Interview with Jackary Salem, author of Where the Lightning Goes (The Impossible Series, Book 1)

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Jackary Salem, whose novel Where the Lightning Goes (The Impossible Series, Book 1) has its debut on May 30, 2023.

Where the Lightning Goes is your first novel. What was the inspiration for the book?

My inspiration for Where the Lightning Goes was to write a book that would reveal so much at the end and have so many double and triple entendres in play that it would be a completely different story the second read through.

Your protagonist, Elle, is trapped in a strange house and has lost her memory. What can you tell us about Elle and how she got there?

How Elle got trapped in the House is actually one of the main mysteries of the book. She entered the House when she was six with no memory of how she got there, then spent ten years acclimating and, eventually, trying to escape. Elle is whip-smart, impulsive, and curious beyond measure, so she never stops pushing forward, trying to figure it out. Ideally readers will hop into the story, knowing only as much as Elle knows, and follow the clues along with her.

 

When Elle manages to escape, she finds herself in a world both magical and frightening. Where is this world and how does Elle set out to explore it?

The world is an alternate version of Earth. It has only one continent, though Elle has no way of knowing that, and is imbued with sentient magic. Elle’s goal is to find someone willing to teach her magic and, beyond that, to find her memories of who she was and how she got trapped in the House. Her exploration of the world is centered around achieving her goals, and she’ll go wherever that quest takes her. 

How much can you tell us about the castle in the sky that appears on the cover?

The castle on the cover is the place Elle and her motley crew are trying to reach all through the book. It’s the castle in her dreams and the place where Elle believes her memories will be. 

In the blurb it says: “Magic is everywhere, everyone is out for themselves, and every truth is accompanied by a lie.” What is the significance of this bleak world-view?

I’ve always loved stories where magic is woven into the world in a way that feels real. To me, that means giving magic to people who might not use it kindly and making sure actions have consequences. Humans make just as many bad decisions as they do good, and the duality of a world that’s bright and wonderful while also being cruel and tricky lends me that sought-after feeling of realism. 

You mention the importance of grief and the self-destructive spiral that can result in discussing the themes of the book. Tell us more about this.

Too many fiction books shy away from real-life feelings like grief, and when they do tackle the subject, they tend to do it in a very black and white manner. They pretend that there’s a way to reach absolution and that once you reach the “acceptance” stage, you can somehow move on. They also act like there’s only one “right” way to feel grief, and everything else is obviously a bad choice or something to be judged. My story posits that whatever way you move through your feelings, and however long it takes you to start finding your new normal, that’s fine. It's important to accept our emotions, good and bad, and to normalize expressing our feelings for what they are. No happy-filter required. 

Where the Lightning Goes is a novel for young adults. What made you choose to write YA fiction?

I love YA for its whimsy and focus on adventure. Once you enter adult fantasy, you tend to get a lot of politics, very technical worldbuilding, and a long, confusing list of main characters. I’ve written what I call “YA for adults.” It’s all the whimsy and simplicity of YA but with the writing level and focus on more complex human emotions of adults. 

You majored in neuroscience and now work as a full-time author and freelance developmental editor. How far does your first area of study influence your writing?

My degree in neuroscience influences my writing immensely. The equal emphasis in biology and psychology helps me to understand where a character is at developmentally and how what they’ve experienced impacts them on a neurological level. It helps me write fuller, more realistic characters. 

Why did you choose to become a freelance editor and what are the challenges and creative aspects to working with writers?

I became a freelance editor because analyzing and fixing manuscripts is one of my passions. I love discussing stories in terms of writing as a craft, what authors want out of a particular piece, and what they need to do to bridge the gap between their dream story and what they actually wrote. That said, my favorite part of editing tends to be working with the authors after the fact, so I’m actually moving my career toward writing coaching, where I’ll get to spend more time encouraging and actively helping the authors become better writers as opposed to improving a single manuscript. 

How do you see the job of a freelance editor and how far has their role become ever more important?

I believe editors are a necessary part of the writing process. Getting feedback is always important, but receiving feedback accompanied by craft explanations and ways to fix the issues help not only the story in question, but the author’s writing as a whole. As more and more authors enter the writing scene, it’s important to remember that selling books and making money isn’t the goal. What authors want isn’t recognition, but to write something that touches readers in the way previous books have touched them, and editors help authors achieve that dream. 

Tell us something about your Blog, Too Busy for Books. What made you decide to offer condensed versions of non-fiction books?

The long and short of it is that I don’t like small talk. I have no interest in sharing recipes or what new fads have popped up in the industry. I like actionable information, and I like it quickly. Unfortunately, a lot of the information I find valuable is buried in nonfiction books which are more suited to be articles than novels. Since I’m a fast reader and tend to take notes regardless, I figured the best blog for me is one that relays all the actionable information in a book in a quick, easily fact-checked article. Hopefully it saves a lot of time and trouble for other authors and entrepreneurs making their way in the world. 

What made you want to write, and to write Fantasy?

I’ve written for as long as I can remember. The books that influenced me most as a kid were fantasy (e.g., The Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix and Poison by Chris Wooding), and the genre has always played a role in my own writing, from childish scribblings in spiral-bound notebooks to present day novels. I love the fantasticism of anything being possible.

There has been a lot of talk about the emergence of AI and bots like ChatGPT. As a debut novelist, what are your thoughts about this?

AI isn’t going away. It’s been evolving for longer than I’ve been alive, and it’ll continue to evolve long after I’m gone. I think the best way to look at AI isn’t as competition—we aren’t every author for themselves—but as a helpful tool. A lot of authors are using it to keep up with the fast-evolving marketplace and to help them make a living. If AI can help someone better themselves and their circumstances, I say more power to them. 

What are you working on at the moment? Will Where the Lightning Goes have a sequel?

I am currently working on the companion novel to Where the Lightning Goes. The Impossible series will be a trilogy, with the third novel being a sequel to both Where the Lightning Goes and its as-of-yet unnamed companion novel. 

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About Jackary Salem:

Jackary Salem is a freelance editor with a degree in neuroscience. Seeing the problems and systemic issues plaguing traditional publishing, Salem became passionate about self-publishing. Where the Lightning Goes is her first novel.

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Interview with G.D. Penman, author of The Last Days of Hong Kong

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview G.D. Penman, whose novel The Last Days of Hong Kong was our featured new release on October 5.

This is the third book in the Witch of Empire series. Where are we - and the protagonist - when the book begins?

Sully is in a really bad place by the end of The Wounded Ones. The war for American Independence is over, but the personal cost to her was about as high as it could be. She’s lost control of her magic, she’s lost her memory, she’s lost her girlfriend, she’s just committed murder on a massive scale, making the hard decisions she never wanted to be hers and sacrificing innocent lives to save even more other people, and the whole world now looks on her as a living weapon to be exploited, not to mention that she’s back under the thumb of her manipulative mother. It was a bit of a downer.

Your main character, Agent "Sully" Sullivan is “one of the top cops in the Imperial Bureau of Investigation. A veteran witch of the British Empire who isn’t afraid to use her magical skills to crack a case.” Tell us something about Sully’s world and where she is in history - or outside it.

Sully’s world is our world, if magic had taken off instead of technology. Because of the uneven distribution of power, many of the Empires that declined long ago are still hanging on long past their sell-by-date. At the same time, because technology wasn’t a deciding factor, some of the worst excess of the Age of Empires has been averted, so you still have the empires of Africa as economic and political powerhouses, Native Americans still control a fair portion of the continental USA and magic essentially gave every world power a nuclear option from the get-go.

At the start of this book, Sully is defeated, but something sends her on a mission to Hong Kong. What is it?

By the start of this book, Sully is starting to pull herself together again, piecing together her memories and trying to recreate the person that she was from the fragments. That means that guilt over all the awful stuff she had to do is back with a vengeance, and that is more than enough to get her out of seclusion. (Although she might also have her own reason for visiting the Vampire capitol of the world.)

The blurb evokes Hong Kong in her world - but not as we know it: “werebear chefs, the blossoming criminal underworld, religious extremists, Mongol agents, vampire separatists, and every other freak, maniac or cosmic leftover with an iota of power”. Tell us more...

The British Empire has crumbled after the war, and all of its old colonies have begun falling to other powers or becoming independent. All of them except for the fortress town of Hong Kong. Which means that it is the wild west. A lawless place with no Empire ruling over it, and people with no desire to give up their autonomy now that they’ve got it. In turn, this has attracted a bad crowd of people that don’t really fit in anywhere else, with good reason.

They are all competing for one thing: “a little sailor doll named Eugene, and the last wish on earth”. Can you tell us about the sailor doll and the last wish?

Eugene was a character in The Year of the Knife, who understandably made himself scarce during all of the chaos of book 2. It is a demon trapped in the body of a doll (based on the story of our world’s possessed doll Robert.) By this stage in the books, all of the extraplanar entities that could grant wishes to humans have packed up their bags and left. Except for poor little Eugene, who is still trapped. And a hot commodity as a result.

What comes first for you - world-building, characters or story?

World building, then characters then story. Without knowing the world, how could I know what sort of people would live in it? Without knowing the characters, how would I know what plot would squeeze the maximum amount of misery out of them? (Okay, slight exaggeration on that last point.)

In your bio it says you are “a firm believer in the axiom that any story is made better with the addition of dragons.” Do you have any favourite dragons?

All dragons are good dragons. I’m a big fan of Errol, from the Discworld, King Ghidora from the Toho films, Mushu from Disney’s Mulan, and Tiamat from Dungeons and Dragons. Paarthurnax from Skyrim, and my sweet-boy Spyro needs a mention too!

You are a freelance game designer. Does that feed into your writing, or vice versa?

I actually write a couple of series in the LitRPG genre, where there are game-like elements in the fantasy settings. So my old folders full of roleplaying game systems that never saw the light of day are finally getting used.

Sully is a detective - how does she use witchcraft to solve crime?

Honestly, she mostly uses witchcraft to blow things up. Solving crimes seems to be an entirely different skill-set. Much like the hardboiled detectives she was modelled after, Sully mostly works things out by going places and talking to people. Magic comes into things on the forensic side of things, and her knowledge of magical theory helps her to work out how crimes are committed, but the rest is just old fashioned police work.

Robyn Bennis, author of The Guns Above, says of your first book in the series, The Year of the Knife, “His Agent Sully is what Dirty Harry would be if he was a lesbian witch fighting demons alongside the cast of Yes, Minister.” As a fan of Yes, Minister, this sounds tempting. Is it true?

The first book definitely saw Sully dealing with a lot more bureaucracy than the latter ones, and the backstabbing politicking that she encountered did lean towards the farcical.

You also work as a ghost writer. What are the different challenges of ghost writing versus writing as yourself?

Absorbing someone else’s style of writing and using it to sound like them is… tricky to say the least. I’m also usually pretty constrained when it comes to writing for other people. What I’m writing isn’t allowed to grow legs and run off in new and exciting directions. It has actually been a huge benefit to me as a writer, because it keeps my out of my comfort zone, and forces me to keep on developing my own voice as I incorporate the best parts of other styles.

Were there any key influences on you as a writer growing up?

Lovecraft’s vision of a hostile universe that actively hated us and wanted us gone definitely appealed to me as an angsty teenager. Once I was past my goth phase, I basically just read anything I could get my hands on. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana was definitely a formative book for me, as I saw fantasy being used to explore real issues in a way I’d never expected. I’d say that was when my fate was sealed and I was condemned to this awful existence as a writer.

What do you enjoy reading now?

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of translated Chinese fantasy. A lot of it is pretty similar to western progression fantasy, but there are enough new elements in each story I try that I feel like I’m getting something new each time. Currently giving “I Shall Seal The Heavens” a try.

Will there be a further book in the series?

If the stars align and these books start selling like hot-cakes, maybe I’ll get to revisit the world of Witch of Empire someday, but for now it is a trilogy, with a completed story.

If the series were made into a film, who would direct it?

I don’t suppose that John Huston is still available, so I guess I’d have to turn to Robert Rodriguez or David Fincher.

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About G.D. Penman:

G.D. Penman is the author of more books than you can shake a reasonably-sized stick at, including series like Witch of Empire, Savage Dominion, Deepest Dungeon and The Last King. Before finally realizing that the career advisor lied to them about making a living as an author, G.D. Penman worked as an editor, tabletop game designer, and literally every awful demeaning job that you can think of in-between. Nowadays they can mostly be found writing fantasy novels and smoking a pipe in the sunshine. They live in Dundee, Scotland with their partner, children, dog and cats. Just . . . so many cats.

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Lacey & Alex: The Dagger of Ill Repute by V.R. Tapscott

Release date: June 25, 2020

Sub-genre: LGBT Fantasy

About Lacey & Alex: The Dagger of Ill Repute:

Lacey & Alex, roommates in San Francisco, are a barista and a cook by day. By night though, Lacey is a part time private investigator and Alex talks to plants. And they talk back.

In this book, they get dragged into hunting for a lost dagger. Of course, it winds up being so much more than simply a lost dagger.

The pair spend a couple of action-filled weeks travelling from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Barstow to Vegas and all parts between in their hunt for the elusive artifact.

They meet up with loose cannon Stevie and step it up a notch with exploding cars and tension of a whole other kind, as she makes it clear what she thinks of Lacey.

Olive from "Jane Bond" shows up with a little tiny insignificant part (heh) and Jane herself has a cameo.

Join Lacey & Alex and Stevie as they have the adventure of a lifetime! Talking plants, explosions, gunfire, mayhem, magic and a little bit of romance all enter the picture before the end, in this slightly humorous, slightly serious, and always fun mystery.

Excerpt:

I shrugged. “Well, it says in here that she’s an excellent marksman, black belt in karate and a Bachelor’s Degree in accounting, and not only that, she has her CPA.”

“What does that mean?”

“I guess she does her own taxes?”

Alex slugged me. Pretty hard. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, of course. But since she mentioned that she was in computers, it didn’t sound like she was counting computers, it was more like programming or monitoring or maintenance. Doesn’t it say in there someplace?” I pointed to the hated document.

Alex picked her phone back up like it was hot, or possibly covered in slime. She read for a few minutes (the thing was pages long) and then commented, “Well, she’s an expert in cyber warfare as well. Looks like she trained in cyber defense at Purdue, I guess that accounts for her being able to hack into whatever she wanted to. Probably including the child’s play of the battery cut-off in the Vette.”

I mused over that for a few minutes. “Maybe we can get her to help? I mean, it’s not like she’s being gross or anything. It’s all pretty stylish, and if I was in the mood for a girlfriend, this might actually be attractive.”

“Attractive? Are YOU nuts? This just drips of Fatal Attraction. Watch for polyester bunnies arriving.”

I didn’t mention to Alex that the vision of Douglas and Close in the bathroom scene had been the first thing that went through my head.

Amazon | Amazon author page

About V.R.Tapscott:

It seems like I've been writing forever in some way, shape or form. 

However, most of my real experience comes from role playing in World of Warcraft. That may seem a strange place to learn how to write, but that isn't the case at all. 

Visualize having to always know what to say, instantly, and be in character saying it. Now visualize doing this for 1-4 hours a day for months and years. 

What it does is eliminate the need to think when writing. You instinctively know how this character will react since you've been trained over hundreds and hundreds of hours of spontaneous improvisation. I always know what she's going to say, since she is me. I am her. After all, we all know what we're going to say, or we find out immediately after having said it. Sometimes to our chagrin.

And I've found that this carries over into writing on digital paper. Or at least it appears to. I suppose my readers will decide if it's a fun read, or a boring load of tripe. 

But let me know either way. :-) 

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The Journey (Twisting Fates, Book 2) by SMA

Release date: November 6, 2019

Subgenre: LGBT Science Fiction 

About The Journey:

 

The Routine's dominion is cracking. Can Owen pick up the pieces in time to save humanity?

Step into the realm of the Routine once again in this sensually adventurous continuation of the Twisting Fates saga.

A MIND-BENDING SCI-FI ADVENTURE CONTINUES

It's not every day you fall in love and get sent to assassinate an AI god.

Dispatched to discover the truth about the missing colony on Mars, Owen finds allies in unexpected conditions, and explores the depths of new love.

But nothing can be taken for granted under the AI's shadow. The Routine is dangerous, and the man Owen is sleeping next to every night might be its most vicious secret weapon.

Cut off from the world, the young Initiate must confront the strength in his own heart—and be prepared to lose everything. What awaits them on Mars, and can he really trust his new allies? Each discovery leads closer to the truth, but there’s one fact Owen will never forget:

The Routine is lying to us all.

Join the journey as Owen pursues the secrets of the Routine—and learns the endless bounds of love and his own desire.

An immersively mysterious sci-fi romance adventure that spans the solar system!

This is a direct sequel to Twisting Fates Book One: The Screening Routine, OUT NOW!

"It's been a while since I've read a true sci-fi story that is so intriguing"
"I was drawn in immediately—the imagery of the dystopian world [is] superb"
"There is absolutely nothing run of the mill about this book"
"I cannot wait for the second part of this series"
-Book One reviewers

Excerpt:

It began in the air.

Domo had halted the shuttle’s progression just a few minutes after they’d taken off from the wind-swept landing pad. Now they hung over the city in the upper atmosphere, and when he closed his eyes Owen could swear he felt the craft subtly bobbing up and down.

He knew this was silly—shuttles were used all the time, both within cities and around the region, and lift technology was never anything but rock-steady. Being in one was usually indistinguishable from standing on firm ground.

But this shuttle was about to become a genuine voyager, Owen knew. About to break its taxi bonds, leave the atmosphere, and live the glamorous life of a V-plane. And somehow that knowledge made it more of a vessel—rising and falling in the waves of this planet’s thin, fragile sky.

He shivered in pleasure at the thought, still flush with the euphoria of being free from the Screening Complex and its endlessly white, windowless towers.

Owen hoped he’d have some time to visit the viewing deck he’d seen in the shuttle’s directory when they first embarked, but for the moment Domo seemed to have a very specific agenda in mind. As soon as the shuttle had taken flight, the bot had scurried off to check on something in another room, instructing the three initiates to wait here.

Gael and Colette stood next to Owen in the embarkation chamber, and the trio perked up when Domo finally reappeared in the doorway leading to the rest of the shuttle. Owen was reminded of his original name for it—“microphone bot”—by its broomstick body topped by a mysterious protrusion that he’d only recently been informed was not a microphone.

But the bot immediately wiggled its sweeps of ocular metal, and Owen smiled at the friendly greeting. He much preferred things now that he’d discovered Domo’s true nature, and had already begun to think of it as an artificial person, not just a (highly advanced) machine.

Domo spoke in the now familiar dulcet tones of a middle-aged woman, “Sorry about that, I needed to make sure the appropriate modifications were active. They are indeed, so if you’ll all follow me, we can discuss where this little pleasure cruise is headed.” The bot turned and went back through the doorway into the ship’s interior.

Owen was still confused about why this conversation required special arrangements, but he’d learned that it was best to pick your moments strategically when it came to questioning Domo—unless you were particularly fond of having said questions ignored.

Gael grabbed his hand, and Owen turned to look up into those stunningly dark eyes, his chest fluttering at the mere sight of the man’s face. He hoped that particular symptom of his rapidly blossoming feelings for Gael never went away.

The two shared a quick kiss, spurring a bit of throat-clearing from Colette, who was impatiently keeping the door open for them—though she smiled indulgently just the same. She said, “Come on you walking hormones, I’ve got family waiting for me, and they don’t even know it yet!”

 

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About SMA:

SMA writes LGBT-themed scifi from his home base in the United States. Book One of his debut series “Twisting Fates” is available now, with Book Two releasing on September 9, 2019. His untitled Four Seasons quartet will begin releasing Autumn 2019.

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Interview with Heather Rose Jones, author of Floodtide, a novel of Alpennia

Today on the Speculative Fiction Showcase, it gives us great pleasure to interview Heather Rose Jones, whose new release, Floodtide, a novel of Alpennia, we are featuring on November 16th.


Can you tell our readers something about the world of Alpennia. How did it begin for you?
It all started with wanting to write a Georgette Heyer-style historical romance only with a female couple. That combined with some imagery from a dream that gave me the shape of the initial story. But a great deal changed from that starting point. I’ve found that I’m not very good at writing straightforward romance novels without tossing in lots of complications and subplots, and some of the books in the series don’t fit the romance mould at all. Fantasy just sort of showed up in the plot and when it did, everything made more sense. Some day I’ll write my plain and simple f/f Regency romance, but Alpennia went its own path.

In your bio, you describe the series as an “alternate-Regency-era Ruritanian adventure” and as historical fantasy. This crystallises a problem I have experienced myself; how best to categorize alternate world fantasy. What are your thoughts about this problem – if it is a problem?
I don’t think it’s a problem for the story itself, but it can make a book or a series hard to market. The Alpennia books are a lot of things at once while not landing solidly on any of them. It helps that I’m not the only person writing in this fuzzy, nebulous literary space, and new sub-genres are emerging and being named based on what people are interested in writing and reading. So Alpennia can be classified as “fantasy of manners” or as “Regency fantasy” or as “Ruritanian fantasy” depending on what aspect you’re considering. And, of course, if I’m pitching it to people looking specifically for lesbian fiction, I’ll call it “lesbian historical fantasy.” When I’m talking about the series to people who have no idea what it’s about, I like using the long string of descriptors simply because it helps define the space it occupies and lets people know they’re in for a combination of themes.

The other important aspect of your writing is its focus on women’s lives and particularly lesbian experience. Does this pose any particular challenges for you as a writer?
The biggest challenge is that, no matter where a reader is coming from, they’ll have fixed ideas about what a “lesbian novel” is. And my series won’t fit any of those ideas. Readers who focus primarily on lesbian fiction tend to expect strongly romance-focused plots with erotic content. If you tell them it’s a historic fantasy, they’ll expect Xena. Readers who don’t ordinarily read books with queer characters are even more likely to expect erotica and to think “this isn’t for me” before giving the books a try. I suppose those aren’t so much challenges for me as a writer, but rather challenges as a marketer.

As a writer, the big challenge is to know what romantic relationships between women would look like in my historic setting. The fact that it’s an invented country doesn’t let me out of needing to make it feel accurate. People who haven’t researched the history of sexuality tend to have serious misconceptions about relationships in the past. For that matter, modern readers often have misconceptions about women’s lives in the past. As an amateur historian, it’s as important for me to get my characters’ psychology right as it is to get the clothing or the food or the politics right.

All of that is one of the reasons I spend a lot of time tracking down academic research on gender and sexuality in history. But more about that later.

In some ways the literary and genre markets are more vibrant and diverse than they have ever been before, but discoverability is a problem. How do you deal with that, and what have your experiences been with marketing and marketplaces?
The biggest difficulty in discoverability is working across reading communities. I’m published by one of the major names in lesbian fiction, and if I were writing their core product (contemporary romance), that would be all the discoverability I’d need. 

Unfortunately, historical fiction isn’t very popular within the lesbian fiction readership. If I were depending entirely on that market, I don’t think I could have sold my second book.
My most natural readership is mainstream fantasy readers, but they expect books to be discoverable through standard publicity and review channels, or in their local SFF bookstore if they’re lucky enough to still have one. My publisher doesn’t do any promotion outside of the lesbian fiction field, and the mainstream SFF venues end up treating my books as if I were self-publishing. My local SFF bookstore won’t carry my books. So that’s a problem. My advantage is that I’ve been active in SFF fandom for nearly 40 years. Fandom is my “native tongue” as it were. It’s one of the practical reasons why Alpennia took a turn into historic fantasy rather than sticking with plain history.

I’ve gotten a lot of traction from word of mouth. The first Alpennia book, Daughter of Mystery, is still selling consistently after five years because the readers who loved it are hand-selling it to their friends and the ripples continue going out.

As well as your writing, you also blog about research into lesbian-relevant motifs in history and literature. Can you tell us a little about that?
Back when I first started playing with f/f historical fiction ideas, I noticed that all my ideas ended up being “coming out” stories where my characters thought they were the only women who had ever experienced same-sex love. I realized those weren’t the stories I wanted to tell. I wanted to write books about women who knew that same-sex love was an available option. Women who had heard stories or seen artwork or knew of rumors of women like them. To do that, I needed to know what they could have experienced. What information might have been available to a woman in a given era and culture?

I’ve always been an amateur historian, and starting back when I was in college in the late 1970s I started collecting books and articles about the history of sexuality. Gradually, I put together an understanding of what the possibilities might have been. But I don’t only want to write f/f historicals, I want to read them too. I didn’t see why everyone should have to re-invent the wheel when it came to that research. One of the things I learned about amateur historic research in my decades in the Society for Creative Anachronism is that the biggest bar to embracing historic accuracy is knowing that the research exists and where to find it.
I had a head start on that, because I’d done a liberal arts PhD and had access to a world-class university library. Plus, I’d been collecting my own library on the topic for decades. So I decided to start blogging an annotated bibliography of research that could be useful to other authors writing f/f stories in history.

The organizing principle is deliberately subjective. I’m not focusing only on the history of lesbians, or worrying about how the people in my research might have understood their own lives--although that’s part of it. Instead, I’m focusing on research that an author of fiction can use as building blocks for developing their own stories. For example, I look at a lot of work on cases of cross-dressing or gender disguise, including many topics that are better classified as transgender. But the idea is that whether or not this specific historic figure understood themself to be a woman or a man, it was a social concept that someone who did understand herself to be a woman had access to as a tool for moving through the world in gender-bending ways. Similarly, I look at research on singlewomen and women’s economic opportunities to know the spaces in which women could opt out of the marriage economy and still make successful lives for themselves.

Like a lot of my research projects, I started out thinking, “This won’t take long. There can’t be that much information to cover.” And instead the project keeps growing faster than I can read the research and write the blogs.

Your forthcoming novel, Floodtide, is a stand-alone book in the Alpennia series. Can you tell us a little about that and how it relates to other books in the series?
For the most part, the Alpennia series has an over-arching long-term plot that will be complete in seven books. (I didn’t know how many books it would be until I was in the middle of it.) Each book has a completed story, but as the series progresses it becomes more important to know the background and be familiar with the characters. That can make it hard to promote later books!

When I started plotting the third book, Mother of Souls, I noticed that my primary characters were accumulating a crowd of teenagers as secondary characters and I thought it might be nice to do something YA-ish with them before they “aged out” and became adults. As the idea developed, I also wanted to focus on a working-class protagonist--someone who wasn’t busy with balls and gowns and university careers. From a more practical side, a story that wasn’t solidly intertwined with the ongoing “big plot” would be more inviting to new readers. I also wanted to look more at “low magic”--at how ordinary people understood and interacted with the mysticism that underlies my world building. The major non-viewpoint character in Floodtide is learning to be a “charmwife,” someone who sells magical charms and amulets for everyday purposes. I wanted to contrast her work with the formal ceremonial magic that dominated the previous books.

I call Floodtide my “independent on-ramp” to the series. It doesn’t entirely stand alone, in that the viewpoint characters from the previous books appear as background characters, and the crisis that the characters of Floodtide deal with was told from a different angle in Mother of Souls. But if you’ve never read an Alpennia book before, you can read Floodtide and not feel like you’re missing anything important.

Chronologically, Floodtide overlaps with the later part of Mother of Souls and then continues on for the next month or so after the end of that book.

Have there been any particular books or writers who influenced you, whether in or outside the genre? [I’m a Jane Austen fan and live in Bath, which has featured in many dramatizations of her work]
As I mentioned previously, one of the inspirations for Daughter of Mystery was wanting to write a Georgette Heyer novel with lesbians. But the other major inspiration--if maddening frustration can be a form of inspiration--was Ellen Kushner’s novel The Privilege of the Sword. That book came so close to being the perfect novel of my heart...and then turned out to be a different novel. A perfectly wonderful novel, but not the book I desperately wanted. So that was another influence, not so much in writing style, but in the “feel” of the story--a story about brave and clever girls who love and rescue each other.

Jane Austen is something of an underlayer, if only in providing examples of the world of women in early 19th century Europe. One of the historical realities that modern readers aren’t always aware of is how strictly gender-segregated 19th century life was. Women--especially unmarried women--spent most of their lives socializing with other women and living with them in intimate proximity. It makes setting up same-sex relationships much easier! It’s been very important to me to center the series on women and their connections and community with each other. Too many historical stories allow women only as isolated characters, always interacting with men. In reality, if a woman had a problem or a puzzle or a project, the first people she’d turn to would be other women. I wanted the series to reflect that.

But I’m not always good at identifying specific influences in my writing. I tend to throw all my influences into a compost heap, which makes it hard to sort them out when the seeds sprout.

Why is it that the idea of Ruritania (and its iterations) continues to appeal to us? And how does the form adapt over time to appeal to modern sensibilities?
I have to laugh, because I used an invented country, not so much to be part of the Ruritanian tradition, but because I needed to set up some specific legal and social traditions for my plot to work. Those traditions didn’t match any existing country so I needed to make one up. In the very beginning, Daughter of Mystery was going to be set in France, but it simply didn’t work because I needed to do things with inheritance law that wouldn’t work in France.

But I think that is the appeal of Ruritania: the ease of the familiar with the flexibility of invention. It’s easier to suspend belief by plopping an invented country down on the map than to ask readers to believe that a bastard daughter could inherit a title in a culture where we know that wasn’t the case.

You also have a podcast covering the field of lesbian historical fiction. What made you decide to start a podcasting and how has it developed?
The obvious answer is “because it’s fun” but to a large extent the podcast is part of my larger marketing strategy. The history blog is fun too, but not everyone wants to read summaries of academic research. I wanted to reach out to a different audience and distill the research into a more popular format. The head of the TLT podcast group (formerly The Lesbian Talk Show) asked me about doing a show at the same time I wrote her to inquire about the idea.

At first, I was only doing a monthly essay on some person or topic in history--subjects that lent themselves to a more sensational and dramatic presentation. After about a year, I was encouraged to increase the frequency to weekly and that meant I had to come up with a different format because I couldn’t write four times as many essays! I’d been wanting to do more to support the field of f/f historical fiction and that helped the ideas click. So I rotate through a round-up of new titles with other general news and announcements, then an author interview, a book recommendation show, and continuing the essay series. Two years ago I decided to add an original fiction series to fill in the times when I air five shows in a month. It’s a bit terrifying to have become a publisher on top of everything else!

The best side effect of the podcast is that it helps me promote my own work. It gives me a lot more visibility and an excuse for making connections with other authors, bloggers, and podcasters. It’s also a lot of work and takes up time I could use for my own writing. The blog does that too. But if it weren’t for the blog and podcast, I think a lot fewer people would be reading what I do write.

What are you working on at the moment and what can your readers expect in future?
Currently I’m collecting notes and background research for a number of projects. I need to get started on the next Alpennia book, Mistress of Shadows. I have it all outlined, but I need to find my writing routine again. I’m also working on several Alpennia short stories. There are bits and pieces that don’t fit into the novels well but that provide interesting background about the setting and characters. It’s a bit like writing fan fiction for my own series!
I’ve also been working on notes and outlines for a couple of ordinary historical projects. I dither between thinking I should focus on Alpennia until it’s done and thinking I should have some other content out there so people get used to the idea that I can write non-Alpennia stories.

How do you research your books? Is historical fantasy more demanding than regular fantasy?
I probably do as much research for my Ruritania as I would for ordinary historical fiction. The stories still exist in the historic timeline we know, so I need to know what the politics are in France that inspire the events in Mother of Souls, and what the travel conditions would be when my characters take a trip to Prague, and what the Franco-Egyptian community in Paris would be like in the 1830s, and all sorts of real-world things. I still need to know how far you could travel in a day with post horses, or what a servant’s wages would be, or what the university calendar would look like.

I also do a lot of research for my fantasy elements. All the mysticism and alchemy and low magic are based on actual historic beliefs and practices. When I wanted to create magical gemstones by alchemy in The Mystic Marriage, I researched the actual history of synthetic gemstones, and how their chemical processes could be aligned with alchemical symbolism. Maybe I don’t need to do that much research, but I get feedback from readers that tells me that it makes a difference, even when they don’t know why.

How do you fit your writing round your day job?
Awkwardly! My writing routine keeps evolving, so it’s never the same for any two books. I tend to have my best writing brain in the morning, so my alarm goes off at 5:30 am, I leave the house by 6am (ideally, earlier) to try to avoid the worst of the traffic on my commute. When I’m actively writing, sometimes I dictate into a mini recorder while I’m driving. I go to a coffee shop near my workplace to write before I get in to the office at 8am. On my lunch hour, usually I’m reading and taking notes for the history blog. I do my pleasure reading while working out at the gym after work. And then weekends are for working on the podcast, getting blog entries set up, and getting as much fiction writing in as possible. (Along with the gardening, housecleaning, and all the other usual stuff.)

I’ll be changing up my routine a bit in a month or so to take the train to work rather than driving, so I’ll probably switch to taking notes for the blog on the train, and then writing fiction on my lunch hour. The only thing that makes this all possible is that I live alone--no dependants who need my time and attention.

Tell us a little about your short fiction?
I have a couple of ongoing short story series in various genres. There’s a series of linked stories I sold to the Sword and Sorceress anthologies that will be wrapped up with a final novelette, which I plan to self-publish as a collection when I find the time for the logistics. That one is a secondary world fantasy with shape-shifters that also evolved a same-sex romance, just because. I’ve written two stories out of a planned quartet inspired by the medieval Welsh Mabinogi, but with queer story lines. The two that exist were published by PodCastle. I know the content of the other two but haven’t written them yet. I’ve also sold a couple of stand-alone short stories with Arthurian themes. I have a novella out on submission that I hope will see the light of day at some point, which is a dark retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I don’t tend to get short story sized ideas very often, but I’ve managed to sell most of the ones I’ve written.

Fantasy fiction continues to thrive despite the occasional disparaging article in the mainstream press. What do you think this tells us?
The mainstream press also disparages romance and that doesn’t stop people from loving it and buying it. Fantasy fiction thrives because people enjoy reading it. We want to imagine different worlds than the one we live in day to day. Not all of them are better worlds--sometimes you just want to try on a different skin or take a trip to Elsewhere.

Given that fantasy fiction is more diverse and divergent than ever before, why is its image so dated?
That’s tough. Images aren’t always reality, so the reasons behind the image don’t always follow logical pathways. I think it’s circular, to some extent. People have an image of “fantasy” as being all Olde Tyme and conservative, so the stories that don’t fit that image get classified as something other than fantasy. Look at the types of fantasy that make it big on television. If you ask someone about TV fantasy shows, they’ll jump to thinking of “Game of Thrones” and that sort of thing, but if you point out that something like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was also fantasy, you might find that they classified it as something else entirely. Fantasy is anything that can’t actually happen that way in the world we know. There’s no reason for that to be dated.

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About Heather Rose Jones

Heather Rose Jones is the author of the Alpennia historic fantasy series: an alternate-Regency-era Ruritanian adventure revolving around women’s lives woven through with magic, alchemy, and intrigue. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chronicles of the Holy Grail, Sword and Sorceress, Lace and Blade, and at Podcastle.org. Heather blogs about research into lesbian-relevant motifs in history and literature at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project and has a podcast covering the field of lesbian historical fiction which has recently expanded into publishing audio fiction. She reviews books at The Lesbian Review as well as on her blog. She works as an industrial failure investigator in biotech pharmaceuticals.

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