Welcome, friend! I am so excited to bring you this conversation with Samantha Mills about The Wings Upon Her Back. Samantha is a Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winning author. Let’s welcome her.
Get to know the author: Samantha Mills
Hi Samantha! It is a pleasure to have you on Armed with A Book. Please tell me and my readers a bit about yourself.
Hello Kriti, thanks for having me on! I’m an archivist and SFF author living in Southern California. I’ve been writing fiction since I was young, but I pursued a backup career before diving headfirst into publishing. At the moment, I work part-time at a small historical society and spend the rest of my time juggling writing and childcare. The Wings Upon Her Back is my first (published!) novel.
How did the idea for The Wings Upon Her Back come to you?
I started planning this novel in 2016. I was aiming for a straightforward action fantasy and somewhere along the way it got more complicated! I was preoccupied with the growing right-wing movement in the United States, particularly the role of strongman politics and isolationism in fascist takeovers. I wanted to follow a character at two points in her life—as a youth, falling in thrall to a charismatic leader, and as an adult, finding her way out again. The rest of the story came together as I followed those threads.
I learned from the acknowledgements that this book was many years in the making and you went through numerous drafts. How was the first draft different from the final one?
The first draft was not as carefully structured as the final version, for one thing! I didn’t have the interludes or the chapter epigraphs, and as a result the subplot about a forgotten heretical work was much weaker. In that first draft I was focused on making the two timelines work (Zenya falling prey to a fascist movement as a teenager, then finding her way out of it as an adult), but I dawdled a lot longer on her training in the past and more setbacks in the present. The subsequent drafts were all about tightening up the plot and drawing the themes out more strongly.
I loved how each chapter started with a snippet from another text or diary. What drew you to this type of storytelling? What did your writing process look like to create such distinct pieces to include with Zenya’s story?
I love chapter epigraphs! I think they are a fun, concise way to hint at more worldbuilding without having the characters reciting all of it. It’s also a form that I’m used to grappling with in my day job as an archivist. We often have to piece together people’s lives from snippets—a handful of letters kept in a box, a scrapbook, some cards and financial papers. When I decided to write them for the book, I made a chart with summaries of the chapters so I could match snippets thematically to what happens in each chapter. Combined with the interludes, they form a third story that follows the same arc Zenya is going through, only on the scale of the city. Her abandonment by her idol is mirrored by the city’s abandonment by the gods, from infatuation to disillusionment to a new understanding on the other side.
Saint Lemain’s thoughts in An Essay on the Nature of the Self, “You are every person you have ever been, continual and simultaneous, an iterative being composed of a million decisions, large and small” stay with Zenya throughout the book. Why was this important to her?
This is really core to what Zenya is going through. She is very preoccupied with whether she can change, especially after being on the same path for so long. When she is young, she interprets it to mean that her future is already decided—she’ll always be the girl who wants the sky, so why fight it? When she is older, she comes to view this differently. She is composed of all the little decisions that brought her to the present moment, but she also has some choice in what she does next.
Gods created the city of Radezhda. How did you choose the characteristics for the gods? Can you share about the struggle at the heart of The Wings Upon Her Back?
In order to set up some of the core conflicts of the book, I needed there to be more than one plausible explanation for why the gods present themselves the way they do. I landed on a scholar god, an engineering god, a farmer god, a worker god, and a warrior god. They arrived during the written history of the city, bringing great knowledge and technology to a small village and elevating it into the technologically advanced city we encounter in the book. The nature of the gods is a subject of much debate, as one sect in particular (the scholars) are fighting for the right to question the nature of the gods, and another sect (the warriors) are attempting to suppress anything they view as heretical in their quest to win back the affection of the gods.
What is something you would like the readers of this book to take away or ponder?
I would love for readers to think about how we construct history; how our understanding of the past evolves over time; how history affects our daily lives even when we don’t know why. It took me well into adulthood to understand that my parents were raised by people who fled Europe after World War II. I knew it in the abstract, but I didn’t really understand what it meant for us. That generational trauma trickled down through their upbringing and into mine, despite the fact (or because of the fact!) that nobody ever talked about the war or the effect it had. In the book, Zenya also has to learn more about the past to understand her own childhood. There are ripples of hurt running through the entire city, tumbling from one person to the next. The real question is: once you know they why of things, can you change in time for the next generation?
Do you have a favourite quote or scene in The Wings Upon Her Back that you find yourself going back to?
Ooh, good question! There are a lot of loud moments in the book, hectic action culminating in big revelations, and those were a lot of fun to write. But some of my favorites are the smaller moments, when people begin to break through Zenya’s shell. There’s a scene about one third of the way into the book, when Zenya (all grown up and going by her full name, Zemolai) is being confronted about her past actions. She gets defensive, arguing that she was a child when she joined the cause, and not responsible for how she was raised. The other character, Eleny, argues that Zenya isn’t a child anymore, “So when was the tipping point? Was there one day you were innocent, and the next day complicit?” It’s a question that preoccupies me a lot! At what point are we responsible for assessing the lessons of our childhood and deciding which to keep and which to reject? There is no one-size-fits-all answer, which makes it a very personal question to chew on.
Do you see yourself returning to the city of Radezhda or any of the characters or gods?
I have an idea kicking around for a prequel short about the arrival of the gods, but as far as novels go this was a standalone project. The character arc and the worldbuilding are so tightly tied together, it’s hard to imagine a new story there—not yet anyway!
For readers who enjoyed your book, what should they pick up next? Can you share 1-3 recommendations?
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark has a lot of similar themes (a fighter raised to serve an unethical government, whose life falls apart when she crosses paths with a rebellion) with a focus more specifically on colonialism. I also always recommend the works of Kameron Hurley, who does a lot of fantastic stuff blending scifi and fantasy, with complicated heroines who are willing to get their hands dirty.
Are you currently working on any new projects or ideas?
I have a couple of short stories brewing, and I’m also editing a new fantasy novel. For now I’m just calling it the Secret Sea Monster WIP. Cross your fingers it finds a home!
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Everything else is on my website! My newsletter sign up, links to free short stories, and more info about The Wings Upon Her Back is all at www.samtasticbooks.com. Thanks again for having me on the blog!
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and share with my readers.
Thanks for joining us! Connect with Sam on Instagram, Goodreads, and BlueSky.
I hope you will check out We Used to Live Here on Goodreads and read my review on the blog.
Many thanks to Tachyon Publications LLC for connecting me with Sam and providing a review copy of the book for an honest review.
Thank you for reading the interview! 🙂
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