All about the novel Floating Hotel

Who is Grace Curtis?

Grace Curtis is a writer from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK. She’s contributed to magazines like Eurogamer and Edge, and has a wonderful day job at an indie game publisher called Future Friends. Her debut novel Frontier is out now. Next year, god willing, there will be a sequel.

What is Floating Hotel all about?

Interview

What was your inspiration for Floating Hotel?

Funny enough, Floating Hotel was born out of a song – Not the First Time, by a band called The World. I stumbled across it on a random YouTube video essay and had a lightning bolt moment where I saw not only the whole setting and story, but how it was going to end. At the time I had all these different elements in my head that hadn’t coalesced: I wanted to see the world of Frontier from a different angle, I wanted to have an ensemble cast, I wanted to do something a bit intimate and small scale. That song brought it all together into this story about an aging spaceship hotel. Once I saw the album art I knew it was fate (seriously, google it – you’ll see what I mean!). 

As I started planning, I remembered another idea I’d had years and years ago. There’s this cult classic movie from 1996 called Barb Wire, starring Pamela Anderson as a bounty hunter in a ruined dystopian America. It’s an infamously bad film, but intriguing in one way, in that the script is a beat for beat remake of Casablanca. Isn’t that a stroke of mad genius? Casablanca, in the far future! I’ve always wanted to write a book that felt like that. 

Lastly, I have to pay my dues to Bernardine Evaristo. Her book Girl, Woman, Other, which won the Booker in 2019, was a huge inspiration in Floating Hotel’s multi-POV structure. The way she incorporates and breathes life into so many different characters is an insane work of skill and craft. I’d highly recommend checking her stuff out if you haven’t. 

What drew you to writing romance? 

Hahaha, I wouldn’t call Floating Hotel a romance exactly. It is definitely a kind of love story though. I guess I wanted to explore different kinds of love… romantic, yes, but also platonic, the day to day affection that grows between people when they get thrown together. Sometimes it blossoms into something else, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people drive eachother up the wall. Sometimes they part ways wondering what might have happened, or feeling like they never fully understood the other person. Either way, the characters shine more vividly than they would on their own. 

What was your process for writing Floating Hotel? Was it different to Frontier?

Very different. With Frontier, I had all the time in the world, and no clue if the book would ever see the light of day. I worked a string of hospitality jobs while I wrote the first draft, which was tiring physically, but left the writing parts of my brain to rest. Floating Hotel had an (albeit distant) deadline, plus I had this whole secondary career in the games industry to manage at the same time.

As a result I had to bring a higher level of discipline, planning, etc to the project. Luckily I had a very clear vision from the story right from the start. All I had to do was write as well as possible, and try to do justice to the thing sitting in my head.

How did you choose which character to focus the story? 

Carl was the keystone for me right from the start. It’s an irony I kind of enjoy, that Frontier spends most of the book withholding the protagonist’s name, and the first word of Floating Hotel is ‘Carl’. It’s like: here he is! Here’s Carl! I think that’s appropriate, because he’s such an open character. It makes him loveable, but also a little challenging to write. How do you make someone interesting when they’re so nice? But that’s the thing. Carl isn’t just nice, he’s kind. And kindness is always interesting, especially in the context of an unkind world. In my life I’ve had the benefit of knowing a lot of lovely men. They’ve been mentors and father figures (or a literal father in some cases – hi dad!). Carl isn’t based on any one in particular, but I wrote his character slightly in tribute to them, and the positive impact they’ve had on my life.

What is your approach to world and character building?

For me character always comes first. I build the world out and around the people, and ultimately everything is in service of their arcs, their stories. The intricacies of a currency system are less intriguing to me then, i.e., who has resources and who doesn’t, who grew up poor and came into money, who’s struggling for the first time, how lines of class show up in relationships and attitudes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love world-first stories. I love that Frank Herbert clearly wanted to have sword fights in his spaceship book and reverse engineered a millennia of history, butlerian jihad and the personal forcefields and sci-fi cocaine, just so it all made sense. I admire it, I respect it. It’s just not my process. 

Did you have a favourite moment to write in Floating Hotel?

Any scene with Rogan. She’s this mean, spiky, scabby type of character who enjoys rubbing people up the wrong way. Not someone I’d want to work with, but to write? Such a good time.

How would you describe Floating Hotel in five words?

Warm space mystery featuring rat

What was your favourite book growing up?

Corby Flood, by Paul Stewart. I love it most ardently. 

Do you have a favourite genre to read?

Nope! I’ll read anything so long as it’s written well. I guess I’m drawn to stuff that’s on the strange side – right now I’m reading The Bridge by Iain Banks, a sensational book about consciousness and death that’s also very funny and has world-class worldbuilding (or bridgebuilding, maybe). My favorite read of last year was probably Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a kind of backwards murder mystery that tells you everything and nothing at the same time. I also adored The City We Became, which is basically N.K. Jemsin reimagining the superhero genre as an expression of place, while also feeding HP Lovecraft into a woodchipper, which he deserves. I think of genre less as a set of rules and more as a toolkit, and I’m drawn to authors who use those tools in a way that’s playful and clever.