[MUSIC PLAYING]
SARAH GAILEY: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you all for coming
here and for spending
the middle of your day with me.
I know that this
is precious time.
And I really appreciate it.
I am going to read to you
from "Magic for Liars."
This book, if you don't know,
is about a private investigator
who does not have
magic powers, and she's
totally fine with that.
She's fine with it.
She doesn't want them.
She never wanted them.
She's fine.
OK?
She's fine.
She's totally fine.
It doesn't matter.
She's fine.
She is estranged from
her twin sister, who
does have magic powers until
someone shows up in her office
and gives her a case.
And the case is a
murder at a high school
for magical teens, where her
estranged twin sister just
so happens to work.
But it's fine.
She'll be fine.
It's fine.
She's fine with this.
OK?
She's fine.
Don't worry about it.
I am going to be reading to
you from chapter 4, which
is the chapter where this
private investigator first
comes to the high
school for magical teens
and gets to see their
world for the first time.
"The drive through
the Sunol hills
was as beautiful
as the Novocaine
that comes before the drill.
Once I got off the
high walled freeways,
the pockmarked city
streets gave way
to land that screamed green.
Tall gnarled oaks
leaned over the narrow,
winding road, casting
it into dappled shade
and obscuring signage that
warned me to watch out
for leaping deer.
Tiny offshoots from
the road appeared
at intervals marked with
signs for Hollow Stone
Ranch or Crystal Brook Farm.
I've gotten intentionally lost
down there a few times before.
And I knew that if I
followed any of those signs
in search of roaming horses
with warm, velvet noses I could
stroke, I'd quickly
encountered gates informing me
that I was on private
property and would
be shot should I choose
to venture any further.
Osthorne was no different.
The sign by the road
read Osthorne Academy
in dark debossed wood
with white edging.
And after I turned
off the road, I
started to see signs warning me
of the dangers of trespassing.
After nearly a mile
of driveway featuring
increasingly
threatening signage,
the rooftop of oaks
thinned, then parted.
The campus spread
before me like a dream.
As I pulled into a parking
space, I peeked in my rear view
at the wall of ancient
sprawling oaks behind me.
Their branches twisted together,
completely obscuring the school
from view of the road.
I wondered if the
school had chosen
this location for the
camouflage or if the mages who
built the school had
engineered the Sunol hills
to suit their need for privacy.
I wove through the cars in the
tiny visitors' parking lot,
trying to look around without
being too obvious a tourist.
The mist was just
thin enough for me
to see the grounds
in soft focus.
The drought impossible,
velvety green lawn
that surrounded
the school looked
like frosting waiting to
have a finger run through it.
The school itself was
a long, low spread
of brick and glass windows.
It struck me as out
of place, unfamiliar.
There's not a lot of brick
in northern California,
not for a little
more than a century.
Lots of brick facades
in San Francisco,
but that's different--
glossy, and too even in color,
and somehow thin looking.
It's not hard to tell
when a building is
trying to pretend that it
survived the 1908 quake.
Not Osthorne, though.
This place was the real deal,
pocked and resealed dozens
of times.
Even from the
parking lot, I could
see the waver in each window
pane, a testament to the age
and survival of the glass.
There was no flagpole,
no clock tower,
no football field with
blazing white lights.
It was a dignified
building, a serious place.
I had a moment of double vision.
If things had been
different for me,
if I'd been born with whatever
thing Tabitha had that I never
got any of, I might have walked
across that grass as a kid
with friends and a future
all laid out for me.
I might have been handed
a totally different life.
This place might have been the
setting for my teen memories--
not the bleachers at my
underfunded public school,
not the parking lot at the
abandoned bowling alley
in the wee hours of the
morning, not the hospice bed
in my parents' living room.
I shook it off.
That wasn't the way
things happened.
There had never been
any profit in wondering
what might have been.
People like me didn't get to
want things like Osthorne,
and besides, I didn't want it.
I didn't want it.
I rolled my neck,
stretched just enough
to let the wound on my
shoulder hit my brain
with a bright flash
of clarifying pain.
I had a job to do.
It was time to go to work.
'Ms. Torres should only be a
few more minutes,' the school
secretary rasped.
Her voice was a
sharp, painful wheeze.
The nameplate on her
desk read Mrs. Webb.
I had a sense that I should
not ask for a first name.
She was one of those
tiny ancient women
whose papery skin is stretched
over steel scaffolding.
She watched me with the cool
eyes of the unimpressed.
I tried not to fidget.
I tried to summon the
courage I imagined I'd have
if this was a place I belonged.
It didn't help.
The door to Torres'
office opened with a bang,
and a tall boy with wild,
dark brown hair stormed out.
His dark blue school
uniform was ill fitting
in the way of so
many teenage boys--
too short in the wrists,
baggy through the shoulders.
His blazer was wrinkled, and the
angle of his gray striped tie
spoke to constant tugging.
The teen paused, his
eyes landing on me.
He hit me with a long intense
stare, his protruding Adam's
apple working up and down.
I was startled by the
frankness of his gaze.
Then he heaved an
enormous head shaking sigh
before continuing on his
way out of the office,
leaving me feeling like
Ophelia in her closet.
It was totally beyond
me how a kid who's
been handed a winning
lottery ticket
could look so damn broke.
I watched him through
the safety glass
window that separated the
office from the main hallway.
He'd already pulled
out his phone.
His fingers moved over the
screen with unnatural speed,
and they didn't slow down when
he looked up from his phone
to throw me a brooding look.
'Is that a spell?'
I asked.
From just over my shoulder
came a deep laugh.
'Is what a spell?
The texting?
No.
They're all that fast."
I turned around to find
Marion Torres smiling at me.
She was wearing jeans and a
nice, but not too nice blouse,
and I felt simultaneously
over and under dressed.
I spent hours over the
weekend figuring out
what to wear to a
place like Osthorne.
What would establish
me as a professional,
as someone who would
solve a murder?
What would keep me from
sticking out like a splinter?
I wound up digging
up the clothes
I'd worn to the only
court case I'd ever
been asked to testify
in, an adultery job where
the husband who followed
up my findings by stabbing
the wife with an ice pick.
He cried more when I
told him she was cheating
than he did at the sentencing.
Next to Torres in
my court clothes,
I felt like a kid playing
dress-up-- a great start.
We greeted each other.
'Did you find the place OK?
I'm so glad you can help us.
Did you get the contract?'
She handed me a
satisfyingly fat envelope
of cash, which I
didn't count, so she'd
feel like we had a good
relationship from the start I
glanced back at Mrs. Webb.
She was watching us with the
same flat, unimpressed stare
with which she'd greeted me.
I was already dreading
interviewing her.
'I'm going to show Ivy
the theoretical magic
section,' Torres said. 'Would
you like to accompany us?'
Mrs. Webb shook her head
with a look of regret
that did not extend
to the uneasy creases
around her mouth.
'I'm afraid I've just got far
too much to do here,' she said.
'Perhaps another time.'
Torres led the way
out of the office.
Her heels clicked
on the gray linoleum
tiles that floored the hallway.
As we passed, I glanced
back into the office
through the safety glass window.
Mrs. Webb didn't see me.
Her eyes were on the blank
pages of a ruled notebook.
She stared at the
paper intently.
As I watched, she
lifted two fingers
and pinched herself hard on
the arm, hard enough to bruise.
Hard enough that I
winced to watch her.
The older woman's face
remained as still as sea glass
as she squeezed at her skin.
I shivered, and a whisper twined
its way through my thoughts.
Wake up.
'Is she ill?' I asked, jogging
to catch up with Torres' brisk
pace.
'Mrs. Webb, your secretary.
I just noticed that her voice
is kind of--' 'Oh,' Torres said
with a grimace.
'No, she's not ill.
She used a spell to alert
the school of an emergency
when she found the
body in the library.
That spell is--' She paused.
'It's fallen out of favor.
The impact it has on the
caster's body is significant.'
'Permanent?' I asked. 'Well,
yes and no," she said.
'For many people, it is, but
Mrs. Webb is working on it.
She already sounds much better
than she did in November.
In a few more months, she'll
probably sound normal again.'
She stooped to pick up a
crumpled ball of notebook paper
and tossed it into a
big gray trash can that
stood watch over the hallway.
It looked like
every trash can I'd
ever tipped over at
James Madison Memorial
during my reign of apathy.
The trash cans weren't the
only thing about Osthorne
that was familiar.
It all felt like a place
I'd seen 1,000 times before.
There were the
scuffed gray linoleum
floors lined with
lockers, and the walls
were frosted with
paint that went
on fresh every other summer.
Assthorne Asscademy was
scratched into several surfaces
with what I bet
was ballpoint pen.
Bulletin boards hung
thick with notices--
auditions for 'The Tempest,'
lacrosse tryouts rescheduled
due to weather, take a number
to call [INAUDIBLE] for tutoring
in math/economics/magic theory.
I lost my phone, $50 reward.
Call Arthur please,
please, please.
There it was again--
that feeling like
maybe in another life,
I could have fit in here.
I could have auditioned
for 'The Tempest.'
I could have tried
out for lacrosse.
It was a feeling like
nostalgia, but for something
I'd never done and
something I'd never had.
'Ms. Gamble?' I looked up.
Torres was halfway down the
hall in front of me waiting.
Her face was set to patient,
but something in her posture
made me hurry.
Classes were in session,
and I swiveled my head
like a small town tourist in
the big city for the first time.
I don't know what
I expected to see.
Mostly, I was shocked by
how familiar it all seemed,
how recent.
The sight of posters
hanging on classroom walls
took me back to my
own note-passing,
sneaking chips in
my backpack days.
Most of the classrooms
featured wide windows
into the hallway, the glass
crisscrossed with wire.
And I peeked in at each one to
look at the students doodling
in their margins.
I lingered just long
enough to be seen.
Let the students wonder
who the visitor was.
Let them whisper at lunch.
Let the word spread
that someone was asking
questions about the murder.
I had never investigated
a murder before,
but this part was no
different from any other case.
Let people know that there
are questions being asked,
and they'll line up to give
you their version of answers.
'They look so
young,' I murmured,
staring into a classroom full
of baby-faced teenagers hunched
over tests.
The sea of dark blue blazers
and crisp white dress shirts
was broken up by crests of
brightly dyed hair and islands
of eyeliner.
The kids were filling
in Scantron bubbles
with number two pencils
and flipping back and forth
between the pages of a packet.
'Freshmen,' Torres intoned with
crisp amusement in her voice.
'They're always younger
than you remember.
It's easy to forget that 14
is so close to 12, isn't it?'
I fell into step next to
Torres for a few paces,
but stopped short before
we rounded the corner.
I was frozen in place hypnotized
by the lurid orange graffiti
that sprawled across a
row of sky blue lockers.
'Samantha is a slut.'
The letters didn't
look sprayed on.
Someone had been at this with
a fine brush and a steady hand.
Torres paused next to me,
regarding the graffiti.
'It's more ordinary
here than you expected.'
It wasn't a question, but it
hung in the air between us
all the same.
'I'm not sure.
I guess I thought that
there would be more--
I don't know.
I thought it would
be different.'
'More cobblestones and gabled
windows and moving stairways?'
Torres laughed,
and her laugh said
that she had caught my
embarrassed grimace.
'I know, I get it.
But at the end of the day, we're
just a high school, Ms. Gamble.
We're a very nice high school.'
She gestured at a nearby
window to the velvety green
of the grounds.
'But we're still a high school.
That means gum, graffiti, cell
phone, sex ed, stupid pranks,
students smoking weed
behind the bleachers.'
She tipped me a wink.
'If it makes you
feel any better here,
I'll show you
something magical.'
She pulled an
impressive folding knife
from the pocket of her jeans.
'I confiscated this from
a student earlier today.
It's not the magical thing.
It's just a knife,
but watch this.'
Torres flicked it open.
The blade was long with a
wicked curve at the tip.
She dragged it across
poor Samantha's name.
Paint peeled from the
locker in little blue curls.
Torres flicked the knife shut.
I ran my fingers
across the locker.
I could feel the groove
in the blue paint,
but the screaming orange
letters remained unscathed.
My jaw clenched.
'How?' 'I'm not sure.
Our graffiti artist used
a spell that I've never
encountered before.
It's probably something they
came up with themselves.
Our groundskeeper, Francis
Snead,' she added as I took out
my notebook, 'He's tried 100
different ways to remove it
or paint over it, but
nothing's worked so far.
He's been working with the
head of the Physical Magic
Department for weeks now.'
'Can I talk to him--
Snead?' 'Of course,' she said.
'He's the one who will set you
up in staff housing.'
I blinked at her.
'In what?' The headmaster cocked
her head at me as though I was
posing a riddle.
'Staff housing.
We have a small apartment
available for you to stay
in while you're here unless you
wanted to make the drive down
from Oakland every day.'
It made perfect sense.
There was no reason to say no.
I aimed those thoughts
at the twist in my gut
willing it to listen to logic.
There was no reason not to stay
here, just for a little while,
just for the case.
'Thank you.' I said. 'Thanks.
Yes, I really appreciate that.'
'Ivy-- I can call
you Ivy, right?
I want you to have unfettered
access to whatever you need.'
A tendon stood out in her neck.
'Nowhere on this campus
is off limits to you,
so long as you don't
endanger any students.
Talk to whomever you want to.
Talk to students,
teachers, staff.
I don't care.'
Her eyes shown hard and
bright as she stared at me
like I had the answers.
She took a long deep
breath and let it out slow.
'I have a responsibility
here to make sure
that things get set right.
The investigators who said
that this was a suicide,
they let Sylvia down.
Do you understand?
One of my staff members
died on my watch,
and those investigators barely
lifted a finger to get her
justice.'
'I'll do my best,' I said.
And I tried to make
her hear the thing I
couldn't say because it's
the kind of thing you just
can't say.
I can't bring her back.
I failed, though.
I could see it in her face.
She thought I was nervous.
She thought I was uncertain.
But she didn't understand
yet that I couldn't give her
the thing she really wanted.
I can never give any of
them what they really want.
I can't fix a marriage,
and I can't undo a lie.
And I can't raise the dead.
And I can never tell
them because they
think they just want answers.
'Yes, you will,' Torres said.
'You will do better than they
did.'
She took another deep breath,
and this time, I counted.
Five seconds in,
eight seconds out.
It was a familiar exercise.
I took a mental note.
Torres had been through
anger management.
'Anyway, yes.
You can talk to
our groundskeeper
after he gives you the
key to your apartment.
And you should also talk to
the head of the Physical Magic
Department, [INAUDIBLE].
I'm sure he'll be able to answer
any questions you might have
about this particular incident.'
She waved her hands at the word
slut, which was still glowing
radioactive on the lockers.
I ran my fingers over
the orange paint again.
I had never seen magic done
by anyone but my sister.
Something in me ached
at the knowledge
that a child had used their
incredible impossible magic
for this.
To make sure that
after the world ended
when alien archeologists were
digging up the thing that Earth
used to be, they'd know that
Samantha had been a slut.
It hurt even more than
the idea that someone
had used their magic to
murder Sylvia Capley.
The idea of some
teenager getting stoned
and then etching the
word slut into history--
it burned in my throat
like a swallowed sword.
Why them?
Why do they get the
opportunity to waste this?
I let my fingers linger on
Samantha's name a moment too
long, and something under
my fingers popped, stinging.
I snapped my hand
away, startled.
'Oh, yeah.
I should have warned you about
that,' Torres said. 'Sorry.'
I stuck my sore
finger in my mouth,
glaring at Samantha's name.
Samantha, I thought,
with unexpected venom.
Then I realized that
was the whole point.
Even if you didn't think
Samantha was a slut,
you'd remember that
she'd stung you."
[APPLAUSE]
Hello.
KEN ARTHUR: Hi.
SARAH GAILEY: Thank
you all for listening
to me read out of that book.
I wrote all those words.
At least that's
what they tell me.
Let's chat.
KEN ARTHUR: OK.
So that section is kind
of indicative of something
I wanted to talk about, which
is tropes in noir fiction
and fantasy fiction.
So I noticed you kind of lean
into a lot of noir tropes.
You've got an
alcoholic detective,
who is kind of in
over her head a lot.
And everybody's lying
and things like that.
But for fantasy
tropes, you focus more
on the realness of this
high school and the way
that the teenagers
relate to each other.
There's no dueling class
and no magical animals,
and nobody wears robes.
So could you talk about
how you decided to--
how you decided
to do the setting
and how you decided which
kinds of tropes to lean into
and which ones you
wanted to avoid?
SARAH GAILEY: I absolutely
can talk about that.
That's actually one
of my favorite things
about this book.
It's an intersection
of fantasy and noir,
which are two genres that
answer each other really well.
Contemporary fantasy, especially
magical school fantasy,
is very much about options.
It's about having more options
than we have now, right?
The world that I think
we all live in together--
I don't want to speak
for any of you in case
you do happen to spend
the rest of your time
in a world where there
are magical schools--
we don't have
access to the things
that people in
those worlds have.
And so part of the joy of that
genre is the idea of the world
that I live in now,
the circumstances
that I live in now.
How I respond to them is
all defined by this reality
and the boundaries of it.
And in a magical school
world, you suddenly
find out that there's something
else that you could have,
that you could have access
to, and how does that change
how you respond to things.
And usually, that means
everything is better.
Noir is the exact
opposite of that, right?
Noir is in conversation with
the reality we live in now.
And it's about
picking up everything
that we think is good and find
in the reality we live in,
and flipping it over,
and being like, OK,
what's crawling on
the underside of that?
It's all about
confronting the bad.
It's about coming directly
into contact with corruption,
and marginalization,
and the ways
that people hurt each other as
a result of the circumstances
they're trapped in.
So bringing fantasy
and noir together,
I was really able to answer
them with each other, right?
They fit together
like puzzle pieces.
Every time a noir trope
pops up, it's like, look,
everything is bad because you're
trapped by your circumstances.
There's the answer
of OK, but this
isn't the same circumstances
that you've been
trapped in your whole life.
There's also magic.
How do things change?
And every time that there's
a fantasy school narrative
moment that's like,
ooh, wonder and magic,
I get to flip over that
wonder and magic and say, OK,
but look at the
underside of this.
Look at what's happening to
the people in the margins.
Look at what's
happening as people
hurt each other with this.
I especially loved doing
that with the setting
of the magical school,
Osthorne Academy, or Assthorne
Asscademy, as I think the
students would probably
call it.
It's a magical school.
And we all know what
that looks like, right?
It looks like a
castle, and you have
to go through a
portal to get there.
And when you arrive,
it's wondrous.
And there's floating candles,
and everyone's going, ahh.
And there's a really great score
that a really smart director
put in there to make sure
that you know that this
is awesome and wondrous.
And there's no such
thing as the bullying
that we deal with
in our high schools.
It's totally different bullying
that uses different slurs
because it's magic time.
And the kids are doing their
magic really serious, as much
as they can.
And then maybe as
a side hobby, they
decide to start developing
pranks out of magic, instead
of using magic to
hurt each other
and harm each other the
way that real teens do.
I wanted Osthorne
to be different.
I didn't go to
school in a castle.
I went to school at a high
school in Fremont, California,
which is in the Bay Area, which,
I mean, the high school that I
went to was exactly
like the high school
that everybody I know went
to who didn't grow up fancy.
It had a big fence to
keep us from leaving.
And the teachers were exhausted.
And there was a cop at the
school for some reason.
And everyone was
trying their best,
and exhausted, and
failing all the time.
There was that linoleum that
has, like, black circles on it.
And over time, you realize
that each black circle
is a piece of gum that
fell out of a kid's mouth
that no one ever
picked up, and then it
got walked on and
walked on and walked on
and walked on until
it's completely smooth.
And if you try and take
it up off the floor,
you're going to pry up
the linoleum altogether.
That's what high school is like.
Osthorne, like
any school, is not
defined by the teachers
who teach there,
and it's not defined by
the administrators who
are just trying to fight
the rising tide of entropy.
And it's not defined by
the architects who built it
or by four founders
who set it up
in a castle somewhere
between 148,000 years ago
because we're not really
clear on timelines.
It's defined by the kids.
It's defined by the students.
That's what teenagers do.
They define their space.
They define their world.
They claim it by decorating
it, and by defacing it,
and by trying to
leave a mark on it.
And that's what Osthorne is.
It's not the tropey magic
school that feels comforting
because it lets you imagine
a totally different world.
It's a high school that is kind
of uncomfortable to go back
to because high school
is an uncomfortable time
in a lot of our memories.
KEN ARTHUR: So on that note, a
big part of the story is also
that this is a magical school
story where the protagonist is
an adult, and does have to go
back to high school, and A,
is kind of dreaming
of the life she
didn't have because she's
not magic, but B, kind of
knows what kids are
like in a way, right?
She psychoanalyzes them.
So was there ever a
version of this story
where the protagonist
was one of the students,
or did you know from the
beginning you wanted an adult
in this high school setting?
SARAH GAILEY: Oh, I
definitely wanted an adult.
This book was never a YA--
it was never a Young Adult book.
Because I also love
horror, and one
of the most horrifying
things I can imagine
is having to return
to high school.
[LAUGHS] Ivy Gamble is
really uncertain of herself,
and she tries to pretend
like she is, right?
She's fine.
And going back to high school
tears all of that apart.
Everyone I know as an adult
who returns to high school,
especially if you go
back to the high school
that you attended as a teen,
there's this moment of like,
oh god, this is where
it all happened.
This is where I
thought I figured out
who I was going to be.
And who am I now?
And what would the
person I was then
think of the person I am now?
And what do these teens
think of the person I am now?
I was on an airplane.
I've been on a lot of
airplanes in the last month.
I was on an airplane,
and I wound up
with this very cool
teenager sitting next to me.
And he lifted up his
phone, and swung it around,
and then yelled to another
teenager on the plane,
"Scope it!"
And I have no idea
what that means.
I have no idea.
He could have been
doing anything.
He could have been saying that
specifically to fuck with me.
And I was sitting there, like
yeah, this is what it's like.
This is what it's like
to be an adult trying
to feel as firm in
my footing now when
I'm around a teenager who
does things, and thinks
about things, and
knows about things that
are totally inaccessible to me.
And this is all
amplified by the fact
that this is a high school for
teens who have magic powers.
So the things that they
talk about, and think about,
and struggle with
have an extra layer
of an accessibility to Ivy.
In this world,
magic is intrinsic,
so it's not something
that you can learn.
It's not something
that's defined
by bloodline because that's
actually just secretly racism.
It's not something that
you can go and buy a gizmo
and then you have magic.
It's just something that
you have or you don't.
And so these kids all have it.
And Ivy has no way to understand
that part of their lives.
KEN ARTHUR: Yeah,
there's a section
I wanted to read about
that because I really
liked the way you did it.
So this is her reading
someone's journal.
She says, "The entry
had started out
as a reflection on the process
of putting the magic together.
I've tried looking at
it as glass lightning,
and that didn't work.
I took a blood sand approach,
but the light levels
wouldn't support it.
I'm starting to think it
would be better served
by a sponge made of slowly
growing roots perspective."
So it sounds like a child trying
to explain quantum mechanics.
Like, it--
SARAH GAILEY: Absolutely.
KEN ARTHUR: So how
did you kind of--
I mean, a lot of people just
use fake Latin or come up
with a very detailed magic
system that can be half
explained to us non-wizards.
So how did you come
up with this approach?
SARAH GAILEY: So I actually
used to work at a tech company.
I worked at a UX
design consultancy
as an administrator.
And when I came to
work at that company,
they were like, we do
interaction design and user
experience design.
And I was like, great.
And they were like, do
you know what that is?
And I was like, yeah,
give me this job please.
And I got the job,
and I called my mom,
and I told her I got
a job at this company.
I think they do inventions.
Because during my
interview, they
kept explaining to
me like, oh, well, we
do user-focused
interaction design.
And we don't do a lot
of wireframes in-house,
and we really like to try
and think dynamically.
And we have a very
iterative process.
And this was several,
several years ago,
and I was sitting
there like, cool.
Great.
Oh, yeah, I also love
an iterative process.
I love doing that,
and I mean, I could
clean a wireframe all day.
It took me my first year
of working at that company
before I really understood
what any of that meant.
And even now, when
I see discourse
online about the difference
between interaction design
and user experience design,
I want to climb into a hole
and hide.
I'm really used to not
knowing what people around me
are talking about because
of that experience
and every other
experience in my life.
[LAUGHS] This is for real.
Magic that you can understand
isn't really magic,
I don't think.
The fact that I was able to
come to an understanding,
an extremely thin
understanding--
please don't ask me
questions about it--
of what a wireframe
is or what personas
are for when you're doing
interactive interaction design
means that that's
not magic, right?
That's something
that I can learn
to understand and comprehend.
And ultimately, it's science.
Magic that is defined
by I have this stick,
and I hold it just
at this angle,
and then I say a Latin
phrase that means,
like, chair is an apple now,
and then it turns into an apple,
takes a lot of the magic away.
It makes it into science.
It makes it into
skill, and craft,
and habit, which is great.
All of those things are awesome.
But I wanted the magic
system in this book
to make as little
sense to an outsider
as interaction design
made to me when
I was coming into that company.
I wanted it to be
totally baffling
because that's what magic
has to be to be magic, right?
It has to be something
that's beyond you.
It has to be something that is
way outside of your conception
of the world.
I can pretty much
understand Latin phrases
for the most part.
I mean, I can't speak Latin,
but if I see a Latin phrase,
I have been speaking Latinate
languages for long enough
that I can be like, oh,
that pretty much just means
your legs are stuck.
I wanted this to be different.
KEN ARTHUR: Well,
so for me, it really
worked because Ivy has
no idea what's going on.
So I also had no
idea what's going on.
So it kind of
helped me identify.
SARAH GAILEY: Ideal.
KEN ARTHUR: So I wanted to
talk about Ivy a little more.
So thinking about
noir stereotypes,
one thing I noticed is that in
another noir book, every time
the protagonist would
have been like hit
in the head with a
lead pipe, Ivy instead
undergoes deep emotional trauma.
SARAH GAILEY: [LAUGHS]
KEN ARTHUR: So how did you
kind of plot out Ivy's--
because she starts out angry
about her family and her past.
And then there's
different levels
of that throughout the
book as she learns things
about her sister and
about her own history.
So how did you kind of plot out
how to make that kind of match
up with the noir beats?
Because I felt like it sort
of did match up with the--
every time she gets close,
something sad happens,
and she has to
start drinking more,
sort of feel that noir has.
SARAH GAILEY: Author
self-insertion.
I'm a very traumatized person.
I have severe PTSD.
I have had a traumatic life.
And so I know the way
that emotional trauma does
hit you in the head
with a lead pipe.
It takes you out of commission.
And Ivy's on a timeline.
She can't afford to be
taken out of commission,
so she does what any noir
detective would do, right?
She gets tanked.
She starts drinking
to deal with it.
And first of all, if
you need to hear this,
if you get hit in the
head with a lead pipe,
drinking is not the answer.
That will probably
make it worse.
And if you undergo a
severely emotionally
traumatic experience,
drinking also doesn't help.
But for Ivy, it
feels like it does.
It's a coping mechanism, just
like most things in her life,
and personality.
She's on a timeline.
She can't afford to deal with
these emotionally traumatic
events.
And so she starts drinking.
And the thing is
those beats were
really easy to plot
out because that's
what every noir detective does.
Noir detectives get drunk
not for no reason, right?
They get drunk
because they're doing
that thing of flipping the
nice things in the world over
and looking at what's
crawling underneath.
But in classic noir,
those detectives
don't get traumatized.
Those detectives are
just like, I'll just
have another shot of
bourbon, and a dame
will come along and
fix my problems.
And then that happens.
They have the shot of bourbon,
and the dame comes along.
And they're like, OK, moving on.
As a traumatized person, I know
that that's not how that goes.
And I wanted to write
a noir detective who
actually feels her trauma.
And the thing is when
you're traumatized
and you don't deal with
it, it becomes easier
to compound that trauma.
It becomes easier
to expose yourself
to situations that
will traumatize you
again, and again, and again.
And because Ivy
thinks she's fine,
and she's got her coping
mechanisms all lined up,
and it's all going to
work out, and she doesn't
have any feelings about it, she
doesn't have to worry about it.
She's compounding her trauma
throughout this whole book.
And she's leaning
harder and harder
on her coping
mechanisms, which include
the lie that she is magic that
she starts telling people.
Her spiral is
something that I wanted
to see in a noir narrative
that I think I've
been missing my whole life.
KEN ARTHUR: Well, it's also
interesting as a noir narrative
because the protagonist
actually changes
over the course of the book.
There isn't going to
be a next book that's
a complete reset and
a new case, right?
So was that a goal
from the beginning
to have something
that's not just
going to be the Ivy
Gamble Adventures Book
1, Book 2, whatever?
SARAH GAILEY: Yeah,
this has always
been a standalone,
although I highly
encourage fan fiction,
especially of the make
out scene later in the book.
I think that books that
don't have any character
growth or change are boring.
I find them
uninteresting because I'm
interested in characters, right?
I'm not a person who's super
interested in explaining
how the world works.
I'm not a person who's very
interested in explaining how
all the systems fit together.
That's just not my thing.
It's good for other people.
It's not for me.
And so what I want to see
is characters and how they
respond to their circumstances.
And if they don't ever
change, or the world
doesn't change to
suit them, then I'm
not reading about anything
that interests me.
So having Ivy change, having her
spiral, and hit a bottom place,
and confront her identity,
and her coping mechanisms,
and the person who
she's let herself become
is really crucial
to this book being
interesting to me to write.
And it has to be
interesting to me
to write because if I'm not
interested in what I'm writing,
it's going to read boring,
and then the reader
is going to be bored.
And they're going to be
like, why am I doing this?
And they'll throw
it into a bonfire.
Which I would
rather they not do.
KEN ARTHUR: I've never
thrown a book into a bonfire.
I have returned some to
the library unread, but.
So I think I have time for
one more of my questions,
and then we should get to some
of what the audience wants
to talk about.
So one thing that was
refreshing about this book
is that it's a fantasy novel
where the problems aren't
metaphors for anything.
They're actual problems.
And one thing that comes up as
a big part of that in this book
is magic health care and what
exactly you can fix with magic
and what you can't, as well
as related issues like birth
control and abortion come
up later in the book.
I don't want to
spoil anything, but.
So in "Harry Potter," which
we've kind of been talking
about without
mentioning, everything
can be fixed with a potion and
a night in the infirmary, right?
But in the real world and in
your book, that's not the case.
So was that something that
was always interesting to you
as something to explore in this?
And why did you decide to
do it the way you did it?
SARAH GAILEY: I love putting
real problems in my books.
I don't know if you
know, but health care
is something that is a
little bit of a problem
right now in our
society that we live in.
I love the idea of
magic fixing everything.
But even more than that,
I love the idea of magic
not fixing everything.
This isn't a world where you
go there, and all of a sudden,
all your problems are solved.
And then you have a
new set of problems,
but actually, those
are just an adventure
This is a world where human
beings are human beings.
People are people.
And so they get
into bad situations.
They get hurt, and
they hurt each other.
And they have sex in a
way that they don't really
think ahead about, and they wind
up getting each other pregnant
or getting each other sick.
And magical health
care in this book,
just like health care
in the real world,
has evolved over time.
And not everyone
has evolved with it.
So in this book, I talk
a lot about consent,
and bodily autonomy,
and health care,
both in life and in this book.
It's relevant to my interests.
In this book, there's health
care that's given well,
and there's health care
that's given badly, right?
These teens have
ready and free access
to birth control and
sexual health resources.
Now, the people who are giving
them access to those resources
have very human constraints
on what they're willing to do
and how they're
willing to do it.
There's a lot of
magical health care
in this book that's like
the old way of doing it
and the new way of doing it.
And there are people who, just
like doctors in the real world,
are like yeah, but I've been
doing it this way forever.
I don't need to change it.
I'm not going to
read those studies,
and do continuing education,
and learn and evolve
as a health care professional.
I'll just do it this
way, and it's fine.
There's health care that's
given without adequate consent
from the patient in this
book, which is something that
happens in life all the time.
I see a lot of doctors,
and some of those doctors
will say, hey, I'd like to
do this test on you to see
about your muscle
response or whatever.
And some doctors will
just start poking me
with a needle to see what my
body does in response to that.
Usually, what my
body does in response
to that is it makes my
mouth go, ow, what the fuck
are you doing?
These are issues in this book
because they're issues in life.
And a lot of times, I
think as readers, we
have an easier time thinking
about and confronting
those issues when they're
in a fantasy narrative.
But this isn't-- as you
said, it's not a metaphor.
It's not like, oh, in this
world of magic and wonder,
there's a potion that someone
might give you while doing a
don't say no to this
potion spell on you.
And then your bone gets
better, but you don't
know how you feel about it.
No, it's like no, someone's
invading your body
without asking you if they can.
And they're doing things
to change your body
without asking you if they can.
Or they're doing things
to change your body
without adequately explaining
to you the risks of what they're
going to do and
protecting you the way
that you should be
protected as a patient.
It's just in there
because it's what
we do to each other in the
world that you and I live in.
Again, I shouldn't assume--
the world that I live in.
And that doesn't change
just because there's magic.
We have incredibly advanced
medical science right now.
And that advanced medical
science is as close to magic
as I think I can get.
Because I am not willing
to go to enough school
to understand it.
Having those advanced
methods, and technologies,
and medications does not change
the fact that sometimes doctors
will be like, here,
take this drug,
without telling a patient
why they're taking the drug.
Sometimes doctors
will be like, here's
this advanced technology.
I'm doing it at you,
without telling the patient,
this is going to
hurt really bad.
And it's going to
be scary, and you
need to be able to say no to it
at any time during the process.
That doesn't change
with advanced science.
It doesn't change with magic.
It's something that
we do to each other.
And there are real
consequences to it,
both in the world I live in and
in the world that Ivy lives in.
KEN ARTHUR: OK.
Well, thanks for answering
all of my questions.
Or I have more, but I feel
like I should give all of you
a chance.
So if someone could grab
that blue box right there--
it's under that chair
in the front row--
that is a throwable microphone.
It's the pinnacle of
Google technology.
And if anyone--
SARAH GAILEY: I
love these things.
I'm obsessed with them.
KEN ARTHUR: Would anyone
like to ask a question?
AUDIENCE: Hey.
So I really enjoyed
the excerpt you read.
And I went to college
in the Bay Area,
and there was definitely stuff
I could relate to with sort
of like seeing other people
go into private schools,
and I was going to public
school, and that kind of thing.
And I just I wanted to say,
so with magic in your book,
you sort of mentioned that it's
something that some people just
have, and some people don't.
And I can't help but sort of--
I'm not going to say it's a
metaphor for real world stuff
because it's clear
that in your book,
there's real world stuff
and then also magic, which
has its own problems.
But it seems like they're
sort of comparable problems
existing in parallel.
And it was just
basically making me
think about sort of
especially in the Bay Area,
this distinction between
sort of normal people
and then the tech
industry and that kind
of thing, which, in some
ways, is kind of like magic.
Let me tell you.
When I started working
here, I didn't know what
anyone was talking about ever.
They would be like, hey, can you
do the tap pre-submit test run,
so that we can
use blaze to build
the Rbinary to generate the
post pilot report or something.
And I'm like, what?
SARAH GAILEY: I have no
idea what you just said.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I know.
Exactly.
But I just sort
of wanted to ask--
and I haven't gotten the
chance to read the book--
but I'm just imagining
basically the equivalent
of tech companies, but they
only hire magical people.
It's like a magical research--
like venture capital and stuff.
And I guess I wanted
to ask, would you
say that the sort of magic,
in some ways, is like--
I guess, I don't
know whether to say
it's like people who
happen to be smart.
Or it did feel like from
how you described things
that there's also an element of,
you got lucky, where it almost
feels some people get
to go to a good school,
even if they're smart,
but then also some people
come from a family
with more money.
So just sort of this access
to resources, I feel,
is parallel to that
to me, I think.
SARAH GAILEY: Yeah.
Magic in this book definitely
is subject to class
stratification.
I also grew up in the Bay Area.
I grew up in within the first
tech bubble in the Bay Area
and then was in the workforce
in the second tech bubble.
I grew up as a kid
in Fremont, which
is like the bedroom
community for Palo Alto.
So I was in it.
In this book, as in the school
system that I grew up in,
there is immense class
stratification, right?
My high school was a regular
degular public school.
But also our population
was mostly white, Asian,
and Southeast Asian.
And the way that school
resources happen in the Bay
Area, we got more
resources than schools
that had largely
black and Latinx kids,
and also a lot less--
what's the word
I'm looking for--
state instituted violence
against students on campus.
And within my school,
which was very privileged
in a lot of ways, we had
internal class stratification
because there are kids who are
designated as gifted and kids
who are designated as whatever,
the rest, miscellaneous,
which is a fucked up
thing to do to children.
When I was in kindergarten, they
took all the kids out of class
who the teacher was like, oh,
that one, I think, is good.
And they tested us, and
then they said, oh, you're
smart and good.
And so we're going to put you in
the smart good children class.
And everyone else, whatever.
You go into the regular
kids' class, I guess.
That probably
feels fine for you.
And that stratification
started happening that young
and then just continues, right?
And there are more
resources allocated to those
kids who are defined as
smart by that test they took
in kindergarten and
then their ability
to cope with ongoing
horrific academic pressure.
Magic in this world is a
little bit like that, right?
You get it or you don't.
In an early draft of
the school, my editor
had me strip this plotline
out, but it is still part
of the built world of the book.
There are adults who
don't realize that they're
magic because they never
had access to adults who
recognized that magic in them.
Because when you're a
little kid and you're like,
oh, I did this thing.
Whatever.
You don't know it's not
normal to do the thing, right?
When I was a little kid, I
used to go and try and find
as many frogs as I
could carry at a time,
and then I would be
like, oh, I did it.
Other kids who I knew weren't
doing that, but I was like,
well, this is normal and fine
because no one told me it
wasn't.
Right?
So if you're a little kid, if
you're in your kindergarten
class, and you are just for
fun back and forth turning
your shoelaces into
licorice, you're like, neat.
Oh, that's that thing
that you do where you turn
your shoelaces into licorice.
And if no adult spots
you doing that and says,
hey, you're turning your
shoelaces into licorice.
That seems weird.
I happen to know about
the world of magic.
So let's scooch you
over to where there are
resources for kids like you.
If you don't get that
treatment, then you're
going to make it to
adulthood not knowing
that you have a gift.
There are so many
people who I know
I grew up with who are gifted,
and brilliant, and creative.
And because they
were neuro divergent,
because they were non-white,
because they were poor,
they didn't have adults saying,
hey, you're smart and special.
Go on this track
that later is going
to lead you to have
access to better schools,
and better networking
relationships with other people
who are going to
go to good schools,
and maybe access to teachers
who will connect you
with scholarships so
that you can do things
like take SAT classes that only
exist to teach you how to game
a test.
They didn't have access
to those resources,
and so they have a really
different life than I have,
even though they're
exactly as smart as I am.
That's absolutely a class
issue, and magic in this book
is a class issue.
I don't want to say it's a
metaphor for a class issue
because class issues
still exist, right?
These kids are going
to a nice ass school.
They're going to a school
in the Sunol hills,
which is like one of the ruraler
parts of the San Francisco Bay
Area.
Very pretty, lots
of horse girls.
It's a school that is a
private campus, right?
It's a boarding school.
It's really pretty.
It's well maintained.
They have a
groundskeeper on site.
These are not poor kids.
These are not kids who are
unsure of where their next meal
is going to come from.
And that's a part of the fabric
of the school and the stresses
that the kids face.
They're real stresses.
There's real pressure on them.
And a lot of that pressure
is the same pressure
that my classmates faced in your
very fancy and smart classes
that I took, that was
like, you have to do good.
And if you don't do everything
right by the time you turn 18,
your entire life is
going to fall apart,
and you'll probably
die in a pit.
And so make sure that you do
absolutely everything you can,
and don't sleep even
though you're a teenager,
and your brain is
screaming all the time.
That's the kind of stresses
that these kids are facing.
And that's a really
different stress from, say,
I have magic powers,
but I'm still
going to high school in
the town where I grew up.
And I don't have
access to any resources
to help me with my
magic, and I also
don't have access to good food.
And also my school is cutting
the free and reduced lunch
program, which actually it's
bad because I'm starving.
But it's good because
it means that I
don't have to eat food
that is literally castoffs
from privately owned prisons.
And I can't afford
another pair of shoes,
which really sucks because
my shoes are falling apart.
And I was hoping to try
out for track, but I can't.
Really different sets of
stresses and pressures, right?
It's all about setting.
This book is set in
upper class magic place.
And that doesn't mean that
there's not class issues that
flow throughout the
world of this book,
again, just like they
flow throughout the world
that we live in.
I'm kind of angry about them.
I don't know if you can tell.
KEN ARTHUR: I think we have time
for one more audience question
if anybody wants to ask one.
AUDIENCE: How did you
get from UX to writing?
And do you like it better?
SARAH GAILEY: I like
it so much better.
So I was an administrator
at this company,
at this tech company.
It was a really--
I don't want to say it
was like a fancy company
because I don't have
contemporary access
to the stratospheres of tech.
But at the time I was working
there, it was a big deal.
It was a great place
to work, especially
if you were a UX designer
or a UI designer.
It was a consultancy,
very high pressure.
But as an administrator, it was
a real different experience.
There were a lot of
different resources
being allocated to my department
than other departments.
It was a lot of
support to people
who were doing work that I
didn't necessarily understand
and was trying really hard
to learn about on the fly.
But if they don't have time,
and energy, and patience
to help you understand
their needs,
you've got to figure it
out as you go, right?
So really different from
writing, where what happens
is I get up out of bed,
and then I walk my dog.
And then I come home, and
I sit down at my desk,
and I make words go.
The work that I did there
had a real intense and real
different kind of
pressure to it.
It was all pressure about trying
to support very stressed out
people, whose needs I could not
comprehend, as opposed to like,
I have a deadline that
I have to get done.
I got from there to here
in a very weird way.
On my lunch breaks, basically,
I was reading and offering
editorial feedback
to a friend of mine
who was writing short fiction.
And I would read a story and
be like, I think this works.
I think this doesn't work.
And one day, I thought
he takes all of my notes,
and he says that
they're really good.
I wonder if I could
write a story.
And then I did.
I wrote a story.
And I went to him,
and I was like, hey,
can you read this story
I wrote and tell me
if it's a good story?
And he read it, and he
said, some people just
aren't meant to be
writers, and maybe
you should stick to
what you're good at,
which is telling
me about my stories
and if they're good or bad.
And I went, OK.
And I didn't write anything
else for six months.
But over the course
of that six months,
I started to notice that he
really took all of my notes.
And I really kind
knew what I was doing.
And I was like, maybe I'll
try writing another story,
and I won't invite
him to read this one.
And I did that, and
I sold that story.
And then over the course
of that next year,
I wrote 27 other short stories.
And to date, I have
sold all of them.
One of them was a short
story called "Haunted"
for "Fireside Fiction"
magazine, which
is the same magazine that
published "Step," my story
about autonomous vehicles and
the moralities of [INAUDIBLE]
in algorithmic programming.
"Haunted" is about
a haunted house,
and it's told from the
perspective of the house.
And that story is
completely just
me processing having first
gotten my PTSD diagnosis.
I was like, I'm going to do
some emotions [INAUDIBLE]..
And I had that story
published and got an email
through my website from
a guy named Don Won Song.
And he said, I love this story.
Do you have representation by
a literary agent at present?
And I went, uh, no.
Because Don Won Song was the
person who I'd always thought
if I ever had a
literary career--
which I'm not going to because
I don't want to do that
because I'm not good
enough to do it--
he would be my agent.
That's my dream agent.
And so I said, no, I don't
have a literary agent.
Do you want to
have a phone call?
And he said, yeah.
We had a phone
call, and he said,
I love your short fiction.
I think it's really brilliant.
Do you have anything longer?
And I was like,
well, not really.
I mean, I have this novella
about hippos in the Mississippi
River and the queer cowboys
that love them that I've
kind of been working on.
But I don't think it's anything.
And he said, well,
I'd love to read it
and give you some of my thoughts
on it, whenever you finish it.
And I was like, mental note--
finish this immediately.
And then he said, I love
these ideas that you have,
but I can't represent you
if you don't have a novel.
Because the way that
literary agents work.
They take a percentage
of your profits.
And the profits on novels
are scales and scales
bigger than on short fiction.
So it's just not worth his
time for the like $0.10 that he
would be getting on a novella.
And I said, well, that's a
real bummer because I'm never
going to write a novel.
That's too bad.
And he said the thing
that he has learned now
will make me do
literally anything.
He said, oh, you don't
want to write a novel?
And I said, no.
And he said, OK, that's fine.
You don't have to write a novel
if you think you can't do it.
And I was like, ugh, fine.
Of course I'm going
to write a novel.
And when he gave me his thoughts
on the novella, I said, thanks.
This is great.
I would love to have
a phone call with you.
And he picked up the
phone, and I said,
you know how you said I
couldn't write a novel?
And he was like,
I didn't say that.
And then I was like, well,
I came up with an idea.
And it was the idea
for "Magic for Liars."
I basically went home after
my first phone call with him,
and sat down, and was
like [BREATHING HEAVILY]..
If I was going to write
a novel, which I'm not,
I guess it would be about this.
And that's how I got here.
I have now written
four other novels
that are all in the pipeline
and jamming their way to us.
There's going to be three
books dropping in 2020.
I'm very scared of that year.
And that's how I got here.
Basically, all of it is on
stubbornness, and a dare,
and men telling me
I can't do things.
Primary motivation is spite.
[APPLAUSE]
KEN ARTHUR: All right.
So we're out of time.
So Sarah has offered
to sign some book
plates if anyone wants their
book or a book plate signed.
Do you want to real
quick tell everybody
where to find you online if
they want to follow along
with your future novels?
SARAH GAILEY: Yes,
I would love to.
You can find me on Twitter
and other social media,
but Twitter is the one that
I really know how to use.
My handle is gailyfrey.
It's like my last name,
G-A-I-L-E-Y, and then frey,
F-R-E-Y. And yeah, that's a
"Doctor Who" reference, of old.
I am kind of on Instagram
under the same handle.
And you can also contact
me through my website,
SarahGailey.com.
It's spelled exactly
like my name, which
is on the cover of my book.
And there, you can find
updates about my book.
You can find updates
about when I go on tour.
You can email me with
questions that you think
of when you get home tonight.
And you can also sign up for my
newsletter if you feel like it.
It is called "Here's the Thing."
It's a $2 a month newsletter.
You get two original pieces of
either short fiction, essays,
poems, recipes,
bullshit that comes out
of my brain at
very high velocity.
And that newsletter pays
for all of my health care
and makes it so that
I can walk and stuff,
which is a hobby of mine.
That's where you can find me.
You can also find my
book, "Magic for Liars"
wherever you get books.
I highly recommend your
local independent bookstore,
or your local library,
or indiebound.com,
which is an online
retailer that supports
independent booksellers.
Go team.
You can also, if you're
looking for backlist finds,
the "American Hippo"
anthology, which
is about queer cowboys
riding hippos in the American
Mississippi River basin.
It's "Ocean's 11," but gay
and hippos if you want that.
KEN ARTHUR: Thank you so much
for coming out and talking
to us.
SARAH GAILEY: Thank
you for having me.
Thank you, Google.
[APPLAUSE]
