In June of 2023, Craig Montgomery burst onto the queer literary scene with his debut novel, A Circle of Stars. It chronicled a young man from Earth, Casper, as he is transported to a society inside the moon where he discovers he’s a very powerful being and meets Helix. The two fall in love fairly quickly.
Now, two years later, Montgomery is back with another novel. A Sky So Hollow continues the story where A Circle of Stars left off. Readers will go on a journey with both Casper and Helix as they try to make the council see sense, and Talleah as she adjusts to life with her daughter once again.
I spoke with Craig Montgomery about his journey with these characters, his inspirations, and what he hopes people come to understand about the world of Novilem. (You can watch the full interview below.)
When it comes to talking about what inspired him to start writing this particular duology, Craig Montgomery was more than happy to explain his process.
“ I think it was 2019. I was like, I really want to give it like an actual go,” Montgomery began. “ I was into tarot reading at the time. I was learning, and I had just gotten a really cool deck. I had seen some people talking about using tarot as a way to explore storytelling, like fiction-wise, not just the stories we tell each other about ourselves.”
“I laid out a few Celtic Crosses to kind of give me a scope of my hero and a villain, and just trying to see if it could stir anything up,” he continued.
“ I knew I wanted to have fun and interesting magic. Tarot and astrology are very intertwined in the way you think about things with the elements.”
Watch the full interview with Craig Montgomery:
To better understand how Montgomery came up with the magic each character possesses, one has to better understand how astrology presents itself in a star chart for each individual person.
“ I started thinking about, ‘Okay, how do I interpret what are the facets of astrology in a fantastical way?’ Astrology tends to be water, earth, air, and fire; an element thing,” Montgomery said.
“And because I didn’t wanna work with the elemental magic system, nothing wrong with them, they’re lovely. I just wanted to try something different. I kind of moved into sort of an Eastern World of thinking in terms of chakra and energy placements in the body,” he added.
“ In your astrology chart, like if you were to have someone draw up a chart for you, there are relationships between different like planetary systems that are going on at the time.”
” Ours will be in different signs, and there’s a relationship, like it makes the angles. Okay, so trines and squares are powerful relationships in that way,” he said.
Once the magic was explained, Craig Montgomery discussed his characters and the stories he built for them.
“ Casper’s voice always comes to me the easiest. I found his voice the earliest when I was writing, and so, for me, he’s always the easiest to tap into,” Montgomery said.
“Helix can be a little difficult ’cause he’s got complex emotions and he’s also like a kid, but he’s also an adult. So sometimes I find when I’m writing scenes with him, I have to finagle a little bit to get him feeling correct,” he added.
“Then funny enough, Talleah is usually the one that I relate to the most. ‘Cause I am just like her, I’m an adult, and she’s older. The issues she’s dealing with and the complicated emotions that she’s having are much more relatable to me,” Montgomery said.
When asked about Talleah’s husband, Hector, Montgomery was more than happy to share in the joy his character brings to the story.
“ He showed up, and that’s who he was. It wasn’t even a conscious choice. I didn’t choose to have every letter of the rainbow represented.
When I had the first scene with Hector, that’s who he was. I mean, it ended up being an important facet of like showing that normalized queerness. I wanted Casper to see that. And so it was really helpful as like a viewpoint to show that,” Montgomery explained.
“ I guess in a subconscious way, it was kind of like my thank you to the trans community,” he added. “We’d all be so lucky to have a Hector in our life.”
Then, the conversation shifted to the relationship that sits at the core of this duology: Casper and Helix. Craig Montgomery had plenty to say about how their relationship reflects a bit of all of us in the queer community at different points.
“ I understood their relationship needed more context, and there were things that needed to be explored,” he said. “I found my way into that much more out of this is what felt like normal.”
“The most I could give myself credit is in mirroring the story structure. I knew that the opening of the first book has sort of like a different space transporting to another space. And so giving some kind of feeling of that same context, I knew I needed to have some kind of experience.”
“ A big focus with the second book, and why I felt like it was really necessary, was showing Helix reaching his breaking point, pushing him or basically showing what happens to him because of what happened in Book One. And giving Casper the opportunity to kinda show up for him the way that Helix showed up for Casper in the first book,” Montgomery explained.
We closed out our conversation talking about one of the most memorable lines from A Sky So Hollow, which comes from Talleah and states:
Sometimes family that you build stands stronger than the family that you’re given. And sometimes the family you’re given teaches you how to hold onto the family that you build.
“ It is kind of like a thematic summary. Because, for me, this duology is about finding home, what that means, and the fact that it’s not always something that’s given to you or easy or discoverable. It’s sometimes something you have to fight for,” Montgomery said.
“You have to build, you have to create out of nothing. And each of these characters are doing that from very different perspectives in very different ways,”
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A Sky So Hollow releases July 7th wherever books are sold.
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Mads Misasi
Mads is a part-time entertainment journalist and full-time marketing content creator. They love reading the latest in Queer novels -- especially romance ones and watching the latest dramas, sci-fi/fantasy, Star Wars, and romcom films/TV shows. They also serve as an associate editor and writer for Tell-Tale TV.
