Romantasy and mental health author Emma Noyes talks to us about her latest novel 'How to Hide in Plain Sight' and gives us a sneak peek at the next instalment in the 'Soul of Shadow' series coming next summer.
Emma Noyes grew up in a suburb outside Chicago and attended Harvard University, where she studied history and literature. She writes books about love, mental health, and magic for both the young adult and adult genres. Her works have been published in 10+ languages and include Guy’s Girl, How to Hide in Plain Sight, The Sunken City series, and The Soul of Shadow series. You can find Emma's books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
Gosh, I don't think I could say. Books have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the floor of my bedroom, rereading my favorite books in the Berenstain Bears series, or listening to the Harry Potter books on tape (actual tapes, not CDs!) in the cassette player in the living room. I'm the youngest of eight kids, and my older brothers were all huge fantasy and sci-fi readers. Our parents took us to stand in line (or queue, as you would say!) to buy the new Harry Potter books when they released at midnight. So many of my happiest memories involve reading.
It definitely wasn't a straight line. I took some fiction writing classes in college, where we worked on short stories. After graduation, I moved to Minnesota for my first job. I didn't know anyone there, so the hours after work ended felt long and empty. To fill them, I started writing, using what I'd learned in my college courses. I didn't have a specific project in mind. I just wrote, and about two years later, I suddenly had a completed novel. This was actually How to Hide in Plain Sight, not The Sunken City, though that version of HTHIPS looked completely different than what was published this year. It needed a lot of work before it was publication-ready.
Honestly, my routine is "whatever works on that given day." Sometimes, that means sitting at the desk in the guest room of my husband and my apartment, as I originally intended when I set up that room. Sometimes, though, it means going to a coffee shop for a change of scenery, or even just taking a long walk with my phone in my hand, jotting down in the Notes app the sentences or ideas that pop into my mind. I call these my "plot walks," and I've come up with a lot of my best material on them.
Absolutely. I love writing fantasy, but mental health representation is what I'm truly passionate about. As you mentioned, Guy's Girl is deeply personal to me as I wrote it in eating disorder recovery. I was recovering from both anorexia and bulimia, and after scouring the internet, I realized there wasn't much popular fiction out there that shows the realities of living with an eating disorder without glamorizing them. That's what I wanted Guy's Girl to do. To receive messages from readers who have struggled with the same issues telling me how seen and understood the book made them feel is the great joy of my working life.
Of course! How to Hide in Plain Sight is, like Guy's Girl, a contemporary love story following a protagonist who deals with a mental health issue not commonly depicted in popular media. In this case, it's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder -- but not the kind you see in "Monk" or As Good As it Gets. There is no intense germophobia, using a napkin to open a door handle, or stepping over sidewalk cracks. While those are very real symptoms of a certain subset of OCD, there are many, many other subtypes that almost never get discussed in popular media due to the taboo nature of their obsessions. Eliot Beck, the main character in HTHIPS, has HOCD (obsession over your sexual orientation, ie believing you are gay when you are straight, or vice versa), Incest OCD (worrying you are in love with or attracted to a family member), and POCD (Pedophile OCD).
Millions of people suffer from these subtypes, but most of them never receive a proper diagnosis, because there are no external compulsions to tip others off. The compulsions are all internal; they hide in plain sight. Eliot, who has been hiding from her family and best friend for three years (though we don't yet know why), returns to her family's private island for a wedding. Though she thinks she has her obsessions and compulsions under control, this time with the people she loves most sends her precarious tower crashing down.
My path to traditional publication has been very weird and windy, so there's a good chance that I mis-explained this story on a different corner of the internet. My first agent actually did represent How to Hide in Plain Sight, but it was the earlier version that, quite frankly, wasn't ready for publication yet. We pitched it to probably 20 different editors and got no's from all of them. I then sent her The Sunken City, which she said she wasn't interested in representing. I really believed in the book, though, so I parted ways with that agent and decided to self-publish The Sunken City trilogy while waiting to hear back from other agents about Guy's Girl. While all of this was going on, I was overhauling How to Hide in Plain Sight in the background. I decided I wanted to take out large chunks of the story and lean harder into the OCD aspect and the best friends-to-lovers storyline. I'm so glad I did, because when I finally presented HTHIPS to the editor with whom I signed for Guy's Girl, she loved it. Like I said, a very winding story!
Next up for me is the first book in my new YA romantasy trilogy, Soul of Shadow. It follows Charlie Hudson, a high school junior who has felt numb and distant from everything since the death of her twin sister two years before. At the start of the school year, one of her classmates goes missing, and the only evidence left behind is a single pair of shoes hanging from a tree carved up with strange Old Norse symbols. This disappearance is followed by the arrival of a new bad boy to town, Elias Everhart, who charms everyone at school except for Charlie. Her suspicions lead her to discover not only the truth about Elias, but the discovery of a world hiding in plain sight around them -- one of gods, magic, monsters, and a first love fated to fall apart. The first book in this trilogy comes out July 2025, and I can't wait for everyone to read it!
Oh, my goodness. Can I say The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster? That was one of my favourite books growing up. It's so imaginative. I must have read it a hundred times.
Easily, the best advice I ever got was from my mother. She's the one who saw how much I was writing in my free time and encouraged me to try to get published. Without her, I wouldn't be doing this interview!
Embarrassingly, I put so much of my life on TikTok and Instagram that there isn't much about me that my readers don't know! Let me think... oh, I was a competitive gymnast growing up! I wasn't amazing at it, but I loved the sport so much. I quit because I developed severe anxiety and started having mental blocks on the balance beam, but, looking back, I wish I had found a way to work through the anxiety and keep competing. Now, I loathe pretty much all forms of exercise except those where I can be upside down, so you can often find me doing handstands in my apartment or attending adult gymnastics classes. Also, I'm completely obsessed with Simone Biles. She's amazing.
