Episode #11
Jesse Aragon on Demon Star: Morally Gray Leads, X-Files Horror, and a Pierce Brown Blurb
Pete has been dying to get Jesse Aragon on the show since he saw the cover of Demon Star back in January, and six months later the wait pays off. Jesse is a science fantasy author and full-time nurse whose debut, out July 28 from DAW, follows an exorcist and a demon-possessed warrior on a god-ruled, ruined planet, where the woman's son is chosen to become the vessel of a god-killing demon. We get into how that cover came together, down to Jesse sketching stick-figure poses on a work schedule and sending it to the artist as reference. Jesse walks through the wild road to this book: querying at 19, a shelved 180,000-word novel that died on submission, a second agent, and a leaner 109,000-word manuscript that DAW then asked to expand by 20 to 30 percent. We talk about writing morally compromised leads without losing reader investment, the deliberate choice to let a queer relationship be as messy and "problematic" as any straight one in the genre, and how years working trauma and emergency medicine feed directly into how Jesse writes violence: ugly, consequential, never just cool. Plus the exorcism horror movies and a half-remembered X-Files episode about a parasitic worm cult that Jesse didn't realize had shaped the whole book until a rewatch last year, the no-context text that delivered a Pierce Brown blurb, a second blurb from Rebecca Roanhorse that arrived the same way, and the advice Jesse has for anyone still years out from a book deal: the work still counts even when nobody's watching. Demon Star releases July 28 from DAW. Book two, a standalone set in the same universe, is already in progress. =========================== Connect with Jesse Instagram: @jva_writes =========================== Connect with Realm Runners Subscribe: @realm_runners Follow Realm Runners: instagram.com/realm_runners Follow Pete: instagram.com/pete_reviews_books_good Follow Devin: instagram.com/bromantasy Timestamps 0:00 — Intro and welcome to episode eleven with Jesse Aragon 1:02 — Jesse introduces Demon Star, out July 28 4:39 — The cover: working with artist Kieran Yanner and the stick-figure pose sketch 7:42 — Commissioning character art before the book deal even existed 10:20 — What DAW let Jesse do: expanding from a lean 109K to a longer, fuller book 12:16 — Writing flashbacks that don't break immersion 17:00 — Writing morally compromised leads without losing the reader 20:04 — Committing to an unlikable character instead of softening her 22:32 — How ER and nursing work shaped writing injury and trauma 26:52 — Why violence should hurt on the page, not just look cool 27:48 — Getting blurbed by Pierce Brown with zero context 31:31 — Messy, complicated relationships and "problematic" queer representation 35:26 — The horror side: exorcism movies, bugs, and a childhood love of possession stories 38:06 — The X-Files parasite-cult episode that quietly inspired the whole book 42:06 — Advice for aspiring authors: querying at 19, a book deal at 30 49:38 — Book two: a standalone set in the same universe 53:03 — What's surprised Jesse about early reader reactions 59:15 — Where to find Jesse and wrap-up
