I almost passed out when Elijah Kinch Spector volunteered to be interviewed for indie week. His book, Kalyna The Soothsayer, was published by Erewhon press and was one of my favorite reads of last year. Despite my epic fangirling, Elijah still managed to provide witty and insightful answers about identity in writing, balancing humor and tension, and why Kalyna’s grandmother is the way she is.
BookishlyJewish: I remember reading the afterword for SOOTHSAYER and thinking to myself this was a book you had worked on for a while. What was it like to finally see her out in the world?
Elijah Kinch Spector: Surreal, euphoric, and a little frightening. To me, someone reading my fiction actually feels more revealing than someone reading, say, an autobiographical essay. Autobiography tells you my version of events in my life; fiction tells you how I think and what I prioritize. (This may be doubly true for a writer who creates an entirely new world to set their story in.) That vulnerability is part of what’s intoxicating about putting art out into the world, and it’s also absolutely fucking terrifying.
BookishlyJewish: How has the process of writing the second book differed from the first, now that there is a publication deadline?
Elijah Kinch Spector: Everyone I’ve talked to says the second book is really hard, and everyone is right. But in some ways, the edits are easier this time around, because I’m still fundamentally the same person I was when I started the book in 2021.
SOOTHSAYER, by contrast, had a decade’s worth of drafts and revisions, which can feel like—and I’m going to quote myself here, sorry—”a disconcerting palimpsest that exposes a hundred different people you used to be, or almost were.”
BookishlyJewish: I just have to put it out there that Kalyna’s grandmother is maybe the worst human I have ever encountered. The literal worst. How did you come up with this fascinating character?
Elijah Kinch Spector: At first, I just thought it would be darkly funny. It can be very cathartic, and fun, to write a character who just says the meanest shit in the world. She’s also a villain in the story that Kalyna can’t just stab, and in fact has to live with, which is a great obstacle to give your protagonist.
Grandmother is also a sort of grotesque exaggeration of the family member with absurdly high expectations for you, whom you consistently disappoint. (Something that I think a lot of Jews, and many others, can relate to.)
BookishlyJewish: Your writing, for me, had a combination of both exciting action and really hilarious moments. Sometimes with the hilarious moments coming DURING the tense action sequences. How did you balance this?
Elijah Kinch Spector: I think small funny or awkward moments that puncture the tension, and show how ridiculous everyone is, can actually make the violence feel more messy and human—more real. But I tried to interrupt the tension without stopping the momentum: it usually isn’t believable, for example, when someone rattles off a long, involved insult in the middle of fighting for their life, but it’s very plausible that someone in a swordfight might slip and fall on their ass. (And then maybe fart?)
BookishlyJewish: With books that are this twisty and full of political intrigue I often wonder if the writer knows the ending from the start or if they discover it along the way and smooth things out during revisions. Are you a plotter or pantser and how did you manage to achieve such a level of layered complexity?
Elijah Kinch Spector; Oh boy, pantser all the way, to my great detriment. I had vague ideas of where things would go, but pretty much figured it out as I went. (And not just the plot, the worldbuilding too.) It took a lot of editing to make it work, and there are whole characters and factions that were cut or added (or both) over the years.
BookishlyJewish: I was also really intrigued by the physical layout of SOOTHSAYER, with the chapter lengths being incredibly variable, and sometimes if they were only a paragraph or two, they appeared on the same page. Plus the cast of characters at the beginning which gave us just enough to entice us about so many of the characters. Did the book always look this way, and if not, how did it evolve to its current state?
Elijah Kinch Spector: The list of characters was an idea my editor, Sarah Guan, had after the book was done. And it was a good one: there are a lot of people in this thing!
The varying chapters were there from the beginning: I thought it made sense as the way Kalyna would organize her thoughts. Much, much later, I realized the structure is also due to my (at the time) undiagnosed ADHD. This goes back to the vulnerability of fiction: that structure is pretty much how my brain works, and now anyone can see it.
BookishlyJewish: Can you talk about the pros and cons of working with a small/independent press? Were there any surprises for you?
Elijah Kinch Spector: Naturally, a small press doesn’t have the PR money that a major publisher does, but a major publisher won’t spend that money on all of its authors, either. Erewhon Books—and especially their marketing manager, Marty Cahill—gives every author so much attention and care. I’m sure I got to do more press for the book than I would have as an unknown debuting at a big publisher.
BookishlyJewish: How has life changed now that your book is out in the world, and receiving such great reviews?
Elijah Kinch Spector: In the times between doing lots of press, my life is pretty much unchanged. Except that once the book was out I thought to myself, with great satisfaction, “Well! That’s a line in my obituary sorted.”
BookishlyJewish: Some of my readers are surprised when I review second world fantasy and decide that the characters are Jewish coded, but it is one of my favorite genres. Do you feel Judaism seeps into your books, and if yes, is this on purpose or accidental?
Elijah Kinch Spector: Oh God yes, both purposefully and accidentally. There are technically no Jews in Soothsayer, but the book is so Jewish I used to worry that gentiles wouldn’t like it. Kalyna is definitely Jewish coded, but she’s also coded to a lot of other things, which is why I love secondary world fantasy: it doesn’t have to map directly onto our current ideas of identity.
But, to be clear, “Jew” is my number one identity signifier by a mile, and that’s reflected in everything I write (and think, and say, and do).
BookishlyJewish: I always end by asking if you have a favorite Jewish book.
Elijah Kinch Spector: Favorite is hard, but I’ll mention one that brought me a lot of joy: Radiant Days, Haunted Nights is a collection of Yiddish folk literature translated and edited by Joachim Neugroschel.The whole book’s great, but I want to talk about the anonymous, 18th century story “A History, or A Moral Tale: About Wondrous Events in the Life of a Young Knight Sir Gawain, Whose Tale Reveals the Workings of Divine Providence.”
Yes, it’s a Yiddish King Arthur story. One that never acknowledges Christianity or England. For example, it tells us that King Arthur’s court was in “a very mighty and beautiful city, which he had built on the shores of the sea. And that was why he named it Arthurstown.” Who didn’t spend their childhood pretending to be a valiant knight of Arthurstown?
Elijah’s bio: Elijah Kinch Spector is a writer, dandy, and rootless cosmopolitan from the Bay Area who now lives in Brooklyn. His first novel, Kalyna the Soothsayer, was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award, and received acclaim from NPR, Nerds of a Feather, Tor.com, Foreword, and Paste Magazine, among others. A sequel, Kalyna the Cutthroat, is expected in 2024.
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