“Audition For The Fox” is Martin Cahill’s debut novella. Cahill has written numerous short stories and penned works for established IPs, including Critical Role. Two of his Critical Role contributions have hit shelves this year with “Critical Role: Vox Machina – Stories Untold” and “Critical Role: Armory of Heroes.” 

“Audition For The Fox” follows Nesi, a young acolyte hopeful desperately searching for a God. After 96 failed attempts, she only has three Gods left to prove she would be a worthy worshiper. Nesi chooses the trickster God, The Fox, and is thrust into the most taxing challenge yet. Thrown back in time hundreds of years, she must figure out not only how to complete the Fox’s task but also what their motives are as well.

“Audition For The Fox” is a wonderful introduction to a new fantasy world. The relationship between the Fox and Nesi is engaging, reminiscent of the Doctor and his companion in “Doctor Who.” The prose and characters are captivating with short interludes of fables from this world. “Audition For The Fox” offers a message of hope and resilience at a time when it is more important than ever.

In an exclusive interview with Temple of Geek, Cahill discussed his approach to telling this story. He also teased ideas for more stories within this world, including a sequel and spin-off. Cahill also touches on the “Doctor Who” comparison.

How The Reader Instantly Connects With Nesi In Audition For The Fox

Temple of Geek: Loved “Audition for the Fox.” I knew I was going to love the Fox, but I really, really enjoyed every character you introduced. Can you talk to me about your thought process of how you started the story. Especially how it mirrors the character’s situation with the reader’s experience?

Martin Cahill:

First of all, thank you again for reading. I really appreciate it. I’m glad you liked it! I started this book in media res for a few reasons. One, I like those kinds of books. I like writing those situations. I like being thrown into the deep end and learning if I can trust the author or not. Because you’re kind of like, Well, can I trust this author to kind of bring me ashore a little bit here? And so I wanted to do that. In a big way, I made the beginning of what it is because it’s meant to mirror Nesi’s own confusion.

I could have done it the other way around where we start with her in the temple and she’s having a panic attack. It would have been fine for it to go A to B to C. But for me, it’s more interesting to see the immediate ramifications of the choice. And then, as it’s sinking in with Nesi realizing, Oh, no, this is real. This is not a joke. Then taking a brief pause to be like, two hours earlier, kind of give that context. I think that is the conscious reason. I want the reader to be confused. It’s a weird thing to be like, Hey, pay attention.

You and Nesi are as locked in together as you’re ever going to be. So you’re learning the same stuff she is at the same time. You are learning how to be in this world with her at the same time. Because we see later Nesi is such an expert in this Acolyte religious background. She’s got the sage background or whatever from D&D. She knows this stuff so well that putting her on the back foot immediately. I want her to really be questioning stuff and then roll it back a little bit and be like, so why did you do this? We find out later this is not how auditions tend to go.

It’s a lot of softball for rounds. The first round is like that. And the Fox does not play by those rules because they don’t play by any rules that they can’t eat. I think part of it too is, I’m an improv kid, right? There’s that thinking in improv of, oh, if somebody gives you the word octopus and you do a scene about an octopus, it’s not very compelling because you were of course going to do that. So, to me, there’s a thought in improv known as, A to C. Which is you want to move to that third unexpected spot.

It’s like, oh, I think of octopus. Octopus makes me think of arms, eight arms. Okay, cool, we’re spiders in a factory. Whether it’s good or not or whatever, you’re in this space that’s been born out of the thought of the first one. And so, to me, it’s more fun to hit the ground running. And then, she goes unconscious and that you can kind of “Wayne’s World” flashback a little bit to how we got here.

Temple of Geek: Nesi is a fish out of water to a degree, but this is still her world. So we never get the exposition lore dump that you often get when you’re in a new world, where it’s like, here’s everything you need to know to understand it. Instead you leave it up to the reader to figure things out. Why is that the worldbuilding and storytelling style you wanted to use?

Martin Cahill:

I try to avoid the word vomit as much as possible. I’m not not a fan of exposition. I think that there’s always show don’t tell things. Sometimes people just need to be told stuff. There were some early versions of, the Fox being very coy about what they were hoping Nesi would accomplish. And I was like, no, you just kind of need to be told what is to be expected of her now. But all of the the lore dumping and whatever, I actively avoid doing that as much as possible. Because to me, it’s a sign of weak world building. 

When I was in Clarion, as I was writing when I was younger, there’s the phrase of, “As you know, Bob.” Which is thrown out there to justify. It’s like, “Oh, yes, well, in this world, our water is peanut butter. And of course, as you know, Bob, we can breathe peanut butter because we’re jelly people or jelly fish.” It’s a very ham fisted way of explaining stuff. I think there’re smoother ways to introduce information that is not just like, “Hey, I’m 16 years old and I’ve lived in the city my entire life. Why is there a giant manta ray blocking the sun?”

There is my most recent and perhaps firmest metaphor on world building in general is, I think of it as scaffolding around a structure that you are building. The world building is not the structure. It is not the story. It’s literally not the stories being built. It is meant to provide a space to build that story. To build it as soundly as possible. To build it at high or as wide or as funky as you want to. The story is contained within the scaffolding. But the scaffolding is not the story. So, I get to have my cake and eat it too, because there are these interstitial fables throughout which sort of act like those lore dumps in some ways. 

I like writing the Fox. I love these characters. Even the Fox being like once upon a time, as you know, a thousand years. That’s not a story. That’s just information, which is not as potent. And also, I trust the reader to figure it out if they’re paying attention. In reading the book, you know, I hope I gave them enough to work off of. 

Temple of Geek: I did like that you had that little bit of push and pull. She remembers certain things or certain things she’s a little more fuzzy on. And she has to figure out how she can get the information she needs without tipping her hand about time travel.

Martin Cahill:

Oh, for sure! That’s what I also have to remember too is, Nesi has done 96 different auditions. She has been exposed to so many different like, as jarring as this is, she’s been in a similar situations. Maybe not with as high mistakes, but she has often been dropped into situations where she has to figure out what the hell to do. I think part of these trials and these auditions are like, you as the acolyte as the young person are meant to, it’s your way of being like, “Hey, I get the world I understand these things. I understand your domain. I know why you’re here. I get you. And by getting you, you get me.”

So now we can have this sort of relationship where even if I never go on to become your acolyte you at least can look out for me knowing like, “Hey, this is someone who could take care of themselves in the world and I’m there to help out in case anything happens.” With Nesi, I’m so often referring to her as a D&D character in some ways. It’s very easy to talk about it that way, because no character is going to be perfect, right? Nesi knows her history. She is skilled in survival. She has very little wisdom. She’s got a very high con modifier. That’s it.

She has talents and she has skills, but they are all bent in the service of, and to be realistic about the life she’s led. She’s not at a temple doing a hundred pushups every morning. She’s reading books and she’s studying religion and she’s trying to escape every chance she gets. So, she’s maybe like one level in Rogue and one level in Bard. And I think she’s not more than a second level character.

“This Reads Like A Fantasy Version Of Dr. Who”

Temple of Geek: It felt very real that she would focus on what she considered her detriments, but not her strengths. This made Nesi feel very authentic. It also made her journey of self-discover and finding her place in this world ring true.

Martin Cahill:

I love those last couple of sections with her beginning to foment that rebellion. Throwing herself headfirst into trying to continue to stay and help the story out. In a lot of ways, her and the Fox share a couple of similarities. They’re both very, very stubborn and they both care deeply, possibly to a detriment. And it’s been very fun for her first arc, because I deal with that anxiety all the time. She is like one of the voices of my anxiety as a person. And that’s certainly something I was working through as well. Giving her as a character the ability to believe in herself, not just because other people told her to. But because when she comes down to brass tacks, she really can do stuff. She’s constantly sort of reminding herself, I did survive this experiences.

Oh, right. I did talk to this God or that God. At the end, getting the Fox’s approval is not the point. She makes that joke about being like, No, I’m good [about joining the Fox]. And if she was serious in any way possible that would have been okay, too. I think the Fox would have still agreed to look out for her. But it was as a joke, but also it’s her kind of really starting to believe, No, I think I could leave this place and be okay. Having had that journey in some ways, it’s almost like, you were sort of at square negative zero point five, and now you’re kind of at square one-ish.

Maybe you’re like taking a step to square two. You believe in yourself and your abilities, and you’ve seen physically, as a reality, what you can accomplish. And my ideas for a possible sequel would definitely deal with, what is the square two, square three? You’re an acolyte of a God now. You are traipsing about with the Fox and helping the Fox out. What happens when it’s not enough for you to believe in yourself, people start believing in you too? And because of your relationship now, and you’re like sort of next step into this divine role. What does that mean for you? What does that look like?

Temple of Geek: I think I made this comparison in my review, it felt very like “Dr. Who.”

Martin Cahill:

My agent has said like this reads like a fantasy version of “Dr. Who.” So, I’m very happy with that.

Temple of Geek: Nesi’s journey reminded me of like the Doctor and Donna. Allowing Nesi to figure things out. It wasn’t the Fox using Nesi as a tool, it was this is what we need to make happen. How do you want to do that?

Martin Cahill:

Yeah, it’s just very interesting. It’s not alluded to in this book. But again, I’ve been noodling on a bit of being like, well, the Fox actually doesn’t have the ability to time travel. The Fox just made a deal with their sibling, the Butterfly, who is the God of time. There is a lot of like wibbly wobbly timey wiminess with the Fox. And that is, again, behind the scenes. But that is because of the mechanics of when their sibling said, I don’t mind if you if you need to hop around a little bit. And the Fox went cool! Things are changed by the very nature of who they are in their domain. So, there is a certain flexibility in their time travel that I think reads very Doctor-ish and their own attitude reads is very Doctor-ish.

So it’s not like the Butterfly has given them total carte blanche to do whatever they want. It’s that the Butterfly has realized over time. Oh, that’s what happens when I give my power to my siblings. Interesting. I’m never doing that again. So not to say that there isn’t other time travel stuff in, in this world. People pray to the Butterfly and their siblings talk to them all time. It’s that the Fox may or may not have tricked their sibling into helping them out. And the Butterfly only ever talks through a messenger when talking to the Box now.

Temple of Geek: So made a deal and immediately regretted it.

Martin Cahill:

Kind of yeah. I think I’ve been describing on tour, because the family is so big, the Fox is that sibling in the family, that kid who’s like, a third of the family doesn’t get them. Doesn’t get them. I don’t know why you are that way. I don’t know why you like your music that way. I don’t know who you brought to the divine table last week. I don’t know who you brought last month. But you’re not actively harming me and you know better than to f-ck with me. So I guess go do your thing. 

There’s a third of the family who loves the Fox who loves their sh-t. Who loves all the weird sh-t that they get up to. Who loves like, that’s my little sibling, aren’t they hilarious? Or like, Oh, that’s my big sibling. They’re funny as hell. And then there’s like a solid third of the family who just fucking hates them. Who does not like their sh-t, who does not put up with their sh-t. Who like slams the door in their face when they try to approach their domain and say hello. Does not even want to talk to you because you don’t talk to me unless you want something.

And when you want something, I disappear for a decade. We’re not doing that again. So hopefully, in sequels, I want to get more into the familial dynamics. Because at any given time, there are always at least like a quarter of the family feasting in their in their divine realm. At this massive, infinitely long divine table where the family is always gathering.

Capturing The Timelessness Of Fables

Temple of Geek: That’s so cool! Do you have mapped out all 99 of them? What they do and their personalities?

Martin Cahill:

I have 99 I don’t have every domain but I’ve gotten most of it.

Temple of Geek: Truly one of my favorite parts were the fable interludes. I felt like that was such a good way for us as readers to understand the world better without having to just explain it. How did you approach writing these fables? Because they felt timeless in a way that I think has to be tricky. This feels like I’m reading something that could have been written hundreds of years ago.

Martin Cahill:

Well, thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I’m glad you like that because they are one of my favorite parts of the book. And they’re hard. They were all different, right? The Fox and the Turtle was just like, Hey, the Fox is a little stinker. They’re a little scamp and they don’t want to do what they’ve promised to do. So they’re going to find a loophole and find a way to mess with their brother. The moral had to kind of be dug through. With the Fox and the Stallion it was like, Oh, I know the moral here. I know what I want to be saying here. And then reverse engineering that to create a fable that hit that tone. Pride and arrogance, the downfall of many.

Some of them can be easier. The story with Nesi and her grandmother, that just happened. A big, big shout out to my editor, Jaymee Goh, who liked these stories, too. Her biggest point was, let’s make these voices even more distinct. The way these are told, are they an oral tradition? Is it a written tradition? Are they country songs or religious explanations? Can we place them in a way that tells us more about the world? And builds out that scaffold even more. It’s those little details, but to think of it as the building. It’s like, those are your towers, your minarets, those are your Juliet balconies, those are your flower boxes, those are the little touches that make something come alive.

Because now we’re not only getting these stories, and these stories are telling us how this world is seen, these Gods are seen, but we are seeing the way they are told. I’m in grad school right now. And I’m in this teaching and tutoring class, which is all about writing and the various styles of writing. To get so specific into the how, the why, how it all comes together. And it’s been very interesting to look back at this as we’re talking and be like, Oh, yeah, there was a lot of little fiddly bits and thought that went into this. The time was qualities, just me tapping into my inner Aesop, my inner Socratic method, my inner Barney.

The lessons I learned as a kid, the things you learn as kids, right? It matters. In this world, what are the stories that are told if your family patron is the Fox? You do something stupid, and your mom says, “Oh, well, you know, look who’s covered in peaches and sh-t.” Now you are like, Hey, we get where that comes from. That’s our context. So trying to make them specific and universal is not easy. But I’m so glad that they came across the way because that was the hope.

Temple of Geek: There are so many different types of trickster gods in stories and myths. But this felt very different. The Fox’s style or brand of being tricky, wasn’t like, haha, I fooled you. It was much more, this is wrong, I’m going to use like trickery to fix this. Why was that the way you wanted to approach it?

Martin Cahill:

I was having this great conversation with my friend, Sia, she runs this website called “Every Book A Doorway.” And we did this huge sprawling interview over the course of months. And one of the things we ended up talking about is, the Fox is different than a trickster god, in some senses, because they are not chaos incarnate. There are beings of pure chaos in this world. And the Fox, don’t get me wrong, the Fox does not always come out looking good. For every one of these stories where the Fox is clever and does something good. There are like five stories where the Fox kind of gets their ass handed to them.

And they like brush themselves off and say, okay, fine, I learned I shouldn’t do that. It’s like a solid 60/40 split. The Fox can do a lot of good things and likes to do a lot of good things. And sometimes the Fox is just as lazy, selfish, and tired as any one of us, as any other human who tries to take shortcuts. And sometimes it doesn’t work out, right? I think that, they say to a character in the book, sometimes it’s good to be the butt of the joke because it keeps you humble. And what Sia and I were talking about, we sort of stumbled upon, this isn’t every trickster, but when the Fox is the trickster they kind of balance the scales. They see injustice, they try to address that. Someone who’s acting holier than them, they will deal with that.

But it’s also just as likely that sometimes they are the person who is wrapped up in their own sh-t. Sometimes they will upset the scales. And someone else has to help come get them. But in a lot of ways, they sit at the center of those scales. I think thematically, I wanted a God that cared. I wanted a trickster specifically, because the problem is, if you’re writing about a God, if the God shows up and just does whatever they want, there’s no story. If you’re writing about a God, and the God does nothing, then the reader’s mad. Narratively, the Fox had to sort of be paws off on this. The stakes have to be real for Nesi and the reader.

You have to be the driving force, I will assist. I’m here and there are others in this world. At the same time, you are but one piece of many in this world. There’s no point to you doing this, if I’m just gonna do what I want anyway. I have to trust that you’re going to take this seriously. And so part of it’s just addressing the fundamental power imbalance of having a God in the text. How much of a God are you if you do nothing? No good character comes in and solves everything.

Temple of Geek: Early on Nesi had said that this camp was the start of the rebellion, historically speaking. So did they change history? Or was this something that was always meant to happen? Truly, at the end of the book, I sat there and I was like, I don’t know which is right. And I like that.

Martin Cahill:

Yeah, I don’t know if I want to give a firm answer on that. But I will say in my mind, it’s sort of because Nesi is mortal, at least when we are with her now, her ability to exist in time kind of asserts that it is one directional. She has as much effect in the past as she does in the present. And there’s a part of me that thinks, that it’s one of those things like, she’s born, and she does sort of affect everything that comes after her time in the past. I think it’s to the degree that she is seeing it firsthand later on. She’s seeing more of the pieces in play. 

But I will say as to two tantalizing teasers. One, I will not speak to the interesting, interesting results of the Fox having a lot of people interested in them in the modern day. And two, Nesi is now the direct acolyte of a god with a lot of eyes on them. And Nesi is going to, as we kind of were saying before, there are saints in this world. Saints of these various divine pillars, but they are people who have begun to be have candles lit to them instead.

And so there are moments where mortals can transcend their own, for lack of a better word, cosmic designation. We will see in book two, the results of what happens when people start praying to Nesi. And the Fox going treating sainthood like getting the chicken pox. Yeah, everyone gets it once. You should avoid people for a few days. I’ll go do what I can, but don’t answer anybody. We’ll see if she wants that or not.

Expanding The World Of Audition For The Fox

Temple of Geek: So you’ve talked a little bit about ideas you have for sequels and ideas you’d like to explore. You’ve said like the time travel aspect isn’t the Fox’s power so much as like a deal that was made. Is time travel still something you want to explore regularly with this? Or is it more that you want to dive into the world as a whole with this?

Martin Cahill:

The answer is both. The Fox doesn’t sit still long enough for time travel to not be a thing that they do. The sequel for this would take place about a hundred years after Nesi’s current time period. So, they’ll shoot forward a century. I’ve described Book Two theoretically as “Back to the Future 2,” but with dragons. The Fox by necessity, their stories constantly boomerang around the time stream. At this point, the Butterfly cannot do anything about it. It doesn’t mean they won’t figure out a way someday to possibly put an end to that. Maybe with some help from other people interested in stopping the Fox from doing whatever they want. 

But I had a thought the other day. There are people who were acolytes of the Hound. And I was like, oh yeah, well, we mentioned the Hound, the Hound of loyalty. So I messaged my agent this morning. I was like, had a thought for other stories in this world, very different, it would be very different vibes than Nesi and the Fox. It’d be more of like a crime family, underworld kind of thing. Where the idea was something with like, followers of the Hound, after years of service can develop almost like a sixth sense for literally seeing someone’s loyalty.

And there’s a small network of of these people who are employed by various crime bosses and institutions to keep other people honest. So they’re like ledger checkers, and brokers between various, gray amoral organizations. Because they can be trusted to say, Oh, well, you broke your contract. I could smell it on you that your intentions were false. So this is null and void. But I was kind of like, It’d be really fun to write that kind of character.

Temple of Geek: I love the idea of exploring this world through different genres. Because it does feel so rich in that you have these 99 Gods, and then the one that was banished. How would you want to find that balance so that it still feels like one world while exploring genres?

Martin Cahill:

That’s a great question. With the Fox, people have asked me, could kids read it or young adults? And my answer has always been like, Yeah, it’s hope. I say this, as I try to quote the back copy, it’s witty, it’s charming, it’s meant to be fun. It’s meant to be a little light, but it also takes seriously the things that need to be taken seriously. I think it works because the things that are grim. Oppression, torture, labor, hate, war, violence, those things are taken serious. They are on the page, they are off the page, there are consequences. And just because they don’t spot visceral, bloody results it doesn’t make it not real.

And so exploring these genres, if I were to do like a fantasy crime book or whatever of this loyal follower of the Hound getting wrapped up in all these machinations it would have to take that position very seriously. But this is also a world in which like, it is also taken seriously, Oh, no, next month, the Koala wakes up after his 70 years of sleep. And we know there’s a giant earthquake coming. And so we have to prepare for that. There are some things that are inherently silly. But to the people in this world, it’s not. It’s like, the acolyte of the Koala, Danny over there, he’s been asleep for five years finally woke up, said, Hey, my God’s waking up next month, we got to go back underground for a little while.

We don’t know where he’s going to show up. They’re like, hey, what does that do to the economy? What does that do to the local government? Oh, there was supposed to be a parade next month. Postponment the Koalas waking up and we all have to go down underground for a minute. Or anything with like romance or, adventurous thrillers or or deep epic political, like the government’s and universities. All these things, like it is a world in which the divine are not seen every day, but they’re around and they do stuff. Stuff happens because of them or not because of them. That’s just kind of life.

Extrapolating from there is where, because comedy and horror live in the same house and all that divides them is a doorway. And it just depends which way you want that door to swing, right? A giant Koala waking up after 70 years, because the Koala sleeps for, 10 D20 years until they wake up, and they’re hungry and angry and furious. Inherently silly. But to the families of this small town where the Koala has been prophesied to show up, evacuating your home and going to live with your great uncle for a month is not silly.

So moving from there, you could tell a story about that. And you could say, Oh, this one market has a 90% off sale, because our business is permanently closed, because this whole town will be destroyed in a month. And that’s inherently silly. Until someone opens the door in the back and sees the shopkeeper crying. Because, the Koala doesn’t choose where he wakes up. No, everyone knows it is literally just a divine act. And just because your tornado is shaped like a giant Koala doesn’t mean it’s not a giant tornado.

“Audition for the Fox” is available for purchase now.