Indies Introduce Q&A with Donyae Coles

Donyae Coles is the author of Midnight Rooms, a Summer/Fall 2024 Indies Introduce adult selection and July 2024 Indie Next List pick. 

Mary Taris of Strive Bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota, served on the bookseller panel that selected Coles’ book for Indies Introduce.

Donyae — I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her. Donyae Coles is an artist and a writer whose work is speculative in nature. She's been published in Fantasy Magazine, The Root, Pseudopod, and other publications. As a visual artist she works in traditional media, mainly watercolor, acrylic, and ink.

Donyae, I would like to welcome you to this interview, and I'm so excited to ask you some specific questions and learn more about you.

Donyae Coles: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to me.

MT: You're welcome. It's my pleasure. So, wow! When I read the book, I couldn't believe I could see myself in a work of gothic thriller — historic gothic thriller. It was just so amazing to read and to feel connected to something like that.

And that leads me to my first question: What made you want to write in the genre of historic gothic thriller?

DC: Well, I really just wanted to write a story about a Black girl in a big dress. I grew up reading Anne Rice and Daphne du Maurier. So I've read all these books, and it's always white girls and women running down the halls in their nice big dresses. I was like, “I want to be in one. I want to have that moment of pulling up my skirts, and dashing down the hall away from terror.” So that desire is really where it started to be in that historical place.

Because people of color were there historically. We didn't just get invented in the '90s, right? There were Black people in England. There were Black people in Europe. There were Black people in continental America who were doing things that wasn't just working in fields. I wanted to tell a story that happened in that space, because I really wanted to have those trappings of that history, of the aesthetic of that history, and be seen in that way. So that's really what inspired me to start working in the space of Gothic.

MT: That's what was cool for me, to be able to see a Black girl in that place and time, because a lot of times we're just captured in terms of who Black people were in terms of slavery. Especially if you're looking at a historic piece, it's sad that we don't get to see more personality and more experiences in terms of what our people have done and can do. So, that was exciting for me to see.

And especially since Orabella is of mixed race, her mother being Black and her father being white — I’m biracial as well. It was just really a personal affirmation for me. We all know that there isn't much representation for Black folks in literature, or at least the mainstream literature. So it was really affirming for me to see not only a Black girl, but a mixed race or biracial Black girl. So, thank you for writing that.

DC: You are very welcome!

MT: It’s not very often we can see ourselves in great literature. So my next question for you is, how did you develop Orabella and her personality? I really love her.

DC: When I started writing I really didn't know exactly what genre I was going to be writing, because I had started it before Mexican Gothic came out. At the time that I was drafting this book, nobody was really buying gothic novels, so I had to kind of think about where this is probably going to sell. And I was like, “It's probably going to sell in Romance if it sells anywhere.” So I was thinking about it in terms of that. (By the way, I knew at Chapter 10, I was like, “I'm not writing a romance. That was incorrect.”)

I read a lot, and I'm very cognizant of how modern characters in these sort of terrifying situations always are like, “Oh, she's not like other girls. She's gutsy and tough.” But I also felt like we see a lot of gutsy, tough, Black girls, and I really wanted to create someone who stands in for the softer Black girls, like the girls who are not for these streets. I wanted to create a soft character who wasn't weak, who wasn't silly, just soft. That's really what I kept in mind for Orabella when I was creating her. Someone who is very high femme, very conscientious of her place in the order of the world that she lives in, and uses that knowledge to survive.

I have ADHD. I'm neurodivergent. I did not know that when I was writing this book. I was crafting this character that I would have liked to have seen when I was younger, who is making decisions — she makes different decisions than me, but was making decisions — from this place that I could understand intuitively. That's how I ended up crafting her.

And that's why I'm so clear about her memory problems. She doesn't remember everything that happens. She is aware that she is a Black woman inside of this space, but also is trying desperately to still fit into this space, because she knows this is how she has to survive. Those are the things that I took into creating this character. And as I was moving forward in the story, it just became really important to me that she retains that softness, that nothing that happens to her destroys who she is in this process. That she may come out wiser and a little bit more worldly, but that she still retains that inner core of who she is as a person.

MT: Right, yeah. And her inner core reminds me of how, throughout the book, you expressed her inner thoughts. It was so relatable, because we could see what she was thinking and the fears she had, and what courage it took for her to do certain things in the book. I was really impressed with that.

I was going to ask you, do you have any personal connections with any of the characters and family dynamics? It sounds like you have some connections with Orabella. If you want to expand on that, or maybe talk about other connections you have. I'd love to hear it.

DC: Yeah. Both of my parents are Black, I am not mixed race. I do have a mixed race child, though. His father is not some crazy, backwoods, rich person. He's just a normal man.

I put some of myself, of course, in Orabella, and I think that's the thing that a lot of authors end up doing. We do kind of write a little bit of ourselves into our characters, but I don't think she's a one-to-one representation of me. She's a lot braver than I am for one, because I definitely would have just given up on day one. I'm like, “Oh, my! I can't handle this.”

MT: Yeah, I would have been trying to run away every day.

DC: Yeah, that whole thing. I'm like, “You know what, I'm done. I'm not doing this.” So there's that. And I also think that I used a lot of my experiences just kind of growing up as a person of color in areas where I was the only (or one of the few) people of color, because I think that does shape some of that worldview, and how you operate in those spaces.

That's the kind of experience that I drew on, and also the experience of — unwittingly — being neurodivergent and trying to parse the social interactions of the people around you and looking at something going, “Is this normal? Does this feel normal? Can I even trust my own feelings about things when everyone else seems to be having a great time?” I'm the person who's like, “I don’t know if this is right.” Those are the kind of experiences that I used in the work. Her isolation was something that I drew from my own experiences. Because growing up as an outsider, there's a lot of isolation there. Those are the things that I put into the book as opposed to marrying into a wild, backwoods family.

MT: Very interesting. So, I'm interested to know what kind of historic research you did in writing this book.

DC: I actually did very, very little. England's not a real place. There's no reason to research it. No, obviously England's a real place. It's actually really funny.

When I was working on the book — before I met my agent and did that whole thing — there was an author who had gotten into trouble for copy-and-pasting a section out of a Legend of Zelda Wiki, and putting it into the book because he needed to know the recipe for something. He just googled it, and he just copy-and-pasted this recipe. It's literally monster juice from the video game. And it made it all the way to print, which is why people knew about it.

Hailey Piper posted about this incident on Twitter. And I was talking to her, and I was like, “You know, I'm out here being really nervous about getting something historically wrong in my book. And this man is talking about Octorok eyeballs in a fully published novel.” And she was like, “Don't worry about it. Just write your book. You could have all the Octorok eyeballs you want.” I was like, “You know what?  You're right.”

I realized I'm not writing this book to be a history lesson. I'm not creating this novel so that you guys can come in and learn everything there is to know about Victorian England. It does not matter.

What I am writing is to mess you up. I am writing a book to entertain you and unnerve you and immerse you in this horror world that I've created. And if I'm doing that, then that was my job. The most I did was very surface level, like: what did the dresses actually look like? Because I wanted to write about dresses. What are the colors that they're using in this time period? And I looked up oil lamps, like: is it actually feasible to carry an oil lamp? I saw Enola Holmes do it, but that was on Netflix, so like…It was stuff like that that I really looked into. Oh, and carriages: what does a carriage look like?

Other than that I was like, if you're reading this book, and you're really concerned about me getting something historically inaccurate, then I have not done my job. That should be so far from your mind.

MT: Yeah, it was like another world that you describe in the book. I was really impressed with your world building. It felt like I was there. And your imagination is just incredible.

DC: Thank you! I really worked to do that, to really put the people there in that moment.

But I will say this: I picked the time period and the place based on the concept that I cannot break your immersion. I knew if I tried to be like, “It's the 1840s, and this Black woman has married into this wealthy family of weirdos.” People would immediately be like, “There's no way that this could happen in America.” Because it wouldn’t have. I was very cognizant of that piece, of understanding this is historically the perception people have of place. It’s important. I’ve got to place it somewhere where readers — even readers who know nothing about history — will be able to buy that this is a thing that could happen. As opposed to just being like “We're Americans,” because they absolutely, immediately would be like, “No. Absolutely not. This never happened. This could never happen. You have to explain too much to make this work.”

MT: Okay, so that's why you chose England.

DC: That’s why we chose England over America.

MT: That's good to know! Now, I want to talk about the cover because it's so beautiful, and it just draws you in. I didn't do any kind of research on the cover. I know you're an artist. Did you do this cover?

DC: I didn't! And it's so funny because so many people asked me that! At first, I thought people were just being nice. But people were coming up with receipts like, “Yeah, this looks like your work that you did.” I was like, “Okay, interesting.” But I did not do the cover. That is by an artist named Marco Mazzoni. I think I'm pronouncing his name right, I'm so sorry if I'm not. He's an Italian colored pencil artist, and he drew that whole thing.

What's really funny about him, though, he has a Domestika course (which is a website like Skillshare) and I had taken it at the start of the pandemic! It popped up, and I was like, “I really love this!” So, I took this class. I've talked to him. I've done art if he's seen it. He probably does not remember, because I was one of thousands of students. It was a very popular class. He was very nice, super nice guy. And I actually sold the piece of art that I did for that class. I sold it to a private collector.

And then fast forward: we're putting together, you know, “Who's going to do your cover?” I had suggested all these artists that I really like, and I was like, “Something like this, or this.” The art director came back with an artist. I was like, “I don't want that.” I wrote like a dissertation about why, “No.” He came back with another [artist], and he got another really long email from me.

Then he was like, “Okay.” He comes back with this list of artists, and a bunch of them were really good — people that I was a fan of — but the first name on the list was Marco. I was like, “That's the one! He could do whatever he wants! Whatever cover he sends back, that's fine. I already love it. He's the one.” And he did! He did my cover.

I follow him on Facebook, and he had posted this really cryptic post about how he was working on something big, and it was at the time that my cover was in production. I was like, “I don't know if this is my cover, but I hope it is.”

So, I love it. I am fangirling, I am so excited this artist I adore is the person they chose.

MT: That's so cool that you have a connection with him, that you had a connection prior to them even suggesting him for your cover.

DC: Yeah! I would not even have known at all that years after that he would be the one.

MT: Amazing! Must have been meant to be.

DC: That's how I felt about it. I was like, this was kismet.

MT: Wow, yeah. Well, I wish the listeners could see the cover, it’s just so beautiful. You all gotta go out and get this book, Midnight Rooms by Danyae Coles. It’s amazing! Am I fangirling right now?

DC: Fangirl harder! Yeah, I love it! The cover came out absolutely beautiful, beyond my wildest imaginations.

MT: And it really represents the story. By looking at the cover and reading the back, it sounds like an amazing story, right? But then, once you start reading it, it's just incredible. How do you come up with these things? I am just so impressed with your imagination, and how you set that world up and built those characters. It was a joy to read, and also very thrilling. Like I said, if I were that character I would be running out of there.

DC: Most definitely. I’d be like, “You know what? I'm done with this. I am walking. Back. Home.”

MT: Right? Yeah. Orabella.

DC: I am walking to the closest nunnery.

MT: She's amazing, though. Like you said, she's very brave. I don't know how she did it. But you wrote her to handle things and to get through. And, wow! I just don't want to say too much about the book, because you have to be surprised like I was with every chapter.

DC: Yeah, that's the hard thing about talking about it, because I don't want to spoil anything. I want you to have these experiences firsthand.

MT: Yes. One question I kind of want to ask — I know people ask you this all the time — what is your favorite part of your book?

DC: Actually, no one asks me about that, but I do know what my favorite part of the book is. My favorite part of the book — the part where I was like, “Yes, I put my whole foot in this one!” — was that graveyard scene. Where it is Orabella and Elias, and she kind of sees who he is — really sees who he is — for that first time, and she realizes like, “Oh, I'm in danger!”

I love that scene because it's the setting just low-key mirroring what is happening in her psyche in regards to this relationship that she's in — because it is a relationship that she has found herself in, that she becomes trapped in. That is my favorite scene. And that is the best characterization of Elias. That, “Oh, this is the truth of who he is, as a person,” and her having to — in that one moment — decide how she's going to handle this. And she has to commit to whatever course of action she has. This is the only moment she's going to have to make this choice, because after this it's all downhill.

That's my favorite scene.

MT: I can see, why. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, wow! Well, it's been a joy talking to you about your work. Are you thinking about a sequel? Maybe?

DC: Not a sequel, but I was considering writing a prequel. To kind of dive more into this family, this house, maybe some of the building blocks that got us here. Why Elias looked at Orabella and said, “That's my future wife. That's the woman.” What led there? Because you know that seems like a strange pick, on the outside. It's like you've got this family that looks like what they look like. And they’re going to pick that girl and be like, “That's the one!” So I am thinking about a prequel for that. I am also working on another Gothic horror novel that takes place in a different time period, in a different location, with different people, but same universe.

MT: Oh, I can't wait! Okay, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for you and your future works, and I will definitely be carrying your book in my bookstore.

DC: Yay!

MT: Thank you for your time today, it was a pleasure talking with you, getting to know you better, and learning more about your work.

DC: Thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed talking to you. This has been really lovely. I'm so excited. And yeah, it's just been great!

MT: Bye, for now!

DC: Bye!

Find out more about the author at donyaecoles.com.

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