This week, I’m talking with YA speculative fiction author Farah Naz Rishi. Farah shares how she totally cheated to get the best critique partners ever, drew inspiration from her legal background to craft I Hope You Get This Message, and how she uses her other talents to enhance her self-editing. We also discuss how she shaped her diverse cast of characters and the challenges of BIPOC writers working with white editors. Listen until the end for recommendations on a super cute video game and the best unboxing video ever.
Music: Harlequin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3858-harlequin
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
Episode 6: “The Why in YA” (Feat. Eric Smith): https://www.arieledits.com/edit-your-darlings/episode-6-eric-smith
I Hope You Get This Message: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43699608-i-hope-you-get-this-message
Odyssey Writing Workshop: https://www.odysseyworkshop.org/
RF Kuang, The Poppy War: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068705-the-poppy-war
Linden Lewis, The First Sister: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52378525
Josh Johnson, The Forever Sea: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53285570
Alex Cooper, editor at Harper
It All Comes Back to You: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55577204
Priya Ayyar, audiobook narrator: https://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/narrator/2167940/priya-ayyar/
Cat Quest (Switch Game): https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/cat-quest-switch/
Joan He, The Ones We Were Meant to Find: https://www.joanhewrites.com/
Gina Chen, Violet Made of Thorns, 2022: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55923578-violet-made-of-thorns
Tashie Bhuiyan, Counting Down With You: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49399658-counting-down-with-you
Bonus: The best ARC unboxing video I’ve ever seen: https://twitter.com/tashiebhuiyan/status/1325497958306111488?s=20
Transcript:
Ariel: Hi there and welcome to Edit Your Darlings, a podcast that tries to take the sting out of editing by talking with darling authors about their experiences. I’m Ariel Anderson, and this week's guest received a shout out in Episode Six’s Hot and Wholesome gossip corner from Eric Smith for her wonderful YA scifi. Today I'm joined by Farah Naz Rishi, Pakistani American Muslim voice actor and writer of I Hope You Get This Message. In another life, she's worked stints as a lawyer, a video game journalist, and an editorial assistant. She received her BA in English from Bryn Mawr College, her JD from Lewis and Clark Law School, and her love of weaving stories from the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She says when she's not writing, she's probably hanging out with video game characters, and I'm extra thankful that she's hanging out with me today. Thanks for making time to talk with me, Farah!
Farah: No, no, oh my God, thank you for having me. Thank you, Eric, for the shout out. What a sweetheart!
Ariel: Oh my gosh, Eric is probably my favorite ever.
Farah: Oh yeah. Oh, Absolutely.
Ariel: He said himself that he's a cinnamon roll.
Farah: Cinnamon roll!
Ariel: I love cinnamon rolls.
Farah: He's literally the definition, like you look up the word cinnamon roll in a dictionary and there's, there's his face just smiling at you. You're like, yeah, that makes sense.
Ariel: So let's start off with a really broad question and then we'll get into more specifics. First off, how did you find the people that you worked with, and how did you know that you could trust their feedback?
Farah: I feel like I cheated on this, because you know how... I think it's a struggle to find good critique partners, if you, you know, don't just happen to stumble upon them, but I cheated because I went to the Odyssey Writers Workshop. And that was, that was me trying to decide whether or not writing was something I wanted to even pursue or could pursue. And you know, a big part of that was also learning whether or not I could handle feedback. But these writing workshops are all organized the same way, right? You write something, you give it to your peers, and then it gets feedback in a group, and you're not allowed to defend your choices so like, it's nerve wracking but like throughout the whole hour I guess—or however long, I don't know, it felt like 10 years when you were like on the spot—it's a really vulnerable space, and it's very much based on trust, right, because you have to keep your mouth shut while people are telling you what they liked and didn't like about your story, and you can't tell them why it was that you made those choices. So by the end of the six weeks, those peers of mine at the workshop they became some of my best friends. You know, these are the people whose feedback have actually been tried and tested. And from that, you know, like, I've been only continuing it. Like it feels like life has just been one giant workshop that has never ended with these people. I just keep sending them my writing and they keep giving me feedback and it's been fantastic, so I'm so lucky, and some of them, you know, are now like super prolific writers themselves, which is fabulous. One of my best friends RF Kuang wrote The Poppy War. Linden Lewis wrote The First Sister, which has been a phenomenal book. Josh Johnson wrote The Forever Sea, you know, so it's just been really nice kind of having our career growth together.
And then of course there's my editor, Alex Cooper at Harper. Her feedback is great because it's always just gentle suggestions or questions that just made me have to think a little bit deeper. Her feedback is just very kind. You know, I never trust feedback that's like, “do this one particular thing and this whole thing will be fixed,” because there's never one way to fix a book. Even if there is that fix should ultimately come from you, right? It's your book, after all.
Ariel: Yeah, I love when I give suggestions for something that I think they could fix in a certain way and then the author comes back with, “Well, I came up with this other way to do it. Does this work?” And then I fall down on my knees and thank the heavens because it’s so glorious.
Farah: Yeah it's somehow, like at the end of the day you know your own work straight and so even if you don't give like the perfect suggestion just even giving the wrong suggestion, I feel like can point a writer in the right direction.
Ariel: Yeah, so then you found your editor, you said she's at HarperCollins, and you found her through an agent?
Farah: Yeah, so I kind of did something a little bit different. I worked with Glasstown on my first book.
Ariel: Ooh, what’s that?
Farah: Glasstown is an IP company, so they essentially have like little seedlings of ideas for books, and then they go and they find writers to write out those ideas. So for I Hope You Get This Message, this was kind of, they had been looking particularly for a Muslim scifi author. And so that, that was the project that I first worked on, but with the second book, been my baby, so that's been fun. It feels like I'm a debut author all over again.
Ariel: That's so interesting because you, you were working in law before you wrote this book, right?
Farah: Mmhm, mmhm.
Ariel: And so how did they know that you would be the person?
Farah: Suggestions, I think? Post law school, I was like I don't want to do this anymore. I don’t like it. It's a lot of work and it's exhausting, which is a joke because so is writing. But right after I graduated, a friend reached out to me and said, “Hey, there's this company that I know of and they're looking for a Muslim writer,” and I kind of connected with her briefly over Twitter on writing. So it was just kind of like, “oh, I know a person,” and it just went from there. And I was like, well I guess I don't have to do law anymore. Fabulous! And been here ever since.
Ariel: And so you have your editor, and then the copy editors and proofreaders and everybody else you get to their fingers in your work, you didn't get to choose any of them.
Farah: No, no, which is fine, I mean, God, I got so lucky, everyone has been so great. So, thank goodness, knock on wood.
Ariel: Okay, and then, I started reading I Hope You Get This Message, because YA specfic is my jam. And you know how you open a book and you don't even know what it's about but on the first like two pages you're like, “oh yeah this is gonna be good!”.
Farah: It's a good feeling.
Ariel: That’s absolutely how I felt.
Farah: Yay!
Ariel: So, two things they really made me curious straight off the bat. So first it starts out with that legalese, right, that dense court transcript that I was like, “What is this about?” And then when I realized that it was...um... aliens talking about Earth, that pay off! Oh, it was so amazing! And so it's brilliant, and it reflects your background, obviously. But I wondered how it's been shaped for a YA audience, because, you know, do the teenagers, do they get it? Did your editors ask for clarification or simplification or reshaping? Because it continues throughout the story. Were you worried that it wouldn't be accessible?
Farah: I kind of started writing it with just like the key legal words and kind of like a brief outline of what I was trying to get them to say. And then I would have to kind of like go through it and add some stuff and take out some stuff so it was as simple as possible, but you know I was a lawyer before I was a writer, and a lot of my work was writing legalese that would be suitable for a nonlegal audience anyway, so I think that that little background really helped there. I was an environmental writer, so a lot of the stuff that I would have to write would be stuff that was showing, say, constituents of a particular place where a law was up to potentially pass, you know, to explain what the ramifications of that law would be. So, a lot of it would have to do with like okay how can you write this thing and make it a lot simpler to understand, and not just simple but like quick to understand.
But I rarely ever question now like whether or not teens will understand something, just because they're younger, you know, doesn't mean that they know or understand less. So that's been good, it's like a lot of writing I think has to do with this, this trust not just with the editors that are your fellow writers that are looking at your work but also your readers. So that's been helpful. It's just like, you know, stop putting so much pressure on yourself to make it so simple. It doesn't have to be, because a lot of people will just understand it, and legal writing I think should just be accessible to everyone anyway so it was good practice for me. Like, if no one can understand your legal writing, then I feel like the law just becomes defunct. So yeah, I wrote it and then the and then the editors were like okay after lots and lots of extensive revision, it's good enough, which is all anyone can ask for I think for a book.
Ariel: Good enough, oh please! And so you didn't have any teenagers provide feedback before it was published?
Farah: No, no. It was a leap of faith there, but I think it worked out.
Ariel: I think it worked out. And then I was struck by the contrast in your point of view characters, so you have three POV characters, right? There's Jessie the gay bad boy fighting bitterness and poverty in Roswell; Adeem, who's a computer whiz and also one of only two brown kids in his school; and then Kate, who starts out the book, trying to have these typical teenage experiences like sneaking out to a party and getting her first absolutely disgusting kiss. But she's also caring for her mom who has schizophrenia, about aliens. And I wondered how your critique partners or sensitivity readers and editors helped shaped these characters and their identities. What sort of feedback did you receive that helped make them so distinct and so real?
Farah: I feel like “writer” is just a fancy word for a clever thief. Like none, none of my characters start off as a blank slate, right? Like I steal traits from people I know, or I steal from other characters who've had impact on me or traits that I want to see in myself but don't have, until a character becomes so unrecognizable and also wholy your own. But when it comes to like marginalizations that I don't have, I definitely rely on sensitivity readers and people who do share those marginalizations to keep myself accountable. Yeah, Kate’s mom, for example, has schizophrenia, right, and my grandfather had schizophrenia, so a lot of what Kate goes through is based on my mom's own experience, but I feel like, you know after writing it, that still wasn't enough, you know? So I had a sensitivity reader go through it just to make sure that I was using the right language. You know, that I wouldn't harm anyone with my ignorance because like, you know, that's my mom's experience but it's not emblematic of all experiences and also I'm just, you know, it's all hearsay, I'm just listening to my mom, it's not what I've experienced. So, the sensitivity readers, they add nuance that I lack.
And then the rest of it was just about, you know, immersing myself in literature that, you know, portrays these kinds of characters well, and also having a sensitive mind about it. You know, at the end of the day I don't want to hurt anyone with my writing, so that means I have to be prepared and do a crap ton of prep work before a character can even stroll on the page.
Ariel: And how did you find your sensitivity readers?
Farah: I didn't have to! Which is so amazing! Harper was like, I got you, and they go through their database, and usually there's a big database at publishing companies, and they go through it, usually with these trusted sensitivity readers, and you know, they go through the whole contract thing on their own. And yeah, so I don't know the name of the sensitivity readers, which I think is to protect them. Yeah, so then they go through it, and then they...I get a page or two of just feedback. And then I go from there. Usually towards the end once we've kind of already gone through copy edits.
Ariel: And since it was contracted through Harper, did you feel like even if you disagreed with something that the sensitive—which I hope no one would be like, “I don't agree with you, sensitivity reader, I’m going to ignore your comments”—but if you did disagree with something that they said or you wanted to take it in a different direction than what they suggested, would you still be able to do that?
Farah: Probably would, but at the end of the day, like who am I to even question them? So I probably, I probably could, but I mean I'd advise against it, because why?
Ariel: Absolutely.
Farah: I think there was one question that we had for this upcoming book, It All Comes Back to You. The characters are all, well, most of the characters I guess are Muslim Pakistani characters. I'm also Muslim Pakistani, so why would I need the sensitivity reader? But we've had discussions about, like, maybe we should just get one anyway just to make sure, you know, that I'm portraying Muslims in like as good a light as I can, or maybe I'm missing something. Who freakin knows, you know? So that's been kind of on the table and maybe, maybe they bring up something that is against what I have experienced. So in that case then I would feel comfortable, maybe, you know, digressing from their advice, because, say, like, well my life experience was this, the sensitivity readers says their experience is this, well then, you know, you're kind of at an impasse. In that case maybe, maybe be different, but otherwise, why? If someone's saying do it, then you should probably do it.
Ariel: Yeah. And so, since we've talked a little bit of the characters identities, and I'm so grateful you told me that we could also talk a little bit about your experiences as BIPOC writer working with non-BIPOC editors. Can you tell me a little bit about the challenges that posed or maybe some of the triumphs that might have come out of it? And how did your editors navigate that cultural divide? What do you wish other writers and editors knew about it?
Farah: Trust in my experience has been the biggest thing so, so my editor. She trusts my experience and she doesn't really second guess or question it. If she has a question—you know, maybe there's some sort of like cultural question there—it's only to help make sure that I'm not making my writing too inaccessible, that I'm giving all readers the context that they need to understand, at the very least, the basics. Like, I want my writing to immerse people and to teach people about some characters, so if I just keep inundating my readers with words that they don't understand, then that could pull even the most open-minded reader out of the story. So, at the same time, I'm not here to serve, like, say, lazy or close-minded readers, so it's all about balance. That's what my editor is here for, you know, just making sure that I'm keeping things balanced.
Not all editors are like that. Some can be pushy. Some might push for content that you're not comfortable with because it sells. Like, this is kind of a discussion that I've had with like with other Muslim writers. You know, sex, for example sells, and it's like well what do you... what do you do? I mean obviously, like, every Muslim character might have a different experience. But some, some Muslim writers were like, “No, that wasn't my experience and so I'm not comfortable writing like, say, a sex scene on the page” or whatever.
So sometimes you have to push back. And that's incredibly hard, it's emotionally exhausting, but it does happen, unfortunately. With this last book that I wrote, thankfully, I didn't have that experience once. It's been smooth sailing. But you know, other writers haven't been so lucky and so that's exhausting. It's just very, very tiring.
Ariel: Yeah. Where do you think writers can find that energy, or how can how can one bolster their own courage to continue pushing back when you feel strongly about something?
Farah: I think that's where your critique partners come back into play. You know, these people that you've trusted to show you the rawest form of your writing are also the very same people that can be your cheerleaders. You know if there's something that you're getting pushed to write that you're not comfortable with, and that you say, you know, maybe it doesn't serve the story, then talk to those friends. They know your story second best after you, right, so they can probably give you even more...I don’t want to say ammo because that, that kind of makes it a very hostile thing but, you know, just more information, a different perspective that you might not have a thought about, which will only just bolster your own courage, and part of the reason why we don't want to get into these kind of arguments is also not just to avoid conflict but because maybe we don't fully trust our own thought process on this.
Ariel: Yeah.
Farah: So they'll, make you trust it. That's incredibly useful, so yeah that's the good thing about having critique partners is that they serve a million purposes.
Ariel: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. I guess I always thought about critique partners as like the workshop before the work is done, and then like that's it.
Farah: Oh gosh, yeah no, I milk them for all they’re worth. After it's done, I'll go back and be like, “Hey, I have all these stupid questions now” and because they've seen me suffer through the whole process, they’ll go through it too and vice versa. So, why not, why not? At that point they tend to know the story better than I do, so.
Ariel: Yeah, well, and I guess you keep calling them your friends, and so absolutely your friends would be there to talk through the issues that you're having, at all the different stages, not just in self revising.
Farah: Yeah, I mean, they should be your friends right? I wouldn't be able to show someone who isn't my friend my work. They would have to be, because otherwise, you know I'm showing them my nasty, raw first draft, which is the most personal one, so yeah I have to have that connection.
Ariel: So let's move on to the questions that I ask every author I talked to. What do you hate about the editing process?
Farah: Oh, I'm rereading my own work. Because I'm terrified of going back one day and realizing that I hate it all. It was horrible. So like, at one point. After writing the entire manuscript and sending it off, I have let go of the fact that there's no more to be done. And I've let go of the whole thing, it's out of my hands. And so I don't have to think about it and it's great. And when I get it back and I have to go through edits, I'm like oh crap! What if I find something that I completely forgot, especially now that I've taken time away from it, and I'm looking at it with fresh eyes? What if I look back on it and I hate the language, hate the voice, I find out that, you know, there's a huge plot point that I missed or I needed to add! And obviously that's, that's a huge part of editing is you have to reread it 1000 times. Ugh, it’s the worst.
Ariel: You get your proofreads back, and you know you're only supposed to make like necessary changes and then you're like well, but what if I want to change the entire tense of the book now.
Farah: Exactly. I don't want to pull on like a string, you know. There's always gonna be fraying threads that you find, and I know that once I start tugging then the whole thing's gonna fall apart and I can't, I can't do it, so I'm like, know what? I'll give it to my husband and say, “You read it, you do this.” I'm not looking back, I don't wanna. But I gotta.
Ariel: When you're rereading it as you're going through your edit passes, are you reading it aloud? Are you reading it just from start to finish, as fast as you can? Are you stopping a million times for chocolate?
Farah: Definitely, definitely that. Usually stopping to go run to the bathroom and cry. But a lot of it has been reading it out loud, which has been so fun, because then I'm like, okay well, I can go into my voice-acting head now and read through this important scene that's mostly dialogue, and I can just read it back and forth and really get to the heart of it, and that's been incredibly fun and incredibly helpful in getting that emotional resonance in a scene. But then the rest of it I'm just soaring through it as fast as I can. It's like ripping off a band aid.
Ariel: Getting to pull on your other talents and remind yourself that, “Oh, I do have these other talents and they're pretty good and so I bet my writing is pretty good too.”
Farah: I wish that's how it worked. It's more that like writing is so hard that I'm like, okay well, I can talk into a microphone, I can do that, so maybe I'll just do that instead and pretend that I'm writing.
Ariel: I don't know if there's an audiobook version of this one out. Did you do your own audiobook?
Farah: I didn't, which I'm grateful for because then that would have meant I'd have to read it. I didn't want to do that. It All Comes Back to You doesn't currently have an assigned audiobook reader, but I believe it will be in audiobooks. I saw it on Audible the other day and I was like, interesting, but I Hope You Get This Message is an audiobook and that's, that was done by Priya Ayyar, who did a really, really great job. Yeah, I don't I don't know. Let's see for this next one. Oh god.
Ariel: Did you have any say in the audiobook like, listen back through it and, oh, this was mispronounced or can we change up the pacing here?
Farah: Oh, that'd be cool. No I didn't. Usually they just give you a list of different audiobook narrators to choose from and then you can do that kind of input, but other than that, once, once you've picked, you gotta, you gotta trust them and go from there.
Ariel: Nngh, there's that word again.
Farah: Oh no! As someone who has trust issues I was like oh, I really chose the wrong field! It's been good. It's been fun.
Ariel: What's the most common bit of feedback you've receive on your writing?
Farah: Balancing how much a reader needs to know. I either give too much information or too little in my first draft and I've learned... in part because I don't know the plot, or mystery so I'm usually just telling it to myself. So first drafts are a hot mess. For me, always. Because at that point I'm just telling myself the story and trying to understand it myself, and it shows! It shows that I don't even know what's happening in the book and I'm just explaining it to me as opposed to telling a story. I don't know, that's just, that's just a confidence thing. And so your first draft is really just your first date with your story where you’re just trying to get to the basics and see if it fits. But once you go through that process, then you can kind of feel more confident in like knowing the story and then therefore knowing how much a reader would need to know.
Ariel: So are you an over writer or an underwriter?
Farah: Underwriter, always. Yeah, if I can do the bare minimum work, then hell yeah. And then we'll go from there. I hate cutting words. I hate it.
Ariel: But it's so much harder having to pull more words out of your body.
Farah: Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's where the running to the bathroom and crying comes into play. But, once, once you do that and you come back and you're refreshed and you're ready to go and pull words out. Yay. Yay.
Ariel: Did you have any last words of advice?
Farah: Oh my god, yes, I can write an essay on this. If you're struggling with your own writing, don't be afraid to go way, way, way back to the basics and ask yourself the most basic of questions, like why do you like reading. Why do you like reading certain books? What is it about them that keeps you drawn in?
The other day I was talking to my really good friends who's from the workshop, and he was struggling to write this book for a really, really long time. And we just couldn't figure out why because he's a brilliant writer. And we were like, what's up, what's on your bookshelf? What do you like reading? And he was like, “Middle grade, there's a lot of middle grade books on my bookshelf.” And I was like, “Well, your book isn't middle grade, the one that you're writing. What if you made it middle grade?” and then that's what he did, and now the words are just pouring out of him and he's like, “I cannot... I never once considered myself a middle grade writer but here we are.”
So sometimes those most basic questions, the ones that are easily overlooked because you're like, “well, I already know all this stuff.” Those are the ones that can get you back on track.
Also speaking of going way, way back to the basics. Don't be afraid to take a break from writing. Self care can make all the difference. And sometimes breakthroughs really do just fall into your lap.
Ariel: Oh but, Farah, in order to be a writer, you have to write every single day of your life.
Farah: Ugh, god, it’s the worst! I took that to heart. For the first year of writing, and that resulted in me having to take like a six-month hiatus from writing.
Ariel: Oh no!
Farah: Because it just, it was abuse, it was self-abuse. Don't do it. Love yourself.
Ariel: Yes, love yourself! I love it!
Farah: I love it, and I love doing that for myself because then it's like, one day can pass I can be like, “Yeah, I didn't write today. Self-care.” It’s all self-care.
Ariel: Yeah. What are your other favorite forms of self-care?
Farah: I love sleeping. I am a ten-hour-a-day sleeper. I need it.
Ariel: Ooh, me too!
Farah: Oh my god, people need to understand that this is like what our body needs. It just needs to happen. We're like cats. Like, we just need we just need more sleep than those other people.
Ariel: Those people who sleep for six hours a day?
Farah: How?
Ariel: I just want to, like, take a nap. It's okay.
Farah: Yeah. I'm also kind of in awe of them. I'm like, how does it feel to be so powerful that you can sleep six hours and still function like a normal person? If I take any less than ten hours, I will scratch people like a feral cat. I can't, I can't do it. I can't do it. So I sleep a lot. And I play a lot of video games. I really like love narrative-based video games. So when I'm playing video games, it feels like I'm reading. (Even though I’m not.)
Ariel: What are your favorites?
Farah: Mass Effect, which is like a big sweeping sci fi epic, has always been my favorite, and I love visual novels. That's been like my thing. So, if you don't know what visual novels are, they're basically mostly romance based and they read kind of like stories, but they're interactive, like a choose your own adventure thing and sometimes they're voice acted and there's a lot of really attractive characters that you can talk to and sometimes there's like mysteries that you have to solve as well. It's great. Like, yeah I'm reading, I'm reading, and then I show my husband my Switch and he's just like, okay, all right. Sure.
Ariel: My favorite video game that I've played in the last couple of years has been Cat Quest.
Farah: Cat Quest? That sounds amazing!
Ariel: It's so much fun! You're a cat, and you're running around defeating dragons.
Farah: No. Oh my God, I love that. Like, what!?
Ariel: There's so many like cat puns, and then for Cat Quest Two, it’s cats versus dogs.
Farah: I’m looking this up. Oh my god the art is so cute! What the heck?
Ariel: You’re gonna love it.
Farah: You're a cat in a knight suit. What the heck! I love it. Alright, well, I don't have deadlines so I gotta go. It was really nice talking to you.
Ariel: Wait, no! My favorite part of the program is coming up!
Farah: Ok, we’ll do this real quick, and then I'm gonna do important—I got to do important things.
Ariel: So the last part of my program is a Hot and Wholesome Gossip Corner.
Farah: Ok, that’s really cute.
Ariel: Are there any other writers or creators doing something you're excited about? Any shout outs you want to give or people you want to lift up?
Farah: Yes, Joan He has a book that's coming out soon. I think in May, The Ones We Were Meant to Find, and I have heard nothing but incredible things. It looks so good, and I still don't understand everything it's about, like I've gotten snippets, but it just sounds like this really big cool mystery but it's also science fiction, and I'm very, very intrigued, for lack of a better word. Is there's something more powerful than intrigue? I don't know, that's what I'm feeling, so that looks incredible.
Gina Chen has a book coming out, I think next year, which is a crime, frankly. I'm going to be talking to her publisher and I don't know crying at them and saying please make your book come out sooner. The book is called A Violet Made of Thorns, and it’s this big court intrigue fantasy. Violet, the main character is, she basically does prophecies, and she is hired by the kingdom tell these prophecies.
Ariel: Oh, she's an oracle.
Farah: Yes, yes, that's the word. She's an oracle so she, she works kind of for the king, and obviously a lot of these or these prophecies that she does are BS, and not really real, but’s kind of like, she’s a really cool political tool. She’s very cynical and she's great as a main character, very different from other big fantasy main characters. I love her and I love this book already.
And Tashie Bhuiyan has a book coming, Counting Down with You.
Ariel: Oh, yes!
Farah: So cute! It looks so cute. All the artwork that's come out looks adorable so I'm all grabby hands all over that.
Ariel: I loved, she and her best friend did an unboxing video and they're like twerking upside down on the wall, because they’re so excited about this book.
Farah: I think that's adorable, I need to go watch it. It's really cute. I'm excited for it. If I could hang upside down, I would try, but I will fall and hurt myself and not be able to read for a while so I will, I will do it in my heart.
Ariel: Well, if you want to check out Farah’s work, you can follow her on Twitter or Instagram as at @FarahNazRishi, and be on the lookout for her new book, It All Comes Back to You, coming out this September. Thank you so much for talking with me, Farah.
Farah: Thank you for having me. This is so fun.
Ariel: If you loved this episode of Edit Your Darlings, why not share it with a friend? Remember to rate and review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast fix. For show notes go to edityourdarlings. com, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @editpodcast, or I'm @arielcopyedits. Until next week, cheers!