Ep 21: Interview with Andrew Rubin

So can you give us a spoiler-free overview of Hell or High Winter? Sure.

Okay, so Hell or High Winter, as you said, is a urban fantasy contemporary mythology, and it's a retelling of the myth of Hermes and Persephone in modern day.

And in my version, it's we intersect Hermes in the modern world, and it's what is a god supposed to do when no one's worshiping him anymore? And for Hermes as a trickster, it's just screwing around and messing around and antagonizing all the religions that are in power currently.

And all that is going fine and not good for him until Persephone is kidnapped again, which is how we got spring and fall and summer and winter and all that in the first place.

And Earth plunges into eternal winter and he has to go back to hell and find her and bring her back.

Except this time it's not the same culprit as the last time she was kidnapped.

And the journey for me of Hermes and finding his sister and figuring out who kidnapped her and why is also his own coming to terms with his identity in the modern world and his place in it.

No, I loved it.

It was so fun.

And like, it's such a journey.

And I feel like, you know, not to spoil too much, but like, I love that you wrote it from third person.

That's not really a spoiler, but I'll say it anyway, that you read it from third person.

And like, we are really going on Hermes journey.

But then when we're getting these other characters, we also get to kind of be inside of their head and see how they see him.

And I almost like that more than having it first person where we're like in his head the whole time.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I really, I will say that was, that was a very, I really appreciate you saying that because sometimes I wrestle about like how much, and POV was a big part of the editorial process with the editor of like where we put ourselves in each chapter and who's POV and where it's most interesting and most revealing and most dramatic.

And I think I, that's definitely a George R.R. Martin inspiration for me when you get to like, Sometimes a breath of fresh air.

I don't do it with as regularity as he does.

But yeah, I think there's a really interesting things, especially because so much of it is Hermes perception of himself.

And then being his part of his journey is realizing that how he thinks of himself is not how others see him.

And, and coming to a reckoning with the mistakes of his past and trying to do amends for them.

And realizing like he maybe actually is the problem.

Yeah.