Path to Publication: Horror Hotel | Sara Biren

Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

 

Today, I’d like to introduce two young adult authors from Los Angeles, the dynamic writing duo of Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren. Their YA horror novel, Horror Hotel, was published on February 1, 2022 by Underlined, a Penguin Random House company. 

About the book:

This addictive YA horror about a group of teen ghost hunters who spend the night in a haunted LA hotel is The Blair Witch Project for the TikTok generation.

Enjoy your stay…

When the YouTube-famous Ghost Gang—Chrissy, Chase, Emma, and Kiki—visit a haunted LA hotel notorious for tragedy to secretly film after dark, they expect it to be just like their previous paranormal huntings. Spooky enough to attract subscribers—and ultimately harmless.

 

But when they stumble upon something unexpected in the former room of a gruesome serial killer, they quickly realize that they’re in over their heads.

 

Sometimes, it’s the dead who need our help—and the living we should fear.

Victoria and Faith are two of the most magnetic, energetic people I’ve met, and I’m thrilled that they joined us here to discuss their partnership, their writing processes, and Why YA. 

Sara Biren: How did you two meet?

Victoria Fulton: We met through Nova Ren Suma’s Media Bistro, an online program for aspiring young adult and middle grade authors. We read each other’s work and had an online chat each week. Our friendship blossomed outside of class and we emailed back and forth. We both had screenwriting aspirations, we both ended up moving to Los Angeles, and the rest is history. 

SB: How did your writing relationship begin? How did you decide to write something together?

Faith McClaren: Before I moved to LA, we had decided it would be fun to write a screenplay together. The first project we worked on was drafting that screenplay. We kept bouncing around ideas and talking about what projects we were working on individually. It was around the time that I parted ways with my first agent that I brought up Wattpad to Victoria, and we thought it would be fun to write a novel chapter by chapter on that platform. That is the first novel we wrote together, which we wrote in an unconventional way. Ellie is Cool Now* came to be through a desire to write together and also put something out in the world.

*The award-winning novel chalked up 838,000 reads on Wattpad and is slated for publication by Forever in winter of 2023. 

SB: Why did you choose to use pen names?

VF: At the time there was some concern with branding. Faith wanted to keep her solo work separate because she was writing fantasy. We were writing an adult rom com and it seemed smart to keep things separate. Everything we write together is under those pen names now, which works because we have other things going on, including solo work and client work. 

SB: How did Horror Hotel come to be?

FM: Editor Wendy Loggia posted a tweet with a call for agented authors to submit a proposal and three chapters to an imprint that was fairly new and looking to acquire a lot of authors for a paperback YA line. Two friends saw it and sent it to me and said they thought Victoria and I would be a good fit. I sent it to Victoria and she agreed. We had discussed the desire to sell on proposal, the idea of not writing in a vacuum, really feeling like we wanted our work to be out there, not just write it and hope that it would sell. Something we had discussed with our partnership. We took it to our agent, Katie, and then took the opportunity to see what we could do with a fire lit under us, with a tight deadline**. We knew that it had to be super commercial, super quick, and really special. We wanted to do YA horror, which is part of the brand of Underlined. It was something different than we’d done before. Since our other project had not come out, we had the freedom to write what we wanted. 

**They submitted the proposal to Underlined in March of 2021, five days after seeing the tweet. The publisher offered on the proposal one week later. The final manuscript was due in early June of 2021, and the book was published February 1, 2022, less than one year after the tweet.

SB: Not everyone is equipped to write this kind of book. What is your experience with the ghostly and paranormal? 

VF: I always loved this kind of story, ghost stories specifically. I would go to the library when I was young and I was a magnet to the ghost story section and books like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. This evolved into a love of anything ghost-related, TV shows, movies. And then in adulthood, I’d break into cemeteries after dark, go ghost hunting at places like the  West Virginia State Penitentiary and haunted trails. Ghosts and the idea of death, something I have no control over that could just manifest, is really fascinating to me. 

FM: Growing up, I was fairly haunted. From a young age, I saw beings that my parents said weren’t real. I had quite a few personal encounters with ghosts as a young person and an adult. As a child, I didn’t know they were ghosts. I thought they were strange things in my house that were real. Later on, my parents found out that things I saw around our house and property were factual based on the history of the home. 

I was always drawn to death and the mysteries of what happens after you die and what really goes on between life and death. I saw things that would scare a lot of people, but not me, and more than anything, it fascinated me. I liked the idea of the world not being super concrete and reality not being everything that we are told, and I’m drawn to the idea of mystery and magic. 

As I got older, I got more comfortable and interested in horror films. I didn’t read horror as a child or teen but I loved horror movies like Blair Witch Project. I wanted to see if anything would really scare me. Not many things do. I was always going to be drawn to writing about the paranormal and the curtain between life and death. 

SB: What has been the most difficult part of the publishing process for Horror Hotel? 

VF: From a writing perspective, we had a very tight deadline. Having to write something so fast but would be out in the world for everyone to read was stressful. I think we did a really good job considering the time crunch. 

FM: Having such a tight deadline was not something that we had ever done before. I’d written books quickly. We’ve all drafted sloppy drafts but this couldn’t be sloppy. We wanted to deliver something that was solid for a first draft. When we signed the contract, we knew it was going to be a tight deadline but once we were faced with the reality, it was very challenging. 

SB: What is your writing process and how does that change when you’re writing with a partner?

VF: I love to collaborate. Writing solo, sometimes it’s difficult to stay motivated. But not with Faith. She has no blocks at all as a writer. She finishes things. I needed someone in my life to execute all the way to the finish line. 

Faith or I will write a chapter and then the other person will edit the work, although it’s more than editing, bigger than editing. We’ll add big chunks or take away big chunks and change things while we edit. We’re working separately but both are touching the words in an intimate way.

FM: It’s not that I don’t have any blocks, it’s that I’m extremely obsessed with writing and the writing process. It is my favorite thing to do. I don’t think that’s normal, that’s just my experience. 

When I’m working on a solo book, I do a lot of upfront work on the project. I write a pitch, hem and haw over the pitch, and then write some kind of synopsis. I used to be a pantser but now I definitely outline more. Do I follow my outline? Not necessarily, I just like that it gives me a sense of what the story is, what it could be, and what it is not going to be. I just draft, start writing pages, and get obsessed with things. I typically draft pretty quickly; my average is about two months. I’m very meticulous, going over scenes multiple times and editing them several times. But I don’t edit while I’m drafting. I don’t stop. 

When I’m writing with Victoria, I still draft quickly and then look it over before I send it to her. I like to feel good about what I”m writing. We’re both in the idea creation, we’re both in the pages. We talk over the phone, we talk in person. We talk about themes and characters and setting. Our process is a lot of talking. 

The Speed Round

Faith

Writing snack? Salt & vinegar potato chips

Coffee, tea, or other? Coffee

Edward or Jacob? Edward

Favorite book? Cold Day in the Sun by Sara Biren***

Favorite author? Maggie Stiefvater

When you write: music, silence, or other? Silence

How long have you been writing? Professionally with the goal of publishing, 10 years

Current read: A manuscript by writing duo Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-BrokaI that isn’t published yet.

Song on repeat? Anything BTS. 

Why YA? Stories for teens are really stories for everyone. The first book that made me believe I could write my own novel was a YA book, and I read it as an adult mom of a toddler. YA books at their best are stories about change, and in a world where hope is limited, and where we long for proof that change is possible on a grand scale, YA is a beacon of light. 

***I did not put her up to this. She came up with that one all on her own.

Victoria

Writing snack? Tortilla chips with salsa or queso

Coffee, tea, or other? Coffee, always

Edward or Jacob? Edward

Favorite book? The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Favorite author? Lisa Kleypas

When you write: music, silence, or other? Silence

How long have you been writing? Forever, but with an eye toward publishing, a decade.

Current read: Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite

Song on repeat? Numb Little Bug by Em Beihold 

Why YA? Because teens and young adults are the most fun to write about the most fun to write for. They are new to the world in so many ways, so are still forming opinions about who they are and what it all means. They're not as jaded by life with full-time jobs and adult responsibilities, like home ownership and parents (although there are exceptions). Young adults and teens have a world of possibility ahead of them, and all that possibility is present in today's YA fiction in stories that are as inventive and imaginative as they are emotionally real and raw. Also, kids are delusional enough to believe they can change the world, and so often they do. What's better to write about than that?!

Many thanks to Victoria and Faith for their time and for sharing their path to publication with us!