Author talk: historical fantasy author Susan J. Morris

In our interview in October 2024 with fantasy author Susan J. Morris, we discussed her novel, Strange Beasts, which debuted last year to great acclaim, published through the new Bindery Books imprint. 

In this fresh-yet-familiar gothic tale—part historical fantasy, part puzzle-box mystery—the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes collide in a thrilling exploration of feminine power. Buy the book here: https://curiouscatbookshop.com/book/9781959411642 

 Susan J. Morris is a fantasy author and editor best known for a writing-advice column featured on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog (which TIME magazine online once called “clever,” and which she henceforth has never let anyone forget), and her work editing Forgotten Realms novels. Susan delights in running workshops for Clarion West and in moderating panels for writing symposiums. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner; her cats, Adora and Kitava; and entirely too many plants. Strange Beasts is her debut novel. Find her online at susanjmorris.com. 

About Strange Beasts: At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realizes how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of monsters: a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris—or have her thrown into an asylum. 

Sam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners’ mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a Beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews. Is trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game?

Transcript

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I've always thought it's fascinating when you look at the discussion of soft and hard power when it comes to being a woman or even being any individual in the society because we tend to celebrate hard power which is that asking for what you want, demanding and being direct and having the gun and with the threat of violence at the back of it. Right, always the threat of violence. It's that traditional, like, oh, this is the strong female character, right? And so any badass, quote unquote, woman is usually using hard power when it's like, oh no, but she'll beat you up if she doesn't get her way. And I was realizing that like in society, we kind of denigrate this soft power, which is where you're in a male dominated society or space, for an example, because soft power can be used for pretty much any group and you want to get something done. but you know that if you go at it directly, they're going to get defensive and you're not going to be able to do it. So how do you get what you want from them without setting off all their alarms and making them defensive? And so you have all these ways. You come at it sideways, convince them it's their idea, you befriend them. So we have charm and we have, know, honestly, it's manipulation, but it's the only way you can get what you want or what you need. Welcome to the Curious Cat Bookshop podcast, the podcast of the independent bookstore of Winsted, Connecticut, creating a literary community in Northwest Connecticut, bringing our local authors to the world and the world to our community in Northwest Connecticut. Welcome everybody. I'm Stacey Whitman. I'm the owner of the Curious Cat Bookshop in Winsted, Connecticut. We're right on Main Street down from the Gilson Theater. We are so excited tonight to have Susan J. Morris with us. She's the author of Strange Beasts. And we're going to talk with her about Strange Beasts in just a moment. But as we get started, I just wanted to run down some of the events that we've got going on in the store and online so that you know what's going on. First of all, if you've got little ones, we've got a story time every Friday. Every Friday, you can come in at 11 a.m. and we'll read a fun book and do a little activity. And it's a great way of getting out of the house and doing something together with. other parents and little ones. And then we have our monthly book club and our book social. You can find all the details on our website at curiouscatbookshop.com slash events. Also our next kitty story time. Did I tell you about this? We have, we work with a local rescue where I've also been up until last night fostering kittens and with Sophia Larange kitten rescue. They bring in kittens. We read a book about cats. And we talk about fostering and adoption and it's a lot of fun. And we do that every couple of months. So details will be coming for that after we've finalized our plan. And this is where you can find us online is at curious cat bookshop pretty much everywhere threads, tick tock, Instagram, Facebook, forgetting something. We're not on blue sky yet. Anyway, do follow us on there and sign up for our email list if you want to get notifications for local events or. book recommendations, that kind of thing. So that is everything that's happening with us. So with all that said, let's get started and talking to Susan. Welcome. I can't, it's been so long. She and I, for those of you who don't know, I used to work at Wizards of the Coast and so did Susan. And we were in the books department. We were editors together and tell everybody what you've been doing since then professionally. Tell us about your book. So obviously at Wizards, was a Forgotten Realms novel, like one of the editors, one of the dev editors of the line. Since then, I actually did freelance for them for a number of years before and doing just freelance editing and also working on writing. And my first, my debut adult fantasy book is coming out, just came out. my gosh, I get to say that now. That's wild. I came out October 15th. Yeah, change the mental like. list came out October 15th in the US and October 17th in the UK. It's called Strange Beasts. It's a gothic historical fantasy with puzzle box mystery and sapphic slow burn romance. And it's out with Hottorscape in the UK and out with Bindery and Inky Phoenix in the US. Congratulations on it coming out. Yay. So I just really just enjoyed reading this so much, but we're going to get into the book itself in a minute because let's talk a little bit. So many people who are readers also wonder about the writing process and like the writing journey. When did you want to become a writer? How did you know that you wanted to become a writer and what was that process for you? So I think I've always kind of loved telling stories. When I was a kid, I used to tell stories in the car to my siblings and cousins in order to entertain them on car rides. then I wrote a, this is so embarrassing, but when I was in elementary school, I wrote like a full length play and made my entire extended family act it out. We have video proof and my whole family is like, we should go and watch that. And as if it's not like terrifically embarrassing. But I guess maybe it's only embarrassing for the author because they all apparently had a great time. I've always enjoyed writing and I went in college and studied a double English focus. So I had the creative writing and the literature focus. And I've always enjoyed editing as well. I don't think that they're mutually exclusive. think that editing is so fabulous because it's a way to kind of look beneath the skin of stories and really understand how they work. And so obviously one helps the other. They can also impede it, but. It depends on what part of the writing process you're trying to edit. And like, do think that we have a creative part of our brain and like a more analytical part. And it turns out there was a study recently about standard mode and focused based mode for your brain. Yeah, I heard about this when I was in the UK at fantasy con. And they were saying how basically when you go into focus mode, that's like task oriented, like getting things done. And it's really good for accomplishing tasks, but it's not creative. Our standard mode is very creative. And that apparently when we decide to focus on writing, often go into focus-based mode or task-oriented mode, and that can be a barrier for us because it takes us out of the mode. That's why you go do dishes or something and suddenly you're creative again. Yeah. And then you get sitting down in front of the computer and what was it? Yes. I don't remember what I was talking Yeah, so yeah, I did some middle grade books for Wizards of the Coast actually while I worked there IP, which were really fun, but it was really nice to get to work in my own worlds. And I say that as it's historical and involves Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, but it's my own. And I have questions about that later because this is fast because I think that there's a lot to talk about even playing in world. yeah. So we will get to that. But let's talk about because, yeah, you started doing the young readers books right after I was laid off in a way, I think. Or was it was it had it already started by? I think I remember. contracted around that time. think the first one came out in 2009. But yeah, they were the fantastical books about I mean, they were like basically gold's book for birds except for like fairies or wizards or dragons. it's a fair it was kind of a spin-off of the yeah it was kind of a spin-off of the monster not the monster manual the practical guide to dragons and practical guide to monsters but it was a little bit older same age group and everything. just the same basically more in that series. So it was very different because there wasn't obviously a plot line or anything. was just, know, but it was really fun and it had that whole details and you can pour over the page. Yeah, I love those books still. think they're really like gorgeous and are the kinds of like seek and find books that I loved. this. Did you read Richard scary as a kid? The name. Sounds familiar. What was a book? Like Busytown, all the books are set in Busytown, so what do people do all day? And cars and trucks and things that go. And lowly worm is the little worm that drives an apple. yes, I do. do. Yeah, I read all My point is that those books were kind of the baseline of me loving books like what you're talking about, what we're talking about that you did. But also you worked on, didn't you create adventures for kids, D &D adventures for kids? I created a system, a simplified system to help teach kids D &D, D &D for kids and it did pretty well. It was really popular and I think I still have a lot of people who are interested in that. That was really fun. It was a very simplified system. Yeah. A couple of years back, saw some, I don't remember, it was a licensed PRH because they, you know, they started licensing the D and D books to PRH and PRH was marketing it as the first middle grade D and D book. And I was like, really? Really? They had a whole imprint that they just forgot about. Yeah, no, I saw that they read it. yeah, I was just saying I saw that they also are like redoing the practical guides only completely different. Yeah, so I think Matt Forbeck was on those. Well, it's been almost 28 n- It's been long enough. It's time to have new stuff out there. Yeah, for sure. And they're out of print. yeah. Yeah. Yes, I was on Magic very briefly for like a year or two. Because I remember you going talking about the the fast pace so fast paced. It's one of those things where it's like people were having to write books in like two months to like four months was a luxury. Had to be so fast as well. And there was also a lot of back and forth between the team and this because the production schedules are so different. And then at the last minute, sometimes they changed, right, complete directions at the very end. You have to manage to like make that work in the book. you have because that is so hard. curious how experience with stuff like that has affected how you look at your own writing. so multiple different ways. One, I'm still very deadline driven. So I think that's probably that magic experience and everything. still think magic also was really good at helping me think in terms of trees instead of roads. And so I with any given Tell me about that. I guess another way to say is thinking of it in terms of pivot points, which is that anytime I can always see multiple ways to do something. so whenever I hit a problem, I can always have all these different pivot points that kind of like shape the book, you know, to see if it gets the right flavor, if it captures that. And I would say that in general, editing was so helpful at getting me to understand writing theory, how stories work. And so I think I am a, one of the reasons I think I was a bit of a slow. late bloomer in writing is that I am a very theme first writer and I'm very like structural writer. And so when you come with theme, it's like, have a vibe, right? And it's like, I have things I want to talk about and I have a vibe and then you have to match everything to that. And you're like, is this it? No, is that it? No. And everything comes from that because this thing you want to explore. so obviously like having all of the, like when you do developmental editing, you're thinking a lot about how the pieces go together. And I did so much that I felt like I could edit that kind of novel in my sleep at a certain point. And I think that was so helpful for internalizing the analysis. So I'm not in an analytical mode while still having access to that analytical information. And then finally, of course, it's shared world. And when it's shared world, you have to do so much research. We had like this library filled with all the books ever done. And I know people are like, there was a mistake there. And it was the hardest thing to be like, that is not a mistake. That is just a different version that you're not reading that, you know, we are actually being true to. Sindri can indeed have magic. Thank you very much. Right. It's because a dragon gave it to him. It's like, I'm sorry, there are actual, we did the research on this, but you can't say that. But it was so useful for historical because also you're trying to capture a feel of a time and place, even if that time and place isn't real. And so you had the forgotten realms feel and like you would have an author and you'd be like, man, this author is great, but they don't have the forgotten realms feel. And you know what I mean? And so you try and find the authors that would suit, that could write. Yeah. In that area, as well as being a great author. And so that was always, yeah, you get those vibes and it's like, no, that's just off. It's great, but it's not right. Do you remember, this was back in the day when we were working together, that we were getting, we were still getting submissions in paper. And I don't know about you, but I got the weirdest submissions sometimes. So there was one time because we were doing the call for middle grade and YA and we got a picture book. And I told this person, oh yeah, your writing is really good. Do you do middle grade or YA? And she said, that's the one thing I don't write. she submitted to yeah i was like that's publish picture books too as in the adult category Yeah, constantly. And toward the end there, because of the monster, the Practical Guide to Monsters and Practical Guide to Dragons, we were. There was also the guy who sent his, I think it was 400,000 word YA novel with each chapter individually packaged in... Oh my god, yeah. It was a box. It was a box. ones were You You've your desk for a long time. I don't, I, yeah, but I had a, I had a question for you in that regard and I, well, it's gone out of my head. No more along the lines of how things have changed over time and has that changed your writing process at all? Like, are you using, like, I'm still a very old school editor. I still edit on paper with. The first draft at least, not the first draft, the first round, the developmental editing, because I need that for my brain process. Like process wise, what does it look like for you and are you still like using notebooks? I know a lot of people write their first draft in a notebook or are you a Scrivener person? Like that kind of So I've tried a lot of different things. And again, you're going to see this come up a lot is that the pivot, right, is that whenever something stops working, I change what I'm doing. And so I do a ton of work in notebooks. And first of all, writing historical, it's historical fantasy, but it's still historical. And so I took like, I think for this latest one, I mean, it was like four or five notebooks worth of notes. And it's not even that I refer to them that often, but it's just really useful to have like writing it down helps get it in your head. And then you can like go back and look, you know, I'd mark certain things. I'm like, I definitely need that. I also use notebooks for whenever I'm stuck and I need to try and work through a problem or when I'm brainstorming, it's just, first of all, my cats approve because I get to sit here, which is very important. It's not okay when I'm in the computer room that has like no nice windows for them. You're in the wrong room. Literally try and bring me over and like, come on, we can go in this room when I'm, if I'm drafting, I will often draft on the laptop just because the laptop is, it feels less inward. feels less official. There's a smaller space. And so it feels more like I can just concentrate on. As opposed to a desktop. As opposed to a desktop. And it also makes me stop doing quite as much. I do find research very inspiring and it's also very necessary. And so you do all your bulk research upfront, but then you're like, I need to go to a place. What does it actually look like? And you have to look that up or this person has to be wearing something. What would they actually wear? And you have to look that up. And so like, there's a lot of that that happens throughout. And so having to go to a different device in order to do research actually really helps you concentrate on the writing when you're on. and not get sucked into rabbit holes. Yeah, you're creating, you're recreating your, you're creating a space for this and space for that kind of work. And so you're in a different head space when you're at that space. Exactly. I have used Scrivener in the past and I like a lot of things about it, but I found that I'm just at heart. Maybe it's cause I grew up writing and like back when it was a blue screen word perfect, like, I grew up on word. And so I still use word kind of as my default. will have a million different documents. I love folders with like, you know, so many different versions. I'll have alternate. Yeah, I save everything. So I'll have like my research all written up there, all the important bits. And then I'll have like alternate chapters and I'll have, you know, all, everything, all different versions of the whole thing too. That actually is really cool and gets back to your idea of the tree because if you're going down a certain path that you've outlined and it's not working, you can backtrack to a different branch. that kind of the idea? And then sometimes in revision, you know, they're like, hey, what about a scene like this? And you're like, I wrote that. And you can pull it out. got it. I didn't know where to put it. That's a great idea. Because so often it's just like, it's a great idea. It's the wrong place. then when you're all done, you can find out where it goes. And then when I do revision, though, I do revision on a desktop. And the reason is that I really like having, well, I start revision first passes on desktops. And I really like having multiple monitors because I want to be able to see notes at the same time as I'm working. And then when it comes to the hardline edits, so you're doing copy edit and everything, I usually do the initial ones. on the computer, but then the final one, I like a printout because I feel like, and I also read it aloud because I found that if you read it aloud and if it's on paper, paper, I noticed so many things I didn't notice. also found if I move it to a Kindle, I'll notice things that I didn't notice on paper or on the computer. like changing format really helps just me not ignore things. Yeah, that's why I do this as well is like when I'm when I'm doing the developmental stuff, I can flip back and forth. yeah. I know like there's a muscle, not muscle memory, but a visual memory of where things are in the book. And when I'm on a computer screen doing line editing, I am only looking at that paragraph. At best, I'm looking at three or four paragraphs. So I'm zooming in versus zooming out. like, I love that idea of how you have different workspaces for different. processes because then it helps you to know what mind space. And different rooms of the house too. So I'll be like in the kitchen on my laptop, right? Or, you know, and then in the office for editing and then like, so like each room has a different like vibe to it. The cats get really upset when I switch. I'm changing my routine out there. So in the US your publisher is Bindery Books. Yes. Inky Phoenix is the imprint. Tell us a little bit about it because this is a brand new publisher and their model is a little bit different from what I'm used to for traditional publishing. Yeah. We've talked a lot, not you and me, but like in general in publishing, we've talked a lot about discoverability and the difficulty of getting books in front of readers who want to read them. Because when Amazon got really big, obviously small bookstores, it's harder to keep in stock because you have to get things people are actually going to buy, which means that limits what they're able to carry and stay afloat. And then Amazon, of course, no one goes there to browse. They go there to buy a book. And so it like everything amplified that New York Times bestsellers and everyone else kind of was falling off and everyone's trying to figure out how to reach them. And you get this rise of book clubs like Reese Witherspoon's book club and like Oprah's book club was always big, but you know, so many micro Yeah, Jenna, everyone is starting to do book clubs and they're really popular and they sell a lot of books and then Book Talk and Bookstagram started happening and they'd sell bonkers amounts of books and bringing back authors who hadn't, who had been okay before, but like Colleen Hoover. yeah. Like all of a sudden. And also like, isn't that how the Atlas six was discovered and things like there were books that were indie published that ended up getting mainstream published through book talk and bookstagram because there was such an app and their New York times best sellers like there's such an appetite for these books. It's just how do you get them in front of readers? And so binary. basically partnered with bookstagrammers and book talkers. And what they do is their traditional publishing model in which all the people involved at Bindery are from the big publishers and they have experience there as well as, you know, other places, basically all throughout that publishing sphere. Co-publishing. It's a traditional publishing model. They have a whole traditional editing team and everything. However, when it comes to acquisitions, they have these influencers and these people from Book Talk and Bookstagram, and they're people who have developed communities on Bindery. And once they get to be a certain size, they're invited to start an imprint. And so they have to have basically a dedicated following who's been really enjoying reading all the books they pick. And that's why they know that this audience. So they know they're a taste maker that. Right, they know the tastemaker who's been picking all these books that their audience loves and buys that, the audience is going to like this book too, because they're actually in touch with what the readers really want. And so they're able to provide that to that audience. This also provides like a street team in that it's these people get it early and they're all very excited because they get to see the inside process of the book as it's getting made. So like when we got cover stuff, they got to see like the cover, the insides of making the cover and everything. and they got to chat with the editor in me about the editing process. so like the whole way they're getting to see how the book is made, which is also just really cool and gives them like a private findery club. You actually get a fair amount online, not private as well, but. I've seen a little bit of it, this is fascinating. Yeah, and so they're very, so the, tastemaker is the one who chooses the book and they're also obviously have like all this complete sovereignty over their imprint. They are the acquiring editor and everything. And then it's traditionally edited and everything. But it's, they put everything behind it. Like we had, I mean, I'm in a ton of indie bookstores. We're in Walmart. We're in, we have a special edition. This is the special edition. Yeah, I saw that. bindery. It's got sprayed edges. Yeah. So we have, you know, they've just done everything. We had a New York launch party too. that was huge and so fun. This is the kind of, this is like the culmination of the thing Nina, for people who don't know, was my boss at Wizards. And she and I were always talking about how do we get, at the time they were called Alpha Readers and the word influencer was just starting to come up. How do we get influencers to like Hallamere? This is kind of like the culmination of the kind of talking that we were talking about right in the very early days of social media. Yeah, and it's, it's, you know, you see everyone trying to figure out how to do it. So like Orbit has a dedicated team of influencers and everyone sends them. If you ever want it free books, like even if you only have like 2000 followers, if you become an influencer, you will get so many free books from publishers. So it's like, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a whole thing now. And I think that it's, it's really cool how much interest there's been in these books. I haven't been into an indie bookstore that hasn't had them. The Strand had Strange Beasts on the front table. amazing! this brand is like in the middle of new york city! yeah! they can pick any book! and Noble Fifth Ave had us come in and do a takeover. so it's amazing. It seems like it's, I'm really excited about finding new ways for books to get discovered. And what's also great about Bindery is it's able to focus on groups that traditional publishing hasn't been able to give a focus to as much. So for instance, you have much more diverse and a lot of the imprints and i think they just started the name of american imprint. did, they did. From the Mixed Up Desk is the influencer on Instagram if you want to follow it. yeah, it's amazing. There's such a diverse slate of people. House of Frank is by Easy Cat Press and that's a cozy fantasy, but they describe it as being i follow jason on on everywhere he's hilarious yeah a warm hug on your worst day and I think that's like the best description of it and there's and the sky blood which is climate fantasy Hang on. I have a cat trying to take over my keyboard. right, House of Frank is by Kay Sinclair also, I forgot to say. Tabitha. Hi Tabitha. K. Sinclair is the author of House of Frank. And then there's Anne of Skyblood by S. Hathi, which is from Fantasy and Friends imprints from Zoran. And this is climate fantasy, Southeast Asian climate fantasy. It's amazing. cool. Yeah. Inferno's Error, which the sequel just got announced today by Tiffany Wang. And that is with Kevin Norman's Violetier. And that is more East Asian fantasy. It's a morally gray heroine. It's very Six of Crows. Rebecca Yaros called it like a mesmerizing debut. And that's the other thing that you guys are getting quotes about your books. You got a blurb for this book from TJ Klune. Exactly. That's amazing. I mean, I know how hard it is to get blurbs and I know how hard it is to ask for blurbs. So let's talk about your book itself. So it's Sherlock Holmes. We've got the daughter of Mortiari and we've got the daughter of Mina Hart. Mina Harker. I'm like, which woman was it? I am way more familiar with Sherlock Holmes than Dracula. So this is fascinating to me because I love literally every reimagining of Sherlock ever because there are a lot of them at the moment. yeah. And so and there are so many, particularly I love the ones that really look at it from a female perspective, a feminist perspective sometimes. But sometimes it's just like, how do you live through the world as a woman in this era? There's the have you read the goodness, I'm now blanking. Sherry Thomas? Lady Sherlock? Mysteries? my gosh, they are amazing. She creates Sherlock as a character that she is working behind as the detective. So the reason why I bring this up is because I'm wondering with so many people obsessed with Sherlock, he's like the epitome of detective work. What was your process? Because you did a lot of research. What was your process to set your book apart from all the others? And I think part of the answer is gonna be mashup. Yeah, mashup is part of it because I wanted to do something with, I wanted to take advantage of like the Sherlock Holmes world and vibes and Moriarty, of course, who I think is a fascinating character, even though he's only in like, what, two short stories, but he's like. really hang on you glitched he's only in two what? I did not realize that everybody's ever he's like the most interesting character right that people love from those studies he's always a little he's sometimes in the background, like as in it'll be referenced that it must have been him or something. But no, he's only like in two stories, two or three. But I found I love that. But I also wanted to do it with monsters because I also one of my things is wanting, you know, magic to be real. And they also Dracula and Sherlock Holmes have so much to say to each other because they're both written in around the same time period. The crossover period is 1903, which is why it's set then but you have Moriarty was often considered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's attempts to discuss the Fenian movement and Irish rights. Yeah. And. Yeah. yeah. I did not know that. I say often considered because I don't know. I think he said something to that effect at one point, but I don't think it was. I believe it was. I believe he did at some point, but I'd have to. It's been a while since I've looked at my notes, so I'd have to go back. But that is widely considered. hence why his daughter is Irish. yeah and because is it ever explicit the Moriarty in the original stories is Irish? Yeah, he's Irish and he, but he works at a university somewhere. mean, the Irish, the Moriarty's are from Galway in general, like as a name, like that's where the area. He's explicitly Irish. He just works at a university elsewhere. And he has a son who in the original, he just has a son and the son is of course also Irish. But yeah, so then you, and he's also like obviously writing from a more Protestant perspective and everything. And then you have Dracula, which, also Cheryl Combs deals with like men as monsters, like human monsters, like. There is that supernatural vague feeling sometimes, but it's never like supernatural. And then you have Dracula, which deals with inhuman monsters, with actual monstrous monsters. And so it's a whole different vibe that clicks on that same area. okay, so the author of Dracula is Protestant because he went to Trinity College and they didn't allow Catholics at the time, but he had a Catholic wife and he, the book is often considered Catholic propaganda. I don't think he meant it that way, but if you look at it, like all the Protestant stuff fails and the only things that work throughout the book are Catholic, even if he kind of abuses the notion sometimes. If you look at all the tropes that have come from every metaphorical child of Dracula in pop culture, it always plays with those Catholic tropes. Right, and so like it's clear that like there was something that it is talking about Catholicism and of course he's Irish, very Irish. And so you have an Anglo Irish. So you have this like wonderful bit where they're talking to each other. And of course France is very Catholic, but the elite there are very agnostic or atheist at this time. And so it's a fascinating time period. It's right before they shove all the Catholics out to Spain, basically. And so it's a fascinating. I think it was Prime Minister Combs. he actually got the Freemasons to spy on Catholics in order to make sure. yeah. So in like the military, it was a whole blow up in order to try and make sure they couldn't get promoted. And he pushed, he, I mean, it was division. He pushed like the Catholics out of all their like education and hospitals and everything. So it's separation of church and state, but then he also started going after like all the other occupations. And so it was one of those where you can see. you can see why separation of church and state not bad, but on the other hand, the poor people were Catholic and this was being taken away from them too. And so there's got this economic disparity, a huge class disparity at the time. And in addition to the feminist, the new woman was becoming a thing, which is explicitly discussed in Dracula, which is fascinating. Women are really agitating for rights at this point, but then there's also the more traditional woman who's modeled in Mina. so economic disparity. feminism, this is right before like a lot of people agitating for the right to vote. This is right during 1895 was like, the big New York convention of suffragettes. And it's right around the same suffragettes in the suffragettes movement in the UK too. Yeah, yeah. It's everything is like coming to a head at this period, this heady period. So we see it as a time of being blissful and glamorous because it's it's the Bella poke, right? It's right before the first world war. But I think it's because it's before it period that was really awful. Right. And that's why we see it that way, because it was actually really only great if you were in that top 10%. So, I mean, obviously these have vibes that resonate today. And this is one of the reasons that I chose these as stories. But it's also just that I really came from that discussing monstrous men and monstrous monsters and wanting puzzles and mystery at the same time as like monster hunting and magic. that's the classic puzzles. Yeah, absolutely. I've often thought about as an editor and as I'm thinking about what I'm bringing into the world as an editor and as a reader, what I want to read. so there is there's been a long tradition of 20 or 30 years of the strong female character being basically a woman who acted like a man trope wise. Yep. Like she has to be really strong. She has to. you no martial arts or handle a gun or whatever. And I love that you seem to be playing with some of that because I mean, in the first few chapters, you have your main character outsmarts a monster with nothing but her flammable petticoats. So talk to us about that. What your thought process is as far as because you do have a gun toting girl at woman character as well. but you've got a lot going on as far as playing with those feminine tropes in fantasy. Well, some of it is that I've always thought it's fascinating when you look at the discussion of soft and hard power when it comes to being a woman or even being any individual in the society, because we tend to celebrate hard power, which is that asking for what you want, demanding and being direct and having the gun and with the threat of violence at the back of it. Right, always the threat of violence. It's that traditional like, this is the strong female character, right? And so any badass, quote unquote, woman is usually using hard power when it's like, no, but she'll beat you up if she doesn't get her way kind of thing. And I was realizing that like in society, we kind of denigrate this soft power, which is where you're in a male dominated society or space. And say, for an example, because soft power can be used for pretty much any group and you want to get something done. but you know that if you go at it directly, they're going to get defensive and you're not going to be able to do it. So how do you get what you want from them without setting off all their alarms and making them defensive? And so you have all these ways. You come at it sideways, like you convince them it's their idea, you befriend them. So we have charm and we have, honestly it's manipulation, but it's like, it's the only way you can get what you want or what you need. manipulation or also just plain knowledge. Yeah. Because I think that there's some very interesting things you're playing with here that she knows what these monsters look like even though she can't fight them. Yeah. And she remembers. Or. Yeah, exactly. She remembers things. And also you've got the invisibility factor where during this era women, especially women of a lower class, were expected to be invisible. And that's there's a little bit of soft power there. Not a lot. yeah! Even higher class women, like was a huge deal at the time that perfume was starting to be put on people's skin and only like by like harlots, obviously. I loved how you were playing with that, the notes. Yes, and so you could only have like one note in your perfume and it had to be on your artifacts, not your person, because the idea was if someone could smell your perfume after you passed, they were smelling the memory of your skin. And this was scandalous. And it was like, my God. Like singing and- Right, right, it's like- have skin. How awful. it's like, I'm sorry. I hope all women have skin. But then also it's like all people. It's kind of like the jokes of I love skeletons because I too am a skeleton Yeah, and then it's also they were taking up space in this era when women weren't supposed to take up space. But being invisible means you can get a lot of things done. You can go places and talk to people and you can use that to your advantage. And I think that I wanted to show this being it's something I actually delight in. Like I've always thought writing about the patriarchy is a bit of a bummer, right? But I realized that's because I was focusing on people on the stories about hard power where you're trying and trying and trying to get it done and you're failing. And I realized that what I really delight in is the stories of like, sure, there's these like boundaries, but it's basically a puzzle. How do we get it done? How do we figure it out? Anyway, these are our tools. You know, we're mostly invisible. We're charming. We have friends, like you have this invisible network. Women do help women for the most part, right? And so you have this invisible network and you have all these different things you can do to try and like achieve your goals. And I wanted to kind of, and knowledge, right? Like you can be smart. And I think there are some greater lessons out of that that we can think about structurally in our society as well. and that it's not lesser. And so one of the huge things she has to deal with is feeling like she's lesser because she uses the soft power, whereas Hell is like this traditional strong, really good with weapons, not as people. She wears pants, even though in Paris you weren't allowed to without special written permission. like she and she doesn't care about clothing, whereas Sam cares about clothing and perfume and feminine things. And Sam's knowledge of like feminine things ends up being exquisitely important to solving the mystery as does her ability to talk to people and actually find out where people are coming from. And so I feel like I wanted to say also though, because Hell is also a badass and someone that I think is one of my favorite characters, but I wanted to say that both forms are fine. feel like sometimes you can be feminine and wear pants and be a badass and you can be feminine and love dresses. And like this Sam is such a fashion show, like every chapter there's a new fashion and like, you know, she loves books. Every, every outfit of all her fashion is just like, it's so hard on the wallet. She tries, you know, so you've got this, they're both valid and that can both be strong and they can both be feminine. And so I really wanted to talk about kind of the breadth because I feel like, you know, one of the things you see is like that there can be only one in male dominated spaces. And so it's like, there is the model of the correct womanhood. Yeah. And then whenever you see something different, there can be a bit of a backlash because if the majority of women don't agree with that representation, they'll get really mad. But I want to show that there's many ways to be a woman. Of course, the soft power often comes from a place, a bad place. Right. Like we have to mention that, that it comes from trauma and trying to survive an unjust system. But. Well, and I think also, I think you're playing with this a little bit as well when you're talking about manipulation because the cattiness can happen as well. I addressed that a little bit too. And also the toxic masculinity that happens as it hurts, you know, men as well. And even with hard power, you run into problems as a woman because, you know, you can be too demanding rather than being like, yeah, you're too aggressive, you're too bossy, instead of being actually a woman in charge, get doing your thing. And so like they each run into problems, like hell is often seen as very off putting, most people don't want to work with her. And part of it's, you know, the fact that all of her partners have somehow mysteriously died. but, and her father who's like a criminal mastermind, but like, you know, it's also because she doesn't take anything from anyone and she gets it done and she's not worried about whether people like her or not. And that's a huge, Sam, this is like hugely attractive. This person who doesn't care because she cares about everything. She's a people pleaser. She can read people like a book and give them what they want so she can survive and get what she wants. and then let's talk about world building because this is fascinating because you're working within. So let's get to the shared world part of it because you're working within the structures of two different worlds that you're mashing up. But I think you're also playing with just the folklore that people would know at the time. Yes. Because like a Grindy Low, I've never heard of a Grindy Low. I mean, and I am well versed in folklore of that era and like I don't know if you remember, Peter once asked me, what is with your obsession with Scotland? The real question is why he wasn't obsessed with Scotland. my Roman Empire. But so talk about your research process and how you approached working within the world but expanding it. Obviously I'm working within the two literary worlds. I'm also working within the Edwardian period. And yes, I also used folklore from that time. And one of the things that drew me to France to begin with was A, the whole Catholic Protestant thing, which doesn't actually play into the book at all. It's literally just fun undercurrents. But the other thing is that obviously Paris has, and France has, a huge history of werewolves, like the Beast of Gévaudan, which I hope I said that correctly this time. of started the werewolf thing, right? Couple before that, there were more like witches where it was like, oh, they like were given, you know, an ointment by the devil and turned into a wolf. Like there were a couple of serial killers in France and in Germany that had it. This was the big one. And this, oh yeah, but they would blame people. And like it was often thought they were just basically actually serial killers who enjoyed killing, but they were like, no, it turns me into a beast. And then also in Russia, there were the good werewolves who like, you know, fought. supposedly at night turned into wolves and defended people against bad for evil forces, but they were still told to like quit it. And there's the Vlosegnas in the Alps at the time in Germany, which was people who could, there was belts that could turn you into werewolves. And they also had these like things that could attract wolves or put them away. So there's all this stuff going on, but this was the big one. And this is because the King of France actually sent people to hunt the werewolves. that happened in real life? I've read stories about it, but I didn't realize it happened in real life. It's this village, right? And so this this monstrous wolf is which you know, could actually there's been theories that it's been an escaped lion because no one knew what lions looked like at the time. There's rumors could be a striped hyena. There's rumors it could be a wolf dog in a costume, a human in a costume, a giant wolf, like, or a werewolf. like so but regardless, a giant beast was killing women, mostly women and children on the outskirts of this village and like hundreds. And so the case Like picking up the sheep at the... so the king hears of this and he's all sore because his country just lost a big war against England and he's like, wow, we really need to show that God still loves us. Let's go kill this werewolf. And so he sends like, you know, his hunter and everything to go kill the werewolf. They declare mission accomplished after they kill a big wolf. There's still more killings. They completely ignore it. And then like a peasant kills it with a silver bullet. And that's where the werewolf thing got started. So anyway, yes. I basically, researched a lot. always do some general historical research for the era. And then I do some more specific folklore research. And I found that podcasts are a great jumping off point. Some of them are really great. There's an amazing one from Ireland called Blirne Beladish, which is folklore fragments. It's done by the Dublin Folklore Institute. now i have a new i'm gonna have to flip this one out It's so good. And then there's the catacombs you can actually walk through online. They have it all videoed. So you can just step by step go through and everything, which is pretty lovely. and then you don't get lost in them. Well, the catacombs are actually just a small part of the mines and you can totally, yeah, the catacombs are much safer. And there's tons of pictures and references that you can find to actual, like every dress is actually from a historical dress. All the buildings are from like historical buildings. know, everything I tried to keep as like at picture. I looked for pictures for absolutely everything. So I have an enormous Pinterest, things like that. I also have a couple of photo books that I bought. of the area. It's really fun because like I didn't know about the Luke Carcle. I think that's how you say it, which is one of the monsters. No, no, it's a snail monster. yeah. You used it in the book. I haven't gotten that far yet. monster and I hadn't heard of it. has this whole, I make a joke there that will only make sense if you actually know the folklore about this monster. And so it delights me. I'm okay with the fact that no one will get it if they don't know the folklore. But I basically was like, what if things like the Beast of J'ai le Don and all these things that they knew are real? Now the Grindelow, I have to say I went more with a Jenny Green teeth version than the traditional, traditional Grindelows are actually smaller. So I use Jenny Green's teeth, which is bigger. because you it was bigger than that. Hence the Jenny Green teeth instead of the which is also a grindy low, but just not the normal grindy low. gotcha. Yeah, I don't know. I was introduced to that particular monster by your book. So I thought that was. Wills of the Wisp, which is the old fashioned way of pluralizing it, which are fun. It's the old fashioned way and I kind of regret it because no one knows that. And so everyone thinks it's an error and it's like, at the time, that's how you said it guys. Yeah. So do you ever read... Oh, now I'm blanking on her name. She's part of the writer. Names are just escaping me at the moment. She writes the Lady Astronaut series, but also historical fantasy. Oh! Thank you. Have you watched her talk about her research process for language? Oh! For her regency fantasy novels, she will not use words that were not in use at the time. Man, I try, but I'm really impressed with. I've heard, yeah. I use one that I know is glaring. Well, I think it's a really interesting exercise in how can you put yourself in that world? And I think that language choices are not necessarily, even if people think of them as cliches or mistakes. Like if you ever read Libba Bray's 20s series, there are lot of phrases that we think of as cliches that were the hot teen slang of the time. Yeah, because our grandmas, they were teenagers when they learned that slang. And so now when they use them, it's old fashioned. But I love, I think that's wonderful because you're getting into the world of the book and you're using the language that your characters would use. trying to do that while also keeping it a little more modern than strictly historic. Accessible. Yeah, because I want it to be accessible. And I feel like the prose back then in particular can get a little bit thicker than I wanted to get for this one. Even though I love it. It's like it's just not quite where I was. Yeah, so you want to give it a nod in the feel without like going too far. I have one more question for you and I think that this is interesting probably only for the editors in the room, but I think that it could be interesting for our audience as well. As both an editor and a writer, coming to the revision process with an editor, working with an editor, how is that for you? I loved it. Like I was nervous at first because... Well, so here's the best part. Being an editor means that as long as I have some time between when I wrote the final draft and when I have to revise, my brain is already working on like revision structures and everything. But then the other thing is that I know that editors have your best interests at heart, that they are actually trying to help you. And I know how editors kind of think, because I was one, right? Good development editors are amazing. They're so helpful. At least I hope I was helpful. And so it's one of those things where... That's the thing that I always wonder about. People have said thank you in nice ways years later that I assume it worked, but I'm so much better now than I was like 10 years ago, even at editing. And I was just like, my God, I almost wish I'd edited you now instead of then, but you know. 15 years later, the first books that I edited for two books, I'm like, my gosh, I would have said this completely differently. yeah. I would have asked for different things. Yeah. We're different people now. we're totally different people. And so I will say I had a slight bit of nerves because the developmental editor is different than the acquiring editor. So the acquiring editor for my imprint in Key Phoenix, since I haven't said that, is Catherine Budick and she's amazing. And I knew she loved my book and I knew she got it. And then I was assigned a developmental editor there who I didn't know. And they turned out to be amazing. His name was Clay Smith and he really got. every aspect of the book and what I was trying to go for. And then I was also, because I actually sold to the UK first, I also had a UK editor. So I was doing them both like serially. no, this was the fun part is that I did the US and then would pass it to the UK. And after I do the US do the edits, custom UK get edits, pass back to the US and the UK and then again, comments. so That's my experience with my UK office. So I had to like just try and make everything work out together. But fortunately, everyone was on the same page. There was only like one thing in which they debated a little bit and then like it was fine. And that was So, and this is interesting to me because this is what I did for my UK author when she was trying to do an American voice. yeah. Syrian character. Did you have moments where your UK editor was like, we would probably say it a little bit more like this? had two and the main reason is that I only have one British person. American character there's only one British person in the whole thing. Yeah, Mr. Right I think is the only British person. Everyone else there's Dutch, there's Irish, there's American, there's that's right, because what's her name is Irish. And my main character is American, so her thoughts and all the prose can be American. And I did that, you know, on purpose. I wanted as close to my identity as possible. like, it's hard. It really is. But there were a couple of things, just like, you cannot say pants. You cannot say pants, pants. yeah. underpants and so like in England and so I kept saying pants and she was like this is cracking me up and you cannot do this This is wrong. 2002, I went to Scotland and I fell down a mountain while hiking in the rain. And so I get myself all muddy and I go to the small town that I was hiking outside of and I asked, do you sell pants? god. i spittaked i was chronically on but I was not- this was before social media- They were like... No, we don't. So they gave me like... Eventually we figured it out and they gave me like a plastic bag to put on the seat so I didn't get the rental car all night from having slid down a mountain. But yeah, that was very embarrassing. think there was like, there was that and there was using university instead of college. And those were the only two things I think, because again, I chose an American POV for the main one. The French was more interesting because I definitely had, we had a separate French editor to edit the French parts. Yeah. And this was a expert. This is a, it's an American, but I don't know if she's originally from France, but she's an expert in that, like a PhD in that field of that time period in France. And so she helped to make sure all the French was accurate to the time period, because there things I would do. was like, yeah, wouldn't, that idiom wouldn't exist at that point, or we wouldn't say it that way at that point. And also corrected, because I took like 10 years of French and like forgot it all, I swear. And so she also corrected all my bad French and then obviously helped with all the details there. So that was really great because I really didn't want this going out in the world without someone looking over it. Right. I think you and I have talked in the past, it's been a very long time. I don't know if we've talked about sensitivity editors or anything like sensitivity readers. And I think that that part of the process is just really important if you're doing any kind of cross-cultural. and it's especially just like what I always think about is that I want to capture the dream a place has of itself. And so I want to capture like, don't want Yeah, because it's not I was reading about Italy in Venice and how Lord Byron apparently was calling it, you know, the city sinking into the sea and everything and all this poetic stuff. And it's not at all, apparently. I need to look into this more. think it would be a fascinating place to set a book someday. Not at all how the people of Venice saw it and like all this romanticized version of it. And I think it's fascinating how we get this idea of a place that is not how the people themselves see it. And I think that the tensions there are actually really similar to the tensions that my main characters deal with also in terms of how people decide to see them versus who they actually are. And I think we all just want to be seen. And so I think the more we can do to help people be seen and help a place be seen, even though France is like, you know, considered a fairly well-known place, it's like, it's not, we have stereotypes about it still, and we aren't seeing like, you know, France as it is. And I was still so nervous that it was going to be hated by the French. But so far, I've gotten a lot of French readers who've reached out and said that they were really, they loved it they were so happy and American to the research. And I was like, oh my God, thank God it was right. and i think that was wonderful place for us to leave it on that everybody wants to be seen. I think that's just so important. And I think that you will love this book, Strange Beasts, Susan J. Morris. And the link is in the underneath. If you go to curiouscatbookshop.com and search for Strange Beasts, you'll be able to buy it. We have it in the store. So read it. Thank you so much. It's been so great chatting with you, Susan. Thank you for everybody for listening along with us. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you so much. Good night.