Author Interview: Kate Golden

Get the inside scoop on ‘Half City’!

Kate Golden is the author of our February Romantasy ‘Demon Hunters’ featured book: Half City. Read on to get the inside scoop from inspiration to favourite scenes and more!

Half City is set in the city of Astera which portrays a gritty and gloomy life. Compared to your other works, what made you decide to make Half City an urban fantasy?

I came up with the idea around the time that I was writing the last book in my first trilogy, which was very medieval fantasy with dragons, fae, carriages, and tunics; there was no technology and there was nothing contemporary about it. So I think I was ready for something different, as I felt like I was pushing myself into a corner. I was like, I want people to be able to text each other! I want people to drive cars! I think at the time I was also reading a lot of great, modern fantasies, and I was like, why do those people get to wear jeans! It was all those little things, and that was what sparked the idea that the next thing I wrote, I wanted it to be urban fantasy. A modern world with magic!

Crafting a world that’s so similar to our own can come with its own challenges. Can you tell us a little bit about how you crafted Astera and Harker Academy?

Astera came to me first! Well actually, the name of the book came to me first, which is pretty crazy. I was very intrigued by the idea of a city that has been bisected. It’s obviously really playing on the idea like in New York, you have the Upper West Side and the Lower East Side, etcetera. This is a very heightened version of that. But this city, that has been bisected by this chasm that is essentially the gates of the underworld, was very intriguing to me. And I loved the idea that south of the chasm was seedy dive bars and great spots for intimate wine nights, with cool galleries and bohemia, but also more crime and night clubs. And then above the chasm, there’s still a dark underbelly to it, but its for the elites, the wealthy, with the fanciest museums and the fanciest hotels. So it’s very much the haves and the have-nots, and there’s a lot of other duality in this series too; good and bad, hunters and deviants, and that city pretty much came to me. Crafting the school was harder, that actually came second and I had to shoehorn it into my story! The school is a blend of all my favourite dark academia, and so much of what I write is just that. I fall in love with things, and I don’t know what to do with my obsession with them, so they come out in my writing. Like when I was visiting a friend in Connecticut, and there was a liberal arts college with great New England architecture, or when I was reading Ninth House, or A Discovery of Witches with its reimagined Oxford. It was all the fun dark academia that I loved reading and experiencing in the world, and then you throw in all the combat college stuff, like in Fourth Wing and Divergent. It’s just a big melting pot of things I enjoy!

Half City felt very nostalgic and reminiscent of the iconic urban fantasies we grew up reading. Were there any particular authors you drew inspiration from?

Yes, definitely! I think definitely A Discovery of Witches. Deborah Harness wrote those books and they’re so good! And obviously The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, and other books that I was reading when I was a lot younger with that real 2000s urban fantasy feel. But also a lot of TV shows! It’s very inspired by Buffy, my favourite show of all time. There’s also a lot of Vampire Diaries, True Blood, and Supernatural in there. I’m a big TV and film girlie, as much as I am a book girlie!

If you were a huntress, which deviant do you think you’d be able to slay and which one do you think would best you?

This is such a fun question! I think I would want to slay a zombie or a ghoul. All the deviant creatures are broken down into a stratification, and the lowest level is the undead. They don’t have consciousness, so I feel like that I could do with the least amount of guilt. And I would be whopped by literally everything else! But definitely with the demons, vampires, and werewolves, I don’t stand a chance.

Let’s talk characters! Viv was such a fire cracker. Her inner monologue was so sarcastic and full of humour. We’d love to know how you crafted her personality and how you ensured it didn’t get lost throughout the story?

Of course every author is different, but I think I sometimes have the inverse problem. I will write the whole book, and I will be so caught up in my characters, their inner monologues, and their dialogue, that the plot kind of falls to the wayside. And upon my second read, I’ll realise I really rushed a plot point because I was so focused on a conversation that really doesn’t move the story forward, but I just loved how funny they’re being or the sexual tension or the found family. So often, upon the second, third, or fourth draft, it’s more about drilling down on the fantasy plot. I think that’s because at the end of the day, what I love about writing is the characters; that’s my favourite part! As much as I love fantasy plotting and the creatures and the world building, the characters and the relationships are what get me up in the morning to keep writing.

Viv struggles to fit in with her normal friends and normal life. She hates lying and having a double life, but on the flip side, she lives for the thrill of killing. Did you face any challenges when writing her character?

Kate Golden is a pen name, that’s not my real name. So I was writing these books as I was publishing my first trilogy under that pen name, and going on tour and to events, but the majority of my friends and family didn’t know I was doing that. I had a whole different job that I worked, which is common as I think lots of authors work a job and also write. But with the job I worked, I couldn’t work a job on the side. And it got to the point where it was getting very Hannah Montana, like I was going on tour and telling my colleagues that I was visiting friends up and down the country. It was getting very difficult, and the lying was really terrible and the feeling of being one person in the day and one person in the night. But I had no one to blame but myself, like I could have told everyone, and eventually I did. But I had a lot of shame, I think, about pursuing something that was purely creative and that I wasn’t sure if I was going to succeed at. So I think that really inspired this character, because I was sort of sorting out all my own feelings about shifting into a career of writing through Viv. Obviously, I gave her far worse problems than I had, like hers are life and death! But I was really working through my own stuff as I was developing her relationship between what she wanted to be doing but feeling a certain type of way about it, and then what people expected of her. Although she has a much tougher family. I have a very wonderful, accepting family. And with writing books, they were like that’s amazing! And I was like, why didn’t I tell you that forever ago!

Reid and Viv were wonderful characters. On the surface, they seem like total opposites but actually, they were very similar and they came to see themselves in each other. What made you decide to write their characters in that way?

I wrote them in this way because it was very important for me, in this first book, to make Reid a sort of foil for Viv. In the first series I wrote, my heroine and my hero were fundamental opposites, and they learned a lot from one another by being ying and yang. And with this, I wanted to do something different, a little more adult and a little more honest. It’s just something I see more now as I’ve gotten older, seeing my friends fall in love and seeing who people end up with. Seeing what it is to fall in love with someone who is a reflection of you, sometimes in the best way but sometimes not so much in the best way; that was what I wanted to explore in this first book. Viv has a lot of self-loathing, and Reid has a lot of self-loathing too. He doesn’t want to be a demon anymore than she wants to be a demon hunter. I wanted to explore what it looked like, for someone who isn’t totally connected to loving themself, loving someone else who is a lot like them.

Which part of Half City did you enjoy writing the most? This could be a scene, a specific trope, or a character.

I really loved writing the found family. I love the whole gaggle of friends she has both at Harker and her childhood friends. Like Penny, who doesn’t know she’s a demon slayer. And there’s this villainous character we meet very briefly at the end of the book that I love. He was very fun to write about! I also obviously love all the combat class stuff, every time she was learning new skills and how to fight. And the romance! The romance is always what gets me! There’s a scene where she gets hurt and she goes the Reid’s cottage, and I loved writing that scene.

If you could travel with any one of your characters, who would you pick and why?

I would travel with Sophia, because she is a blast! She is so fun, she’d know all the best restaurants, she’d take me to all the cool museums and clubs. She’d be like, I’ve got this, follow me!

What part of the story challenged you the most as a writer?

I think plotting out the trilogy, and knowing that this was just the first third of one full story. Trying to be really mindful of what the reader needs to know now, what can I leave out for the future, what’s going to be breadcrumbs, if the cliffhanger is going to feel too open or finite. This is my second trilogy, so I’m still kind of learning. And I think also just managing the world building. You have a whole urban fantasy setting, you have an entire academy setting, you have all these different creatures on both sides of the isle, and you have your love story, your found family, and your actual family. A lot of these books are like, she’s an orphan there is no family! But this one’s got the crummy boyfriend which the mum approves of and the older sister and whatnot. I wanted to make sure it didn’t feel too much, but also that there was a lot going on, so that was a challenge, too.

What is your favourite thing about the FairyLoot Edition of Half City?

This is my favourite special edition of any book that I own, and that I have written. I’m so in love with this book! I have to say it’s the interior art, on both endpapers, for me. It’s so beautiful I could stare at it all day! It’s so gothic, the attention to detail is extraordinary, it’s pretty incredible.

Author Recommends

Have you ever wondered which books your favourite author thinks are an absolute must read? Well, wonder no more! Here are four books Kate Golden thinks everyone needs on their TBR: