Axiom's End Q&A

good afternoon i hope everyone is having a lovely war on christmas if you're anything like me you're all dressed up with nowhere to go literally the first christmas where i don't get to see my family in all of my 36 years on this earth yeah i'm fine with that this episode was brought to you by my publisher asking when i'm going to do a content promoting my book before christmas just under the wire you can see it right here along with some other um gift ideas for the um sff fan in your life it's only mostly extremely nepotistic i had a run in with the oven if you're wondering so i wanted to do a q a for a while but the thing about books is they take a lot longer to get through than movies and generally when they're released it's not like everybody reads it all in the same week it's a very slow burn but it's been about five months so i figured i can break this down into a um no spoiler discussion or at least what i consider no spoilers like if it's if it's in the you know blurb on the jacket then it doesn't count as spoilers spoilers section where i actually uh talk about the content of the book in a spoilery way finally sequel stuff at the end and i don't want to say it'll be spoilery but it would be like on the level of stuff that you read like on the jacket blurb which incidentally has not been written yet so the way i did this was through twitter because that required the least amount of effort on my part [Applause] what software did you use to write slash organize all of the world building going on is it a bunch of google docs more specialized things with scrivener uh both i use google docs for a lot of it like especially keeping track of like timelines um like there's like i guess sort of the macro timeline of um you know alien civilization and when we hit what milestone like becoming space-faring becoming interstellar you know becoming post-natural and then there's the micro timelines like you know the human family trees and when so-and-so was born and what year they were born and when they went to school and how they met but mainly i use scrivener i just have to have a really clear road map before i actually do it and i use scrivener for that and i find scrivener very good for organizing massive projects especially one like this that is like a combination of epistolary novel and uh regular prose novel because i have to categorize the different sections especially in the sequel which has multiple points of view in your video talking about your book deal you mentioned reasons why it didn't sell in it having to do with publishing trends would it be a spoiler for the sequel if you went into those reasons now no but generally when we talk about publishing trends publishers want something that is similar to something that has already done well because like hank green's book uh an absolutely remarkable thing was like the only comp we had when we had on submission besides his book there weren't really any other you know best-selling sci-fi novels that were also sort of contemporary real world grounded type stuff publishers want to buy things that are similar to things that have done well within the last five years and um in terms of like commercial science fiction there weren't a lot that were similar did you deliberately set out to write basically the book transformer should have been i mean if you're talking about the movie uh maybe bumblebee stop lubricating the man i feel like so much of my adult life has been shaped by frustration with michael bay and i think like one of the things that like i kind of got obsessed with with the first transformers movie after it came out was that it did kind of set up a really interesting premise which was that okay aliens show up but the world doesn't end what now especially after the second one um the the worst one arguably no actually i think maybe they're all really bad but like the second one ends with like the fallen being like we're here we're queer we're gonna kill you but then you know the world doesn't end so like what then and they kind of they they kind of tiptoe up to like doing something interesting with it like how in the third movie there's like you know john turturro hanging out with transformer refugees in cuba buy my book buy my book i think it is also very fair to say that uh a lot of it was shaped by frustration with mr bay's transformers franchise when describing cora's outfits did you try to create an iconic look for a potential adaptation yeah sort of what i thought were the most visually i don't know 50s b movie scenes i keep describing this tiered chiffon maxi dress from the 1970s and um i don't know why i decided to go with that and not something more like you know 1950s um but i think it was just it was kind of like a janky like a janky version of that um you know something white and flowing and damsel but also like cheap and polyester in 70s when will you write an omega verse novel i don't think i need to someone already wrote an omega verse x seems in fanfic it's on ao3 no i haven't read it i'm not allowed in regards to core's experience with linguistics in college have you ever taken any linguistics courses yes at nyu they had what they call a um concentration which is what it is when you don't have enough credits for a minor but you had enough where they're like ah we could put that on the degree somewhere or whatever it seems and ready read very much like the natural disaster films of the 90s how much of this was intentional i didn't really set out to do that but i guess some of that was inevitable because so much of like the plot and the structure and the character dynamics was very much inspired by movies like that and like towards the end of the process like after the book sold and while we were in revisions like i kind of allowed myself licensed to just like go all in on it i've seen independence day probably more times than i've seen any other movie let's just own it you know it's like there's a lot of men in black in there um there's a lot of zim in there it's sort of like which is which is funny because i saw that joan and vasquez posted like check out my book haul and that was in it and i was like oh no pathetic humans fleeing in terror on the side of firm nobody even looking at you it's a show of respect their stupid eyes can't handle all these so i was watching the new uh invader zim movie uh enter the floorpuss and as i was watching i was like holy [ __ ] i forgot how much invader zim um kind of crept into like the world building it's almost sort of like uh invaders and played straight like which i'm sure joan and vasquez would be horrified by like even even uh kaylee donaldson of pajiba pointed this out it's sort of like ampersand is almost like a if invader zim was competent but where are the flames i can't rule the world without cool flames shooting up behind me now that it's out can you talk about what it was like watching bumblebee with this in your pocket bumblebee came out right before the book went on submission i loved bumblebee because it was you know the transformers it's the only good transformers movie but it had a lot of similarities and when i was watching it with uh lisa for the first time this one um she we were in the movie theater and she just kind of like whispers to me like this is a lot like your book and i'm like oh it's they stole my idea not the other way around but the but the really funny thing was uh when we were um the first blurb st martin's press sent me that was like the cover copy this thing it basically like it read it read like the plot of bumblebee so much that it included things that were in the movie bumblebee but we're not in my book for instance like we're being pursued by like evil john cena it's like but no that's not the plot that's not what happens oh my god if the xam zen series was adapted for tv would you rather see it made into live action or animated i don't know it depends on who's making it if it was animated i feel like it would have to be like either anime or anime style you know because it should feel a little aged up but yeah i don't know i think i think that really depends on who's at the helm and what the budget is because i think the thing is like if it was animated for the content that it is it would probably be cheaper than live action because like jeez i i kind of doubt we're ever going to see a live action version what language slang phrase do you use often that was off limits due to the period setting that you chose the truth is um i was a lot more careful about that for the sequel like i have an entire thread that was neologisms that i started to write but had to cut and i guess they would tend to be like internet thing like like we can't use doge like much alien very invasion or stuff like that even though that's already dated i also kind of had a problem of like sort of in the opposite direction of like language that was really common then um but is like considered super problematic now like as a for instance um like i think i had a uh a scene where felix cora's brother calls something gay in like a derogatory way which you know a 13 year old in 2007 absolutely would have um but like you know we had these conversations about like do we want to be true to the period or keep in mind who's reading it now and you know defaulted to the who's reading it now even though it is accurate that doesn't mean it needs to be there do you think your history of doing video essays will influence more folks to make video essays analyzing your work is that an exciting prospect or a dreadful one i mean i guess it's not really relevant to me because i wouldn't watch it i don't i don't think it's fair i get that not all authors are like that but i think just from an ethical standpoint i shouldn't engage with stuff like that like that's not for me that's for other people to have discussions that said i think it would be more likely for me if only because the type of viewer i have and the type of audience i have is more likely to be interested in video essays how much of your theories did you have done before queried i mean i had definitely had it mapped out by the time it sold and we pitched them five and they bought one and they bought two more after the pre-sale numbers for the first one came in so thanks for that so basically three out of five are under contract and whether i get to finish it i guess is contingent on how well the first three do so a question for everyone else who has read the book does everyone envision lindsay as cora while reading this and if so what is lindsay's opinion of this ah that sucks honestly you know this is like something that most authors don't have to deal with so i guess as an author i would like to die i would like for people not to be thinking of me and other things that i've done while they're reading it but obviously like you know like i say death of the author for the most part is not a very applicable to the real world theory that's just not realistic where do we send fan letters um here this is my business email super early but what's your dream cast and director for an adaptation christian slater would make a great nils oh yeah that would be i never thought of that yeah he died he'd be perfect the only casting that i thought was kind of a good idea was uh pedro pascal as nils but you know we probably couldn't afford him what build is cora in oblivion dark elf uh mage but also she doesn't really like oblivion because oblivion sucks she prefers more wind because it's better should i read axiom's end that depends on what you're into in your how to get a book deal video you said your agent pinpointed the issue with why agents thought they could not sell this and you fixed and suggested that you might share one day are you ready to share it now are you really one weird trick that was keeping me from getting a literary agent was cora's age in the original draft she was 19 not 21 and you might be thinking oh well really what so the first chapter in the final version she's at work she's a temp uh and she's dropped out of college but in the first draft she was in school she was like you know in college rather than at work and so that first chapter felt a little too y a curious so it's not really a deal breaker for like character age in genre fiction it's more just like how it's presented and so the fact that she was a little she was young in the first chapter was at school felt a little too y a curious and so we aged her up and that was it adding two years to her age what advice would you give to beginner slash novice writers for one thing don't make my mistake and over revise i think another is um once you get to the editorial phase except that most editorial notes are suggestions they're not mandatory and editors don't expect you to incorporate all of them let alone even most of them depending on the notes would you agree that axioms in falls within the horse girl genre yeah since the setting is irl does that mean that lindsay ellis exists in the universe of the setting you know i'm going to go with no i just got to keep it simple no i was never born in this universe the green brothers exist though what part of axiom's end were you unsure about but you found turned out really well i guess sort of the dynamic between the two leads i didn't know if people would buy into it and that was kind of another reason why i was so squirrely about the actual content of the book um because i didn't want to market it on almost sort of like this borderline romance because publishing be sexist but you know by that same token it's not for everybody like it is a hard definitely not for everybody and so i think the result is that a lot of people read it based on this sort of like government conspiracy thriller blurb that probably would not have if they knew that the main substance of the book is not that and i guess the people that did like it you know responded to it in the way that i was hoping so i guess that but by that same token again not for everybody the physicality of the aliens feels very vivid and visceral while thinking of their anatomy what kind of visual and material references did you make for yourself did you settle on their general shape from the start or was it a longer process it was kind of both because it's like i always had an idea of the general shape that was always there from the very beginning but the details um changed a lot and kind of only really settled towards the end with the various characters having different opinions on the truth as a human right debate where on that spectrum do you fall uh regrettably i think i'm probably a centrist what i think is what is true matters not as much as how the truth is framed because any truth can be weaponized but on the whole i think like it's it's more complicated than just full transparency because you know again any true thing can be framed in a way that ultimately furthers a uh completely unrelated political agenda are you a panther plotter or in-between hard plotter um outlined a lot do you naturally write in third person or was this a choice made specifically for this book was first person ever considered no i don't know i think in a weird way first person feels more stylistic to me than third person for some reason i guess if it's if it's in in my head anyway if it's in first person i feel like there needs to be a narrative reason like who is this person telling the story to and why and i know logically that doesn't make any sense like third person is just as much of a stylistic choice but i guess if i was gonna write in first person i would need there to be a reason like a narrative reason of like why this person is telling their story how do you think your experience and screenwriting influenced the novel well i feel like it has a very screenwritingy style i i feel like my prose is very utilitarian and you know that's just a taste thing some people like that some people don't um also just like in terms of structuring it i think more than anything the structure like basically like um points of attack inciting incidents act breaks um different sequences taking place in different things and having different tensions um framing it like that was very influenced by screenwriting and apparently that is becoming increasingly common what would you change about the first book and how will you be adapting what you learned in the second book there were times when i i kind of deferred to um editorial um i think maybe to the books detriment where you know they'd ask for certain things and then i'm not going to say what they are because then you're going to be like where is it but like i'd do it and then i you know in hindsight would realize like this feels kind of forced but then i'd kind of leave it i think the other thing is reading it too much like reading it too many times and revising it too many times i think that is i think that's definitely a trap first time authors fall into whereas you know it's your first time and you want it to be perfect but then like uh the result is you read over the same sentences over and over and over and then they just start to lose meaning and then you stop being able to construct a sentence that um you know is flows well i noticed a lot of criticism about like the writing style especially like in the first third um and i think part of the reason it does feel kind of clunky is because i read it too many times and i revised it too many times and the result was that like you know the the words just stop carrying meaning so for the sequel for the most part when i finished a draft i would just put it away and do not look at it until it came back uh from editorial with like here's what you need to do the thing is like when you're doing revisions if you've looked at the sentences too many times each time you look at it it becomes harder and harder to re structure it into something that like flows better or sounds better [Music] what was the biggest most surprising change from your original draft book one i guess it depends on what you consider the original draft when i compare the trunked version to the final version a the trunked version was like way too chicken [ __ ] about the you know primary relationship therefore it was very sterile and very no emotions allowed and the other biggie was where the exposition happened and um there would be like these big exposition dumps towards the beginning um which i you know upon reflection i was like holy [ __ ] this you know it works so much better if like when she meets amber sand she knows nothing you know and so she kind of has it's a journey of discovery rather than having all the information ahead of time but i guess also like in in those super early drafts what kind of ended up being the meat of the book wasn't really there at all so like all these sort of getting to know you chapters that happen like in the middle in the bunker just did not exist like even a little with regards to the ending when ampersand goes but i'm not human i was like smiley face and then frowny face can't decide which feeling to have how do you view it i think that's correct that's the correct response to have did ampersand lie about the known number of space-faring species no but absolutely take everything he says with a grain of salt he obviously tends to omit truths if not outright lie and there are definitely some things in the first book that he lied about are amygdalins and their super organism the great filter no ampersand was telling the truth about that there's a lot of talk in the first book about like the great filter and why in in a sort of statistical likelihood standpoint this other intelligent civilization popped up relatively close to earth like only about 100 light years away which you know in the grand scheme is like really unlikely but no he was telling the truth about that the super organism is not the great filter although that will be elaborated on considerably in the sequel i remember that ampersand said he had two sim files was that chaefo and obelisk or was he not including chefo because he's dead uh that was not including chefo because he's dead he has two one is obelisk the other that is a really good catch of a throwaway line because it is a very important throwaway line and yes that will be explored considerably what were the amygdalin's evolutionary ancestors like and how do they get their energy since they don't eat um well they do eat a little uh christopher paolini's new book talks about this concept of like a a human [ __ ] mind which is basically like a brain that is you know kind of fed nutrients constantly um and in this case they can kind of almost have like a star trek replicator inside their own bodies so it's kind of like that basically like similar or those that exist in the bodies of a similar get their energy differently from everybody else because like you know espresso and all the other ones they don't have like these grand super powers then that's basically uh because they uh have a different form of energy but it's it's kind of same-ish and the simple answer is uh i went with uh matter anti-matter fusion and as for their ancestors um i don't know if i'll ever really get the opportunity to go into this because i have this whole like you know what kind of star did their planet well not play because like in my mind it was like a moon that ordered like a gas giant around like a um like a like a k-type star a red giant um so the atmosphere would look very different the greenhouse effect would be very different the air pressure would be different um and that's sort of being like why our sun is very like yeah yeah it's just like way brighter than they were evolved for and that's part of where their eyes are so big um that and that and big eyes is cute and alien i guess it's like kind of a complicated question that i always kind of have in the back of my mind while writing but i don't know if it'll ever actually make it to the page because it may never be relevant to the actual prose but the simple answer is like you know ampersand mentions that it like the social group being very more similar to gorillas than like monogamous humans and their ancestors were also like strictly herbivorous which is part of why humans are so like ah okay it's like i kind of imagine like if humans had evolved as like strict natural vegetarians and then coming in contact with aliens that ate animals that would just be like oh my god that's awful but i guess that's more subtext than anything at the beginning of part four cora mentioned she can hear better infliction and even a slight accent with ampersand's voice uh why does she hear it clearer before the bond i think that's just because um that doesn't really have anything to do with uh bonding that's just he improved the the text to talk speech to sound more natural he did not create that software that's just mac and talk and he figured out how to like you know apply it to an earbud that he made but really it's just over the course of the novel he improves his serie that doesn't really have anything to do with uh any mystical e.t soul bonds having gotten to the end and read the special thanks i have to ask is this novel a low-key starscream fanfic i get that a lot and it's kind of a weird question to me because i think on a personality level amber sand and starscream have nothing in common i'm stupid i'm stupid i guess they are both kind of jerks but like they're you know they're very different characters um ampersand was not in any way inspired by starscream i'd say obelisk was a little though there is a hidden starscream in there i've seen one person catch it how much of you is in cora and what other sources did you draw inspiration from her personality i guess off the top of my head not a lot to be honest like i guess we're roughly the same age but her mid-2000s experience was very different from mine and and like the way she handled things was very different from mine like she was very unambitious her family is nothing like mine i was extremely ambitious and like honestly borderline entitled like i did not know how to deal with failure like i still don't i also i also like to think i'm a lot funnier than she is like i'm more witty than she is i guess in a weird way i think i have more in common with ampersand and this sort of combination of being really controlling really emotionally unavailable and borderline authoritarian in a weird way it's easier to pick out your similarities with an alien character because he's representing something more symbolic than just like a human character who has a regular human personality and that can be a little more difficult to suss out did you base nils off of any whistleblower in particular yes it's julian assange it was like i could try to be like oh you know she's like he's a combination nah it's julian assange sorry let me backpedal that a little bit his function in the world as celebrity whistleblower is based on julian assange his personality is not or at least it wasn't intentional whenever i was writing it way back in the day i like went way out of my way to not research assange's life or i didn't want to read any interviews he'd done i didn't want to know about him as a person because i didn't want nils's personality to be based off of julian assange but inadvertently they definitely ended up having a lot in common bless you for not killing the dogs and also for letting us know they were safe i'll say this i will never kill a dog in a book that is the lindsay ellis promise did you intentionally starve korra so she had to eat the whole plate i double plate someone on twitter was like if there's no whole plate joke in there i'm gonna be really disappointed and i just kind of was like oh yeah that'd be funny so i just push it put it in there on a whim i didn't really think about it and so now half of my twitter mentions are about oh you put the whole plate in red the whole what was the inspiration for ampersand's appearance would you ever consider official art getting made i keep wanting to the inspiration is sort of like this combination of um like just things i like to look at things i find inherently like appealing not necessarily beautiful like just striking i guess like i really like spiders um i really like praying mantises we have a bunch of pet spiders and mantises and also this sort of like hypothetical evolutionary ancestor of like what does a bipedal herbivore look like because um and maybe you'll have things like kangaroos or guanodons so i guess like structurally it's sort of a combination of like an iguanodon and a dragon also because i just i like dragons like if there's a dragon in a book there's a dragon in a thing i'm here i'm here for that dragon is the is it a good dragon is it a bad dragon is is it are we dragging shifters or are we are we rioting dragons are we fighting dragons i don't care i'm i'm i'm here for those dragons that's part of why there's there's something a little draconian in the way that they look not draconian dragon like that was another word i got dinged for like no that's not what draconian means and there was also incorporating like insectoid and arachnoid characteristics not because they felt alien well yeah because they felt alien but also just because i i i like them like they are appealing to me personally but i got a mantis in my panties okay from what i can tell korra is kind of a self-insert so in what ways is korra different from you besides her dad of course do male authors get this question i don't think she's a self-insert any more than any like every man-style protagonist is i guess as i mentioned earlier i don't really have much in common with her personality at all like she's good with kids i am not you know despite being an oldest her way of coping with the world is to kind of fade into the background you know she's a she's more of a water sign i guess she's kind of conflict diverse i am very confrontational i guess she's she's latina i'm not she's catholic i'm not um never had any problems you know supporting myself never had to move back in with my family never had this sort of contentious relationship with my parents and certainly never called them by their first name like you have every man characters that are kind of a fish out of water because like they need the world explained to them some of the time and you know that is a really common thing especially in genre fiction you know but that doesn't mean they're self-inserted it just just means that the reader needs an entry point and i guess i kind of wonder like if if if cora in commercial fiction is considered a blank slate what wouldn't be how many dicks does ampersand have too many dates that's a complicated question um bex living in a post-natural body and being born sterile um he doesn't have any um reproductive organs but if he did he wouldn't have a penis it would be a nova positor but i guess the corollary to that is uh he does have some limited shape-shifting ability obviously so i guess it depends on how creative he wants to get he could have infinite well not infinite but as many as you can fit did i imagine a parallel between the hospital scene at the end of vaccine's end and the end of twilight well i mean you can make all the parallels you want like and i have seen this a lot it wasn't intentional but i guess the other thing i would say about that is uh you know convalescent scenes are pretty common at the end of thrillers um because you know if someone gets hurt a lot of times the denouement will take place in a hospital um like you know even bright ends in a hospital uh like the prequel to this uh futuristic violence and fancy suits ends with a very similar uh convalescent scenes like i'm very actually similar um so i just say like yeah but i would also argue that ending thrillers in hospitals is not at all uncommon was it always the plan to end the first book in the way that you did i thought the last line was fantastic and it left a really strong impression you know that's funny because i get really mixed reactions on the ending i i was kind of surprised by that because i yes the ending was always exactly what it was like there there was always a bonding moment at the end of act two beginning of act three and this conversation that they have in the convalescent stage in a hospital basically you know where normally you know et leaves at the end of the book he decides to stay and yes that was even from like super early first draft that was always the ending um and i guess the thing that surprised me is like some people really were like yes what a great ending and some people were like wow that was so abrupt that just ended and i was like i guess i you know i was i was kind of surprised by the people who thought it was abrupt because i in my mind i was like it was very very set up how did you get the idea to name the pug monster truck my friend's ex-boyfriend's roommate had a pug named monster truck and i thought that was funny does ampersand's race have starships and if so what are they like sort of so a civilian is not going to travel your friend or group is kind of an outlier and should not be counted generally similars or in ampersand's case an individual that is stolen from basically the body of a similar are the ones that explore because those are the bodies that are built to withstand different planetary like gravities and air pressure and stuff like that but being these sort of cyborgy things they don't need a lot of room they can just kind of go into stasis for you know years and decades on end so yes they do have starships but they kind of would more look like you know an apollo capsule like they're really really small means that you know it requires less thrust to get up to light speed and and that is its whole own complicated thing if you want to talk about like you know thrust and energy and getting up to light speed and why that is impossible and why that would need so much energy after a certain point so yeah despite the fact that their bodies are pretty big their starships are pretty small the majority of the mass is going to be devoted to uh energy and energy production the actual living spaces are really really small but the ones that are here are not on earth they are safely away in orbit where humans cannot [ __ ] with them aside from ampersand who is your favorite monster boyfriend i mean come on it's the beast he fell and i landed on my amberson was surprised at the speed humans had advanced in a few hundred years was the precursor species to amygdalin slower than humans in that regard they were definitely slower they were way slower and part of that is sort of like nature related one of the sort of dynamics is uh ampersand being really surprised that we go to space not because we have to do it to survive which is what their ancestors did they only kind of started exploring um space as a as a need for survival um meanwhile humans do it because it's there you know because and that's just very like why would you do something so dangerous if you didn't absolutely have to and they're also kind of like naturally less competitive they're much more risk-averse you know meanwhile humans are just so dumb so it's not necessarily that they were less problem-solving but like the things that make humans the things that made our technology turbocharged like being really competitive and being really risk-takey um they didn't really have so that's part of why they were a lot slower uh advancing wise why they would have advanced over a period of like from developing writing to you know cracking the space barrier it would be like 20 30 000 years as opposed to our six ish five six thousand years was the genomes fate planned from the start or did you decide on it later yes uh very first draft genome died do you have an era appropriate song for your couple ship i don't know my my instinct is like some cheesy 80s song like this who funds nils or does he sell merch like gay frog pills um he's not to the gay frog pills stage of his career yet i wouldn't put it past him but right now he's funded by donations i'm curious about the moment ampersand and cora's feelings changed i have a solid idea for cora but less solid for amber sand was it realizing she was also afraid of her own government yeah actually i think yeah because i think that is like uh the most traumatizing thing that ever happened to him was like being expelled from the bloody politic you devoted your life to how do you feel about fan fiction and fan art of your work which fan art has been most like your vision um i feel positively about it i support it but i also feel like i shouldn't comment on it because um you know i don't want to be like this person is correct but you you know i think whatever you have in your head is valid like you know your vision of the thing that i wrote is it's not wrong although i guess my main differentiation from in the fan art that i've seen it's like the little i've seen of obelisk has been darker than um the rest of them like no they're all the same color they're all kind of this silvery white thing um and uh ampersand has a really big head relative to like the rest of his body who are some of cora's favorite music artists and songs um which of them would ampersand find interesting or intriguing well to the latter half of the question none of them they'd all kind of sound the same to him but for cora's favorites i actually have a playlist for that and i'll link it in the description is the similarity and concept between awoken and axioms and coincidental did you find that your experience writing a human girl eldritch horror romance translated well i get yeah i guess it's sort of like awoken was the i was when you do an ironic version of a thing you kind of want to take seriously and not just me because i think like you know lisa's book is as similar to mine in a lot of ways especially with its relation to awoken we had a jokey joke version of a thing where we eventually wrote a book that took a similar concept and took it [Music] seriously would you like to write a meeting between cora and her dad they will meet eventually will a member of either of the two absent space-faring species sister species species x appear in the sequel and will we acquire names for those species yes and yes well they'll appear in this series let's leave it at that will cora's lingua skills become relevant in sequel it seems a little odd that the protagonist is a linguist and yet she never has to do any of the translating thanks to ampersand's auto translator well a linguist is not a translator first of all those are two very different things but the main reason i had her like have a very rudimentary understanding of linguistics is i wanted her to be able to put words to just how little we understood and how for the most part the study of human linguistics doesn't really apply to alien linguistics like for instance a huge component of human linguistics is just mouth sounds and um the way words are constructed or syntax so it was it was less about her having a skill set that she could apply so much as her being able to put words to the sheer limitations of being able to apply human language to this hypothetical alien language i had the pleasure of experiencing your novel through the excellent audiobook reading performed by stephanie willis and oliver thorne will they be reprising their roles in the sequel um probably although the sequel will have three readers i hope i think is there anything you had to cut from axioms and that will be in the sequel it's mostly world building stuff there was some stuff in earlier drafts that was a reveal in the first book but i realized would be a more powerful reveal in later books and then there's just some like world building stuff like the conversation on gender got shunted into later books so yeah i mean not a whole lot it was mostly world building is there smut in book 2 or are you going to make us wait longer yes but whatever you're thinking you're probably wrong since bush resigned who's the next president going to be well it's dick cheney it was kind of surreal because i had to type the words president cheney like at least a dozen times would irl covey get along with book cabe um yes uh but mostly because both iterations uh kind of get along with everybody joke question when is core going to get it in already let me just say of like the uh beta readers editors and agents who have read the sequel um eyebrows have been raised is it easier to write a sequel having established a core cast and concept are the answers to narrative questions or problems more obvious in my experience it was so much easier part of that was because i kind of came up with the concept for the sequel before i came up or really nailed the concept for the first one because in my mind the first one is mostly set up to me um i know i know like the meat cute people will always kind of like that the most but like really the first one was like set up for where i wanted to go the sequel has two point of view characters instead of one and um i for some reason found that made it so much easier like being able to hop from different points of view and also just having done it before you have a much better idea of your process so yeah i found the sequel so much easier to write than the first one will sloop john b make an actual appearance in the future yes could we expect a sequel to follow cora and ampersand or some new characters both straightforward question are we looking at a time skip between books if so how long yes small time skip about three months when did you start planning and writing the sequel to axiom's end again before the first book was even written and i guess after the second one comes out i guess i can talk about like what it was because primarily it was like it was a character dynamic thing but mainly it was just this sort of like broad premise idea of how does society cope with this first contact scenario um where the world doesn't end but also nobody really has any information like how does society cope with that and i guess that was the thing that interested me more than anything that's really in the first book are we going to be seeing more of that [ __ ] journalist copy uh i guess yeah here's the biggest spoiler of all yes um cave is not only a major character in the second book he is also the second point of view character and that's my big reveal and yeah and so i guess for those of you who listen to my podcast i guess we'll talk about that next year i did not know i was going to have a podcast with a guy named carly oh you seen cloud atlas right unfortunately oh my god do you love cloud outlets oh my god wow so that was a lot like that went on long enough that the sun has completely changed places but anyway thanks for watching you can buy this for your monster lover friend in your life for christmas or hanukkah or new years or persian new year whatever whatever whatever you happen to celebrate or for the hell of it it's not like we're going anywhere anytime soon if you don't want to support the big box sites you can buy it from bookshop.org which gives part of its proceeds to help support independent bookstores during the pandemic you can also get the audiobook on audible or librofm or wherever you get your fine audiobooks or consider any one of these fine potential christmas gifts for the sff lover in your life or yourself and uh that's it for this year at least in terms of video content and the sequel is called truth of the divine it'll be released in 2021 there is it's in the fall i don't they don't have a date officially it's sometime in the fall probably and yeah so here's here's to a better 2021. it's only uphill from here right

Channel: Lindsay Ellis

Views: 244,822

Rating: 4.9381194 out of 5

Keywords: lindsay ellis videos, lindsay ellis video essay, lindsay ellis review

Id: TJWAxMfFAOg

Length: 42min 17sec (2537 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dr_franck]

Wait can someone help refresh my memory (I listened to the audio book, so it’s harder to skim through chapters)? Who is this “journalist” character Kaveh?

[u/marksiwelforever]

That answered all the questions I had

[u/eddytony96]

I can't help but wonder... Did she screen the questions before she read them? I would assume she did, but then why would she respond to questions she found annoying, why wouldn't she just skip them? Or at least edit them out?