K.A. Merson: 'I wanted the reader to participate as much as possible'
BY Maya Fernandes
13th May 2025
K.A. Merson was a student on our How to Write Your Novel series and Writing Your Novel in 2020. We caught up to discuss his debut novel, The Language of the Birds – out now from Ballantine Books (Penguin Random House).
Read on to discover the inspiration behind the novel, his advice on balancing fact and imagination, and the adventure stories that he always returns to.
You studied on our How to Write Your Novel series and our Writing Your Novel – Six Months course in 2020. How did studying with us impact your approach to writing?
When the six-month course began, I’d already completed a first draft that I thought had good bones, but I knew it needed revision and refinement. While most of the plot points have stayed in place since the early drafts, much else has changed – style, description, characterization/interiority, et cetera. So, I’d say that my approach to writing (and perhaps especially to the editing process) is much more comprehensive than it was before the course. Hand in hand with the polishing process was learning how to best absorb and implement feedback (from both tutors and peers) in a way that allows me to open my mind to other opinions while also remaining true to myself and my vision.
Many of our students find their writing community on our courses – are you still in touch with any of your course mates?
Indeed, my closest writing friends are ones I met on CBC courses (before the six-month course, I also took three of the six-week novel-writing courses). In addition to excellent feedback, my course mates provided (and continue to provide) critical emotional support. As I say in the acknowledgments of my book, I honestly can’t imagine navigating this journey without them. On a related note, I first learned about CBC from the acknowledgments in Jane Harper’s The Dry, which I read in 2019, so being able to thank CBC and my writing friends in my own acknowledgments represents the closure of a long and gratifying circle.
The Language of the Birds follows seventeen-year-old Arizona as she searches for her mother and unearths ancient secrets. How did you go about developing Arizona as a protagonist?
Even though Arizona was brilliant in general and great with ciphers in the first draft, she was also neuro-typical and quite snarky (which is to say a more typical teenager). But I decided that I wanted to make her more unique, and also give her a more compelling character arc. My wife suggested that I make Arizona neuro-divergent, and I thought it was a great fit with some of her existing abilities. So, I studied up on neuro-divergence and tried to incorporate appropriate character traits without ever using the words neuro-divergent, spectrum, et cetera. I was very pleased when the authenticity reader approved of the portrayal.
The novel is filled with puzzles, images and ciphers that invite the reader to participate in the mystery. What was your process for creating these interactive elements? Did you always imagine the book as something that would encourage readers to become sleuths themselves?
Taking the second question first, I wanted the reader to participate as much as possible. However, the question is an interesting one because I’m still not sure to what extent I truly succeeded. In some cases, I think the puzzles are so complex that it can be challenging for the reader to follow along even though (with the encouragement of my editor) I show virtually all the steps in Arizona’s process of deduction. As to how the puzzles were created, that would be backwards, first determining where I needed to end up and then figuring out how to get there in an obtuse but believable manner. Creating the puzzles was fun, but it was also a slow process. The first draft took about sixteen months and going back and modifying the puzzles during the editing process was equally laborious.
You also blend real-world history and legend with fiction throughout the book. Do you have any advice for budding writers looking to balance fact and imagination?
The more facts you want to incorporate into your fiction, the more reading of non-fiction you’ll have to do. I read at least a couple dozen non-fiction books while writing and editing The Language of the Birds. For me, the desire to blend fact and fiction comes from a few different sources. Modern society is rife with conspiracy theories, and I have an interest in how the seeds of just a few facts (and sometimes none, it seems) can bloom into a full-fledged conspiracy theory. This phenomenon is also reflected in two phrases that come to mind: ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’ (most often attributed to Mark Twain) and ‘correlation does not imply causation.’ I really wanted to (try to) create a conspiracy based on numerous facts that were only loosely correlated. But I also wanted to incorporate some of the history (the mines, boomtowns and ghost towns) of the area in which I live, the foothills of the Sierras, home to the California Gold Rush.
What are some of your favourite adventure stories?
It probably won’t come as a surprise that I’m a fan of many of the authors and books that I referenced within my story, so classics like The Time Machine, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Treasure Island all come to mind, as well as Lord of the Flies, and Mark Twain’s classic adventure stories. More contemporary works include The Martian, The Hunger Games trilogy, and on the non-fiction side, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.
Finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
My contract with Ballantine/Penguin Random House is for two books, so book number two (which is still in progress) will be in a similar vein. After that, there are some disparate stories in the queue.
Get your hands on a copy of The Language of the Birds.
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