A Cage for Angels was the winner in the Young Adult category of the 2023 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author Dani Hall.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
A Cage for Angels / 7-30-22
What’s the book’s first line?
“A projection of the rising sun was displayed onto the walls of my bedroom, as it was in every other bedroom at this precise moment across the houses of Athea.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Bayith Renity has never been outside of her domed city of Athea. Every hour of her day is accounted for: education lessons, social interaction requirements, physical exercise mandates. Her entire life is tied to a port permanently embedded in her wrist. All citizens of Athea adorn the port, and it controls their identity, access, and money. It also acts as a way for students to have information directly loaded to their minds. However, when she receives a corrupted history lesson, she stumbles upon a resistance group called the Angels Uncaged. Kass Rush is part of the rebellion, and he wants Bay to join his team and help free her city. With Kass’s help, Bay realizes that everything she has been taught about her life and her freedom is a false construct intricately woven together by an unknown person in power. Bay holds an important ability that can help unlock the hidden histories of their world, and in doing so, bring freedom to her city and her people. She must decide whether it is worth risking her life to assist the AU in breaking down her society. Bay must also come to terms with her growing and complicated relationship with Kass.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
In a British Serial Literature class around the year 2013, a professor brought up the title in some context that has since escaped me. The professor, as soon as she said “a cage for angels,” paused and noted that it would be a really awesome title for a book one day. So, I wrote down the title, determined to make a story out of it. At the time, I was very interested in The Hunger Games and Divergent, and wanted to write my own young adult, dystopian story inspired by nothing but this title.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Bayith Renity is not a warrior in a physical sense. It was important to me to make a character that was not magically gifted with a weapon or physical adeptness. I wanted to create a character who had a weapon in the form of her mind. Bay is a culmination of a lot of my favorite literary heroines who aren’t necessarily physically adept, such as Hermione Granger and Tessa Gray. Bay is stubborn and kind, clever and compassionate.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
A Cage for Angels presents tropes such as forbidden love and found family. It also has a few twists and turns (throughout the series!) that can keep the reader engaged. As a teacher, I think that obtaining knowledge is a powerful weapon. And that weapon is compromised in this novel. There is an attack on the ability to attain truths, and the series explores villainous attempts to overtake the mind entirely.
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
I did not have one particular actress/actor in mind when dreaming up Bay and Kass. I made the conscious choice not to include a specified race for my protagonist. Aside from her black spiral curls and blue eyes, I did not specify a specific color for her skin, meaning any young lady could potentially play Bay if it was ever adapted for the screen. I had so many female protagonists that looked like me growing up (Katniss, Hermione, Tessa, Tris) and I wanted other readers out there to experience that same kinship with Bay. The reader could imagine Bay to be whoever he/she wanted her to be.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I wrote books in my childhood years, so I suppose I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life. I wrote my first real book when I was nineteen, and tried to self-publish it at twenty three. It was not very good, but people were too kind to tell me that my book was garbage. Years went by, life became a bit unkind, and I gave up writing to focus on my family. I sat down to write A Cage for Angels multiple times in the intervening years, and it just never worked out. Finally, when I sat down again to try and draft it in 2021, it worked. From there, I decided to pursue one of my dreams…which was to be a writer.
Is this the first you’ve written?
No. I wrote two books that I self-published before A Cage for Angels. They are cute YA stories, but this novel in particular will always hold a special place in my heart for many reasons. I have many, MANY, books waiting in my drafts folder to be written. So this book is not the first, and it certainly won’t be the last.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I am a high school English teacher, and have been for about eight and a half years. I do the bulk of my writing in the summertime, when I enter my ‘full-time author’ mode. I essentially wrote the second and third book in the trilogy over the summer of 2022!
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
During the school year, I try to get in at least a half hour of writing daily. On a good day, I get an hour or so in. But, again, my summers are my golden time to get my writing accomplished.
What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?
I am awful at marketing. I would encourage future indie authors to take some marketing classes before venturing forth into their writing dreams.
Writing the book is the best. Connecting the dots between disjointed scenes that I’ve envisioned, plugging plot holes, and creating unique moments is magical for me.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Traditional publishing would be an avenue I would be happy to explore.
I found my self-esteem a bit tarnished when I sent out my first dozen queries and was met with polite rejections. I went with indie publishing because the rejections were affecting my writing, and making me question whether I was a decent writer or not. I’m well aware that those rejections should not have brought me down, and were not a judgement of my abilities, but I wasn’t able to shake off the feeling of ineptitude.
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
The dream, for me, is to write full time. I have so many stories, so many characters living inside my head and I just don’t have the time to get them all down on paper. The ability to make a living off this would be my dream. The eight weeks I have in the summer to write is literal bliss for me.