Can you describe Lord’s Dome in one or two sentences?
Lord’s Dome is a short novel about a girl who decides to question what she’s been told and an older woman who must decide whether to help her. It’s a fantasy, but with a different style of world building and elements of many other genres, so I’m hoping it will appeal to non-fantasy readers as well.
What made you want to write this book? What made you want to self-publish it?
I wrote this book in 2018. As I discuss in the Preface, it was an experiment of mine during an editing break, to see if I could write a short novel. I don’t think I said this part in the Preface, but I wanted to see if I could write something a little more poppy. A shorter story with high excitement and flow. With all that’s happened this year, some of my memories are floating around in a bowl of water right now, but as I recall, I was thinking about power at the time. However 2020 has gone, 2018 held trials too. I actually had some interesting inspiration, but that gets into spoilers. Anyway: Power. Resistance. Truth. Things on my mind at the time.
Additionally, I now realize everything I’ve written to date has been heavily influenced by my own mental issues. This would be a long discussion, but in this case, there are definitely some psychological things going on in this book.
All of that said, the book flowed out quickly. First, a fairly simple outline, then a full story. I surprised myself how quickly it came together. Then I put it aside, as a project for another day. And look, it is another day!
As for self-publishing, I’ve self-published all of my books because I own the small press. I know there is a big price for this, but I just can’t imagine not having final creative say over the product. (And I’m extraordinary lucky having a life and business partner who can help do the rest. I know how fortunate I am for that.) However, this one is particularly so because we did all the edits and design on a short timeline and no budget. (More about that in your next question.) So it does absolutely have big self-pub energy. Huge.
2020 has been a rough year for a lot of us, myself included. What has it been like, trying to release books this year? How is it different than past years?
There is so much to this. First, I’ve been open about having some serious mental health issues, ones beyond the common 2020 issues, and also discoveries about my disabilities this year, after a near-total collapse. This involved periods of mental stateas well as medication that were difficult to work through. On top of that, because of the pandemic, a lot of our releases slipped—then all happened at once, and me seeing that those authors needing the joy of seeing their products released, and were relying on us to do that without further delay, so I wanted to make it all work. We’ve released or will be releasing an anthology, a fantasy novel, two graphic novels, and a novella fairy tale this year. On top of that, I was in the middle of my own fantasy serial with a three-month release schedule that I was determined to keep on track. (Diamondsong Part 10releases in October, and the entire print bundle is available now at edebell.com/diamondsong)
All of this involved edits, proofreading, sensitivity changes—it was a lot to work through, some during some rather intense personal issues. There was a lot going on, and it took all that I had (which was limited) to keep it all going. But I realized I needed to create as well, and so, I started working world building for my next big series. For me, world building is slow and careful work, and while it got me through some really hard days and was probably all I could have done at the time, it didn’t have the lift of a near-term goal. In the meantime, one of my friends had just read this manuscript, which as I’ve said, I’d written in 2018. She really liked it, and encouraged me to try and release it as soon as possible. I thought, can I do that? Like, right now? But something about her enthusiasm, and then the enthusiasm of the others who beta read it really made me feel like I was going to make it through this. It gave me a reason to try and focus better, a reason to feel excitement; it even allowed me to change some of my medications in ways that made it easier for me to work the edits. I don’t know if I was ready yet to write a novel, but I found myself feeling ready to bring a short one to life, and it was a totally cyclical process, where the book gave me the energy I needed to have more energy for the book. While still taking care of myself, this time.
As for releasing all of these books this year, yeah, it’s been hard, even beyond the personal issues. Hard because it’s difficult to sell and get attention online. Sales have been…I’ll censor myself here and say the sales have not been where we needed them to be, even for books we felt sure would do better. But we are doing our best trying to make ads work, trying to find ways to be seen, and just hoping something breaks through.
As for releasing this book, I simply can’t pretend it wasn’t a 2020 thing and I don’t even want to. People are like: don’t tell people you did this on no dollars, and I’m like whoop I put it in the Preface! : D But to me, this is a total triumph. This book is made out of friendship and hope and we-exist and who-we-are-is-good and we-are-going-to-make-it more even than paper and words. Friends encouraged me to do it, friends went through extra efforts to beta and read and help review. We made our NO DOLLARS COVER on our computer, and we put this book out there with every tiny drop of 2020 “I did this and I like it just how it is” that I had in me.
I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of this question. 2020 is so much. Like, there’s so much more I could say.
On that note, if people do like this story, please let other readersknow. Reviews, ratings, recommendations - any success of this book will depend entirely on that.
Being way too honest (a thing I do), we need to get to a point where Chris and I can take a break. A real break. But for now,surviving and books with all the heart and hope of our beings pressed into their pages is what I’ve got.
And to everyone out there also having a hard time of any type, I’m sending love. Let’s feel it together, and feel that power.
What can you tell me about your writing style for this book? Are most of your stories written with a Great Lakes dialect, or is this one different?
In general, I have learned not to stifle my voice in my writing. Early on, an editor told me that even if I was from Michigan, my characters and readers weren’t, and strongly encouraged me to phrase things in more “standard" ways, which at the time I did. Yet this really started to bother me. First, if I were writing representations of different backgrounds on Earth, that might be a more relevant discussion. Next, the more I learned about how writers of regional and cultural backgrounds are commonly demanded to write to other people’s speech patterns, it really made me passionate in general about honoring our authentic voices, whenever and however we choose to express them. Next, it’s fiction. It’s art! As I’ve said many times, strict standards may be necessary for the Mars Landing Manual, but they are not necessary for a slipstream fantasy novel about people in a magic mine.
As for this story, because it was an experiment when I wrote it, I decided to be even more colloquial. I just let the words flow, and the characters speak, and had such a wonderful time writing this back in 2018. When I revisited it in 2020, with all the 2020 emotion, I was set and determined not to write those qualitiesout of it. So even for me, this book has an informal, rules-annoy-me tone, and given a whole bunch of things about this story (characters, world building, the world itself, plot flow, plot, themes…), I really think it worked.
Who’s your favorite character?
I couldn’t pick between the two main characters. The story is told equally between a young teenager and an older mentor / supervisor. As I’ve learned that a lot of my own difficulties go back to my youth, again, I am now certain this comes from a very personal and psychological place. (Other themes in my writing have become apparent!) So let’s leave Gu Non and Vo Jie alone, as I truly love both of these characters. They are earnest, flawed, and I hope vibrant on the page.
So I’m going to pick our kindly old priest, Ny Auv. He is sweet, he is passionate, and in a very difficult life, he has used his relative privilege for his own best quiet resistance, without ever knowing what it might do. I hope this is one resonance of the story: the power of doing something, even when more feels out of reach. To remember that the power of hope often comes from our believing in it.
Pretend your favorite character lives in our modern world. What kind of music is on their playlist?
This is a strangely hard question for me to answer, just for this story. For other stories, I could tell you what specific songs a character would totally rock. But again, the worldbuilding of this story leaves a lot on the periphery, so a lot of the details are quite open for interpretation.
First a side note: One thing that I noticed when I was editing the book was there was a specific lack of music in the story. For me, fantasy is music, so I always include at least one gratuitous fantasy song, more if I can—it’s my tribute to classic fantasy (along with mentioning embroidery when I can). But I realized this year while editing that there was no singing, no music, no dancing. Now, people in hardship often turn to music, but part of this worldbuilding style is that you only see what you see.Because of that, also my desire to preserve the 2018 story, which was written with a lot of natural flow, I didn’t try to edit any in.The reader can provide the music.
So let’s talk about our priest, Ny Auv. I imagine he’s been even more stifled on music, probably only Temple-permitted music, I mean, let’s hope he had that. He comes across to me as someone who might enjoy 70s music: some folk with guitar influence, and some soul and R&B. Yet part of me thinks I am totally stereotyping him, and if he made it here, he’d quietly become a huge Metal fan. I’m going with that.
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