It all happened rather quickly after that and, shortly later, she sold her novel to Penguin Random House.īefore DVPit writing was just like her full time second job, it was very regimented. ![]() Just a few days later, they got notice that a publisher was interested, and hours later, they discovered that even more publishers were interested. She worked with him to revise the novel, then he submitted it to editors at traditional publishing houses. From this event, she connected with Peter Knapp of Park & Fine Literary and Media, her literary agent. Then in April of 2019, she took part in an event on Twitter called #DVPit where she “pitched” her book idea to editors and literary agents. She worked on the story for four years (from 2015 until 2019) and asked her trusted friends to read it and provide her with feedback. However those were the words that she needed to write in order to learn about pacing, character, and craft. In print, the book is around 120,000 words, however if you take all of the words that she wrote, deleted, and revised it’s much closer to 500,000 words. There were a bunch of false starts and many scratched drafts. The combination of these experiences inspired her to begin writing the story which would eventually become “Beasts of Prey”.Īyana began a bunch of mini-stories before finishing the book. Six months later, she studied abroad in Ghana (West Africa) and was struck by its complex history, beautiful landscapes, and the connection that she felt to it as a person of the African diaspora. She took an honors colloquium on political violence during her third year of undergraduate study which made her wrestle with how easily concepts of “evil” and “good” can be manipulated. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she avidly reads, follows Formula One racing, and worries about the varying moods of her mini goldendoodle, Dolly, and her adopted baby black rhino, named Apollo. ![]() Ayana Gray is a lover of all things mythos, magic, and monsters and a New York Times bestselling young adult fantasy author.
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