Ten questions with Roxana Arama
Roxana Arama’s debut novel, politically timely and deeply personal, has earned rave reviews: “[a] remarkable cast sparks this incisive, riveting tale of intolerance.” (source: Kirkus Reviews)
Thanks Roxana for taking time for an interview!
1. Please tell us about your debut novel.
Thank you so much for inviting me to talk about Extreme Vetting: A Thriller. It’s a story about an immigration lawyer who fights to keep her client from being deported to the country where his family was murdered many years ago. Then she finds out the killers are coming here—for both of them.
Seattle, Washington, 2019. Attorney and single mom Laura Holban is an immigrant herself, guiding clients through a Kafkaesque system of ever-changing rules, where overworked judges make life-shattering decisions in minutes. Laura’s newest client is Emilio Ramirez, who was arrested in front of his sons at their high school and thrown in detention.
When Laura files for his asylum, false criminal charges prevent his release. Someone is following his family, and an ICE prosecutor threatens to revoke Laura’s US citizenship. None of it makes sense—until Laura uncovers a deadly conspiracy involving ICE, stolen data, and human trafficking. Which puts her daughter and Emilio’s sons in serious danger. Not to mention Laura and Emilio themselves.
2. I’ve read that only 4% of the people who start a novel, finish writing it. Why do you think you beat the odds?
My background in computer science helps me manage complex projects such as novels. I find software development and novel writing to be not that different. When I write, I blend research, storytelling, and editing the way I used to mix design, coding, and testing in my previous career.
The other reason was my belief that Extreme Vetting could be a useful addition to the public discourse on immigration in the United States. Many loud voices condemn immigrants without understanding the basic facts about them. One such voice prompted me to write this thriller. In 2018, I watched a video of the president of the United States at a rally, where he compared immigrants to venomous snakes that should be crushed and killed, not given shelter. His crowd loved it, but I was horrified. Dehumanizing the other is the first step toward violence. Soon I started working on a novel that shows readers what it feels like to be an immigrant. It was my way of pushing back against the dehumanizing language coming from people like Trump.
3. Was your debut novel the first book you wrote? (Any prior efforts hiding on your hard drive?)
I wrote a novel for my MFA thesis in creative writing, but I didn’t polish it. I was too captive to my real-life inspiration material—a series of interviews with a fascinating man who tried to flee Romania during the communist era—and I couldn’t turn that into a novel, with its own structural expectations. In the end, I created a nonfiction project, available now on my website under the title Our Borders: A True Story.
I then wrote a grounded historical fantasy set on the ancient maps of Romania and Ukraine, which my agent couldn’t sell at the time. In it, a princess is exiled from her native country, and she ends up changing the religion of her adoptive kingdom, while threatening the future of the Roman Empire itself. It’s based on my experience in post-communist Romania, when the whole country shifted from secularism to a religion-based order within months. It’s also an immigration story that readers of Extreme Vetting might find compelling—the theme of the immigrant who alters their adoptive culture. I hope to publish it soon.
4. What helped you become a better writer? Any books or resources you found helpful?
I’m a dedicated learner of everything that has to do with writing and publishing. Constant practice (reading and writing) makes everything better, while editors and writing groups offer perspectives and resources I wouldn’t have on my own.
Joining Codex Writers’ Group has been a life-changer for me. For those who don’t know it, Codex is a support group for neo-pro speculative fiction writers—and the winner of the 2022 Locus Award for Community Building and Career Development.
Another terrific resource is the Better-Faster Academy with Becca Syme. Their courses introduced me to the Gallup Strengths, which allowed me to understand why my writing process works for me, and how to lean into things I do well instead of trying to improve things I’m only mediocre at. Their classes freed me from a lot of misconceptions, and I only wish I had found them sooner.
5. What was your process like getting an agent?
This is a more complicated story, where the politics of US immigration affected my path to publication. I actually had an agent while working on Extreme Vetting. When I presented the manuscript to him, he rejected it. The reason was that my book—a thriller written by an immigrant, with a protagonist who’s an immigration lawyer and an immigrant herself; a book based on extensive interviews with an immigration lawyer and inspired by two criminal cases in Washington State, where ICE officials were sentenced to prison for defrauding undocumented immigrants—that book was too similar to another title my agent was representing. So we parted ways.
In January 2020, I started querying both agents and small presses at the same time, because we were in the middle of a presidential campaign, and I thought that Extreme Vetting, a thriller named after the president’s policies of targeting immigrants, could help bring a more nuanced perspective to a polarized public discourse.
Initially, I received lots of manuscript requests. But a couple of weeks later, another immigration novel was published, dramatically altering the cultural landscape on this subject. All my manuscript requests were returned with form rejections. But I kept submitting. A brand-new agent found me through a Twitter pitching event, and I signed with them, warning them about the complex marketplace forces we were going to face. Two days later, Ooligan Press (Portland State University) informed me that they wanted to take my manuscript to acquisitions. But my agent decided to go in a different direction, without a good understanding of how to pitch my manuscript in this complex political context.
When things didn’t work out, we parted ways. I contacted Ooligan Press to see if they were still interested. My manuscript went through their submission process again, and months later we signed the contract. It took fourteen months to write the manuscript and three years to publish it, but it’s finally out in the world. My publication date was February 7, 2023, exactly twenty-two years since the day I arrived in the United States as an immigrant with borrowed money in my pocket. I hope readers will appreciate the detailed picture of our immigration system I painted in this novel. I also hope they’ll enjoy my fast-paced thriller.
6. How did you celebrate when you learned your book would be published?
I’m not sure, but I probably sat at the dinner table with my kids and my husband, and we toasted with red wine for the adults and milk for the little ones.
7. What was the most exciting moment involving the publication of your debut novel? (The moment you first saw the cover? The call when you learned when it was being published? When you cashed your advance check?)
I was excited about my publication date being a significant day in my life, but I kept my expectations low. Because of supply-chain disruptions during Covid, I was sure we’d miss my pub date—but we didn’t!
8. What’s your best advice for someone who wants to be published?
First, be cautious with the advice given by other authors. We writers are all very different people. What works for some doesn’t work for others. If anyone’s advice for what a “real writer” should do doesn’t resonate with you, just ignore it. For instance, I used to imagine that real writers get up before dawn to write with a strong cup of coffee, and that they write every day, preferably in a cabin in the mountains. I couldn’t do any of that—I can’t even drink coffee. All the social media memes involving this writing imagery left me feeling inadequate. And this is just a goofy example, but there are more damaging assumptions: about plotting or pantsing; editing as you go or waiting until the end; writing chronologically or out of order. In each case, I thought there was a correct answer—because a famous author had said so—and that I was doing things incorrectly. Then I learned about my strengths and embraced my own quirky process, which was liberating.
Also, the publishing industry has changed a lot in the last fifteen years—and it’s still changing. The rules of the game shift constantly, and in a saturated marketplace with low discoverability, strategies that worked years ago aren’t as effective now. In this context, good resources that help us navigate the current publishing landscape are invaluable. I subscribe to Jane Friedman’s newsletter The Hot Sheet. Examples of great organizations that educate writers about publishing and marketing include: The Authors Guild, SFWA, Codex, ITW, and the Better-Faster Academy.
9. What are you currently reading? Or, what's one of the best novels you've read lately?
I’m almost done reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Some of the best novels I recently read are Daughters of Smoke and Fire by Ava Homa, The Reckoning by John Grisham, and Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. Oh, and I must seize this opportunity to mention a nonfiction book I studied for my work-in-progress: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins.
10. What are you working on now? Any projects coming out soon?
I’m revising a sci-fi thriller about the advent of artificial general intelligence on Earth, in an alternate history where the Roman Empire survived for another millennium. (AGI is very different from generative AI such as ChatGPT). My novel is based on extensive neuroscience and AI research, and it draws from my background in computer science, where I graduated with a major in artificial intelligence years ago. When the androids in my sci-fi can’t secure the same basic human rights as their creators, they must find their own place to call home. It’s another immigration thriller, but this time with androids and spaceships.
Thank you, KC, for your great questions and this wonderful opportunity to connect with your readers!