DeMyth Turns The Page With Charlotte Cross

Disclaimer: no vampires in this book sparkle.

Charlotte Cross joins Lauren to demyth her debut. A feminist gothic horror retelling of the brides of Dracula "The Brides".

They delve alot into Charlottes writing process with letters and journals and different timelines. Her writing journey and advice for authors. What makes a book feminist... and a dollop of vampires.

Obligatory spoilers include what Lauren was SO WRONG about. The ending and the reveal of who Lady Lowell is.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hi, I'm Lauren, and this is D Myth Turns a Page. My special episodes where I travel across to Transylvania, I definitely don't sparkle in the sun, and I become one of the brides with Charlotte Cross. So hi Charlotte, thank you so much for coming to talk to me about your debut. And we are so close now. We are literally doing this two days, two days before your masterpiece is released onto the public. So thank you so much. Two days. Thank you so much for finding the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's fantastic. I am having the weirdest week. It's really crazy. But no, I'm so happy to be here and to guess to talk to you about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

So your book, The Brides, is described as feminist gothic horror. And this is something I've never asked before, but I'm really interested. So, what as an author do you think makes fiction feminist? And do you think that sometimes that word is thrown around too frivolously to describe retellings now?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

So I feel like anything where women are given like subjectivity, agency, kind of get slapped with the label feminist because so much of not I'm gonna say literature, but I don't even mean like literature capital L, like the great Western canon, whatever. So much of what is written is male-centered because some much of it was just men doing the writing. But I think, yeah, anything, anything that's properly female-centered with female agency gets given the label feminist. So I do worry that it's like a little bit diluted, maybe, but I will say the brides is definitely feminist. Yeah, like the characters they are making their own choices, they are choices that are sometimes contrary to the society that they live in. It's definitely female focused. The male characters are kind of very much like on the edges, and they're like adjuncts of the female characters. In the way that we've seen, you know, a woman is always someone's wife, someone's daughter. I've I've kind of realized after the fact that that's sort of what I'd done with the male characters in the brides. Oops, not sorry.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

There is an author that we've had on who I've sort of developed a friendship with, and she always refers to my partner as Mr. Lauren, and it's like, oh my god, you know what? I'm good with that, and he hates it. But she's like, Oh, what's Mr. Lauren doing? I was like, No, I love that. I do that with some of my friends and their partners. Do you think the idea of a feminist book is different when we look at a retelling of a previously more male-centric story? Because obviously, with Dracula, Dracula is a vampire, but he's a man, and then the main characters that we have are men, and it does feel like a little bit more of a damsel in distress thing with the women in the story, rather than say, and I'm gonna get into some of what you said with women making choices outside society in a little bit, but yeah, we have a retelling that is female-centric that was previously male-centric, and we see that a lot in a lot of the retellings that I've done.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

I mean, I think female characters in older stories have a tendency to just be kind of ignored, not given their own subjectivity, be objects, be adjuncts. Dracula actually starts kind of alright. Like when we first meet female characters, we see Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker. Well, when she gets married, she's Mina Harker. And Mina actually starts off really well. Like she's quite tough, she's got a job, she's very focused, she's kind of she feels like not even of that time. But Lucy is like the princess, the damsel in distress. But later on in the narrative, Mina ends up kind of being in the damsel in distress role. And I find that really irritating. I love Dracula, but I find it really irritating when I read it because I feel like Bram Stoker kind of did Mina dirty, like she's starts off so tough and with so much agency and subjectivity, and then it kind of goes away, which irritates me so much. But when we're doing when we're retelling stories from a female perspective, I think we are kind of almost naturally going to put it in a more feminist lens. I mean, when you turn a side character into a main character, you see things through their eyes, right? And through their choices and what they want, and they are the center of the narrative. So therefore it almost happens by definition, I guess. Yeah, I feel like that's kind of what happened with the brides, actually. Taking characters who are they're just Dracula's brides, they're on the edge of the narrative. Bram Stoker tells us almost nothing about these women. So putting them in the middle of the narrative is just gonna turn it into a feminist book. Because why, like, why bother write a book with boring people, boring women who just follow the men in the story around? That would be so dull.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

You said in your acknowledgments that humans love to embellish and reimagine our favourite stories. So, why do you think that is when there's countless untold untold potential news stories out there? Why do we sometimes fixate on stories that are already told? And we see that with countless versions of the same thing coming out and coming out and coming out. Not that I'm saying that's what you've done, but you know, with a lot of we're in a real almost resurgence of feminist retellings of things, and you are now part of that. So I'm interested in what you think.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

I think like we've done it with like telling, retelling our old stories for such a long time. Like literally all the ancient Greek plays about their myths, which were old even to them, so they're retelling those stories, and that's thousands of years ago. Like, humans just love to do that. We've always loved to do it, and we still love to do it. But I think in terms of telling stories that haven't been told, we we still love to do that too. We still want to do new things, and we still want to do new things with older stories, especially like right now, and for the last, you know, the period of time that we've had real diversity in who gets to write, who gets to create stories, being able to step away from this very white male colonial imperial view. I heard it described once as like art is like a house with loads of windows. And when you only have the white male creative person, you're only looking out of one window. So when we have diversity and this diversity of viewpoints, we can look out of all of the windows of the house and we get we can get views on all of these old stories. I think you don't want to be derivative. I think it's easy to get lazy and like not to um get myself cancelled or anything. But do we really need another Marvel movie with stuff just being blown up? I think you need to like it. It was important to me when I was writing The Brides that I was doing something different. Like, I wasn't just rehashing Dracula. It was important that I was taking the old story and still moving it forward in some way.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

So, spoiler, not spoiler, The Brides is obviously about the Brides of Dracula. Why do you think that they have lived on in pop culture and we still see their influence? Like, even in one of the most recent Resident Evil games, there are characters that are kind of inspired by them. So, why do you think people are so interested in them? Maybe not as much as Dracula himself, but they still hold their own real special place in pop culture.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Okay, so I feel like it's two things. One of those things is because in the adaptations they're always like sexy and in their 90s, and they're all like even in the book, they're kind of like sexually predatory and aggressive and transgressive for the the morals of the time. So there's the kind of male gays sexy aspect, but more than that, like I feel like they're a question that Bram Stoker never answers. He like never goes into detail about who these women are, where they came from, what they're doing there, anything at all. We don't see any of that in in the original Dracula. So it means that we can kind of create our own answers to that. And I think, yeah, that's maybe why people in all different media, like video games, movies, books, kind of keep revisiting the brides to answer that question in a new way or a different way, or put a different light on it or something.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

And obviously, I'm assuming you are a fan of Dracula. Of course, yes. So, how did the story come about? Because you mentioned in your author's note that at first you were ashamed of your own arrogance, thinking that you had something to add.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yeah, because you know, Dracula is so like everywhere in our culture. Everyone who knows who Dracula is, everyone knows who he is, what he can do, his history, like we just we all know that, right? And putting him in my own story felt kind of felt kind of arrogant. I pushed through that because I just got possessed. I got completely possessed by the idea and by the characters that I wanted to create. So I just kind of got over myself. Um, but I started so I started writing The Brides in October of 2019 because it was like a dark and stormy October afternoon, and I went to a bookshop in Oxford, and I was just browsing, and I came across this book called Who Was Dracula's Father and Other Puzzles in Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece by um a literary critic, Professor John Sutherland. And I was just like having a nice read on my sofa in the Oxford suburb of Littlemore, round the corner from the old asylum, and they came across this essay, um, Why Do Dracula's Brides Speak English? And I read the essay and I was just like, that's no, that can't be right. And then I went back into my very well-thumbed copy of Dracula, and yeah, it is totally possible to interpret the bit that scene with the brides and Jonathan Harker and Dracula as the brides are speaking and understanding English. And I just kind of ran with that. Like, what would they be doing there? Why would they be speaking English? How would they get there? It's really long way away from England, especially at that, you know, that time in history. And the fact that I was living in Little Moore next door to the asylum also gave me one of the settings for the novel, and it just all sort of coalesced in my mind, and I was just so possessed with the idea that I kind of couldn't stop myself. So yeah, I just I just got over my whole Dracula arrogance thing. Um, I worked quite hard to make sure that my Dracula was Bram Stoker's Dracula and you know, a bit more going a bit further, but I wanted him to be like the same character. I didn't want to make him sexy, no sexy Draculas. You can have sexy vampires, but you can't have sexy Dracula. He's creepy and gross, and that was important. Um, but yeah, just kind of once I got going, I couldn't stop.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

I respect the little bit of arrogance in it, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

I mean, like, there's a little bit of arrogance in all writers, I think, to assume that you've got something to say and people might want to hear you say it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I think you can say that about everything. Like when I started doing this, I'm you know, I last studied books when I was in college, and now I'm talking to authors. Like, does it take a bit of arrogance when I first started emailing publicists to ask? Like, yeah, maybe, but you know what? Here we are today talking about it, and here you are with your book about to be released. So I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Oh, thank you. I mean, is it arrogance or is it confidence? Are we just calling it arrogance because in a man of a woman confidence? Yes. Yeah. But I did think, like, I was in what I think it was roughly when I'd like just started writing. I was in my living room in Oxford doing yoga, as you do, and I was like upside down, and I was looking at my bookcase, and I just had this thought, probably because all the blood was rushing to my head, I had this thought that like all these people wrote a book. All these people did it. Maybe I can do it. Why not me? If all these people, why not me? You know? Should at least try it.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Exactly. Why not you? And I mean, how does it feel that you went from feeling like, oh, maybe it is a bit arrogant to try and bring something new to Dracula, to then having it be taken seriously. And it's now found a home with such a massive publishing agency that obviously liked it enough to want to put it out there.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah, I just the honestly, like taking taking writing seriously has been a huge challenge. I think like I took a writing course um online with the Oxford University Continuing Education Um department in the summer of 2021. And that was the biggest help because I was like talking to other writers who were just like me, like starting out, not people who were published, not people who were, you know, really prolific, but people who were learning. And we all took each other really seriously and took our our work seriously and our ambition seriously. And that helped so much because it just when I was dealing with these other people, it's like, well, of course I would take them seriously, so why can't I do that for me? And it it helped me so much, but um yeah, taking taking it seriously, believing in what you have to say and that someone might want to hear it is just so hard. It's so hard. And I think we have a tendency in society to be like, well, don't get your hopes up, especially if you're doing something creative, whether that's like music or writing or whatever, if you want to make a career out of it, don't get your hopes up. But if you don't get your hopes up, you won't get anywhere. You're like defeating yourself before you've even started. So God, does that answer the question, or have I just gone off on one?

SPEAKER_01 14:57

No, I think it does. So is that advice that you would give to someone then who maybe hears this and thinks, I I think I could do that, to maybe find a writing course or a writing group filled with like-minded people?

SPEAKER_00 15:10

I think I would, yeah. I mean, be careful about the one that you pick because you want it to be ultimately like uplifting. I think if it was the kind of group where you get really into the critique and picking other people's writing apart, I don't think that would have helped me specifically at that time. But yeah, like the self-belief and getting the extra kind of input, if you like, the extra education, and it stretched me in like ways I didn't know even existed. Like it was a really strange experience. It was only 10 weeks, but I found myself being able to see my own progress literally week on week, and it was a huge confidence boost. So I think being in an environment that's really positive and uplifting and propelling you forward in that way. Like, I don't know how people do creative writing degrees and go and sit in a classroom and get your work ripped apart by a bunch of other 18-year-olds, I think that would be really just oh my god, I would probably cry in public. But it needs to be the right environment, I think. But yeah, it's definitely advice that I would give people. Find other people who will be encouraging and uplifting and help you learn rather than trying to like get really into the critique and ripping everything apart.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

I guess because you are also learning at that point, it is important to focus on the positives rather than maybe all of the negatives.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, exactly. And I'm not saying like that you don't need to hear, okay, you're struggling with X, this is really needs a lot of work, but there's ways to communicate that. I think like all writers, we have massive ego that's really fragile. So you've got you've got to be careful, you've got to be careful about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

The Brides is all letters and journal entries. So is that done as homage to the original?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah. So in part, yes, it's homage to the original, but also because at the time I started writing, I was not very confident, like at all. So I thought, like, all my favourite books or most of my favourite books are in the first person. Maybe it'll be easier for me to write in the first person, and then obviously, like Dracula is mostly in the first person from all these different perspectives, so it felt like a really natural way forward. But of course, that ends up with me writing a book as a novice novelist, which has 12 or 13 different points of view in it, which was quite challenging. And I think if I'd known just how challenging it was going to be, I might have chosen a different path, but then it wouldn't have been quite so um in keeping with the original. But it was it was really satisfying, but it was just just so challenging to do. Huge respect to Bram Stoker, who did not have the advantage of an Excel spreadsheet to keep everything straight.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Well, I'm really interested, like what was your writing process like? Because I think we have kind of three main timelines, or two main timelines, and then some letters written in the past. We have the current timeline of when the book is sort of taking place, and then we have some journal entries and letters around the time. I guess the best way to describe it is the build-up to and the creation of the brides, because it's not spoilery to say it's obviously gonna happen. And then we have some letters that are slightly further back that give some important context. So, how do you keep track and how do you know when we should jump forwards and backwards with letters and journal entries?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

So when I was writing, I put it into a frame, I call it a frame narrative. I don't know if that's strictly correct, where we've got the 1903 sections in Little More Asylum, Little More Mental Hospital, at the beginning of every part. No chapters. Why why why be conventional? No chapters, my god. Um, so there's 12 parts, the 1903 section at the beginning of every part, then the 1884 sections, and then yeah, like you say, there's a set of letters from 1874. So it's like that frame narrative. When I was very, very, very first drafting, I was just uh I decided about every 10,000 words I would move to a new part. So that didn't completely last through all of the drafts, but that when I was initially drafting, that was my kind of rule of thumb guideline. And it seemed to most it seemed to mostly work to feel that kind of distance. I did move things around where I wanted to mirror what was happening in the frame narrative versus the main narrative, but yeah, basically it was just that that blunt of a choice, really, just word count.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

And how do you know when to do it for sort of pacing and because you have to keep the reader engaged, and you want to swap maybe out. I've had people before say, I'm gonna do it on a cliffhanger. Because then you're gonna have to keep reading. So, how do you know what is going to keep the reader engaged? Because we have some points like where they're on a train. I think that could get really boring, so you have to do it in a way that it's still interesting, and obviously you can flip perspectives between Lucy's journal and maybe Alice writing a letter.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

I think so. With the brides, it was really important to me to make sure that every entry is doing something, there's always something new that's being given to the reader. There's always maybe it's extra information when maybe we're moving the plot along, maybe it's saying something about the character that's going to be relevant later or whatever. But it's always doing something. And I wanted that to be true in every single entry. Like there's always something that's new or something to interest the reader. There is often like a bit of a crescendo towards the end of a part which ends sort of a bit on a cliffhanger. But I think that just yeah, making sure that you're not rehashing old ground, there's no filler, you're always making sure to give the reader something important in some way, kind of keeps that going. And I mean, the train journey, that whole section, that ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. So you know I know the bit you're thinking of, and that's um I can't I probably can't say in the non spoiler portion of the episode. No. But yeah, it lets let's say it ends on a cliffhanger. So I feel confident about that bit.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Impressive.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

I like trains. I don't think trains are boring.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

So maybe that comes through. How do you balance lore from the original with maybe other folklore and possibly pop culture influences to do with vampires? As well as looking at because you have sections that are set in the Littlemore Asylum. And so we touch on maybe some medical treatments of the time. They do talk into they do talk about potential hypnosis and things like that. I don't think that's spoilery particularly. So how do you balance all of this? I'm assuming that you did possibly did some research, and it keeps the novel feeling believable. Because even though it's about vampires, it never really felt that far-fetched.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Thank you. Um, like that is just reflective of kind of my own taste in like supernatural fiction. I like things to feel really grounded. So because as a as a writer of something supernatural, fantastical, you're asking the reader to kind of come on this journey with you and like trust you. So I wanted it to feel really, really grounded in the reality of daily life to some extent, like medical treatment, what it's like in the hospital, what it's like in a home of the time, what people are really doing. So that when we start going into psychics, we start getting into vampires, we start seeing people, you know, having prophetic dreams, all this stuff, that the reader is already so grounded in the world that it feels like it doesn't feel like a huge jump. It was really, really important to me to make sure that it felt very solid and that we have kind of rules. But that's actually easier to do with Dracula because everyone's kind of familiar with what vampires can and can't do. Although pop culture of what vampires can and cannot do has moved on since Dracula. Like we all think, oh, vampires can't go out in the sun. Dracula was came before that was a thing. So Count Dracula can go out in the daylight. And so there was a little bit of fun in that where you can subvert expectations just a little bit, which I kind of I kind of enjoyed. But um balancing it all out is not I didn't find it that difficult. It seemed to me to be quite just so in keeping with my own tastes and what I enjoy that I just kind of wrote it how I would like to read it, and it it seems to have balanced itself out.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

I mean the colours can go out in the sun. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Nobody in my book fucking sparkles, okay? Nobody fucking sparkles. I think okay, this might be uh might get cancelled for this too. There is probably no influence from Twilight in the brides. There's influence from other pop culture, like properties and other folklore and all this stuff, but yeah, I don't think there's anything in there from Twilight.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I just imagine sparkling Dracula in this.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Oh my god. No, no, Dracula does not sparkle, he's not sexy, he is scary and gross. No.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

I feel like that's a sound right there. No one in my book fucking sparkles. I really liked Lucy, and I sort of I liked her pretty early on when we start getting into her diary, and it's like, respect to you for keeping such a detailed diary, because I could never. And she is she quit, she catches the eye of a reverend, and she is reading Frankenstein, and he doesn't believe that women should be reading Frankenstein, and he wants to give her a nice sermon book, and she's kind of like, eh, I think I'll stick with Frankenstein, and that that ends that potential budding relationship. So when we say about a book being feminist, are there challenges around what was socially acceptable at the time? Because we see in a lot of Alice's letters when she is writing to her mum and sister, she's very careful to say, Oh, there was a chaperone here, or we didn't do this on our own. So, yes, you have these really badass women that are maybe pushing boundaries, but you have to keep them at least within some realistic limits of what was socially acceptable at the time, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah. First thing, Alice is writing to her mum. Her mum worries, she's reassuring her mum. So she's really focusing on the fact of don't worry, mum, the only male servant's really elderly, he's he's not gonna be, you know, an issue. Uh, don't worry, mum. I wasn't left alone with this young man. It's fine. If anything bad happened, I've got my hair pins, you know, we're fine. So she's yeah, writing to her mum and reassuring her that she's okay because she's a teenage girl in living away from home for the first time, basically, uh in her job as a ladies' maid. And she's, you know, traveling in a way that probably no one from her family has ever travelled ever. So she's always being really careful. Don't worry about me, mum. I'm gonna be alright. Whereas Lucy, on the other hand, is writing in her own diary. Lucy also has a lot more privilege because she's kind of upper-ish, middle class, and she has more of a like free not necessarily freedom, but just a little bit more space to push boundaries. Because if Alice Alice is a maid, she's working, she needs her job, there's a limit to what she can do because of her position in society, whereas Lucy can has a bit more freedom to like push boundaries, say what she thinks to an extent to a point. And Lucy has also been kind of under the influence for a very long time of the other main character, Mafalda, who is her secret girlfriend, and Mafalda is very privileged, has no fear, is very tough. And Lucy's been under that influence for so long that she's kind of got some of that going on. And she also, you know, with the reverence, she's not interested in marrying him, she doesn't need to impress him, she she can show that she's annoyed by him and and stick up for herself in a way that maybe other young ladies wouldn't necessarily be able to. Yeah. It's there is certainly like boundaries of what would be socially acceptable. Lucy kind of chafes against them quite a lot. Like the benevolent sexism in society about what young ladies should and shouldn't do, she pushes back where she can because she she feels so uncomfortable and so bound by it. Um, but yeah, there's definitely a difference in because of the class situation and because of who they're communicating with. Like Lucy's writing in her diary, she's thinking, I'm gonna need a career, I'm gonna try and be like a newspaper woman or some kind of writer because I feel like I can do that. She's writing everything down really faithfully, she's practicing for her for her future career. But Alice, yeah, she's just trying to help her mum not worry.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

It definitely shows some sort of reflection of the time of differences in class and like you said, what you write privately as opposed to what you are willing to tell people and tell certain people.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

That was really fun to do, actually. Like in the whole, you know, letters, diaries, reports kind of thing. Always thinking about not just who is the person who is doing the communicating and how would they be communicating, but they are aware of their own recipient and what the recipient of that communication what will be appropriate for them, what they will be expecting to hear, what they will need to hear. Like Alice's letters, she always adds a little postscript to her sister. Her sister is reading the letters out to their mother because she's lost her sight. And to her sister, she is much more forthcoming, she is much more honest, she shares much more frightening things. I think that's probably the most obvious example of that. But it was really, it was really rewarding to do, and who knows what when is was just also kind of really oh, it was really fun to do, like in that context. And the physicality of the communication, like letters going missing, letters taking a long time to arrive, so information doesn't get from one place to another. Yeah, that was also just a really, really fun way to really fun way to write a novel, actually. Challenging, but really fun. And I really enjoyed it. I'd do it again. I'd do it again like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

You didn't want to give yourself much of a challenge for your baby, did you?

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Well, I didn't know, like I didn't know at the time that this is where I was going with it. I don't think I started thinking about publication until like I'd had the book for I was working with the book for nearly two years. Like I don't think I really was pushing forward for that until probably 2021 when I took the class.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

So this is the point of the episode where we do the all-obligatory spoilers. If you haven't read The Brides, please come back and join us when you have, because aspects of the book will be spoiled, including what I was so sure about and what I was so wrong about. How did you decide to plot when the women would see Dracula? And they all encounter him in different ways. So, like Eliza sees him in this really friendly way at Budapest Castle, and he teaches her some history, and then she sees him again later. Whereas Alice seems to see something much more creepy and sinister straight away. So, how are you deciding who is seeing him when and how they are going to see him?

SPEAKER_00 32:07

So Alice has what she calls the sight, which I was quite careful to never completely define, but she's always had like prophetic dreams from when she was a teenager, and she starts to have during the course of the novel like daytime visions, especially if she um touches someone, but she she can see things that other people around her can't in these different ways. So when she sees Dracula for the first time, she can see him for what he is. Um, and she also has you know, her mum and sister have an apothecary shop, she takes some medicine to try and control the nightmares, and that's a part of it too. So h some of his like glamour power doesn't work on her because she's taking this this herbal remedy for her nightmares. Um and pop culture alert moment, the um tea that she's drinking, the proper Latin name of it is uh related to Vervaine. So and if you're a vampire diaries fan, Vervaine is um like an anti-vampire herb. So I put that in there because I just I like the vampire diaries, and it was really prevalent in pop culture when I was growing up. Um but she so she sees in this very like clear-sighted way that nobody else gets to, um, at least not until much later in the novel. Writing a character like Dracula, it gets really easy to introduce Dredge because I can just put him in the back of a scene. Like when Eliza meets him in the castle, the reader's already seen him, like they're in the little funicular going up to the castle. He's already there, and the reader will know because there's a tall, pale man in black just just standing there. And so when he crops up later, like the reader's been knowing that that's coming. And that's really nice to do because you can just just put him there and the reader knows to to dread him. Um as far like how I decided to do it, I think it was just I wanted to feel like I wanted to feel like he was circling them, like he is stalking them. He already knows um one of the characters, Mafalda's Aunt Rika, from like nationalist m the nationalist movement in Hungary. Um and he went looking for her. He like he went looking for someone for people to kind of join him, essentially, and that's where he started. He started with people who were nationalists, like which, if you squint a bit, he is. And that's how he ha found Aunt Rika, and then he moved kind of outwards. He's been stalking her, and then he starts to stalk Mafalda and then Eliza, and he kind of is circling them like a shark. And I wanted him to just sort of pop up so for that kind of creeping dread that the reader will hopefully feel as as he circles. And then um, we talked about cliffhangers. I ended um one section with Alice giving her mum the new address of where she's gonna be because all the ladies are going out to the country and and the address is in Transylvania. So the reader, like, they already know what's coming. We're gonna see, there's gonna be more Dracula, he's gonna be more present, he's he's kind of luring them in. Um I think it was important to kind of have him on the edge of the narrative until we get closer to the castle and closer to that kind of denouement, and then the reader gets to see like the full horror of what he's planning and how he really is, instead of presenting himself in these different ways to all these different women. I just oh, it was so much fun, it was so fun to do.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

As we see Dracula's influence spreading, because obviously we get Eliza becoming unwell, and we get the regression of Aunt Rika, she seems to be getting more and more ill. We see a lot of advice on page about what they should do. Yeah, windows closed, rosaries, the hanging of the garlic flowers. So, how do you paste things like this to show that the stakes are getting higher? Like you said, he's circling them like a shark. Because at first it seems like Eliza's just bitten. We don't get her transformation until later. So we can we see him at points, and we're getting more advice, and you can see the stakes moving up, and you can see him kind of circling a bit closer until they get to Transylvania and go to his castle. So, how are you looking at pacing this just to show that it is getting that we should be dreading more even before the characters are?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Um I think Alice gets more and more on edge, and she's the dread because she's seeing things that nobody else is seeing. Um, so she's kind of the index, if you like. She's like almost like the Renfield in the original Dracula. She's the index of what's going on with the with Count Dracula and how much closer he's getting, or how much closer the women are getting to him. In terms of pacing, I like a I like a kind of not slow but medium speed reveal to kind of build up that tension in the reader. And Eliza, yeah, Eliza is bitten, so like the first part one of becoming a vampire happens and then there's quite a gap because they try and run away, but it doesn't work, although the ladies don't see it as running away, but Alice kind of does that she's getting her her mistress Eliza away from Budapest where they think he's like active, but yeah, just pacing it out in a way that felt that felt like that dread could build. So there's not full-on, you know, hundred miles an hour terror and horror from the middle of the book to the end. It's much more like this awful thing has happened. Oh, and then things seem to be getting a little better, but then this next bit, this next awful thing happens, and then oh, we're trying to escape again. We're oh, a nice nobleman has invited us to stay in his castle, and it's even worse. And just because nobody has the full kind of picture of what's going on except the reader, I think that probably makes it more horrifying, or at least that's what I was going for. Um I'm hoping that the reader will be like screaming at the book at one point, like, what the fuck are you doing? Don't go to Transylvania.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Um of course. I mean if you've made it full on dread from about halfway through to the end, I don't think it would have been effective. I think this creeping dread that we know and that Alice does kind of know, makes it work.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Good. I'm glad that you think so. Um but I mean, some of it like in terms of the kind of technical craft aspect of like pacing and stuff, some things have changed and shifted around a lot since I started writing because I went through like three or four drafts, and the first draft was a huge mess, and I rewrote the last third completely. It's completely different. It's almost like the kind of craft aspect came in later when I kind of started taking things more seriously and knew a bit more what I was doing, and so a lot of it is a this weird mix of like what I unconsciously feel from my own reading feels right, and overlaid with the kind of craft aspect of sitting down and actually looking at it and going, okay, it's been this long since this happened, and this needs to happen here. So, okay, these things need to move around. It's it's a weird way to write a book, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

There are some tinges of nationalism in the book, as you've already mentioned, and when they are invited to the castle, they know that he's a nationalist, and maybe that is more of a source of comfort to them because of Aunt Rika, and they know that he's had some dealings with the family, like buying some of Mafalda's aunts, so Aunt Rika's dead husband's property. I can see why he wants Aunt Rika because she has those maybe nationalist ideas like he does, and Mafalda, because Mafalda's of his bloodline, but I can't see why he wants Eliza.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Really? Okay. So okay, okay. So one of my whole things with Dracula was this idea that he can take what is good about someone and twist it and turn it to his own ends, because I feel like that is a true thing that can happen with like dictators, right? We see it in the world now, like taking a good belief that someone or a group of people has and kind of twisting it 90 degrees and turning it to their own nasty ends. So that's what Dracula kind of does. Like in Aunt Rika, he sees her kind of nationalist fervor and also how she can be quite like strong and opinionated in kind of similar to Mafalda. And he sees in her that he can twist that to his own uh ends, and he can turn her into this like brutal beast-like creature to to be a source of terror. Because of and and that's more obvious, like as you go through the novel and learn about the things that she's done in her past. Mafalda, she's you know, strong and forthright and focused, and she's kind of a natural-born leader in a time when she couldn't really be one, so he can take that and twist it to his own ends. Eliza is a much softer character, she's much softer, she's much sweeter, she's very like morally good, but she also she really wants to be a mother, she really wants to care for people, she's very loving. And when he sees her and speaks to her in the castle um in Budapest when they go on their little tourist trip, she's talking about she looks after her sister, um, and she's they talk about children, they talk about Dracula's own children from his like human life, though she doesn't know that. And she shows that she shows him inadvertently that she has that like maternal instinct, that care, and he wants to take that and turn it to his own ends, like when he's wanting to make lots of vampires and kind of take over in this very kind of conquer the world attitude, which is like carried over from his human life, she she is of use to him in that way because she can she can help him with that. So he's like taken something really good and really um positive in all of them and like turns it to his own ends.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Ah, okay. So when he says desire is what drives a man, and he's talking about Eliza saying he Here is my lady, my own queen, who will mother my children, tend them and teach them and send them forth. That's not just about her need, that's about his need as well. Yeah. Ah. Yeah. Okay. That makes more sense then.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

I just I was a little bit wary of that because it's not because it's less it is less obvious. Clearly I needed to edit that a bit harder.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

That could be just me.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

But I just really enjoyed the thought of being able to of his being able to twist what's good about someone into suing his own purposes. And it feels like quite horrific because I've I set Eliza up as this like really moral good person, so when you see her later, it should be quite a shock. It's a shock to the characters.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

I'm trying I'm trying to be respectful with this question. Um but it's a really unfair position to put Lucy and Joseph in. But Josie wants to marry Mafalda, and Lucy is pretty convinced that Mafalda will say no, but obviously we find out that she doesn't say no. She says yes, but she has conditions which will allow Lucy to remain with her. And Mafalda says that she feels like this is the best way for them to be together. Lucy tells her it's unfair to both her and Joseph to have her as kind of half a wife. I mean, do you think Mafalda is being unfair? And in a modern society, and I'm trying not to look at it that way, there are a lot more restrictions on love, and I think she would be unfair. But at the time, and this is again going back to the challenges of what is socially acceptable of the time. I don't think it would have been socially acceptable for Lucia Mafalda to live as wife and wife, basically. So is Mafalda doing maybe the best she can in a bad situation?

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Mafalda definitely thinks that. Like she definitely believes that she is doing what is best for them, and she's used to being very decisive, so she's made the decision. And the thing is, like Lucia Mafalda, the whole way through the novel, until we get to this point, which I've just been listening to in the audiobook, actually, because I just got the audio recording last week, and it's so good. The actors are amazing. Um, so this is really fresh in my mind, this bit. She she genuinely believes it, but the whole novel neither of them ever really envisages like them breaking up. They both believe that they want to have a life together, but they never actually properly communicate about what that looks like. Lucy thinks that like she says at one point she might like to run a school, but she doesn't have enough money to do that. And there was a bit which I cut for pacing where she kind of imagines what that would be like living with Mafalda and running a school together. But she she kind of envisions that they'll be able to like live together like they do now, and Mafalda will maybe run the business and she'll be a writer or whatever. She has never envisioned this life, and Lucy thinks there's there's ways forward, and Mafalda does not, and they've never communicated about it, and so this is where they've kind of ended up with Mafalda going off and thinking, Well, I've made the right decision, I have made this sacrifice, and Lucy does not see it like that at all. But she sees it almost like Mafalda having her cake and eating it. And I just I don't think that Lucy is wrong. I think Mafalda's being really unfair, but in part because she's made a huge decision and hasn't consulted Lucy at all on something that affects her so deeply because she just thinks she's right, she thinks she's right all the time. Um and it's come out in this really difficult, awful, like kind of soul-sredding way. Like Lucy feels so betrayed, and yeah, so so TLDR. Yeah, I think Mafalda's being unfair.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Mafalda always has the power in their relationship. There's points where you see in letters she's talking about, oh, you know, this woman's brushing my hair too hard, you know. I wish you were here to do it. And I think. What are you doing for Lucy? Because it seems like Lucy's doing everything for you. Lucy's the one rubbing the lavender oil on your head. Lucy's the one who's maybe having to make compromises because like Mafalda's made this decision about what their life will look like. Lucy's had no part of it, and it does seem like, and we see more of Mafalda's decisions, which we're gonna get onto in in just a sec, but Mafalda has the power and Lucy doesn't. I think that's really sad.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

I think Lucy has more power than she thinks she does, and she does realise that after Mafalda does this, she has more power than she thinks she does. And Mafalda at one point like lays out for her, oh, you're gonna have a sad, bookish life um with just one maid, and I feel so bad, I don't want that for you. But to Lucy, that sounds fine. Like she thinks that would be fine. She has a power to walk away, which she kind of almost doesn't know until it happens. But yeah, Mafalda has all the power because of class, because Lucy has a her family's not very interested in her, and she obviously lives with Mafalda and her family, she's grown up with them to an extent, and Lucy just adores her and like admires her and loves her in a very like uncomplicated way. But I think a lot of it is back to class again. There's like that class dynamic which just influences most of the relationships in the book class and money, as well as Mafalda's personality, just kind of I don't want to use the word taint it, but affect it in a way that is not positive.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Up until Mafalda does the thing, which is what my next question revolves around, it feels like Lucy likes her more than Mafalda likes Lucy.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

I think it's that's really interesting that you think that.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

I did. Up until, up until the thing.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

I feel like because um we see Lucy's diary, like Lucy, we get her through her own, it's her own mind. She's it's very interior, she thinks a lot, and she's in a place where she's not very busy. When she and Mafalda are separated, she's not very busy, she's just staying with Eliza, and they're just like doing social things and taking food to the poor and like doing genteel lady things, and all she does really is miss Mafalda. Whereas Mafalda, when she's away in Budapest, she is busy, she is busy all day, she is working on her uncle's estate, she is helping look after her aunt who is so sick, she is, you know, basically contributing to the running of a really big household and dealing with all this stuff, so she does not necessarily have the time to sit around thinking about how much she misses Lucy, and we also only see her letters, we don't see like diaries from her, her kind of interior thoughts. So she's telling Lucy what's going on rather than just writing pages about how much she misses her, although she does miss her. So I see why you could get the impression that Lucy is more in love with Mafalda than Mafalda is with Lucy, especially in the light of what happens later. But I would say because of the choices that Mafalda makes, like she's she's willing to do a lot in her mind from her perspective. Like she's the heroine of her own story, she believes in the rightness of her own actions until right at the end. So she does view it as like a sacrifice that she's making to marry Joseph. And I don't agree with her, but so to her, to her mind, she's showing Lucy like a lot of love in the actions that she takes later in the book. But I do see why you would think in the beginning that Lucy loves her more. I do see it.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

It could just be a love language thing.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Possibly, but Lucy does fall in love with her first, so there is that.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

It's interesting to me that this plays into Mafalda's reason to actually accept transformation because Eliza doesn't choose, but Mafalda does. And obviously, in the original Dracula, we have no way to know how and why they ended up there. But here, with we see we see how with Bika and Eliza, but with Mafalda, we see exactly why, and obviously that is something that interested you, but it definitely added an interesting dynamic to their relationship. So I was like, oh shit, and we'll get into it. I thought that Mafalda was the one in the asylum at the end, not Lucy. And maybe I'm I don't know, maybe it's where I miss things, but that is really that is what I thought. And when you find out that Mafalda's like, well, this this is how we can be together, you know, he's turned me, but you're mine.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

It's kind of like, oh I love that so much. Um, yeah, my whole, my whole like this, maybe this was the trickiest bit, like deciding when to do that reveal of who the woman in the asylum is, um, who and how. And I moved that around like quite a few times, but I think the book does play fair with the reader, and if you reread, you will probably see all of the things um that add up to it being Lucy in the asylum. Oh, it feels really weird to be talking about this.

unknown 54:00

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Be talking so openly about spoilers. Um, because I think I've played fair with the reader, like if the if you're really like paying attention, I think it is relatively obvious. Well, maybe not. I don't know. It's easy for me to say. Um I I'm so interested to know like what people think and like what impression more people get.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Okay, well tell you what, let's let's talk about this now. So, did you plan to keep it somewhat ambiguous who she was?

SPEAKER_00 54:32

Yeah. Yeah, I wanted it to be a mystery until until the end, until the final reveal. And you get like breadcrumbs as you go along, like the the husband is Sir Joseph, and this is his wife, Lady Lowell. It's like, okay, so not only is she in the asylum, but whoever it is has married Joseph. And it does kind of point to Mafalda for much of the novel, but I think there's I've left hints, many hints about who it actually is, and I just ultimately like I don't believe that Mafalda would have left Lucy there, whereas Lucy leaves Mafalda in the castle at the at the end.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

I think up until the point when you start to see this, because you there's this whole thing about oh, there was a carriage accident and people died, and you you know that's not true, but you don't know what actually happened, and the marrying of Joseph. I was so hung up on the name and so sure in my own rightness that when you did breadcrumb things, I was so blind to it. I was like, no, I I I know this is Mafalda as Lady Lowell, it is Mafalda, and obviously it wasn't. So I like the fact that I was wrong about that.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

Oh, that makes me really happy. I'm glad that you're not like disappointed. Um, but this is something I was rereading Dracula recently because I hadn't read it just for fun. And Jonathan Harker says that when Mina Haaker's been bitten and she's like on her way to turning into a vampire, he says that he loves her so much, he would do it, he would do it too, and be a vampire with her. And I think that if it were reversed and if Mafalda was making the choice, do I stay or not, I think she would would make the sacrifice because she doesn't care so much about being like moral or good, and Lucy really kind of does. But yeah, Mafalda chooses, she makes a choice. Mafalda feels very powerless, a lot of the novel. Even though we see her being like quite decisive and bold, it's like there's things like she needs a man's signature on loads of documents, and she struggles when she has to go out at night. It's like a whole big thing and a whole big plan, and she ends up in trouble and kind of has to punch her way out of it, which is a really satisfying moment when she gets to punch someone horrible in the face. Um, so like, and then like when we get to the end where she is making that choice, part of it is because she wants to have the power that she feels she's kind of not necessarily owed, but like ready for, able to handle. And so being like Dracula's right hand, she can be free of the shackles of the kind of benevolent sexism that like contain her, but also there is like being able to be with Lucy in the way that she wants. But that choice aspect was a really big deal for me that Eliza Enrique don't get to choose, but Mafalda does.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

That's another reason why I can see her marrying Jonathan would be sensible because she needs a man's signature. She can just say, you know, oh husband, you know, clearly I'm so capable, but I do need you to do this one thing for me. And Jonathan's gonna just sign what she needs him to sign.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Like, she doesn't like him. Mafalda doesn't really like him as a person at all.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

No, you can tell that. Like, why does he think I would care about sheep?

SPEAKER_00 58:04

Yeah, she thinks he's really boring, and he is like a little bit boring. Lucy acknowledges he can be a bit boring, but he's got this path in life that he's kind of grateful to have. And because like he says, um, Sir Gerald, who's Mafalda's dad, didn't have to give him like the the estate to look after while he was still alive, he didn't have to do any of that, he didn't have to like help him along in any way. So he's got this path in life that he's grateful to have, and he's really like dedicated to it, and he cares a lot about it. And so Mafalda just sees he's like really boring. Why do I care about sheep? Lucy kind of sees more that he's a bit like her, like this family, the Lyell family, have helped her, like they've helped him, and she feels like an affinity with him in that way. They are closer friends than Mafalda has ever been with Joseph, who's like her second or third cousin or something, it's not close enough to be gross, I promise. Um so she Lucy feels that a bit more like respect for him and friendship with him, even though when he says that he wants to marry Mafalda, she basically wants to kill him. So I think the fact that Lucy does end up marrying him because she feels that that is the right choice at that time. I don't think it's as jarring, and I don't think he's gonna have as an unhappy life with Lucy as he would have with Mafalda. I think if they got married, he'd be fucking miserable.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

I think they make kind of a sweet couple, even though you know Mafalda is Lucy's big love. I mean they have kids, so yeah, clearly there's enough there.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Yeah, like I think I feel like this was kind of a choice for a lot of women in history. Like, marrying for romantic love is such a new idea, really, in like the grand scheme of things. So for Lucy to say, I don't feel romantic love for this man, but I feel liking and like friendship, platonic love for this man. So this this is actually a good reasonable choice for me to make. Like, I respect him, he respects me, we get on well, we're quite similar. It feels like a good bet. And I really I get to worry a little bit that the reader might feel like let down by that. But it feels like to me, Lucy's kind of absorbed a little bit of Mafalda's practicality and like toughness in being able to make that choice for herself. Maybe that was what I was going for, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Another thing I was really surprised about. So okay, I was surprised and not surprised because obviously I thought Lady Lowell in the asylum was Mafalda, but I thought that the brides could have been Eliza, Lucy, and Mafalda. And so, what do you think that says about the sort of societal prejudices of our age that I assume? This is so bad. I assumed that Rika would be too old to be a bride, and I am definitely closer to her age than I am for Mafalda's, but it's this pop culture thing of like you said, they're always sexy and in their 90s, and it's a very kind of more sex-driven role that I just kind of thought, oh, Rika's just too old, and yeah, I'm probably not I'm probably not far off her age. How old do you reckon she is?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

So I'm 39 and she's probably younger than me.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:28

Okay, so she's younger than me, and I assume she was too old to be uh a blog.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:33

In my head, she's in her 30s. Like Lady Maria is probably into her like late 40s. So Mafalda's mum, she's like in her late 40s. Mafalda's 21. Um, but and yeah, Rika is somewhere like in the middle, she's probably in her mid-30s. So she's and before she got really sick, she was like gorgeous. This gorgeous, like glamorous, socialite, intelligent, like society lady. Um, so yeah, she's she is definitely hot enough to be to be a bride. And she like she looks like Mafalda. They're kind of all all of them have like this really strong familial resemblance to both each other and ultimately to Dracula, who is their like relation. Um so yeah, she's she's definitely hot enough to be a bride. But what does that say about I'm also gonna say me, because obviously I you absorb things through what is around you that I assumed that I feel like I feel like because our society, like they all got married a lot younger and had kids a lot younger, but also kept having kids for longer, so like the big age gap between Mefaldo's mum, Lady Maria, and Aunt Rika is more maybe more likely then than now. And we just have like assumptions about if you talk someone's talking about my aunt, you imagine a woman in like her 50s or 60s or something, where that wouldn't have been the case in that time period when people were getting married younger. Yeah. I know, but yeah, I I promise she was like glamorous and gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

So definitely hot enough to be a bride then.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

It could be hot enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

It couldn't have been Eliza Lucy and Mafalda because I was so convinced that Mafalda was Lady Lowell, but I just it never occurred to me that Rika might be.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

Yeah, there are hints, there are hints about who it is. But I'm like, I love I kind of love that you didn't pick up on it. Because I would love people to reread this and to go back, it's like I do with mysteries and stuff, to go back and be like, oh wow, I did not see that. Oh wow, I missed that. Oh, like I really enjoy rereading my favourite books, and I know not everybody feels that way, but I feel like you miss out on a lot if you don't reread because it's such a different experience to reading something for the first time, and I love I love books where there's that, like there is that element of mystery, whether it's a mystery novel or not, but you kind of you get to see more of what the author's been doing, and I just find that really satisfying when I read it, so I hope people have the same experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:13

It makes sense because some of what was happening happened before Eliza even got there with like locking up the windows and stuff like that. So it does make sense, it's just yeah, I was so convinced she's too old, but no, it it makes complete sense, and then and I know I saw the signs, but chose to I chose to ignore them in folklore and pop culture. We see a lot of rules and advice when people are kind of suspicious of the supernatural. And I'm gonna bring up one of my favourite horror films, American Werewolf in London, and they get told two things, which is beware the more beware the moon and stay off the moors, and obviously they do neither, and that happens right at the beginning, like right at the beginning of the film, and then the whole thing is about him sort of turning into a werewolf and blah blah blah. Um, people should have seen it, so that shouldn't be a spoiler. We see at various points there are innkeepers that aren't really trying to be that hospitable, and again, it seems like the dread of the advice given builds up until the last innkeeper and his wife, who they stay with before they go to the castle, and the innkeeper's wife flat out says, Do not go, it is dangerous, and gives Lucy a rosary, and she's very insistent. Lucy's like, Oh no, no, but I'm not Catholic. She's like, No, fucking take this, don't go. If you're gonna go, fucking take this and try and be safe to sum up, basically. So, how do you balance again things like that? I've been asking you a lot about pacing because it's something that, especially with your book, has really interested me because of different timelines and the building of the dread, and sort of deciding when to pigeonhole certain things. Because there are points with Eliza where we definitely know Eliza is sort of basically turned before she gets there. Things with the eyes. Someone says that she's not in the mirror.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:14

And there are all various things like that. But yeah, we're still getting advice, even though by that point, as a reader, we should be pretty sure I think she's she's basically there now. And um, oh, the feeding of the duck blood soup seems to be the only thing to help her, not the bone broth. And it's like, oh the fact that that's blood is very significant.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:35

God, maybe that is an odd to twilight. I hope that's not an odd to twilight. I didn't mean it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

I didn't see it as a no, because I think they yeah, I didn't see it as an odd twilight.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:43

Yeah, the idea that like animal blood can help a bit, like can feed you a bit, but not really.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:50

Um but but what else could they do? And I actually felt like when the woman was feed making that and saying, No, give her this, this is the thing she needs. It's like, hmm, have you have you maybe dealt with this before? Because you seem to know what to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

No, it's just like apparently, like it's it's kind of the thing that your Polish grandma might give you to make you feel better. And I just like I love that there's it's like, oh, this will make you feel better. Oh wait, or it'll help you if you're turning into a vampire. It just feels like it's a little bit that turning like a good thing into a into a thing that serves Dracula and his purposes. I don't know. Um, but yeah, getting all the advice of like what to do, I kind of feel like so. You're talking about American Werewolf in London, where people go and like break the rules they've just been given and wonder why bad stuff happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:40

That was one of the big examples that came up to me. And I do love that film, and I love an opportunity to talk about it and bring it up as an example.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:47

But I think throughout most of the brides, they follow the rules. Like the doctor, um, Dr. Arminius, who comes and attends Eliza, um, he lays out the rules and they they follow them. They follow the rules that they're given for the most part, I think, I think. And it still goes, it still goes awry because they're always trying, especially Alice, like she's always trying to do the right thing. She's always trying to protect people, she's always trying to like help people and make sure that they are okay and safe and healthy and that they get away from him. And it still keeps going wrong, like doing things right, but the forces that are kind of against them, Dracula, is just too too powerful, I guess, too, like so many steps ahead. And I felt that that was kind of almost like part of the tragedy of it, that you can do all the right things, you can stay indoors, you can lock the window shutters, you can hang garlic flowers everywhere, you can have your crucifix. And still still you end up in the castle, still you get bitten, still bad things happen. And I found that really sad and I liked it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

What I'm about to ask you would mean that your novel would not work.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:07

Okay, go on.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

But is there anything that they could do? Because alright, Lucy obviously, years later, has a relapse because she sees Dracula, and this is when Dracula is in London for the events of Dracula. But up until that point, she seems kind of fine, but we know that his presence is there circling, but that distance seems to help. So is there anything if you could go in and create like almost a bonus alternate ending? What would you say to them? Like, no, this is what you need to do, and you think it would actually work? Because what they tried didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:42

I don't know, because like the only way to get away from him is to like run away. Once you've been bitten, though, it's a bit of a question as to like what happens what happens to you. Do you become a vampire or not? I think I came down on the side of not, but like he's vengeful. Like he part of his going to London in the events of Dracula the novel, like he's still got his whole master plan that he's working on, but being able to get at Lucy, who's got away from him, is like a bonus, so he can he can get at her. And it's a scene like in Dracula. I'd love that. That was so fun to do. It felt so fanfiction-y, I really enjoyed it. Um and so she's run away, but like there's nowhere far enough. And the only reason that he doesn't kind of finish her off is because the events of Dracula, the novel, are going on, so he kind of doesn't have the space to do it. So in terms of like what they could do, I don't think I don't know that there is any course of action that the characters could take that would save them all from him. And that's like part of the tragedy of it, I guess. Like the only person who sees clearly does not have like the social power to remove everybody from danger. And yeah, I think just it's just like a one-way street to Dracula's castle. Like there's no there's kind of no question about where we're gonna end up. It's just how we get there and how long does it take.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:27

At least it doesn't end up as tragedy for everyone because Lucy kind I know she ends up in an asylum for a while, but she does seem to have a reasonably good life. And Alice has a great life, she gets a great husband.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:38

Yeah, she does, she gets the best husband, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

Well, I think she's romantically interested in her husband, which is a bonus, which is a bonus, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:47

And he's very sweet. I liked him very much um as a character. Like her husband is lovely. Um But I think, yeah, I wrote the epilogue actually really early on, and it went through some edits. Um, but it's one of like the pieces of the very first draft that still exists in more or less the same form. So because I was like, I was always going there to that point. But um one of the very few changes my agent suggested I make was the last paragraph, so that it's not quite rounded off and it's still a bit creepy. Um and I really like that, like reading it through. I think it was one of I think it was a really good idea. Um that Lucy, this idea that Lucy like she might have survived everything, but she's like there might be more, there might be more vampires just because Dracula's gone and the his quote unquote brides are gone, that doesn't mean they're all gone. So I'm gonna like I'm still gonna be prepared. And yeah, I loved having that like additional creepy ending because it just I love that. I love that in a book where it's still it's mostly when you're mostly done, but there's that tiny bit of it being like slightly open-ended, like, oh is the horror really over.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:14

It's definitely something that puts the hairs on your back of a neck up.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:18

I'm glad you think so.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:26

Thank you so much for coming and talking to me about the brides. I thought it was really cool the way it was written with all of the journal entries and the letters, and I was so here for their kind of journey further and further towards tragedy.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:42

Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it. Their journey further and further towards tragedy. I'm gonna use that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

And I'm glad I was glad to be proved wrong because I I love that when I'm so sure about something, and it's like plot twist moment. You're not as smart as you think you are. I love it when authors do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:01

Well, now you can like reread it and uh see all the things you missed.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:06

So I think I've read enough that I'm quite confident with my with what I think a lot of the time. So when someone does prove me wrong, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:14

That's awesome. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

A moment of humility. I'm really I'm really not as smart as I thought I was.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

Well, thank you so much for having me on and letting me ramble about all this stuff and talk about my spoilers, which has been awesome. I like this isn't something you get to do very much. So thank you very much. It's been great.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:38

I like to talk spoilers because otherwise, how much of the book am I going to be asked to talk to you about? Maybe like first two chapters or first two parts in your case. Like, no, I want to. I I've read the whole book. I want to talk to you about the ending, and that's why I have a spoiler section. It for for my own to indulge my own pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:59

That's awesome. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:03

Literally why I started doing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:06

I think that's like excellent reasoning.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:08

That's all this might be a bit of a preemptive question because I mean we are we are literally on basically the Eve of the Brides coming out, but are you working on anything else?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

I am. Um I am in edits right now uh with my second book, which I genuinely don't know how much I'm allowed to talk about. Um so it's another like historical gothic horror title. Um and it's about Vikings, cursed archaeology, and female rage.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

So you would brand this as another feminist book?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:50

Oh god, yeah. I'm not I don't think I'm ever gonna write a book that's not somehow feminist. I'm a feminist, so like that's always gonna come out.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:59

I'm excited to to read that because I I enjoyed this. There are so many things in it that you did that I thought were really cool. So I'm I'm very keen to read future things that you have coming out.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:12

Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. That is awesome to hear for my like massive yet fragile writer ego.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:20

Well, good luck with launch, and I look forward to seeing how well your book is received.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

Oh, fingers crossed. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:36

Thank you for hanging out with me and Charlotte today. I really hoped you enjoyed the episode and that you finish it with maybe the hairs on the back of your neck sticking up a little bit, and that you come away from the episode knowing that no one in the book fucking sparkles. Follow me on Instagram at DMythPod and join me again soon for more episodes. I've been Lauren, and today I've been turning pages and drinking blood with Charlotte Crossing.