Interview with Author Ciera Burch

Welcome Back, Booklovers! Today I'm back with another author interview and this time it's with Ciera Burch who is debuting with her ghastly middle grade novel Finch House. You can check out my Finch House review here and keep reading to get to know more about Ciera. 

Where did the idea for Finch House come from?

I had a lot of inspirations for the book—from books and tv shows like White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi and The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix—but my main inspo was my poppop’s basement. It’s the darkest, scariest place I’ve seen in a house that’s otherwise pretty filled with light and from childhood until now, it’s been the fear of everyone in my family (except my poppop!) who goes into the kitchen, especially at night. It made me want to write about an equally creepy basement in a much more haunted house. 

Was it challenging writing a book where the setting is one main location that also serves as its own character?

No, actually! It felt a bit easier than other things I’ve written that have moved around a lot. I’m a very character-driven writer and so writing a location that was also a character allowed me to get much more depth and insight into Finch House, more so than I normally do for locations. I got to spend a lot of time with it, building a history for it, and was able to highlight many of its nooks and crannies, and some of its own emotional turmoil, as Micah explored. 

Finch House, to me, is a much of a main character as Micah but with so many different aspects to it, and I really enjoyed giving out more and more of those as the book moved along. 

What do you do to get inside your character’s heads?

Oh, I wish I could get inside their heads! It’s more that they get in mine and refuse to leave until I tell the story (mostly) how they want me to. 

If I’ve already started writing, I usually go back and reread a few paragraphs, sometimes an entire chapter, to try and pick up the voice again. If it’s something brand new, I spend a lot of time, well, talking to myself. Getting to know the characters and the types of things they like, what scares them, how they would react to different situations. 

What is a significant way Finch House has changed since the first draft?

Oh, that’s a good question! I’d say Finch House being off-limits to Micah. It wasn’t something that was in the first draft—originally, Poppop didn’t like being around/near the house and would avoid it during their networking runs, but that was it. The suggestion to make it actively off-limits was a brilliant one from my editor that made everything much more tense and fun to write. 

How do you balance your job working on the editorial side in Children’s Publishing books while pursuing your own author career?

It was difficult at times! Sometimes deadlines coincided with busy times at work for me, especially being on a very small team, meaning I might be working later and have less time to actually write in any given week. But I did my best to try to squeeze in writing whenever I could—on my lunch break, on the train if I was going somewhere, and, most often, at night. I’m a big night owl so it wasn’t unusual for me to stay up until two or three in the morning writing and then go to bed and get up for work. 

What has been the most surreal part of your publication journey so far?

The entire cover process. I’m a big art lover and so the journey from talking illustrators to actually getting one (especially Alessia, whose fanart I was actually already familiar with and loved from other fandoms I’ve been a part of!) to being able to give my input on things that I liked or wanted changed was amazing to me. And getting a physical cover wrap was amazing! It’s something they don’t really do often in publishing anymore, especially not for non-picture books, so I was really floored at getting to see this artistic rendition of something I’d thought up and hold it in my hands long before I could hold the book itself. 

You also have your YA debut Something Kindred releasing next year. That book started as your thesis, correct? Can you talk a little bit about how that story came to be and what the book is about?

It did, yes! My master’s thesis. The summer before my senior year of college, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer on the 4th of July and actually died in late August—the day I moved back to D.C for my final year of college. The suddenness of everything was still very much on my mind during my first semester of grad school and when I was told that 100 pages of work would be due at the end of our three years…I at least knew what emotions I wanted to try and capture in my work. It, of course, ended up being much longer than 100 -pages. 

Something Kindred is about a teenage girl who, with her mother, moves to rural Maryland to help care for her dying, estranged grandmother and ends up discovering how haunted the town and its people are—both literally and figuratively. It’s a lot about death and forgiveness and history and trauma but it’s mostly about love and connection. Love for one’s family and one’s self, love in the face of forgiveness, and even romantic love—figuring out parts of who you are, sexuality included, through falling in love with someone else. 

If you could plan your dream book tour event, what would it consist of?

The introvert in me and the daydreamer in me are competing so hard right now. It would probably have an ice cream bar at every stop, be at a ton of cool indies in states/countries I’ve never been but always wanted to go to, and have lots of kids with great questions in attendance! Oh, and all of my conversation partners would be my favorite authors growing up like Mildred D. Taylor, Sharon Draper, Rick Riordan, etc. That’s true dreaming! 

What do you consider the most important elements in a good book ?

Characters, for sure. I think people can suspend their belief for a great many things, plot holes included, but for me, well-written and well-conceptualized characters are the backbone of a good book. Those characters don’t have to be good or nice or even likable, they just have to feel realistic. 

Also: voice. Voice, narration, those are the things holding your hand throughout, leading you through the events of a book. If that’s not engaging in some way, it’s hard for me to get into a book, even if it has everything else I might be looking for. 

When you’re not reading and writing what other activities do you enjoy?

I love watching or playing Dungeons & Dragons. It’s such a collaborative storytelling game and I, luckily, have an amazing group that I get to play with once a week! I also really enjoy playing The Sims, traveling, baking, exploring D.C, and talking too much to my plants. 

Ciera Burch is a lifelong writer and ice cream aficionado. She has a BA from American University and an MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in The American Literary Magazine, Underground, Five Points, Stork, and Blackbird. Her work was also chosen as the 2019 One City One Story read for the Boston Book Festival. While she is originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, DC, with her stuffed animals, plants, and far too many books. Visit Ciera at CieraBurch.com.