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Hello, and welcome to myth makers.
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Myth makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives
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brought to you by the Oxford center for fantasy. My name is Julia Golden.
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I'm an author, but also a director of the center.
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And today I am joined by a special guest from America,
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Lisa Edmonds,
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who is well best known to me for her Alice Worth's series.
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Now, before we talk about that, uh, Lisa,
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perhaps you might want to take us on your own personal story of your
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journey to becoming an author. What happened before to get you to this point?
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Um, well, Both my parents were librarians,
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so I'll start with that. Um, and when both your parents were librarians,
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you grow up in libraries, you read a ton. Yes. Um,
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you, so from a very young age, um, my dad was also very nerdy,
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so I grew up watching reruns of the original star Trek. Um,
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so I grew up on science fiction and fantasy and mysteries, um,
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started with Nancy drew <laugh>, uh, when I was little. Um,
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and then in my teen years, I, um,
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kind of graduated to cozy mysteries and hard boil detective fiction.
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Um, and I especially really loved, uh, private investigator. Uh,
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but I also read a lot of, uh, police procedurals, like ed McBain. Um,
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so I was reading a lot of Sue Grafton, um, who wrote the alphabet mysteries.
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I know that's a little bit out of the purview of myth makers, but, um, and, uh,
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Sarah Persky who wrote the VI Warshawsky books, um,
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there was a movie maker of that. Um,
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so I just kind of read a lot of genre fiction. Um,
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I kind of envisioned myself writing really science fiction. Um,
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so it was a bit of a surprise, um, that I started writing urban fantasy, but,
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um, I discovered the genre through Kim Harrison's books. Um,
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the Rachel Morgan Hollow's books,
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and it was sort of like a gateway drug <laugh>. Um,
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after that I just started reading every urban fantasy series.
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I could get my hands on, um,
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and it was like the perfect melding of the science fiction, the fantasy,
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um, and the mysteries, um,
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because every book in an urban fantasy tends to have some kind of mystery to
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solve, you know, what kind of creature is this who's causing all this, this,
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this disruption. Um,
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and then you have these wonderful characters that, you know,
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the typical urban fantasy heroin has a lot of snark. Um,
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you know, she's a, she tends to be a self rescuing princess, which is, um,
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also a great, um, you know,
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creates great storylines and I just love imagination.
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So I love the world building. So, um, all that kind of came together and,
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uh, a couple of years ago, I guess, well,
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it's been more than a couple of years ago now, but, uh, back in about 2015,
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I thought, you know, well, maybe I could try my hand at this. Um, so I,
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you know,
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developed a character and a world and yeah,
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and that's how it all got started.
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Did your journey on the way include the JD Rob stories? Cuz they were one of my,
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uh, entryway into that kind of sci-fi police procedural.
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I've been following it all the way.
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Cause I think she started writing those in the nineties. Didn't she?
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Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
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Yeah, I's been around a really long time.
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Not running series, but that was the thing that showed me, um,
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the way that you could mash up genres of something which was familiar, you know,
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contemporary police procedurals, and then,
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but then put it 50 years in the future.
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I think the only where catching up aren't we with the historical period she's
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chosen.
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Well, and I also really like the Scandinavian, um,
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sort of psychological thriller mysteries as well. Um,
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like the Hening man ankle series. Okay. And um, oh gosh, uh, the Kenneth brag,
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they turned it into a TV series, Kenneth Brown, um,
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and a bunch of other like the there's just nobody that does that. Dark,
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psychological really twisted <laugh>, um,
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mysteries like Norwegian and Swedish, um, and Danish authors.
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So I feel like my series is like an amalgamation of all of that.
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Um, Atlas is a little, um, a little bit Kinsey Milone who is,
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uh, Sue Grafton's, uh, PI and a little bit via Warshawsky. Uh,
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but then also, um, influenced by, you know,
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all the fantasy and all of the, um, the mysteries and of,
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you know,
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sort of across all the sub genres sort of all <laugh> put together in one body.
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Yeah. Talking had this, um, thing he wrote about the Coldron of stories,
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the idea that all these other elements from everything you've read and the
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traditions have go into this and then you label out your own version of it.
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And then of course I would say Alice is definitely her own character. You know,
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she may have had these seeds in her origins, but I love her as, uh,
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the character she's grown to be.
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So looking at the Alice worst series, um,
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for those who haven't yet read it and I'm stressing the yet <laugh>
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uh, it's in the urban fantasy genre.
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Would you like to give us a little kind of taste of what they will find
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if they start reading the series?
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Sure. Um, you know, uh, my particular world is sort of it's,
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it's very similar Alice's world is very similar to our own, uh,
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with the addition of, you know,
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supernatural and paranormal creatures and beings. Um,
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so there are shifters and vampires and Googles, um, and things like that.
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And so I, I like, uh,
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my preference on urban fantasy is like our, um, like our world,
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but with these interesting twists, um, excuse me,
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I also enjoy urban fantasy that steps much farther away from our own world,
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like, um, a bishops, the others series, which is very, very different.
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Um, so I sort of imagined, um,
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what would have to change in our world. Um, if we suddenly,
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you know, had these creatures walking among us. And so I envisioned like, well,
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there would have to be like a federal agency dedicated to sort of tracking,
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monitoring and serving as law enforcement, um,
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who are set up for interactions with creatures that aren't human don't think
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like humans and aren't, um, vulnerable to the same things that we are.
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Um, and then sort of just, it, it sort of grew from there. Um,
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so Alice herself is, uh, a ma so she has magic.
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She has what I call natural magic. So, um, uh,
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air and earth magic, um,
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as well as a few other abilities that kind of develop throughout the series. Um,
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and she is a private investigator in my world. Um,
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a ma private investigator spec, uh,
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sort of specializes in supernatural and paranormal type mysteries and almost all
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of her cases involve solving a supernatural related mystery.
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Um, she has a ghost sidekick <laugh> um, Malcolm, his name is Malcolm,
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right? <laugh> yeah, his name is Malcolm. Um, he is, I mean, he calls,
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he calls himself the comic relief in the partnership. Um, you know,
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he's a lot of fun. Um, he tends to be a crowd favorite. Um,
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and, but.
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In some ways he's her anchor.
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Like he's the one who very much sort of the conscience in some
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cases, isn't he, he corrects.
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Yeah. You do always see him doing cuz Alice had the,
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had a really not to spoil anything, but she had a very difficult and uh,
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traumatic childhood and upbringing.
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And so there are a lot of times where her reactions are very much shaped by
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her past and Malcolm in some and a few other characters
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come in as like her Gemini cricket. And I was sort of like Alice <laugh>,
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you know, think about this a little bit. Um,
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and you see her changing over the course of the books, um,
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and adjusting and you know, becoming a little bit more, well,
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she calls it a little bit more human, um,
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learning how to interact with others and how to love,
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how to love others and care for others and how to let them care and love her.
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Um, which is a difficult journey for her, you know,
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considering she didn't really have that growing up. Um,
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so each book they're not, they're not designed to be read, um,
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as standalones, each book contains its own story, its own mystery,
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but there are overarching stories. There's a,
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there's a major antagonist that everything is sort of building up to her,
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dealing with there's storylines that run throughout each book.
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So although each book has a self-contained mystery for her to solve because
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she's a PI, um, you would wanna probably start with one <laugh> and then,
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uh, go forward. It's not, you know, not really designed to be read out of order.
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Yeah. She's also in, I wouldn't call it a love triangle.
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That's the wrong word because there's another side to it,
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but she's sort of in the middle of pools between a shifter,
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um, friend, a very close friend mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, lover,
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but also somebody within the vampire community who is very interested in
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her, but also the major community. So I there's three points. It's not really.
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Right. And then in the federal agency, you know, a federal agent as well, well,
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there we go. Um, it's, you know, there's,
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there's definitely a romance angle to it as there is with a lot of urban
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fantasy, but I, you know, I definitely wanted,
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I didn't want to get into the love triangle thing, um, uh,
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too much, but there definitely is a little bit of, um,
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what's the word like there, there's a, uh,
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like she's trying to find the person who like, uh, you know,
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who completes her, who supports her, who compliments her,
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that's the word I was like for who compliments her the best. Um, and you know,
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there's a lot of power plays going on too, as you know,
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as you would expect with any, any time that you have, um, you know, you have a,
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like the vampires they've been, they have hundreds of years old,
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they they're all about the power. They're all about the,
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what can somebody do for me? What benefits me. Um,
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and that's not necessarily the type,
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the type of partnership relationship, uh,
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that someone like Atlas would be interested in.
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So I think what I was most interested in is exploring power dynamics in
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personal relationships and, you know,
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letting Alice sort of figure out what's the healthiest type of relationship to
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be in. Yeah. Um,
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one trope in urban fantasy and paranormal romance that
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I'm less of a fan of is the ones where you have a, um, a real,
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like difference in power and you have one partner asserting that dominance over
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the other. Um, I mean, I think there's room in any genre for all kinds of,
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you know, types of relationships, but I definitely wanted to focus on a more,
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a healthier type of relationship.
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So I think that is an exploration of what's a healthy relationship.
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What's going to be mutually beneficial. Um, what love really is,
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um, as opposed to what can this person do for me?
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How can they advance my, my goals? You know,
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which isn't to me a healthy relationship.
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Yeah. And because you've got a long series that you are working on,
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that the, for example,
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the main central relationship with Sean does become more and more important
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to the reader as you go on. And I, I found it really gutting in,
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I think it's, um, shadows, uh, where
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she loses.
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I think it's not too much a spoiled to say that she's Casa loses her memory.
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I think it's in the blurb. So I'm allowed to say that.
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Yeah, it's on.
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Yeah. So it's a, a reset of her relationship with Sean, but it's,
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it is absolutely, it's just terrible to see her. No,
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you can't forget all these things. You've had, you know, the,
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the reader is really involved in that.
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I thought that was a very good thing to do to a relationship from a craft point
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of view in the middle of what I might otherwise be.
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And they lived happily ever after, you know, right. Keep,
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keep putting the grit in the relationship so that it can move on and become
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actually even deeper as a result.
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And they, um, you know, they have a lot of ups and downs, um, you know,
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as they both kind of adjust to the relationship and, you know,
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Sean has always wanted, um, and you know,
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he very much did believe and does believe he wanted an equal,
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he's not wanting what the rest of the pack wants him to have,
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which is a very submissive, um, uh, <affirmative>, uh,
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mate partner, you know, who's going to just follow orders.
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He wanted someone to stand beside him. Um,
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but that's all well and good in theory,
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until he does get someone who wants to either stand in front of him or,
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or stand beside him or stand in front of him. Um,
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and then he's got to try to figure out, you know, exactly what that means. Um,
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you know, and Alice isn't ever going to be anybody's, um, you know, he's,
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she's not gonna be bossed around, um, too, so there's a lot of dynamics there.
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Uh, so you have to put your relat, you know, your,
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your relationship through some ups and downs and, and, uh,
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cause I think that's realistic. You know, I don't know any relationship,
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that's all sunshine and roses, you know, from day one,
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you're gonna run into problems. You're gonna run into differences of,
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of opinion. Um, especially when you have two people who have, you know,
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are so kind of set in their ways, you know, so above all,
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I wanted it to be a realistic series, like series, you know,
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I want my heroin to be relatable. Um, and, um,
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realistic. I want the relationships, the, the mysteries, the drama,
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it all to feel like all things that make sense, all things that are relatable,
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even though it's, you know,
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there's magic and all sorts of other creatures around, like,
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I still want people to, to read it and feel like, yeah,
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this is something that would really happen.
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And just to, uh, help people find these books, the,
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the title sequence is heart of, so heart of matters and so on.
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And so when I say shadows, I'm referring to the book called heart of shadows.
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Just if you're looking, if you're Googling it now, that's how define them.
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It's a, yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
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I was going to ask you, um, when you write,
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so I'm now gonna actually sort of ask you to think about the process. Do you,
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you said there's a, like a long arc you've been working on,
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is this something that you sat down and sketched out?
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So in a drawer there's the entire plot of the entire series is
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written down or are you someone who, um, is a discovery writer?
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You may have a vague idea, but you write into the dark. How do you approach it?
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Ooh, annoying answer. A little of both. <laugh> um,
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I definitely sketched it out cuz I was planning a long series. Um,
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the current plan is 12 books. Um, it, it went from 10 to 12. Um,
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had to do a little bit of growth because that's the discovery part. Um,
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you can plan all you want, but characters for me are, are living,
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living things. And so they will do and say things that I didn't see coming.
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And then you have to,
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you have to work with that <laugh> so I definitely sketched out kind of the
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arc. Um, I have definite plans for like,
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what's the gonna be the mystery going to be in each book. Um,
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and then how is that gonna relate to, um, I kind of have the, the,
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I guess three main over, um, overarching plot lines, you know, the deal, the,
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the conflict with the main antagonist, um,
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Alice's personal development and growth and then her relat her personal
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relationship. Um, yeah, so.
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Yeah,
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the family she built the route around her is it becomes a kind of story in
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itself who, who becomes part of that? The cl her, her ma family, not.
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The born family is a problem. <laugh> yeah.
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Yeah. So yeah, a problem. So, um,
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when you set out, I dunno, if you can remember what it was like to think it up,
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did you start with Alice as your character or did you come,
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come up with the situation and then think who's the character to carry the
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story?
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Well, um, it's kind of, it's an interesting, um,
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and I do remember actually I remember the moment it happened. Um, in fact, um,
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I was sitting out on my porch,
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I have this lovely screen porch overlook over her and I was sitting out there
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and a sentence popped into my head. Um,
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and it ended up being the first sentence of the blurb of heart of malice, um,
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or what would become heart of malice, which was, um,
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the first time Moses Murphy's granddaughter killed on his orders.
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She was six years old. That sentence popped into my head.
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Um, you know, some people say call it the call it a muse, some P I don't,
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you know, it just, it just, it, that sentence fully formed popped into my head.
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So I actually met Moses before I met Alice.
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Um, because in that sentence,
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I sort of imagining who he was and then who his granddaughter would be.
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And it sort of, it just grew out of that.
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I envisioned Alice as the granddaughter and then the whole,
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the whole setup just sort of grew out of that moment. Um,
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it was a very magical moment. <laugh>.
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Absolutely. And also looking at your biography,
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you have a background in forensic criminology,
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which seems to me to connect to the private eye story. Would I be,
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cuz there's quite a lot of detail, um,
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in a fantasy form of like tracing and um,
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uncovering crimes.
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Is that something that you've picked up from your reading of real world
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criminology?
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Oh, definitely. I mean, I think it comes the, the,
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the college courses were an outgrowth of my lifelong fascination with mysteries.
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Um, part like not just putting the clues together,
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which I personally find amazing. Um,
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and Alice is living my dream life as a private investigator. Um,
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but as an undergrad,
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I was really seriously interested in pursuing criminal
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profiling, um, as a career. Um,
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I would've liked to have gone to work for the FBI, um, and,
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and done that. And so I took a lot of, um, criminal justice courses,
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uh, as an undergrad and of course I was an English major.
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So the instructors always thought I had accidentally enrolled in the wrong
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class, uh,
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because they would be looking down their rosters and they would be a hundred
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criminal justice majors and then me the English major. Um, um, but I had,
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I was lucky enough to take courses with, um,
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all instructors who were actual former or current law enforcement and,
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um, a couple of courses with an actual practicing forensic psychologist, um,
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whose job it is to go to prisons and secure wards and talk to
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talk to serial killers and talk to, you know, uh, all kinds of, of people.
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And so I, I got to absorb all of that real world knowledge, um,
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through courses like death investigation and serial killers and, uh,
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forensic CRI or forensic psychology. And I, you know,
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I ended up not going that route professionally,
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mainly because as a very empathetic person, I thought it will be,
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it will be too difficult day in and day out, uh,
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particularly to interact with, um, you know,
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family members of people who, you know, who lost their lives.
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I just thought that would take too much of a, a toll on me personally. Um,
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but it re it remains a real fascination. Um, and so I feel like, um, I,
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I definitely wanna use that, you know,
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in the investigations as Alice's not just following physical clues,
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but trying to figure out motivations and understanding, not just the,
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how, um, and the, when,
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but the why of why people do the things they do.
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Because I think that's a fundamental question that we all ask ourselves. Um,
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whenever we read about any, any particular case, um, is why did this happen?
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Um, what was this person's motivation? So I want that to be, you know,
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sort of at the forefront of the stories as well.
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I mean, hopefully most,
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most people are fortunate enough not to experience this in their
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own lives. I mean, we all know it's a possibility,
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but whilst when you don't have it,
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you can have a certain comfort blanket around you that it's happens to
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other people, whereas you are writing a character to whom it has happened.
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Do you find it a difficult place to go when you are writing Alice
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and her traumatic backgrounds? Um.
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Yes, I really do. Um, I struggle particularly in,
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during the writing of shadows, I will say. Um, because that is, uh, to me,
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the darkest of the books, you know,
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a lot happens to her a lot happens that kind of, um,
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you know, uh, calls back to mind, you know, what she went through, you know,
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during her childhood, as she was growing up, um, after her escape. Um,
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and while she's been in hiding, um,
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not just the darkness of the people that she has to interact with, uh,
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in that book, which are, you know, sort of the, the darkest. Um,
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but I feel like I, on the one hand, I like, I like tapping into those,
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those, um, again, it's about relatability, right? And it's a,
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like tapping into fears that I think a lot of us have, uh,
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that feeling of helplessness,
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that feeling of wanting to help and protect those around us and not always
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being able to do that. Um,
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and I think that's a lot of what Atlas has to go through. Um, you know,
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and especially like at the end of heart of malice, you know,
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that I won't spoil anything, but, you know,
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the end of that book carries over into the next book because she's struggling
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with what she witnessed and ha and was a, uh, was a part of,
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and that's another thing I wanted Alice to be in terms of relatability.
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I I've read some series where the main character goes through really difficult.
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Like she loses someone or she goes through a really traumatic event. And then,
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because she's a strong character, you know,
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she just goes on as if it doesn't bother her.
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And that really bugged me cuz I that's not how, that's not how we, we,
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we operate as human beings. Like we can't,
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we don't brush things off that easily. So, you know,
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when Alice goes through something, you know, it's, you still see the,
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the ripple effect, not just in that book,
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but even in subsequent books as she's trying to deal with it.
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So yeah, also, also in shadows, you, um,
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depart from your usual more, um,
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straightforward timeline orientated plot structure, and you break it up,
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uh, in order to, I suppose it gets a sense of the disorientation,
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but also it's a way of telling a really difficult story because you have other
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moments where it's before this is, you know, the,
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you don't have a, like unrelenting,
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big slab of negativity sitting in the middle,
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which would've been the alternative. Yeah.
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And, you know, from an author's standpoint, you know,
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that book was a challenge to write, um, because it was, um,
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the first one I wrote where the point of view changes depending on,
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but switches this back and forth between the two main characters,
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because really that's, as I was planning out the book, I was like,
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that's the only thing that makes sense to tell the story is to have
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part of the book told by Sean.
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And part of it told by Alice because of what's going on.
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And then it didn't really work very well when I was planning it out to,
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to tell it simply in a linear timeline, um,
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because of the things that happened.
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So I felt like the way I put it together made the most sense to me.
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Um, and, and I tried to be very clear with headings and so forth,
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like where we were in the timeline and you know, who was telling the story and,
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and so forth.
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I really honestly don't think it would've worked very well if I had just told it
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linearly. Um, and only from Alice's point of view. So, you know,
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and it's good as it matter, you wanna stretch, you know, you wanna stretch, um,
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yourself from time to time and challenge yourself and I'd already written in
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Sean's head, um,
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because there's a Nove called just for one night that retails part of heart of
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malice from Sean's point of view.
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So I wanted to kind of continue with that and, um, tell,
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tell part of that story from Sean's perspective,
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as he's also going through the difficulty of,
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you know, start almost, almost starting over, um, with Alice, um,
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and you know, trying to help her.
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And I also felt like his impressions of who she was
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in this particular situation, without all those traumatic memories, uh,
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shaping how she thinks and reacts.
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I wanted to also get that perspective across like how he's reacting to this
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version of Alice.
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Thank you for listening to part one of this week's podcast.
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Come back next week to hear part two.
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Thank you for listening to.
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Thanks for listening to mythmakers podcast brought to you by the
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Oxford center for fantasy visit Oxford center for fantasy.org
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