
Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
1: A Story Is As Long As It Needs To Be But Won’t Tell You Until It’s Done
First, it was a 5000 word tennis match of dialogue, back and forth over the narrative net, the rookie hotshot with anxiety clearly losing to the seasoned pro, a fox with a tennis racket in their mouth talking circles around the poor thing. Amusing, but not a story. Then, it was a very long short story, something close to 8000 words, which was stuffed to the gills with plot, and not the good kind either, no, this plot was stodgy and puffed up weird in the oven and it’s not that it was bad, per se, it just wasn’t done. Then, when it became a very short long story, what the French among us call “le novelette,” it was, how you say, still not awesome. 11,000 words and it was either bloated or too lean, like a funhouse mirror that changed depending on the angle you were looking from. No, it wasn’t until an editor encouraged me that maybe it was book-shaped, or at the very least book-hopeful, that everything began to fall into place. From the outset, I couldn’t have told you it was going to be a novella, (let’s be honest, it’s three words from being a teeny-weeny novel but that’s for the judges to argue about), but I did learn through the six years it took to transform: as always, your story is going to be whatever it needs to be and changing forms to figure it out is all a part of the process.
2: Tricksters Are Tricky On Purpose
Let them be tricky! Let them be a little scamp! No air jail for little fox, no, let them nom upon the hands of those who would lift them from the ground and bite at the ankles of the cruel! Part of figuring out the balance of this story was knowing when, where, and how to deploy the tactical trickster nuke that is the Fox. A being of mischief, lessons, aforementioned scampery, and pranks, the Fox is a god. And a god has very few things to bind them, unless they wish it. Letting the Fox tromp across the narrative is fun, but not engaging. Holding them back is maybe logical but it’s boring, and disappointing to boot; they’re a trickster! If they don’t at least try to tie together the boots of everyone within a mile, readers will be unhappy. Nailing down what made my trickster tick, reasons the Fox would and wouldn’t respect certain boundaries, were essential in showcasing them to the best of my ability. That, and it helped that having a protagonist undergoing a trial; even a god of tricks has to respect that, (kind of).
3: Bitter and Sweet are the Predator Handshake of Narrative
Jokes all the time rob a story of meaning; if nothing is taken seriously in the context of the book, why should the reader take any of it seriously? And if every single thing is treated with the held-breath seriousness of open heart surgery, then are we saying that even in fiction, life is grim, difficult, and needs to be struggled through? I have always been a huge believer that you need the bitter and the sweet working together to create a strong story. If we weren’t able to laugh once in a while, the darkness would crush us. If we didn’t work to overcome the hard times and push through the dark, then the joy of the sun would be rote. Audition For The Fox is a dark book, let’s be clear: it deals with empire, colonialism, torture, oppression, occupation, and more. It looks at these things with clear eyes, and does not flinch from the truth of them. But it is also a book about the very real debate between coffee and tea, a book that laughs when someone falls in shit, that highlights the small joys to be found in community, that sees the world the way it could be, when we lift one another up and help each other smile. I can’t say I did it perfectly, but I did try my very best.
4: Worldbuilding is Scaffolding Around the Building, Not the Building Itself
I’m a firm believer that worldbuilding is awesome, one of my favorite parts of writing, and often, real fucking tedious. Not because it isn’t awesome, mind you, but that I think a lot of writers often mistake worldbuilding to be the creation of a literal building with hundreds of rooms and halls and windows and paintings and stairs and-and-and . . . but it’s not. Your story is the building. That is what needs all that space, those apertures, those details; your worldbuilding is the scaffolding that provides you with the narrative structure to make that building as strong as possible and gives you as many essential parts as you need for the reader to feel welcome, and to help understand the story of the world, and the world of the story. I had loads of fun in Audition For The Fox when I was worldbuilding Oranoya and the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven and everything else but at a certain point, you need to ask: am I adding this explanation, this detail, this texture because the building needs it? Or because I’m worried someone won’t like my building without it? It’s a really hard thing to learn and I know I’m still learning it, but something I really embodied throughout this writing and editing process is that scaffolding, if you can remember to see it that way, helps you build the strongest story possible, and don’t forget: worldbuilding is awesome, yes, but it is NOT the story.
5: Swing For the Imaginary Fences
Publishing is fucking weird, man. It’s picky, it’s hesitant, its non-committal, and nothing is a guarantee. Truly, nothing is certain; even contracts can be broken. So with that being said, if you have the chance to publish and tell your story as close to the way you want to tell it? Fucking go for it, friend. Swing for the fences. Swing like there are no fences. Send your ball into orbit. Blah blah blah you’ll end up among the stars, fuck that, make a new crater on the moon you swung so hard. Who cares if that doesn’t get you “moon points,” right? They made up the rules anyway. This is a weird book. It’s weird! Interstitial linked stories, time-travel-fantasy, non-binary trickster energy by the barrelful, and more. It’s a weird little thing, this book, but you know what I can say, wholeheartedly? It’s mine. It’s a book of my own weird little heart, and at the end of the day, sure, maybe that isn’t for everyone. But I know I took a heckuva swing. And I hope wherever the ball lands, it surprises someone and makes them smile.
Martin Cahill has published short fiction in venues including Fireside, Reactor, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Nightmare. Cahill’s stories “The Fifth Horseman” and “Godmeat” were respectively nominated for the Ignyte Award and included in The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019. He was also one of the writers on Batman: The Blind Cut and a contributor to Critical Role: Vox Machina – Stories Untold. Cahill, who works at Erewhon Books, lives just outside New York City.
Martin Cahill: Website
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