Accidentally writing a hit: Sebastien de Castell

Sebastien de Castell is a Canadian author of 17 books. His most recent release, The Malevolent Eight, follows foul-mouthed accidental heroes in their quest to bring peace, no matter how much they have to kill to do so. De Castell sat down with The Gateway to chat about the new release, its insane proposal, and what spurred both. 

At 16-years-old, de Castell read Bard by Keith Taylor, and ever since, has wanted to be a bard. The book’s main character “travelled around the world, played music, sang songs, got into sword fights, went on adventure, and told stories. And I thought, ‘man, that’s the job for me,’” de Castell said.

After graduating from Simon Fraser University (SFU) with a bachelor’s degree in archaeology, Castell went to Sutton Hoo, United Kingdom for his first dig and realized he hated it. After quitting archaeology, de Castell set out to be a bard. 

“I was a travelling musician for a long time, playing gigs in small towns, and I ended up in Australia doing some gigs there. I took up fencing and did fight choreography for theatre too. Overall, got the experience of being a sort of fighting, musical bard in the aggregate,” de Castell explained. 

With all the rest of a bard’s activities out of the way, de Castell turned to storytelling. Since 2014, he has written 17 novels. His most recent release, The Malevolent Eight is a follow up to his 2023 release, The Malevolent Seven. 

“I’m going to break every rule. I’m going to say every bad word,” de Castell says

The Malevolent Seven, de Castell said, was never meant to be published or read by anyone. He began writing the book in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, he was writing a couple other novels. In copy editing, he was being asked to remove or change certain words to ensure gender inclusivity. 

And, on what was Twitter at the time, there was discourse about what tropes and stories should and should not exist in fantasy literature. And that discourse, de Castell said, actually affected what publishers would ask for “since that’s the most accessible form of data they have.”

“That was kind of frustrating me a little bit, even though it wasn’t the copy editor’s fault. But, when you’re writing a novel, when you’re writing a series, it’s very strange when all this language changes. Language in that world isn’t changing that fast,” de Castell explained. 

In response, de Castell said “[I decided] I’m going to write a novel for myself in a month. Nobody needs to read it, and I’m going to break every rule. I’m going to say every bad word. And so I started writing about these morally compromised wizards going around blowing things up, swearing all the time, and accidentally saving the world.” 

After his agent read the manuscript and loved it, they convinced him to send it in to publishers. After doing so, de Castell said it ended up being the fastest book deal he’s ever gotten. He said he realized that nobody was trying to censor him. “The world is just trying to say ‘hey, don’t unintentionally hurt people,’” he said. 

And with The Malevolent Seven becoming one of his most successful novels, he was asked for a sequel, but he was also asked to send in a proposal for it. “I hate writing proposals,” he said. 

“Modern readers deserve something that would make death row inmates throw up their last meal,” de Castell says

He did end up taking an hour to write one. But, in protest, de Castell said he ”wrote the most offensive book proposal in history.” 

“I start off with ‘The Malevolent Seven was a reasonable success and all, and people love these morally compromised wizards. But modern readers deserve something better. No more of these sort of whiny pseudo-antiheroes talking about how they can’t be redeemed. Modern readers deserve something that would make death row inmates throw up their last meal,’” he explained. 

And to give the publishers an example, he laid out a scene for them, which de Castell said is not something usually done in proposals. 

The scene sees angels being tortured to death, the seven coming in to kill their torturers, but then, the seven killing the angels too. And during the chaos, de Castell introduces all the main characters. But, after realizing he’s missing one, comes up with something outrageous on the spot. 

A seven foot tall rabbit with short ears and a long tail “that wraps around his enemies as he punches them to death [to] slurp the blood from their caved in skulls” was introduced. De Castell even wrote into the proposal, “yeah it’s a fucking vampire kangaroo, get over it,” he said. 

He finished the proposal with: “The Malevolent Eight: Let’s Get Cancelled Bitches.” This proposal was a joke that he sent to his agent. His agent, without realizing it, actually sent it to the publishers. 

In response, de Castell said they sent a one sentence email that said “you had me at vampire kangaroo.” 

As a whole, de Castell said the first book in the Malevolent series is “me telling a joke to myself. The second book was me telling a joke to the publishers.” 

“Once war starts, it becomes too profitable to stop,” de Castell says

And while the books come off unserious, the themes explored actually revolve around “our inability to figure out how to deal with war,” de Castell said. 

“We’ve been watching a war unfold in Europe for several years now. And everybody thinks war is terrible and should be stopped. But nobody’s sure how to stop it. And [a character in the book’s] thing is that once war starts, it becomes too profitable to stop. It’s fundamental and one of the things that comes through the story is that it’s profitable for lots of people,” he said. 

In response, the characters in the book decide “let’s make [this war] so unprofitable that it’s not worth anyone’s time to join either side. To stop a war, you could go ‘I’ll just murder all the generals.’ But then you realize it wasn’t the generals running the show. It was the arms dealers. But then you realize it wasn’t the arms dealers. It was the economic system from which that profit was made. It’s really about how war looks insane from the outside, but when you peer inside, what’s really tragic is that it’s not insane at all. It’s entirely rational.”

The Malevolent Eight was released on August 26. And for a signed copy, de Castell is doing a book signing at Audrey’s on September 2.