Behind the Book: Chloe Angyal

Welcome to the first post in our blog series Behind the Book, where we interview authors about behind-the-scenes details of their books and their writing process! This week, we’ve got Chloe Angyal, author of Pas de Don’t, on the blog. Pas de Don’t is a -as-heck romance about a ballerina who joins the Australian National Ballet, where an injured member of the company shows her around Sydney. The catch? As they tour Sydney together, the two discover an immediate mutual attraction—one they absolutely cannot act on. The Ballet has a strict no-dating policy, and even a hint of romance could cost them both their jobs…

Chloe recently hung out in the store for a Cocktails and Convos event, where she told us about her real life meet cute, her hot take on enemies-to-lovers, and TimTam slams, and it was so fun we had to have her on the blog. Luckily, she was kind enough to oblige.

Here’s what we asked her:

Questions About Chloe

In Pas de Don’t, an American dancer moves to Sydney for work. You yourself moved from Australia to the U.S. What was that like? Presumably you were without a hot dancing tour guide… Specifically, one staff member wants to know if you like scotcheroos.

Chloe: It was a huge culture shock. My mom is American, and I grew up visiting pretty often, so I thought I was prepared to live here. But a college campus is a culture unto itself, and there were lots of things that really took me by surprise. I hadn’t appreciated how laidback Australia was until I came to a place that was decidedly less chill.

And yes, I like scotcheroos—enough that we served them at our wedding!

There’s some stargazing in Pas de Don’t. Is this a hobby of yours? If so, what's your favorite constellation in the northern hemisphere? Which one from the southern hemisphere do you miss the most?

Chloe: It’s not! But after over a decade living in New York, I love being able to see the stars here in Iowa. I miss the Southern Cross the most; every time I go home to Sydney I make sure to go outside and look for it on my first night back.

You’re also a journalist, currently a senior editor at VICE. Do your journalism and contemporary romance writing feed one another? 

Chloe: Most of my journalism has been about gender and power, which is what romance is about, at its core. It’s a genre about how people arrive at equitable relationships with each other, and also how they create a more equitable world so they and their love can thrive. Whenever you’re writing about relationships, you have to ask “where is the power here, and why?” and that’s what journalism is a lot of the time too. “Who has the power here, and who doesn’t, and why, and how does that shape the lives of individual people?”

Questions About Her Process

What do you love about your genre/why do you love it?

Chloe: I love how optimistic it is. Romance says, yes, the world is a dark and difficult place, full of real problems and unkind people—and also, here is joy, here is pleasure, here is community, here is love. Some people call romance escapist and unrealistic, but I don’t think there’s anything unrealistic about telling people that they deserve to love themselves, and to be surrounded by friends and chosen family and a partner (or partners) who respect and care for them.

At your event with Dog-Eared, you talked with Rachel Mans McKenny about how the structure of a story really shines in romance as a genre. Do you find it freeing or constricting to work within a predictable structure? Do you think that writing in a genre with a predictable structure (like mystery or romance) is easier or more difficult for new writers?

Chloe: The structure sets out clear expectations for what the book needs to accomplish—but the real trick is to do something new or unexpected or possibly subversive within that structure. Romance Readers tend to read a LOT of romance, so surprising them or writing the best version of their favourite trope is really hard! I would say the romance structure makes it easy to learn the game, but harder to master and change the game.

What do you want readers in general to know about your genre?

Chloe: That there’s a romance novel for everyone, because it has anything and everything you could want. Any setting, any heat level, any gender, any subgenre. It’s all there, and in any combination you can think of. Small town, big city, outer space. Straight, queer, poly. Time traveling, shape shifting, magic—it’s all possible. You want time-traveling lesbian werewolves in space? There’s a romance novel for you.

When you feel stuck as a writer (with a particular piece or in general), what do you do?

Chloe: If I’m having trouble finding the words, it’s usually because I haven’t refined the ideas. So I usually stop trying to write and go spend some more time thinking. And experience has taught me that the ideas will come if I give them some space to breathe. So as hard as it is, I try to make myself walk the dog, or cook a meal, or work out. Something that will use my body and redirect my brain a little. Usually once I stop looking directly at the problem, it takes the pressure off enough for the ideas to float to the surface.

Which element of craft comes easiest for you? Why?

Chloe: Writing a sense of place. Helping a reader understand what a location smells like, sounds like. How the trees move, how the light refracts.

Which do you struggle with most? Why?

Chloe: I struggle to let characters behave badly. I get attached to them and want them to make good choices always, so letting characters screw up and hurt each other is really hard for me.

What do you do to overcome that struggle?

Chloe: I remind myself that my characters are human, and humans make mistakes. And that if I’ve done my job in making the characters feel real and sympathetic, my readers will understand and feel for them, and forgive them their bad behaviour if they learn from it.

What's one writing project you've always wanted to tackle?

Chloe: There’s a nonfiction book I want to write about politics that I’m uniquely positioned to write, and every few months something will happen in the news or in my life and the book comes back and prods me between the shoulderblades, like “hi, I’m still here, you should write me.”

Her Next Project

Chloe: The sequel to Pas de Don’t, Pointe of Pride, is coming next spring! It’s enemies to lovers starring Carly, the best friend of the heroine of Pas de Don’t. It’s also set in Sydney, and it’s got chronic pain rep and some of my favourite microtropes (including that one where a character speaks a language and doesn’t realize the other one can understand them, swoon!).

If you haven’t picked up your copy of Pas de Don’t, stop by in store or order it online here.