G: Hello, everyone.
My name is Gabby and I am here at the Anderson's in Naperville with the very lovely and talented
author, Ashley Poston.
A: Hi!
G: who is most known for Geekerella and her most recent release, Heart of Iron and she
has graciously taken time out of her day to sit down with me and answer a few of my questions.
Thank you so much for being here.
A: Well, yes yes yes it was quite, quite wonderful for you to invite me here.
Hi guys!
G: Okay, so if you very briefly want to introduce yourself and give a basis synopsis as to what
your newest novel is about for those who aren't familiar.
A: Alright, so my name is Ashley Poston and I am a super huge fangirl, just saying, and
my first novel, Geekerella, is Cinderella at a sci-fi convention and its nerdy and its
great and it's awesome and it is NOTHING LIKE Heart of Iron, which is my new thing that
just come out and it's Anastasia IN SPACE.
Right, and it has blood and it has political intrigue and it has lost princesses and it
has a romance and it has androids and it has all these cool things and a crown that doesn't
rust and its fantastic and it has female starship captains, sword fights, and its everything
I could have ever wanted.
G: Those of you who are out there may know Ashley, like as she said before, from her
debut novel, Geekerella, which was, of course, incredibly successful and very well deserved.
A: Thank you so much!
G: What stage in the writing process were you in for Heart of Iron when Geekerella started
to receive such positive reception and did this hype affect your writing process at all
and what you wanted to make prominent in Heart of Iron?
A: Oooh, that's a big question.
Actually, I wrote Heart of Iron before I ever knew about Geekerella.
Geekerella was actually a story that Quirk came to me about.
They're like "Hey, you're super fangirly online.
Do you wanna write this Cinderella story?"
And I'm like "Oh my God, it's a geeky Cinderella, like count me in."
And so they gave me free reign and I just like jumped at it.
Like Geekerella was the story I didn't know I needed to write and if Geekerella is my
heart, Heart of Iron is my soul.
Heart of Iron has been six years in the making.
It is my child.
It is the one story that could never get out of my head, kinda like a song that you hear
over and over and over and you can never never get it out of your head.
That was Heart of Iron for me.
G: That's so beautiful.
A: Thank you.
G: With writing, it's a very individual process.
Each person has their own unique style of storytelling.
So when you first started writing, how did you develop your persona as a writer and how
has it changed since the release of your second novel?
A: That is a very good question.
I started writing fanfic a long time ago and I always say that writing fanfic is the best
way to understand character and character development and like putting characters that
you already know into certain situations.
So that definitely like helped out a lot in my writing process.
When you craft your own story, you have to be a fan of your own book first.
Like, you have to be a superfan of your own book first.
I just like took everything that I knew from fanfic and just applied it to fiction.
And it just like a seamless transition.
I've always been writing and I always will write and I'm just a fangirl at heart and
what can I say?
G: And I can very much relate to that!
A: Right?
Don't you always want like a really really solid OTP that you can just get behind?
G: And there is plenty within Heart of Iron.
I can say I recently finished the novel and I loved it.
A: Thank you.
G: So when sitting down to write Heart of Iron, how did the writing process work for
you?
What type of environment did you want to be in while writing, not only physically, but
maybe mentally, as well?
A: I've been so long writing this book that it's very hard to…
Okay, so I have a playlist, right, and this playlist, like I always listen to when I'm
not writing cause I can't write and listen to music at the same time.
So basically, I listen to this playlist like between writing and I listen to the same songs
over and over and over again.
And there's this one song by Marianas Trench called Who Do You Love that iTunes has recorded
me listening to over 1,200 times.
G: Oh my gosh.
A: So, just put that song in Heart of Iron and that's basically like the feeling.
G: When your writing is there maybe a certain point where maybe if your feeling a little
bit upset you want to write a sadder scene or like mentally when your writing are you
just gonna start writing or do you want a certain mindset that you want to be in when
your writing a certain type of scene?
A: Usually, like, I have certain scenes that I'm planning out when, but it really all
depends.
The way I write, I start from the beginning and I usually know the end, but sometimes
I don't.
For Heart of Iron, I knew where I wanted to go, I knew the ending, and the ending is going
to be in the sequel, Soul of Stars, which I am so excited I can finally talk about.
I've been sitting on that news for so long.
People have been asking me, "Is there going to be a sequel?" for like months.
I'm like, "I don't know.
Maybe?"
G: Did you plan it to be that way, to have a sequel?
A: Yeah, I had originally written Heart of Iron as a duology and when the first book
sold, I was like, "Okay, here we go."
I had to prove myself and I did and now Soul of Stars is happening and I'm just really
excited.
Anyway, but back to your question.
I am sometimes in the mood to write certain scenes, but especially when you are under
deadline, you don't have the option to write a sad scene or write a happy scene.
You have to just write down the draft and then later on you can go back and kinda like
tweak it.
I mean if I'm not under deadline it's ideal, but I'm never not under deadline
anymore.
G: I can complete relate to that as a high school student.
A: Ugh, yeah like so many deadlines right?
Homework all the time and essays..
G: And being in like three AP classes and..
A: Oh my gosh G: I'm in so many clubs and things and like
doing like all the fun extra things like..
I relate.
A: I was just in like in Honors English, everything else was just regular because I'm terrible
at math.
G: No, so am I.
A: Don't ask me to math.
G: I got shoved into Honors math anyway.
Probably wasn't a smart thing, but..
A: Well, you know you're probably doing really well.
I mean I would have like tanked it so hard.
G: Oh, AP Physics right now is like the bane of my existence.
A: Oh, just that word hurts my soul.
G: Oh, yeah, no.
It's so painful.
There's so many tests that I've bombed and like even today I got back a grade were
I like didn't even finish and it was like… uhhhh….
But I mean luckily enough that I have a really nice teacher, who's like willing to work
with me, but like of all the classes, it's the worst.
A: That is so..
Ahhhh..
See like, I usually hate math and I almost always hate science, too, but like in high
school I got into astronomy.
I love space.
And then like when I took the course, I loved space even more.
And it was the most amazing experience and like that kinda helped me prepare for Heart
of Iron and like figuring out that bodies can't burn in space.
And like you suffocate that's how die in space.
And like the, the spit on your tongue starts to boil
G: oh my gosh A: It's super horrific, but you can last
in space for like two to three minutes if you like exhale all your breath, so you don't
explode.
But yeah so, it's so much fun.
I love it.
G: So things like that, on a sorta similar note, talking about research.
Obviously, as an author you know research is really important to crafting a novel.
Since Anastasia is a very historically rich story, how much or what type of research did
you do for Heart of Iron?
And how did you know to limit yourself in order to create a truly unique story?
A: The legends of Anastasia is so steeped in mystical, Rasputin, and innocent loss princess
and in real life the Romanovs were terrible people.
The fairytale is all nice, but like when you get into the actual historical context of
what was happening, like it's not a great story.
It's propaganda.
When you go into Anastasia knowing that, you have to change certain elements.
I made Heart of Iron a lost princess story, but I call it Anastasia in space because it's
easier for people to say, "Oh Anastasia, lost princess, I kinda understand this now."
And so it's an easier way to market and connect the book, but it's really just a
lost princess book.
G: That's interesting.
G: Obviously, for those that may not know, I love broadway.
It's one of my favorite things.
A: Me, too.
I just saw Frozen.
G: Ahh, yes I saw that and I saw your tweets afterwards.
It's seems you weren't as happy with it as you would have liked to have been.
A: I had so much OPTIMISM going into that broadway show, but then it froze my cold dead
heart.
It's fine.
G: Anastasia came to Broadway last year.
Did you get to see it?
A: I saw it when it was in Hartford while I was still on submission with Heart of Iron.
G: Was that helpful for your research or did you see certain things in the show that you
wanted to maybe bring into the book, like the way certain characters were depicted?
A: Oh, not at all.
G: So, it was more just like for fun?
A: It was just for fun.
All of the characters in Heart of Iron are wholly my own.
The closest one to their historical counterpart is Rasovant, who is Rasputin.
The Dimitri character is super different and the backstory for him is different.
You get to find out a lot more about the Dimitri character in Soul of Stars and like what happens
there.
G: Which I am so excited about, talking about his character.
A: The Dimitri character is wholly Don Bluth it's like not in any historical context.
It's not in history, right, Dimitri was like written by Don Bluth in the Anastasia
movie to like ferret Anastasia away.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
G: No, you're totally fine.
One of the things I was going to say is that one of my favorite things about your writing
style is the way you blend concepts within your novel.
So, to give an example of this: In Heart of Iron, there is a character that is called
D09.
He's an android.
He's found with Ana.
They're pretty much like counterparts, they have a really, really close relationship.
If you look at the way that that [D09] is spelled out, it looks like dog.
In the Anastasia movie, her counterpart is a dog.
That's one of her, sorta like, sidekicks in a way.
When you're creating those sorts of things, how is it that you come up with that because
I thought it was brilliant?
And I was watching the Anastasia movie at like 1:30 AM and I went and I looked at the
synopsis and I saw it and I had a freak-out attack and I was like how does she do it?
A: You know the funny thing is I didn't think about the dog thing until you just said
it, so that's you and that's fantastic, like I didn't even think of that.
G: Are you serious?
A: I'm serious.
G: I was like, "She would have had to have totally known what she was doing there because
that was so clever."
A: D09 is literally D09 because it took nine drafts to get Di right.
G: That is amazing.
A: Yeah, yeah that's why.
G: Completely mind blown.
That's amazing.
A: Yeah, yeah.
It took like nine drafts for me to like, to get all these characters together.
At first he was Dion, then he was Dine, and then he was D05, and then I started counting
up until he became D09, which is who he is now.
G: That's brilliant.
Talking a little bit about fandom because if I'm in a room with you we have to talk
about this.
A: Uh, yes please.
G: It gives us a safe space for all those who are passionate about a particular topic
to convene together to share their love for that said topic.
A: and just fangirl.
G: Yes, so what is the most iconic or memorable experience that you've had because of fandom?
This interview would definitely be one of mine.
A: Oh gosh, there are so many.
There are literally so many.
Because of Geekerella, I got the chance to be on so many panels with so many amazing
women.
I got to go on a book tour with Hope Nicholson and Sam Maggs, who are two fantastic, fantastic
people in the book world.
I've gotten to meet so many people, so many awesome authors that I would never have met
otherwise.
But my favorite, my most fangirly moment, was in London with Sam Maggs and we were like
walking out of the convention center and the dude playing Archie was running in late, basically.
Archie from Riverdale.
G: I love Riverdale.
A: Right, like, "He's shorter than I thought he'd be." and he heard me and I was like,
"nooo" G: KJ APA
A: Nope, we're going that way.
G: They are actually having a RiverdaleCon in Chicago.
A: Really?
G: It's in April, so it's like the end of April.
I got my friend to go with me, so like Cole Sprouse and Casey Cott are going to be there.
A: That's so cool.
Yeah, that was one of my favorite fangirl moments.
And then like the other one I got to be on a panel with a lot of really cool people.
At like every single con, I fangirl over everyone I'm with.
It's like C.B. Lee, Victoria Schwab, Yissel thedesignergeek, Wendy angrygirLcomics.
It's just like there are so many amazing people out there who are creating amazing
content.
I love everyone that I meet.
G: Talking about Victoria Schwab, she blurbed Heart of Iron, which is really cool.
How does the blurbing process work, for those who aren't familiar and do you want to talk
about your involvement in that process at all if you have any?
A: I sometimes like go out and I ask the authors myself if they would like to blurb it and
then we send them an ARC or a bound galley.
Sometimes my publisher does it.
It really all depends.
On the opposite side, my agent forwards all of the blurb requests from me to me.
And I just got one today and like it's yeah.
It's pretty cool.
It's kinda like nerve wracking because these are people that you look up to and that you
really love their work and so it's kinda like your nudging like, "can you look at
my lowly book, please, if you have time?"
It's very humbling and I'm very humbled by all the blurbs and all of the people that
have tweeted about it and talked about it and it's been a fantastic experience.
G: Talking a little bit then about fandom culture again.
Obviously Geekerella is known for its representation of fandom culture, so translating that to
your newest release, what fandom would each of the characters from Heart of Iron be in
and would they want to cosplay as any of the characters from their fandom of choice?
A: This is hard.
I am a huge Star Trek fan and I know D09 would be, too.
He would be a super hardcore Star Trek fan and he would probably cosplay Data.
D09 was inspired by after Data.
I feel like there'd be some connection there.
And I love cosplay because you get to be someone else for a few minutes or you get to be like,
not "better than yourself", you get to be someone who can conquer worlds and who
can slay dragons and its fantastic and it's this fantastic experience.
And so I think Ana would probably cosplay as, oh gosh, what's her name, what's her
name, from G: Game of Thrones?
(I was thinking Daenerys Targaryen) A: No, no.
Black Panther.
Um, what's her name?
She's the general from Black Panther.
That would be her jam.
R: Okoye?
A: I think it's Okoye, yes.
Yeah, Ana would totally cosplay as the general from Black Panther, Okoye.
She would think that badass and it totally is.
Jax and Robb would probably be Voltron trash, if we're being honest.
G: I could see that.
A: Like totally Voltron trash.
G: If we're going to talk about fandom, we have to sort the Heart of Iron characters
into Hogwarts houses.
A: Uh, yes.
G: Of course that's a tradition on the booktube.
A: Good.
Ana would be… she would totally be Gryffindor.
G: That's what I was thinking.
A: Actually, I change that.
She would be Slytherin.
She would be super Slytherin because she is ambitious.
She also charges like headfirst into stuff when she really shouldn't, but I think she
becomes more Slytherin throughout, throughout the book.
So I say begin is definitely Gryffindor, but by the end Ana is totally Slytherin.
D09 is Hufflepuff, all the way.
Like Di is the Huffleyist of Hufflepuffs.
Jax is probably also Slytherin because he is very ambitious.
He's ambitious in his own way and he's ambitious like to a fault.
Now, Robb is Gryffindor.
Robb has like his heart bleeding on his sleeve.
G: What would you say about Erik?
A: Erik is Robb's brother, older brother.
I would say he'd be Slytherin, like just because he's also really ambitious.
It's not a spoiler, but Erik wants the crown and he want is real bad and that travels into
the sequel, too, where he wants it even worse.
G: So there's the hashtag Baes in Space, which is associated with Heart of Iron.
Do you want to talk about what inspired the hashtag?
A: Yes, I can.
Someone told me early on that all of the characters were Super Baes and I was like, "I can see
that."
And then like I always do Anastasia IN SPACE and so it just became Baes in Space, which
I now realize rhymes with Gays in Space, which also works out.
G: It does.
A: Because there are a lot of queer people in my book, which there is going to be more
queer people in the sequel.
G: So talking about the behind the scenes of publishing a novel and some of those fun
things, there has been plenty of beautiful artwork that has been circulating relating
to Heart of Iron, especially some that has been used as part of the pre-order campaign.
Do you want to talk about the process of how that artwork for your book came to be?
A: The preorder artwork?
G: Yeah, sure.
A: Well, the preorder artwork came about because I was on tour for Geekerella.
I was at a con, Emerald City, actually, which is happening right now, but it was this time
last year.
I had been to a lot of cons before, but I had never gone up and said, "Hey can you
commission something for me?"
One of my favorite artists, M.J. Erickson, she was at her table by some stroke of luck.
I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do this."
And so I walked up to her, and I was like, "Hi, I know you don't know me, but would
you want to do a commission for me for a book?"
And she was like, "Yeah, sure."
We communicated for like the next year basically.
She read Heart of Iron and like I didn't even have to really like write anything down.
She plucked the characters from my head and just put them on the page.
It was the coolest thing ever to see and she is fantastic.
Everyone should follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
She's kreugan: K-R-E-U-G-A-N or E-N, something along those lines.
G: So obviously one of the things you keep mentioning, Heart of Iron was an Anastasia
retelling that was turned into a space opera.
So what is that inspired you to want to retell Anastasia's story in the manner that you
did and what specific elements about the original story captivated you to want to create Heart
of Iron?
A: I really love the lost princess trope.
I know a lot of people don't.
A lot of people think it's contrived and over-used.
I like it enough to have written a book about it, basically, but I also like the cast of
characters around that trope.
I love Ana to death, but I also really love the people that surround her, too.
I really wanted to place these four different characters in this one dynamic.
I wanted to see where it went and what happened.
It was basically a character study.
I had these characters.
I put them in a situation and I was like, "Here ya go.
Have fun.
Go, see ya later."
They were like, "This is the story we want to tell."
They told it and I went along for the ride.
G: When writing Heart of Iron, how did you decide the way that you wanted to portray
the characters to the audience visually and was there any character that was difficult
to visualize when writing Heart of Iron?
A: No character was really that hard to visualize.
They all just kinda popped into my head almost fully formed.
That's kinda weird to say.
I had been playing around with some OCs for a while and fanfic, but they'd always gone
under different names and they always looked different, but they had these strong personalities.
I finally pulled them into Heart of Iron, into these four points of view and so that's
how that happened.
G: That's really cool.
So with Heart of Iron being a multi-perspective novel, how did you decide which character's
points of view you were going to include to tell the story from a specific chapter.
So like deciding this chapter is going to be from this character's perspective…
A: That was really hard because it has one linear narrative and I started at first to
like rotate through all four over and over, but then I realized some chapters were better
from Ana's perspective than say Jax's.
And Jax wasn't even a POV until way late in the game.
G: That's interesting.
A: Yeah, you can't think of the story without him now.
There was always something that didn't fit until I added his point of view.
And I was like, "That was the missing piece.
Okay, I got it now."
It just depended on where I needed the story to go at that moment, who would tell it, who
would be best to tell it.
For Ironblood, noble interaction, I definitely chose Robb because Robb understood that.
Robb could explain to the readers better than say Ana in that scenario.
Same with Jax and D09.
I mean his perspective [D09] alters halfway through the book for spoilery reasons.
G: Can you explain the process you went through to get the title, Heart of Iron?
Did it somehow originate from the Firefly episode, Heart of Gold because I noticed those
two titles were similar and you mentioning that Firefly was one of things that you mentioned
in marketing Heart of Iron…?
A: Ya know, I'm not going to say you are wrong.
At first, it was called Iron and Stars.
It was that for a long time, but that got too generic because everything was like this
and that or this and that.
Shadow and Bone.
I decided to go with something else.
Yeah, that was it.
Heart of Gold.
Okay, let's do this.
Heart of Iron.
IRON, better.
It was very easy to play Heart of Iron to Soul of Stars and they fit perfectly within
the metaphors that I was trying to make with them.
G: You mentioned Soul of Stars, which is your sequel, is there anything you want to tease
to the audience for people who've maybe already read Heart of Iron, things to expect?
A: Without spoiling what happens at the end of Heart of Iron,
G: It's a ride, guys, you are going to very much enjoy it.
I know I did.
A: Thank you.
I will say that you will get a lot more of D09 and a lot more of Jax in the exact way
that you think you will.
Nothing will go the way you want it to go.
G: Oh, no.
I could definitely say that Jax has become one of my favorite characters reading this
book.
I absolutely love him, so it was weird to hear you say that you weren't sure what
his involvement was going to be or seeing that you weren't sure that he was going
to have a point of view because I love him and his character.
It would be weird to not have him in the story.
A: Right, it would be so weird.
And then like all of a sudden, he's like, "Hey, yeah.
I'm this person."
And then in the sequel, he's like, "I'm a bigger person now."
Because Soul of Stars alludes directly to him.
It alludes directly to him and to D09.
Not to spoil anything.
G: For those of you who haven't read Heart of Iron, you all should go and pick it up.
All of the links will be in the description where you can go and do that.
That is about it for this interview.
Thank you so much again for sitting down with me and answering all of my questions.
If you guys want to follow Ashley on her social media, do you want to tell them where?
A: Yes, you can find me on Twitter @ashposton, A-S-H-P-O-S-T-O-N and on Instagram I'm @_ashposton.
And I just tweet a lot about broadway shows and anime and manga and Voltron.
There is going to be a lot of Voltron in the next few months because the new season just
dropped ohhh like six hours ago.
Soooo, I'm gonna be Voltron trash for a bit.
Thank you so much for having me on here!
G: Yes, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
This being my first author interview, I was a little bit nervous.
A; You did perfect.
G: This was a wonderful experience.
I'm so grateful to you for making this happen and of course to Anderson's in Naperville.
If you want to check them out, there links will be down below.
And of course to Teenreads, which was a big help in helping to set this all up.
Thank you guys all so so much for watching and I'll see you all next time!
Goodbye!
A: Bye!
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