Latest / Mythmakers / Lord of Stariel: An Independent Route To Publishing

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Lord of Stariel: An Independent Route To Publishing · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm
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the director of the Centre and an author and today I'm joined all the way from the other
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side of the world by AJ Lancaster. AJ, tell us where I am talking to you. Where are you
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sitting at the moment? I am currently sitting in my office in the city of Hamster North which
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is at the North Island of New Zealand. Yeah, so it's literally across the world we're talking.
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Now AJ, I think it's about as far away from the UK as you can get.
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Yes, absolutely. Fantasy is bringing us together. So AJ came across my radar because I came across her
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fantastic series which will come to the Starriel series which will come to in a moment but you can't
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escape AJ. Anybody who comes out of New Zealand and meets a fantasy fan is always going to be
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asked about what their feelings are about Middle-earth basically becoming synonymous with New Zealand.
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I'm basically expecting you to be a cousin of Peter Jackson or something. Is this true?
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Oh yes, obviously we're all related to him. It's just like every New Zealander owns ten sheep.
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Yeah, that's this and we're all hobbits. It is one of those strange things that gets associated
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with New Zealand when you're overseas. Are you talking to someone from overseas?
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Is Lord of the Rings sheep rugby? One of those three depending on your audience.
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So for me, I'm going to commit sacrilege and say I actually like the movie Spill Up in the Box.
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No, I'm not. End of broadcast.
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Yeah, you can take that. I don't know what Tolkien did for the genre but it's not my preferred
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style. I guess I like a slightly more modern, slightly faster past thing whilst admiring all the work.
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He did inventing languages and all the kind of myth kind of level. In terms of New Zealand,
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it's a very strange thing because New Zealand is really beautiful and I feel like the movies
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really captured that and a lot of it does look like that. But Lord of the Rings
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you know places like the Shire, the land that Tolkien was imagining is clearly more England.
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Yeah, it is a disconnect, isn't it? Because I think I live somewhere much more like the Shire than
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the Hobbiton that was created, which felt... Have you ever been to New Zealand?
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No, I'd love to come. It is very charming.
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I suppose what I was thinking about was more, it's quite obviously it's a film set so it's
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relatively small and it doesn't have the network of villages that the Shire actually is and the pubs
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and the sense of rival communities and Buckland and all the rest of it, which is absolutely
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necessary for a film set whereas places I live near are very like that and I think you don't have
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to worry about being identified as a Hobbit because you know there's plenty of people over here too.
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Anyway, so I was wondering if you felt that the use of the Middle-Earth landscapes as being
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synonymous with New Zealand, kind of getting the way of your own fantasy, creative,
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you know, your imagination because you feel it's already been used in that way.
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No, not really because although the sort of movie has that sort of very iconic landscape,
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it doesn't feel like New Zealand if it makes sense.
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That would be an interesting challenge if I came and visited it, would I be walking around
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entirely the wrong lens? I think I might be, I reckon a lot of these package tours might
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you would see a bit or like you say you would go to the tourist set, it's Matamata, which is
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Hobbiton, it's when they voted. But something you said about the, you know like New Zealand doesn't
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have the little connections of villages or to other villages, it's that kind of weight of human
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history like, obviously New Zealand does have its own history and we have our own indigenous people
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but in terms of the length of human occupation like in England there are pubs that are
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500 years old and it's not that unusual, but it is not the case in New Zealand, you know, we don't
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have, you know, it's debatable when Māori first came to New Zealand but say roughly a thousand
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years ago or so, but then if you go back much further than that, you know, two thousand years ago,
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there were people in England building things but there were birds here. And so I'm getting off
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point, but in terms of like you know like the flora and fauna they sort of, that's not so much in
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the movies, I guess because it wouldn't fit with the kind of tokeness, all our kind of bird life
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and like a little bit of the bush, but the spots they chose, they chose particularly to more
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represent kind of very English and European flora, flora and trees and things. So when I kind of
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watch the movies, although I can pick out particular landscapes, it's not, it doesn't kind of
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evoke kind of that feeling of walking through the New Zealand bush because it doesn't really look
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so much like that, it has a very different look. Well that's reassuring to know that they
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haven't edged out the fantasy potential for yourself as a writer, but let's come my neighborhood
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as it were because you told me that you wrote the first draft of the first book in your series,
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The Lord of Starriel, while living in Oxford. So did you find the city itself as a source of
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inspiration? I mean there's a lot of Oxford and Cambridge I think in your other city, in your book,
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well one of your other cities is called Knoxbridge. Yes, comingly disguised.
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There's no one, no one will ever guess. Yes I wrote the first draft, I had just moved to Oxford.
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I'd moved to Oxford in October and I think around 2014 and I was starting a new job in November
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and I needed a way to meet people. So I thought, oh I'll write a novel for national novel writing
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month which is November and so that's sort of where Starriel came from and it was very influenced by
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living in England by the kind of, November is kind of the weather's getting kind of colder so
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the kind of like, particularly like the lamps, the kind of old-style architecture that there's
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so much of around there in the beautiful buildings and I'd also recently been up to
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done a little bit of traveling up in Scotland. It's thanks the Lord of the North idea in the
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way. Yeah, yeah, well and I'd been rewatching an old series for a little while ago called
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Monica of the Glen, I don't know if you heard of it. Oh yeah, yeah. So which has as a sort of initial,
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it's a sort of set in modern times but the kickoff of the TV show is that the sort of black sheep
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with a family gets a call but his father's dead and goes back to the crumbling older state in
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Scotland and so I sort of had that in my head and this sort of season of the turn of seasons
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and I thought oh but it would be much cooler if it was magical and set further a go and this
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the main character was a woman. I think agent is great, you can look back in the way that our
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sort of magpie tendency is why you should be used like you watch something like Monica of the
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language is entirely entirely different. Yes, but you take the thing which sparks your imagination
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and turn that into your opener because you've got your wonderful main character Heter who was
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living a life of relative freedom down in the main city as a illusionist in a stage company
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answering the call to go back to the ancestral home to find out which of her family
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the Val stars is that right? Yes, it's going to be picked as the next Lord of Staryl. So let's
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that takes us to the location of your story. Your series feels it has the feeling of a historical
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fantasy but it doesn't have a specific location. It has in add its heart, a wonderful little
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wonderful concept of a little independent kingdom which has a foot in the Fey world and a foot in
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the human world and that really is a character in the book in and of itself in a very important way.
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You've began to mention that some of your imagery are like the lamps and the old buildings are
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taken from being there but what was the thought process behind setting it in this
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familiar but undefined world and then also the period that you pick which sort of maps maybe
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onto the interwar period in the 20th century possibly but then you might have a different view.
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I feel like my reasoning was not very deep and it was largely driven by cooler sedix
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where I you know things said in the past seem a bit cooler but also I really like the idea of
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plumbing so everyone can you know wash. So I didn't want to go like so far back that it was sort of
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pre pre that kind of era and yeah so one of the big things is they're running
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I sort of like that idea of like everything's kind of a bit old-fashioned still but they
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it's just starting to get some modern technology like electricity and fine lines and things
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but and I kind of wanted to do that sort of juxtaposition of where he just come from the sort of
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city, down south that the technology is kind of more entrenched and more developed but it hasn't
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quite made it out as far as the kind of older states that are still clinging onto the past and
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you know don't and that are a little bit more magical and where people are a little bit
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more suspicious yeah I sort of so I sort of I very loosely used the kind of Edwardian
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time period but I did play very fast and loose with historical accuracy and I have to admit that
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that's sort of driven by my own lack of desire to do huge amounts of research like I like
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looking a little bit up but I do I knew if I said it like in a very firm historical time
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period then that would entail checking you know checking dates and and what people would
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had access to at particular times and that would that would have been just a very different
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approach whereas I was more interested in kind of their aesthetics really and we do the fantasy
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through that I mean people are sort of looking for parallels I mean the Susanna Clark
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to Norrell Mr. Strange or Mr. Strange and Dr. Norrell whichever way around that book is it's
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very specifically in a Napoleonic war era and you know linked to history whereas her more
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recent book Pyreneesie is in more of a space that doesn't quite a timeless but old-fashioned place
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and yours is war on the that end of the spectrum than the I'm into the war if you sit it if you
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sit and in an an our world in a specific period of history then you kind of have to start
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you have to start considering like how real world historical events would have unfolded
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and I guess I was less interested in that it's an interesting path to take but it's a different part
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these sort of yeah and the reason why it's it's set in the past at all is because I really like
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this sort of place kind of old-fashioned social mores with this sort of heightened melodrama
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over what we would consider today very small stop stakes of like oh you know you have to you can't
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sort of break the social rules or people will you know gossip about you and and that sort of
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yeah sort of propriety worrying about that kind of thing is it's just a lot of fun
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so there's two main characters who who fall foul of that because Heta as a unmarried woman
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um I'm not going to donate plots of money here but she might what's thrown at her by the
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male lords is her female nists and her fitness as a woman to rule but also to conduct her life
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in a way that they do but what she does she gets centered for and I love the way that your heroine
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is just so unapologetic she's come from a world prior to that which was much freer this theatre
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world and she just thinks they're all ridiculous and I love the fact that so often her thoughts are
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oh gosh I'm I'm pushing it's oh just get over it kind of attitude and then her older brother
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Marius who is gay and struggling with those urges there in a way which hopefully now in most
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many parts of the world that's no longer that would just be accepted he's isn't in a period when
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he has to hide that and add an extra drama to his his character talking about the sort of
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relationships and use of gender I was really fascinated by the very natural use that you make of
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inter intersects characters in the Feywell they just are like Lamurkin oh non binary characters
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binary yeah is that something which was influenced by the debates going on in the outer world or
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did you just feel that was right for the you know how did that emerge as a theme I guess I've
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always found gender really interesting like to think about and play with and I have a lot of
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non binary friends so it's in perfectly natural to have some in the books but I guess I was it was
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one of the things I wanted to do with the Fey culture was in sort of contrast to the sort of
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human culture that is still quite sexist and very binary about what you know well that they are
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only women in men in that men and women have very particular kind of ideas about they should
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and shouldn't be I kind of wanted to contrast that with the Fey culture which has its own issues but
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one of the things that they are quite good at is that they don't think about gender in the
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quite the same way and so I sort of thought what if they if if gender is sort of not an issue for
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them in the same way that it is for humans at this point in time then it seems very natural that
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it would also be no big deal that there would naturally be non binary in trans Bay and that
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would just sort of that they wouldn't even necessarily have a word for that because it would just
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be as normal as any other kind of presentation yeah I kind of wanted to just feel very like not
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unusual yeah exactly that was so relaxing because it wasn't like a message novel it was one where
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this was just this is how the world is and it was nice to go there in your imagination and think
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it gives it sort of I mean one thing that I like there are there would obviously have been non-binary
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people in terms of humans as well but the story sort of doesn't focus on them and it would have
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been that would have been about harder to do in terms of they would have been pushing against sort
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of societal rules so the story would have been had to be kind of more about that if you had a
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couple of issues going on so maybe that as a next issue would have been another main character
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and it would yeah it was something I wanted to include but I yeah there's only so many things you
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can do in a book writing is about choices isn't it yeah so just thinking I'm not sure I've done
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a good job of giving the flavor of it I was thinking well what is it like I felt it for me without
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really quite unique but I suppose one story that came up to my mind was Cole Comfort Farm
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then if you know the story it's a it's a mid 20th century comedy novel where a
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female character goes to a traditional household and shakes it up and her presence there
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is in the real world but a comic real world similar period it kind of revolutionises the household
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and how your first book starts not the later ones felt a bit like that moment where you've got
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this catalyst coming into a traditional world the assumption is the lord ship is going to pass to
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Jack who's like that kind of a steady hand like close to being like the old lord but it's you know
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I don't think it's too much for a plot spoiler to say it doesn't happen like that
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um yeah so it has that fun and that feeling of a revolution happening within a world that's
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got kind of bit too close before you open out to the other worlds but I should mention of course
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that it's also um a lot a love story an inter-species love story do you want to tell us a little
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bit about win halloween your wonderful butler come steward come prince uh yes which is also a
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plot spoiler but it's it's fairly impossible to talk about the first book particularly without
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giving away but I don't think the the first book something's they're set up are relatively easy
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to see coming I feel like that's probably one of them um and yeah so there's sort of a twist that
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the the main estate uh that's called starryl uh turns turns out to be in addition to being a
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the human estate it's also a part of the fairy world um and and the the fairy have been absent
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from the world for several centuries for reasons that are later exposed um but they're just sort of
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started coming back and one of them has been present on their state and the guys are pretending to be
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a human butler and he's he's sort of he's been sort of childhood friends with he's the main character
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and then she went away to the city and sort of pursued her own life and she's returned um and
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yes they sort of have a uh a growing relationship over the over the course of the four books
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and do you want to spoil it too much yeah yeah but um I think one of the things I would say
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AJ and I really appreciated um is that your your plotting is excellent so there were a couple of
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twists in the very first book which one I thought oh I knew she was going to do that and then you
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turn the tables again and you think oh okay um she she caught me out there so so I would really
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recommend people if you want to read a really just a good story it's there but also your
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overarching plot which I can't say too much about because that would be serious spoilers but there is
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a release of information about why it all is as it is that comes gloriously to a head
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at the end of the fourth book um so you know um oh I thought it was it was great I really really
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enjoyed that the way you did that uh so when when you plot books out are you somebody who say
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starts with a character and just explores or a concept or do you have like your post-it notes or
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files and scrivener or whatever with it all mapped out in advance um I definitely don't plan
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it all in advance I I usually start with kind of something about the world and the setting
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and the character and then a lot of it sort of comes from the character kind of saying well what
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would they do in this situation if I throw this at them what happens how would they react um
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and then I sort of find out things as I go along um and then I do a huge amount of editing to make
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it look like I knew where I was going so I'm very grateful to either that work
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yeah that's one of the things I say to um people I'm teaching on the creative writing courses we
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run which is you may have written a scene where you mention in passing I don't know a box on a table
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or a thing on the wall and then when you're thinking oh I need something some foreshadowing of this
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thing oh remember that box I put in that scene and you go back and you and you make that the clue
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but you didn't think of it at the time when you first put it in there yeah that is one of the
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lovely things about writing as when it feels like your brain kind of secretly sit up a thing
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you didn't know setting up until you get there and then you're like oh that's why we put that
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thing in back then yeah um which doesn't always happen perfectly and usually you have to go back and
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kind of smooth it out a little bit but drop a few more hints or change something so that it's consistent um
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I have thought of another thing I wanted to say about the romance oh okay spill um I'm
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allowed to go back um one of the things I did really want to do with the romance particularly
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was I wanted to do a slightly untraditional uh kind of relationship dynamic to what I'd read in
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a lot of books at the time that I was looking at where I was reading a lot of romance books where
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the man was very like uh sort of in charge and commanding and sort of uh had lots of
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mistresses like the Bridgerton boys yeah yeah that's sort of like I guess the sort of classic
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sort of alpha male stereotype kind of thing I wanted to do I was like what if the guy was really like
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you know he's still confident but what if he was more what if he was more about like running the household
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and with her I wanted to do I wanted to make her kind of quite traditionally feminine in terms of
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you know being interested in uh clothing and her appearance and stuff whilst also being very kind of
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strong but not in a way that was like a punching people strong but like
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so that was sort of a gender dynamic thing I was interested in doing there yeah you didn't flip the
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roles so no that she's become the alpha male and he's become no it's more that they are individuals
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who aren't conforming to a particular prescribed role so if Heter better and this isn't a plot
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spoiler because very early on it's clear that she's you know she's had boyfriends and dated and had a
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sort of normal life before she comes back home to the so she has that experience behind her and
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confidence of not sort of being kept in the nursery really um and I think that that's good because it
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gives her she's not the sort of simpering virgin type not but I know that I don't also like a good
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classic alpha male and romance or a simpering virgin there is there is definitely a a time and a
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place for both of those those kind of uh character types can be they can be enjoyed um but not as
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Lord of Starrion we need yeah it was just it was just a thing I was interested in playing with
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so I was like I should say that I think that I would say quite again it's a plot spoiler say too
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much but I think you did that really well and um it doesn't feel basically you believe in the
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magnetism and the sexual attraction between them which could be the casualty here if if it wasn't
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right you you feel that they they get each other and they are that they're the pool together
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from based on this childhood friendship that's grown it's very convincing and sweet and lovely so yeah
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um I was looking and when I got to the end of the last book I read read I that was the point at which
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I read your little biography about yourself and you describe yourself as an independent writer
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so what's your journey to publishing been like and have you got any tips for listeners
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wanting to follow in a similar path because you're a bit less scary because I think they can
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understand how your writing journey started but um as it oh well I'm going to try a novel in a
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November and many people might be thinking that as well but you've done the steps beyond that
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spill all the beans on how that happened so before I wrote Lord of Starrion I had I had written
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I tried to write other things um that were more kind of epic fantasy style things uh
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and I that I've always kind of gotten lost in the boggy middle and so I thought I would this
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one I'm just going to write I'm going to write like a short simple straightforward standalone
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no epics um and it's never going to say the light of day um so it doesn't matter um so I can just
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just have fun this writes I mean it's fun for me and then obviously it is not a standalone and it
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is published um but that's sort of so I originally had no intention to publish it um and then
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as it sort of grew and I ended up writing I sort of I wrote I wrote drafts of all the books before
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I thought about publishing because I knew that I would need to know where this series was going
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um and so I and I and I am I'm self-published I'm probably sure to start so I'm self-published
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uh and the reasons I chose that were many in several there there are definitely advantages to
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going independent and there are advantages to going traditional um I decided it's that I decided
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self-publishing would to give it a go I had some advantages in that I have a background in editing
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and in publishing like I've done type setting and sort of production management um so I knew
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I knew some bits of the process I felt confident I could do to a good standard uh and that was sort of
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my my kind of commitment to myself I was like well if I'm going to self-publish that I wanted to be
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I wanted to be sort of indistinguishable from a traditional publish book for the people reading it
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you know I don't want it to feel like it hasn't had uh enough attention or enough polish um
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so it was quite a long process um and quite a lot of that was me leveling up a bit in my craft so
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the first book particularly went through a lot of drafts um and I had a whole crew of beta readers
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in your thanks yeah a lot of that was a lot of that was beta reading so getting getting other people
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to read and give their feedback and then letting us sit for a bit and going back to it and that sort of
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thing um how did you come up with your other design which is very strong um so I was just going to
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say like one of the key things when you're self-publishing is you is getting your covers right
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um because your cover is you're kind of single most important kind of marketing
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asset um so you want a uh cover that signals the genre really clearly uh so you go and look at
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other books that are sort of similar to yours which is a bit hard for me because at the time
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there wasn't that much that felt similar so trying to figure out what my sub-jonger I was in
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how best to signal that was a bit tricky but I eventually came down on that kind of look because
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there were sort of a couple of books that were doing kind of that sort of style of kind of
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that kind of my covers are illustrated but kind of in a very kind of cut out sort of look
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um and I found a designer I liked and uh did she turned out to be brilliant and has done all my
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covers um and I wanted them to sort of convey convey the kind of vibe of the book that it was
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was fantasy it was sort of historical feeling um that it was whimsical um yeah which so I'm
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very pleased with my covers and I I think they are a lot have contributed hugely to the success
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I've had with that series I think a lot of people took a chance at them because they saw the
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covers and were like oh what was that um yeah so yeah so my my advice for indie publishing would be
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yeah leave it up your craft as well as you can I'm interested about it I suppose um get a good cover
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that signals the genre and you know do research and watch what your what you think your audience
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is likely to to find appealing kind of what they're looking for in the same with the blurb
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and find like a group of like minded people to support you and bounce ideas off and and give
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feedback there's there's heaps of resources out there for indie authors now um lots of
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Facebook groups and discord servers and people on Twitter and um yeah so find find the
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group of those that works for you um and the other great thing about indie publishing is uh you
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can always change stuff because you have power which so you know you can uh set up a new pen name
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of the if the first one should work or or you can change the covers or you can you can change
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the whole book if you know you'd look at it later and think are actually I've improved so much
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since then and I sort of don't want this up under my name um and did you have a like a budget
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sorry this is quite techy questions in anywhere in the interest it did you have a budget for promoting
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the book or was it an organic growth for review um I did do a little bit of of of marketing but uh
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not a huge amount in the beginning I paid to list it on like a reviewing site the first book so
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to get it into the hands of like book bloggers and things um and I've run a few like sales promotions um
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but it was a very it was sort of very organic slow build like it wasn't it definitely wasn't a success
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straight out of the gate uh it took time around I think a rounding book three came out uh which is
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this is this is uh general received in de wisdom is there's something magical about three
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the number three I like that when you have three books out in a series um I don't maybe read this
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link I believe that they're going to finish this series off um so yeah it helped it helped once
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there was three books out but it's a lot of it's been word of mouth I've been very um fortunate to
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get some really good reviews and uh by you know various blogging sites and uh in places large and
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small that have all kind of helped as it's gone along the way um which has been really cool.
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Fascinating because I think that that's one of the areas where a lot of people are looking
34:29
to see how do you know the the secrets of success and your organic word of mouth is still there um
34:36
yeah you didn't yeah it really is it's not it's not going to give you I mean there are people that
34:42
do go viral overnight but you don't have to go viral to success which is sort of reassuring um
34:51
yeah and I think that's where the kind of attention to craft and and making the kind of package look
34:56
appealing of the kind of cover blurb content really helps you out because that's going to get
35:03
you the word of mouth um it also helps with what you've written appeals to people and that's a harder
35:11
thing to I think try and do purpose three I think I was lucky in that I kind of wrote these books for
35:18
me and it turned out that what I wanted to read there was other people that wanted to read it but
35:23
there's also like six billion people on earth so with the right with indie publishing you mostly
35:28
see our ebooks so you can kind of sell to people all over the world to even if your audience is
35:35
potentially quite small you know that out of six million people it's not a lot of people
35:41
six million people how many are up to now I actually came to your books because I I consume a lot
35:48
of audio versions of things and I think it might even have been on one of the deals where it was
35:54
so that worked you're one of your off sales um but also because Finty Williams was reading and she
36:00
read my very first book she's Finty Williams is she probably gets annoyed by this but she's due to
36:05
and an actress over here and so immediately I saw that name I thought oh um that's going to be
36:11
well read so this is worth me trying so first question I suppose to you is what do you think of
36:19
the audio adaptation the last book is read by somebody else isn't it um whether or not
36:24
dissimilar voice so it's not jarring um and have you sort of thought about your listening audience
36:30
and that impact on you because the received wisdom is that there's not people don't get much
36:36
back from commissioning an audio book but maybe you've but that trend I have to take
36:44
back my interview with the clients because my audiobooks are actually done by Podium
36:50
so I have a publisher just to just as the audiobooks um oh that's interesting
36:56
I've not heard that can you tell me tell us more tell us more um so they approached me
37:01
they approached me I were like we would like to make audiobooks of your books here are our terms
37:08
what do you think um so I talked to them about it um and decided that that would be good because I
37:14
I wanted to have an audio that is as you say it's quite it's quite expensive to do it yourself
37:20
if you're having to pay for someone to narrate them and I wasn't sure whether I could justify
37:27
putting the costume um so I was happy to to let them do it and they they have a good
37:33
reputation as an audio book publisher um and at the time I hadn't really listened to
37:40
many audiobooks I felt I felt I didn't really have the expertise um to do it myself to judge
37:46
what was needed um now I have listened to quite a lot of audiobooks have gone really into them
37:52
um but when but at the time I when they sent me the recordings uh I was a bit uncertain I was
37:59
like oh I don't know whether I'm going to be able to cope with hearing someone else read my book out
38:04
out loud but I started listening to it and then immediately was just entranced I was like oh my
38:09
goodness Funti has made the sound like sound quite good yeah how I'm like what kind of dark
38:16
sorcery is this like like I was like oh I want to keep listening to find out what happens
38:23
I've experienced most on a book of mine um which I probably too long ago now but it's called
38:28
the ship between the worlds it's a middle grade fantasy about pirates yeah uh in a fantasy setting
38:34
and I had two main pirate captains in it and the actor who took on the part had decided to give
38:43
one of them a really broad glass region accent which I hadn't written into the script or the book
38:49
at all um and then as soon as I heard it thought well obviously he has the glass region accent
38:56
that was just waiting to be unlocked and so he sort of it's where you're no longer in control
39:02
of your own book it was it was like getting to read alongside someone else and see how they were
39:09
interpreting it as they're reading it which was um which was fascinating because you know normally
39:15
you only get to know what you yourself think as you read something um but yeah that same thing
39:21
of seeing how they do accents for the different characters that you haven't specified and being
39:26
like oh okay oh valid yeah I hadn't really imagined that but yeah um yeah as I I I've really
39:35
loved I've really enjoyed when he's um narration um I'm very pleased with it um yeah and it's
39:44
it's really nice to have audiobooks um now that I as I said I listen to a lot more audiobooks
39:49
generally um because they're so they're so convenient you can listen to them while you're doing
39:53
other things exactly that's why for me you know it's the driving in the car thing um that's what I
40:00
that's what I listened to so what next for AJ are you you mentioned in your notes at the end of
40:06
the fourth book that you might do a fifth is that happening uh yeah so that is what I'm currently
40:13
with him um it's so it's it's sort of I guess it's technically book five and then it does follow
40:21
chronologically even though book four is very differently the conclusion of the series like it's
40:26
done um but this book is about it's about another it's about a different character it's about
40:36
hitter's brother who has sort of becomes a more prominent uh side character over the four books
40:43
and in this book is sort of his book um with him as the main character uh and I'm trying to make
40:50
it kind of self-contained and also kind of work potentially even if you haven't read the first
40:55
four books which we'll see if I managed to do that successfully um uh and it's uh romance and also
41:03
met a mystery because I thought that would be a good way to stop the plot from accidentally
41:11
turning into four books which is what happened with the Lord Astarial um uh yeah and so that should
41:19
hopefully I'm hoping to get that out this year um it's underway at the moment well all the best
41:25
with that I look forward to reading it when it does come out um at the end of my podcast I always
41:30
ask my guest to choose a fantasy world in which it's the best to be something so we've done all sorts
41:36
of things from you know the best place to go for a drink like the best tabern um best place to
41:42
be a warrior you know loads of things uh and I thought that picking up the wider theme of your book
41:47
which has this love story between people of different sort of species if that you've had a thought
41:53
where in all the fantasy worlds you've read or watched is a good place to be in love with somebody
42:00
from a different race while species um I had to think about this over while because I I feel like
42:07
the set up of most fantasy worlds is that it's there's usually tension between um another
42:13
someone from a different species and I decided that there would have to be like fantasy romance
42:18
because that way you would you would definitely get a happy ending with the person you fell in love with
42:25
and I thought it would probably be a good idea for it to be like some kind of shift of romance shift
42:30
of because yeah yeah then whoever you you fell in love with you'd also get the bonus of like
42:35
there um you know if you fell in love with a werewolf you'd get kind of the sort of big extended
42:40
family as well um so I have chosen uh Nellini Singh who is a New Zealand author who writes
42:48
kind of paranormal paranormal fantasy romance um Sarah's uh I feel like
42:54
her worlds even though a lot of bad things happen like uh the romance has always worked out
43:00
happily and there's a lot of like extended family vibes so I decided that would be the best
43:07
oh well thank you for mentioning shift of romance because I hadn't thought of those I was thinking
43:11
oh maybe something science fiction was what I was thinking uh I mean it is yeah what does
43:18
not science fiction but a speculative fiction yeah so I'm going to actually go I've changed my
43:24
pick uh hearing you I'm I like Patricia Briggs Mercedes Thompson series which is uh the Mercedes
43:34
Thompson is a car mechanic but also she is a native American coyote shifter and her
43:43
relationship is with a more traditional werewolf shifter so you've got um and it's just it's so
43:49
funny it's a brilliantly handled as well as the serious plot there's so much comedy in it but the
43:57
um the the imagine imagining these different species and how they can come together
44:03
she brings the hostility between coyotes and wolves into how Mercedes is accepted or not accepted
44:10
in the pack which adds a whole dimension to a love story um you know the Romeo and Julia aspect
44:17
without the tragic you know ending uh so I that so we've gone we've gone werewolf excellent
44:24
werewolf or I think you know any things like side-changing series where they have werewolves
44:31
but also like people with psychic abilities excellent this sounds good I haven't read these
44:37
and I've read almost all there was of the um werewolf stories because I love a good
44:43
shifter series yeah they're not all werewolves but they're all animals that they've changed
44:48
your tunes absolutely that sounds that sounds great so thanks so much AJ for joining me today and
44:56
just to we'll put a link to your books in the show notes so people can find them but just so
45:02
if you've come to the end of this series this episode you're thinking I really want to go and read
45:06
AJ's books now you just need to look up AJ Lancaster, Lord Astario and that will take you to the
45:12
first book in this series so thank you so much AJ and uh all the best we've got five
45:19
yeah thank you so much and thank you for giving me all the book us
45:29
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