Leanna Renee Hieber: Gothic Storyteller and Haunted History Tour Guide

The 54th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory has Mookie talking ghosts, gothic fiction, generational trauma, creativity, labor politics, and the thin membrane between the living and the dead with acclaimed author, actress, and haunted history guide Leanna Renee Hieber.

Leanna’s work lives in the shadowy crossroads between gaslamp fantasy, horror, romance, historical fiction, paranormal mystery, and social commentary — which means trying to pin her to a single genre is like trying to handcuff fog. From Victorian ghost precincts and spectral detectives to haunted mansions, robber barons, labor uprisings, and vengeance-driven spirits, her fiction blends lush gothic atmosphere with sharp cultural critique and a wicked sense of humor.

The conversation quickly spirals beyond ghost stories and into Leanna's lifelong fascination with the paranormal, childhood experiences she still cannot rationally explain, and why she believes science and the supernatural are not mutually exclusive. Drawing from her work leading haunted tours through New York City, she explains how certain places seem charged by tragedy, memory, suffering, and emotional residue: from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to the lingering psychic weight of old brownstones, forgotten streets, and hidden atrocities.

Mookie adds his own uncanny experiences: seeing his father’s ghost after death, sensing overwhelming energy inside Dachau, and living through bizarre moments in a Park Slope brownstone that felt less like coincidence and more like reality itself tearing at the seams. Together, they explore the provocative possibility that consciousness, memory, grief, and history may operate on levels modern society doesn't understand.

Going beyond paranormal speculation, they offer an unapologetic defense for storytelling with boldness and bravado. Leanna breaks down her evolution from actress and theater performer to bestselling gothic novelist, discussing how she balances performance, prose, narration, and historical research while building a career that refuses to fit neatly into publishing categories. She talks about the challenge and liberation of writing “five genres in a trench coat,” embracing gothic excess, and refusing to flatten her voice into something market-safe.

The discussion also turns into a broader critique of modern fiction culture itself: workshop orthodoxy, “show don’t tell” dogma, hyper-cinematic prose, sanitized storytelling, and the growing fear many writers seem to have of directly expressing ideas, values, or moral outrage through narrative. Mookie argues modern genre fiction has become over-engineered and emotionally declawed, while Leanna explains how gothic fiction has always used atmosphere, metaphor, horror, and heightened emotion to smuggle dangerous truths into the reader’s bloodstream.

Part ghost story, philosophical debate, art gothic literary salon, and rant against modern creative conformity, join Leanna and Mookie for one of the strangest, smartest, and most emotionally layered conversations you'll hear on either side of the veil. 

The Guest

Leanna Renee Hieber is a professional actress, playwright, ghost tour guide and an award-winning, bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction for Tor, Union Square & Co. and Kensington Books. A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, co-authored with Andrea Janes, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction and their follow-up, America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction, was an Instant USA Today Bestseller and is also a Bram Stoker Award nominee. Her Gothic novel Ravenfield Hall is forthcoming early 2027 from Union Square & Co / Hachette. A 4-time Prism award winner, three of which went to her Gothic Strangely Beautiful saga and a Daphne du Maurier finalist for Darker Still, Leanna’s novels have received translations into multiple languages and her short stories have been featured in notable anthologies such as Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells while her non-fiction essays have appeared in Apex Magazine, The Deadlands, Haunted Magazine and more. A guide with New York’s Boroughs of the Dead, founded by Andrea Janes, Leanna also tours one-woman shows she has crafted from historic texts starring interesting figures in women’s history. Featured in film and television on shows like Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown discussing Victorian Spiritualism, Leanna lives in New York and lectures around the country on Gothic and paranormal themes as they intersect with women’s history.

Her Work

Website: https://leannareneehieber.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/leannareneehieber

FB: https://facebook.com/lrhieber

Etsy: https://torchandarrow.etsy.com  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory. In the factory today, I'm thrilled to have Deanna Renee Heber. She is a speculative fiction writer, actress, and ghost tour guide. Is that right? You you give you give tours of haunted places, and I want to hear more. I want you to spook me out.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Okay, but I I like friendly ghosts, so it's not gonna be I'm not I'm not here to to bring out necessarily all of the terror. Um my favorite stories are actually the friendly ghosts, but we have some there's there's a quite a range. I mean it's New York, so there's quite a range of personalities, we'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Actually, uh a New York ghost who's kind of mean is just kind of like an average ghost, I think. Uh I live in California now, and they say that the difference between California and New York is in New York, if somebody says fuck you, they're really saying hello. And in California, if they say hello, then what they mean is fuck you. So I think I think friendly ghosts in New York are probably uh still pretty, pretty brash.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Well, they're they are they say what they mean. See, that's the thing about New York. New Yorkers say what they mean, and and sometimes it's just with a bit of an edge, but at the at the same time, like I come from Ohio originally in the middle of nowhere. Um, and a lot of times when you're in those sort of Midwestern, sort of nice cultures, it's like it's hard to know what anybody means or or where anyone's coming from. At least in New York, if you need help, New Yorkers are right there to help you. Um, if as long as you are moving quickly down the sidewalk. That's really all anyone asks of you, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

People visiting New York, the the worst thing that you can do is be in the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

That's all that's all anybody wants. We're just everyone's trying to get to the next place, and it always takes a while. So, you know, just keep move keep it moving. But again, as a as a tour guide, um, I have to be cautious about, you know, not not being uh um dismissive of tourism because that is also part of the job. So I work for a great company called Burrows of the Dead, and uh it is uh an incredible company run by my co-author in my nonfiction, Andrea Janes. Um, and so she founded the company over 10 years ago, and uh it's been a really wonderful company that focuses on respect for the dead while still sharing about haunted spaces and the complicated nature of history and hauntings in New York City. So um I I really love working with a company full of wonderful tour guides who are each, many of them writers in their own right and who love to tell a good story, but want to make sure we're getting the facts on the ground correct as best as possible. So that's a whole one of one of the missions in my career, both as a fiction writer and as a nonfiction writer, is to make sure I'm creating a realistic historical setting in which paranormal things happen. But there's gotta be sort of a baseline for me of actual historicity. Otherwise otherwise, for me, the points I'm trying to make, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, don't really land.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

What is the degree of your credulity when it comes to the paranormal? Do you believe I I do I do believe the other world, the other dimension, they they cross over, they visit.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

Yeah, yeah, and they have since I was a kid. So um the great thing about having a co-author in nonfiction is that it can it provides a range of different experiences as well as a range of different beliefs. Um I am much in in the X-Files dynamic, I am much more the Mulder, and Andrea is much more the Scully. Um I have just frankly had more just number of weird things that have just happened to have happened to me. Um and and she's had some doozies too, but she definitely approaches things with a bit more skepticism in any given situation. However, because I know how wild and and uh magical our imaginations are as human beings, I also know that I can just as easily as anything create a haunting if I'm not careful. So I always go in also skeptic first, believer if it pushes past all the rest of the metrics I kind of you know put forth. Um, but one, you know, believer or not, if you know the actual history of a place, there's a certain something to be said for the weight of history in a significant area, or a place where tragedies have happened, or a place where jo joyful things have happened. There can be a spectral imprint that's joyous too. It doesn't just have to be about tragedy. But any intense experience will kind of leave what paranormal folks say is a kind of like a psychic imprint or a spectral weight to it. And I definitely do believe in that because my understanding of history is also informed by understanding what had happened there. And in a lot of cases, for me, they those spaces become cautionary tales. We can honor the dead and their sacrifices and what happened to them and that tragedy, not by trying to be like, ooh, here's people that scary things happened here, but say what happened that we could then prevent. Um uh Andrea and I's first book was called The Haunted A Haunted History of Invisible Women. And we open that book with a triangle shirt waist factory fire. Not because we want to talk about a building that's haunted, we want to talk about the fact that we are haunted by what happened there. As tour guides, we discuss everything that went wrong when 146 people, 123 of them were women as young as 14 years old, died in that fire. And thousands of New Yorkers saw it happen March 25th, 1911. And it created our modern-day labor laws. And I get very emotional when I talk about it when I'm when I'm standing in front of that building where it happened, when I'm standing on the sidewalk where people's bodies were lined up, having fallen, having jumped. Um it it's the the weight of that. If that, if I ever, if I'm ever at a point where I become at all desensitized to that, then I need to walk away from my job. Because I I never, I say every time, I never ever want to become numb to what happened here, because I never want anyone to take their labor laws or any of their other safety protections in our world for granted. There's just a lot we're taking for granted right now as a society. And so one of the things I think that that haunted history and history in general, discussions of it, gives us just enough distance from the present to kind of be able to look at it. But very often, I'm writing about it because I want us to think about it now because it's happening again now. There's so much of the 19th century that's being repeated right now on a massive scale. So whether it's my fiction all set in the late 19th century, when you've got robber barons taking advantage of a widening wealth gap and you've got the beginnings of labor law, the beginnings of civil rights laws, the beginning of women's suffrage and bodily autonomy, all these kinds of things that we're still fighting these fights. But I think fiction can help us talk about that in a way that gives us enough, just enough escapism. And that's the same thing with haunted history. It's like, ooh, we'll pull you into the ghost story, and then we'll like, you know, make sure you're really paying attention to your own modern moment.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

That's the foundation of Jungian psychology that you could look at religion, ghosts, the supernatural from a rational cognitive point of view, but that's missing the point. Why do we tell these stories? Why do we believe in these things? And to your exact point, it's because they hit here and they have impact on our everyday lives, and ultimately, hopefully, they connect us better with each other to show some empathy and maybe even make society and life better through their telling and through their belief.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Absolutely. I I say in just about every kind of book that I write, some kind of variation of how much the dead teach the living about how to live. And I really think that that's not just, you know, sort of a death positivity movement, which has kind of been an interesting thing. Um, the like the Order of the Good Death is a whole death positivity movement. Um, Caitlin Doherty is one of the authors that that has been a founder in that sort of movement to talk about death in a way that is um open and accessible and not fear-mongering and also acknowledging grief and that it's a process and that all of us have a very complicated relationship to it. And uh and a fear. We are born with a mortal fear of dying. Uh, and that that's that's a healthy thing. That's not something to start kind of rationalize out of us. We just have to make sure we're not operating from it in places where it's not helpful or where it goes against what the the the community needs in the moment. People acting out of fear um leads to really horrible things. And so I feel like um the the way that ghost lore has been a very um uh it's it's synthesized in every part of my being. I mean, my go the the the hauntings that I've experienced go back to to my earliest, almost my earliest memories. Um, and and having uncanny experiences and later being like, oh, oh, oh, that was okay. So when great grandma came to visit, she actually had passed away that day. Okay, all right, just getting a timestamp on it. All right, the woman I'm named for kind of came to visit the day she passed. I was I was on part of her goodbye tour, I guess, uh when I was about six years old. And and I and I and I love that story because it was sort of like, yeah, my earliest haunting was just like my great grandma checking in on her namesake, you know. And and so for me, like that was a wonderful thing of like you could interpret that almost as a guardian angel story because I was very sick actually when it happened. And she broke my fever. Um, because the timing on it was she passed, my fever broke. I went into some kind of weird trance state talking about God and the angels using words I'd never been taught. And I write about this in in my most recent book with Andrea, America's Most Gothic. Um, I talk about these, some of these moments that were happened to me because I I it has to be relevant for me to sort of trot that one out. Um, because it is a very personal story, and I'll and there are people who just do not believe me when I say that this happened. And I'm like, well, that's fine. You could you can choose to not believe me, but I am speaking from my lived experience, and I'm not trying to gain anything from saying this. It's just this is what happened. It was corroborated by my entire family. Um, and I, you know, I certainly had nothing to gain from that at six years old. Um, so it's one of those things where I I try to kind of operate in a s in a s in a space of openness and and sort of see if that see and then see what happens. Because I from that moment on, I really kind of felt both connected to the concept of the spirit world. And I also felt very driven. And from that moment, I think it kind of opened a door. And from that moment on I felt very co called, compelled to write about ghosts, um, sometimes in a very just fun and whimsical way, and other times a very, very serious way. It depends on this if it's fiction or nonfiction. And I've that's been a calling my whole life. I have felt called to, as a performer, as a tour guide, and as a writer, to kind of be in conversation with the spirit world in everything I do.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

I believe you. I saw my I I saw my father's ghost as if it happened yesterday, and he was as corporeal as can be.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

And at first I was like, this just can't be happening. And then I was stunned to the point where it took me out of myself in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

And then I and I had to double check, and I knew I was experiencing something extraordinary in the moment, and then at the at the blink of another eye, gone, which further confirmed the aber aberration. And I've had similar psychic feelings, premonitions. Around the time of my mother's death, I experienced many of the same feelings and visions that you did. Yeah. So you you bring up lived experience, and the way we perceive the world each and every day, the most banal, boring of days, is astonishing because it's nothing like what reality capital R actually is. We filter everything, we're constantly looking at the world through these doors of perception. So why not? Believe in science all you want. But uh that does not preclude or create a mutually exclusive kind of arrangement with this possibility in reality that there's stuff we just don't know.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Exactly. And I do not think these things are at all antithetical. I do not think for a moment that science and the paranormal are at all incompatible. I am a person of science, I am, I am blessed by modern medicine, and and as are you know, I am alive because of modern medicine, so so is my family, um, so are my loved ones. I I and so I believe in that wholeheartedly. I also have these other things I can't explain. And the minute that you start to really look into things like theoretical physics, a lot of that stuff about phasing in and out of spaces and about matter and form and all of this stuff, it starts to sound a little bit like a ghost story. And it may be, we may find that time is in fact nonlinear and it can loop back on itself a little bit. And we are, there's so much of our brain that we're not using. And there's also a lot of stuff, like you said, that we filter out. There's a lot of things our eyes and the spectrums that we see on or the spectrums that we hear on, whether it's in in for uh um uh the the like the the sounds that are so low we can't perceive them, which yes, scientifically can lead people to feeling uneasy in a house that has maybe a boiler problem. Yes, sometimes these things can be completely uh gat gaslighting. There was a lot, you know, it's not just the term of of trying to undermine someone, but the term gaslight um and the idea of gaslighting is because people couldn't trust their senses because there the chemicals within gaslighting was making people not get enough oxygen to their brains. And so people were having visions, or they died because they blew out the little, the little uh blue flame that you're supposed to keep the pilot light going. And so then you just had carbon monoxide poisoning. Um, there's all of these things that are like that that when we think about historically about what led to various hauntings, there's all kinds of atmospheric effects. And then there's all these other things that we don't know, uh, we don't yet have a full understanding of perception, and each brain is so different. Each brain has a capacity for something that we would consider a sixth sense, but maybe it's also just hyper X, Y, and Z of R five. Um, uh my uh my partner's epileptic and he has a very sensitive light uh uh um basically he's very aware of different light conditions. He's aware of flickering light when no one else is able to see the cycling of it. Um and so he credits his ability to sometimes see an apparition as part of what how his neurology is. And and you'll find a lot of folks who are um neurovariant um that will have all kinds of different experiences where they'll be tuned into things that other people might not see or experience. Um and I think that that's kind of uh that that for me that adds just to just how cool humanity is because it's possible. All of these things are possible, and we're still trying to figure it out. So I'm somebody that doesn't need to have all the answers. And I feel I I feel bad for people who do because I I know it is uncomfortable not to have the answers, but at the same time, there I I kind of lean into the divine mystery of it. Um, and also in certain ways, it's like I'm kind of glad I don't have to know all the answers. Like I don't I don't need to know all of that now. And I try I try not to tell people what to think. I'll I'll share what I believe, but I also try to let everyone have their own belief and experiences. And, you know, in your case, and again, so I am I am sorry for your losses, I also know it's startling in those moments because even when it's a loved one, I still think one of the things that makes ghost stories kind of still startling and also terrifying in many ways, is because the people and the possible appearance of the loved one or any of these things, yes, there might be emotions attached to it, but the way in which it occurs is startling. And so I wouldn't, I don't want to ever be flippant about how I talk about the spectral. Because for a lot of people, that uncanny moment is actually deeply, yes, it is unsettling. I say uh in my Spectral City series, my Howard Win as a psychic medium, and she says she deals with ghosts every day, it's part of her job. She, you know, she's she's reporting to the NYPD. Um she she's got the ghost precinct and she has some you know ghost operatives as they try to solve weird crime in uh 1899 New York. And she says that even though she is aware that that ghosts are part of her everyday, that there's still creatures of startle and shock. And that that that she even being as accustomed to it as as she is, will still be startled and will still be unsettled. And I think that that's one of the allure, uh one of the allures to ghost lore, because it is it can be unsettling. Um, because again, we don't have those answers. And it's a way for us to health, you know, I think in a healthy manner, uh grapple with our own sense of mortality and our own fear of it. And so ghost stories can be both reassuring as the idea of something that's living on, the idea of the that the that this corporeal form is not the end necessarily. Um and it can also serve as these cautionary tales, like we're talking about. It can also serve as these markers. It can also serve as a way to make the past present, uh, a way to seek justice if there was a a spirit of somebody that was wronged. The idea that that spirit is still haunting is a reminder to maybe a sense of justice that wasn't served, and maybe, maybe in time it will be. Um, so I think that I think that ghosts can be in so many different things, depending on who needs them and when and why. So we talk a lot about the why of ghost lore in our nonfiction. I talk about kind of the heart of ghost lore in a lot of my fiction. So in in the nonfiction, we're we're taking you know a lot of different examinations of ghost lore through time and sort of comparing and contrasting. In our in the case of a haunted history of invisible women, it's hey, how do we talk about women alive and dead? What are some of the stereotypes? How do some of these stories subvert those stereotypes? How do they conform to them? In America's most gothic haunted history stranger than fiction, we're taking stories that seem like they could have been plucked right out of an Edgar Allan Poe tale, but are actual real stories. And then we say, all right, how does this perpetuate in our modern understanding and breaking things down from the lens of Gothic literature and gothic tropes that then apply to how you find a lot of common themes within our uh our ghost lore? Um, so it's all a bit we're all in conversation about all of these things.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Speaking of old New York, as a blended family, I moved into a brownstone in Park Slope in Brooklyn. And I believe the date on this structure was something like 1878 or something. It was an old, old, nice, nice brownstone. So let's talk about a haunted residence from almost the second we moved in. Weird kind of stuff is going on, and not all of it good. But you'll you might like this story. I'm watching the movie Memento with my two kids, and there's a scene in the movie where Guy Pierce, the protagonist who's moving backwards through the film because he's got amnesia. Yep. He opens up a closet and there's a guy in there with a broken nose who's all gauzed up, and he doesn't know why the guy is there, and he's got no context because he's got this memory problem. And right at that moment, we heard a boom, and my partner had fallen down a step or two and busted her nose at that very moment. So I remember hitting pause on the video. We went rushed up to see it. She's bleeding. We rush her to the emergency room, and then when we come back hours later, the still image of the broken nose with the gauze is frozen on the stream. As if we were being taunted. Welcome to this house of horrors. You have no idea the lives that were lived here and the agonies that were endured. And you know what? Welcome to the party, pal. Yeah, and and it was one of the roughest two years of my life. And as things were falling apart, the relationship, my career, I remember pacing across the creaking parquet flooring. And you love setting in your in your novels. You bring up that setting and an intricate wooden parquet flooring. They don't do that anymore. The craftsmanship, the radon gas emanating from the brick, right? And I remember just pacing back and forth and feeling that kind of presence in this place. So I am with you a hundred percent that places have character, that time and space are not absolute, that we interpret the world that we live in, and there's stuff going on. And you could say that we're making this up, but you know what? We make up reality as we live through it.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Absolutely. And you're right, like I have been very blessed, and that my experiences have been. Very kind for the most part. However, I have been in spaces just like what you're talking about where there is a negative energy or something that is part of the dynamic of what's happening in our lives that almost becomes a perpetuation of some energy that was unresolved in that space at that time. Again, that's a that was a that whole area and that whole time frame was there was a lot happening, a lot of social change was happening. And it was a really very roiling time period then. Um, and so I think that sometimes those energies kind of parallel with roiling times in our present life too, and it becomes a bit of a feedback loop in some cases. And and and I've I've definitely had to kind of have a détente with some of the uh buildings that I know cause a real effect uh on me, however, I have to talk about them because they're on my tour. Um, and I I definitely I I've I've spoken uh in in both of the nonfiction books about what structures have given me pause and where and when. Um, and and the and the kind of um boundary that I have to make. And I do encourage people who have had experiences where they do not, they're not feeling good about whatever energy or sense that they're getting to maintain their own psychic boundaries like you would with the living. If somebody is being abusive uh in your life, you need to set a boundary with them. Same thing kind of with the energy of the dead. Um, I've had to sort of tell spirits to put things back that have taken things or um tell to say draw a line in the sand of do not startle me. I acknowledge that you're here, do not startle me, and sort of be vocal about it. Um, because I I do think that there is a conversation that needs to be had. And maybe it's just because there's just a desire to be acknowledged very often for me, uh, the times when something has settled down, if it has been very, very active and annoying or or possibly negative, is to acknowledge and then draw the line. Because I think sometimes it is it is something that's seeking to be seen or to be to to be felt somehow. And and a lot of times things will settle back down once it is acknowledged. And also um those boundary when those boundaries are drawn. If it if if something persists and it starts to get more and more and more uh intense, then that is when you call a professional of some kind of whatever faith or or non-faith you might feel could come could come into your place. That is all of that is above my pay grade. So not me. But call someone you care about who has a good sense of energy, come in and do something something spiritual or or or fun or fun and funny to just sort of like you can be, you know, it's like I try not to take myself too seriously. It's like you probably do an exorcism with like a game of twister, it's just a matter of like just be intentional about it.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, and you gotta be careful too. I was in Dachau, the concentration camp outside of Munich. It's a suburb of Munich. And I was looking at a photo, and it was put in the corner of a building inside, and it depicted uh a mountain of clothes leaned against a wall in a corner. And then as I stood back, I realized that the corner I was standing in was the corner where the clothes were, and just like you mentioned, time suddenly had compressed, decades vanished, the space was the same, and I suddenly heard a humming in my ear. And it was a monotone, just a tone. It wasn't a crying or a laughing, it was just a tone. And then as I'm walking around the whole situation, it just kept steady and it didn't dissipate until I physically left. As if, again, the the connections, which are usually opaque, were becoming transparent, and my senses were tingling with the suffering, and I was reminded of the burden of history and my own sense of responsibility for not succumbing to some of the forces that led to this kind of tragedy. So there's there's stuff to be learned in all of this.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Absolutely. You do you describe a a a note, a t a tone in the air. That's exactly how I that that's a uh that is also very similar to how charged places that are literally charged with an energy of the the collected weight of human misery that was present in a space like that. Um, it does create for me a f almost a frequency that can be heard. Um for other people, it will affect senses differently if you are at all open to it in a space like that. Um I've I I've had friends who've gotten very physically ill, um, very nauseous, um, and uh and and and also just too, I mean, even that's not necessarily a spectral thing. If you if you have an open heart and you uh have empathy, you will be affected in spaces like that. You should be. And that's and that's why it's a museum. Um, because some folks do need to feel that in order to let it land. Um, some people need to experience rather than just read about a tragedy to really make that implementation like you're talking about. How can I how can I make sure I'm standing against something like this happening again? How can I be trying to be mindful of that? Because other other things are cyclical in our world. We're seeing things play out again. And it's very, very scary. Um, but that's where we can we can take a certain amount of comfort in history because there have always been people that have been standing for what is right and and and as as just as anyone knows how to be. It's all very contextual. Um, but it's in it, and it gets really overwhelming these kinds of things, these these big, big existential topics, they get really, really daunting. Um, a lot of times I, you know, especially when I'm sitting down to write a book, I think, oh gosh, there's so much I want to say. And I realize I cannot say all of it, and I just have to focus, when it's nonfiction, on the the the the building at hand and the person at hand, the the the angle I have chosen to take on this one chapter. Because trying to thread all of it through, I that's that's a that's for some other um comparative study course. Um and we're trying to be, you know, armchair academics here and and we're tour guides. We're not we're not we don't have you know doctoral degrees. Um and and we're we're trying to make sure that we're leading our audiences through through our through our stories and and with fiction too. I'm trying to, at the end of the day, have some action, have some have some adventure, have uh the the good guys uh you know win win the day and and and hopefully have some some you know food for thought along the way. Um but it's it's hard. Sometimes you get a little lost in in the weeds. And um, and so I I end up going back to character. When people ask me, like, how do you how do you you know uh break through in terms of like a r whether it's a writing, uh whether it's a writer's block, or whether it's just feeling completely daunted, um, as I often will, because again, we're talking about big things. Uh, I just go to character. I'm like, well, my character has a problem to solve, how do they solve it? That's when I'm that's when I get to lean on my acting and my performance background, is I get to be the actor who's addressing how my main character is going to go through their moment and try to make it read for the audience slash the reader.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Tell our viewers and listeners a little bit about your renaissance womanhood. You've got a lot going on. You're an actress, you're a writer. I met you through Matthew Cressel, who's also a wonderful writer. And how did that get activated? You've got books going back 15 years, more. You've got more than 40 books that I saw that are out there.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

That's a lot.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Very impressive. You're prolific, you've been doing this for a while. Where where did the spark come from? And and how do you express it in all these different ways? On the stage, with a pen, with a keyboard, and then you do your ghosting as well. Yeah, it's it's tell us about you.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

It's all about storytelling. Like I my earliest, my earliest art form was writing and performing, uh, just whether it was uh, you know, just for family, and then later on it was for small regional theaters, uh, in just like a community theater capacity, and then I went to school for theater. But all all the while in the in the background, I was writing the whole time. Um, my first one of my first professional jobs um was at the Ohio Renaissance Fair. Um so I was always interested in other time periods. Uh, another one of my other earliest jobs was at the Ohio History Center. Um, and so I I was drawn to times not of this time because I felt like I had unfinished business. I didn't understand why I was so drawn to the late 19th century until somebody explained the concept of past lives to me when I was a teenager. And I was like, oh, that's why I feel what that's why this that era and the architecture and the clothing and everything feels so familiar and and also fraught. Like there it was not, it's not a the 19th century was not an easy place to live if you were not a rich white man.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

And I would I would venture to assume the 20th as well.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Well, yeah, a lot of that too. But we but we start to have there starts to be some rights in the 20th century, starts to be some rights. Um, but it's and but again, we can see how all of those rights we're having to keep fighting for and fighting for and fighting for. And so I I I had this sense that I was kind of a creature out of time. And I thought, all right, well, I have to tell stories. Um, and I have to tell as many of them as I can and as quick as as as quickly as I can. I felt I ever since I was a kid, I felt this press like a spectral hand on my back that was pressing me to tell stories. Um, my earliest memories are of telling ghost stories to my Girl Scout troop and terrifying them. And I found a great sense of power in this, so I decided I was like theater. That's theater's the way. Um, but then I went, I I spent uh 10 years as a professional actress. I went to school for theater. I trained with the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. I was doing a lot of period classical theater. I had one year where I just was every woman in Dracula. It was really great. It was a great, the year of Dracula was a wonderful year, um, where I got to just channel one of my favorite books, right? But I got my actor's equity card and I moved to New York City. I'd been doing regional theater primarily in Minneapolis for a while, great theater town. Um, but when I got my equity card, I thought, okay, now it's time. I knew I was eventually going to hit New York City because I also knew that New York City was the capital of publishing. And here I'd been working on these novels in the background. And I thought maybe New York City can help me sort out if I can still be the jack of all trades that I want to be, or what's going to take precedence, what what ultimately is what's the thing I want most? Not that I necessarily had to always choose because I I I go back and forth. I choose all of the storytelling um venues, but you do sometimes have to focus on one versus the other, depending on your deadlines or your or your rehearsal schedule. Um and so I was at a Broadway callback, and all I could think about was the book that would become my debut novel, Strange and Beautiful. And I thought, you know, if I'm at a Broadway callback and I'm thinking about anything else, and everyone else at that Broadway callback was only thinking about that Broadway callback. And I thought, you know, that's this is telling. This is telling. And I needed something at that level. I needed something I could walk away from, like, all right, I've gotten to the Broadway callback level. Now I can walk away from this a little bit. Sort of I, you know, check that one off the bucket list of like, all right, well, I've I'm good enough to have gotten here, but I will forever regret not focusing on Miss Percy Parker and her story. And so that became my debut novel in 2009. And when I made that shift, um, I had been querying that like in the background for a really long time. And when I made the shift and started networking and going to um uh uh writers' groups meetings, attending KGB Fantastic Fiction, which is where I met Matthew Cressell, starting to sort of say, okay, here I am here as also as a novelist and kind of putting that for foot forward, garnering critique groups, uh doing uh revisions on the novel to get it to the point where I could query an agent and they did take it on. And within about a year and a half after I made that shift, I did have my first publication contract. And since then, I have I have placed my novels first and foremost, and then my theatrical world secondary. Um, and the the ghost tour guide stuff works in nicely. It's it's a very seasonal job, so I it's not it's not something that's preoccupying me all the time. So I do have these sort of cyclical periods where all right, I'm gonna focus on a show thing here, or I'm gonna focus on um uh a book thing here, whether it's a novella or um or a full-length novel, or maybe I'm gonna be a narrator for a while. So some of those, some of the 40 that you mentioned are novellas that I've narrated. Um, and so that's that's been a fun uh little other aspect of things that I like to do. So, and and it brings the performance aspect of my life back into the the the four as well. And it's a kind of a nice synergy. So yeah, a lot of it for me is just I'm a freelancer and I've been a freelancer for such a long time, and I have all these things that I love doing, and it is beautifully, and I'm very grateful, that it's all kind of been put towards the same direction, even though they are different um companies and they're different contracts and they're different time frames, all of it is very ghostly and uh gothic spectrally inclined, which is very much who I am as a person. Um I'm usually always in some kind of regalia. And when people are like, is that a costume? And if you if you get to know me, you're like, no, that's just not, that's just how she is. She just shows up in regalia, and that's just that's just it's just that past life shining through of like this is what's this is what's comfortable for me. Um and people are like, Do you have a pair of jeans? I'm like, yes. But when I was doing background work for film and television, I had I couldn't like go into work uh doing background work for you know gossip girl wearing my gothic Victorian regalia, so I had to have a pair of jeans. So the friends are like, wait, so your pair of jeans is your costume? Yes. Yes, it is. So um I I was basically trying to figure out what can I I want to dress like a Victorian widow uh uh my you know every day. What what what career path can I can I take to make that um doable? So here I am.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Well the persona fits and it works, and and it's you stylistically what I get from your prose is this whimsical horror. The way you juxtapose a a shocking happening with a very almost goofy sensibility, not always, but in a lot of your stories. That's that's my takeaway from from reading your stuff, which is you're always balancing the absurdity of life, the fantastical nature of your storytelling. It's it's meta, it's postmodern in the sense that you're very self-aware of the storytelling, and you're having fun with it, you're playing with it. So the wall comes down, it goes back up. Uh, you wink at the reader, and sometimes you wink at your own characters, which I think is cool. And as a writer myself, I have I have that sensibility, which is like, I see what she did there, and it's fun, and sometimes shocking fun, and sometimes funny shocking fun, and sometimes cringe shocking funny fun. And it's in that juxtaposition that I think you've got your own distinctive voice, which is you're hard to pin down even though you're specific in that way. There's a lot of other things infused, including a sense of historical context. There's a value-driven point of view. You do have your sense of right and wrong, and it comes through your characters and the and the stories, and their resolution or not. And I think that that's that's great. You're a very mindful writer in that way. You're not just cranking it out because cozy fantasy is trending now. You've got your own voice.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

Thank you. That's the I'm I am so honored by your words because it's it's it's it's a thing you kind of hope for as a writer to be seen and heard in this in these ways and to be read and to be uh valued in the way in all the ways that you just said, without trying to craft it. Like, you know, voice, you you know this voice is something you can't teach. You just kind of have to let it percolate, let it simmer, and let it come out and see what it looks like on the other side of it. And and it is and I am the product of everything that I have have mentioned, it's all goes in there. And I think the that that winking and the the self-awareness, I think that's where the theatricality comes in. It's like I know I'm create I'm staging this for you, the reader. And especially because I'm dealing with gothic themes, the gothic is extraordinarily self-aware. And if I'm not aware of the gothic being self-aware, then it's just gonna read like I'm trying too hard. If I don't know that I'm over the top, then it's gonna read us over the top. And you're not gonna see that metatextual thing like you talked about. Um, which, you know, it's it's all of the all of my gothic foremothers were were very aware of what they were doing and and and how um the br every each Bronte sister was writing a different metatextual narrative with ghosts through time and are and and and also the the pain and the plight of of a very, very fraught society then, um, and how different marginalizations would play out in those, in all of the in each of their respective cases. Um, and so I was just very aware that um that a lot of my favorite fiction was also pretty self-aware. One of my favorite novels is Gaston Laura's Phantom of the Opera, which is very, very aware of itself. It knows it's telling you a story that it's saying is a true story, which yes is based on a couple of things that were in fact found below the Paris Opera House. But it but but he's crafting this very self-aware, very theatrical narrative. And that was really, I imprinted really early on a lot of the very self-aware gothics. Oscar Wilde, the picture of Dorian Gray. There's there's a lot of commentary in there, there's a lot of stuff. Edgar Allan Poe, great author of at talking about this about society and snarking at it and often, and and there's some pieces of his that are really funny, um, in addition to the stuff that's absolutely harrowing. And so I think that just for me, the being somebody who's drawn to this time period as a kid with this unfinished business angle, reading books set in the 19th century that made me feel like I uh made me feel at home because of whatever unfinished business was driving this soul, um, meant that I needed to make sure that I was doing that. Okay, now here I am X amount of 100 years later. How am I still making that accessible for a modern audience with modern editorial standards that are not going to let me have a paragraph long sentence, a la Henry James? Oh my j I just went through this with my editor. Bless her, bless her patient heart. Um, uh at um Hachette. Uh I have a young adult uh novel coming out uh next February called Ravenfield Hall. And it is a young adult retelling mixing elements of Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca with Daphne de Maurier's Jamaica Inn, but setting it in 1874 on the coast of Southern Maine and bringing in actual real history of the fact that there was land pirates, much like in Jamaica Inn, uh there were land pirates along that coast of Southern Maine and bringing in a spectral ghost ship angle to uh vengeance about all of those things. And my heroine being very well aware that she is living a Bronte novel as sort of a governess character in this haunted house. Um and so and I am again very metatextual in that I've named my character Agnes, um, and she is named for Agnes Gray, and her mother said that's what I was reading when when I had you. So, um the and and she's aware that these things are playing out around her. So I think for me, if I wasn't if I wasn't paying homage, then it would probably seem like I was trying to reinvent the wheel rather than just pay homage while still doing my own thing. Because I think if I didn't, um If I wasn't explicit about these things, then it would just seem like I was trying to get one over on people. And I'm not. I'm trying to sort of say, hot, hey, here's my take on Dumouriez. Here's here's my here's my here's something I can add to this because I'm in I am inspired by my four mothers. And here's what I have to say about it, as as someone who lives in this country um in this time period, uh with a pointed discussion of uh of work working class solidarity. So there's you can you can tell my my solidarity forever that just kind of go just it's the little song in the backgrounds of all of my work.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

There's some self-referential campiness to it too, which is dress up time. We we know that we're mimicking and emulating conventional society, and in your case, 19th century conventional society, and when you infuse it with zany and horrific, narcissistic, exploitative, but also empathetic and deep characters, you get a great creative cauldron of fun. And sometimes this magic happens on screen, it's relatively rare. The last time I felt that was Poor Things, that that film. Oh, yeah, which which had you laughing and cringing simultaneously, and that's that's the good stuff, especially when it comes to gothic genre-driven drama where it's layered, it's oozing, it's this pus cafe of emotion and history and storytelling, and you can feel it in your gut. It's really filling, and sometimes it's so filling you want a barf and like a tainted cheese, you get hungry again right after, and then you just want to eat more cheese, and it's it's in a sense, this expiation that you're going through with the creator who's feeling that same mixture of agony and ecstasy that really hit home, and and it's just so so rich.

SPEAKER_04 46:29

That's the purpose of the gothic.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

Turn the pages, or you you can't you can't stop looking at it. You you you do you do one of these where you're just peering through uh nightshade, so to speak.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

Yeah, yes, thank you. I love this. I love I I love all of this because it is exactly I am I I am in love with the really lush, rich, sumptuous nature of the Gothic, but it is always on that perilous precipice where just when you think you're safe, um something else is going to threaten that safety. Um and and it's usually very dramatic and it's usually very dizzying. Um, you know, I love that the gothic is always having you test your senses. And as someone who likes to be a very sensory writer, um, that's kind of my my my my favorite moment to sort of walk you through this fever dream and and see how just how dangerous the footing can and can't be, while still allowing like the the the what what I want for my books is for them to be a cathartic experience and for people to be able to feel deeply, but also though to be very to know that they are safe and that there are certain things that I will not do in my books. I do not do stuff for shock value alone. I will have a very, very grim situation, but I try not to put my female-coded characters in positions of particular violences because I think that's overdone. Um, I try to make sure that I'm not doubling down on uh traumas for marginalized people. Um I try to showcase that there are threats for everyone, but I try to be aware of everything in sort of their measure of not making anyone helpless uh in their situations. I do have a big cast of characters and it's diverse because my my stories take place in cities and they have always been diverse. And so it is it is it it for people to have a completely homogenous city is uh it is not that's not historically accurate. Um and so I make sure I do make sure I hire sensitivity readers for things outside of my uh experience, um and and and try to kind of create a Scooby gang of of characters from all different backgrounds. They each have their own gift and perspective to bring to the table. And because I j I think that's the only way anything, any problem gets solved. Um and and usually, I mean I'll I I do very often, I mean, I do have uh a a hero hero and a heroine. So sometimes it does come down to the two people at the center of it, and sometimes it's a romantic and sometimes it's not, and sometimes it's just purely a purely a story of a group of friends who care about each other who save the day. And it does not always have to have a a romance in it. Many of my books do, but not all of them do. Um, or if there is something, it's in the background and it's not uh the main uh uh the main crux of of the goings on. Um and some of that just depends on which house has bought it and whether or not they were buying wanted to be buying a romance or whether they wanted to be buying just a fantasy. Um, and because I like both. And so sort of it's sometimes it's been like, hey, what do you want to what hey editor, I like working with you. What do you want to work on? And so that's actually how Ravenfield Hall happened, um, was because the editor said, I would like to do this, and I thought I would like to do this, and we sort of built a book we wanted to work on together, which was which was a delight because we were both excited about the gothic themes and how what could what could we make that uh how could we create that and craft that for a modern teen audience um while still letting it be a period piece. And uh yeah, you spoke to something about the the cross-genre nature of my work. And that is one of the reasons why I think I have not broken out bigger as a writer, is because it is hard to pin me down. And and every editor and every agent of mine has had the same difficulty of where do we shelve you, how do we shelve you because you are five genres in a trench coat. And and I don't and I've tried to, I've tried to to to shift and just do one thing and just be like, no, I'm just gonna write a straight up thriller or a straight up mystery or whatever. And I I cannot. I've tried, you can ask my agent. I've I tried to just do a modern romantic suspense story, a contemporary romantic suspense story.

SPEAKER_04 51:09

And then the the editor looking at it was like, this is just this is just a thinly veiled gothic novel. Just like, you know, no, it's not this is not what we need for our line. And and it's I so I kind of I've tried.

SPEAKER_03 51:25

I want to be, I'm I'm interested in like I I I've I uh have tried writing a dystopia. And I I have written uh slight dystopia. One of my novellas is a is a parallel uh steampunk and modern dystopia, um, or a futuristic dystopia rather. Um, you know, so I've tried I've experimented here or there, but any any of the things that's gotten traction for me has just been what is most authentic to myself, which is five gas lamp fantasy-esque genres in a trench coat, and you know, you're gonna get a little bit of each. And and then the nonfiction is really where that's where my best sales numbers have been, to tell you the truth. And I'm grateful for it because that has helped fuel everything else. Um, you know, hitting the bestseller list, the USA Today bestseller list with America's Most Gothic, um, was was a real feather in Andrea and I's cap. And um, and I'm really, really, really grateful as somebody who like wants to be known as both a goth and gothic novelist, um, that that hitting with that title felt like I was it felt like the universe was taking care of me in that moment of like, okay, this is good, this is good for your for your brand, as it were. Not that I not that I need it to be branded necessarily, but there is, considering that it's so hard to print down my genres, pointing, pointing in at least the gothic direction has been helpful for both uh the industry and for me connecting to readers.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

I wear the same trench coat. So in addition to bald podcasting, I write to, and then I I'm wearing a trench coat, and then I flash, and out pops hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, humor, historical fiction, social commentary, a love story among zoomers, the history of crypto and quantum mechanics, and it's fast. So I'm shifting gears and and I'm just throwing it down. And even Amazon bumps me in genre. So I put it in as hard science fiction, and then they move they move me to fantasy, which I guess is this bucket where we don't know what the hell this is, but we gotta put it somewhere. And it makes it very difficult for people to even understand my intent. Right. Because because they're not used to this kaleidoscopic explosion of just storytelling. Yeah, I got some Douglas Adams, and I've got some William Gibson and some Thomas Pynchon and some Hunter S. Thompson. But even that trivializes when when I talk to writers, I don't like to pigeonhole them. You sound just like Ray Bradbury meets John Updike. And they're like, get the fuck out of here with that. And they're right, which is we want to be unique, we want our own voice. And if you're a good writer, you got your own voice. But to your point, you and I have a voice that doesn't like to settle into a trope because we're constrained. I got a lot on my mind, and this character and this story is very compelling. And I just heard the news, and our world is on fire, led by mad men, and I'm channeling that bullshit into my story. I'm not gonna write some tale that's utterly devoid of social and ethical context. There's a lot going on, and I want the story to be reflective of how I feel in this moment. So deal with it.

SPEAKER_03 55:11

Absolutely. It's all art is political, and it always has been, and you can't if if you if you if you are not writing, if you are actively not trying to engage, that too is a political choice. So that too is politics. And and there's no we're all informed by everything that's happening around us all the time. And and I I I'm you you are the perfect person to kind of break this down because of your own cross-genre nature. Yeah, I was like, I I was gonna ask you, I was like, how would you what like how do you because of all the different subgenres that you do, when you pitch your own work, what are the what are the you can't pin it down to one word, and you can't necessarily even pin it down to one genre term. So what do you tend to say? Because you gotta have at least a full sentence, right? How do you tend to pitch your comments?

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Several elevator pitches. I've been to several of the book selling fairs, LA Comic Con, Pasadena Comic-Con, LA Festival of Books, which by the way was the best, because you've got readers. Yeah, if you go to a con, people are doing cosplay, and and they don't really give a shit about a novel. Generally, I remember just like science fiction fantasy, you guys like it, and they're like they they stream it, they don't read it. So the LA Festival of Books was terrific, and I adjusted the elevator pitch based on what I was sensing the reader was looking for. So I've got a black and white kitty cat in a bathtub on the cover, and some of them were just drawn, they thought it was a cat story. So I talked about Bernie Sanders and Sandy Burns, the mirror kitty cats in the multiverse in the story, and they like that. And there's a story of zoomers, like the battle between men and women is acute right now. Young women are doing very well, and young men are in cells in a basement, vaping and playing video games, and I I focus on that struggle and that dichotomy as a theme in my book. And then I have a transcendent Boltzmann brain, which is this self-generated consciousness in a dying universe that gets the keys to reality. So if I see someone's a nerd, I talk about the Alice character who is manipulating reality, the ultimate magician. And if they're a zoomer and they seem to be interested in their in their kind, then I'll adjust accordingly. But that's actually the strength of not playing to a genre or a trope where we're disadvantaged a lot of the time because people want to know what they're getting, but at the same time, it gives us flexibility to morph into what folks might like and draw them in that way. And your books lend themselves very much to that because you've got you've got saucy romance, you've got horror, you've got intrigue, you've got mystery, you've got crime.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

And it's interesting, the the the main thing that becomes a blockade for some people is because most of my most of my books are historical. So if if if that that can be a deal breaker for some readers, it's like you have to be willing to to to see that this is a historic setting. And I and I don't I don't write with the density of the Victorians, but I but I write with a I write with a complexity that makes you feel like it can be from the Victorian era. I have made a sort of a a modern compromise about what is uh is and then this is always a discussion with my editors about, all right, um, how can I sort of declutter my prose uh from a Victorian sensibility of, you know, Dickensian paid by the word kind of situation. Um that's not what I'm going for. Um but I am trying to go for a lush um and and uh hopefully high vocabulary kind of of book that's gonna make you feel like you are in a drawing room in the 19th century. Um uh to to give that sense of it is a different language, it is a different time period and usage of turns of phrase. Um and then everything else is sort of like, okay, as long as you're cool with historical, then you get every other I I will touch down in just about every other genre that exists uh within that historical context. And so I also will get the get a read on people's do you like there to be a little bit more romance forward in it? Okay, great. Then I'm gonna I'm gonna shift you towards uh Strange and Beautiful and the Spectral City. Um even and and if you like a little bit more grittier, a little darker and grittier, big cast of characters, big, you know, inner international intrigue, then I describe my Eternophiles as Victorian X-files. And so I'll I'll have little turns of phrase that I'll use, you know, Victorian Ghostbusters, um, Victorian X-Files, you know, uh a um, you know, my my little Victorian Ghost precinct. Um and coming up, I've got, you know, just a straightforward um young adult gothic uh with romance right at the fore as well. So um I'll ask about what, but because I am writing for young adults and adults, I am also very clear that I keep to a PG 13 content range in my work because I have nine-year-olds reading my work and also adults, and you know, there is I I love the idea that a grandmother and a granddaughter could be reading my book and see characters that represent both of them in there because I also have a wide range of ages in my books. But I do keep to that PG 13 content, but both because my voice suits best that way, um, and also because I don't want there to be, because I am writing under my real name, and I'm I'm writing uh for an audience that I want to be really, really broad, and I don't want there to be something that is jumping into content that one of my young readers would feel really uncomfortable with, or or a caretaker would feel really uncomfortable with, while still trying to make sure I'm not talking down to anybody in my work. But I I that that kind of PG 13 range helps me to to whether where everything else is really, really broad brush, I'm able to kind of feel like my voice already self-constrains into that time in into that kind of range. I don't feel constrained by it. Um I feel like I can say all kinds of really, really sweet and sensual things or actually really terrifying things. Um and I I myself kind of like some of the some of the really true either spicy stuff or the really true horrific stuff. For me, I like to that to be off the page. Um and like allow for there to be a little bit of room for imagination from from the reader. So but also for the people that want the really, really, really um explicit stuff, they then that they're not gonna find that in my work. Um, or if they want it to be just, you know, hot of blood and high slasher content, that's I love horror and that, but that's just not gonna be my that's not gonna be my writing. My writing is going to have a fairly hopeful, happy ending because that's where I want my brain to go. Not that I'm not gonna take people through horror in the meantime. Some of my short stories are s are are pure horror only because I'm I'm kind of leaving um the reader with um kind of an unsettling consequence for something that's happened. I actually realized that my all of my short fiction is all pretty much straight up genre horror, uh, because it's sort of like a becoming. It's usually like, you know, this is like coming of age stories. Well, I feel like my short stories are coming of monster stories, where something happens and then my characters have become something else, usually something otherworldly, generally speaking, to take vengeance, and usually they're right.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

So so they're very good. My horror stories are very cathartic because it's still there is still like it's a it's sort of a happy ending if for for for the person enacting the vengeance.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:32

Very Edgar Allan Poe-esque, and in and in true post-Elizabethan Victorian style, you make readers work a little bit, and you don't and you you're not overt. You you leave things to the imagination, which heightens the drama and the suspense and gets your readers more involved too, without just giving away the goose. So I think that's a good technique. And you indulge a little bit. I just wrote uh an essay that I threw up on Substack, and people got annoyed. I know I I triggered a good writer friend of mine, and she was like, You're attacking me. And I go, I'm not attacking you, I'm just I'm I'm I'm expressing my opinion. So the the essay was called Show, don't tell. Yeah, I tell you to kiss my ass. And the and the point I'm making is we're living in an era of workshopped fiction where you can almost see the the the annotation from the editor. Now there's developmental editors, and it's like, can you externalize this a little bit more? Everything is cinematic, everything is behavioral. We're not allowed to set up the soapbox and pontificate, we're not allowed to introduce historical elements, we're not allowed to indulge our values and just let the reader have it. And I just don't buy it. I think that clearly their access is in the other direction, and show and don't tell is a great general piece of advice, especially for writers who are learning the craft. But I I say you let it loose, you gotta just do what feels right, and you do that to a certain extent. I think your prose is tight. You often not so much pontificate, but your point of view is crystal clear about this historical situation. The characters are within it. You're letting the bad guys have it. There's a lot of satisfaction, and your your heroes, often heroines, are victorious in a way that reinforces, I think, your point of view about what constitutes a true and just and fair society. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:01

Absolutely. And I do I think where I think where the show don't tell thing is helpful is I I I do I do a lot of telling. I just try to have the telling happen in a moment that's still active. And um I found especially uh because I was trying to make sure that my young adults, so I just went through this exact thing with having a back and forth with an editor about okay, wanting to make sure I am making the point about this working class woman who is struggling. She's a she's 18 years old and she is she is an adult before she's ready to be uh kind of thrown into the deep end of a situation, um, uh trying to kind of solve a problem with another young man who has also been put into a position of responsibility um and and and you know thrown right into the deep end of adulthood also, um, needing to be a caregiver. Um uh and and and a lot writing, a lot of pressure writing on these young people um when they feel like all the adults have failed them. And I feel like that's kind of uh very relevant for a lot of our society right now, and especially considering that, you know, both of these characters um fell victim to predatory um uh predatory practices um uh of of um of regul uh la a lack of regulation in the stock market. So I have this set in uh a year after the the great financial panic of 1873. So in 1874, there's enormous there's an enormous recession. Um and uh so it it was kind of rivaled the Great Depression and it was really, really, really devastating for all kinds of folks across class. And um, so there's there's these two people who have who are under the thumb of of really nasty characters and or who have lost everything, who are just trying to literally survive. And um, and so I have to kind of give a sense of why the intensity is there, why the dislike of these of the people who are perpetuating the problem is so visceral for the characters. I have to talk about why. So there's gonna be a little bit of telling there, but but having it come up in moments when they're confronted by this person who's representing everything that they hate, um, and everything, you know, greed incarnate is standing in front of them and they're gonna have some thoughts about it, and it's not the appropriate time to push back just then. So they have to go vent about it. Um, so I think that you know, those moments to tell in the into interior narrative, I'm just trying to make sure that those are very active. Also that if I were playing that on stage, I you you as the audience wouldn't necessarily know what my internal monologue was, but I would need to make that clear in my expression, turning away, letting the audience see the something that the character couldn't see. I'm just gonna make that textual in my story. But it's but that's still an active point. So that that for me is where I try to make sure I don't I try to make sure that the soapbox is is is on wheels and is going in the same direction as the action.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:10

100%. It's gotta be contextually relevant and it and it's infused with the action and augments it. Right. If it acts in isolation, then the the train is left to track. Right. So you've got a momentum as a storyteller, and it's immersive. And if you break the continuity to pontificate and to bloviate, you're blowing it. But if if if if the rant is irrelevant and it further reinforces the mood and zeitgeist of that moment in the narrative, I think you're okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:50

I don't I tend to make a lot of those moments where I really need to say something. I tend to make that dialogue where the character is about to burst and they just have to say it. Because if they're saying it, then that in and of itself is an active choice. Um, rather than it being an the me, the narrator, making sure that you understand the point of this cross-class consciousness that I would like for you to, you know, yeah, no, no, no. Like make that make that very real for the character because they're thinking about it, because they're the one that's under they're the one that's under the thumb of of this of this greedy person who's trying to take further advantage of of someone's precarious situation. So, you know, I feel I feel like uh um the I I I like the discussion about these kinds of things, about where and when um for sort of the show don't tell, because I really do like to be a lush, very um, very big wordy prose kind of person. But I don't want that to get in the way. So I like having these discussions because it does always make me make sure I'm checking to make sure that when I do go into a a very atmospheric passage, that it's one that I've kind of earned, um, or that it's a moment where we can take a moment to breathe and that the pacing allows it in those moments because I get so a lot of times I'll get so focused on character that I will lose sight of my pacing if I'm not careful. So that's one of the things that I always have to, I think that's just an actor thing, where it's like I'm in actor mode and I'm not stepping back and being a director. And I think that I'm always in conversation with the various theatrical parts of my uh life and career um whenever I'm sitting down with a book. And so the more I can be shifting out of actor mode and into more staging mode and director mode, that's actually when I can be doing better work on the story as a whole and hopefully uh can address some things before my editor comes to it. But then sometimes I just I can't, I can't see the forest for the trees, and that's why I am very grateful to have editors along the way. I I would, I, I couldn't imagine my career without the incredible editors that I've had along the way, seeing the potential and what I do and just trying to hone it and just trying to make sure it's it is hitting the best as possible. When we got a chance to do the revised version of Strange and Beautiful, I was so grateful because this, these were my first books. I had made a lot of mistakes in my first book. So when Tor picked up the backlist of Strange and Beautiful after Dorchester Publishing had gone bankrupt, this was, you know, early the speaking of another financial crisis, right? 2008 hit, and uh then there was a whole lot of disruptions in the industry, as in the publication industry, as we as you know. Um, and yeah, and here I was. I just gotten, you know, I just started my career and I'd been a Barnes and Noble bestseller and I was in a four print runs and like right away, and you know, like tens of thousands of copies of my first little mass market paperback, and then suddenly I was out of print. And and suddenly it was like, and you know, $60,000 I will never see later or something. I mean, I I actually don't exactly know how much the royalties I will never see um, you know, were because those statements never came. Um, but but I stayed in it, I stayed in the business. I was not gonna let someone else's financial mistakes, you know, take out, take away my joy. So I I powered through. And then when Tor bought Eternophiles, they were like, hey, whatever happened to Strange and Beautiful, I was like, I well, I have the rights. Would you like them? And and they and they republished. And that was wonderful because it was, they kind of pitched it as this is a foundation work of Gas Lamp Fantasy, because that did come out in 2009, the same year as uh Gail Carriger's uh Paraself Protectorate um uh series. And there's a bunch of other like Gas Lamp Fantasy that started to kind of really get its get going around that time period. And I was I was in some good, really good company there. So um I felt really lucky that I got a chance to go back and re-edit um alongside uh Melissa Singer, who was the editor who picked that up at the time. And then we got a chance to finish the series, which had never been finished prior. So it's I've had these wonderful kinds of moments where the career has been like this, but it will sometimes dovetail and come back on itself to come back to something. And I feel I even though I've had a lot of of setbacks uh career-wise, just because the industry is full of unpredictable things, I've also just tried to stay with it and uh maintain my connections and maintain a sense of good spirit about all of it. And I'm just grateful to still be published. I don't take that for granted for a second because it's a rough industry.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:17

Very rough. And you mentioned a critical core component of it, which is the the human networking. I had uh another writer said it's not networking, Mookie, it's making friends. I had uh C C S E CUNY on the podcast, and she she's great, she's just effervescing with energy and enthusiasm. And go, so I go out there, Mookie, and I make friends, and I'm like, you go, girl, that is awesome, because she is just effervescing, and she participates in writers' clubs, she goes to ReaderCon, and uh she's engaged, and it sounds like you have a very good social network of other writers and agents and editors, and you're living the dream, but but it's not on an island. And I think that's that's important for especially up-and-coming writers to know that it's not like you're Dostoevsky toiling in the cold basement, and then you write a book, you sell it, then you you go gambling and whoring, and then you're destitute again, and then you write another book, rinse, repeat. There, there's a process here, there's uh a community, and you're wired into it, which is cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

Absolutely. And it's it's definitely one of those things where if you want people to show up for you, you do need to show up for them. And so it it is one of those things where um making sure that you are also just genuinely uh you it doesn't mean you have to be genuine friends and and full, full besties with everybody that you meet in the industry. It's not possible nobody has time for that. Um, but being genuine with people and genuinely interested in what other people are doing, um, and being supportive in the way that you would want to be supportive. Um and then just making sure that like you are operating with um with a certain sense of generosity uh rather than a skepticism about, you know, I've I've I've had experiences where other authors have been jealous of me uh for this, that, or the other. And that's just not a good vibe. I mean, I understand it's part of the industry, but it's not good to sit with, and it does not create good lasting relationships if that's somewhere in there, someone trying to kind of get one over on somebody or just trying to be use the person as a stepping stone or any of those kinds of things, you know, just as long as you're being a community member lifting everyone up, I do believe in the rising tide floats all boats kind of situation. Um, and I and I won't overextend myself if I can't. If I if someone's asking me to blurb a book, like right now I'm at my blurb capacity. Everyone, I I have, I have done as many blurbs as I can do this year, and I'm I am over overbooked on that. So I will say, I'm so sorry, I can't this year um, you know, check in with me uh in a future for a future project. Because I don't want to overcommit or over-promise. And so I think that's another thing, too, is just for folks who are really eager, yes, but just know your own limits and make sure you are not um over-promising uh so that you can meet make meet and make your deadlines. Um, because, you know, hard work will will out. Um, and so one of the reasons why I have had good editorial um relationships is because I do work hard and I do always turn my stuff in on time. Obviously, there's stuff that's like, you know, life can happen and things like that, and and industry schedules change too, and that's certainly been the case. Um uh, but I think as as as much as you know, we can be seen as people who are um uh who are good to work with, who are are fun to work with, who do understand that we there's a whole lot of stuff that is out of an editor's control, so can be understanding and empathetic to their situation. Editors are really under the gun right now, they're overworked, they're underpaid. It's a very stressful situation. A lot of the editorial force has been laid off. So having an empathy for that too, even though it's our work that's on the line and we're we're emotional about it too, knowing that like at the end of the day, there's another human being on the other side of that keyboard who is going to be reading your stressed-out email. Um, and that's, you know, uh agents are great in kind of mitigating that too. Um, and so so having a good relationship with an agent who can kind of be your intercessor in the stressful things is very important too. But I I think, you know, going into this knowing that we're not, we're not at odds. What is at odds is um the the forces that are trying to make us feel irrelevant right now in, you know, and and and there's a lot of disdain for the arts that has been very painfully apparent in a lot of the discussions of of of whether it's tech rows or whether it's you know, or just in general, just politics not valuing art either. Um, and that's that's a hard thing to have your work be devalued. Um, and uh, you know, I'm I I had a lot of my works stolen by anthropic, like the rest of my colleagues. Um so you know We all we all got ripped off.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:24

We all got ripped off, and we're mad about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

Everything got Pac-Manned into the large language model.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:30

Waka, wacko, wacko, wacko, wacko, and we're mad, and we're mad about it, and we are and we're justifiably mad about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:38

But but at the same time, um the we can we can be aware of all of these things that are making our our lives more difficult, um, and and not helping the planet or each other uh by by all of that greed, but I cannot let them steal my joy. That's been a that's been a consistent conversation I've been having with everyone, with my editor, with my agent, with everyone in publishing, is I'm not gonna let anyone steal my joy. I'm not gonna let anyone steal my love of writing. Um, they they stole my works, but to train their bullshit, but um they're not they're not gonna steal my joy or my or my voice or my creativity, because you cannot do you cannot replicate that. You cannot replicate. Folks can plagiarize, but they cannot replicate. Um, and so I feel like that's one of the things I don't want artists to feel like they need to do is like what you were saying earlier, which is to sort of write by committee, because that's gonna start to sound like it's an output from a large language model. And that's no, be be weird. Be be weird, be unique. Um no know that you're still structurally gonna have to attend to all the things that make a good novel. Um, you're still gonna have to have pacing. You're still gonna like any of the things that we were just talking about of like, yes, by all means. Sometimes you're gonna, sometimes you get to tell. Sometimes you just get to do that. Um, and deploy it as needed, but deploy it carefully. Um, I don't think there's any one hard and fast rule about anything, as long as there is sort of a moderation of, okay, well, I'm gonna let myself indulge in this sequence right here. I know it is a little wordy, and I know we're pausing here, maybe a little longer than is necessary, but no, I'm I'm actually gonna push back against editorial saying this is taking a little long. And I'm like, no, I like, I like this one, but I pick my battles. I pick my battles because you can't do that about everything. Because for the most part, my editors are always right. I'll just I'll allow myself a couple of moments where I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm being I'm being indulgent right here. And I know that I'm being indulgent, but I'm choosing to be indulgent right here because I do think that sometimes we need to make sure we do hold on to what is uniquely ours. Um right now publishing is very afraid of rocking boats, and I understand that, but at the same time, I don't I want to make sure I'm still really uh staying true to my voice as best as possible. Not that I am not that it's the be all and the end all, but um but finding that right balance of what sits right with me. Um what's versus what is what do I feel now it's become something else. And if it's become something else, then I need to bring it back towards what still feels like it's me.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:26

We could fight the AI by being as human as possible, and what is humanity? We're irrational, we're impulsive, we could be shitty to each other, just like you're describing. We're jealous, envious. We we swim in these contradictions, and that's awesome. So F F U GPT, you're a matrix math-driven language model. There's zero sentience or soul or self-awareness, at least not yet. The architecture probably doesn't even allow it. So let's stop fooling ourselves and stop acting like this homogeneous army of mediocrity that's obeying all the rules all the time. Can't do this, can't do that. The greatest artists learn the rules, honor them like a pro, and then break them like a true artist if you know what you're doing. And then there's the the cohabitation, there's the courtesy of a community. Sam Robb is another author I had a couple weeks ago. He's with Recontour Press. Now he's jumped over to the military sci-fi people, and he's done the one of the first fantasy books for Celine Press. That's a newer, a newer outfit. And he posted on Substack a few rules of engagement because he does a lot of editing work. He's he wears both hats. He's an editor and a writer. He goes, Why is your manuscript rejected? So so don't take it personal right away. And he's got a few reasons. Reason number one, it really does suck. It's like put put it through a spell check, get your grammar right, it's a mess. Learn how to write. Rule number two is you just wrote this splatter vampire horror comedy, and you sent it to a cozy romance publisher.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:37

Why sabotage yourself by not reading the submission guidelines?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:40

Not bothering or giving a shit who you're throwing your stuff at. Now, I'm the number two guy. I do that. So I restacked Sam's little advice sheet and I go, hey, I'm number two. I just had an idea for a spin-off prequel to my science fiction extravaganza. I bang out the plot summary in three chapters, so I'm playing by the rules in the industry, and then I just blast it to 20 people indiscriminately publishers, editors, everybody. I obviously get 20 different reactions, but I'm the number two guy, which is like what do you think? And the reactions have been proportionally uh diverse and uh and eccentric, but but I like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:37

Just you're an agent of chaos. No, my my agent would never let that, she would never, she would never okay that.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:48

Oh I know that's why that's why I bring it up. I'm not advocating this as a as a contrarian best practice, it's just not a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:57

I just think it, but I also think it's hilarious that you did it.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:00

At least now.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:02

I and and honestly, like that's the other thing too. It's like the folks are still gonna shoot their shot, and that is and if that works for you, kudos. And you get to be the except you get to be the exception to that rule next time you talk to him.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:16

If if if that does go forward, it can be you know there always are exceptions to rules, but yeah, and and retroactively famous people knew all along that everything they did was genius. Someone asked Rosie, how how come how come you were a DJ before you became a world famous actress? And go, what can what kind of stupid question is that? Right. I had to pay the rent. I got a job, I was a DJ. Sam Jackson did puppet theater in Central Park. Yep. Right? Why? Because he knew that he would be uh a world famous actor. No, it's just you do what you do and then see what happens.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:00

That's yeah, that's kind of been my strategy of just sort of like following where things lead. And a lot of times, as long as it's something that you feel that you want to be doing, I've I've I've led both with needs must, but also here's where I want to be going. Um and even if it's not the end step, at least it's towards that next step. Um, I I realized that um because of a change in the publication schedule, um, Ravenfield Hall originally when it was bought, it was supposed to come out this fall. And then it got moved to February of 2027, which meant I didn't have a fall release. And I try to have, I mean, you noted I've I've got a bunch of things out. I try to have something out every year if possible. Now the nonfiction takes so much research and so much time to build. So that that slows things down if it's a nonfiction set of years. But in terms of the fiction, I try to have a fiction out every year if possible. In this case, I won't have a fiction, not a full length. I'll have Some shorts, but um a full-length fiction won't be out this year. So I've thought, okay, well, what is something that I can control timing-wise? So I've been drafting a one-woman show about Victorian spiritualism that I hope to have drafted and at least try to have uh at some kind of first performance by the fall. Um, dep again, sometimes depending on schedules, because I'm spinning about nine different plates and we'll sort of see what needs precedence. But um, but I've been hoping to have this show about Victorian spiritualism where I would be a spiritualist talking about the movement of the 19th century uh obsession with talking to the dead, and then the idea of channeling a few famous women of history in this sort of 45-minute presentation where it would be sort of a performative lecture about the 19th century seance movement and why it was important to women's rights, and then trot out a few interesting women of history in a little trance-like state and sort of get a chance to, you know, do that in a performative way that could be fun. Um, and then have a little bit of room for talk back about what is what are we, as we are here in this modern era, what can we be, what can we be tapping into from the past to inspire us about what's what to go how to go forward. Um, and so that's something that I can control in the midst of other other things. Um, but there's I really like deadlines and I like deadlines that are sort of given to me from publishing houses or from theater companies or something like that. So self doing the self appointed deadline stuff and self-producing is a little bit harder for me. Um, but I'm trying to, but I've been talking about it very publicly as sort of a um accountability practice.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:42

I do that too. I boviate about stuff I'm gonna do, and I'm like, oh shit, I just told everybody that I'm almost done. Now I gotta finish this up. Yeah, deadlines are good too. I saw Margaret Atwood give give a talk. She did the she did the circuit. And the point she kept repeating was deadline, deadline, deadline. Writers need a deadline. If you're just floating in space, woo-hoo, you end up like Douglas Adams, frankly, the hitchhiker's guy guy, where you're writing garbage like Dirk Gentley's holistic detective agency, because you've got no you've got no accountability. Everyone thinks you're a genius, you're held up to high expectations. You got a bunch of money, more money than you had before. They're making movies of your stuff, and uh, and you look at the page and the keyboard, and all life has been sucked out of you because you're you're just not accountable anymore. I think we all need a whip in a chair in in some way. We need that that fire under our ass to keep us driven and motivated and accountable.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:52

And it's not that we don't love what we do, it's just that a lot of times for for me, I look I love what I do, but my brain is very nonlinear. So it just needs it needs some kind of external tether to make sure that I then have some kind of executive function that kicks in at some point to get something done. Because again, it's not like I don't love what I do, but I I really enjoy taking very long percolating times for things, very long, you know, brain soaks in in given projects. Um, and also there's a lot of research time. But I, especially with the various uh things that I have going and the things that I know are gonna come out, I'm gonna have three releases next year. So all of which are in various stages of editorial. Um it I'll blink and then a couple of months will go by. You're like, wait, what did I do? Oh, well, you were doing developmental edits on this and then uh other edits on this, and then other, you know, exploratory uh conversations and and 10 bajillion emails. Um, and and then suddenly you're like, you just the the the business of writing does take so much time. Um, just the the the the the ducks in a row with all of that, let alone going on sort of a self-appointed book tour or things like that. I do a lot of events because I find that the type of thing that I do, um, people are more responsive when I'm talking about my work. Um yeah, I'm blessed with really beautiful book covers, but sometimes people need me to talk about what I'm doing for them to understand what I'm doing because of that cross-genre nature.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:28

Tell me a little bit about this uh this dual creativity that you have. And the reason that I want to explore it for just a little bit is one of my favorite books on writing is David Mammoth's On Directing Film. And it it it localizes everything into the scene, and he takes a very show-don't tell approach, but it really moved me and it motivated me, and it taught me what's important in storytelling. And you brought up your performance, your histrionics, your acting, and now you're doing this show, and I think that that juxtaposition between writing stories, prose, and acting, the line between a screenplay, a play, and a book is something that's really beneficial to storytellers, being able to shift gears in those modalities. And that way you know the little yellow or red light goes off if you're being violative to your own principle, methodology, and practice. To your point you made earlier, that uh this is just too much or too little, because uh on stage everything is seen, there's no internal action, and that's a great perspective to have.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:01

It's been really helpful also in the nonfiction versus the fiction. It's a different part of my brain, but the the nonfiction uh chapters, um, and Andrea and I trade off on chapters. There's a few things we will co-write, but we can spread more ground and cover more ground and get to more stories if we dive in deep separately. Um, and then and then kind of uh editorially, thankfully, our editor will stitch stitches things all together in a really nice way structurally. Um and the the tour guide part of me and the nonfiction part of me is always in concert, it's always in dialogue with itself. But it's also like I I'm almost a director when I'm doing the nonfiction. Um, and then I am I am inserting in as much of myself it's you know, I'm talking in first person about why am I draw why am I personally drawn to this particular story? Because I I do think in nonfiction, especially in narrative nonfiction, you have to have a point of view about it. So we're just very honest about our own personal point of view in this. Um, the the American Most Gothic is a is even more personal than the first book. Um and that being able though to shift, knowing that now, okay, now I've told you why it's important to me. Um, and here's the players on the stage, then setting the scene of now here's actually the ghost story, and here's what I find most fascinating, or you know, and and and throwing in a few choice spectacular details that have been, you know, uh uh associated with a historic property or a person through time. Um the knowing when to kind of use what tool. Um, and and but trying not to overthink it either too. Like I a lot of a lot of what I'm doing and shifting between gear, shifting gears between one project to the next, a lot of it's just like instinct at this point. Um, and all of it's stuff that I care about. So it's like a lot of times I'm just like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm leading in my heart. And and structurally I'll make sure I I can can can uh futz with it later. Um But the the fiction side of me, I get to just I get to really go into the drink. I really get to go underwater in in in fiction. Um and and then but I but I use kind of a nonfiction brain when I'm looking at it, uh, especially if I'm uh uh dealing implementing editorial notes. Um that's when I can kind of so the when to be in the headspace of the character um or or the atmosphere of what you're trying to evoke um in in nonfiction, you still have to set the scene. You still have to make the reader feel like they're there in whatever place you're trying to describe. Um, especially since we're we're talking about sp very specific locations with very specific looks to them. Um so it's uh it's there's a lot of there's quite a switchboard up here. Um and I and most of the buttons are labeled. Um most of it like it looks like my brain looks like a a theater. It has it has like a control board, there's a like a fly rail, you know, there's in and things are things are going up and coming down and backstage all the lights. It's backstage, yeah. It's it's it's it's just it's just as it's uh all all the brains a stage.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:29

And that juxtaposition is is useful, it's a shift in perspective, and this goes back to your genre busting approach too, where you're changing gears and you're also changing modalities and approaches between stage, screen, brose, and it's self-reinforcing and self-disciplining. So one call one calls bullshit on the other.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:55

It does, it does, absolutely. When one of my characters is getting way too dramatic for their own good, uh my other characters will call them out on it. Um, yeah, especially Strange of Beautiful is a great case in point because I have a group of Ghostbusters who is who are led by a very bombastic, brooding gothic hero. And who who the heroine finds absolutely magnificent, and he and he is, um, but but his colleagues will make sure that if he gets too if he gets too much, if it's just too overbearing, they will make sure that they they cut him down to size. Um and I think that that just makes for a fun dynamic. Um, and that way it's not that way I am aware that everyone's gonna have their limit with any one of these characters. Um, because it's just you're not we're not always on stage 24-7 every m every moment of the day. So um, and I want to make sure that the reader can take a breath as well and not feel like they have to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:59

You're you're you're very generous. I think if if I err on the side of anything that's uh not giving the reader too much of a break, which is uh pedal pedal to the metal. I also have an anti-hero who's this reprehensible exhibitionist, narcissist, drug addicted, Gen Z hustler. And and I think he's lovable in his own way, but I let him have it. I wrote and rewrote my three lines to be as unflattering to my character as possible, and I just had a blast in insulting my own protagonist, and I think that acts as a kind of refreshing counterpoint where he's involved in all of these despicable exploits, and I'm reminding the reader that yeah, he really is that bad. I think that that veneer of descriptive miasma could be entertaining in its its own way. So I think experimentation is good, and I think pushing the envelope is good, but to your point, it's a delicate equilibrium that takes us full circle to the these boundaries between the living and the dead, between stage and prose, between one genre and another, and between living the life of a writer and a business person. It's the dance.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:37

Yeah, I'm I'm a very liminal being, and I'm I I have to kind of stand on a threshold every day and sort of see what room or corridor I'm walking into. Um, and then going back to that, that that my my state at rest is at that threshold. Um, and it and uh sometimes where I move is dictated by a sense of getting a push from the spirit world. Like I talked about that early feeling of calling, of sense of I need to do this, not just for myself, but other voices that are driving me and other energies that also want to be seen and heard through what I'm doing. Um, so much of our nonfiction is about making sure that that that voices are heard and seen and represented as best we know how, um, uh especially kind of returning to some hidden history uh aspect too. Um, but uh but then sometimes too it is, well, where do where do I want to be going? The idea of like, yeah, write what you know. Well, also write what you want to know. Yes, yes, write what you know because that's unique to you, and everyone does, uh sh in order to have that authentic voice, um, that is unique to you. So what is unique to you? Asking yourself that of write, writing what you know. But then of course writing what you want to know because that's that's where the research comes in. That's what the what is what are the the hyper vexations that you have that you want to make interesting for the reader. Um, and that's and I I love I love when that's uh when something I didn't know I wanted to know about um, you know, becomes a whole new thing that I'm that I'm thrilled I learned about because of uh of reading a book about it. So um, you know, I think that um a lot of my interest in the dovetailing of of of of science and art um is really beautifully um uh exemplified in my favorite play. We recently lost my favorite play, right? Tom Stoppard. Um, and uh his his play Arcadia uh is a beautiful dual timeline narrative, uh contemporary and historic. And um there's these beautiful monologues about heat exchange and about uh about a young woman who's actually charting a path of uh thermodynamics, but she doesn't have, she's in the you know, the um uh 17th century and she does not quite she doesn't have enough math, she doesn't have a computer yet, um, to to chart that actual trajectory. Um and a modern mathematician is realizing that she was on to uh uh um what we what we now know as modern math and and modern uh uh you know physics. Um and so I love I love that idea that we're all kind of parts of these um of these intersecting dialogues. And uh that uh that for me that kind of nonlinear nature of the past is present, um, and the past is prologue, and the present is also prologue, um, is uh is is it's a it's a lovely place to be, um, as chaotic as it can feel sometimes. Um, but that uh that the the space where I'm not sure exactly what's next, and I just I have a lot of projects, but I'm gonna kind of see which one I work on each day is dependent on any of these other various factors. Um there's a little bit of of uh of of excitement in that uh uh perilous precipice of stepping out from the liminal space and not sure where your foot's gonna land. Um, but uh but I but I like what I have set up as the structure. And so I hope that that's I hope that that reads in my work as well. That I that I'm in I I I enjoy putting readers on a perilous footing, but I but uh but I promise I'll reinforce it as we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:27

I believe in the that para normal world where creativity and intuition lie. And I don't think all the entities and essences on the other side aren't necessarily benign as we were talking about earlier. The idea of of Loki, the mythological construct of the Joker, the fool.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:57

Yeah, there's a lot of chaos out there too. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:00

Life is such a circus and it's so unfair, and our own lives seem absurd so much of the time that uh I feel I'm being toyed with a little bit, and I embrace it because it makes my life more interesting and fun, even and especially when things go wrong. It's that it's that titillating prick of fate and uncertainty, frustration that motivate me to get outside my own comfort zone and fight back a little bit. I'm like, you know what? No.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:49

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:51

That defiance is is really the energy I think writers, creative people feast off of.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:01

Absolutely. There's so much chaos out there that we cannot control, and I'm not interested in necessarily controlling things, but I have to I have to ride the the waves of everything that gets disrupted and and try to do it with a sense of of of kindness and try to do it with a sense of uh figuring out where my own center of gravity is when we're feeling tossed off of our of our own, you know, uh, off balance. Um one of the things that m one of my favorite theater theater directors, Ann Bogart, said when she was, she ran the city company, the Saratoga International Theater Institute, and she um I was part of one of her intensives once, and she said something that stayed with me always, and it is the most interesting thing to watch on stage is when a character is physically thrown off balance and trying to get back into re regaining their balance again. And I thought, that's that's kind of an interesting thing about life too. So I feel like that's just what I do as an actor when I'm trying to portray that a character is moving through their space, trying to get to their goal. What's my motivation? Trying to get back to balance again. And I feel like that's pretty much the crux of a lot of the trajectory of my books, too. Because I do think that struggle towards regaining balance is something that we crave as species and and as a society. And so the the the fight to get back to that is, I do believe, like a captivating thing that goes back to like into the deepest part of us. So that's again, that came from a a theater workshop and it influences, and I that was a theater workshop when I was a teenager, and it's and it's it it it it goes into every single thing that I do and every choice that I make, and that initial step from whatever's the next project. It's like that just that step in and of itself is that's off balance. Well, let's try to see, let's try to get gain balance where we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:53

I was a theater critic for about a year in Chicago, which is great to be a theater critic. Off Broadway, off off Broadway, Broadway.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:03

That's a scene.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:04

That's a scene. It was mid-90s, too, which was another scene. Over the course of about a year, I think I saw probably 150 plays, and I reviewed about a hundred of them two a week on average.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:19

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:19

So I'm seeing this semi semi-experimental play. It's about about Foucault and justice, and it had all that kind of preachiness that that that younger people put into an earnest ideologue-driven expose. So it wasn't it wasn't great. But I I got a little tipsy um in the press booth before the show, and they had these folding chairs set up in like a gym, and and they had a stage propped up, and I was right in the front row with the press. So I had my little notepad sort of the kind of pre-digital days, and I'm I'm drunk because I knew what I was getting myself into, and about a quarter of the way through the play, the folding chair. I'm I'm a big guy, I'm like 6'2, 220. It gave out, and I slipped and I literally tumbled onto the stage mid-scene. Oh my god. And I'll never forget like looking up at the actress playing the lead, and without missing a beat, she was so incredible. She's doing her lines, and then she she goes, you know, soto voice.

unknown 1:49:45

Are you a runner?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:47

I'm like, yeah. And I literally I roll back so funny to the thing, and you know, the show went on. So I incorporated that into my Into my critique of the show. And the reason I bring all this up is the destruction of the Prosemian Arch is what you're talking about here, which is breaking boundaries, getting out of your comfort zone, mixing and matching. And this goes back to what we've been talking about too: the dichotomy between the living and the dead, between matter and energy, between fiction and nonfiction. Keep all of that in play. And you can't go wrong because that that makes every new book, every new experience fresh. That's what I've loved most about our conversation, which is I feel you do that each and every day, where you're not you're not constrained. You're always fighting and being a little mischievous with genre and storytelling.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:55

And hold holding things that could seem antithetical but are but are actually just in conversation, which I think is what that there that creates a an energy in and of itself. And that that is energy that I is is kind of my uh my nucleus. Like it's it's really kind of my engine, is these these these things that seem like they could be antithetical, but no, they're just they're just particles moving really fast. Um, and we're just and we're just seeing what comes of it. Um and trying not to be destructive along the way for ourselves or others, um, but holding complications and sort of seeing, okay, well, but where where can we be each from our own perspective trying to work towards something over there that seems that hopefully peaceful and and with some resolution to what would seem like a conflict. Um, so you know, there's a certain amount of uh of de-escalation that I'm interested in working with in my work, but also not without not not just by pretending things didn't happen. De-escalation by resolution and by by a certain sense of justice, um, whatever that may mean. Um and it that depends from one series to the next, from one book to the next. Um, and from one, and there's a lot of stuff within our nonfiction where we we can't offer that. And that's that's been one of the harder things, is that in the nonfiction, a lot of these things are not resolved. But talking about them helps us feel like, well, then let's just think about them because most things will not necessarily be resolved. So, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be called to sit with that discomfort.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:39

That's sort of history's history's often bunk.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:43

And if you're true to it, then you just need to tell it like it is, and then maybe uh highlight and prioritize some of the hopeful elements that have led to society learning a few things. One one step forward, now we're a couple steps back.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:01

But we can't we can't let yeah, we can't let the the the doom and gloom of it um have have its hold. Um that can't we can't stay, we can't we can't as a society exist in that uh kind of entropy of misery. It's just not nothing can live in that environment.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:21

And on that hopeful note, I want to thank you sincerely for making time. And you for being on the science fiction and fantasy factory.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:31

I am so grateful for you engaging so deeply with uh the themes and what I do. I it's I feel I feel seen and heard, and that's I'm very grateful. Um, and and just thank you for your time and for being cross-genre with me. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:46

Yes, let's let's keep keep crossing it up. And then uh when is your next book out?

SPEAKER_03 1:53:52

So I'll have a bunch of stuff out next year. Ravenfield Hall is going to be out in February.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:57

That's the YA book.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:58

That's the Gothic YA that I was talking about. I have another gas lamp fantasy called Dead Ringer um about a telephone operator who has a ghost come through her console in 1892 Manhattan, and she has to solve the ghost murder uh by listening in on a telephone line. Um, and so it becomes it's an amateur sleuth uh mystery, and it's very fun, uh, full of a big cast of characters, very whimsical, um, very fun and very uh a love letter to New York City and to a diverse group of people uh also saving the day. Um, so I'm not sure when Dead Ringer is coming out, to tell you the truth, because that also got bumped in um the City Owl Press is the publisher on that. Ravenfield Hall will be out with Hichette, uh Union Square and Company is the imprint. And then I'll have the paperback release of America's Most Gothic. Um so this is hardcover. And so we'll have there'll be a paperback release at some point, probably next fall. And in the meantime, this year, I'm gonna have some um, I'm gonna have some uh anthologies out with some short stories. Um and uh I'll be working on a one woman show, and I'm I will share as much of that publicly on my various social media channels as as I'm able to. Um, I'll probably have um some New York performances of that as well as in some uh Massachusetts performances of that. So, but that is all still very much still in the works because um yeah, I gotta finish the script.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:30

Links in the description below, folks, to uh get Leanne's books, to to follow her along, and to uh keep keep on track with all your prolific output. Very impressive, very inspirational, and super fun talking to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:49

Thank you, you as well. This has been a joy.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:53

And I would love to have you back when when these two three books.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:57

Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's let's talk about ghost ships when Raven Hill Hall comes out.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:05

I'm in it to win it.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:07

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:09

As I think Richard Pryor said when he was mimicking one of his relatives, I I believe.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:16

I believe we are believers. We just you know, when stuff happens, stuff happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:22

Thank you. I appreciate you. You rock! Thank you, and you