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-She was a social media manager who had just given birth to her first daughter, who needed something that was just for herself.

Coming up next on Tennessee Writes, we sit down with Tennessee author Hannah Whi a wife, a mother, who is now a New York Times bestselling aut We'll find out what inspires her fantasy stories and how her southern roots shape her writing.

-Books about Tennessee.

-Books that come from Tennessee -Books and stories with a Tennes -West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

-Welcome to this edition of Tennessee Wri I'm Peter Noll.

Grab a cup of coffee, and your favorite comfy chair, and get ready to dive into the w of Tennessee books as we sit down with authors that have a Tennessee connection Some are from Tennessee, others call Tennessee home now or they've written stories with a Tennessee twist.

Today, Tennessee Writes welcomes New York Times bestsell fantasy writer Hannah Whitten, who calls an old Tennessee farmhouse her home, which she shares with her husband, children, two cats, and a dog.

Please welcome Hannah Whitten.

-Hi.

-Welcome to the show.

-Thanks for having me.

-Thank you for coming.

Hannah, thanks for being here.

Let's start out with, you're from Tennessee, you were -I am.

-Cookeville?

-Cookeville, yes.

-Okay, and then you moved away.

-I did.

Yes.

-Where to?

-Huntsville, Alabama.

-Then you came back.

-Then I came back.

-What happened then?

-I lived in Cookeville until I w a sophomore in high school.

Then my dad got a job at NASA, actually.

We moved to Huntsville.

I finished high school there and then was really homesick for Cookeville.

I ended up coming back and going I'm still there.

I didn't leave again.

-What about Cookeville and Tenne drew you back?

-It was just so familiar.

That's where I had grown up.

It's where I had some really deep friendships, some really good community conne there.

I've really always loved it.

I grew to love Huntsville, too.

It felt natural to want to come -You actually studied English and communication.

-I did.

-Tell us about that.

-Yes, I thought I was going to b learned very quickly that was no my calling.

I changed my major to English, I think, in the middle of my very first s at Tech.

It was a very quick decision like, "Oh, never mind.

This is not for me."

I finished that and ended up goi into social media management, actually.

-When you were studying English, did you know you were going to be writing books?

-I'd always written books just f No, at the time, it wasn't neces what I planned to be doing.

It was always just something tha for me, just for fun.

I had always written since I was I was poking at a book at the ti It was not very good.

It was just, I would do it whenever I got bored, [chuckles] basically.

A lot of times, and it's still how I write books, the ideas come from me wanting t a certain story and not really b to find something that scratches that itch.

I'm like, "I guess I'll just do it myself."

That's how this book came about.

Yes, I had no idea that this is what I was going to end up do even though it had always been s that I'd just done for fun.

-I know a lot of authors that I've spoken to, they sort of become an author later in life.

The kids have left.

They got divorced.

A spouse passed.

They were doing it because, "Oh, now I have time."

You just had your first child.

That's when you said, "I wasn't being a wife.

I wasn't being a mom.

I needed to concentrate on something just for me."

Tell us about that experience.

-Whenever I had my daughter, I was 25, and I had worked full-time prett since I graduated college up until that point.

Whenever I had her, I dropped back to working part-t mostly because we couldn't affor full-time child care.

I found myself just being at hom I think that it's something that a lot of moms can relate to where you lose yourself in those first very early years just because there is a tiny per that is dependent on you for absolutely everything.

It can be really overwhelming.

For some reason, I hadn't written in a while since then because I wrote so much for my d that it's like once I got home, I didn't have the capacity to wr That was just for fun.

Once I dropped back to part-time conversely, had that time again, even though it was spent taking care of my daughter.

It's like that part of my brain started to work again.

I knew very specifically the story that I wanted to read because I've always been a huge That's been especially, in stressful times and stuff.

I read a ton.

I couldn't find something that w all the marks that I wanted it t This book I had the idea very late at night, one night, whenever I was up with my daught The tagline for this book was, the first daughter is For the Throne, the second daugh is For the Wolf.

That's the very first thing that I remember writing it in my note on my phone with the brightness turned very, very down so that I wouldn't wake up the sleeping baby that I had.

I forgot that I had written it.

Then whenever I woke up the next I was looking at my phone.

I was like, "Oh, yes, that could be something."

I started thinking about it and putting together how that st would look and started writing i Once I started, I didn't really which was new for me because I h one of those, even whenever I was writing stuf it was very much like, you write when the muse comes.

It's not like an everyday thing that you sit down and you work.

With this book, I wanted to get so much that I was working on it whenever I had a minute to do so It was a really eye-opening proc I feel like it gave me back to m because it was something that didn't have to do with being a mother, didn't have to do with being a w It wasn't making any money.

It was literally just something I was doing because I wanted to do it.

That was really invaluable for m whenever I was in that very early postpartum si [chuckles] -What does your husband think of the books and you-- -He loves them.

[chuckles] -Does he share the like of genre -Yes, he does.

He's more of a horror reader.

[chuckles] He reads horror and nonfiction, and all of my fantasy leans into horror a little bit.

He reads all of them and he really enjoys them.

-You were a social media manager What were you exactly doing?

-I was doing social media content for mostly car dealerships.

-Wow.

-I know more about cars than I ever wanted to.

[laughs] -When you were studying-- That was just a job that you got out of college?

-Yes.

-Not like, "I love autos and want to write posts for [?]

-No.

It was very much like, "I need to find a big girl job.

Here one is.

I guess this is what I will do."

-At what point did you think, "Okay, I've become successful en I don't need to write auto?"

-It was actually taken out of my The company was sold and my position was made redunda At that point, my first contract had earned out I was making money on top of the Weeks after I found that out, my position was made redundant.

I was like, "Okay."

My husband and I talked and I wa "I think that I could just write He's like, "Yes, I think you cou That's what I've been doing sinc -How old are your kids?

You have two kids?

-I do.

I have an eight-year-old and a one-year-old.

-How do you balance being a mom being this New York Times bestselling author?

-With a lot of help.

My husband works full time.

He's how we get our health insur He's a very involved dad.

Often, he will get home at five and it's like, "Okay, they're going to hang out with you for a little bit because I got stuff I need to do A lot of that, a lot of writing during nap time My mother-in-law is retired.

She can come and keep the kids for a few days if I'm on a tight It's really just a lot of juggli everything to find time where I can find it.

I don't get to be super pretentious about li I need to light my candle and have my coffee and like have my moment to sit down.

It's more like I have 15 minutes and I need to finish this draft.

I'm going to sit down and I'm going to do it.

-What do you tell people that you do interviews with book tours that are outside of Tennessee it's like?

What do you tell them about Cookeville and Tennessee?

-That it's beautiful, that it's complicated, that it is a place where I feel like the outside view of Tenness is not like the interior view that we have.

It's a very diverse place with very diverse people and div and from the outside looking in it can be hard to see that just because you're represe by your elected representatives.

It is a beautiful place that I feel very deeply for and feel like it is mine.

Even with the risk of maybe want to move out to somewhere where you feel like you would fi in better politically or somethi I feel very much like this is my and I want to stay and make it b [music] -Hannah, For the Wolf was your first published book.

-It was, yes.

-You've been writing for fun before, but this is the first on that got published.

Tell us that story.

How did it come to be?

-It is long and complicated.

[laughs] I wrote this book in 2016 through 2017 is when I finished Had no idea how one published a book if you wanted to go the traditional publishing route I did some googling and everything told me at the time to join Twitter.

Reluctantly I did.

That's where I learned in order to sell a book to a publishing h you need an agent.

You have to edit the book, do more than just a glorified sp I didn't know any of this at the I joined.

I started making some writer fri and we swapped manuscripts back My friend Erin Craig, who is als she doesn't live in Tennessee an but she was from Memphis at the time.

We connected over that too.

She sent me my first ever edit l on what would become this book a my life really.

Telling me how to fix it.

-For the viewers that don't know what an edit letter is, what is that?

-Basically, it is a letter that tells you he all the things that are wrong and that you need to fix.

-It's like a critique letter.

-Basically, yes.

She sent me that list of things "Plot is shaky here, characterization isn't really working here.

Maybe you could do this instead.

I had never edited a book before at least not to that level.

Anything that I had written befo I had done basically a glorified spell check and been "Good to go."

I'd never gone in and really lik with the structure of a book and to make it work better on a fundamental level.

That was a learning experience of even kn if I can do something like that.

I went into this manuscript, I implemented her changes.

It made the book so much better.

At that point, there was this contest for writers where basically you get matched with a more experienced writer who pretty much does the same th again and gives you an edit lett and helps you really polish the manuscript up.

It was called Pitch Wars at the I don't think it still exists.

Basically, an author would help you polish your manuscript and then agents knew of this con and it was a big deal where they would go in and request to see these books that they knew had been selected for this contest.

I got into that with this book, polished it up again.

At that point, I think I had rew from the ground up twice.

I didn't get an agent from that but I queried the book afterward, which is whenever you pretty muc you send out emails and batches or like, hello, I have written this book.

Here's what it is about.

Here's the first five pages.

If an agent likes it, then they'll ask to see the whole manuscript.

Then hopefully if they like the whole manuscrip then they'll want to represent you.

I did end up getting an agent just through that process.

She made me rewrite the book aga It was actually out on submissio for a pretty long time with publ for about a year before-- -That means out on submission, they're like considering it.

-Yes.

Your agent sends it out to the p and the publishers look at it and it's pretty much like the querying process over a just like the next step up.

After about a year, the book sold and I was, I think, a lot more successful than any of us were anticipating -Your first published book, when did you receive the news on the New York Times bestseller -It was the week after it publis my editor called me.

-Were you like, "What?"

-Yes, I was shaky.

My husband had just had surgery, so he was asleep on the couch and so I won't come up.

I was like, "Hey, it's a New York Times bestseller He was still groggy from pain medication and he was -The book is very, very-- Some people call it retelling Beauty and the Beast or retelling Little Red Riding, mashup, but it's really its own unique story.

Tell us how you came up with thi to take us-- because it's not just telling a good mystery story.

Fantasy books are, you have to create a whole world with its own rules -Yes.

That is why I had to rewri the book three times is figuring I had originally set out to make a Little Red Riding Hood retelli mostly because I was very intere in the morality tale bent that Little Red Riding Hood has of like, you stay on the path, you do as you're told.

You don't stray into the dark wo I very much wanted to take that and twist it around and see how I could play with it and mak a story that is very much about and personal autonomy and taking your own path whenever it seems like there's n that is available to you.

Then the Beauty and the Beast el crept in just because I think an that you're writing a fairy tale with a strong roman Beauty and the Beast is going to be sneaking in there somewher As I worked on these books, this book and the sequel, For the Throne, are both very fairy tale-inspire My idea was I wanted to create a story that you could read and a bunch of tributaries to other fairy tales and make it feel almost like an ur-fairy tale where it's like here's the thing that actually happened that all of these other fairy ta then came from.

-What would you say about your upbringing in Tenness your southern roots helped shape this book?

-This book takes place almost entirely in a sentient forest, which I didn't really recognize at the time was such a Tennessee until I was talking about it lat whenever I had a similar questio I was like, "Oh, the reason that I wanted to set it in this big deep forest that fee like it has its own personality is because I grew up in those fo It felt very natural to describe all of that and for where my imagination took me as a first foray into writing a -Now you said you were writing, even before you became published because you couldn't find books that you wanted to read, so you wrote your own.

Are you finding those books now?

-Yes.

I find them, but I also still like to write my own because som I'll read something and it's lik "Huh, you could have taken this instead and what would that stor look like if you had taken these character archetypes and t something different with them?"

I find that I get a lot of my id from reading and watching and li to things and just seeing that o that could have been taken and w and start thinking about it.

-When you went the publishing ro "I'm going to get published," our world has changed so much that some people just self-publi Why didn't you just do that?

-Mostly because I didn't think I had the skill set to do it.

Self-publishing, I have many fri who self-publish and it takes an incredible amount of business and the ability to have a really critical eye of your ow You pay for your own editors and you do your own art directio and things like that.

I just did not have that mental fortitude to do that Distribution also is something that you have to consider whenever you're doing things lik I knew that I wanted other peopl to take care of the distribution and the bookstore placement and stuff like that.

I knew that if my job was more than just writing the book, I was going to get very overwhelmed very quickly.

[chuckles] [music] -Now we come to the part in Tenn Writes we call our lightning rou where we ask our guest authors a series of book-related questio and see how many they can answer in two minutes.

If you don't know the answer, just say pass.

Are you ready to play?

-I'm ready to play.

-Two minutes on the clock.

Favorite book of all time?

-Lisey's Story by Stephen King.

-What book are you reading right -The Duke Who Knew Too Much by Grace Callaway.

-Last book you finished reading?

-Pass.

I can't remember.

-What book have you read multipl -Deathless by Catherynne Valente -How many times?

-Four.

-What author, living or dead, would you most like to have dinn -Probably Stephen King.

-Paper books or e-books?

-Paper books.

-Who would you want to play you as an actor if your book is made into a movie?

-Florence Pugh.

-Favorite place to read?

-In my bed.

-Least favorite place to read?

-I don't have one.

I'll read anywhere.

-First book you can remember rea -The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanley.

-On average, how many books do you read in one year?

-About 200.

-Favorite children's book?

-The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

-What book has most influenced y -Probably Lisey's Story.

-What book is on your list to re -Pass.

-Name an author you most admire.

-Erin Craig.

-How many books are on your nightstand right now?

-At least five.

-What book took you the longest to finish reading?

-The Dark Tower.

-How long?

-About a month.

-Do you own more paperback books or hardcover books?

-Paperback.

-What's your favorite movie based on a book?

-Pass.

-How many hours a week on averag do you spend time reading a book -At least four or five.

-Most guilty pleasure book you've ever read?

-Pass.

[chuckles] -Do you prefer fiction or nonfic -Fiction.

-Whose autobiography is your all-time favorite?

-Pass.

-Name a fellow author who you would like to go on a book tour with.

-Erin Craig.

-That's two minutes.

[music] -Hannah, what's coming up next f This is part of a two-book series, correct?

-Yes.

-This is For the Wolf.

The next -For the Throne.

-Okay, and then it's done for that one.

-Yes.

-You have other books?

-Yes, so these two are done.

Then right now I'm publishing a It's called The Nightshade Crown The first book is called The Foxglove King.

The second book that came out th is called The Hemlock Queen.

Next year we're wrapping up that The third book is called The Nightshade God, and it comes out in July.

-For the books, are they all-- Who are they intended for?

-They are all adult fantasy, so intended for 18-plus, but I have readers that are 16, 17 that enjoy it to -Are you always going to be in t or are you looking at branching -My 2026 book is actually a horr It's called Reliquary.

It's like a modern, gothic, seaside situation with a lot of squishy body horro I'm super excited to branch out and do some different stuff.

-Because you said that you loved Stephen King and reading Stephen King books.

Is that sort of an homage to him -A little bit, yes.

It's mostly an homage to a movie I really like called or Not that I watched.

There were two characters that had so much romantic tensio but weren't leaning into it, and I was like, "They should have.

I'm going to write a book about That's how that book came about.

-I read that Star Wars influence -Yes.

-Tell us about that.

The trilogy that's publishing ri was highly influenced by how angry I got at The Rise of Skywalker.

We're going to be real nerd hour here for a second.

There was lots of things about The Rise of Skywalker that I did not like the way that they were handled.

The one that got to me the most the Rey Palpatine twist.

Not because I don't like the Rey Palpatine twist, but because it was not seeded into the rest of the trilogy.

It just got to the end, and they were like, "We heard you guys like Palpatin so here's a Palpatine."

I was like, this could have been such a poignant thing if it had been handled correctly I got to thinking about what tha would look like if you had this who seemed to come from nothing, but it turns out she's the heir to this awful power that people have been spending a lot of time to keep on the down low and how her story would look.

That's The Nightshade Crown.

It is not set in space.

It is set in a very Versailles-i fantasy medieval world.

That's where the inspiration for that story came from.

-All your books can be purchased?

-Anywhere.

Anywhere books are sold, yes.

-Are all of your books on audio -They are all on audio, yes.

You can get e-books of them also -Okay.

Do you prefer people to do one or the other?

I've always wondered, does the author make more money if you buy one over the other?

-I think that maybe, but I don't know which one it is It's whatever format best fits your life works for me.

-For all the new Hannah fans out where can they stay in contact w -I am on Instagram, @hwhittenwri I have a website with a contact if you need to send me an email.

-New York Times bestselling auth do you have like you need to kee a low profile so you don't have people coming up to you at Kroge or showing up at your front door -I've managed to keep a pretty low profile by design.

I get recognized sometimes, but it's not ever weird.

People are always super nice abo -Hannah, we'd love to hear you reading from your bo For the Wolf.

-All right.

-Would you?

-Sure.

-Okay.

Here's Hannah Whitten's reading from her book, For the Wolf.

-It was colder in the Wilderwood The temperature dropped instantl cool enough to make her glad of As Red crossed the tree line, pressing into that infernal hum, bruising pressure built against it was almost enough to make her stumble onto the forest floo almost enough to make her cry ou but the pressure and the hum were gone as soon as she settled both feet beyond the forests bo leaving her in leaves and deep, undisturbed silence.

The only thing that moved was th a sinuous crawl over the ground.

Beneath the sleeve of her gown and the heavy crimson of her clo the mark gave one more twinge.

Then the feeling of that subtle was gone.

Red rubbed at it absently.

The trees were strange.

Some were short and gnarled, but others grew tall and straigh their bark unnaturally white until it met the forest floor.

There it bent and twisted, dark standing out in ropes like corro Some of the trees had the rot only around the roots, but on others, the corrosion stretched up taller than Red.

The white trees had limbs only at the crown, swoops of graceful bone-like bar Just like the branch shards in t One white tree stood just inside the forests border.

Black rot grew over halfway up i Even the ground around it seemed and somehow cold.

The nearby trees, brown-barked and thatched with irregular bran had no rot on them at all.

Other than the trees, Red was al [music] -Sadly, we are coming to the end of this edition of Tennessee Wri We want to thank you, Hannah, for coming on and talking about For the Wolf, and about your life and your fam and how you became a New York Times bestseller.

-Thank you so much for having me -I really appreciate it.

We do want to end the show by as if you'll sign a book for us.

-Of course.

-Thank you.

Thank you for coming on.

-Dear Channel 11, Thank you so much for having me.

Keep Tennessee weird.

[music] -For comments about today's show or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites@west Tennessee Writes on air and stre [music] -This program you've been watchi was made possible through the generous financial s of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit West TN PBS dot org a donation today so that we can to make local programs like this Thank you.

[music]