Interview with Jeri Westerson, Author of CLOCKWORK GYPSY

Such a fun conversation with Jeri Westerson about her new Steampunk historical mystery/fantasy/adventure! Lots of imaginative characters, a hint of romance, and a liberal sprinkling of magic, all set in a fictional Victorian London. The book comes out on October 31 (Halloween!!!). Jeri's having lots of fun events, including a Facebook Live launch and a YouTube launch!

Transcript

Susanne 0:28

So I'm here today with Jerry West. Herson I'm really looking forward to talking to her. She is the author of a, an impressive series of medieval new our mysteries. And now she has coming out a steam punk historical. Fantasy mystery, some sort of thing like that. That is absolutely fun. So anyway. Hi, Jerry, how are you?

Jeri 0:54

Hello, Susan. I'm good. Good. I guess I'm calling it, Gaslamp fantasy slash theme punk. There's so many descriptors for that.

Susanne 1:07

I know. I know, but, so let's dive right into that. Tell me how you came, how you decided to do this really. what is it? I don't know. Fun. Interesting twisted kind of book.

Jeri 1:21

Finally got me out of the middle ages. So I got moved up to Victoria. So I'm slowly getting to the current, life lifetime here. I was always fascinated by, first I liked steam punk. Can you just

Susanne 1:37

define steam punk for people who might know?

Jeri 1:39

it's a sub genre of science fiction fantasy that, involves an aesthetic, that the world is powered only by steam, even the higher technology it's usually set in a Neo Victorian London and, and it sometimes involves magic. And a lot of fun things like goggles and leather clothing, and mostly dirigibles, you gotta have dirigibles doesn't everybody. so the, there's a lot to it, but it's sort of like pornography, you know, when you see, anyway, that's that definition. So I favored them in that time period. I was always fascinated by magicians, the pre Houdinis and, and how, the whole mill you have magic of that time period, was thought of as sort of real, it wasn't just a stage show. People believed in it. and this was a time when seances are becoming popular. So there's always a little bit of mysticism involved in magician's show and their presentation. So I was just so fascinated by that. The posters from that era are so wonderful. They all have, they have demons and devils, a little imps prancing around the magician who knows the secrets. So I wanted to do something in that and a steam punk lended itself to me anyway, to creating a story. So my protagonist is a magician like Leopold Kazimi, or the gray and chanter, and he does pepper, his magic act. with real magic, because he's learned the dangerous art of summoning Jewish demons.

Susanne 3:30

and what's really interesting too, is he's not just a musician, but he's Darien and a, And Hungarian and he's is he bro? He's half Roma, right?

Jeri 3:44

Yeah.

Susanne 3:44

so that's more of that kind of mystical, magical, whatever.

Jeri 3:48

Anyway, his father, his Jewish father got interested in. In studying the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism and learned how to summon demons and that sort of started a whole, this whole backstories are interesting. So you started this whole thing where his father was swept away a Hannah and, Was saved, but by is the demon that usually conjure to perform magic, but it was still you swept away and get to HANA and sacrificed his life for his son because his son slept in there. but we find later than maybe that's not true. yeah, there was all this wonderful. Atmosphere that you can gather from the Romani people and from his Jewish heritage. And he of course, gets involved in studying the Kabbalah and all that as well. So Jewish demons, because they were friendlier historically speaking, the old Testament, the demons, there are Playful spirits in a way they're not as evil as when you get into the new Testament. so yeah, it's interesting that aspect. But also in studying Jewish mysticism. Oh my gosh. This comes with a whole plethora of things that you can grab colors, have meanings numbers, obviously neurology, but there's so many things you can call from it to put into your fantasy and really. just embellish what you've learned. So maybe,

Susanne 5:24

yeah, I bet. And what I really also loved about it being a sort of historical, not myself was how the little bits and pieces of history that are blended in with this fantasy. setting and you really evoked London very well. and the, I love that the first scene takes place in a piece super, They don't have any more. They don't have the coal fire pollution.

Jeri 5:50

That's right. Yeah. I took what I learned from researching medieval life and just plunged into Victorian life. The fun thing about Victorian life is that you have photographs people everyday and everyday life, what they look like and what they were wearing. and what is the different little jobs, the. They were the knocker uppers. That sounds very young. Sounds very sexy, but it's horrible women who were paid to be alarm clocks for you. They would take a snippet and knock on your window at the right time.

Susanne 6:34

When I lived in London for 10 years, I can't even remember the first time somebody said to me, Oh, don't worry

Jeri 6:42

in the morning. Yeah. Okay. yeah, as I saying in my afterward. I'm almost more concerned with the actual history, then the fantasy. I want to get the history right first as the foundation. And then you can go from there. obviously, we don't know, is there really magic flowing through every inch of a London? Of course, but. But in this case, let's get the foundation right. First, let's get the idea of gas, lights, and electricity is starting to come in all kinds of other things. Let's get all that first. Introduce demons and EMTs and all kinds of creatures.

Susanne 7:30

yeah. Yeah. and all kinds of creatures. That is the operative word I love. Yeah. Love it. fairies, imps, what is it? Ogre is whatever you've got all these kinds of different, beautifully described and. appropriate to the period, which is what's really fun. it's not like a modern kind of fantasy. I was going to ask you one of the things I was going to ask you is, first of all, what made you decide to shift away from the medieval new R which you've done? how many of,

Jeri 8:01

Oh, there's 14 released in our writing. The last one is ending 15 books. And I think that's a good, that's a good number. I didn't want to write a series one series forever. I think that, I think you should end the series. they can become stale. They can become repetitive after a while. And I, I just, I always planned on ending it any way. Excuse me. And then, the ending follows the timeline. This is Richard, the seconds rain. And he had a very definite end to his, it was rain. And that seemed like a really good point in the series. So I writing that right now. and, and I just, I think I wanted to get away from medieval. I wanted to get back to some of the things that I always enjoyed reading. when I was in high school and college, it was a lot of science fiction and fantasy. And, and I had some definite ideas of things I wanted to try. And the first it got published was the book of the hidden series. That was four books in done, and I'm taking my agent's advice and writing a three book series, Trilogy's done. And, I think that's a good way to go. You won't get tired of it. You'll be very excited about just, plunking through three books and then move onto the next three. Next three way. You don't have to worry about, how long has this, how am I going to do this series? what, if I get tired of it, I'm not just gonna stop writing them. I think readers a good ending to each. Each series,

Susanne 9:45

right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very interested in the whole phenomenon of series and trilogy and stuff because I've just dipped my toe into that recently as well. Having had all my other books, just be one offs and, yeah. And,

Jeri 10:00

when I started writing historical novels that no publisher would publish, They're were all one offs. And that was what I brought to the Zoe thing I thought too. So when I switched over to the idea of a mystery, I knew from my research that while you probably had a ride series, cause that's what editors wanted. So I'd never done that. So as soon as I whipped out the first Christian guest book, Which wasn't the first one published. I wrote the second and then I wrote the third right after to make sure that I knew how to do that. And, once I started, I was, I just love it. I love writing a series because you are fighting the longest novel over.

Susanne 10:42

Yeah. And, but what else about writing a series is do you enjoy,

Jeri 10:47

you really get a chance for your characters to grow and you give them the time and the elbow room to do that. Crispin starts out pretty, he's pretty annoyed with his life as it is cause he's a disgrace night. And, he has to eke out a living on the streets of London and figures out how to 14th century and figures out how to do that and becomes a detective of private eye is a paper called the tracker was hired to find things and stumbles upon murder. So he's an actor individually for a lot of books, and I realized that's starting to get old, so we need to move him along. and, he also has, I, a servant that comes into his life, an orphan, orphan boy, who's a pickpocket is a cut purse and, He was only going to be in the books. The first couple of books, when I was going to say, he needs to move along. Crispin's on his own, but my editor liked him so much. He said, he's going to be in the series. Nice, wonderful serendipity. Because he's the one that really propels Crispin to change. He has to raise this child. Who's never had to do. Yeah. and it changes him. So he has to be responsible for this person. He teaches him to read and write, he's teaching him his craft and that it opened up a whole different world for her change and for things to come through of his life. it's been fun because each book. Gets to concentrate on one little aspect of life they're in medieval London, and then, he's grown, he grows through that. One of my favorite books. what's the third one. it's. It has to do with, medieval Jews who were all kicked out of England. A hundred years before, how are they in the work? that gets explained, but, so that aspect was interesting and then that's the demons parts for, by the way. and that, so there's, each thing that I, I find interesting in that time period in that particular time period of Richard sprain, Can become part of the story sometimes important, sometimes just a tangential part of

Susanne 13:07

the story, right? Yeah. I see that. So let's go back a little bit further. And how, what was your journey to becoming a writer? What, where did you start? How, was this something you've done all your life or like me? Is it something you came to later?

Jeri 13:23

it was something I did all my life for fun. Since I can pick up a crayon, they were little stories, but it was never going to be a career choice. It was, I wrote my first full length novel when I was 16. and no one in the world ever read it and I was going to read it. I just started writing books from their novels. And, I had a turn in college. My career choice was design art. So I was a graphic designer. I did that for many years in Los Angeles as a freelancer. And, when it was time to have a baby put that aside for a little bit, my child, and then. I figured, when he's about to I'll get back into it. when he was about to the whole world had changed from hand done graphic design to,

Susanne 14:23

yeah. You may not know this about me, but I spent decades in advertising as a copywriter. Yeah. And I started in the seventies in London.

Jeri 14:33

Oh boy was, I

Susanne 14:34

completely electroset, it was a complete,

Jeri 14:38

he's looking over here and I still have my leprosy tools sitting there. So that's a piece of archeology. So yeah, I did all that too. and working with typesetters and all that stuff, and it was great fun, but I had to stop to have this child and then this child was 30 now and I'm. And when I was trying to get back, it was all computers. Jerry knew nothing of computers, and I couldn't afford to get them and I couldn't afford it, the classes to learn how to use them. so that was put aside and I thought, what else can I do to make a living that I could do at home to raise my child? So I thought, well, you know what? I've been writing all these years. And I. I really think I want to make a go of it. I want to make it go up of writing historical novels. And so I brought this to my husband and I said, well, I think what I really want to do is write novels, do that for a living. And he said, honey, that's great. I'll support you in anything you want. But, Do you write? Cause he'd never seen that. I did the whole researching, what did you have to do? What are the formatting? Do you have to have an agent? and I did all of that and worked it out and, And went ahead and started doing it. And, I think I finished my first novel for sale 92, 1992. and I got on agents about. I think a couple years thereafter.

Susanne 16:20

so you were in the publishing world before it changed as well.

Jeri 16:27

it's, I was writing as a sort of a models and the kind of historical novels I like to write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, not about the courts, not about the Kings and Queens. and Andrew's just didn't want, I said, no, we can't solve this needs to be about amble when, for God's I wasn't happening. So I, but I had a former agent who said, you should switch to medieval mysteries. Because that is

Susanne 17:00

CAD fail, right?

Jeri 17:02

Because Peter is the queen of assault and mystery was a much better market. Of course you had conventions devoted to just mysteries. You have shelves and bookstores and those days just industries, bookstores that just sold mystery. So yeah, it was a good marketing move. And that kind of thing that I wrote easily translated to that you could have a fictional detective and then he can come into the situation Marine, he gets to court sometimes more on the famous people, the real people that show up. So that does work. And, but that took. It took me 14 years to get published and years of writing stuff, when people weren't going to publish and finally switching over, okay.

Susanne 17:56

so it's interesting that you have a design background because one of the things I loved about your book is how beautifully designed it is. And it's, and there's going to be illustrations in it. And I think only one of them was in the

Jeri 18:12

file. You sent me five.

Susanne 18:15

And what inspired you to do this? it's not usual to have illustrations in a, if it's not like a graphic novel or something,

Jeri 18:25

I guess to me, it had a graphic, novel vibe. I couldn't wrap my mind around writing and then I couldn't, even though I could, it could take a while. I could probably have illustrated in myself, it would have been extra burden and take it a long time, but then I couldn't afford to have a whole graphic novel designed either. I can afford a few pictures in it. So just to get all that sensibility in it, it was that kind of an idea. Yeah,

Susanne 18:54

it's a, it is so funny you say that because I thought, Oh God, this would make a great graphic novel. I can really see

Jeri 19:01

how it would

Susanne 19:01

work, and the richness of the images and the characters and all that kind of thing. I love. Oh, what's her name? Oh, I'm missing it. The female, the main female character mainly Zhao, right? Yes. She's a terrific character. Yeah. She reminds me of, there's the Asian woman in the Charlie's angels

Jeri 19:25

movie.

Susanne 19:29

Yeah. There's something kind of Lucy, Lou about her. Yeah.

Jeri 19:34

She's definitely got she's capita. She's got her own Michigan ass, but, yeah, she's a fun character to write the story. Almost always picks up when she shows up,

Susanne 19:49

add something as a real spot,

Jeri 19:53

nothing like a character that knows everything that's going on that put still cagey about telling you and. Yeah. Yeah.

Susanne 20:01

Yeah. And just this whole thing. You're your heroes? you're writing really both the Crispin guest and this one from the point of view with the male main character, was that a conscious choice or did that just happen?

Jeri 20:18

Well, because it's really about the magician. Yeah, he had to be male. So I usually write male characters. I very seldom write female characters because the hidden was different because I was following sort of the tropes of that genre of urban fantasy, where it's a female protagonists told him first person that sort of thing. and I'm also thinking about a new. Steam punk. Why a series with female protagonists, same reasons. but I usually had a male sensibility about things I wanted, what males do in the middle ages. They fight with swords and their lights and things like that. that's where my mindset was for that. And, and for most of my other series, I've been pretty much health centric.

Susanne 21:09

Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. And,

Jeri 21:12

I think it's fun. when you are writing a book, you are all the characters and you like an actor. you find their motivations and you put on the costumes and you really get into the character. And so I like being in characters completely different from me. I like, obviously female that makes them different right off the bat. But also I even give them likes that are the opposite of my likes and dislikes that are the opposite of mine. I really want to be completely in their heads. How are they thinking? What informs. What they do, how they say things that, that's part of the fun.

Susanne 21:59

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. You said you were thinking about doing a series because my thought of this was, Oh my gosh, my preteen teen grandchildren would love this book. I could still, I could totally see them getting into all of the, in fact when it, when it comes out and I can get a hard copy, I'm going to get one and send it to my 13 year old granddaughter.

Jeri 22:23

And it's perfectly flying for them because there's no real language. That's terrible in it. There's no.

Susanne 22:30

Listen, I write why, and it can be pretty, pretty mature at that age when they're good readers. They're reading adult. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think I read gone with the wind in seventh grade, sitting in math class., so you've already mentioned that you're going to be thinking about doing a series directly for the wire market. Anything else that's coming up for you that you're going to continue

Jeri 22:59

on. We have a series of. The necromancer series that is a mashup of medieval mystery and fantasies. I got us that I still use this in my research I got from it.

Susanne 23:16

Oh yeah.

Jeri 23:17

Yeah. So that's, that's kind of a fun and funny. I like to inject more humor the things without being an Akronist too.

Susanne 23:27

Yeah.

Jeri 23:27

Yeah. Challenge because of that. Yeah, I have a werewolf mystery series, so contemporary series. Okay. So I have to rent the second of that 100 and reach the guy with a surfer guy with a werewolf.

Susanne 23:48

Oh, very funny. So is that really contemporary? The werewolf

Jeri 23:53

series? Yeah. So

Susanne 23:55

how do you find flipping between historical and contemporary? Is there

Jeri 23:59

it's not a problem. I don't write two different books at the same time, but, once you're in that zone, you're there.

Susanne 24:07

Yeah.

Jeri 24:08

You're really fun.

Susanne 24:12

Yeah. I know. And there's a

Jeri 24:13

lot of research for, but like anything else there it is. Yeah.

Susanne 24:19

so is there anything, first of all, when is this book coming out?

Jeri 24:25

It's coming out on Halloween,

Susanne 24:27

on Halloween. Do you have any, sort of fun events or anything planned? I know it's a little difficult at this time, but

Jeri 24:33

yeah. they're virtual of course, on the 30th of October. this is the Facebook launch. And I've been doing Facebook launches few years now. So now they're just more populated. Yeah. And on the, Oh my Halloween, I have my life, YouTube event. So I have a YouTube channel. Lot of fun videos on there. Some book trailers and some little videos that I did for fun. And, so that's, that will be there. I'll like is, they're both at 2:00 PM Pacific time and there are so many fun things to give away. I have all these little. Fun little gifts to give away. So it's all free.

Susanne 25:18

Yeah. it, you should make sure I have the links and stuff for that, because I'll put them in there in the notes for the show, yeah.

Jeri 25:26

There's a blog tour that kind of goes with that. And so that's. All through this month. So

Susanne 25:32

wonderful. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about that I haven't thought of asking you?

Jeri 25:38

let's see about this book, clockwork, gypsy.

Susanne 25:43

it has a

Jeri 25:43

title, and it's a fun book if this is the second and the enchanter Chronicles series a trilogy. So Nicole Kaz, Mary is my. Magician and the Spanish inspector Ming-Li Zhao. He is pretty good besotted with her. So there's a lot of back and forth with them and it involves a lot of things. Mysticism, fantasy creatures, essentially, there is a railway. that was built, that promises London to Edinburgh in two hours, which is impossible. But even today sure. Nobody was going there, but it seems to be the cause of, of immortal beings being killed. This is what brings out Ningaloo shell. That's she's the special inspector because. She investigates supernatural doings in London. Meanwhile, there's this clockwork man on the loose and he is trying to kill Leopold and we have to figure out why all these things are coming up. And then we have bull of course, has his demon friend. He has, his inspector friend from Scotland yard who was now a ghost. There's a ghost Raj. Yeah. So there's all these, there's all these creatures and interesting things that happened.

Susanne 27:16

it's just a lot of fun. I'm, it's a little bit of a. Breadth of change, fresh air. I read a lot of historical fiction and stuff because I have to, and I love it. It's just, it's like, Oh, this is so much fun. yeah. It's you can just zip through it and smile as you're doing it, even though Harley's horrible. Things are happening.

Jeri 27:38

So

Susanne 27:41

yeah, exactly. so anyway, I it's great because. it's talking to, you adds a little different dimension to the people I've had on my podcast so far. So it, it was really great that you agreed to come and I hope it's awesome. But anyway, so a clock. But, sorry. My memory for names and titles is nonexistent.

Jeri 28:11

That's block word, gypsy.

Susanne 28:13

Yeah. Okay. All right. And it's coming out on Halloween and I will put some links into the, into the show notes. And, yeah. So what can I say except thank you for this fun conversation. And I hope clockwork, gypsy has a really fun opening even though. Even though we're somewhat limited because of, because we're all virtual,

Jeri 28:40

we really don't exist. Somebodies imagination.

Susanne 28:44

How do I know? You're really there. Jerry,

Jeri 28:49

a lot of people have told me I'm not all there.

Susanne 28:52

Oh on that note. Thank you again. And I hope you have a great day weekend. Did everything and we will

Jeri 29:02

talk again. All right, thank you, Susan. Thanks so much.