All about LILIUM: Interview with Ashlyn Forge
H.ARM Suit, by amazing artist Elliot Lilly. Not drawn by me and unrelated to LILIUM, but definitely an inspiration!
Have you been wondering what the hell LILIUM is all about? I’ve been singing and dancing and jumping up and down about it, but haven’t let a whole lot slip… until now.
Today I was interviewed on the Gay Sci-Fi group on Facebook by Ashlyn Forge, the author of the excellent “Toys and Soldiers” series, Sci-Fi with strong M/M romantic elements. Ashlyn is an enthusiastic promoter of authors in the Sci-Fi, M/M romance and LGBT genre fiction categories, and I was very flattered to have her ask me for an interview.
During the interview, Ashlyn and I talk about indie publishing, the background of LILIUM, the future books in the series, and the opening of GOD HAS HEARD.
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Ashlyn Forge: Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Are you a new author? Indie? etc. etc. As far as your art and writing goes.
James Baldwin: *Puts on his Robe and Wizard Hat*
I’m not new to the publishing industry: I worked as a magazine editor for a trade journal in Australia, and I’ve ghostwritten and edited several novels as a freelancer for some significant money. I’m yet to publish a novel under my own name – LILIUM will be my entry into writing and selling my own fiction.
Ashlyn Forge: Will you self-publish it?
James Baldwin: Yes! I’ve talked a bit about LILIUM to a few different groups on Facebook and other places online. It is being self-published under an experimental self-publishing model.
Ashlyn Forge: You write the title in all caps, is it an anagram for something?
James Baldwin: LILIUM is the series title – capitalizing titles is something often done in the publishing industry to signify a title and make it stand it against a background of text. It’s a habit from work, mostly.
It does have some symbolism attached to it. But first, the more literal meaning.
Sapheda, the Main Character of LILIUM. Art by James Baldwin.
The Lilium Project is a significant military operation which occurs in the stories, which are based around the experience of super-soldiers in a dystopian future. The super-soldiers are called Nephilim, because of their large size and demi-human natures, and they are all male. The Lilium Project refers to the creation of the first (acknowledged) female Nephilim in history, Isis and Sapheda.
The name also refers to the fact that it is a six-part series, and there are also more obscure references… Catholic/Christian references, and the Occult symbolism of the hexagon.
Ashlyn Forge: Sounds a bit like Neosapians.
Ashlyn Forge: I see a lot of cool artwork with it. Do you draw those yourself?
James Baldwin: Yeah – one of the reasons I’m self-publishing the way I am is because I’m an artist as well as a writer, and agents generally get leery about being pitched to by people who want their art to be featured alongside their novels.
The beauty of serializing a finished work online is that you have immense creative liberty on how to do so. I can incorporate a lot of the visual symbolism associated with LILIUM into the site itself, as well as illustrating certain characters and using those illustrations as part of the story.
Sapheda, in particular, is more a visual than an auditory presence for me. She’s a character I’ve been developing since I was around 8 years old, and I’ve always ‘seen’ her – so publishing her books (she’s in 3 of the 6) without accompanying images of her just wouldn’t feel right at all.
Ashlyn Forge: How do the images work? Are they actually in the novel itself?
