Kamilah Cole: Someone Somewhere Needs Your Story
Kamilah Cole was a writer and entertainment editor at Bustle for four years, and her nonfiction work has also appeared in Marie Claire and Seventeen. A graduate of New York University, Kamilah lives on the East Coast, where she’s usually playing Kingdom Hearts for the 100th time, quoting early “SpongeBob SquarePants” episodes, or crying her way through Zuko’s redemption arc in “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Learn more at kamilah-cole.com, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Kamilah Cole
Photo by Lauren Banner
In this post, Kamilah discusses the inspiration behind her debut young adult fantasy novel, So Let Them Burn, her advice for other writers, and more!
Name: Kamilah Cole
Literary agent: Emily Forney, BooksEnds Literary Agency
Book title: So Let Them Burn
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Release date: January 16, 2024
Genre/category: Young Adult Fantasy
Elevator pitch: A Jamaican-inspired fantasy that follows a gods-blessed heroine who’s forced to choose between saving her sister or protecting her homeland.
Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
So Let Them Burn is a story about two sisters—one who was chosen by her gods to channel their magic to fight their island’s dragon-riding colonizers, and one who is chosen as the Rider of an enemy dragon five years after the war is over. It’s inspired by my Jamaican heritage, my love for my own sister, and my experience as a gifted kid who peaked in high school.
There were a lot of small prompts that ultimately pushed me to tackle this story, but the two hugest inspirations were Black Panther and Zendaya’s 2018 Met Gala outfit. Black Panther was a triumph of Blackness that made me realize how far I felt from my own culture, how much I had given up to assimilate into American culture, and how I didn’t need to do that to fit in or succeed. Or rather, it helped me make the late-stage realization that I shouldn’t need to assimilate to fit in or succeed.
Then I saw Zendaya’s Joan of Arc-inspired Met Gala outfit. I’ve always been fascinated by the short life of Joan of Arc, but despite how much I love reading diverse retellings that was the first time I thought, “Joan of Arc can be Black?” From there, the idea of a Joan of Arc figure freeing an island based on Jamaica from world powers based on Europe began to take shape. It felt like the perfect way to reaffirm my love for the land I was born in, through the lens of the kinds of fantasy books I love and have always loved.
But also with dragons. Because I love dragons.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
My book will come out in 2024, but I had the first inklings of the idea for So Let Them Burn in 2018. It took me until 2020 to be ready to query, and in that time I rewrote the book about 40 times. At first, my Jamaican Joan of Arc took place mostly in Langley, the colonizing country. Then it took place mostly in San Irie but ended with her being kidnapped by the Langlish. There was a point where she had to hire a mercenary group to be her bodyguards for … some reason. The first ideas I had were all over the place, basically!
The real shift happened when I removed some of the POVs and aged down the older sister character to a teen. Initially, Faron had a peer her own age, and her parents had only allowed her to go to war because her responsible 20-something sister had gone to protect her. Eventually, I realized that absolutely NO parent would let their kids just go to war no matter what! Thus, Elara was aged down to 18, and in the way of teens, she and Faron snuck out—which complicates their relationship with their parents in the present.
This story was meant to be told through their voices, and they were always meant to be the heart of this story. It just took me a long time to see that. Thankfully, through gaining an agent and an editor, that’s the one thing that everyone praised and didn’t ask for changes on: the sisters and their bond.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This might sound silly but bear with me. The most surprising thing about the publishing process has been how well my team understands my book. When you’re just writing the draft, the story is entirely yours. When you pursue traditional publishing, the story is now a group effort. I’ve heard both positive and negative stories about the working relationships between authors and their editors, and I’ve been so lucky that my experience has been entirely positive.
There was something surreal about getting an edit letter back which showed such a deep level of understanding and respect for people I made up in my head. My editors, Alex Hightower and Crystal Castro, prove in every second that we spend working together that they took on my book because they see what I’m trying to do, and they want to support me in getting that across in the most effective way possible.
In turn, I learned to trust in them to steer me right when I start to drift from what I’m trying to accomplish. Trusting someone else with your baby, this book you’ve spent so much time and effort on, can feel like an impossible task, but at least in my case, it’s been very worth it.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
So Let Them Burn isn’t the first book that I finished; it’s actually the fifth. But it is the first book that I revised for querying—or revised at all. I used to write to finish the book and then move on to the next project to prove I could actually finish again. I had no plan to share any of those books with anyone; I was just enamored with this new ability to finish what I start. But with So Let Them Burn, I really felt like this would represent me so well if it were to be my debut novel.
As it turns out, revising is harder than finishing the book. Many writers prefer revision to drafting, but I’m the opposite. When I’m drafting, I can put anything down on the page and move on. Revising forces me to confront the fact that those first draft sentences are weak, that those plot holes loom large, and that I can’t just have random things happen to reach the end. So, yeah, the biggest surprise was just how hard revision is when, previously, just typing THE END was the hardest part for me.
Luckily, I’m not the first author in the world to revise. I found Susan Dennard’s Guide to Revisions incredibly helpful, as well as Chelsea Abdullah’s essay on Reverse Outlining. I’m also a lover of craft books, so I read Sin and Syntax and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. I also love Craft in the Real World and The Dark Fantastic, though I read those long after.
But if there’s one thing I love about being traditionally published, it’s having an editor to tell me what revisions they think my book needs so I no longer have to figure that out on my own!
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
First and foremost, So Let Them Burn is anti-colonialist literature. It tackles a lot of themes in that arena: war, patriotism, nationalism, imperialism, and the violence of cultural erasure. There are sexy ancient gods and sarcastic dragons, a sapphic main character and a demisexual main character, two romances, and lots of laughs along the way, of course. It wouldn’t be my book if it wasn’t fun. But I want readers to pick this up and feel hope. I want them to lead with love, and to love deeply and fiercely. I want them to be unafraid to stand up and speak out. I want them to feel seen and understood. And I want them to go out and be the hero of their own stories.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
This is very cliché, but my advice is to just never give up. Take breaks. Protect your mental health. Step back when you need to. But don’t give up. The world needs your voice, and someone somewhere needs your story. As an immigrant, there are so many books from my childhood that were there for me—that saw me—when I felt out of place. It didn’t matter if they were “good” or even if they hold up today. For the length of time I spent between those pages, I was not alone.
Every reader deserves that experience, and you never know what book will give it to them. So, if you can’t keep writing for yourself, keep writing for that future reader. Keep writing.
With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!