Surrounded by the beautiful canvases and sculptures populating Winter Garden’s SOBO Art Gallery, we were joined by author Rachel Griffin to discuss her new book, Bring Me Your Midnight. Griffin and her moderator for the event, Georgia, who is also known as Peachy Queen Cosplay, discussed Griffin’s process of writing the book, the fun hashtags she came up with for the book’s release, and everything in between.
Bring Me Your Midnight is Griffin’s third book and was one she had already been thinking about for years. Griffin said that authors have a long time with their debut book, years and years to perfect everything about it and ensure that it’s ready for release. With the second book, there’s often a time constraint that wasn’t previously there. It was hard for Griffin to adjust to this. She explained that by the time her second book was done and it was time for the third, Bring Me Your Midnight just flowed out and was the best writing experience she’s had to date.
Griffin knew that she wanted to write a love story based on the relationship between Morticia and Gomez Addams, something obsessive and all-consuming. Add in her love of nature and the ocean, and we have the start of Bring Me Your Midnight. As a nature lover, Griffin incorporates it often with her stories. She also expresses a love for the magic systems in fantasies that have all these rules and limits, but confesses that as a writer, she prefers linking the magic to nature, so that the world is still familiar to the one we all live in.
Writers often say their number one piece of advice is to write every day. Griffin discloses to the audience that she doesn’t write every day and takes breaks “to refill the well”. Not every writer is the same! Griffin tells us that her breaks can last for weeks at times, and in the meantime she’ll take walks and listen to the playlists she’s created to stay focused in the world of what she’s writing. When actively writing, she gets distracted by music with lyrics and will instead listen to instrumentals that still fit the vibe of her book.
Griffin really looked forward to marketing Bring Me Your Midnight because she had created a terrific hashtag way in advance in 2020 to promote the release. #MeetMeAtMidnight. Any Taylor Swift fans know, with the release of her album Midnights, the hashtag was also #MeetMeAtMidnight. Griffin, a Swiftie who always has a Taylor Swift song associated with her books, laughs and says she forgives Swift for unintentionally taking the hashtag she hadn’t yet announced, and tells us that she and her team changed the book’s hashtag to #SeeMeAtMidnight. Griffin concluded by issuing a teaser regarding her fourth book, calling it her “tree book.”