Kiss of the Basilisk
Kiss of the Basilisk
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Lindsay Straube on Kiss of the Basilisk
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
A reality show question taken to its logical extremeThe book’s central competition, in which fourteen women train with basilisks and sexual skill is the only criterion that counts, did not begin as a fantasy premise. It began as a question Straube kept turning over while watching a specific episode of a specific television show: the Fantasy Suite on ‘The Bachelor’, where the final contestants spend the night with the lead.
I always thought that... whatever they do at the end of that show where they go and they have sex for the last two or three people... what if the whole show was just kind of that, and that is the only thing that mattered — like, who’s best in bed? And so that’s the premise.
How she wrote it
An accidental first page and a strategy of slow seductionBefore the book had a publisher, it had a mailing list. Straube released it in weekly chapter drops on her website, which meant every file she queued carried a consequence she could not undo. That irreversibility became the sharpest pressure of the entire writing process.
Something that put the fear of God in my bones was when I was doing the chapter drops — I was terrified that I was going to email one that was further along than the ones I had already done... if I sent it to the email subscribers and I sent like the last chapter... I can’t take it back. I checked it so many times.
The opening scene between Tem and Vera was written as a placeholder: a way into the story Straube assumed she would eventually preface. She never went back, and what remained became one of the most-noted passages in the book.
The first page of this book is interesting because it was never actually intended to be the first page. I hopped right into the middle of this conversation, always thinking ‘Well, I’ll go back and write the actual first page later.’ And I never did! Word for word, these lines have stayed the same.
Dropping in mid-conversation also had a practical side effect she embraced rather than corrected: the word ‘cock’ landed in the book’s opening paragraph. Her annotation reads that given what the book goes on to contain, she decided readers might as well start adjusting immediately.
Her approach to scene-by-scene craft mirrors the same preference for momentum over preparation. She does not pause to lay groundwork, and she does not treat gaps in explanation as problems requiring solutions.
I hate world building, and sometimes I simply leave it out, and figure I’ll get to it later. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Somehow things always turn out fine either way.
The same instinct shapes how she handles character knowledge. When Tem, the protagonist, uses the word ‘orgasm’ in the opening pages, a reader might reasonably ask how a virgin farm girl would know it. Straube’s annotation records that she asked herself the same question and chose not to answer it.
As far as first pages go, this is definitely my preferred method of establishing the lay of the land — I don’t want to read or write a lot of extraneous details. I always try to refrain from explaining what’s going on and instead try to just show it instead.
The book’s most extreme scenes, including a ritual and what she calls a council meeting, arrive well into the story. That placement was not incidental: Straube built the escalation of explicit content as a structural trap, designed so that readers would be too far in to recalibrate by the time those scenes appeared.
I think one of my goals was: I want to pull you in so subtly that by the time you’re reading the ritual and by the time you’re reading the council meeting and by the time you’re reading these crazy scenes, you’re just in it already — and you’re like, why do I find this hot? How did we even get here? You’re just accepting it.
What she wants us to sit with
An insult, a sentence, and the universality underneathVera’s opening insult to Tem, ‘you taste like chicken shit,’ is specific to a farming context, but Straube designed it to land on something far more general. She wanted the degradation to be recognizable to any reader who has ever absorbed a remark that cut deeper than it had any right to.
Every girl has experienced what Tem feels here — that one insult that cuts too deep. I wanted anyone reading this to see themselves in Tem a little bit. Even if you can’t relate to Tem’s exact struggles (and if you can, what is your life??), you can relate to her on a fundamental, human level. Who hasn’t felt like they aren’t good enough, or undeserving of love? These are universal human fears.
Readers kept returning to one phrase from the opening pages: ‘dovetailing perfectly with her shame.’ Straube’s annotation records the pattern of responses that line generated and what she thinks it communicated about the rest of the book.
‘Dovetailing perfectly with her shame’ is another line that gets pointed out to me a lot. Far be it for me to think that sentence is any sort of literary masterpiece, but I do think it was the moment for a lot of people when they realized ‘Ohhhhhh she can actually write. She may be writing basilisk porn, but she’s going to write it well.’
The cast’s sexual diversity was not left to emerge gradually or remain implicit. Straube established it in the opening pages, for main and supporting characters alike, including Gabriel, Tem’s only friend.
I tried to normalize everyone’s sexuality — even the side characters — straight out of the gate. Everyone in this book is horny. And we love them for it!!