part of this universe. How does that change
• 32:34
  things? Tony Stark is joining Harry Potter in the fight against Voldemort. Or joining Voldemort.
• 32:43
  Yeah. You know, I've been selling weapons to Voldemort, you know, you can see that happening.
• 32:50
  Exactly. Exactly. Like, just, just, just, changes the rules, makes it more interesting. And I,
• 32:56
  I think it ends up affecting all of the writing, all the creating stuff that comes out of you,
• 33:02
  because suddenly you're breaking a lot of the rules in your thinking for what a traditional setting
• 33:08
  might be, you know, your traditional harping back to Lord of the Rings, because it's well-known.
• 33:13
  Your traditional setting and your, and your, your kingdoms, your political structure.
• 33:17
  Suddenly, if Iron Man turns up, that changes all of the rules. What isn't, isn't possible?
• 33:22
  How would people react? Would people be happy? Would they be cross? Would they call them a witch,
• 33:27
  probably? But, yeah. Yeah, game playing, great source of creativity. So we always finish with
• 33:34
  thinking, where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something? And I was struggling to
• 33:38
  come up with one for you. And I thought, actually, because at the heart of this is the idea of
• 33:44
  being fated, and that the fates themselves exist in certain, under different guises in many
• 33:54
  pantheon, or even in going back to the idea of the chosen one, that has the idea of being
• 33:59
  fated to do something. So where would, and then I thought, well, I can't ask where's the best
• 34:05
  place, because mostly meeting fates is rubbish. I'm about to say, even outside of my work, most
• 34:11
  people don't enjoy meeting fates. So I've put in the Chinese thing of, may you live an interesting
• 34:16
  time? I thought, where would you think playing this game, where do you think would be most interesting
• 34:22
  to go and meet fates to have that experience of seeing a fate working out in a fantasy world?
• 34:30
  And perhaps disrupting it? I mean, well, in my book, it's got to be situational,
• 34:39
  depending on where you are, depends on what you're then forced to do next. If you're in the
• 34:46
  holy states where they very much believe in fates, you've got to do whatever fates tells you to do.
• 34:51
  If fates tells you to blow up a building, you've got to do it. Fates told you to do it, you've
• 34:55
  got to do it. And you'd be forced to do it. And that would be quite interesting. But if you were
• 35:00
  somewhere like Malaya, which is briefly mentioned in the book, they'd probably be like, maybe don't
• 35:05
  do that, maybe, maybe take a short pill. So I think it's very much situational. I think if you met,
• 35:15
  met like the fates, like straight up met them, I think whatever happens would be terrifying.
• 35:22
  Yeah, so if you're going to play your game and you're going to take your soul,
• 35:27
  hey, I get into another fantasy book, where would you like to plonk it down and see what happens?
• 35:35
  If we're sticking with the idea that fates is a jerk, yeah, that's my joke. And just living
• 35:40
  for the drama. Yeah. I think maybe, I think Lord of the Rings can you just shake up? That would
• 35:50
  be quite funny. Yeah. I'm trying to think what else what else would be a good fantasy setting
• 35:58
  to just just suddenly throw in like the most terrible soulmates and soul hates pairings you'd
• 36:04
  think of. Honestly, like, I know there's a concept of fate or force in Star Wars. But I think
• 36:13
  that could be quite funny. Yeah, yeah, because that's quite cerebral that it's not in the
• 36:19
  work realms of like person to person, is it? It's a force to sort of things and people inhabit
• 36:25
  those forces. You're just personal animus that you're experiencing. Yeah, exactly.
• 36:33
  I think it'd be quite fun to sort of throw it into something like I know,
• 36:36
  peace pan or winded the willows suddenly kind of explode the worlds and say, right?
• 36:41
  Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking like you could throw it into something like the Marvel movies
• 36:48
  and just see see see how that affects it. Because what I liked about the the idea of the soul
• 36:55
  hate is that so your soul hate isn't an evil person. It's just someone who is not you.
• 37:00
  Yeah, it can be it can be anyone out of work together with somebody who is your
• 37:05
  talk to your cheese. Every time you look at them, you are filled with the urge to physically murder
• 37:11
  them like like it's a physical violence reaction. And even if you're not a violent person,
• 37:18
  you will be filled with this like this like absolute full body disgust and loathing.
• 37:27
  Hannah, thank you so much for your time and I look forward to seeing not only this book in
• 37:30
  print but also your version of it when you get to give it its own makeover in your wonderful
• 37:36
  studio. Thank you very much for talking to us. No problem. Thank you for having me.
• 37:47
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• 37:54
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