Kate Stayman-London: On the Deep Bonds Created Through Fandoms
Kate Stayman-London is a novelist, screenwriter, political strategist, and bisexual double Libra. Her bestselling debut, One to Watch, was named a best book of the year by Time, NPR, Marie Claire, Mashable, and more. Kate has written for political icons including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Cher; she is also a television writer-producer and proud WGA captain. When not writing, Kate enjoys fabulous trips with friends, rewatching Buffy, and fighting for reproductive justice––as well as justice for Speak Now, Evermore, and Reputation. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on X (Twitter) and Instagram.
Kate Stayman-London
Photo by Auden Bui
In this interview, Kate discusses how wanting to escape into other worlds during the pandemic helped inspire her new novel, Fang Fiction, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Kate Stayman-London
Literary agent: Julia Masnik, Watkins/Loomis
Book title: Fang Fiction
Publisher: Dial Press
Release date: October 1, 2024
Genre/category: Fantasy; romance
Previous titles: One to Watch
Elevator pitch: Tess Rosenbloom is obsessed with Blood Feud, a mega-popular vampire book series that allows her to escape her relatively small life managing a hotel in Brooklyn. She even, on occasion, has dabbled in online conspiracies that claim the series is real – though Tess is sensible enough to know that isn’t actually possible. But one day, a vampire Tess recognizes from the series walks through her door. It turns out that Blood Feud actually is real, and not only that, but the handsome villain of the series desperately needs her help.
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What prompted you to write this book?
I’ve always loved fantasy stories in general, and vampire stories in particular, but I’d never been brave enough to try to write in that genre. Then came the pandemic, and after a year of isolation, I wanted to escape into another world so desperately that it almost felt like I had no choice but to create that world myself. I’d been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a loop, and I was captured by the idea of visiting a mysterious, magical island filled with vampires. The characters on Buffy (among many other vampire novels, shows, and movies) had brought me so much comfort throughout my life. The idea of actually getting to meet those characters, and then having to navigate the legitimate danger they’d pose if they were real, felt really rich and exciting, the kind of idea that could hold my interest over the years it takes to write and publish a novel.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
By far the lengthiest part of the process was figuring out the characters and plot before I sold the novel. I first had the idea for the story (in its most basic terms: “A girl wakes up in Buffy”) in January 2021, but I wasn’t ready to submit the proposal for the novel to my editor until September 2022. I considered and reconsidered the characters and their arcs, different kinds of structures, whether I wanted to write in one POV or many, what kind of magic system I wanted to use and what the rules of the world would be, trying (and often failing!) at different options until I landed on something that felt right.
After I submitted the proposal and began working on the novel in earnest, drafting and editing took about a year, and then another eight months from completion to publication. The idea changed a lot during that proposal process, but not too much once I actually got into drafting. There were the usual changes of “Oh, we don’t actually need this plot point” or “Wait, let’s expand these characters’ backstory to explain their relationship,” but for the most part, I’d done so much thinking about the novel for the previous two years that I was able to write it relatively quickly. This was a sharp contrast to my first novel (One to Watch), which took only three months to ideate and nearly three years to draft! So, it was a big relief with Fang Fiction that doing all that work beforehand really did make a difference in the drafting process.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I was immensely lucky to be able to work with my same editor from my first novel on Fang Fiction (Emma Caruso at The Dial Press), and it was not a surprise but an utter delight to see how she adapted her editing style to my work in a new genre. She brought a contemporary eye to a fantasy manuscript, always challenging me to keep the magical elements of the story rooted in character emotions and plot causality. I’ll never forget the day I was trying to work out the exact rules of a vampiric blood thrall—Emma was at jury duty, and she called me from a Brooklyn courthouse to have an extremely earnest conversation about how vampires might be able to use their blood to control humans. I try to be pretty rigorous in my writing process, and having an editor who takes my work just as seriously is such a gift.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I knew creating a whole world with its own rules and magic system was going to be hard, but I don’t think I properly appreciated just how complicated it was going to be. Some chapters of Fang Fiction take place in New York City, and when I was writing those, it was like, OK, the characters want to go to Midtown. They can take the subway or call a car, easy! I know how that works! But in the chapters that take place on a magical island, I had to make deliberate choices about every single element of the world, and whenever I thought I was finished, I’d come across a whole new slew of questions that needed answering: What makes sense within the logic of the story, and what’s most useful for advancing the plot and character arcs, and what just feels beautiful and fun and like you could never write it in a contemporary setting? That part of the process was so exciting, but it was also hard. The biggest relief in the entire drafting process was when I realized my protagonist could have a horse. A horse!! That I didn’t have to invent and wasn’t magical, just a regular-ass horse! Oh man, I was so happy.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope that Fang Fiction provides the joyful, immersive escapism I was craving so desperately in 2021, but I also hope it celebrates the deep bonds you can create through fandom—both with the characters you love and with your fellow fans. If you’re dealing with trauma or loneliness or anything tough, fandom can be such a comforting and safe way to feel connected to other people. I hope Fang Fiction’s readers will experience that same sense of connection.
The novel also spends some time interrogating the idea of heroism, particularly in how gendered so-called “heroic” attributes can be. We think of heroes as putting others’ well-being before their own, but that’s something we expect all women to do without offering any sort of acclaim—and it’s something a lot of male characters wouldn’t be able to do without women supporting them. So, I hope that all of Fang Fiction’s readers, but especially women and queer folks, feel inspired to recognize heroic qualities in the people they love, and most of all, in themselves.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
There’s a quote from the artist Nao Bustamante that I keep saved in my phone: “I am not responsible for your experience of my work.” It’s so hard not to measure our work by external metrics: Did the professor like my short story? Did the literary agent request a full manuscript? Did my novel sell to a publisher, and was it well-received by readers? But I can’t control any of that. All I can do is make work I genuinely love, and I know I’d be doing that whether or not anyone ever paid me to write or published my work ever again.
As readers, we bring so much of ourselves to any book we pick up—our own tastes and experiences—and that’s great! That’s how it should be. But as a writer, it’s also kind of none of my business what you’re bringing to the table and how that might affect your read? So, I try to keep my head down and stay focused on my end of the bargain: not to chase market trends (blech) or write for anyone else’s approval, and instead to write something that makes me joyful and proud, to put a story on paper for no other reason than that I’m bursting to tell it. Write what makes you happy—that’s my advice. Write the story that feels the most like you.
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