Interview with Esme Symes-Smith, Author of SIR CALLIE AND THE CHAMPIONS OF HELSTON

 

I wanted to try something different this month. I am very excited to be presenting the first, but hopefully not last, author interview!

Esme Symes-Smith (they/them) is the author of SIR CALLIE AND THE CHAMPIONS OF HELSTON. This book is one of my personal favorites, as well as having been my most anticipated read of 2022. I am so ecstatic that Esme agreed to this interview. All of the links to follow Esme will be included at the end of the interview, as will links to preorder SIR CALLIE.

So strap in and join Esme and I as we discuss Sir Callie. I had tons of questions for them, so this might be a bit long. Might want to grab a snack before reading. I've also grayed out one part that might be a bit spoilery. If you want to read it, just click and hold.

SIR CALLIE AND THE CHAMPIONS OF HELSTON is the first book in a fantastical middle-grade series. This book stars Callie, a 12-year-old nonbinary knight-in-training, as they follow their father to Helston. He was summoned to train the crown prince Willow, and Callie lunged at the opportunity to prove themself. But the people of Helston just look at Callie and see girl. Callie finds themselves trapped in the rigid hierarchy of Helston, but Callie also finds that they aren't alone. Elowen, Edwyn, and Willow are also struggling in Helston. There's a war raging against Helston, but they can't defeat the threats outside the kingdom until they defeat the bigotry within first.      

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Okay, I'll start with a pretty standard question. When did you first start writing?

I first started writing when I was 10, but I didn't get serious until I was 12 and discovered that people wanted to read what I wrote. I got addicted to fanfiction, and the feedback/validation that came with it.

You wrote fanfiction?

I did! Started with HP, met my wife through BBC Sherlock, and done a bit of Avatar: The Last Airbender too.

That is so cool! I spend what is probably way too much time reading fanfiction and I respect anyone who can write the stuff I love!
How did you go from writing fanfiction to writing an original story? What made you want to take that step?

So writing has always been the one thing I can do and be confidently good at. Like, I cannot emphasize enough how Not Good at anything else I am! So the only [thing] I could really go to university for was Literature and Creative Writing and I was forced to write original stories. Nothing really stuck or felt good, and I kept writing fic too. But after university I was in a really low place. I had no idea how to become an author or what I wanted to write about but I knew I had to give it a go.
That's when my wife told me about NaNoWriMo and we decided to do it together that year (2013). I gave myself an ultimatum: Win NaNo or quit writing. Quitting wasn't an option, so I ended up with the first draft of my first original novel and I was over the moon and never looked back. It suddently felt like it was possible and that I could do anything.

That is actually kind of awesome! I've done NaNo a few times and even managed to win it a couple of times.
Do you still do NaNoWriMo or was it a one year thing? I'm guessing that the story you wrote in 2013 wasn't Sir Callie, right? Did you ever try to get that story published?

I've done NaNo every year since, plus a few camps! Callie was actually an April 2020 Camp NaNo project!
My 2013 NaNo ended up being the story I signed my agent with in 2019, though it went through many iterations with a few books in between! It was on sub as I drafted Callie but ultimately perished. I'm not sad about it though, it's okay that it's just for me and I'm thrilled to debut with Callie!

Learning that Sir Callie was a Camp NaNo project is probably one of the coolest things ever!!! I love hearing about NaNo successes!
That actually leads to another question that I had. I'll admit that I don't know a whole lot about the process of getting a book published. Like I don't know what the book being on sub means. Can you tell me a bit about what the journey was like for you? Were there any extremely gratifying or frustrating points?

Absolutely!
So sub, or submission, is when your agent sends your manuscript out to editors who they hope will like it enough to buy it. It's like querying, which is when authors approach agents with their books, except this time the author is pretty hands off.
So I finished my 2013 NaNo novel and revised it. I had no idea really *what* it was, genre-wise or age category-wise but at the time I didn't know that mattered. I queried a little but got no bites, and I revised it again.
I then connected with an agent who told me that I needed to work out what it was before it could actually be considered ready, so I went away and revised *again*, trying to make it YA. At the time, I had no idea what MG actually was beyond 'kiddy books' and I was certain mine was not that! But when I sent the MS back to the agent, the feedback I got was that it was both too old for YA and too young for adult.
I was crushed and wiped out, and I decided to shelve the book.
I went on to write a few other books just to get back on the horse and really work out my craft.
Then in 2018 me and my best friend decided to go in for PitchWars. The problem was, the only completed book I had was that shelved novel. So I got it out and dusted it off. The community approaching PW was amazing! And I got the kind of feedback I'd never been able to find before. I honed my query letter and my synopsis, and got so much feedback on my pages! A few people suggested this book might be MG, but I submitted it as YA. I still wasn't comfortable calling myself a kid's writer.
But PitchWars was unsuccessful. I didn't even get a nibble. But I was okay with that. I felt reconnected to the book, and it felt like it really had the potentioal to be something. I decided to give it one more go, rewriting it totally from scratch. I made it one PoV where before it was seven, and I simplified that timeline so it wasn't sprawled out over six years, spanning several age categories.
It was, definitively, Middle-Grade.
I submitted to PitchWars the next year feeling better than ever! I also applied to be in a workshop with my favorite author and an agent I really admired. It was the first real investment I made in myself. The workshop came whilst PW mentors were sending out requests and so far I had no bites. Again, I was feeling the lowest I'd ever felt about my writing. I really thought this would be it, but so far it was turning out to be another failure.
But during the workshop I connected with so many writers at different stages, and talking about our mission as writers, about my work, my book, my future...PW might be a dud, but that didn't mean I had failed. It just meant this wasn't the path for me.
I started querying as soon as I got home. And in 24hrs I had my first request for more. And then more and more, and two weeks later my agent emailed me asking for a call.
We revised a little more, then went out on sub a few months later, a couple days before lockdown started. The high of being agented and the certainty my book would sell wore off pretty quickly as I realised sub was just like querying-no guarantees and no control. I didn't even have my dayjob to distract me.
So I did what I've always done--I hid in my writing. This is when I wrote Callie.
I wanted to write something just for me; the knight book of my heart, that 10 year old Esme would love. A homage to Tamora Pierce but Make It Gay. It was a joy, and even as we got rejection after rejection for my other book, that was okay. Callie kept me floating.
Nine months later, we pulled my first book to send Callie out into the world. I was terrified, certain it would be another dead book and this was the cycle I'd be in for the rest of my life.
Ten days later, I was watching Schitt's Creek and feeling mopey when my agent pinged my inbox to ask if I could hop on a call. That meant something!!!
It turned out the editor of a new imprint at Penguin Random House had devoured Callie and was keen to hear my thoughts on turning the book from a standalone into an epic series. Given that I had cut out a bunch of subplots and tens of thousands of words to make it fit the industry standard word count for MG (no more than 60k) I was ready!!! We got the offer a couple of days later, and my life changed forever.
It's extremely frustrating when your best doesn't feel good enough, and I had many of those moments. You can do everything you can and still come out with nothing. That's the industry.
But the highs make it worth it. Connecting with readers is everything to me, and the closer we get to publication the more I'm able to do that. It's truly a thrill every time I get a review that connects deeply with the book. It makes everything else worth it!

Okay, wow, that is a lot. In a good way though! Thank you for sharing your experience.
I'll admit that while I knew publishing was difficult, I never really considered the variations a book could go through when the author was still trying to figure out what the book is. I think it's incredible how much an author pours into a book considering there are no guarantees it will be published.
I'm glad you persevered through the highs and lows to get here. I truly believe that Callie is a book that needs to exist and I'm glad you, your agent, and the editor all agreed.
It's not quite the same, but I get what you mean about connecting with people. Getting to connect with authors and other readers is easily my favorite part of posting and talking about books. I also love seeing people connect with books that mean something to me and I am so excited to see how people react to Sir Callie! Also, I am now very curious about the subplots you had to cut out.
So you said in writing Callie that you wanted the knight book of your heart (I loved that wording by the way). Does that mean that when you first started writing Callie you knew what you wanted it to be genre and age-wise?
You also mentioned that you didn't know what MG was beyond 'kiddy books' and that you weren't comfortable calling yourself a kid's writer. I've, unfortunately, seen people with that thought process before. Was there anything that made you more comfortable calling yourself a kid's writer and calling the book a MG book?

Callie was the first book I wrote specifically as MG and I loved every moment of it, understanding the age category and the mission I wanted to achieve for the first time. I was very ignorant and dismissive before, but reading more MG and connecting with kidlit authors made me really respect the significance of what we do.
MG can be just as deep and complex as YA and Adult but you're making it accessible for the kids, and there's always the light of hope visible on the horizon that you don't necessarily get in older categories. I feel like MG authors are writing most specifically for their audience in a way that YA often loses. There's a sense of responsibility that comes with writing for younger kids. It's about them, the reader, rather than us, the author.
And now I never want to write anything else.

That makes sense. One of the things I love most about MG books is how they tackle some tough topics.
This might be a strange question but is there a learning curve to writing MG books? Like is it difficult to figure out the correct words to use and how to tackle tough topics without talking down to kids or over their heads?

There's definitely a learning curve, and I think it's mostly about letting go, if that makes sense? Have fun with it, write what you need to write and really get into the voice. I think a lot of people starting out in MG overthink things, but you don't need to condescend to kids, either in the topics you're writing about or the language you use.
I will say that voice is the most important part of MG, so if you don't have a strong command of voice you will probably have the hardest time. But if you're a voicey writer, just sink into the character's PoV and do what you need to do.

Okay, that makes sense!
So Callie was a Camp NaNo project. Was there a lot of planning and world-building for it or did you have a general idea of what you wanted to write and just let the story develop as you went along? Or was it a mix of the two?

Ha! I'm definitely a pantser, so I pitched headfirst into it without any idea. I knew that Callie wanted to be a knight like their dad, I knew Willow was a reluctant prince, and their friendship was the heart of the story, but beyond that, everything was a discovery! And so much shifted into place from draft to draft. That's what I love most about the process! The trunk of the story stayed the same whilst everything else shifted around it.

Ha! Gotta love just jumping into it! It ended well at least. I'm very curious about some of the things that changed between drafts.
Did you take notes either when writing or editing the book to keep track of characters/locations.subplots? Did you plot out Sir Callie 2?
Also, you mentioned that Callie and Willow were part of what you knew going into writing Sir Callie. Were Elowen and Edwyn part of the original draft or did they come later?

I keep notebooks CONSTANTLY but I don't have an organized method of tracking anything. My ADHD means I can't use a method that works yesterday today but I've learned to work with that and focus on what I need in the moment. I do all my note taking by hand and that solidifies it in my brain.
I plotted book 2 out a few different ways, but it didn't come together until I fell into the story and pantsed it. I need to enjoy the story myself first and I can't do that if I'm plotting too closely.
They were but in very different forms. They didn't come into their own until the second draft. Honestly they were the most important to work on because they both started out as archetypes--a girly girl and a bully-- and with the themes of gender and justice being so crucial to the book, I spent a lot of time working specifically with them.

I get needing to just enjoy the story and then figure everything out. I'm also so happy that you worked with them. I absolutely adore Elowen and Edwyn seems to have a lot of potential.
Just to satisfy my own curiosity, are the names of these characters their original names or did they have other names?

Haha, they were all the same the whole way through except Edwyn who was originally Christian.

I'm impressed they were all the same, except for Edwyn. Guess I expected them to change.

Yeah, some of the names were hard to find but once they stick they stick. Willow was the hardest to find because I wanted something that could be manipulated into a more masc name but had to be soft and sweet to fit him. Callie was a placeholder name that stuck, named after my old dog, and Elowen was always herself haha.

I could be wrong, but I don't think Sir Callie was the original title of this book. What other titles has this book been known by?

My working title when it was a standalone was The Prince's Champion but when it became a series we wanted to change it to something that really focused on Callie. We went through a lot of options, and I really liked 'The Ballad of Sir Callie' but I adore what we ended up with!

I love the current title, but 'The Ballad of Sir Callie' sounds so cool!
Now, hopefully without spoiling anything, what was your favorite scene to write?

Any scene where Callie loses their temper at Peran. I love writing those two together, especially the later scenes! Also when Willow knights Callie with a poker. That scene had remained the turning point of every iteration.

Callie losing it at Peran is always amazing!!
I am in love with that illustration, especially the shadows on the wall and the look on Callie's face.
Were there any scenes that made you emotional while writing them?

Goodness, yes! Anything where Willow is having a sad breaks my heart cos he only deserves good things, but the big one is when Callie realizes how much trouble they've got Elowen into with Peran and Elowen tells them it's fine. Because it's not fine at all, and El knows what she's going home too. Elowen's quite courage always gets me.
And Callie's reunion with Nick! I love them so much, and his willingness to be honest and apologize and support them hhhggghhh!

That is such a good scene!! I finished reading Sir Callie during a day of bingo. There were three scenes that had me trying not to be emotional in the middle of the bingo game. The scene where Callie was getting knighted, the one where Callie was fighting Peran, and when Edwyn goes back. Also, there were several scenes where I'm pretty sure I was smiling like a goof at my phone.
One of the big ideas in Sir Callie is that family are the people who love you no matter what, even if they aren't blood. Are there any other big ideas that you think are important to the story that you want readers to leave with?

That scene with Edwyn always gets me too. Recovery is hard, especially when your abuser is someone you love.
A really important theme is that bravery comes in all shapes and sizes. Each of the kids are hugely different but each show courage in their own way. I always found in the books I loved as a kid, that I wasn't represented. I wasn't the kind of brave the heroes were, and that always bugged me. I hope that every reader finds themselves in my books.

I definitely get that! I've never been the mainstream kind of brave either.
Can you describe the vibes of Sir Callie (either in pictures or words)?

I feel like this aesthetic sums up the vibes!

Yes!! Amazing vibes!
Is there a specific piece of media (TV, movie, book, etc) that made you feel seen for the first time?

She-Ra!! Not just in the queer representation, though that was the first time I truly saw that rep out loud and not just in subtext, but in Catra. It was amazing to see a messy character who struggles so hard with redemption be treated like a hero without ever losing her personality.

I need to finish She-Ra one of these days. I'm a bit obsessed with Catra even without having seen it all.
For me, it was Carmilla, LaFontaine specifically. A nerdy nonbinary character was right up my alley. First time I ever realized/considered that there was more than just male and female.
What are some of your favorite books either from childhood or more recently?

It goes without saying that Tamora's Pierce books were everything to me! Especially the Alanna and Kel books. It was so cool seeing the girls being sword-wielding bad-asses! More recently, I really loved THE CIVIL WAR OF AMOS ABERNATHY by Michael Leali. We're really lucky with all the queer kidlit coming out recently!

I used to love reading Tamora Pierce! I absolutely loved the Beka Cooper books!! I've not read Amos Abernathy yet, but I am planning to. Looks so good, as do many of the other queer kidlit books coming out.
Are you reading any books right now?

I just devoured NURA AND THE IMMORTAL PALACE by M.T. Khan in one sitting! Such a gorgeous MG fantasy!

I've not heard of Nura before this. It sounds so good!! Definitely going to have to check that out later!
What are some books coming out later this year or next year that you're excited to read?

I'm really excited to read JUDE SAVES THE WORLD by Ronnie Riley and ALEX WISE by Terry J. Benton.

Jude sounds like such an amazing book and I am absolutely ready for it!!! Also, I think this is my first time hearing about Alex Wise and I truly think that is wrong. I'll be eagerly waiting for the one now too.
This is a question that's been on my mind recently. Is there a Sir Callie playlist? Music that makes you think of the story or the characters?

Yesss!!!
I always have a playlist for my books!
Callie is such a badass Disney character haha so I have a lot for them.
Willow's song is Don't You Worry Child.
Elowen's song is Speechless from Aladdin.
Edwyn's is Til It Happens to You.
Helston's is The Village.
And the book as a whole is Little Game.

This is amazing! I'm going to need to listen through the entire playlist at some point just to fully experience it. These are amazing song choices, especially The Village for Helston!
Thank you!!! This was amazing!! I can't wait until everyone gets to read Sir Callie.

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Esme can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and on their website.

Sir Callie also has its own website that can be found here.

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You can preorder SIR CALLIE AND THE CHAMPIONS OF HELSTON from The Novel Neighbor to get a signed/personalized copy.

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