We adore Grace Curtis over here at Hodderscape, and I for one, cannot stop raving about her books to anyone that will listen. A leading voice in uplifting, cosy sci-fi, and now turning her skills to the fantasy genre too, Grace is an author that know no bounds. Her work shines a light on much needed conversations whilst whisking you away on unforgettable journeys.
Her debut novel Frontier, is a queer space western about climate change (really!), which came out in March 2023. The follow up Floating Hotel is a charming story of misfits, rebels and found family, a UK bestseller and recently the Waterstones Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book of the Month. Idolfire, her first work of fantasy is a sapphic romance inspired by the fall of Rome, and let me tell you, the switch of genre has done nothing to slow her down!
When she's not dreaming up stories, Grace can usually be found up a hill somewhere, climbing or hiking or lolling idly in the grass.
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From climate-ravaged world to once-grand hotel in space ̶ and now to a journey across an ancient-feeling world to a mythical city, your settings are always vividly imagined and distinct. Did anything particularly inspire this latest iteration?
Oh yeah!! I think a couple main things. The first is post-Roman Britain, when settlers from mainland Europe found the ruins the Empire left behind with no idea who built them and how. Imagine having no concept of a city and then stumbling across an abandoned London. It's awe inspiring.
The other was my favorite open world video games: an early pitch was a story that begins as Breath of the Wild and gradually transforms into Dark Souls. Anor Londo was an important touchpoint when I was creating Nivela. If you know you know!
Do you have a favourite character across your three books? Or rather, one that was the most enjoyable to write?
I will always have a huge soft spot for Amber Keeper, the librarian from Frontier. She was the first character I created for that novel and writing her really helped me discover my voice. In terms of pure fun, probably Aleya from Idolfire, cuz she's so bristly, and I find that kind of perspective very easy to inhabit. Probably because I'm fairly bristly myself, hahaha.
Has your writing process changed much since writing Frontier?
I'm more disciplined now and much less precious about my first drafts, less determined for them to be perfect - that's one of the benefits of working with an editor and getting to share the mental load a bit. I guess I see writing more as a collaborative process now. But my approach in building stories is much the same, trying to plan while leaving room for serendipity, and writing everything really, really, obnoxiously slowly.
The SFF genre seems to inspire incredible queer representation, especially recently. What do you think it is about the genre that makes it a safe space for these stories?
Queer people are great fantasizers. Partially because fantasizing is fun, but I think it's also something of a survival tactic; the world doesn't show you a model of what your life will look like, so you have to make one up. Invent the future as you go. So I'm not surprised we're over-represented in the making stuff up sectors. I arrived at a good time, when people like Becky Chambers had already kicked the door open and proved there's a large, enthusiastic market for this stuff. I'll always be grateful to the queer authors who came ahead of me and I hope I can keep kicking that door to splinters for the ones who come next.
And the question everyone is dying to know the answer to ... What can we expect from you next?
It's a weird 'un. I've been pitching book 4 as a sinister lesbian history mystery - set 2000 years after the events of Idolfire, it's about an archeologist with an intense parasocial crush on Aleya who's obsessed with proving the events of Idolfire really happened. This leads her to dig up some stuff that's better left buried. My idea is that you can read this and Idolfire together but in either order. Companion novels!!
