Author Q&A: K. B. Hoyle, Author of The Queen of Ebenezer
My good friend K. B. Hoyle is the award-winning author of a number of middle-grade and Young Adult books, specializing in fantasy and adventure. (I regularly buy her books for my oldest goddaughter, who’s a big fan!) She’s also the cofounder, CEO, and acquisitions editor of Owl’s Nest Publishers, an independent press specializing in books for adolescents. This March, K. B. did a surprise release (more on that below!) through Owl’s Nest of her new YA novel, The Queen of Ebenezer. It’s a dreamlike but intense story of two lost teenagers trying to find their way through a mysterious swamp—and that’s just the beginning of what they’re trying to find.
Q: The Queen of Ebenezer has an isolated setting, a lack of any backstory (at least at first), and a tight focus on two main characters, one of whom doesn’t really know where or even who she is. What inspired you to write the story this way?
A: So, The Queen of Ebenezer is actually the second book I have written with an isolated setting with a tight focus on two main characters without any (true) backstory. In 2019 I published Hunter, which is a standalone prequel novel to my dystopian trilogy, and it follows two teenagers through the apocalyptic wilderness of Virginia—almost the entire novel is spent on only two or three characters. I bring that up only because writing Hunter was such a fun challenge, and it really allowed me to tell a story in a new and unique way that I hadn’t done before. I think Hunter is some of my best writing and storytelling, and I was eager to write another novel like it. I found that opportunity in The Queen of Ebenezer, which is a story that just begs to be told in a tight first-person perspective. I don’t want to give too much away about it, but because of the nature of the story—with the inner and outer lives of the two main characters being so tightly woven with the setting itself—the mystery would not unfold the same way if the reader was anywhere other than tied to the narrator’s perspective.
Q: What was the most difficult part of telling the story this way, and what was the easiest?
A: The most difficult part of telling the story this way was the fact that Beatrice (the narrator/main character) doesn’t really know who she is. Well, she kind of does and kind of doesn’t. She’s walking this amnesiac line where she knows she’s human and she’s a girl and she knows what clothes and food are, and things like that. But she also can’t remember anything before waking up in Ebenezer, and she feels that she knows Tom (the boy inhabitant of Ebenezer) but she doesn’t know-know Tom. So she’s constantly also asking questions of her reality to unravel what is going on, and I was constantly asking the same questions: “Would she really say this? Would she know that? How would she realistically react here? How MUCH does she know?” It was tricky finding that balance where the reader would believe that this girl really woke up and believably moved through this world I put her in—even with amnesia and under these extraordinary circumstances. And doing it from her perspective.
The easiest part is tied to the hardest part (I think that’s often how it goes!). The easiest part was weaving all the little hints into the story. All the reasons WHY Beatrice has amnesia—all the out-of-order memories, clues, Easter eggs ... whatever people want to call them. (I love a good puzzle box story and I’m not ashamed to admit it.) Telling the story from her perspective in such a tight setting and focus allowed me to really manipulate the delivery of these clues; I was able to be very intentional with my storytelling.
Q: I have to ask, was Beatrice named after the woman who guides Dante in The Divine Comedy? What other legends, myths, or stories did you draw on, if any?
A: Beatrice was indeed named after the woman who guides Dante in The Divine Comedy. I tend to be intentional about naming in my stories, so if you ever think a name is a call-out or means something, you are probably correct. For this story, I was inspired by quite a lot (for such a short book). Also among my inspirations were the famous Robert Robinson hymn (that is attributed in the front matter of the book), Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis, and a very specific scene between Harry and Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Q: If not for Beatrice’s urging and guidance, do you think Tom would have ever tried to leave Ebenezer? Why or why not?
A: I have my own ideas about this, but I’m more interested in what readers think! (seriously—email me and let me know). Although I will add that I don’t think the question is so much whether or not he would have left as how and when. Ebenezer is not a forever place, so everyone leaves in the end.
Q: Without giving too much away, how do you think their time in Ebenezer will ultimately affect them and their relationship?
A: Tom and Beatrice are, as I say in the story, “honey and bees”—they need each other for survival. There’s a reason why she was able to do what she does, and that means they will only be stronger than ever, after Ebenezer.
Q: Another thing you did differently was doing a surprise book launch! Why did you do that, and how did it go?
A: The surprise book launch! We did this at Owl’s Nest for a few reasons (and one of them was just because we thought it would be fun), but primarily because when we looked at our publishing schedule for the beginning of 2023, we realized we had back to back poetry releases (Muses From the Moon by W. Scott in January and Hertz Gets Fused by Suzanne Purvis in May). Both are wonderful books, and very different books, but we needed something else to release between those two books to keep the momentum going strong, and we didn’t have time to sign an outside author to write and publish it. Well, I had this idea for The Queen of Ebenezer and lots of notes for it that had been sitting on the back burner and floating around in the back of my mind since about 2017. ... I was confident I could knock it out quickly, too, as I’ve written and published over a dozen books now. The one caveat was that we didn't take promotional time or space away from either W. Scott or Suzanne Purvis—that I would just write it, the team would edit it, and we would publish it.
So I took about 6 weeks in Dec.-January and wrote this book that I had been wanting to write for so long, and ironically, it also is almost an epic poem. It’s very poetic, at least. But I’m very happy with how it turned out. The release was fun, as people were very surprised. Sales have been good to fine (I think a lot of people still don’t know about it!). Honestly the worst part of doing a surprise release is that it’s been difficult to get reviews on the book, since we didn’t send any Advanced Reading Copies. But we can still send review copies to reviewers/review outlets, and I am happy to have simply published the book.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers about the story?
A: I may have been a little coy with some of these answers only because this is a difficult story to discuss if you haven’t read it yet, and I’m keen not to spoil the experience for anyone who wants to pick up a copy. This was a very personal book for me to write, and I took a lot of care with every line. As much as you might think, “Wow, six weeks is fast to write a book!” I hope you don’t equate writing fast with writing carelessly. I write all my books fast. :) I write in my head first, and The Queen of Ebenezer has been living there for many years.
Also, Ebenezer Swamp, where the story is set, is a real place! So if you ever make it down to central Alabama, you can wander into a tiny ecological wonder—a truly wonderful world of the brightest greens and hidden giant animal statues where I spent a lot of days imagining the “what ifs?” that became this story. Just watch out for the snakes.
(Cover image copyright Owl’s Nest Publishers.)
Book Links:
The Queen of Ebenezer on Amazon
The Queen of Ebenezer on Bookshop
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