C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 41

Podcast S01E05 ~ Chapter 5 Up Now!

Listen to the latest episode, Chapter 5, now!

CHAPTER 5: SOMETHING IN THE ATTIC

Chapter 5: Something in the Attic

…in which Carrie finds a music box and Guy brings a book…

THE CROWS

The bank of smothering cloud hung over the sea, flat and grey like a tin lid on top of the world. She thought she heard someone calling, but there was only a lone figure walking the path in silence.

As she looked up, the figure stopped, hands in their pockets and hidden by their quilted coat, watching her. Prickles washed along Carrie’s back, lapping at her fight-or-flight response.

It wasn’t the right build for Phil.

She thought she could hear a whistle on the edge of hearing, sounding shrill and faint from some distant, invisible source. The figure jerked into a crouch, reaching for her across the gulf with crooked gloved fingers like talons.

It was the pose of a pounce.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, pp. 90-91

Something in the attic is one of my favourite tropes, and I did a post on it here.

Horror Podcast Schedule ~ March 2021

I hope you’ve been enjoying the serial and bonus eps so far – here’s a look at what we’ve got coming up this month! Really excited to share Stefanie Simpson’s interview with you this month – we chatted about her eldritch cosmic horror apocalyptic romance, Witworth Doom Baby; disability rep and undermining ableist tropes in romance; BDSM and kink, and more. I seem to be making up for the fact there are no sex scenes in The Crows…

4th March – The Crows Chapter 5 8th March – Author Interview with Stefanie Simpson 11th March – The Crows Chapter 6.1 18th March – The Crows Chapter 6.2 22nd March – Bonus Episode! 25th March – The Crows Chapter 7

We finish Part 1 this month, and start Part 2 in April, kicking of with Chapter 8! If you want to read ahead, buy the book, and/or join or start a discussion in the Goodreads group.

Podcast S01E04 ~ Chapter 4 Up Now!

Chapter 4 is now up! Come and meet the Grande Dame of Pagham-on-Sea herself… Mrs Beverley Wend.

CHAPTER 4: THE GRANDE DAME

Chapter 4: The Grande Dame

…in which Beverley returns the Green Man, and Carrie gets suspicious…

One old photograph caught Carrie’s attention. It was of a young, pale girl in a dark dress, straw boater set winsomely on her tight ringlets, standing by a rose bush. She was staring up at the camera with a hooded expression, a twisted smile of secret knowledge on her face. There was something malevolent about it that sent a chill up Carrie’s spine.

“That’s me, before I became Mrs Wend,” Mrs Wend said, peering over Carrie’s shoulder and making her jump. “Beverley Pendle I was then. I couldn’t be more than, oh, eighteen there. These are my sisters.” She pointed out a portrait of two girls, clearly an amateur’s early attempt but showing promise in the passages of paint. The perspective was a little off, but they told a story of a quiet girl with sad eyes and a proud, younger girl with a strong jaw. It was the swirling background that made Carrie uneasy, as if the painter had been trying to capture something they couldn’t quite see, something reaching for the girls with writhing, pale green coils.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, pp. 67-68

If you’re interested in the trope indicated by the chapter heading, there’s a ‘Gothic Tropes’ post here that looks at it in more detail and introduces Beverley Wend as a character.

In this chapter we meet Katy Porter in a quick cameo appearance, blink and you miss her. Katy is a main character in Thirteenth along with her oldest brother Wes Porter (you’ll meet him later on in The Crows). They are Ricky’s cousins. You don’t learn anything specific about the family relationships in this novel, except later where it’s stated that Ricky’s parents look alike. So this isn’t really a spoiler, since there are worse things than tentacles to worry about in that clan.

CW: incestuous family tree

The Porter Branch

The story of how Nathaniel Montague Porter (Nathan) met and married Deirdre Wend is told in my novella, The Reluctant Husband. You will notice this novella states that the first batch of spawn were actually born in 1939, but this is a truncated family tree. The ones missing off the genealogy above (which just needed to show the quads of 1949 and the triplets of 1952 for the purposes of this branch), run from 1939 (quads), 1943 (quins), and 1946 (triplets).

Marrying first cousins is legal in the U.K. and parts of Europe, and is not considered incestuous. Incest here is defined as within the same immediate family group or between uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews, though the latter definition didn’t stop the Habsburgs. So Charlotte and Ian Porter’s marriage is technically legal, although because both sets of parents are siblings, this is also… a bit questionable. George and Letitia’s marriage is obviously not legal, but they have the same surname anyway and Lettie goes by ‘Mrs’ after a formal ceremony at home.

Despite the fact that the family almost exclusively marry each other with one or two notable exceptions (Ruby Wend, who married ‘that Youngblood chap’, for example [Ch 2]), the family itself is comprised of five distinct branches. The Wends are the main branch that spawned the Wend-McVeys and the Porters, in-grafting extra genes, while the Shaws and the Foremans do not currently have any branches who have married beyond the family. This is generally because the generations tend to reflect the personalities of each matriarch, descended as they are from one of the three Pendle sisters. The Shaws are peace-keepers or complacent in their situations, the Foreman family think they are the superior line and are therefore the most inbred, while Beverley Wend, still alive and kicking, has a more pragmatic view of the bloodline situation and something of a romantic streak. Just because she never got her HEA, doesn’t mean she actively discourages her spawn from theirs, even if she does complain about them a lot.

The Youngbloods (mentioned in Ch 2) are… actually already blood relatives. Beverley’s mother was a Youngblood. Obviously by now this is a distant relative, but it’s not someone entirely unknown to the family. I may explore Ruby and Tom Youngblood in later stories, as Tom Youngblood (based in Lancaster) has a biotech company and partners with Ruby’s cousin, Barry Wend-McVey, who has an underground lab making designer drugs. Both are interested in manufacturing the mutations that the clan members have, only without rituals and shrines and all that palava. There’s a possibility that Tom Youngblood’s company and research is connected to Avery Medical in Chicago, Illinois. If you want to know what that’s about, Avery Medical is the property of Nita Pan, and features in their novella Under Your Knife (forthcoming).

You’ll learn a lot more about the family in Thirteenth.

Podcast Bonus Episode ~ The New Estate and Hangman’s Walk

My first bonus episode with two additional stories ~ both extracts from The Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Vol. 1.

I talk about the New Estate and Hangman’s Walk, and read the tale of the Meteorite Strike in Roman times, and the Punch & Judy Man of Hangman’s Walk

Bonus Ep ~ The New Estate and Hangman’s Walk

You can find versions of the tales I read out here and here for free. You can also buy the whole companion volume for 99p from my Ko-Fi Shop!

I’m not able to transcribe all the bonus episodes, but this one elaborates on the stories I linked to above, and considers the origins of the New Estate’s urban legend (or is it?) that there is something in the darkness that sucks the life from whoever it catches. You can find out more about this in my short story, ‘The Sound of Darkness’, published in F is for Fear with Red Cape Publishing.

One view is that the farisee stones mentioned in the medieval account of the meteorite strike were taken from the site, unwashed, by some of the first children to move into the estate in the 1960s. The stones cursed the estate and possibly brought forth a dangerous kind of soul-stealing fae than now lurks in the dark corners.

The medieval account also seems to suggests an origin myth for lycanthropy localised to Pagham-on-Sea, but many places have such myths including the village of Hangingstones in Yorkshire, which tells of a demon dog that attacked parishioners in the parish church during the later middle ages. It was said that the survivors of this attack became werewolves.

I elaborate a little on Hangman’s Walk in this episode too – Hangman’s Walk is the name of a street along which those sentenced to death by hanging (smugglers and witches, for example) would be led to the gallows. I cover this in The Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Vol. 1 and will talk more about the folklore of the town and its history in volume 2. I might explore Hangman’s Walk with you in future episodes, but it’s also the name of my RedBubble shop, so if you want some exclusive official merch designed by me, check that out!

This is the first bonus episode where I discuss different aspects of the town and its history and urban legends.

What did you think of the episode?

Submit a form.

Podcast S01E03 ~ Chapter 3: Meet the Locals Up Now!

The next episode is up! Check it out on my podcast page.

CHAPTER 3: MEET THE LOCALS

Chapter 3: Meet The Locals

…in which Carrie joins the History Society…

As Guy got out to open the door for her, Sheila leaned in close to Carrie’s ear, her breath hot on the back of Carrie’s neck. She tapped Carrie twice on the shoulder.

“If you go to Beverley’s,” Mrs Azeman whispered, “Don’t drink the tea.”

Jumping with surprise, Carrie twisted around to stare at her.

Guy opened the door.

“Have a good evening,” Mrs Azeman said at her normal volume, getting out and slamming the door.

Carrie’s skin crawled where Sheila had tapped her. It felt like a signal of some kind, something she couldn’t interpret. Like another warning.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, p. 62

If you want a little more from this chapter, Ricky’s point of view is already up on this blog in a fun teaser… introducing your not-so-friendly local soothsayer, and a toy called Gerald.

I did a post on the Gothic trope of sinister, secret-keeping locals here!

If you’re wondering why Mrs Azeman has a folkloric surname, that’s a deliberate choice she made and will get explored in future stories when the concept of lychgates will be looked at in more detail. Mark Curtis may have his own short story – I’ve got a few ideas for that, which will expand on his character and clear up (or add to) the mysteries surrounding his particular nature. If you’re well-versed in Ancient History/Classics, you may have an idea where he’s from and what the name denotes.

Current regular members of the History Society:

Guy BishopMark Curtis (Guy’s godfather)Sheila AzemanBeverley WendJanet VarneyDev SyalLeo Domov (unnamed, but he owns the pet shop on Gordon Road)Madelaine Dewser (named in Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea )Pete Cheung (named in Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea )John Hampsted (unnamed)Tom Redditch (unnamed)??Pamela Rumbold (pending approval)

Check out the Gallery page for art of Ricky and Gerald. I love fan art, so if you are inspired to draw any, tag me on Twitter or Instagram!

Spring Rush – 25K Word Goal

If you have seen the hashtag #SpringRush on Twitter you’ll know that accountability threads and aesthetics abound, and that writers are embarking on a writing challenge to get 25k words done between 15 Feb and 21 March.

I don’t know if I will reach it, and I won’t be writing every day. But! Here are my projects that I am concentrating on over this period!

1. Thirteenth: final edits, formatting, sending out ARCs and setting up preorders. Think HANNIBAL RISING X THE DUNWICH HORROR, with a twist of DAGON and a dash of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. Add it to Goodreads!

Illustrated by Tom Brown

2. Solo project: unnamed sapphic 1940s WIP, folk horror in the Welsh Borders with middle-aged lesbian protagonists. Think JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING X PAN’S LABYRINTH. As this develops we’ll see where it goes. This is in the experimental writing stage.

Snippet: current opening to explore concepts and setting

3. Co-written project: Eldritch Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Nita Pan is my co-writer. We have 67K done of the first draft, of an estimated 80K. A burlesque dancer finds her calling killing people on camera and meets an erratic, devolving hitman with family issues. What could go wrong? A splatterpunk, villain-on-villain, two-hander romcom for fans of Rob Zombie, Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. Add it to Goodreads!

Temporary Cover (C. M. Rosens)

Will I make 25k total? Who can say. I also want to try my hand at more short stories this year, and I have some ideas, but let’s see how that goes!

Good luck to everyone doing #SpringRush. Get ready for updates, I guess…!

Oops!

I scheduled the podcast episode for next Monday (22nd) and the accompanying post for today (15th)! This has been rectified – the episode airs next Monday.

This week – Chapter 3 goes up on Thursday 18th Feb! Full schedule for February is here.

Apologies!

~ CMR xx

Podcast S01E02 ~ Chapter 2: A Town With Dark Secrets

The next chapter is now available on my podcast.

CHAPTER 2: A TOWN WITH DARK SECRETS

Links on my podcast page

Chapter 2: A Town With Dark Secrets

…in which Carrie gets a job…

Coastal towns around the country had their fair share of deprivation and economic problems, but Carrie had thought Pagham-on-Sea was a quaint commuter town, a dreary middle-class hideaway off-season and in the summer, all fish ‘n’ chips and Union Jacks. In London, she had run the gauntlet of human misery in the few hundred yards between her office and the tube station, but here, no one slept in doorways. She had thought that was a good thing, at first. Now she was thinking about what Rachel had said, wondering about the rumours about the Sauvants, the dead girl in the chimney. She remembered Joe Lin’s cryptic comment about Redditch Lane – the Bermuda Triangle of Sussex, where people went missing.

The town seemed more furtive than before, the huddles of its buildings conspiring against her and all those who fell through the social cracks.

C. M. Rosens, The Crows, p. 34

The Town With Dark Secrets is one of my favourite settings/tropes. I wrote a post on the trope of a place with dark secrets (it isn’t always a town!) here. This came up in the Left Page Podcast interview I did with Frank R. Lopes, where we discussed the town of Pagham-on-Sea in detail and my world building processes. Pagham-on-Sea is a town full of different communities and individuals, some more supernatural or eldritch than others, and we’ll be exploring it in more detail on this podcast too through the bonus episodes.

Look out for the Bonus episode coming soon where I chat to you about the history and folklore of the town, and read you two extracts from the 99p companion short, The Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Vol. I, as reviewed by the Folklore Podcast. We’ve also got a fun episode coming in April, where the elusive Guillaume Velde is coming on the show to chat about Pagham-on-Sea’s museum collections, as he did in this guest post.

Where it comes to the episode itself, I tried to do some effects and I don’t know if they worked ok – sorry if not! The tricky part of representing Fairwood’s ‘thoughts’ is that on the page they look like this:

…Right aligned and in italics.

I tried to do some background noise to set the scene like with the background rain in Ch 1 – this one has a supermarket scene. I also tried to do pub noises to get the impression of her zoning in and out during that scene, which I think worked ok, but might be a bit distracting… I hope not. This is super early days for me with this and I’m not pretending it’s a pro job. It is me, recording on my phone, popping stuff on Audacity (free software) and trying things out. I hope this doesn’t detract from the enjoyment!

Enjoy the episode, and if you want to read ahead (or read along!) you can buy the book!

Book Club Reads: Recommended Novellas

Book Club Reads: Recommended Novellas

Author Interview ~ L. B. Shimaira

Interview Transcript

L. B. Shimaira (she/they) is an erotic horror and dark fantasy author from the Netherlands, and we chatted about her new novel MY LORD (Gurt Dog Press, 2020). Follow her on Twitter and Instagram, and check out her free fiction available on Wattpad. You can also follow her author pages on Amazon and Goodreads.

podcast

Listen to this Author Interview episode on my podcast.

L. B. Shimaira Author Bio

L.B. Shimaira is from the Netherlands, born in 1989, is married and has a daughter. She has a Bachelor of Applied Science degree and works as a research technician, where she helps develop vaccines.

She considers herself a horror addict, having been into the genre since she was a little kid. As she often finds horror too predictable, she enjoys trying to make her own works full of surprises—and avoid the standard clichés.

The majority of her works are inspired by her own dreams and nightmares, giving them a vivid sense of realism. She struggled with depression as a teen, is a self-diagnosed autistic, and received therapy for PTSD in 2019. When she states she needs to write in order to stay sane, she means it.

She currently identifies as pan grey-asexual and recently discovered she is idemromantic. She uses she/her pronouns but is perfectly fine with they/them too. Thinking about her own gender too much can give her quite the headache—especially since feelings fluctuate—so she prefers to state her sex is female while her gender is simply queer. Polyamory tends to sneak into her works, even if just a notion, and LGBTQ+ characters are always present in her novels.

L. B. Shimaira

On Wattpad, she shares some of her work. The first part of her horror novel They call him Lucius was featured by Wattpad itself for 3 years (2014-2017), and a paranormal thriller she co-wrote with the user Godhand under the name G.S. Lucent was featured for Halloween of 2019. She has won several user-run awards on the platform. She has also joined the Wattpad Stars in May 2020.

You can connect with her via various ways through www.shimaira.com.

Extract from My Lord (Gurt Dog Press, 2020)

“The cut… It hurts.”

Lord Deminas lowered himself and licked the wound a few times, his eyes fixed on Meya’s, taking in her suffering.

Meya’s nerves screamed from the sensory overload. Fucking sadist! Tears slipped from her eyes as she clutched the sheets in anguish.

The lord rose a bit and licked her neck. “Don’t forget that this is meant to hurt.” His hot breath against her ear made her feel weak.

He flicked his tongue against her earlobe, while at the same time pinching her nipple, causing her to moan softly. Meya’s mind had trouble forming coherent thoughts.

“You agreed to suffer in Gail’s stead.” He moved down again to lick the wound.

Meya winced. “I…I did, my Lord.”

He looked up, blood glistening on his lips. “If you can’t take it anymore, you may tell me so.” He licked his lips clean. “I’ll stop, however…” A devilish joy was visible in his eyes. “Gail’s punishment won’t end tomorrow morning.”

Meya swallowed. Is he seriously offering me a way out? She was quiet for a few seconds. “If… If we stop now… When will Gail’s punishment end, my Lord?”

Lord Deminas thought this over. “Tomorrow, after supper.” He lowered himself so his nose almost touched Meya’s. “Does that mean you wish for the pain to stop? Is it too much?”

Meya bit her lip. He’s enjoying this… But I’m no weakling! She kept her eyes locked on his and gathered her courage. “I don’t enjoy pain, my Lord,” she said calmly. “Yes, I want it to end, but no, it’s not too much.” She felt stronger having said that. And I’ve suffered this much already; I’m not going to quit now.

~ L. B. Shimaira

Interview Transcript

CMR: Welcome to LB Shimaira, who is our guest on the show. So would you like to introduce yourself and tell us about your work.

LBS: So my name is LB Shimaira and I write dark fiction. I’ve been writing short stories and novels and last Halloween my first novel got published. It’s My Lord, it’s erotic horror.

CMR: Is it fantasy as well, or historical?

LBS: It’s a bit of a blend, actually, because it’s set in a… in a made up country. That’s in Europe, because I did try to actually adhere to actual historical events, like the invasion of the Golden Horde. It’s set in that time period. But yeah, it’s a fictional country because you know it’s, it’s a fictional place with fictional laws and how things are done there. And of course, there are these kind of vampires going on there. So that’s a little bit of fantasy elements, only in my other contemporary novel in the same universe, They Call him Lucius I actually explain a bit more what it is that they are, and actually try a scientific approach to that so it would be more of a Sci-Fi than a fantasy, actually. But yeah, this one’s sets in the, what is it in the 13th century, because it’s 1200. So they don’t know what it is.

CMR: That’s really cool. I do love the 13th century. That’s my so 13th century British history is like my specialist topic. Yeah, so the medievalist by by trade in real life. But I know a lot about 13th century Wales and absolutely nothing about 13th century anywhere else. So I’ll happily just enjoy it.

LBS: I did, I did some research in it, but it was more like, yeah, more you know, different parts of Europe, what’s going on there. And also when it comes to medieval dishes. Because yeah, what the hell are they eating back then?! I don’t know. What did they sleep on because you’re so inclined to just write that they sleep on a on a normal bed but they had met this is filtered straw. For example, like that was more a thing back then. So, okay, but that is just small, small details.

CMR: And so there’s there’s quite a bit of LGBTQ rep, is that right, in your books as well. So to tell us a bit about that. Like what kind of representation do you have in your work?

LBS: Well basically I tried to stick a little bit more to what I know, so it’s bi/pan, that kind of representation. I have friends who are trans. So one of my friends actually made a character for one of my novels. It’s just a little side role at the moment, but still just kind of fun to just ask him, because I like doing it for my friends, just have them make a character in my books. And there’s also an novel that I co wrote with someone [In Sickness and in Hell] and they were basically also alter egos of ourselves and those two characters were both asexual. So yeah, we put that in. Yeah, so asexual characters as well. Also in other books, but because those books are more horror oriented, sex or romance didn’t play a big part. So it’s kind of hard to put it on paper, what the orientations are, because it’s not something that is discussed all the time.

CMR: So I wondered if ace characters in particular open up the narrative … There are different ways you can write about them and different storylines you can take. Like, as an, as an acespec person I do enjoy sex and [your characters] can also like that. But it also kind of removes those kind of narrative expectations and it kind of lets you be a bit freer with it. I don’t know if that’s something you noticed or put in. It’s a difficult question.

LBS: I don’t know, because I do find that, because actually, when I started writing My Lord, I was like, yeah, I can read erotica. I can write this. But I couldn’t [write it like that]. Too much sex is boring to me like it just gets repetitive very quickly. And also, I was really like, yeah, I need, I need a lot of story before there’s any sex because otherwise it just feels –

CMR: -weird, yeah.

LBS: Yeah. It was like, yeah, no. These characters are like, Nope. I’m quite a pantser so my characters really dictate what happens.

CMR: Yeah. And there’s polyamorous characters in My Lord, as well. Was that always going to be a thing, or did that just happen?

LBS: It was not planned when I started writing, it just kind of happened as it went long. It was this, like, yeah, no, this is, this is just how it is. Now that’s – yes, the characters have decided this, this is the thing.

CMR: I love it when characters just kind of take over in a character-driven sort of narrative and go right. We want this to happen now.

LBS: Because originally it was also just meant to be a straight book, I suppose. But nope. Definitely not. This is going to be gay now. But also the, the moment you get more in touch with your own gayness basically like good luck reeling it in in your fiction, because, nope, not gonna happen, every character now is some sort of gay.

CMR: I feel that also. It’s been really interesting because I kind of personally have been on that that explorative personal journey. I suppose about kind of getting in touch with different aspects of myself and coming to grips with different parts of my sexuality. And I think when I first wrote The Crows it was a very straight book. Um, but it was there was something a bit off about it like, not quite heterosexual. This whole new character appeared. He was very definitely as aro-ace, probably grey ace, and then it got a bit polyamorous and went a bit off piste. Then there’s a polyamorous character in the second book who is pan, and has an open relationship with his girlfriend who is bi, and a boyfriend who is monogamous to him. So lots of different things.

LBS: Now I also forget the terms for complicated relationship structures…

CMR: Polycule? I like that one.

LBS: Yes.

CMR: V [one person with two partners unconnected to each other], Triad/Throuple…

LBS: Yes, triad, throuple, quad, there are lots of terms.

CMR: What’s the one for your partner’s partner who isn’t your partner…

LBS: Metamour.

CMR: Meta, yes. I love all of those, but it’s just really fun to kind of just play around with things like that and explore different kinds of relationships and but I also really like platonic relationships and queerplatonic relationships and things that aren’t romantic.

LBS: But are also more than just friendship.

CMR: Yeah, I just find that to be a really interesting dynamic. Do you have any of those in My Lord or other works that you’ve done?

LBS: Um, well, for myself, I only learned about queerplatonic relationships like a few months ago, and I’m glancing at my own relationship like hmm. Yeah, it’s a little bit difficult for me. I guess because I’ve always have this weird thing with romance. I’m like, romantic stuff makes me want to puke. I have an amazing partner and we’ve been together for 15 years now, and I love them a lot but it’s kind of hard to, to think about. It isn’t actually what society deems as romantic love, but I only know what I feel. I don’t know if that’s romantic, but it’s the most love that I can basically feel for person so…

CMR: Yeah.

LBS: It’s, it’s all good and amazing and we’re very happy together so that’s that’s the most important thing. So when it comes to my own books, at least in My Lord, I suppose it is it is written as romantic love. I think I guess like it’s up to the reader to interpret, I guess. Um, but, for example, the book that I co-wrote, In Sickness and in Hell, there are ace characters in that and they are living together and they basically they love each other very much and they actually want to get married and but there is, there are no sexual relations between the two. The fun thing about that book is also because nowhere is it actually said that they are ace, so it’s it’s basically all between the lines, but it’s also one of the moments that one of the characters gets very touchy in a way that she normally wouldn’t do and that actually gives away that this person is not actually who she pretends to be. Actually getting too sexual basically gives away that no, this is someone else. I really like I really like that part, but also one of the characters is actually a Cam-girl, okay. I also really like that part. Because yes, she’s asexual but she’s also a sex worker. And yeah, you don’t need to be sexually attracted to actually do these kinds of things. Anyone can be ace, and an ace person can do whatever.

CMR: Yeah I love that. Is that one published or available anywhere?

LBS: It’s free to read at the moment on Wattpad.

CMR: Perfect, I’ll be scooting over there soon. How did you find the co-writing process? I’m co-writing a book at the moment and really enjoying it.

LBS: Oh yeah, it was very different. Because basically, we spend a lot of time blocking it out and just working through looking at an outline and that’s also when I discovered that how I do my outlines also, because I’m mostly a pantser, and it is very different from how Godhand (the one I co-wrote with) did her outlines, because she does very detailed outlines, almost a chapter in themselves, and I’m more of a bullet point person. But it actually clicked very well because we weren’t that different and we just went along [like that] because it’s also a bit of a mystery. We have to put in all the elements from who done it. But those elements in there and hide all the hints. And then we had an original idea and while we were plotting it out we were thinking about how do we could do this differently. And if you do it like this, It’s more fun. It will shock the audience more, and this is so much better than this. And we avoid certain tropes if we do it like that. We did everything in Google Docs, because then you could also work together at the same time. When her character was in the spotlight, she would write that part, and when my character was in the spotlight, I would write that part, and when we were together, sometimes it was basically her writing a few lines then me writing a few lines, and stuff like that. It worked really well.

CMR: Yeah that’s really similar to what we’re doing, we are using Google Docs too. My co-writer is in America –

LBS: So was mine!

CMR: – It’s quite fun because you wake up in the morning and there’s like a new section and it’s like a little present.

LBS: We also had timetables, because we were trying to do updates. Like, what was it again every week or two times a week. So we actually had those deadlines to actually push us to keep writing.

CMR: So! My Lord is published by Gurt Dog Press, and it’s also got a mental health issues as well represented, is that right?

LBS: Yeah, mostly trauma and PTSD.

CMR: Okay, and why did you choose to explore that kind of representation?

LBS: Well, basically it’s the things I am most familiar with. I had therapy for PTSD in what was it, 2019. So, and that’s also when I actually discovered that the, you know, this is not new. This has been growing for some time and now it just – the volcano erupted, basically. And I really became disabled. I couldn’t work and I had to get therapy, and after a few months of that I was able to slowly get back into work and, yeah, I’m working full time again. I’m also out of therapy now, but I can really recommend therapy. I should have done it sooner. I started writing because it was for me, a form of therapy in itself. And because I used to have a lot of bad dreams and nightmares, and writing those down helped me to process them. And yeah, also puts stuff that I was dealing with that I had trouble with. I put it into my stories also as a way to help process them because hey, look at this character. Look, they are working through it. They can beat this shit. So can I. You’re kind of projecting yourself into your characters and and viewing how they deal with it and how they work through it and then yeah, it kind of helps you deal with it yourself.

CMR: Yes, definitely. I am. I think I did a little bit of that in my stuff as well. But I kind of, I was distanced enough from this situation and the emotions and all of that, that I could go, okay, I want to kind of Gothicise my depression and my complete inability to understand things like friendships and interpersonal interactions and I kind of put it into like the antagonist character. And I kind of pushed it to its, its extreme – like how extreme can I make this? And came up with this character that I absolutely love but is like, just the most traumatised character.

LBS: We love our characters like that.

CMR: People do like him, and it’s concerning because he’s…

LBS: …going to say, he’s a bad person, yeah.

CMR: He’s an anti-villain, so yeah. He kills people.

LBS: Bad boy.

CMR: Yeah exactly.

LBS: Lord Demiras is like that.

CMR: I really liked the the extracts that I read and the bit that I’ve read out on the show. He sounds like a character I’m going to need to know better.

LBS: I did try to actually write him as someone that has to grow on you. I’m going to let you keep being afflicted about it, like, do I like this person, is he good or bad, and he kills people like… Yeah, difficult, at least that’s how I wanted to write him. No clue if I succeeded because on Wattpad [beta version] there were people who were people who instantly liked him, and there were others to who didn’t like him, even in the end they were still like no, I don’t want him, go away.

CMR: Yeah, I think, I think with those kinds of characters it depends on what your readers’ experiences are, I think if they get that character or get something about them, they’ll resonate with them in a particular way. And I think maybe people who have had different life experiences will not resonate with that character in quite the same way.

LBS: That’s true for all characters though.

CMR: Oh, for sure. Yes.

LBS: Also, when you use it with your character, people like it because he’s this traumatized depressed villain. And yes, there are people who are going to be fawning over that person because I’ve seen enough people do that, but they’re also going to be the ones who say, you know, this, this is a horrible person for everything he does and… yeah. No.

CMR: He’s just, he’s just a dick. Yeah, so it’s it’s a bit of a mixed bag, I think, with those sorts of characters, but it’s sometimes the most fun to write.

LBS: Definitely. Also to read, because those are characters with depth that have some actual meat in the characters, it’s not a one dimensional character like no, there’s more to them. I got multiple facets and multiple sides and I actually liked that when a character has more to offer. You’re not just writing a character you [the reader] has to hate – like, no, make them more interesting, give them more sides, make them more complicated and three-dimensional.

CMR: Definitely, I think that just it adds so much to the whole experience of reading. I like it when you give the reader space to read between the lines and figure out why they’re like that. Like, oh, this thing happened in the past, and so that makes sense as to why they’re responding like this now. I love stuff like that, it’s my favourite thing.

CMR: So was there anything you found difficult to write for any reason?

LBS: Um, one of the things that I actually did get stuck on were the sex scenes because I have to be the certain mindset to be able to write that kind of stuff. And sometimes it was just like, how do I write this and how do I make it actually interesting and boring and not just, yeah. Not something a 14 year old with no sexual experience would write. I’ve got plenty of experience, that’s that’s not even the problem, it is just how do I put it on paper and make it actually interesting to read and look like something good, rather than it being written horribly. I don’t have that much experience reading sex scenes, because most of the books I have, have none, so. Yeah, that was quite a challenge to do.

CMR: Yeah, I find it difficult, I kind of do the fade to black. There are no sex scenes in The Crows so that was something I avoided. But yeah, it’s hard, isn’t it, and like I think especially when you read if you do read sex scenes and you’re like, you can kind of get a feel for what’s well written, and what’s really not. I think it’s hard when you’ve got like a book that’s kind of sold itself on being very erotic and then you realize that they have to sustain it for like 400 odd pages of the novel or something like oh my god like…!

LBS: How to put it with My Lord… My Lord is… kind of a slow-burn. So don’t expect something to happen by Chapter 5 or anything like that.

CMR: Like for me anyway slow burn definitely works better with erotic kinds of things because I think slow burn is erotic anyway. Definitely the anticipation aspect.

LBS: And then you have also the yearning of putting characters together like, dude, get it over with already!

CMR: No. Not for another 15 pages. Yeah, I love it. And I think we’re out of questions! Yeah, that’s been fantastic.

CMR: Do you have anything coming out soon or any promotions that you want to make us aware of anything we should know?

LBS: Um, yeah I am planning a certain quiz for My Lord which might be up and available by the time this podcast episode airs, so there’s that. Basically, you have to read the sample pages that are free online, answer a dozen questions, and for everyone that gets them right, I will pull a winner. And you get a free ebook. So I have that plan. Otherwise I am basically working on the outline of the sequel. And I’m also trying to silence my other work in progress, a dark fantasy. I keep writing it, I’ve been writing it since I was 15. At the moment, it’s again on hold because I had it on Wattpad and I drafted it again because it’s like, yeah, no, it’s still not good enough. And I want to add some more. And with that book, I also want to explore some more sides to the LGBTQ characters. And also where it comes to gender, I want to explore something there. And I want to look more at qpr [queerplatonic relationships] which we mentioned them earlier. I want to keep that book a little bit closer to my own experiences and push more of my own experiences in there and also make the main character I was already writing, a bit closer to myself, and I want to see if I can actually make her autistic in the way that I am. I started that book when I was like 15 so it’s been 15 years now. I completed this once before. It was 140 K words when it was done, the finished version, and I fully drafted it and then I started rewriting it and I think it was no around 38 or something that I drafted it again. This was a full rewrite. So I hope I can save, whatever. But yeah, it’s a big book, and probably will be a series because I have ideas for 2-3 books with that already. But yeah, those characters have been in my mind for 15 years and they really want to get written. Their backstory is also getting very much fleshed out. And yeah, I really want to write those books as well. But there are so many ideas and so little time to actually write stuff.

CMR: Yeah, I think that’s a universal… so many ideas, so little time.

LBS: If anyone if anyone wants to pay me to become a full time writer, please do.

CMR: Yeah, what’s your Ko-Fi or PayPal?

LBS: I don’t have one actually – I do have a PayPal but it’s not noted anywhere.

CMR: I guess the best way to support you is to buy your book!

LBS: Yes, actually!

CMR: So thanks for joining! It’s been really fun. I’ll put all your links in the blog post that’s going up under my Author Interview page! Hopefully see you soon on social media!

LBS: Yes we’ll be talking! See you!

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