Daniel José Older is no stranger to the weird and fantastical.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Older discussed where the ideas for Ballad & Dagger came from — the real-life inspiration for Little Madrigal, as well as ideas from within himself — as well as the novel’s unique and powerful magic system, and what comes next for the power within Mateo. Check out the full interview below, and be sure to pick up a copy of Ballad & Dagger wherever you get your books.
OLDER: Yeah, it's that. I just dug deep for Mateo and for his world and for his community. People I love are in there, and parts of myself that I don't love are in there, mistakes I've made. He's better at piano than I am, but certainly just his love of music and his trajectory as a healer, all those are just things I really pulled from deep within myself and gave to the page.
And most of all, I remember the music because it's very — I guess what you would call off the map in certain [gentrified] terms, like off the beaten path or whatever. But there's such a vibrant music scene, and you would just walk into any bar, and there would be an accordion player or a pianist or someone on keys or whatever, or a whole group jamming. And I loved it. It was just so amazing to stumble on music like that.
OLDER: Yeah. I always think of it as a conversation, right? The characters sometimes want to do their own thing, and that's always a great moment because they're alive. But on the other hand, sometimes you have to wrangle them back to the story, and it can be hard. The other example I have of that is Tia Lucia, who fully came to life on her own. And I felt like she was teaching me things, like with the Chela moment.
OLDER: I'm putting the finishing touches on it now, and I can tell you that...things really do take off immediately from the last beat of the first book and escalate very quickly and very dramatically. And I will tell you this, it's a much more intense book than I even set out to write. It really took on a life of its own, and it went to much darker places than I imagined it would, and I love it for that.
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