Episode 465 – Swordplay, Subterfuge, and Romance with Freya Marske

Oct 21, 2024

Jeff & Will recommend the BL drama Sunset Vibes, which streams on iQIYI. Jeff also reviews Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune and Swordcrossed by Freya Marske.

Freya joins Jeff to discuss Swordcrossed, a romantasy featuring a slow burn romance between a man trying to save his family’s business and the con artist he hires to stand up for him at his arranged marriage. She talks about the inspiration for the characters and the story, as well as the multi-year journey to getting the book published.

Look for the next episode of Big Gay Fiction Podcast on Monday, November 4.

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Show Notes

Here are the things we talk about in this episode. Please note, these links include affiliate links for which we may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase. These links are current at the time the episode premieres, however links are subject to change.

Transcript 

This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.

Intro

Will: Coming up on this episode, we’re talking romantasy with Freya Marske.

Jeff: Welcome to episode 465 of the Big Gay Fiction podcast, the show for avid readers and passionate fans of queer romance fiction. I’m Jeff, and here with me, as always, is my co-host and husband, Will.

Will: Hey there, Rainbow Romance Reader. It’s great to have you back for another episode of the show.

Jeff: As always, this podcast is brought to you in part by our remarkable community on Patreon. If you’d like more information about what we offer to patrons, including the opportunity to ask questions to our guests, simply head out over to patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.

Viewing Recommendation: Sunset Vibes

Will: So before we get to this week’s author interview, we wanted to tell you about a show that Jeff and I really loved, the Thai BL series “Sunset Vibes,” which understandably may not be to everybody’s taste. Okay, let me explain. The show itself is about Lin, who has been messaging a guy on a dating app. And after going on their first date, he realizes that the man of his dreams is Sun, the new CEO of the luxury jewelry brand that Lin and his friends have been interning for.

So in terms of storylines, we’ve got, you know, forbidden office romance, there’s some corporate espionage, a big jewelry design competition. And there’s even a paranormal side plot with Lin’s dreams of a dragon snake god, and doomed lovers from the ancient past.

And normally you’d expect a BL show to take all of these elements, you know, and crank them all the way up to 11. But “Sunset Vibes” has a slightly different approach. The stakes remain relatively low with each plot point merely… it’s just kind of an excuse for the characters to interact sweetly and be super cute together.

“Sunset Vibes” is definitely not interested in angst, and there’s plenty of comedic sound effects in each episode, and that tells you that you know, they’re not taking this too seriously. As characters. Lin is a naive, Mary Sue. He’s practically perfect in every way and contextually that’s perfectly fine. And Sun, he’s got all of the trappings of a billionaire alpha archetype, but really he’s just a sweetheart. Granted he is a drop dead, gorgeous sweetheart who looks phenomenal both in and out of his designer suits. But he is a sweetheart nonetheless. The chemistry between the two leads is really appealing. They’re cute and genuinely exciting together despite the show’s lack of high drama. Nice guys being nice. Jeff and I have said it many times before, it is our thing, and this show proves that that particular dynamic can be genuinely compelling.

So I think if you go into “Sunset Vibes” with the right expectations, you’ll love this light and funny and sweet show just as much as Jeff and I did.

Jeff: It was such a delight. Lin and Sun have such amazing chemistry from the very first time they essentially have their first date where they’re kind of moving from talking in the app to actually meeting in real life. They swoon for each other. It’s not that one swoons more than the other. They are equally in this and also looking to navigate things with the workplace romance and you know, when do they tell people? How long does it stay a secret? When do the parents find out and things like that. I really liked it.

The only angst that comes here where there’s any amount is around the espionage area of things. Trying to figure out who is trying to destroy this luxury brand that they work for. There’s also really great side plots. There’s three other romances that crop up on the side, as Lin and Sun are going through theirs. And those were equally satisfying as these other couples kind of discover each other and start to be like, I might like you a little more than maybe I should be in the workplace. But it was just a delight.

Will: If you’re interested in watching “Sunset Vibes,” you can catch it on IQIYI at iq.com

Jeff: And I’ve got a couple of books that I want to tell you about.

Reading Recommendation: Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

First up is TJ Klune’s latest “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.” Now, I knew when I talked to TJ back in June for episode 458, that “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” was going to be very special. I mean, I’ve been a fan of TJ’s books for a long time. I really enjoyed “The House in the Cerulean Sea,” but there was something about “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” and just the excerpts I got to read ahead of that interview that you could just tell that this was going to be something important and yet something also quite magical. And hearing him speak about the book during our interview, you got to see where his point of view was these days in the things that are happening to queer children, to trans children, and his desire to be the anti JK Rowling. And if you wanna hear all this for yourself, I highly recommend you go back to episode 458, if you didn’t hear that.

“Somewhere Beyond the Sea” actually picks up at the end of “The House in the Cerulean Sea.” We find Arthur and Linus together on the island raising the children. They’ve been invited to testify which turned into really a massive kind of baiting of Arthur to discuss his past, to make him look very unfit to be a guardian to these children, much less adopt them as he wants to. And so they have to deal with another inspector coming to the island. This time it certainly won’t be someone like Linus who could see the inherent good of what’s happening on the island either.

And here in this book we really get Arthur’s story. ” ” was from Linus’ point of view as he is coming to this island, unsure of what he’s about to see, unsure of what he’s going to find, and then becoming transformed by the things that he witnesses on the island.

Here it’s about Arthur having to relive some of the trauma that have made him into the man that he is, having to deal with potentially the destruction of his family. If he can’t protect it with Linus and those who are allies in the village. And that point of view in the book really gives some additional strength to the story from what we already knew. What I really love here is the continued hope. This was always built as a book of hope in “House in the Cerulean Sea,” and that really continues in “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.” They never give up hope that they’re going to win against those who hate them.

Even at some of the darkest moments, you know, they just plan to be able to rise above. And that is really great to read. This book is also really a call to action to be able to fight for that hopeful feeling. We’re just a few weeks away from the US elections. In fact, you know, by now some places have already begun early voting for the next president, for all of the races, state, local, federal, that are up for election in this election cycle and this book really shows how it’s so important to stand up for what you believe in, what you know is right, to stand up for hope. And that was certainly something I took away from this book.

And it was interesting too, as they move through having to deal with this government entity that’s coming to maybe take away the children, to maybe break up this family, that the family is drawing tighter together than ever. Each of the children have their own unique way of dealing with this and helping to strengthen the family and to help the family, and it’s so just wonderful to see.

And two of the ones that really stood out for me amongst all of them who are so amazing is Lucy, who of course is Lucifer the antichrist, who really makes some amazing decisions for a 7-year-old. I mean, setting aside the fact that he is Lucifer that he goes for being good, for helping his siblings, for helping Linus and Arthur, for helping to do the battle. And really questioning within himself, knowing that he’s got a way that he could just make everybody believe what he wants them to believe. But choosing not to do that with guidance from Arthur, but also really deciding it for himself.

And then there’s Sal, who’s the oldest of the children. Really just incredible insight from a child. And you know, it’s the children who do have these insights. It’s not unusual for a child of 15 to be questioning the things that he’s questioning, to wonder about what the adults are saying. To me, in a lot of ways, this is almost Sal’s book because of how much of a forward role he plays in keeping the children together, working with the children, kind of leading the children to make some decisions about how they want to stand up for themselves and fight alongside Arthur and Linus and the adults who believe in them.

And then there’s David. David is a Yeti, a young Yeti, who has come to live on the island after much abuse in his life so far. Watching David kind of become accustomed to the island, how he’s in a place that is safe and a place where he belongs. And watching all of that play out, even while the family is having to deal with these bigger issues of the government coming after them was really so, so heartwarming. I can’t recommend this book enough. You’re probably not surprised to hear me say that because I’ve been such a fan of TJ’s over the years. But this one I think is really a pinnacle for him in just increasingly amazing storytelling that he’s given us over the years. So if you haven’t picked up “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” yet, I hope you’ll do so.

Reading Recommendation: Swordcrossed by Freya Marske

And the other story I wanna talk about, of course, is “Swordcrossed” by a Freya Marske. What an incredible book. You’ll hear me say so many things coming up in the interview that I absolutely loved with this book, but this was an unexpected read for me. I picked it up because of the cover. If you haven’t seen the cover, you should definitely check it out because it is so sexy and so smoldering with these two guys in an embrace with the swords in their hands.

But this book was one I hadn’t expected. I don’t read much fantasy anyway, and I have not picked up a romantasy, but this slow burn romance between Matti, whose an heir to a struggling family business and getting ready to do an arranged marriage that will actually help to save the business because of the infusion of cash that it will get as he makes this marriage, he goes off to hire a best man who he very quickly discovers, is actually a con artist. But there’s something about Luca that he, you know, doesn’t rat Luca out, and he keeps him as his swordsman for the marriage in case there’s somebody there who wants to challenge the marriage.

What comes from there is this amazing slow burn romance between these two. They end up with Luca giving Matti some sword lessons so that he has a little bit of understanding around, you know, being able to defend himself when necessary and to get some of these skills. And for Matti, it’s also taking a little bit of time for himself. He is so family focused and so intent on solving the family business problems that he’s really overstressed and overachieving and he just needs to take that moment for himself.

It’s something as these two go through these lessons and then come to know each other more and more, you just can’t wait for them to get to that first kiss moment and for them to start to have to deal with everything that means that they’ve actually done that and had that kiss that both of them knows that they really shouldn’t have. Just amazing. And then combine that with this plot line that comes in around how Matti is trying to save the family business and coming to understand the machinations that are happening behind the scenes of the wool manufacturers to really put Matti’s family out of business for a lot of reasons. It’s not just that the business is doing poorly, it is being deliberately sabotaged. And figuring out the mystery behind that as it aligns to the wedding, as it aligns to other things that are happening was just amazingly awesome.

I tell you, this was such a page turner for me. One of the best books I’ve read this year, in fact, because the romance was so good, the stuff around the business was so good. These two characters, I tell you, they crackle on the page almost from the moment they first meet as Matti is looking for a swordsman and a swordsman he’s also gotta hire for cheap because again, he’s trying to save his family’s money and the business. It’s just, oh, it’s sizzles. I can’t even tell you the right words for it because it was just that good.

And of course you’ll hear even more about what I liked about “Swordcrossed” in my conversation with Freya. She tells us everything that went into writing “Swordcrossed” from coming up with the characters, to writing about sword play, and you know, even a little bit about wool manufacturing because that’s important too. We also discussed how “Swordcrossed” had to wait a while to be published until romantasy was more of an established genre that publishers were willing to take a chance on.

Freya Marske Interview

Jeff: Freya, welcome to the podcast. It is so exciting to have you here.

Freya: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Jeff: I got a little obsessed with “Swordcrossed” I have to say. I mean, just from seeing the cover, which was immediately eye catching for me, it was the book I didn’t know I needed cause I don’t really read romantasy and I kind of fell in love with it. So I would love for you to tell our listeners what “Swordcrossed” is all about.

Freya: Absolutely. And you’re right, that cover, the American cover in particular, is so eye catching. And when they first told me about what they were envisaging for it, that they wanted this lush illustrated clinch cover to really signal how much of a romance the book is. I got very excited and I’m just… every time I look at it now, I’m just blown away by how beautiful it is.

Jeff: Did they send you a poster I hope?

Freya: They’re sending me some prints and I tend to ask for very large files of all of my covers so I can create prints here and then and get them framed. But it’s just so pretty.

But in terms of what it’s about, so the short version is that “Swordcrossed” is what happens when a stressed overachiever falls for a charismatic disaster. And also what happens when you fall inconveniently in love with one of your wedding vendors.

But the longer version is that it’s a fantasy of manners about a young man called Matti who sets out to hire a swordsman to be a dualist at his arranged marriage, which is gonna save his failing family business. And the dualist he ends up hiring, Luca, is an out of town con artist who is scrambling to make a new life for himself, and who agrees to give Matti sword lessons as well in the lead up to the wedding, in exchange for Matti not immediately exposing him as a criminal. So that’s the setup in the first few chapters, and obviously events get progressively more complicated from there.

Jeff: I feel like complicated is almost an understatement. The twists and turns that happened with the wedding and setting up for any challenges that might come and everything going on with the house. It just kept ratcheting up, running alongside this delicious kind of slow burn romance running between Matti and Luca. It was just like, oh my goodness.

Where did your inspiration for these characters even come from? Because there’s so much richness going on between these two and with these two.

Freya: Like with any characters, they grew much more rich and complicated throughout the drafting process. So at the very beginning, they were deliberate creations that grew out of the premise. So the premise came first, this idea of a sword challenge at a wedding, and having to hire a best man to stand up at your wedding just in case somebody decided that they were gonna challenge the wedding with a sword and try and abduct the bride. Which is according to sources, and by sources I mean a Buzzfeed listicle I read once, that is where the whole tradition of having a best man at your wedding comes from. It doesn’t mean best friend. It means best swordsman.

So once I had this premise of what if that was a real job that people could have, I had to think, okay, well who would need someone like that? Why would you need someone like that at your wedding? And obviously, to me, it was somebody who was getting married, not because these two people are in love, but because this is an arranged marriage for business reasons.

And so Matti as a character grew from the kind of person who would enter into that kind of marriage. So he’s got that eldest sibling, deep sense of responsibility. But it was important for me that he comes from a loving and well-meaning family. The kind of family that can fuck one another up without actually having any malice or bad intentions. And so Matti was someone who very much embodies the eldest daughter while being an eldest son. Someone who’s let this stress and responsibility erase or obscure the other parts of himself.

And then Luca was built as a complete foil to that kind of person. So what would Matti be drawn to? What would he find both tempting and irresistible, but also very dangerous? And if you’ve got somebody who’s a chronically responsible, oldest sibling, how do you create somebody to stand up in a romance with them who’s very different, but also would find that appealing?

And I think for me, when I’m building a romantic pair, often it does come down to those very fundamental questions of what are the nature of these characters that make them both clash and be perfect for one another? And then once I started building them, then I love writing theatrical, lying characters. And so Luca was just enormous amounts of fun. To have someone who enjoys performing and enjoys people and loves talking to people and telling stories to people. But on one level it is also covering up for that lack of self-belief in your fundamental self. Like, I can’t show who I really, really am because I’m not 100% sure who that is or if that person is worth knowing or loving.

And so from those beginnings, I built Matti and Luca, and gave them interests and families, and a wider context. But it was a lot of fun watching them change and grow and become much more layered as I wrote the book.

Jeff: Every time they got together for sword lessons, cause Luca ends up giving Matti some sword lessons, even though Luca’s standing for him at the wedding. Those sessions were part therapy, part flirtation, part so many things for both of them, even though Luca is the one trying to do the teaching. I was kind of obsessed with those and it’s like, oh good we’re going to learn some more sword play here.

Freya: Oh look, partly it was an excuse to put all of the research on sword play in. ut partly it’s because if you’re building a romance, you have to have an excuse for them to be thrown together. Like I couldn’t just have him hire him as a wedding vendor, like a florist or something, and say, okay, you know, you’re not gonna really speak more than twice before the actual wedding. I had to come up with an excuse that they were gonna be constantly in each other’s company. And the whole idea of giving sword lessons was that it was Matti’s first step down the road of taking something for him himself that he would not normally have let himself take. And that’s obviously his whole character journey through the book. So for him, it was a first step down that line.

For Luca, it’s being challenged by the idea that you’re not actually as good at something as you think you are. Like he’s an expert swordsman, but he’s never actually had to teach anybody anything before. And he very quickly comes to realize that teaching and expertise are different skillsets.

And so I wanted them both to be, obviously, you know, thrown together, developing this attraction, adjusting one another’s stance, all the sexy things that come with sword play. But those lessons also represent the first shift in their character journeys across the book

Jeff: I like how you refer to Luca as essentially a wedding vendor, which I hadn’t even quite focused on that it’s similar to getting the flowers and organizing the food and getting the decorations sorted out because in this case, he does go contract for those services and he ends up having to get one on the cheap side.

Freya: Yes, exactly. And look, I said florist quite deliberately because in my heart, when I was pitching this book or thinking about it. What kind of vibes did I wanna go for? I was thinking of one of the first queer rom-coms I ever saw, which is the British film “Imagine Me and You,” which is a rom-com about a woman who meets the florist for her wedding at her wedding, and they lock eyes as she is literally walking down the aisle to get married to her best friend who she does love. And it just begins this crisis of sexuality and attraction. And what if the person who is romantically perfect for you is not the person that you are now freshly married to, but someone who you’ve just met and had this immediate spark with. It’s a wonderful, wonderful film.

Jeff: I’ve not heard of that. I’ll have to add that to my list of things to watch.

Freya: Oh, yeah. It’s fantastic. It’s in that tradition of sort of like British rom-coms with a wacky cast and it’s really lovely. It’s got Lena Headey as the florist character and Piper Perabo. And it’s a really lovely film and so when I was thinking about this book, I thought, well, that’s such a great conflict, the idea that you are maybe not quite married yet. So I wasn’t going quite as far as having them meet at the wedding. But there’s a wedding coming, you know. You have this end point of one of these people is about to become eternally linked to someone else. But you’ve met somebody else during the planning process that is making you question what’s gonna make you happy and what do you want out of life?

And it’s a great reason why people can’t be together. And I think if you are writing a romance, you’ve got those internal conflicts of personality and vulnerability and self-doubt and what am I allowed? But it’s good to have a really strong external conflict as well, because otherwise it’s just, well, why can’t these two people who are clearly attracted to each other and in love get together 20% of the way through the book?

And the reason is because one of them is engaged to someone else. So that was a big inspiration, but it’s not one that I talk about much when I’m talking about it as a book because it’s a contemporary rom-com film rather than a romantasy novel.

Jeff: It brings up an interesting look at the story too cause one of the things as I was reading, I’m like, how are they going to make it so this romance actually gets its HEA cause he is obviously not gonna go through this marriage of convenience. But there’s all of this stuff that’s stacked up that says he must. And so it was kinda like that tension point for me all the way through the book going, how’s this gonna work? How’s this gonna work?

Freya: Yeah, exactly. And that’s why when I first had the idea, I thought, well, this is such a great premise for a romance because you’ve just given yourself all these obstacles, and my job as the author now is to write my way through all the obstacles.

Jeff: I wanna talk about the world you’ve created here a little bit, because I loved like the mix of like what, in a lot of ways I could call traditional trappings of a historical romance in some ways. cause you’ve got the trade guilds and you’ve got these houses that are like the family business. But yet it’s not the world that we know, certainly. And you’ve also got some wonderful things in here, like same-sex marriage. It’s just part of society. It’s not gonna be anything if Matti’s bisexual or gay or you know, whatever that is. And you’ve put all this together in this wonderful place that I would love to go hang out in for a little bit, I think.

Freya: Look, this is the wonderful thing about creating a fantasy, especially something like a low fantasy world, where it’s not so much about the magic and the fates of kings and queens. It means you can keep all the stuff that you like from various parts of history or various real cultures, and then just discard the rest.

So what I ended up building was I wanted to have this idea of this merchant aristocracy. So it’s less about what your born into, although that still plays a part. And it’s not that we have dukes and earls and kings and queens, so there is a certain amount of social mobility that is possible. But it’s all to do with prosperous wealth and trade. And it’s all linked to this religious world building idea that, to a certain extent, the ways in which you are successful or unsuccessful might reflect whether or not the god or the goddess of your trade guild is smiling upon your endeavors.

And I think there’s a quote in the book that, you know, you get yourself halfway across the bridge and the gods will get you across the other half. You’re still expected to work hard but there is a certain amount of superstition around success. And so I combined some of the stuff that happened in renaissance Florence with these big trade guilds. I liked drawing on Amsterdam as a big trade and hub, a port of trade, for a setting, which I think is always really fun.

And then places like some of the places in Belgium, which have these twinned Flemish and French influences to the language, but all happening in the same place. And then I just built it around the aesthetics of some of the canal cities, again, like Amsterdam or Bruge to create, you know, a vivid sense of place.

And then I built the religion and the social structure up from there. So it was important to me that same sex marriage and same sex relationships were very normalized in this society cause this isn’t a historical queer romance where the societal homophobia and the societal oppression is one of the obstacles. There were already well enough obstacles in the whole wedding vendor set up, I didn’t need that to also be something that they had to overcome or struggle with. I wasn’t particularly interested in that as the story that I was writing here. So the obstacles were all completely different.

And it’s a society that’s not always been like that. I think I wanted to write it as a point in time, in a society that is in flux. So same-sex marriage hasn’t always been accepted and legal, but the ways in which these big houses transmit power and inheritance has been changing. And there’s more to do with the idea that you can adopt an heir. The heir doesn’t have to come from the family, although it usually would. And so it’s a society that has these historical trappings, but is also captured at a point in time when same-sex relationships and marriage have become, over the last few decades, a very normal part of the society.

Jeff: You mentioned some of the research that you did looking at the sword play. You had to have learned about wool manufacturing, I imagine for some of what I read in there.

Freya: Absolutely. So the sword play stuff, because it’s so fundamental to Luca as a character. If you’re gonna write somebody for whom this is the driving interest of their life, he obviously thinks in terms of swords, he’s very comfortable with them. The metaphors he uses arises from the main driving interest.

And for Matti, obviously he thinks in terms of fabric even more because it’s been his whole life. He’s just thrown himself into his family business, which is wool manufacturing. And so I wanted to know enough about it that it could sound realistic without having to get into very nitty gritty details, but also allow me to construct the narrative for these people. Cause for me, that’s one of my favorite things about creating new characters is what kind of metaphor do they think in? And so there’s a lot of metaphors, especially in Matti’s narration to do with wool and fabric.

The fencing, I’d done about six months of fencing myself as a teenager, so I have at least held a sword and attempted to fence with someone else. So I kind of have a little tiny bit of leftover muscle memory there. But I read a great book called “By the Sword” by Richard Cohen, which tracks the history of dueling from dueling as war to a form of legal challenge all the way through to fencing as a pastime for the rich, and then to its current form as a sport. And then to also the kind of fencing and sword play that is shown on screen. Cause Richard Cohen, I think, was a member of the British Olympic fencing team and then became somebody who was a consultant for sword play in movies and taught actors how to do it. And that was really, really good book to read. It just gave me enough detail that Luca could sound like the expert that he was and that some of the sensory details of being both an expert and then a beginner were correct.

The wool stuff was just a lot spottier. I kept getting stuck down rabbit holes about the history of wool trade between France and Britain specifically. But then I had a lot of fun watching YouTube videos of people carting wool and spinning wool and reading about how these different types and qualities of wool would translate into different fabrics.

There’s a very minor plot point in the book about mandating the percentage of wool from a particular area that goes into the robes that barristers and lawyers wear. And this is something that was actually done, a law that was actually passed in England because they were having trouble with the supply. And they needed to mandate that English wool was gonna be used rather than the wool that was being smuggled over from the continent. And so they mandated that the barristers and judges who obviously wore these big black woolen robes, the wool that went into them had to be English wool. And it was just a way of mandating a market demand for local supply. And I thought that was really fun and put that one in as a little merchant drama kind of thing.

But the real difficulty was then having to translate all of that research into a plot, because this is still a romance first and foremost, but I had to give them something to do. And so building a plot around all of this merchant stuff was the next step.

Jeff: It was really fascinating watching all that come together from the very basic of like, we’re having a wedding and you need to be my best man. And to getting into all these machinations about what’s going on with Matti’s house cause that’s one of his burdens is that he’s keeping hidden the fact that things are not going well. In some cases, even from his family, he’s keeping these secrets from.

And learning about how society worked but then combined with… Once people kind of get behind helping Matti with this, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes on here. I’m not gonna give up any spoilers, but in some ways it was like part mystery, part thriller in some cases because of what was going on. And it was a really exciting aspect to the book that I imagine had to have been either plotted out in advance or something that went through a lot of revision just to make sure it kind of had the beats right throughout the story.

Freya: Yes, it was the part that took the most planning because the romance beats were so clear to me from the beginning. But I think once I had the basics of it down, the balance was actually quite easy because I could use that plot to provide every beat that the romance needed, you know?

They are stuck hiding in a wardrobe because they’ve gone to spy on someone in someone’s house. Oh no, we’re stuck in a wardrobe and the sexual tension is ratcheting up and oh, the proximity, you know. And they have this shared project that they’re working on, which allows them to display competence to the other and see each other in a different light and in a different context. And, oh, this person’s really good at this. Oh, I’m finding it very arousing, watching this person pick a lock, that sort of thing.

And then it provided, because they’re uncovering secrets, you have these moments of emotional catharsis where they can bond and be there for each other. And also provides reasons for ongoing secret keeping and ways, for example, one of them to make a grand gesture to the other after they’ve completely fucked up the relationship.

So it was a really useful plot to have in terms of feeding into the romance. But coming up with the details of it was quite challenging. So I had to know what had happened when, what were the villains doing throughout the book or what had they done? What was a reasonable and logical way for the clues to be uncovered and for the story to come together? How much do I show the reader as we go through so that the finale could still be a satisfying surprise? So that did require some sitting down and painfully working out the details of the plot.

I had to basically come up with the plot the villains had come up with, work out how they’d done it, work out how they’d hidden it, and then work out how that could be uncovered in a logical way that wasn’t just two people stumbling around a city, bumping into clues as they went. Like I allowed myself one coincidence to set things off, but everything after that had to be deliberate action by my main characters towards finding out the next piece of the puzzle.

And that did become more clear and more reasonable in revisions. But even the first draft stretched some muscles that I hadn’t used before when it came to plotting.

Jeff: I imagine you could almost write an entire book about the attempted takedown of Matti’s house based on everything you had to come up with to make this work in the book itself.

Freya: Yeah, it’s almost like if you’re writing any kind of mystery, even like a murder mystery, I think you’re sort of writing two stories at once in that I don’t know how anybody writes a murder mystery not knowing who the killer was. Apparently Agatha Christie could do this. For me, I am a pretty methodical planning kind of person.

You do have to know what happened in the past if the whole point of it is uncovering what has happened in the past. And I did enjoy writing the antagonist cause some of them you don’t see as much of, some of them are quite on page, and from their perspective it would be quite an interesting exercise to write the book that is their perspective and how they do it. Because everybody is the main character of their own story, in their own head.

And I really enjoyed writing these people because everyone has to come across as a good, layered, realistic character. People have to have that strong belief that they are justified in what they’re doing and that their reasons are good. And so from my perspective, I wanted all of my antagonists to have very strong, clear reasons for what they did and the way that they viewed the world. And the way that they feel justified in what they were doing.

So obviously one of them is the person who is going to challenge at the wedding, who is actually in love with Matti’s fiancé. And he was a lot of fun to write this character, called Adrian, because in his head he is definitely the main character, and his love story is tragic and thwarted and he’s the person who’s up against this rich, snobby merchant house. But true love will find a way because that’s the way that he thinks. And putting him on the page and then starting to deconstruct his assumptions and his entitlement was a really satisfying exercise.

Jeff: Very satisfying read too. You kept me up late one night because from the point that we had the wedding dinner the night before, I could not put the book down. I don’t know what percentage that was exactly, but I know I was up past my bedtime because once we got to that dinner and the things that went down there, I’m like, I can’t stop reading.

And the whole wedding, again, I’m not gonna say anything specific, but it was just page turning as things just kept coming. I mean, you know, it was major excitement.

Freya: Writing the wedding scene was like that as well. Like I had been building up to it for so long. I don’t let myself write prose in advance, so I write books start to finish. Otherwise, I would just be too tempted to skip ahead to the fun parts. But I keep extensive notes, so by the time I hit the wedding scene itself, I had a very detailed outline of lines I wanted people to say, the order in which things had to come out, what was gonna happen. And I can’t remember how long that chapter is, but I remember I sat down and wrote about four and a half thousand words in a day, which is much, much more than I normally write, because it just had that momentum.

And I was so excited that I had been dangling this wedding above the head of myself and above the head of the reader for the whole book. And I was so happy to finally be there and let everything just explode in a mess onto the page. So I’m really happy that it came across that way to a reader as well. And I think it’s a reflection of how I was feeling by the time I hit it as the author.

Jeff: And over on the romance side, I mentioned how kind of sexy and flirtatious the sword sessions were between Matti and Luca, but I love how they bounce around between one or the other, sometimes both at the same time, being tender and a little playful and sometimes a little bossy. And also as they get more and more close understanding the difficulty that sits inside of both of them, even before some of the reveals happened and how they’re trying to help each other. How was it for you to find the right pace for them in the same way that you had to find the right pace for everything that was going on the business side.

Freya: The pacing of a romance does depend… It’s a little bit just vibes as you go through. But I think it does, if you’re doing it right, does rely a little bit on good planning and then certainly a bit of revision after getting feedback. The pacing of Luca, especially across the book, his emotional journey and where he was in each scene did change a little as I went through. And so I did some revisions on that.

You mentioned the word bossy. Look, this is a book that has some obedience kink in it and this was something that just sprung up out of their personalities and then became a way for me to really increase and wind up the sexual tension when all they were doing was talking or having sword lessons.

Like I wasn’t gonna let them kiss. I wasn’t gonna let them hook up until a certain point in the book. But I did let them have this mutual discovery of kink that begins in an entirely non-sexual way, and they just sort of lean harder and harder into it and realize, oh, okay, yes, this is a sex thing. But they’re exploring it in a way that gives them deniability, especially for Matti cause Matti is trying so hard through the whole first half of the book not to give into self-indulgence, not to give into temptation any more than he already has by putting himself in this position with Luca. And of course he is slipping inexorably down that slope and allowing this new element to creep into their dynamic, was a way for that tension to just go up and up and up and up until ideally, you as the reader are wanting to just take them by the shoulders and shake and go, just kiss. This is unbearable.

And of course Luca is pretty much at that point already and he’s the one who’s going, but why? Why can’t we? Because he’s so used to just taking what he wants and giving into temptation when it comes up which is obviously what makes him a great foil for Matti. But it meant that I had to put those internal safeguards really firmly in place for Matti so that you did have a tension that could break at a certain point.

And then when the tension does break, all it does really… on one level you’ve got that, huh, that release and that catharsis of the sexual tension breaking. But the very fact that they’ve allowed it to break increases the romantic tension because now they’ve done something that they weren’t necessarily meaning to do and all the other stuff about the wedding is still there.

So yeah, it was a really fun balance to reach, and I didn’t get it quite right in the first draft. But you’re right, I had to balance that tension release, more tension, not letting that release, but also allowing them to be at slightly different points in their personal journey. So every sex scene means something different to them because they are at different points in terms of what it means to them. Is this just sex? Is it sex and feelings?

Even if it is just sex, what does it mean to someone like Matti that he’s allowed himself to take this step? What does it mean to someone like Luca who’s fairly casual about sex, that he has had to wait so long and his feelings have developed in such a way in the interim? And that’s what I love about a good romance novel and a romance novel that allows the characters to have multiple sex scenes that really digs into the internal life as we go along. It’s not just about what sex acts are being done, it’s about what does this mean to them now and how are they changed at the end of it.

Jeff: You mentioned that you like to have stuff plotted out. Did you learn something interesting as you went along that like made you kind of change your plot or add to your plot that it’s like, oh, hadn’t thought of that? We gotta work that in somewhere.

Freya: I think more to do with the external plot, like the sabotage and the intrigue. That was something that I had to learn how to do it as I went. The romance, I had, I don’t know, I think I just lucked out. So this was the first book that I ever wrote. The first original novel I ever wrote, even though it’s the fourth of mine to be published.

And I wrote it as an exercise in self-indulgence and telling myself that I could actually finish something cause I was about 25% of the way of a book that has since been abandoned. And I was really struggling with it and I couldn’t quite work out why. I wanted to just sit down and write something, start to finish, and I thought, okay, I love romances. I’ve written a great deal of romantic fan fiction in my life. I do know the shape of a good romance and I know what the beats are. So how about I just write a romance novel, prove to myself I can get to the end of something, and then I’ll go back to all of this other science fiction and fantasy that I’m writing.

Obviously it didn’t quite work out that way. I got to the end of this one and went, hang on, this is quite a good book. Let’s see if we can shop it around. And it didn’t end up selling at the time. But it is how I got my agent and it’s how I did prove to myself I can write a book and that I enjoyed combining a really strong romance plot with a fantasy plot and some world building. And that’s really what led directly to the writing of the trilogy of mine that did come out first.

So I think the romance in this one at least, it relies on some pretty tried and true tropes and it was just… It worked for the beginning because I built the characters to work and I built the obstacles to work. But then having to put them into this wider plot, you know, there probably is a version of the book that doesn’t have that espionage and thing around it, but it would’ve been a very different book. Probably a bit shorter.

And you know, it might have had more stuff to do with their families and things and it would be more straightforward romance. But because we were trying to sell it to fantasy publishing houses, my agent said, when we first went into revisions, we need to beef up the politics and the world building and the trade things so that it has got both.

Jeff: What led you to decide to sit down to write a book? And you mentioned that you had the one that was abandoned, but you were still sitting down to try to write the book. What made you get into that head space?

Freya: I am not sure. I feel like when I was younger I wanted to be a fantasy author up to the age of about probably 13, I think. At that stage, I had no idea what being an author actually was like. I just knew that I really loved fantasy books and I did a bit of writing, started a few things, but I never really had the ideas that were large enough. I didn’t really know how to write a plot or put together a book. And so I just occasionally would write the first couple of chapters of something and think, oh, well that was fun and then wander away.

But then I discovered fan fiction in my mid-teens and wrote huge amounts of that while I was going through my undergrad degree, my post-grad medical degree, my specialty training. And by doing that, I was just constantly writing. So I was teaching myself to write. I was teaching myself to finish things, which was really important. And I was discovering that the things I was writing were getting longer and more complicated and more full of original side characters and with more interesting plots.

And so it I felt like I was moving towards a place where I could write an original novel. I’d written a few original short stories. I’m not a natural short story writer. I find that if I get a very clear prompt, sometimes I can come up with something good. But you know, there’s so many masters in that particular form who are just so, so good at what they can accomplish in a small amount of words. And I’m not good at a small amount of words. I need lots of words to do even the simplest thing. I always end up having to cut in revisions because I just believe in writing my way towards something with as many words as is necessary for me to get there.

But yeah, that came to a point where I had made a lot of friends through fandom and a lot of them were starting to turn to writing original things. And I could feel my own writing was starting to reach a point where I felt I had most of the tools I needed. And the only way I was going to give myself the rest of the tools was by sitting down and giving it a go. Because fanfiction and original writing are quite different. You do need different skill sets to do them. But I was just so comfortable with the act of writing by that point that I thought, okay, let’s give this a go. Let’s see if I can do it.

Jeff: I’m so glad you did.

Freya: Yeah, Yeah, me too.

Jeff: Especially with this book.

Freya: Yeah, I’m really happy that this one is out there now because, you know, I think this is probably a very normal thing, but yeah, when I finished it, I was just so overcome with pride in myself. I was like, oh my God, I did it. I finished a book. I loved these characters so much. This book, in my eyes, was my perfect first child and could do no wrong and I think I got a little bit carried away by how much attention it got at the querying process.

So I had a very smooth, very lucky querying process when I went through some revisions. I had some friends read and give me feedback. I polished it up as best I could. I went and queried agents and I got lots of offers for representation. And most of them did say the same thing, which was this is gonna be a tricky sell in terms of genre placement but we think it’s a great book.

And so I think, you know, I would’ve had a different journey maybe depending on who I picked as an agent and what kind of revisions they wanted me to do. But we did end up with the agent that I went with, pitching it both to some romance presses and some science fiction fantasy presses, and both of them said the same thing, which was, this is not enough X genre. There’s too much of the other genre in it.

And so it didn’t sell, but it was very a useful endeavor because it taught me, number one, a lot of people can look at a book and say, this is great. We love it. It’s so good. Excellent. And still turn around and say, there’s no space for this in traditional publishing as it stands at the moment.

So timing, luck, what does the market look like? All of that plays a huge role. But it also meant that when it came to me sitting down and writing something new while we were going through this process of trying to sell it, I was much more clearheaded about, well, now I’m not just writing something self-indulgent for myself. I’m now writing something that I’m aiming for a particular shelf in a bookshop. And so my agent said, look, do you wanna be a fantasy writer or do you wanna be a romance author? Where do you wanna aim for your breakout book? And I thought, well, really, mostly I wanna have something on the fantasy shelf.

And so when I sat down to write the book that became “A Marvelous Light,” I was still thinking, look, I want this to have a queer romance. I still want it to have sex scenes. I want it to have that really strong romantic core, but I rooted it very firmly in this is now a historical fantasy. It set in a real time. It has a fantasy plot with magic. And so it was in the end a lot easier to sell and we had some editors who had looked at “Swordcrossed” in its first edition and gone, we like this person’s writing style. Come back to us if you have something that’s a real genre.

Jeff: You were just ahead of your time.

Freya: I was, and look, that’s what happens. Like I think with traditional publishing, you have to wait for things to break out. And so I had to wait for romantasy to break out. Even more than that, I think I had to wait for the industry to discover the cozy slash low fantasy market. And that was something that I think didn’t necessarily happen organically through the big publishers.

I think it was a confluence of the pandemic hitting, but also “Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree I think did a great deal of opening up the space here because that was a self-published book that took off. And one of the ways in which big strides I think are being made, especially in genre, is that the publishing industry is looking at the indie and self-pub sphere for those big breakout successes and then picking them up and going, oh, well we wouldn’t have bought this, but clearly there’s a market for it. Let’s re-release it with a fancier cover and give it some marketing push and take advantage of the fact that it found its audience.

And so once that audience has been proven to be there and then once traditional publishing can look and say, well, clearly this one did well, then suddenly they’re looking for everything else that is like that, but different. And so “Swordcrossed” just needed to sit in a drawer for a few years while romantasy and low fantasy developed.

And also obviously now that I had an established readership from my first trilogy who expected a certain tone of romance and fantasy from me, it was a lot easier to slot in and say, here is the follow-up book by this author. Rather than attempting to make it as a breakout debut novel when it wasn’t as easy to sell. That’s just publishing bullshit.

Jeff: But it is interesting to know that moment of having something that was a little too early to really work in that moment, but then be able to bring it back and give it the launch that it deserves and things like the cover that it deserves and things like that.

Freya: Yeah, absolutely. And like I’m always happy to tell that story because I want to sort of give a combination of commiseration and hope to authors out there who are just like why isn’t my book selling? Why can’t I find an agent? Why can’t I find a publisher? You know, I think it’s good. I’ve had friends tell me it’s good. It probably is. It’s probably just that as the market stands at the moment, if you are going through traditional publishing, there’s so many other factors that play into whether it will sell or whether a publisher will take a chance on it or not. And it often doesn’t have a great deal to do with whether it is a good story or well written or not. Obviously, you have to write a good story that is well written, but there are just so many other factors and sometimes it’s the wrong time.

Jeff: You mentioned “A Marvelous Light,” which is the first book in “The Binding Trilogy.” For anyone in our listeners who have not picked up that book or that trilogy, tell us a little bit about that cause it could be a place they go after “Swordcrossed” if they haven’t read those.

Freya: Yes, exactly. So “The Last Binding Trilogy” is, as I said, a much, much more straightforward historical fantasy series. So it’s set in mostly in England in the Edwardian era. Although the second book is set entirely on a boat. And it does have, because of the fact that it’s set in a real historical time period, it does have some of that us against the world societal oppression. But I didn’t really wanna use it for angst so much as to build a queer found family. Who are again, drawn together by a shared project in the form of a magical conspiracy.

So each of the three books, “A Marvelous Light,” “A Restless Truth,” and “A Power Unbound” has a different romance in them. So the first book and the third book are both male/male, and the second book is female/female. It’s a sapphic couple. But there is an overarching plot across all three books about this hidden society of magic users and a conspiracy to steal magic. There’s a lot of stuff in there about magical houses and who deserves power, period accurate pornography. A lot of, again, Freya did a lot of fun research and just put the best parts into the book. Again, a lot of kinky queer sex.

But for this one, I wanted to steal the romantic structure that historical romance uses a lot, which is having a group of friends or a family. The first book introduces you to the world via one couple but also starts introducing characters who are then going to get their own romances in subsequent books which I think is a great way to pull readers through a series.

It was a little unfamiliar, I think, to people who had come at it from the strictly fantasy side of things. I had a few emails, some of them more surprised than others about, well, you know, I was a little surprised at how much gay sex was in it, but you’ve opened my eyes. I had a good time. But I think also what some people got stuck on was the fact that the point of view characters do change from book to book and that they got very attached to the characters in book one and they’re like, oh, I dunno if I wanna take a chance on book two.

So I was really trying to make you intrigued by the characters when they first appear in their own books. But for somebody coming at it from a romance series perspective, this is obviously a very tried and true way of writing a romance series. Again, I just had to make sure that as well as putting romance beats in and giving each couple it’s happy ever after, I was then developing a fantasy trilogy and that was a whole new set of plotting muscles that I had to employ because I each book had to have a little sort of sub fantasy plot in it. And usually, again, built around a mystery of some kind. Often there’s a dead body or someone’s disappeared. But then I also had to think, well, what makes a satisfying fantasy trilogy? How do you increase the stakes? How do you widen the world building? How do you ratchet up the sense of danger across these three books? So yeah, I think I was really glad to have written “Swordcrossed” cause it had given me a lot of confidence in my own ability, but also a lot of plotting tools that I could then use in this new trilogy.

Jeff: Fantastic. Hopefully people will check that out too if they have not already cause that trilogy just wrapped up last year.

Freya: Yep, yep. So all three books are out. You can just power through start to finish.

Jeff: So even though “Swordcrossed” is just out, is there anything you can kind of tease us about what may be coming up next? And I think one of my biggest questions is, do we get to come back to the world of “Swordcrossed” at some point?

Freya: Ooh. The answer to that one is, I don’t know. I haven’t got any plans at the moment. I do have a vague idea for some other stories that could be told in that world, but in terms of what is, what I’m working on at the moment and what I’m finishing up and what the plans are. I’m not quite sure. Let me think.

I can’t tell you great details or titles or anything else like that. But I can say that my 2025 book is a novella rather than a novel, so it’s a bit shorter. And it’s a fairytale retelling, so it’s a little bit different in tone to some of the other books that I’ve written. But it still has a queer romance in it because I’m me and that’s what I write. So that one, yeah, that’s gonna be a bit of a different one. You know, a standalone fairytale retelling.

And I have been teasing readers for ages with a book that I have in the works about a magical medical school. And I have written the first half of that, but it proved a bit more complex and tricky than I had hoped. And then I had some health issues, which got in the way. So that one’s just… it’s on the go, but I need another year or so to get that one done. So that’s probably gonna be on the cards for 2026 if all goes well.

So again, quite different to anything else. Completely different world, completely different characters. Definitely still some queer romance in there. But I’m, yeah, the next few years I think are gonna be me trying a few different things. But, look, I love the world of “Swordcrossed” and I can definitely look at it on the page and see potential in certain characters, in certain unexplored corners for me to come back to it in the future.

Jeff: So as we wrap up, we love to get recommendations and love to know what you’re reading or watching that our listeners should maybe check out.

Freya: Well, speaking of fairytale retellings, and this book has just come out. T Kingfisher, who is one of my favorite writers across quite a few speculative genres, just came out with a book called “A Sorceress Comes to Call,” which is a loose retelling of “The Little Goose Girl,” which is one of the more obscure, I think, Brothers Grimm fairytales and I found it completely fantastic. I tore through it in a day. Just a wonderful fairytale retelling. Quite dark, but also these really well-grounded and funny characters. So, I loved that one.

And I just finished reading an ARC of a book called “When the Tides Held the Moon” by Venessa Vida Kelley, who’s an artist who is now writing as well. And this is a historical gay romance set in New York City in 1911. And it’s about a Puerto Rican man who gets accidentally recruited to a Luna Park sideshow by building an enclosure for a kidnapped merman. And the pitch is “The Shape of Water” meets “The Greatest Showman,” which sort of gives you an idea of what it’s like. It’s beautiful. It’s so romantic. It’s got this like fun ensemble of the sideshow workers and this romance between this young man and this like magical merman who’s been captured and who he has to take care of is just breathtaking.

And Vanessa’s doing illustrations for it as well. And I’ve had a sneak peek of some of the illustrations that are gonna go into the book. So I think it’s gonna be a gorgeous work of art, but also like a really fun historical fantasy romance. So I think anybody who enjoys my books will love this one.

Jeff: I’m gonna go check that out cause you kind of ticked a couple boxes there.

Freya: Oh yeah. I think you should definitely check it out. It’s such a good book. Like, I think we haven’t even gotten to the point of a cover reveal yet. Like I was very lucky. I knew that she had it in the works and essentially just pestered her editor until they sent me an early copy. But keep an eye out for it cause I think it’s gonna be really big.

Jeff: Awesome. So what is the best way for everybody to keep up with you online to see what’s happening as “Swordcrossed” rolls out this fall, and then you know what comes in 2025 and ’26?

Freya: Yeah, probably the best way in terms of social media at the moment is Instagram. I’m also on Blue Sky and the site crumbling to the ground, formerly known as Twitter, all under just @FreyaMarske, all one word. And for announcements, like big things, like new book announcements, new releases, cover reveals, that’s what I use my mailing list for. So, email mailing list you can find the signup on my website, which is just freyamarske.com. I’m definitely not a very frequent newsletter kind of person. It’s really just a couple of emails per year to keep you abreast of big announcements. But social media, who knows? Like I feel like the landscape could change between now and release, but I think at the moment Instagram is probably the easiest way to keep up with me.

Jeff: We’ll link up to those and everything that we talked about in our conversation. I can’t thank you a enough Freya for coming to talk about “Swordcrossed.” It’s absolutely one of my favorite things that I’ve read this year and wish you all the success with it.

Freya: Oh, thank you so much.

Wrap-Up

Jeff: This book was so fun and talking to Matt and AJ about it was so terrific. You’re gonna find out why one of them had a pearl clutching moment and why the other of them is called a joke assassin.

Will: Jeff and I, we wanna thank you so much for listening and we hope that you’ll join us again soon for more discussions about the kinds of stories we all love, the big gay fiction kind. Until then, keep turning those pages and keep reading.

Big Gay Fiction Podcast is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more shows you’ll love at frolic.media/podcasts. Original theme music by Daryl Banner.

 

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