Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Sam Muller

What inspired you to write “I Will Paint the Night”?

Muller: Fairy tales, primarily. I grew up listening to my grandmother’s fairy tales and Snow White was a favorite one. Much later, I found out that the villainess in the original Snow White was not stepmother but mother. There was no stepmother in the story the Grimm Brothers collected during their forays. Meaning that was the story that was passed down from generation to generation for centuries. But when the first edition was published in 1812, 19th Century sensibilities were offended. So in the next edition, mother was replaced by stepmother.

That made me think about how tropes come into being and how villains are made. That was how I got the idea for the novel, a story where the stepmother is killed and the stepdaughter, who loved her dearly, becomes the main suspect – and tries to find the killer. Early in the story, Allii, the stepdaughter, muses, “Stepmother; was there ever a word more seeped in myth, laden with tradition? One hardly ever heard of evil stepfathers, but which stepmother wasn’t evil?” And such ‘villainizing’ is something we do not just in stories but in real life, isn’t it? Agatha Christie is another of my literary loves, and the idea of writing cozy mystery came from that. I love dogs; and I wanted a dog-human partnership in my story. Since this was fantasy, I made Spooky a daemon-dog, someone who can take the shape of any canid.

How did you come up with the names of your main characters?

Muller: They are named after dogs I knew. I had an Allie who died young. Spooky was the first dog all of my own (we had family dogs previously). They are the two main characters in the book. I keep the originals in mind when I shape the characters, fill them up. That turns writing into not just a literary exercise but an emotional one as well.

Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?

Muller: I don’t plan my stories. I start when a germ of an idea occurs to me and wing it. Sometimes it works, other times, it flounders. I like the uncertainty. It adds spice to the hard work of writing, making it kind of fun.

I have written several posts in the last few months about world-building, basically where I draw my ideas from. Our world’s history and geography are unfailing sources. So are every day news from our present. That is where I get most of my ideas from. For example, in I will Paint the Night, Allii and Spooky comes across a valley of waterfalls: “We were on a narrow horseshoe-shaped ledge studded with dark grey rocks veined in black. Eight caves, like the one we had traversed, opened up to the ledge. From each a river gushed out and tumbled down to the unseen depths in cascades of silver. Above the ledge cliffs rose, steep and unwelcoming; below the visibility ended in a cloud of mist. Rainbows weaved in and out of the waterfalls. The spray from the tumbling water filled the air. Caught by sunlight, they turned into tiny pearls before vanishing.

An entire landscape of waterfalls! Who in the relative safety of their family, would believe the world could hold so many wonders?”

This scene was inspired by a real-life marvel, our world’s incredible geography.

Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?

Muller: Never give up, not if you have a story to tell and the will and the capacity to tell it. Writing it a labor of Sisyphus, no less. If I got a cent for every rejection I received from agents, I’ll be filthy rich.

Revise and revise. I will Paint the Night went through two versions. The first one was in the third person. Then I changed it into the first person. So altogether more than two years. Then uncountable revisions. I kept on tweaking it until I found my publisher.

Listen to beta readers and critique partners. We become so familiar with our own stories we can miss anything, big, small, critical, mundane. In an earlier version of I will Paint the Night, I had written tale where I should have written tail. The kind of mistake spell checks won’t help. You need eagle-eyed betas and CPs for that.

What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?

Muller: I read across genres (except romance and extreme-horror) and have multiple favorite authors. Fiction authors I return to again and again: Phillip Pullman, Terry Pratchett, Ursula Le Guin, E Nesbit, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Albert Camus, and JRR Tolkien, among others. And Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree books. They can still enchant.

What are you working on next?

Muller: The sequel to I will Paint the Night, plus couple of new short stories. The inciting incident is the disappearance of booksellers. Here is a kind of a blurb/synopsis, in case you are interested.

The city-state of Sammalore is renowned as a Republic of words, a haven for books, and those who love them. Now bookshop owners are disappearing, even from homes as fortified as fortresses. 

Allii was an itinerant investigator before the collapse of the city-state she resided in turned her into a penniless refugee. With a day-job as a street-cleaner, she tries to forget and rebuild – until the bookshop owner she moonlights for vanishes. Determined to find him, she agrees to work with Mufhilah, the secretive head of Sammalore’s elite investigators. With her daemon dog Spooky at her side, Allii discovers that there’s more at stake than missing booksellers – the real crime is the slow murder of a city. The suspects include almost everyone: from Allii’s street-cleaning buddies to Mufhilah and his bosses.

Allii is tired of running. She’d do anything save her new home from the fate of her previous one. But as bodies pile up, and they narrowly escape a charred end, she is reminded of Spooky’s favourite line from their first investigation: How dangerous it is to live among humans, even for humans.

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