Shaun Hamill’s The Dissonance is a big and bold novel that mixes fantasy, horror, and heart. The magical story weaves between characters and time periods, as readers encounter themes of friendship and love. Just like with the author’s previous book, A Cosmology of Monsters, there are even monsters.
Shaun Hamill received his BA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington, and his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut novel, A Cosmology of Monsters, was published in 2019. He lives and works in North Texas.
It was a pleasure to talk to Shaun about, among other topics, outlining, characters, and monsters.
BS: It’s good to talk to you, Shaun. Thanks for taking the time. I want to dive right in and ask a process question because I was so impressed by how you pull off this new book so well. You have multiple perspectives. There are multiple time periods. We move back and forth through it all. The writer in me kept wondering how you did it, on a craft level. What was your outlining process like?
Shaun Hamill (Photo by Cedrick May)
SH: It’s good to talk to you, too! Thanks so much for asking. This will be fun.
To answer your question, this book had an interesting gestation. It started as an outline/pitch, which I shared with my agent and editor. Once they had blessed the basic concept, I set the outline aside and wrote the first draft, more or less from memory of the outline. I didn’t worry much about structure, just tried to tell the story from beginning to end, letting it be messy.
Afterwards, I bought a corkboard and re-outlined the book based on the finished first draft. I used different-colored index cards for each point-of-view character, so I could get a feel for their overall arcs within the book (and within each sub-section) and try to balance out when they disappeared for long stretches or seemed to appear too often.
The trickiest part of writing this novel was making sure the alternating perspectives lined up with the important beats of the story, and there were many times where I had to go back and reconfigure several chapters to make sure that I was in the right character’s head for each of the big moments. Hopefully I chose correctly, and the end result resonates!
Bradley Sides
BS: As I was beginning The Dissonance and read through the first chapters from Hal, Athena, Owen, and Erin, I was already thinking this is a book that has friendship in its veins. Reading more and more, and then the acknowledgements, I knew I was right. Will you talk a bit about how friendship became such a vital part of this novel?
SH: The Dissonance is a COVID novel down to its DNA. It was written during lockdown in 2020 and 2021. I know that was a rough time for everyone, but it was tough for me personally, too. My marriage was ending, and I had to start my life over again in Alabama, where I didn’t really know anyone at a time when it was dangerous to try meeting new people.
Everyone I knew—all my old friends and family—were back in Texas. In the lead-up to my divorce, and during the endless months of solitude in my Alabama apartment in 2021, I longed to be back home with the people I loved, and I think that longing powered the novel.
Luckily, that part of my personal story has a happy ending. The company I work for has an office about twenty miles from my hometown, and they allowed me to transfer back to Texas at the end of 2021. I got to come home and be among my favorite people while I went through edits and revisions on The Dissonance.
BS: Speaking of friendship and connections, which one of the characters in the book did you connect with the most as you were giving them life?
SH: That’s tough. I think there’s a lot of me in all the main characters. But if I had to pick one, I’d say Athena. She and I both spend too much time in our own heads. We can be aloof. We can be shitty if we don’t get our way. We’re both maybe a little too tempted by dark questions of morality and pragmatism, but I think deep down, we both know that our love for our friends is what keeps us human.
BS: When we talked over at The Millions about A Cosmology of Monsters, when it was first out, we spent a lot of time talking about monsters. Monsters are here, too, but in a different way. The definition can change over time certainly, but right now, what do you think makes a monster a monster?
SH: I’m tempted to go back and read my answers from 2019, so I don’t copy myself! But I’ll play fair.
The way I see it, there are two distinct ways of thinking about the term. The first is “monster” as a category of living creature. As in D&D’s Monster Manual or Sully from Monsters, Inc. Creatures with shapes you can easily point to. These are a lot of fun, regardless of whether they’re being played for scares (Alien) or pathos (The Shape of Water). They hold up a funhouse mirror to the audience. They give us a place to examine ourselves and the forces that shape our existence (be they seen or unseen).
The second way of thinking about the term is more upsetting. That’s “monster” in terms of behavior: rape, murder, abuse, etc. There’s no funhouse there. Just a look at humanity’s worst impulses. To my mind, these are the true owners of the term. The fun creatures above probably deserve a different designation, although I’m not a talented enough writer to come up with it myself.
BS: Since I mentioned A Cosmology of Monsters, I’ll ask this question: What do you see as the relationship between it and The Dissonance? Close kin? Not really at all?
SH: I’m dying to know what readers have to say about this, once they get their hands on the book. But from where I’m sitting, three months out from release, I see the two novels as siblings. They’re both coming-of-age stories preoccupied with a sense of dark wonder. Both center on a small group of people who truly love one another (even if they’re not always good at showing it). Hopefully, readers who enjoyed Cosmology will feel like they’re seeing a natural growth from one book to the next (with some surprises along the way).
I’m not going to go all-in and say I’m building a universe like Brandon Sanderson, but there are a few deliberate nods to locations and characters from Cosmology in The Dissonance. I don’t have plans on combining the two plotlines or anything, but I see them taking place in the same overall world.
BS: So, let’s talk about the Dissonant magic. Professor Marsh gives his students literal rules, but, of course, you had to build these on top of others to make the whole world-building seem so real. Were you inspired by other works? Did you try to make it all up from scratch? How did you approach world-building?
SH: The two biggest influences for me were Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Clarke and Grossman both present magic as a rigorous academic discipline, something that is difficult to learn and practice. They also both present magic as something mysterious and wild, with a prominent dark side and unforeseen costs. I tried to incorporate all of that into my own magic system. I wanted it to be a talent that could only be accessed by people who were a bit broken. I wanted it to be enigmatic, as likely to harm as to help. And most of all, I wanted to hint at a world much bigger than the one glimpsed in the novel. Hopefully, I succeeded in at least some of that.
BS: I want to close out by saying how I admire the way you represent Texas and Alabama both in this book. Is that just a bit of you coming through? An homage to home of sorts?
SH: Thank you so much! That’s definitely my lived experience coming through, the two places I know best—rural Alabama and suburban north Texas. If people from the area(s) feel like I got it right, I can’t ask for a better compliment.
BS: Thanks again for your time, Shaun. It’s been fun. Congratulations on the upcoming release of The Dissonance!
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