Emily Rath talks Finnish folklore, world-building, and refilling your creative well

Please tell us more about North is The Night! Why will we love the audiobook?

North is the Night is an action/adventure fantasy steeped in the world of medieval Finland. Inspired by the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, it draws on the mythology and folklore of Finland, particularly death gods and death magic. The story follows two best friends, Siiri and Aina. I’m not giving too much away when I say that a death goddess appears in their village and captures Aina, dragging her to Tuonela, the Finnish underworld. Desperate to save her friend, Siiri launchs an epic quest to journey north in search of the greatest hero of legend, the only shaman to enter Tuonela and return alive. While Siiri fights her way to Aina’s side, Aina is trapped in a dark realm full of magic and monsters, just trying to survive.

The audiobook is presented in dual narration by the amazing Lucy Doig and Maryam Ali. Readers will love getting to explore the world of Finnish mythology through these two very unique characters. With vast world-building, page-turning action, and swoony romance, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy. 

Could you please tell us about your career as an author? What first drew you to writing?

I’ve always been addicted to the written word, and to storytelling more broadly. From my earliest years, reading was always my escape. I devoured books in all genres. Reading helped unlock my imagination, showing me what was possible. I started writing at a young age too, entertaining myself with stories I jotted down in my spiral notebooks.

My broader love of storytelling has also inspired my writing. Whether through dance, art, theater, music movies/tv—I devour it all. Daily. Each medium of storytelling empowers you with different skills, different kinds of voice. I like to think I incorporate them all into my own stories. 

I didn’t seriously consider writing a book-shaped thing with a mind towards publishing until around 2017 when I was living in Malawi, conducting research for my PhD dissertation. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, meaning there’s extremely limited access to internet and we would often go days without electricity. Since I had my one-year-old child with me, we weren’t doing too much adventuring at night. This meant that from around 6pm every night, I was home, often without power (or any other form of entertainment). So I became my own entertainment. I started writing again, something I hadn’t done in maybe seven years. Once it started looking like a book, I thought, “Hey, maybe I should try publishing this.” From that moment, I haven’t looked back, knowing I could make publishing my stories a reality.

You’ve written so many great historical and contemporary romances, what drew you to the fantasy genre for this project? 

Fantasy has actually always been my first love. It was my favorite genre growing up. The first five books I ever wrote were all fantasies. North is actually the third book I ever wrote. I was moving it down the traditional publishing pipeline when the pandemic hit. Trapped in my house and looking for any distraction, I started writing Beautiful Things, which is a super spicy ‘why choose’ Regency romance. My friends warned me against it saying no one would read it but I was like, “There’s a pandemic out there! Just let me have this joy!” I self published it. Then I wrote two more books in that series. Once I knew I could do it on my own, I was unstoppable. In the time it took for me to go from querying North to having it sell at auction, I published ten books on my own. To the readers, it might look like I’m suddenly switching genres to fantasy, but that’s just the way publishing works sometimes. All my earliest proects were fantasy and you’ll definitely be getting more fantasy from me in the future. 

Tell us about your characters! What inspired Aina and Siiri? 

Siiri and Aina are inspired by many different things. In many ways, they’re a case study in opposites. Siiri is bold and adventurous, loud, opinionated, brash. While Aina is sweet and quiet, friendly, careful. They’re both strong women, but their strength looks different. I see this reflected very much in me and my childhood best friend. I’m definitely the Siiri between us. As a bold and brash Siiri, I always admired my friend for her patience, her ability to empathize so strongly with people and extend grace. I drew on that when building their relationship dynamics.

If you’re looking for some other character comparisons, I’d say Siiri and Aina have strong Sansa/Arya vibes from Game of Thrones. Another trope I love is “young, plucky heroine teams up with curmudgeonly old man” a la True Grit and Moana. I definitely leaned into that for how I crafter Siiri and her relationship with Väinämöinen. For Aina, you will also read a strong Hades/Persephone coding into her relationship with Tuoni, the Finnish god of death.

How do you come up with your names, both of people and places? 

I was lucky with this story that most of the names were selcected for me. Or perhaps a little unlucky—it’s a lot of umlauts to keep typing over and over! Since this story is inspired by Finnish mythology, all the names of the gods, the items and aspects of Finnish folklore, and the town names are all taken directly from history and/or the Kalevala. Since many of these names are long, like Väinämöinen and Lemminkäinen, I was careful to pick shorter names for my own characters. If the character only has a four letter name, you can guess it’s mine, haha.

For those shorter names, I did some deep dives into historical archives, looking for names from the medieval period. But since this book is also a nod to my own Finnish heritage, I incorporated several family names too. Kaisa is Finnish for “Katherine,” which was my grandmother’s nickname. Liisa is my aunt. Aksel is the name of a great uncle. Lalli is a well-known character from Finnish folklore, but Lalli is also one of my family names. There’s little nods to my family throughout the story. 

We love to talk about world-building. How did you develop the story? What were the biggest challenges? 

I love world-building! I have a very cinematic imagination, so I love when a world feels real and sort of “lived in,” if that makes sense. This is where my experience as a former university professor comes in really handy. From clothing details to food to wallpaper designs, I put in the work. And I always try to have an eye for accuracy. So when I wrote the scene of Siiri and Aina salting fish, that came from me doing a few hours of research into medieval food preservation techinques. The research and the world-building is where I really get to nerd-out and just obsess over learning something new. I do the same thing with all my books, whether it’s studying original Regency-era dinner menus or reading reports on 12th ceuntry reconstructions of clothing found in burial sites.

A challenge for this book was finding ways for the Finnish folklore elements to feel new, yet familiar. So many readers told me they were intimidated by the long names or the fact that they knew nothing about Finnish mythology. The barrier to entry is lower for a Greek mythology book because that market is so saturated the world over. But what if I told you the Finns also believed in the concept of an underworld ruled by a king and queen? What if this was an underground realm encircled by a dark river…a river you could only pass over safely in the ferry woman’s boat…a ferry woman who would meet you at the veil of death and ask you questions to confirm that you’re dead…

This all feels *really* familiar, right? The parallels to Greek mythology are astounding. So my goal with the world-building in North was to make this world and this story feel uniquely and distinctly Finnish, while still giving readers those touchstones of the familiar that helped guide their way.   

Where is your favourite place to write?

This changes with every project. Sometimes I’m feeling very attached to my desk and I will write most of a draft there. With one project, we were mid-move and I didn’t have anything unboxed or decorated in my office. The walls were white and none of my usual comforts were on display. It felt sterile and uncreative. So I wrote almost a whole book sitting out on my couch in the living room. Right now, I’m in the middle of a construction project at my new house, meaning workmen are in my home sawing and hammering five days a week. So I’m currently sitting in the writing lab at my town’s local artisan network co-op. It’s a great space with Wi-Fi and a full kitchen and—blessedly—no hammering under my feet!

Any advice for emerging writers?

Oh gosh, I always feel so wary giving advice because the wrong advice absorbed by an impressionable new writer can be toxic. I know because I was once that panicked writer! It took me a long time to crawl out from under the pressure of “write every day.” As a new mom with two other jobs at the time, trying to follow the mantra of “write every day” became just one more thing I got to fail at every day. It was devastating. It sapped my joy and really made me feel like a failure. Now I tend to say, “Just keep writing.” Whether you do it every day or not, keep writing. And follow the joy as you write. When you’re just starting out, there’s no such thing as wasted time. Write the idea that fizzles out after 10k words. Write the quippy lines of dialogue that have no plot. In those early days, it’s all about learning your voice and your craft. So just keep writing. 

What do you do when you experience writer’s block or reader’s block?

"When it comes to my craft, I’ve identified three different kinds of writer’s block. First is what I consider more of a scene block. I know what the scene should be and I’m just struggling to write it. For this, a few tricks are: 1) change your location, 2) change your medium, and 3) change the POV. What I mean by change your location is just get out of your writing space. Step away from the laptop and go for a walk in the woods. Go for a drive. Listen to the book’s playlist while you drive. Stepping away from the ominious blank page can help you recalibrate.

By “change your medium” I mean stop trying to sit down and write the scene in the manuscript itself. Try unplugging from the manuscript and just pull up your Notes app on your phone. Write just the dialogue. Write it out on paper, on a napkin, leave yourself voice memos as you talk it out. Anything but the manuscript.

The last one is change the POV. This one only works if you’ve got a multiple POV project, haha. But in my case, I always do. So if I’m feeling stuck writing a scene in one person’s POV, maybe it’s because it’s not supposed to be in their POV. Try writing it from another POV. So many times for me that has unlocked the scene.

The other two kinds of writer’s block are a life block and a project block. A life block is when there’s nothing wrong with the scene or the project, you’re just burned out. As creative creatures, our wells are not infinite. We get drained. And you can’t pull stories from an empty well. If I’m feeling like the block is me, I pull back. I step away. I’ll do anything else. Literally. Weed my garden, shop for fancy towels I don’t need, binge my favorite comfort shows. Do anything that helps you refill your creative well. When you’re ready to write again, I promise you will. A true writer can’t help themselves.

The last kind of block can be the most devastating for a writer, and that’s the project block. What I mean by this is maybe the project has run it’s course. Maybe you’re stuck for a reason. Maybe the project just doesn’t have the legs to keep walking. Or maybe now just isn’t the right time to write it. I have many half-finished manuscripts sitting in folders. Some will get opened again, I’m sure of it. But some are closed forever. And that’s okay. None of those stories were wasted time/energy. All of them taught me something about my craft and my voice. All were worthwhile, even if they’ll never be published. Sometimes the block is there to tell you that you had your fun but it’s time to move on to the next thing.

North is The Night is narrated by Lucy Doig and Maryam Ali. While writing did you imagine the audiobook to be dual narrated? 

Yes, I always saw this as being a dual narrated project. Siiri and Aina are such different characters. I wanted two voices for the women that each felt distinct.

We’d love to know a bit about the casting process. What was your favourite part? What made Lucy and Maryam the right fit?

 "It’s always fun to hear the voice clips for the different actors and imagine them as my characters. Honestly, for this particular project, it didn’t take long at all to settle on the narrators. I trusted my team over at Arcadia. They already had ideas of the kind of voice/accent they thought would work so I was presented with a short lise of candidates. Lucy and Maryam each did such a fantastic job. I really felt like I could see Siiri and Aina as they were speaking.

Obviously, I’m always hoping for a tonal match where they “sound” like my character, but as a former percussionist, I tend to focus on cadence too. As much as there are words on the page in each of my stories, I see a sort of sheet music too, especially when it comes to the style and tempo of dialogue. Lucy and Maryam both had a great natural cadence that fit their characters.

Please recommend an audiobook you absolutely adored!

Am I allowed to do a shameless self-insert here? My favorite audiobook from my backlist is Whiskey & Sin, which is an MM Omegaverse narrated by Tor Thom and Diontae Black. Even if you don’t want to read my book, definitely look up these voice actors and explore their other works. They did such a fantastic job bringing my characters to life! 

What are you reading (or listening to) right now?

I have several books on rotation right now. I’ve launched a non-fiction book club in my Patreon where we’re focusing on political titles. Right now, we’re reading How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley. I’m also about 10% of the way into The Weaver, by Tiffany Roberts, which is an alien romance. I devoured the first three books in the series. I was lucky to get an early ARC of Harley Laroux’s upcoming release, House of Rayne, which was delicious. It comes out this fall. And I also just got an ARC of Winging it With You by Chip Pons, which is a gay romcom that I’m so excited to start!