CASSANDRA JEANNE FARRIN is a speculative fiction author and editor with a keen interest in history and religion. Her novels have shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award and longlisted for the Bath Novel Award, including an early draft of Prince Darling, her vivid reimagining of the fairytale of the same name, for which she is newly represented. Cassandra lives in Idaho with her identical twin sister and their three adoptive children.
Many congratulations accepting representation for Prince Darling, from not one, but two literary agents at Azantian Literary: Jen Azantian and Thais Afonso. Why two agents?
Thank you so much! When I queried Thais, little did I know that a whole conversation would unfold behind the scenes between Jen and Thais that involved them both reading my novel Prince Darling and ultimately meeting with me together to discuss rep! It’s a bit of an understatement to say that I was blown away by their passion and their deep understanding of what I tried to do with this book.
It’s not uncommon for agents to team up where they can support each other and the author with complementary roles. For me, I’ve always seen myself as writing for a global audience, beyond where I live in rural Idaho. I love that both Thais and Jen share that broad mindset with me about what it means to be a storyteller. We all have life experience spanning multiple cultures, inter-generationally and through travel / work abroad and nontraditional families. We’ve all got a passion for nuanced postcolonial and queer stories and “found” family. It’s a gift to have both their insights on my work as partners on this publishing journey!
Azantian is as much a community as an agency, and I am so grateful to all my fellow ALA authors already for the warm welcome. In the short time since Jen founded the agency in 2014, this team has advocated for some truly cool and transformative work that pushes the boundaries of genre, and it’s just this incredible confidence boost to be a part of it.
You’ve mentioned that you have had moments where you thought that this moment might never come. What kept you going?
I’ve had plenty of ups and downs over the years, but I had an especially difficult time around the time COVID hit in earnest and then onward through that next year or so. I couldn’t seem to finish anything I started. I stopped querying for the most part and dabbled in my novels but felt a bit directionless and unsure of how to improve.
That changed when I became a new parent in 2021. Our third child arrived in our arms at 10 days old, and suddenly we were newborn parents with basically no warning, no supplies, no plan in place. We’d adopted our older children at 4 and 2 years old, so we had no experience with newborn parenting. I gave myself permission not to write anything at all, just enjoy our baby. But the funny thing is, suddenly I found myself writing a “just for fun” novel and finishing it, almost without my fully noticing!
When I go back now and reread my journal entries from that time, I see a pattern of someone who needed a bit of indulgence and joy. It hit me that I was going to write whether I was published or not, because writing is an immersive, creative act I do simply to be happy. Once I set aside the question of “should I write,” it really came back down to, “well, if you’re going to write these novels, you might as well start querying them again.” I restarted querying in 2024 and immediately noticed a shift in energy in agent responses, with lots of full requests and conversation and engagement all the way through, so I had this heart-in-throat feeling that it might just happen this time around. And in October I signed with Thais and Jen at Azantian!
“As a writer, you know, we’re on our own for so long laboring over a story like this, and suddenly you’re on a call hearing someone speak right to the heart of what you were trying to do. “
What was your approach to querying agents and what advice would you give to other authors seeking representation?
My approach to querying in general was never really all-or-nothing. At any given time over the past seven years, I would send out a small batch of queries (by which I mean around ten queries, give or take) for one or two different novels while working on a different one. I tried to take a learning and growing outlook. If I didn’t get interest, or I noticed a pattern in responses, I’d take that as a possible place to start for my next round of revisions when I circled back around to that novel. It was hard, I’m not going to lie. I was very impatient at times. I had my painful moments where I wondered if I should give up.
My best advice is to read a lot and write a lot, in a circle. Many writers have shared anecdotally that they had to finish three, four, five novels—and often rewrite them!—before they hit a level where they started hearing something positive back from agents. That was true for me. And the time I spent on those projects helped me develop my own personal approach to writing, because there’s no one right way to do it. And of course, put yourself out there! Go to that writing group, submit your writing to those awards and opportunities! Do query!
How did you pitch Prince Darling to Azantian?
I pitched Prince Darling as a queer romantic fantasy that combines the quirky, if at times dark, magical world of Heather Fawcett’s novel Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries with the odd couple queer romance of A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske.
Prince Darling is set in an alternate Victorian Edinburgh with a goblin underworld. Why goblins?
My twin sister was homeschooling our kids at the time, and as a family, we used to read aloud fairy tales from The Blue Fairy Book alongside poems like Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. I was particularly charmed by Goblin Market and an obscure fairy tale called Prince Darling, which is about a badly behaved—but very well loved—prince. But of course both are relics of their eras, and even though I couldn’t stop thinking about them, I knew I was going to have to subvert them to do them justice.
Goblins are traditionally ugly but also mischievous, and if you read the original Prince Darling fairy tale you’ll see the Prince was made “hideous” as punishment for his bad behavior. The deeper I got into my research, the more I realized that racism and religious persecution and gender all had to be dealt with meaningfully in the story that I was trying to tell. As I naturally came to think of Prince Darling as goblin, what probably drove me the most was the idea of doing justice to goblins somehow. I wanted to lean into the traits they are best known for to give them their own epic—and romantic!—story. So, in my version of things, humans like the minister’s son John Dunham and the poet Ines Maria are the ones who behave most badly, while Prince Darling and his goblin companions have all the charm and righteousness on their side . . . well, even if they are still pretty mischievous!
You mentioned on Instagram that during their pre-offer call, Jen and Thais they told you what they loved about your writing and quoted favourite lines. Can you say a bit more about what they pinpointed?
Oh my goodness, I was fighting back tears through that part of the call. As a writer, you know, we’re on our own for so long laboring over a story like this, and suddenly you’re on a call hearing someone speak right to the heart of what you were trying to do. One thing they mentioned that was very validating for me was that the prose was “stunning, stylistic and period appropriate [for the setting in 1840s Edinburgh], but accessible and funny and inviting.”
That stood out to me because I struggled a lot early on with my prose not being accessible enough. My sentences would get all tangled up. I didn’t want to write a book that readers would feel shut out of somehow, but I still wanted to invite them to fall in love with literature all over again through reading it. I wanted to include poems, which I know can be intimidating sometimes for readers. I DID want to make people laugh in the midst of it all. So striking that balance was very important to me.
You also said that it was incredible to find crystal clear direction for your manuscript. What was their vision for Prince Darling and what revisions were agreed to get ready to go out on submission to publishers?
What we set out to do on this recent round of revisions was really dig into how the magic worked and why it mattered to the story. This is a novel in which poetry can open up “veils” in hidden places right here in our everyday world, and the Fey and their kingdoms are themselves poetry come to life. Ministers are the healers and keepers of the edges of things, where human and Fey meet. And poets are the explorers, who carry the risk and reward with them of world-making and world-breaking.
So I spent a lot of time meticulously working through how each of those roles show up in the story, and what happens when they clash. Which naturally leads to questions about characters—who they are, how they ended up in these roles and how much they embrace or fear what it means for them. And of course, what happens when you fall in love across those lines!
“Let your voice shine. Don’t worry about how other people write or what will sound “serious” enough. There’s no one right way to do it.”
What have your Bath Novel Awards listings meant to you?
The hands down best thing about the shortlist experience, in particular, was that I got to read actual comments from my readers and hear directly what they loved about my book! It was my first ever experience of fan mail! Since I couldn’t attend the award ceremony in person for the shortlist, I tuned in via video call to hear my novel excerpt read aloud by one of the Junior Judges. To hear my story read like that, by someone who simply enjoyed it, was moving and fun—and exactly why I’ve always wanted to be published.
The community that has sprung up around the Bath Novel Awards is upbeat and optimistic—and even a bit playful! We all can’t help but read those snippets on socials in the lead-up to list announcements year after year to get that jolt of excitement around what stories might pop up. That naturally makes for a more light-hearted group, because you’re all laughing together about, “Oh, could that one be mine? Yes, let’s all claim that one. It’s very nice. I’ll take it!” Even if you don’t make the list ultimately, you bond over the fun of anticipation and remember why we’re all writers and readers to begin with.
Any advice for any writers thinking of entering this year’s prize?
I think what the Bath Novel Awards offer writers is a space where it’s okay to put your unpublished novel out there for respect and recognition, a truly rare opportunity. There are very, very few awards like it, where there is no gatekeeper except yourself. It just comes down to you finishing a novel and braving that “submit” button! So my first advice is: Do it! Don’t count yourself out! And if you don’t list at first, don’t be afraid to try again.
My second bit of advice is to let your voice shine. Don’t worry about how other people write or what will sound “serious” enough. I’ve enjoyed reading the BNA excerpts for years, and I have seen for myself that they are wildly different from one another. There’s no one right way to do it. Good luck!!
How long have you been writing Prince Darling?
I had to go and dig through all my old writing journals to find the answer to this! In February 2018, I wrote down the earliest lines for what would eventually become this novel. But I can’t tell you what the lines are, because they are both spoilers at the very end of the book!
I’ve actually written and revised four different novels over the years since then, so it’s a bit misleading to say it has taken “seven years” to write Prince Darling, but I had to grow a lot and learn a lot through my drafts and revisions of each of those books to finally get this manuscript to where it is now. The breaks were just as important as the active writing time.
You’re juggling a job, co-parenting three children with your twin sister, and writing. What’s your writing routine?
I do have a very busy work and home life, so I write in the evenings after my toddler goes to bed, around 7–10 p.m. most nights. I have never been a fast-drafter. I rarely write more than 250-500 words on any given day, but slowly and steadily, I end up with whole novels written.
I am an exploratory drafter, which means I don’t plot my novels in advance aside from a broad-strokes idea of what they’re about, and it usually takes me a couple of drafts to get them where I want them. Maybe embracing that small element of chaos in my writing style helps because I don’t worry about getting into the right “headspace” or anything like that. I just reread the last material I touched and then pick up where I left off!
Lastly, you were recently selected for Clarion West’s inaugural 9 month Novel Writing Workshop. What are you hoping to achieve on that?
That selection was such a bolt of lightning! I had about 50K words of a new novel in the vein of novels like When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill and To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose, with three separate timelines woven together. When I debated whether or not to put in an application, I thought, “Wow, this book is going to be pretty technically challenging to write, and I’m grappling with some serious themes around war and rural communities. The focus of this new workshop is on process for long-form writing. Maybe that could be a good fit and a chance to learn.”
I actually just at the beginning of February had an orientation meeting with my cohort members, our workshop leader Samit Basu (fabulous author of The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport), and the Clarion West coordinating team, and it was such a warm and welcoming environment, I’m thrilled to be a part of it already! There will be guest speakers, both authors and industry leaders, and we’ll be reading each other’s work. The best part is that it’s open to writers around around the world, because it is entirely virtual, so I hope that some BNA hopefuls out there will be able to give future iterations of the workshop a try themselves!
Interview by Caroline Ambrose
Prince Darling by Cassandra Jeanne Farrin
“A vivid and extraordinary fantasy inviting glimpses into Edinburgh’s goblin underworld.” – The Bath Novel Awards
No one loves Scotland’s goblins like Prince Darling, whose family coexisted with them deep below Victorian Edinburgh until the Fey hunter Sherlock orchestrated a coup that all but annihilated the goblins and left Darling orphaned, trapped in Goblin Hall as it slowly collapses. Like all Fey kingdoms, it can only exist through variorum: poetry brought to life.
On the night Darling attempts to make himself into a poem fearsome enough to oust Sherlock’s puppet king, a minister’s son named John Dunham ruins his efforts with a misguided attempt to save his soul. John’s prayers tangle hopelessly with Darling’s poetry: Now, if good-for-nothing John dies, so does Darling. But John must die for Darling to become the Goblin King, because John has become mixed up in the poetry of the throne.
To rid himself of John, Darling gambles on a variorum that requires him to shapeshift into a beast, a hound, and a bird. He must defeat his enemy in each form. But engineering John’s death would be easier if John were a little less, well, sweet about it—especially once Sherlock strikes a deal with an impoverished but ambitious poet who will stop at nothing to achieve greatness. With Darling’s kingdom increasingly pitted against his heart, he must commit to a metaphor true to both before he ends up a trophy in the hunter’s collection.
