Breaking Out: Adam Oyebanji

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We first connected with Adam Oyebanji during his debut novel's publication and featured him in our March/April 2024's Breaking In column. Now that his next publication is hitting the shelves today, we're reconnecting with him.

Although this is my fourth book to be published since I “broke in” (Braking Day was followed by A Quiet Teacher and Two Times Murder, both mysteries), Esperance was actually written third. I’m trying to alternate between SF and Crime, although Esperance mixes both! To get back to your question, though, it was written in 2022-23 and has been waiting to be born ever since.

I still feel very grateful to be here, and I think it’s important not to lose sight of that. I’m lucky to be able to write, luckier to have an agent and publishers, and luckiest of all to have readers who seem to like my books. These are things to remember whenever the enthusiasm levels drop.

In terms of what’s changed, I think the process as a whole is simply less mysterious, so I’m less hesitant about speaking up if I feel something isn’t quite right. Plus, I sometimes get invited to parties and book festivals!

Editors. The publishing houses, like many businesses, have been going through a lot of changes recently, mostly driven by a desire to keep costs down and profits up, which is what businesses do, after all. In consequence, a lot of editors have been laid off and/or moved on, which meant that Esperance has had more editors than I would have expected. On the plus side, though, they’ve all been great to work with. I love working with people who love books!

Everything, of course! More seriously, I’m proud of being able to talk about a dark subject through the light and pacy lens of a speculative crime thriller. Library Journal describes Esperance as “recommended for readers who love intricately blended genre stories that ask big questions,” and I couldn’t ask for better than that. I hope people will see Esperance as a fun read that sometimes makes you think. Then, on a more granular level, I feel I’ve done a pretty good job with the dialog. I like to think I’m good at the back-and-forth that keeps people engaged with the characters while the story rattles along underneath.

Absolutely! Every time I write a novel, I learn something along the way about how to write a novel. Reading Esperance now, I keep thinking why did I use that word and not this, this motivation and not that. I suspect a lot of writers feel this way. Left to ourselves, we’d tweak forever and nothing would ever get published!

Persevere. All you can do is write. You have no control over anything else, so concentrate on that. Write because it gives you joy or because you find it meaningful in some other sense. If the “other” stuff happens, great! But you can’t really write for that, and I would suggest you don’t try. It either happens, or it doesn’t. No good can come from worrying about it.

I’m returning to the universe of Braking Day: a murder mystery (sort of) in space! There’s a supporting character in Braking Day that I really enjoyed writing. This new novel is set twenty years earlier than Braking Day and is told from that character’s point of view. After that, I’d quite like to write the follow-up to Two Times Murder, but one thing at a time!

Website: AdamOyebanji.com