Casey McQuiston shares 3 books that encourage them to take writing risks
The American romance author is known for their books including The Pairing and Red, White & Royal Blue
In their own words, Casey McQuiston has always "had one foot in an imaginary world."
The author of blockbuster romance novels including The Pairing, Red, White & Royal Blue, One Last Stop and I Kissed Shara Wheeler, McQuiston told CBC Books that they've been a voracious reader for as long as they can remember — and for them, writing and reading have always gone hand in hand.
"It wasn't like I ever made a decision like, 'I think I want to be a writer,'" they said. "It was like as soon as I knew what stories were, I was just making my own."
McQuiston's reading taste is expansive — from Victorian romance to hardcore fantasy and a lesbian space opera — and they explained that they enjoy reading books that encourage them to try new things in their writing.
They sat down with CBC Books to discuss three books that inspire them and have impacted their creative process.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Published posthumously in 1817, Persuasion is what McQuiston calls the "thinking man's Austen." Featuring Anne Elliot, a 27-year-old woman nearing spinster territory, the novel is about second chances and listening to your own heart.
Seven years before the start of the novel, Anne is persuaded to break off her engagement with the dashing captain Wentworth, a naval officer. When he comes back into her life, she's forced to reckon with the decision she made and wonders whether she was right in breaking it off after all.
"I really adore a romance that is built on yearning," said McQuiston. "That book is like, I would say, 95 per cent yearning."
McQuiston also loves the letters in the novel — and was even compelled to use the epistolary style in their own writing.
In Red, White & Royal Blue especially, McQuiston applies their own modern-day take on letter-writing in the form of emails and text messages between the two love interests.
"Sometimes with romance, there are things that you can have characters say to each other in a letter that if they said it in dialogue, it would feel so corny or it would feel so unrealistic that anyone would ever say that out loud," they said. "But with a letter, you can get so romantic, you can get so passionate and vulnerable in ways that I think it's really, really difficult to pull off in a dialogue scene. And so you're able to have these two characters directly communicate about their feelings."
Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series was the first high fantasy series that McQuiston read — and they quickly became obsessed with the enchanting world it's set in, its endearing characters and their wild adventures.
"Tolkien made me a genre lover," they said. "I was like, 'this is something I'm going to be reading for the rest of my life.'"
McQuiston even has half a tattoo sleeve dedicated to the Lord of the Rings universe. But it's Tolkien's writing that also keeps them coming back to the novels time and time again.
"Tolkien is one of the most formative writers of my life," they said. "Anytime I need a very classic frame of reference for something, there's always a passage from one of those books that I can lean on about pretty much any topic."
McQuiston is also inspired by the level of knowledge and obsession Tolkien has with his world-building.
"There's so much that he knows about his world that most people will never even read or see on a page, but he knows it, and you feel that he knows it. And I feel like I took so much away from that as a writer, too."
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The first book in the Locked Room series, Gideon the Ninth is a fantasy novel about lesbian necromancers in space.
"It's so funny," said McQuiston. "It's a book that takes itself so seriously and not seriously at all."
"The narration is so good and so sharp and funny and voicey and interesting and the world-building is so dense, so it takes you a couple reads to really understand it."
McQuiston also loves the way Tamsyn Muir plays with point of view (POV), specifically in the second book of the series, which is written partially in second-person narration and partially as a third-person rewrite of the events of the first book.
"It makes me want to be braver and more experimental and a more creative writer," said McQuiston. "I feel like reading books like that is why I had the courage to do this split POV experience in The Pairing where it was a little bit more of an unconventional approach for me."
Casey McQuiston's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
