In anticipation of our upcoming author event on July 19 Booksweet’s bookseller Bella chatted with author Halli Starling about her book Coup de Coeur, her writing and editing process, and what it’s like to be a multi-genre and self-published author. RSVP for our event through Eventbrite.
Booksweet: Before we get into all of the questions, I would love to have you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.
Halli Starling: Oh, sure. I am Halli, Halli Starling. I am a librarian. I’m a queer person. I currently work in the book world and I’m an avid reader, avid gamer, all around nerd ever since I was a little kid. I write books that focus largely on queer romance, but they are across genres at this point, which I was not able to say a year and a half ago, and now we’re into thriller and horror and historical fantasies. So, we’re doing lots of different experimentations getting into some of my other interests. But yeah, whenever people ask me what I write, it’s always like, it’s queer romance, but also there are werewolves sometimes.
Booksweet: You’ll be reading from and talking about Coup de Coeur at the upcoming event at Booksweet on Saturday July 19. Coup de Coeur spans several genres – we have historical fiction, romance, fantasy, and it’s queer, which is not strictly a genre, but is pretty great. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what it is like to write across multiple genres?
Halli Starling: I think it comes more naturally to me because I am such an avid D&D and tabletop role playing fan, and a lot of those games can span genres. Most people think D&D is fantasy – and it is – and then people throw like horror elements in or there’s something, you know, historical about it or whatever it might be. So I think it just comes naturally to me to want to dump all of that into a blender and swirl it around a little bit and see what happens. It didn’t start that way. It started as a story about two people who have a very toxic relationship. They’ve been friends forever and they rely on each other a little too much. We might use the word enmeshed. Maybe they need some personal space after all of these years. But they were both so lonely when they first met as kids. They are not able to break that bond. And then it turned into, okay, what else am I going to do with this? And it’s a whole long story. But it wound up turning into all of these genres. So I did a bunch of research about what New York City looked like at the turn of the 20th century. I can now say I’ve looked at fire maps and tried to understand those to see what the buildings looked like. So I’m like, how high did these buildings go? If I explained that someone went to the fifth floor, was that a thing at the time, or just weird questions that you come up with as you’re writing. Because we assume so many things from a modern perspective and I had never tried to do that from the historical end of things before. So it got really interesting.
Booksweet: Was historical fiction and this level of historical research an aspect of this book that you intentionally sought out, or did you at some point realize you wanted this to have a historical setting?
Halli Starling: It was a little bit of both. When I was researching I had two journals going on. I had one for the historical details, like what kind of stove was there and that kind of thing. And then one for the historical stuff that was also occult and trying to deal with that part of it and then see what happens when you merge them together. After I realized that I wanted to set it in New York City and I wanted to do it at the turn of the century – because the turn of the century is kind of exciting, right? People don’t know what’s going to be on the other side of it. And there’s always folks who want to get on their soapbox on the corner and scream about the end times. And then there’s people who are just like, it’s a party, what do we care about? It’s just literally the turning of an hour. So I wanted to look at that, because the city at that time was changing so rapidly and growing so rapidly. Central Park was being built. All of this stuff was happening that we think of as iconic New York, but at the time, it didn’t really exist. There were still pigs running around in some of the outer boroughs.
Booksweet: Speaking of multiple genres, do you have a favorite genre either as a writer or a reader, or do you love many genres?
Halli Starling: I like many genres. I’m very much a mood reader. If someone dangles cosmic horror in front of me, I will probably immediately run to it just to see if it will genuinely scare me, because I’m cynical and jaded in a lot of ways. Like someone, please scare me. I can’t do scary movies anymore, but if you give me Cosmic Horror stuff, absolutely. And I read a lot of nonfiction. That’s actually something that I’ve started doing over the last several years. That’s partially where Coup de Coeur kind of came from, was a nonfiction book about the black market book trade, which is very interesting. If anyone wants to read it, it’s called The Curse of the Marquis de Sade and it’s by Joel Warner. He looks at the Marquis de Sade, of course, and him basically writing on toilet paper while he was imprisoned in the Bastille, which is a whole other thing. But also anybody can get obsessive about anything and books are a collector’s item. We see that constantly now and how wild people go for these like rare editions and smuggling them and all of these things. It was just really a cool way to take that little bit of history and also wrap it into the book itself. So basically what I’m saying is it’s pretty much every genre. There are very few things that I don’t at least try to read.
Booksweet: Coup de Coeur is self-published. I would love to hear a little bit about what that process is like for you and if you have any tips or tricks that you’ve learned.
Halli Starling: It’s actually something that I do try to help folks out with because it is so confusing and it’s really easy to get scammed. It’s really easy to spend a lot of money thinking that you need certain things. There was just something on Threads about it, a bunch of self-published authors talking about their journey and what they wasted money on, what they felt like was worth their time and their cash. Because it’s very easy to spend more than you’re ever anticipating. You can publish and spend nothing, but it’s hard to do. I was very fortunate because I worked in libraries for so long. I did everything from circulation clerk all the way up to department manager. I did ordering, I did cataloging, I did all of it. So I understood that part of it. I understood how we acquired books. I understood where they came from, how to get an ISBN, that kind of thing. And then when I switched my career role to work more on the marketing side of things, the rest of that information kind of filtered down to me via what I’ve been doing over the last 10 years or so. I always tell folks don’t spend what you don’t have. That should be rule number one. If you go to the casino, and you say, I’m only going to spend $50, don’t spend more than that $50. You’re tapped out, you walk away. It’s one of those things where I really try to help folks not get scammed, because there are so many scammy people. If someone reads this and has questions, please email me. I will gladly help you with some of this stuff, but also anticipate that you’re going to have to spend something. After 12 books, I have a process kind of lined up now. I use a formatting software to do all of my chapters and then go in and do all the nitpicky things, making sure everything lines up and it doesn’t look wonky. Stuff still happens. It’s true of self-published books and it’s true of traditionally published books. I just finished the draft of the last book in the trilogy literally over the weekend. Let that sit and then I start to do test formats just to make sure that there isn’t something really weird somewhere in the document that I missed. It’s just a weird brain thing that I do. And then I work on the cover. I do a lot of my covers myself. In the case of the Coup de Coeur trilogy, I hired an artist. Then I start putting everything together. I’m basically self-taught, but not everybody has the time for that. Again, please just email me. I will gladly help. I really will, because I don’t want people to get ripped off. I also have a podcast that I’m on and there is an episode on my website, we did a two-parter about the whole process. Nitty gritty details. There’s a transcript for it all written out with all the links on how I do everything. It took four hours. The info is there, but I wish there was a guidebook. There’s just not, and I don’t know that there ever could be because of the multiple ways that people do things down to the formatting software, down to how they write and how they draft and, you know, do they hire an editor, all of those questions.
Listen to Halli’s podcast episodes discussing the self-publication process and find more resources here on her website.
Booksweet: Did you have anything, particularly in the earlier days of going through the self-publication processes, that you learned that you were very surprised by?
Halli Starling: I do think it comes down to personal preference. Some folks really like having a team of friends or beta readers or whatever that might be. I don’t like interjecting people into my writing process until I am ready to slap it into the formatting software and really go at it. I will have a friend or two reading along. I just had one who was reading along with me as I was writing because that also kept me on deadline. She’s like, where’s the next chapter? I need to do that, otherwise, she’ll be upset with me, and I can’t do that. But those first couple of books, I tried to find beta readers, and it’s not for me.
Booksweet: I have to imagine there’s a moment in that process where you’re getting to the sharing stage, and you probably just learn so much about yourself, and how you take feedback and how you do edits.
Halli Starling: Yes, absolutely. I try to stick to like, death of the author when it comes to once it’s out there. I did my due diligence to make it as good as I possibly can. I had a sensitivity reader if that was needed. I’m taking into account different cultural things because I try not to write outside my wheelhouse too much because I also only have a certain set of lived experiences. You do learn a lot. Feedback is hard to take. I don’t care whether it’s your best friend in the whole world, it can be difficult to realize like, oh, how I speak landed in this character or whatever it might be. It’s interesting. Yeah, there’s a moment of self-reflection there.
Booksweet: Can you tell us more about your writing process?
Halli Starling: It has to be separate. Like right now I’m at my work desk. I work from home. I can’t write at this desk. I can work on it and I can play video games until I keel over. But the writing thing, there’s a mental separation there that I have to create. And also the distraction factor. The internet’s right there, let me go check Instagram – my brain will run happily away from writing if I don’t go and actually sit. I write in bed. I write typically at night. I usually have at least one of the four cats on me somewhere, so I usually have a furry companion. And I write in order. A lot of folks are able to skip around. I think that it is incredible to be able to do that. That is a skill. I admire anyone who can do that. I have to write in order. I also always keep a page of runoff ideas. Like, maybe I can incorporate this or I cut this piece of dialogue out that I really like, maybe I can use it later. But for the most part, it is scene by scene, chapter by chapter until I get to the end. And then I put it away for a long time because I can’t think about it too much. It’s so easy to get down into the weeds and not realize, oh, I’ve messed up this whole scene because I missed the detail five pages ago or whatever it was. So yeah, for me, it’s about just the quiet and letting my brain run wild and do whatever it wants and then I can put it away and wait until I’m ready to write again.
Booksweet: Can you tell us about your editing and reviewing process?
Halli Starling: I have to be mentally there to be able to write. So if I’m not feeling it that day, I have learned to not force it. If I force it, it’s trash. It’s automatic dumpster fire. It never makes any sense. Typically when I sit down and try to read through my writing, that time between finishing the first draft and looking at it again is really important for me to get some distance. Once it’s done, it’s done and I kind of have to move on for my own sanity. But when I’m in the middle of it, I try to let the whole picture come into my head. What does the room look like? What are they wearing? Is there a fire in the fireplace? And so all of those details kind of get filtered down into the draft, so often what I’m cutting are these. Now I’m not Anne Rice or Stephen King taking like 18 pages on a sand dune or whatever it is, but I am a detailed writer. The details are really cool as long as you don’t overload your reader with it. So when I’m editing a lot of that, I’m either cutting down or finding a different way to say it so I’m not repeating things over and over again.
Booksweet: Do you have a timeframe that you usually wait in between finishing a draft and coming back to it to review, or is it a feeling? How do you know when it’s time to come back?
Halli Starling: Yeah, it’s usually a gut feeling. As soon as I end a draft, I jump to whatever the next project is. And the next project is always the palette cleanser. So I finished the draft of book three in this historical fantasy, queer romance, slightly cosmic horror-esque weird thing that happened over the course of three books. And now I am writing a fantasy book about an 800-year-old sorcerer who is dealing with memory loss and a storm elemental who’s trapped inside her body. Totally different from that. Then usually as I’m writing that palette cleanser, I get to a point where it’s like, okay, I think I’m ready to go back now. Whatever was bothering me about the draft has cleared out of my head and I can go back and read it with a slightly more focused vision and thought process.
Booksweet: When you’re reviewing a draft, are there things that you’re looking for or are you going into that process with no expectations?
Halli Starling: I was just thinking about this the other day. I write with almost no outline. I’ll have notes or things that I know need to be hit. My books wake me up at three in the morning and I have to go and write the thing down or I’m going to forget whatever it was that I know needs to be brought to attention. But when I go back and I revise, that’s when I’m like, OK, I need to watch out for these character arcs. I need to make sure that I didn’t miss this moment. Maybe the scene between two characters – my toxic buddies, sometimes lovers who constantly have this push-pull relationship going on – I need to make sure that they don’t get missed because at this point, towards the end of the series, I’m juggling six points of view. I never meant to do that. It just happened. But I also need to make sure that it’s balanced and people don’t feel like I left this wide open. Some things I left wide open, maybe for another book somewhere down the line. But I want to make sure that people get that feeling of like, that was satisfying. It was a satisfying close to that character arc or that moment or that relationship, whatever it might be. Then I throw it at people who I trust who have been with me in this case through the whole series and want to know what happens and go can you look out for these points and then any other feedback you have hit me and we’ll see where it goes from there.
Booksweet: Do you have one moment or memory that comes to mind about either independent bookstores or libraries?
Halli Starling: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I’ve been so lucky since I was 19 to be working in the book world. It’s been my entire career at this point. I grew up in libraries. I was that kid. I was always a reader. Libraries and bookstores for me are one of the centers of art and culture. And a lot of the things that we’re seeing right now are a push against art and culture and people’s ability to think for themselves and think critically and to listen to other people with opposing viewpoints. It hurts my heart to see all of these book banning efforts going on. It feels very Orwellian, right? It feels very 1984, Big Brother, we will tell you what to think and what to do and you can’t fall out of line. So the focus of a library and an independent bookstore is to be that push back against that, is to make sure that we all have the ability to think freely and to read freely, but also with libraries, to do so much for their communities. I can go check out a shovel. What? Like, what? In my time in libraries, we were just starting to do 3D printing and that kind of thing. Now there’s cake pans and seed libraries. You can go get your passport done. Absolutely incredible places that literally don’t exist anywhere else because everywhere else requires you to pay. So those libraries and those bookstores, and especially when they work together, and they so often do, and often the school system gets brought into that as well, they’re fostering something that is extremely human, and that’s the ability to build community and to tell a story. And if we lose that, I think we might as well set the planet on fire and just be done as a species.
Booksweet: What else are you working on?
Hall Starling: I had two books out this year. So we’re going to be discussing Coup de Coeur on the 19th. Then the second one came out in March right before my birthday. I did that on purpose because I was like, I might as well. That’s the fun part about it. So this one is available right now. Coup de Coeur is an award finalist for the Indiverse Awards. So this is 99 cents right now on ebook. If you want to go grab that, you totally can. Please use like bookshop.org or something like that. have a freebie novella on my website. It’s permanently free. It’s called Pose for Me. It is my poking fun at the toxic masculinity of the early aughts and late 90s where we had pinup calendars and were doing these weird things. One of the characters who’s the photographer gets kind of brought in to this charity calendar thing, he’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to do this. It feels so exploitative. How do I change that to make it accepting and diverse and show queer couples and do all that. So that is on my website. You can download it at any time. I do have a podcast, it’s called The Human Exception. We’ve been doing this fo five years. I have three friends in Vancouver, Canada, who I do it with. If you like nerdy stories, we all have really weird, diverse interests. So we just research things and then tell each other about it. And it’s usually a true crime thing, or I’m going to be doing one on the anatomical venuses, which were these statues that were used in medical examinations in medical schools in the 1700s that you can take apart. But of course it’s a woman because that’s how they did things. And they are really weird. If you don’t like dummies or mannequins, do not look these pictures up. They are very scary. They have real hair. There’s a lot of misogyny steeped in there and talking about the medical world and how women aren’t studied and all of these things. I usually bring the bummer topic in, just a fair warning. We also curse a lot. So if you’re into that, there’s that too. I also try to raise money for different queer organizations and cat shelters, because I am a cat obsessive person. So if you buy things off of my Etsy, I will turn around and donate 20% of the proceeds from that as well.
Thank you so much Halli Starling for chatting with us! If you want to learn more about Halli, check out her writing, or listen to her podcast, please visit her website https://hallistarlingbooks.com/ and join us at Booksweet on Saturday July 19th at 6pm for a reading from Halli’s book Coup de Coeur and an opportunity to ask Halli questions! RSVP through Eventbrite.