Fiction Fans

Author Interview: Death on the Caldera by Emily Paxman

• Episode 194

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Your hosts are joined by Emily Paxman to talk about murder, mayhem, and magic in her debut novel, Death on the Caldera. The conversation ranges from Agatha Christie influences, to complex family dynamics, to who we were rooting for as love interest for our intrepid heroine. They also discuss creating a fantastical version of the 1920s, and volcanic magic.

Find more from Emily:

https://www.instagram.com/emmypaxman/

https://bsky.app/profile/emmypax.bsky.social

https://emmypax.substack.com/


Find us on Discord / Support us on Patreon

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License


Lilly:

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.

Sara:

And I am Sarah, and I'm so delighted to welcome Emily Paxman onto the podcast to talk about death on the cald.

Emily:

Hi, Emily here. I am so excited to be here. Really, really thrilled.

Lilly:

I cannot wait to talk about this book. I ripped through it. It was ridiculous. But before we do, what is something great that happened recently?

Emily:

So something good that happened to me recently I do a fair amount of community theater and auditions came up for the big musical of the year so tried out Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella and I also talked my sister-in-law and my best friend into coming up and auditioning for the company that I would go with. I got the wicked Stepmother, which I was super excited about. My sister-in-law got Cinderella and my best friend got the Prince. So we're all

Sara:

Oh my God.

Lilly:

Oh my God. Congratulations.

Emily:

thank you. Yeah, I'm really excited. Last show I did with them was Legally Blonde, where I played Paulette. So I'm really looking forward to getting to be in my villain era and like torment my sister-in-law.

Sara:

Amazing.

Emily:

we're like the same age, so it'll be kind of funny seeing how like they costume you, us to look stepmother and Cinderella, but it'll work. She's like a perpetual ingenue look. She's like blonde and blue-eyed and everything. And whereas I look like a quirky little character actor thus playing Paulette and the Stepmother, so.

Lilly:

Oh, that's wonderful.

Sara:

That is incredible. Incredible. Good thing.

Emily:

Yes.

Lilly:

Sarah, what about you?

Sara:

My good thing is that today is actually my birthday,

Emily:

Happy birthday.

Sara:

Thank you. So I bought myself an obscene amount of sushi for lunch and it will continue on for dinner tonight. And then probably lunch tomorrow as well.

Lilly:

Wonderful. That's the way to celebrate your birthday.

Sara:

I thought so.

Lilly:

Also, I would like the record to show I already wished you a happy birthday. I did not just ignore it.

Sara:

It's true. You have wished me a happy birthday. You're safe.

Lilly:

Yeah. My good thing is that I currently have a cilantro forest in my backyard. We didn't even plant cilantro this year. It's like from last year.'cause we like let it

Emily:

itself seeds, so well, yeah. Yeah.

Lilly:

So it, we, you know, plant our tomatoes way too early. They were sad. It was cold. And then a couple weeks ago we were like, holy shit. That entire planter is just full of cilantro.

Emily:

of cilantro. Yeah. Yeah. We we did have a bit of a cooler spring, I garden as well. As you may know, I think that's in my bio. And I, I nearly said my good thing was building garden boxes.

Lilly:

is good, but,

Sara:

is.

Emily:

yeah, yeah. But I, I haven't left my bragging about theater era yet, so I went for that instead.

Lilly:

Fantastic. What is everyone drinking tonight? I was gonna do a mimosa because champagne, fancy train, orange juice, all on theme, no orange juice in the house. Is it still a mimosa if you use apple juice? Maybe we're working with what we got.

Sara:

I mean, they do, they do mimosas with like pineapple juice and stuff. You can get weird mimosas at at restaurants

Emily:

Here you

Lilly:

Pacific Northwest mimosa. Anyway

Sara:

I am also drinking champagne, both because birthday, but also fancy train. It felt appropriate on theme.

Emily:

Oh, you guys. So have the vibes down. So, I'm allergic.

Lilly:

no.

Emily:

So you guys have to carry the vibes for us. I'm allergic to alcohol. I don't like, my one healthy habit is I don't really drink juice or soda. So I was like, oh, I need to make a nice tea or something like that. And I went upstairs like an hour ago and the self-cleaning mode on the stove wasn't done. And I was like, no.

Sara:

Oh,

Emily:

So I have really, I have really boring water, but it's at least in a writer at work like Tumblr Cup that a friend of mine made for me. I was gonna bring something cool, but then my stove wouldn't boil water for me and I couldn't, I couldn't brew anything.

Sara:

I mean, hydration. Hydration is good.

Emily:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lilly:

And this is actually a book podcast no matter how often we accidentally veer into gardening talk. So has anyone read anything good lately?

Sara:

I've just been doing podcast reading, which has been good, but is is not an answer for the purpose of this question.

Lilly:

have a whole episode to talk about that, so that's my answer too.

Emily:

Yeah, so I, I'm like halfway through a couple of books. I think the last thing that I finished that I really, really loved though was honestly the most recent Hunger Games. I, I am such a huge Suzanne Collins fan, just that entire series. It's, it's so, so good. Loved it. It was very convenient because I was heading to a conference where I was going to be teaching a class on character and ethics, and I was trying to find various examples of characters who kind of line up with different moral, ethical theories and philosophical, ethical theories and that kind of thing. And. I knew she was gonna come in as a ringer for me because the previous book was so heavily based around social contract theory. I was like, which one is she bringing this time? And sure enough, like within a few chapters I was like, oh, Hammit was a care ethicist this whole time. So that was really fun, was just kind of being able to slide that into what I was working on for that conference right away. So that's, that's probably my favorite thing that I've, I've read recently was that particular book. But there are a few other good books that I'm kind of like midway through, so hopefully I have more new ones soon.

Lilly:

Wonderful. Well, we read Death on the Caldera. You wrote Death on the Caldera, so I dunno if that counts as having, do you read the, your books after you write them? I have to ask.

Emily:

Yeah, you know, I, I will be perfectly honest, I don't think I have reread it since I did my line reads, like when I was doing kind of the very, very final polishing edit and everything, like I read it top to bottom then and was catch like, I think I had just like a single page worth of these are the grammar and formatting notes that I, I noticed and that would've been back around December, I wanna say was around when I was doing that. And that would've been the last time I read the book. I haven't, I haven't read it since then, all the way through. Like I've read portions of it. Like when my advanced reader copy came in, I was like real book and parts. But I have not sat down.

Lilly:

Well, we won't have any gotcha questions. Don't worry.

Emily:

Yeah, no, I think it's burned enough on my psyche. I roughly know what's in there. If you like, you can try, you can try to gotcha me with it. I don't mind.

Lilly:

one thing I did notice is in your author bio, it mentions that this is your first novel, but you have written in other formats quite extensively. Can you tell us a little bit about how that crosses over?

Emily:

So I think the reason why we ended up using that this is her first novel is because kind of almost without meaning to I did self-publish comics for quite a while. And so that's really the main area where I did a fair amount of writing on my own. Actually it was concurrent with while I was writing Death on the You know, like any good person with a DHD during the pandemic, I picked up a new hobby

Lilly:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. We started podcasting.

Emily:

right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. and so I was at the time drafting death on the Caldera during the pandemic. That was right during that time. But there was this really big section where suddenly I just stopped writing and all I did was draw, paint, and, and make comics, and it was really fun and I, I loved doing it. I learned a ton doing it, and it ended up, you know, having some good effects on other things kind of later to come that we might get into at some point. And I kept that up for quite a while and like the comic I keep in my heart, it's not dead, but I haven't had time to work on it as much as I used to. it's been a hot minute since I updated and added another episode on Web Webtoon. I do kind of hope I get back to it eventually. I think it's a very funny story. It's very different from death on the cald. I draw very different things from what I write as, as silly as that sounds, but I'm not somebody who cares enough about like I, I would never draw a death on the Caldera comic simply because Absolutely draw a train kind masochist wants a. so I tend to kind of write things that are more contemporary stories when I'm doing like more slice of Lifey romance and that kind of thing when I'm doing web comics because I don't need to draw hard things. I just don't, I have nothing to,

Sara:

Did you, did you find, since you were writing them kind of concurrently, did you find that you wanted to bring in characters from one to the other? Do some kind of crossover for yourself or was, were they always completely separate?

Emily:

they were pretty darn separate. You know, it's interesting because Death on the Caldera, it does have characters that I made up like 10 plus years ago, like when I was a lot younger. They were in projects that I wrote when I was much, much younger and a lot more unfocused. And in general, like in terms of my progression and growth as an author, I was much stronger at character early on than I was at like plot and world building and things like that. So a lot of my early work had some really serious structural issues, but it had some decent characters. And so you know, like Death on the Caldera, as I'm sure you noticed as a very large cast. And so I went to go populate that train. I was like, okay, who are some characters that I haven't written in like 10 plus years? That would be fun to kind of explore again and everything and put them in. So I do do that on occasion. My comic Neptune Bay, it is a pretty separate thing. I have considered using some of the characters from that in other projects at some point. But it hasn't happened yet. That that group ended up being very. Separate. And I think part of it is because that it was kind of serving different ends. Death on the cald, the characters were also kind of chosen to match various Agatha Christie archetypes and everything. Whereas Neptune Bay is paying homage to farming sim video games. So the archetypes that it's matching are just very, very different. It's like the bad boy who's a bad boy simply'cause he owns a motorcycle. You know, like that kind of thing. I love a good homage.

Lilly:

Well, you brought up Agatha Christie first, which is great. Now I won't feel bad saying, you know, feels a little murder on the Orient Express, uh, I'm seeing some similarities, which we actually read very recently, I think in the last month or so.

Emily:

Oh, lovely. Yeah,

Lilly:

so the timing worked out

Sara:

yeah, it was, it was pretty recent. I think

Lilly:

Now listeners might realize that does imply a mystery. Our nons spoiler section is probably going to be very short, just in the interest of not spoiling any of the very cool things that happen in this book. and that's just, that's just how it's gonna be. That's okay.

Sara:

it's hard to talk in nons Spoily ways about a murder mystery.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Emily:

It is, it is. I mean, I, I certainly can talk a little bit about sort of Christie as an influence on it, I'd say in a nons spoilery way. Because there's certain things that are just kind of baked into the premise. Like you can get them from the ad copy on the back of the book, anything like that. You know, it's not, it's not a secret that the train crashes. It's not a secret that people start getting murdered off afterwards. You know, like all of that is kind of right there, front and central and everything. Yeah, I wrote this book Agatha Christie was actually an author who I kind of came to later in life. She was not someone who was ever put in front of me as a child or as a teenager or anything. Child is kind of the wrong ish word'cause I don't want to, you know, like some Agatha Christie might be fine for your 10-year-old. But like on the whole, it's usually something that when I've talked to friends who found her younger, they found her in, in their teens. You know, she's a lot of fun for teens and everything because like her books are kind of a safe level of scary and a safe level of dangerous and everything. But I didn't, find her until the last, I wanna say it was within the last eight years because we'd kind of just moved to the house that I'm in now and everything. And I was like, you know, I kind of like things with mystery elements and I've never read any eth the Christie, maybe I should try her. And it, it was that feeling of coming home of finding something that just immediately resonated so hard. And I was just like, where has she been all my life? And the first book of hers I read was Murder on the Orient Express. Mostly just because that's, it's got like the best aesthetics. It's so well publicized and I liked it a lot. But my favorite of hers. The Luke warmest of takes there ever was like, everyone, this is their favorite, but my favorite of hers is. And then there were none. That book horrified me, like in the best way. And it's funny because it's not graphic, it's not overly intense in a lot of ways, but the fact that you're just, you know, like I can remember kind of opening it and getting two or three deaths in and going, oh, they really are all going to die. Just being like, oh, every single one of them. and that realization hitting me and that just like ongoing dread as I read that book, that book gave me nightmares. It's the only one that ever has no horror novel ever has. Just, and then there were none. And it's simply because the tension just does not let up. It is so, so intense watching all these people just die and get scared and get angry and everything. And I, I finished it and I was like, that was the best thing ever. And I've read a fair bit more of her since then. Obviously, you, you don't wanna be drawing from a shallow pool when you write about something. And so I, I made sure to kind of keep reading her and being invested in her work and everything. But it really was kind of right after reading those two books, which were the first two of hers, that like the wheels in my head started spinning and it took probably over a year before they kind of solidified and landed on exactly the plot that I wanted to do in the world and everything else. And I actually got into drafting and everything. There was still quite a bit of a time period where this was all just sort of percolating in the back of my mind. But by the time I did get there. I just was really excited because I felt like Christie actually pairs really, really well with fantasy settings. There's certain challenges about that. Her novels are incredibly tight. They're very, very short. And a big part of that is she can lean on stock characters in a way that is actually very hard to do in science fiction and fantasy. Like the best example I can kind of give is there's a world of difference between the stereotypes we have for a police officer and the stereotypes we have for a British police officer. and Christie's stereotypes that she used were more in the family of British police officer, so they were a little bit more well-rounded and then she'd go from there and then she'd pull back layers and she'd reveal what was different about the characters and everything else. But you don't have that advantage in fantasy. You can only do police officer because everything else you have to set up the context for. And so if you want anything to have the same level of depth or the same level of anything, you've just gotta spend words. She used familiar tropes, she used familiar places, she used familiar you know, character types and everything. And I kind of felt like I had to sort of build all of that and, then put one of her plots inside of it. So of a necessity. It's just not as quick paced as her work is. It kind of can't be. But on the other hand, they do pair well because Christie's work also, she wrote a lot of books that kind of now we look at and talk about as being her travel novels, her novels that were very much about, like Paro solves a mystery on in X location, you know, murder on the Orient Express being the most famous. But of course, death on the Nile is another really good example. Murder in Mesopotamia, you know, kind of all these different books. Where setting is so integral to the nature of the mystery. And I really think that it's that coupling of how setting impacts the mystery that made me excited about the idea of setting Agatha Christie style tropes in a fantasy world. Because of the fact that like she just loves to use every aspect of the way that the house, where the murder takes place is built or the, you know, like the location that she's in and everything, and really bring that to the fore and everything in her books. And, you know, fantasy being a genre that is so about location and so about you know, kind of exploring and everything and playing with a location in an interesting way and hopefully using your world, building in a unique way. It just kind of seemed perfect.

Lilly:

You keep saying fantasy setting. Fantasy setting. This book is so far removed from that stereotypical, vaguely medieval, vaguely European. There's no elves. So when you say fantasy setting, like you mean so much more? This book opens with Davina, our, I'm gonna say main character. They're, as you said, a large cast of characters, but Davina's my main character

Emily:

Yes.

Lilly:

visiting the big city for the first time. And it gave me so much wanderlust, just that experience of her the, a culture that she didn't know the sort of metropolitan big city vibes. And then all of this happening at the same time is introducing the reader to this very different world from what I know and what I'm familiar with. How did you use setting to enhance the reader's experience?

Emily:

Yeah. So one of the things that I think was really, really important to me with the vibes of telling this story is while it's not set on earth I still wanted it to be evocative of the time period that Christie was writing about. So I wanted it to feel like the days in the 1920s and 1930s when fancy rail was at its height and, you know, you had jazz playing on every street corner, you know, and that kind of thing. And so in general, I very much do still feel like there's clearly real world inspiration points, and particularly the jazz era was what I was looking at in terms of what I was using as my inspiration for the book. But the other thing, apparently I'm extra this way, I, I very early on decided that instead of, the world having been modernized on the back of steam and the various technologies that we kind of associate with that, you know, and eventually leading into combustion engines and everything like that. This was a culture that had instead modernized on the back of a magical technology. And, that is kind of fundamentally where the division point is, is like you could almost think of the world in death on the Caldera as probably having had a very similar history to ours up until the Middle Ages. And then when you have kind of people starting to break out of that, even, maybe even the same, all the way up through some of the Renaissance and everything, though again, even the guns are based around vault chemistry within within this world. So you know, you're starting to hit the advent of say, gunpowder and everything else. Into Europe and that sort of thing. And then at that point, instead of it being what we understand from modern technology to be what they have modernized on the back of, they've instead modernized off of the back of the central magic system for the book, which is vol chemistry which is a fancy way of saying magic. Volcanic rocks, basically.

Sara:

So that actually leads perfectly into my next question, which is I, I loved the magic system in this. We'll talk a little bit more about some of the magic in the spoiler section because witches, witches are really cool as well,

Lilly:

Can't talk about him yet.

Sara:

can't talk about them. But I just wanted to, to ask you to talk a little bit about how like you developed the system and what gave you the idea to, to do magic volcanic rocks.

Emily:

So the really big inspiration point for basically all of the magic and death on the cald. And this is so touristy, but it's true, so I might as well say it. I went on holiday to Yellowstone Park for the first time and and as I was there and I was looking around and I was looking at this place, I genuinely, one of the things that really hit me in advance of going, I, you know, I was reading a lot of different accounts from early European based explorers and everything kind of reaching that region and you know, that area of course had been historically known by indigenous peoples for quite a while. But when white people got there, there were issues with the explorers coming back and telling what people assumed were tall tales about Yellowstone. And they ended up having to send not only a photographer, but also a watercolorist to document what it looked like because color photography didn't exist. And one of the things that was really driving people bonkers is they were like, there's no way the water is all those colors, you know? And so, so they sent both, they sent both in order to get them to kind of verify each other. And there was also a lot of paranoia about the way around the ways that like photography could be doctored. And this was actually also a big thing in the legitimizing photography is an actual means of obtaining information. Because up until that point people were like, I'm not sure photographs are real. Which is in itself amazing and hysterical.

Lilly:

We've looped back around.

Sara:

Yeah,

Emily:

I know. I think about that all the time. Oh, deep fakes. What have you done to us? But when I was there, you know, and, and you're wandering right? And it is incredible. It is an absolutely insanely incredible place. And I've been to some other volcanic areas before in the past. I've, I've been to in Greece. You can definitely see hints of that. I'd say also in the, in the story and in the histories that are in the book. And then I've, grown up in British Columbia and we crossed the Rockies all the time going to and from my dad's family in Alberta and everything. And we would frequently stop at the hot springs along the way. I've been inside of hot spring caves and all sorts of things like that. But it was particularly like, just a lot of those thoughts sort of crystallized looking at Yellowstone. I was like, how are there more fantasy novels here? this is so extraordinary. This is so. Out of this world and interesting, and it seems inherently magical to us. Like you can just sit around and nerd out about the actual real science about it for forever. And just feeling that I was like, wow, I really the idea of a book where, you know, essentially all of the magic is in some way due to geothermal activity. And so you know, there's a lot of magic in this book, whether you're looking at the mist that the characters from Halal Jer use, or you're looking at vault chemistry, which is what the characters from Balter primarily use. Those. Both have volcanic origins, you know, they both have geothermal activity origins and everything. And I thought it was kind of a fun way of having the magic like bank baked into the crust of the land and everything which can be fun for thematic reasons. And I also in general, really like magic systems that use materials. I always find that interesting because I think you can do a lot with economics. When you start actually looking at okay, well then how do you monetize a thing that can do all this stuff for you and everything? How do you, how do you regulate and control it? You know, like who has the control? how are they making sure that this thing is disseminated in a way that is agreeable to them?

Lilly:

And what does the black market look like?

Emily:

Yes,

Sara:

I mean, all of that does, does come up

Emily:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's Mary Robin at Cole, who always talks about if you haven't thought about how your magic system can be used on the black marketer for sex, you are not thinking about it deep enough. We don't get into the sex stuff a lot in this book, but I have thought about it.

Lilly:

Oh,

Sara:

well now I, now I wanna know.

Lilly:

what? There's a thing, right? Like humans use every new technology for sex fir, like it's the first thing that they do.

Emily:

Yeah. Yeah. It's how do we get freaky with this? So

Lilly:

Right. Photography was porn and cats were like the first two things. Delightful. I love humans. They're great.

Emily:

We know what we want.

Lilly:

So earlier you mentioned being a very character centric writer and that I think really resonated. I'm a very character centric reader and I that it might be why this book vibed with me so much and I would love to talk about Davina Morrell and Kellen, who I'm gonna expand to be our three main characters. Sorry, Davina, you've been dethroned.

Sara:

Technically, she never had the throne in the first place.

Lilly:

declared her main character like five minutes ago.

Sara:

No, I'm just saying Kellen is the one who has the actual throne.

Lilly:

a, is that a spoiler?

Emily:

not really.

Lilly:

No. Okay. It comes up pretty

Emily:

the

Sara:

No, no, no. It, it's on the back of the book. It

Lilly:

see, I refuse to read the backs of books, so I never know what's a spoiler or not, which is not great for this format,

Emily:

yeah. No, and, and Davina does introduce it kind of in the first pages as if it's a spoiler.

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Emily:

Yeah,'cause'cause we're trying to set the tone for the overall book. And the overall book is that you're just gonna be, you know, slapped up the face with things constantly. Um,

Lilly:

So do you have siblings or did you just pluck this incredible sibling dynamic out of the air?

Emily:

I have siblings I think what actually is more shocking in all of this is I have siblings I have never quarreled with. And, and that's mostly I think, just shocking on a real life level. But I had kind of the ideal experience, but I was the youngest. And I still am to this day. So I've got an older brother and an older sister and I wouldn't say that there's like a one for one with all of this. But like my sister always she definitely was the boss the way Kellen is to a certain degree. My brother was always kind of the really big hearted one in everything, the way that moral is. I would like to think I was not the angry, obnoxious thing that Davina can sometimes be. And I say that outta love for her. I adore her. But when I, when I

Sara:

She's got some reasons to be fair.

Emily:

reasons. Yeah. When I wrote her, I genuinely was like, what is the emotion I am the least comfortable with expressing? And how do I make that the center of a character? Because that sounds interesting and it's anger. I'm very uncomfortable expressing anger. I'm a lot like Kellen that way. Kellen comes from a more personal place a lot of ways than Davina actually does. But that was kind of the appeal of writing Davina, is that it was like a place to express thoughts and feelings that really have only ever been internal for me and with her, because she's so led by them. They just come out and, and she's got reasons. It's not it's not like they aren't justified and it's not like it doesn't make sense from her point of view. But she is a very angry girl and it's just kind of the way it is. But yeah, I do have siblings. And I think, I think that where. The conflicts between Kellen and Davina particularly, and also moral to a certain extent, come from where you can see that reflected in my own life is that as the youngest child, I was the one who got left behind. You know, I, I, I am younger, like my siblings are closer to each other in age than they are to me. And they were gone from home when I was still fairly young. And because we were incredibly close, it was really hard. It was really, really hard being young and being suddenly alone in my home with just my parents and having never experienced that before. I had no desire to be an only child. Like they, they were my, best friends, you know, when I was growing up. And they still are. They're, they're incredible. and so I think that what I really was sort of funneling in general and like the thing that, that book is so much about in a lot of ways is how. Strong and important. Those feelings can feel between siblings. You know, siblings can be an incredibly important part of your life. And and if you are the one who gets left behind, which is sort of the position that d has been in, in a lot of instances in her life, you can kind of feel like you're scrambling to, to sort of get back the love and attention that you used to have. And so there were certainly things that were personal about that. There's a lot more conflict between the siblings and death on the Cal than me and my siblings, I'd say ever had.

Lilly:

Presumably there's fewer crowns involved.

Emily:

fewer crowns involved. My older siblings have not really, yeah, they haven't had the power over my life. There's a power imbalance that exists within the characters and death on the cal there. I feel like now we're veering close to spoilers, so I'll stop at that. But there's a power imbalance there that makes things harder to navigate, whereas there's essentially none between, you know, me and my very, very normal middle class siblings.

Lilly:

One benefit of not growing up in the 1920s, a little bit less misogyny. It's so funny. I am reminded that I'm an only child because when Davina feels some guilt over some of her interactions with her siblings, which we're gonna leave at that for now, and I was just reading that going. Why are you upset? You were right. If they're mad, it's their fault, which is so not, I think maybe a sibling reaction to, oh no, I hurt my brother's feelings.

Emily:

yeah,

Sara:

I mean, I'm, I'm also an only child, and that's not quite how I responded to some of Davina's internal monologue,

Lilly:

You're just nicer than me, then.

Emily:

No. You know, and I tried I tend to be more interested in stories where a lot of the complications arise out of people who are in theory on the same side, not seeing eye to eye. I find conflicts that are entirely like villain versus hero driven, a little bit flat. So in general, I, I don't necessarily want the reader to feel super comfortable only seeing things from any of the character's perspectives. You know, there's, there's ways in which kellen's viewpoints are sympathetic. There are ways in which Devin's viewpoints are sympathetic. There a lot of ways in which morals, viewpoints are sympathetic moral bless. He's just a guy. He is just a guy who was there trying to deal with.

Lilly:

I feel like I sympathized with him the most, frankly, like just thrown way over. I mean, they're all in over their head a little bit, but he was just,

Emily:

He's like, we're all panic enough. And then they're like, we can't panic. He's like, fine, fine. I'll just repress it. But

Sara:

I would, I would actually, sorry, I don't, I don't mean to cut you off. But I was gonna say, I would actually expand that statement about seeing viewpoints of everyone to some of the broader cast as well, not just the, the main characters.

Lilly:

Or not just the siblings

Sara:

or not just the, not just the siblings. Yeah. Because I would argue that even though yes, there is a murderer who is killing people most of the characters in this novel have very understandable motivations, even if I don't always agree with the murder

Emily:

Yes.

Sara:

bits.

Emily:

Yeah. I, I'm going to hesitate to expand upon that, but I have thoughts. I do have, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait for the next portion because

Sara:

It, it definitely, that veers into spoiler territory. But

Emily:

yeah.

Lilly:

Let's put a pin in that. Maybe talk about our favorite point of view. Character Ray, who like deserves a, a whole episode just on her.

Sara:

I don't normally like reading Children's POVs, but Ray was fantastic. I was like, more of Ray, please. That's not a question, that's just a,

Emily:

no, it always warms my heart when I hear that for a couple reasons. Probably the biggest being, raise me at the age of seven, that is a hundred percent how I saw the world. We, have very different backgrounds. We have very different upbringings. But I, I really did just go, what were the questions I would've been asking? What were the things I would've been worried about at that age, and how would that have reflected in my behavior? What are the things I would've said out loud? What are the things that I would've just thought to myself? Because I was like, no one's gonna actually understand this, so there's no point in saying it. You know, like that kind of thing. And, and Ray comes very, very, very strongly from me and just my memories of being a child at that age. So I'm always deeply relieved when people like Ray, because I know how much I drew from just my own childhood and my own way of understanding the world and everything as, as a kid. but yeah, she is, consistently, I can actually say this, having had these conversations with a few different people, she's consistently people's favorite character. And I think to me it goes to show that Viewpoint characters and who you pick as a viewpoint character, when you're writing a massive viewpoint novel, you, it's not always about picking the one who's driving the plot. And it's not always about picking the one who is going to give you like, the most like, emotional stakes all the time kind of thing. Like Ray for, for those who this is like the tiniest of spoilers, I don't think it's a big deal. She's a 7-year-old girl. She's very, very young. She has very little control over what's going on in the entire book. She mostly just responds to things, she is. However, I think an incredibly crucial part of this whole novel because this is a novel where people are in danger and there are petty jealousies and rivalries that are causing things to escalate and there is a literal child's life at stake in all of this. And, and I think that she grounds the story in a way that is really important because it is really hard to buy into kind of the, the BS of what everyone else is doing when you have this very vulnerable child who is dependent on things that actually going well. And then I'm just always so thrilled when people don't find her annoying when they, they find her quirks and her eccentricities charming and everything. I had a lot of fun writing her. I actually your comment about I never like child characters and yet when I was querying this book and I was fielding agent offers, all three agents said the same thing. They all went, I don't usually like child characters, but I think she might have been my favorite. It's oh, well you're probably the right person for the book then.

Lilly:

Yeah. While she is a child, she's not infantalized, right? I mean, she's in over her head like everyone else, although in a very different way. But she is still has an internal logic that is very important.

Sara:

I mean, she feels like a person, not a caricature of a child.

Emily:

Yeah,

Lilly:

a person just far away.

Emily:

yeah,

Sara:

Yeah.

Emily:

yeah. No, I was I was talking about this elsewhere with a friend where they were like, what's the key to writing a good child character? I was like, I think one of the most important things is to keep in mind that like what we experience about children, like their cuteness and their innocence and the way that they make us reflect, they are like never actively trying to cause that in us. That is so far from their heads. Like they, they are trying to make intelligent decisions with very limited knowledge. You know, like they just don't have the same knowledge and experience to pull from, but they're trying to do things that to them are logical. And if they're cute and if they are inspiring and if they are adorable, like that is accidental most of the time. Kids aren't trying to do that. And I, I think sometimes. I've seen, like when I've seen child characters that I haven't cared for, it's like they get caught up in the way that we as adults perceive them and like the effect they want us, the child to have instead of actually kind of getting down on the level of well, what, what would you think would be logical if you were in their position? You know, kids, kids are actually very logical from their point of view. It's just that they, they have such different information to you that's.

Lilly:

Absolutely. Well, I have a thousand more questions, but those are gonna have to be saved for the spoiler conversation for the sake of everyone listening. So before we get over there, I have one final question for Sarah. Who should read this book

Sara:

You should read this book. If you read Murder on the Orient Express, and thought I want an updated version of that with more fantasy and more romance, then this book is gonna be for you

Lilly:

and Less Racism?

Sara:

and less racism.

Lilly:

Well, racism. I mean, there's racism in the story, but

Emily:

more contextualized racism,

Lilly:

yeah.

Emily:

better contextualization for racism, not more racism.

Lilly:

Fantasy racism, which is a little easier to swallow than

Sara:

Well, but also also like just the pros of murder on the Orient Express has a lot of inherent racism baked into it in a, in a way that this book does not, even if there's racism towards the various characters. Yeah.

Lilly:

yes.

Emily:

Yes.

Lilly:

And on that note,

Sara:

Yes.

Lilly:

This episode of Fiction Fans is brought to you by Fiction Fans.

Sara:

That's us! We really appreciate our patrons, because otherwise we fund this podcast entirely ourselves.

Lilly:

Patrons can find weekly bonus content, monthly exclusive episodes, and have free access to our biannual zine, Solstitia.

Sara:

You can find all of that and more at patreon. com slash fictionfanspod. Thank you for all of your support.

Lilly:

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers. So we touched on the sibling dynamic between Davina Morrell and Kellen, but almost even not almost definitely more heartwarming and heart wrenching. Simultaneously was the developing family dynamic between Kellen, Jenna, and Ray. Because as we do eventually find out Kellen's, I'm gonna say college sweetheart. Jenna had his daughter who is Ray, although. He doesn't find out until much, much later. The reader, I think, finds out a little earlier. I think there's some thoughts that are

Emily:

yeah. It's, it's interesting. It actually really varies. I think depending on the person. There are some people who are going to get it the moment that like, Jenna is I need you to watch out for this man. there's some people who I think that immediately they're gonna go, oh my gosh, is Kellen's Ray's father? But a lot of people are just like, oh, there's some weird relationship there. But they don't jump all the way. They don't jump all the way to that is quite literally her dad, you know? And because like for a long time, I've, I've actually often joked that the. The reveal that really hit people in the stomach in early reads of it. And admittedly, there were some differences. So I don't think it was quite as clearly telegraphed. So it might be different now. But for anyone who doesn't pick up on it right away, the reveal that really hits them in the stomach is when they find out that Kellen has Ray's father. They're like, oh. And but yeah, that was that was something I had a lot of fun writing in, in terms of the dynamics between them and all of them. I mentioned earlier that of the siblings, Kellan is the most like me and Ray is the most, most like me of all of the characters. And there's, there's reasons for that. You know, they, there's, there's similarities in personality. Kellen was probably a lot like Ray as a child, and that's, you know, that's why she is the way that she is and everything. But yeah, it was, it was really fun. It was really fun writing a. Had such high emotional stakes, I'd say for a whole bunch of the characters involved, where there was a really deep history that had involved a fair amount of lying in deceit on both sides, and yet everyone was trying to do the best they could with the choices they had. And how do you recover from that? You know, how do you rebuild when everyone has hurt each other, you you know?

Lilly:

Especially since they were so young. I mean they were in college, so Dang young. And to have those, I mean you're allowed to make mistakes with your 17, but also it makes sense why people are still mad at you about it.'cause they were also

Emily:

Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Emily:

Mm-hmm.

Lilly:

usually, miscommunication as a complication feels fake. A lot of times it feels manufactured by an author, but the miscommunication between Kellen and Ray I thought was just so, so sincere and well done because it's, again, it's not one of the character's faults, it's just Ray is operating on a different amount of information than everyone else, and then mm-hmm.

Emily:

I've seen so many things where people are like, you know, if everyone just talked, then the plot wouldn't need to happen. And I'm like, yeah, and if everyone just talked, then your parents' divorce didn't need to happen. You know, like there's not to sound brutal there, but I

Lilly:

I mean,

Emily:

I actually really love a miscommunication trope for those reasons. And, and I think it's the difference, like you said, between is it manufactured or is it growing outta the fact that like people making their, what they think are best decisions in the positions they're in, make bad choices you know, make choices that you kind of in hindsight are like, Hmm, maybe I should have done that differently. But you know, Kellen not telling Jenna that he was next in line to be king was an understandable choice from his point of view. Jenna, after she realized that, not telling Kellen that she was pregnant because she didn't know what would happen if she got a royal family of the most secretive country on the continent involved, was a very logical decision from her point of view. You know, making in that instance. And then, you know, when kind of. Everything blows up and there hits that moment where Jenna suddenly needs Kellen's help and her life again and everything, and she appears and basically like comes in angry because she's harbored all of this resentment for years that he's had no idea about because he doesn't know any of this happened and he thinks they just fell outta touch. Because he's a little clueless that way.

Sara:

Poor.

Emily:

Wow. I guess we grew

Lilly:

I get now, but now I'm going. Did I get everyone I stopped talking to from college, pregnant on accident? Oh, no. Unlikely. But what

Emily:

what if, what if I know right? Yeah. and so as a result, you know, like Jenna comes in angry, Kellen's not ready for it. Once Kellen finds out what's going on, he is angry. And yet ultimately what they both really just want is what's best for Ray. You know, credit where credit's due. Neither of them wanna be making these choices poorly on raise account. It just happens. So, you know, it's just, it's just one of those things.

Sara:

They're doing the best

Emily:

they're doing the best they can and it's not great. And I think one of the things that's also sort of worth pointing out, you know, and there's, there's a moment where Davina, it suddenly hits her how young Kellen is for the amount of pressure that is on him. He is only 25 in the context of the actual overall story, he is a 25-year-old man who has just found out that he has a 7-year-old daughter and he is trying to hold together a whole bunch of people who are. Basically trying to get themselves killed after a, after a train crash on the mountains. And he really is about the only thing that is holding that group together. And the moment he's outta commission, it all falls back, you know?, I do, I feel for him, I feel like he has a huge amount of pressure on him, and he is obviously not always making the best call in a lot of those situations. And he is worsening problems. But he's also doing some things right. You know, again, things don't really actually completely go off the rails until Kellen is unconscious. Which, you know, he spends a good part of act two unconscious, so the second half

Lilly:

The other miscommunication plot line, not plot line, but aspect, I think necessitates a conversation about witches first because, ooh, our witches cool. In this book.

Sara:

They're so cool.

Emily:

so fun.

Lilly:

So the idea that some women have a, a witch self inside of them, is that sort of the, the best way to describe it, that inspired by something that I should know? How embarrassed should I be by that

Emily:

No, no, not very. So I'd say that the witches were kind of inspired by sort of two strong things. One, this is a concept I've batted around since my teen years and it. Being in social situations where I was watching my friends and I would watch how drastically differently they behaved around boys and men versus the way they ha behaved around just their female friends. And you know, like with time I was like, oh, the word for that. It like, it's a form of code switching you know, based around gender as opposed to being based around race, you know, and everything. But it was something that just really hit me was how many of my friends it was, it was like they, they repressed what was weird or what was, difficult about them in, in certain types of social scenarios. And that was really, really apparent. And it's especially true when you're dealing with like younger people, with teenagers and everything, like the older we get the less we care. so this is definitely a phenomenon that I do kind of associate with youth and I think that's part of why Davina ends up being our access character for it, is that she is dealing with more of a conflict between those sorts of things. But at the same time as I got older, even if we are more settled in ourselves, you know, as women, as we get older and everything, you still see it in workplaces. You still see it in places where you're supposed to be taken seriously, a really specific way. And, and I think that this general sort of realization of how much hostility there. Threatening in the mildest of sense behavior from women was very interesting to me. And so I liked the idea of you know, a way of approaching witches where it's oh yeah, well there's the good version of you and then there's the bad powerful one. and then complicating that and talking about that a little bit and everything, and so I, I developed this whole system that basically is used as a means of justification within this book. I wanted to write in a world that was dealing with certain similarities in terms of questions around sexism that our own world deals with. But I can empathize with people who don't love it when sci-fi and fantasy does that just'cause they're like, well, in real life it was sexist then. So now it's sex and you're making a fantasy world. Choose the

Lilly:

It's, that is your choice to bring that in. Yes.

Emily:

And, and I was like, okay, I know I'm making the conscious choice to bring sexism in. How do I do that in a way where it's interesting because there's something different about the way that it's perceived in this world, and it's actually tied to the way that magic comes out and everything. Like If you had a world where you know your mom or your sister, you know, like using the kind of classic, I, I'm a man who has a mother and a sister. That's why I care about women's rights. But if they could suddenly transform into somebody who was radically powerful and who also could not remember who you were, do you deal with that? You know, like how would you deal with that and what are the terrible choices you would make in the name inspiration? Is also essential to the witches is this idea that a witch can do no small magic. Which is actually very different I'd say from most portrayals of witchcraft. Like in most witchcraft stories. You've got like these kind of smaller spells and everything, and they very frequently are the practitioners of small magic and of kind of like gentler things and everything. That's a very common trope, I'd say.

Lilly:

I, yeah. Is that a, a continuation of the men or the big, powerful, loud magic users and women are the,

Emily:

think that that's frequently kind of how it comes about. That's frequently how, what shows up in a lot of traditional literature. And what I was kind of interested in and this is, this is maybe a little more separated out from the gender stuff in terms of where my inspiration came from. I was really fascinated by the idea that like. Any magic system and any kind of magic you give people has to have limits. You have to kind of know what the magic can do and what the magic can't do. And I thought it would be really interesting to tell a story where the magic was very much defined actually by the fact that you can't really use it for any of the really practical things that we would want to do because that's too small. Like you can only use it to flatten a city, you know, or something like undo it, that there's a little more nuance than that as the book kind of gets into it. And and there's things I know that didn't quite make it into this book that if, if I get the chance to write a sequel and everything will make it into later ones, you know? But you know, like at this point, the main thing that you understand is that like when a witch does magic, it's scary and it radically alters things. They can't just start a campfire. They can't just cook your food really fast or anything like that. No, they are flattening a valley or nothing. And because that actually struck me as a less useful magic, like I feel like it's so often that we want something small to happen, and it's so rare that we actually need that superman end sequence level of, you know, like knocking over buildings and everything. And so I, I loved that idea of creating this magic that was incredibly unpredictable, where it caused, this disconnect between personas, between, with the women who practiced it and everything and that the limits were actually based on it not being able to do anything small as opposed to like needing to grind your levels or whatever in order to do the big thing. I thought that would be really interesting.

Sara:

Yeah. I mean, I, I loved it. And like you say, I, I do often wanna start campfires. I don't wanna start forest fires. One is, one is useful. The other not so much.

Lilly:

There's a, there's a joke about the most Californian sentence in there somewhere.

Sara:

That was, that was a pretty

Emily:

That was so, yeah. Yeah. No, we get it. We're also on the west coast in fire.

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

yeah.

Sara:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yeah.

Lilly:

So that brings us to the other huge communication, or, I mean, impossible communication that in the course of this book, Davina's Witch Self is brought forth for the very first time when her life is threatened, because normally someone has to use the witch's name to call forth the witch. And so Davina and her witch, I'm, I'm gonna spoil re I don't think spoiling the name itself is a spoiler for plot stuff, but Sorry,

Emily:

Anyway. You knew you

Sara:

I mean, we're in the spoiler

Emily:

picked it up.

Lilly:

I won't tell you how that comes out, leave something to the imagination. But between the two of them, while they are so separate, that moment of miscommunication or those moments of miscommunication is also heart wrenching. I think I used that for the first one too. But we, the reader know who Davina's brothers are, and so re is there like, I don't know, you're kind of helping me, or you don't seem like you're helping me. And that again, I guess the internal logic of it, I think like you said, is what preserves that for not being frustrating and just sympathetic instead.

Sara:

I mean, it, it absolutely makes sense, but it did kill me a little bit to see Cice attack Kellen and actually get kind of close to killing him.

Emily:

yeah. She gets close. Yeah. And you know, and it's funny because there's this piece, there's this piece of Kellen that feels like he earned it because of the fact that he didn't tell Davina sooner. Like he's in this terrible position of he could have prevented that, but he was scared and didn't know what to do about the information that he was given about her. You know, he, he learned about his sister's witch nature when his mother died. And Kellen would've been 13 when their mother passed away. So he was quite young. Davina was six Morl was 11, Kellen was 13. And you know, you don't know a ton about the family that they were raised in. You know, you kind of hear them talk a little bit about their father and about their uncle but you don't know a ton about them yet. What you do know is that Davina's mother, who was also a witch and new Davina, was a witch. as she was dying, she did not trust that information with her husband or anyone who was like an adult in the lives of her children. And so she left a letter with her eldest son, who was honestly still incredibly young at the time and. Kellen didn't know what to do with that information because he like he was a kid, he had no idea how to train a witch or anything like that. And in his very logical brain, he was like, I will research this enough that eventually I will come up with a situation that will be so safe to give her this information. And what that turned into was procrastination of actually doing the thing that eventually lands them in this spot where the actual thing that informs Davina, she's a witch, is the fact that her life is threatened and witchcraft. I decided, this felt like a logical cheat. Like the way that they switch between their personas on the whole is by name. When the name of one of them is called, they swap. And when the name of the other is called, they swap back. But with this instance I was like, I feel like it just kind of feels a little unfair if something is trying to kill you if your witch magic doesn't flare up and is like, Ugh, stop this. That just felt logical to me. And so, you know, so in general, that was kind of my, my thought process. And so when I realized that and that's basically what happens in the book is that their lives are threatened on the train. The, the whole train really should explode and Davina instinctively transforms, turns the front train car the front passenger car, which her family happens to be riding in to stone. And it actually manages to survive the grinding across the the tracks as it's caved over and it doesn't burn the way that it would've. And as a result, there's significantly more survivors than there would've been. There's still death toll people survive, Davina included. but the thing is, is she does that and then they wake up and that, you know, like everyone comes too, because it happened in the middle of the night. Everyone wakes up and one of the train cars has been turned to stone and the train has crashed. And to most people's eyes, it looks like a witch crash to the train. And so you get this real conflict that arises outta the fact that Davina actually saved their lives, but she looks like the most guilty person if anyone finds out that she's a witch. Which also was a really, really fun tension to get to play around with. I, you know, it's fun. I like putting people in terrible situations.

Sara:

Well, and it turns out that a witch did crash the train. I mean, it just wasn't, it wasn't Davina, but, but there was a witch and, and she did crash the train.

Emily:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, she did.

Lilly:

Well, and that leads to how there were so many bad guys or.

Emily:

Yes.

Lilly:

Bad guys. Listeners won't see my dramatic air quotes, but bad guys and also a few red herrings in this novel, and so many of them end up

Emily:

Yeah.

Lilly:

Who do you think deserved their death the

Emily:

Lord, draw, like that's pretty easy. There's a reason why like with most people a meth just explodes them, but withdrawal, he's we will be stabbing many times. Draw sucks Aer who needs him?

Lilly:

Oh, except then guilt by Association. That does pull Carrie Lord Carrie, down a little bit. And I don't want him to be pulled down.

Sara:

actually like genuinely spent most of the book thinking, okay, Carrie seems great. What bad thing is going to be revealed about him? And we do get some kind of like mild bad stuff.

Lilly:

but not terrible.

Sara:

And, and then he died and I was like, oh, I did not see this coming. And I was very sad about it.

Emily:

I really thought there was gonna be a bait and switch where a meth was the love interest and Carrie was the murderer.

Sara:

That like genuinely genuinely that was what I thought.

Emily:

And I. On purpose because I kind of did a meth and Davina have a weird relationship. Like you can kind of tell that they are both watching each other, you know, the entire time in, in the book and everything. Like they're both a meth is so so much faster to clock than Carrie that he is like, something's not right with this girl. There is something going on. And she's just like, he's very odd.

Sara:

I mean, Carrie's a bit of, abo

Lilly:

And that's why we love

Emily:

Right. If only he wasn't a war profiteer, he'd be perfect.

Sara:

yeah,

Lilly:

He's trying to be a war

Emily:

Yeah. Well and I think, you know, I credit and I'm quotes again, genuinely believes somehow.

Sara:

he's not, he's he's not very bright. Like, I mean,

Emily:

I mean, canonically, it's canonically in the book that the reason he didn't like flunk outta prep school is because meth did his homework

Sara:

Yeah. Yep.

Lilly:

Oh,

Emily:

just

Sara:

RIP Carrie,

Emily:

carry you? You were lovely. A little dense, but really lovely.

Lilly:

there's, there's a fan fiction somewhere in Carrie surviving this and then seeing what Soze does because of these experiences, and then realizing how bad of an idea it was.

Emily:

Yeah.

Sara:

and he and Davina team up and they have a, they have a romance.

Lilly:

I think if he, like everything that he saw during the course of this book, he would've been like, oh

Emily:

Yeah, you'd like to think that I, I'd like to hope that he is somewhat self-aware. I think Harry's a little bit just guilty of rich boy like myopia. Like I think he has a very hard time seeing his life outside of the social class he was born into. And a meth who can like, does not know what to do with that. Like basically is just he's so angry and he doesn't know what to do with all of his anger. And then he's oh, this train blew up. That was a great idea.

Lilly:

the romance trash reader in me is like, well, obviously Carrie likes Davina so much. It would,

Emily:

It would redeem

Lilly:

through all of his preconceived notions.

Emily:

You're counting on Davina to be the moral one here for that.

Lilly:

no, because he'd be like, oh, if she's a witch, that means I was

Emily:

That's true. I think that that is true. I think that if Carrie, I think the witch stuff, Carrie would have an easier Time with the Calder stuff is where he'd struggle because that more directly impacts him and his ability to make money. Whereas Davina, you know, and, and in general, and I only can get into it so much within this book again, everyone pray that I finished this proposal to give to my publisher for a sequel.'cause I, I really, really am hopeful that I will get to do one.

Sara:

I I will also say that I finished reading this book and was like, I need the next one. When is it

Emily:

I'm working on it. I'm working on it. So yeah. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed.

Lilly:

like a little angry, but also excited.

Emily:

And there's, there's places that touch on this in this first book. But in general, one of the things that I, hoped to kind of hit on is the idea of intersectionality and how sometimes people in certain privileged positions only see the ways in which they're discriminated against, and they don't necessarily have the best grasp on what's hurting everyone else. You know, like there's the conversation that's right at the beginning of the book where Davina's like women's liberation is happening here in Balter and like Kellen's, like happening for whom? Davina, and of course Kellen's really getting heated because he is like, you are a freaking witch. You can't be here. You know, they'll kill you little sister. I don't want that. We're going home. I know it sucks there. I know that there's real issues with the way that gender is done over there, but you would die here. and she doesn't know at that point, and he's not gonna tell her in the literal country that will kill her. so he waits until the train explodes. Great job, Kellen.

Sara:

As one does.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Emily:

but in general, you know, like there are multiple axes in which people are being in some way discriminated against within this book. And there are characters who I think would do well at reevaluating on some again, I think carrie's a really good example of somebody who could be like, yeah, I'm a feminist, but not be necessarily great at being a little bit more racially aware. You know, like would kind of be the equivalent today. You know, not, not be like, quite willing to let go of the colonialism that has benefited him. And there's definitely tensions around that I think throughout the entire book. And so, very few people really get a particularly high moral ground to stand on except maybe for moral himself, who's just so done with all of this. He's just a guy. Um.

Sara:

Well, I think it brings us back to what we touched on a little bit in the nons spoiler section, which is that for a lot of the, characters in this big cast, they all, even when they make bad decisions, or like with a meth who, you know, literally murders people and Hess who, who

Lilly:

Yeah, but don't most of them deserve it?

Sara:

Yeah. Well that's, that's what I'm getting at, right? Is there is, there is some kind of like understanding there of why they're doing those actions. So it's there are a lot of bad people in this book, but it's not black and white. It's not like there's a villain. There are antagonists,

Emily:

And you have that conversation at the very end between Ray and Kellen, you know, where Ray is confused and upset about what's happened. And she's talking about like, why did this witch target our train? And he says to her, you know. This to that witch. She was a soldier like your Uncle Morl. and I actually think there's a pretty strong argument that can be made that Hess really isn't a villain. Like in a traditional sense, like not from her point of view. And if you look at egg at the Christie's work one of the things that was really, really common with Christie, Christie was very moralistic in the way that she wrote. She actually it's really funny because the death penalty during her time that she was writing, the type of death that her characters got at the end of her stories was always indicative of how guilty and how bad what they'd done she thought was. So if they killed someone who kind of deserved it, she often gave them the chance to like gracefully commit suicide because in her head that was better. You know, it's, it's so weird, but it was a different time, you know, it was a really different time. I'm not gonna try to understand it. But so you'll see in like if, if she empathizes with the murderer, they won't necessarily get carted away and hung, you know, and actually executed. Poro will slip them a pistol and they'll be able to take their own life before he takes them out, you know, like that kind of thing. That happens quite frequently. Murder on the Orient Express, we're in the spoiler section. Sorry, everyone. We're an almost, that is the one group, Paro, let's get away. You know? Because he does think the murder is justifiable, and so he doesn't blame any of them. And so, you know, death on the Caldera, one of the witches who institutes the, the crisis gets killed, but the other one gets away and a meth gets very badly injured, but he gets away. because I was thinking about that. I was like, okay, well if I'm Christie, how badly do I think these characters need to be punished for what they did? And the answer is, it's complicated. You know, especially with a met, there's something very, very screwy going on there. But at the same time, the people he's after, you're like, oh, I do get it. I, I get why you are so frustrated that you can't seem to find a way to bring down this system you were born into and now you're just angry and lashing out at it and everything else. And with Hess. Hess is quite literally a soldier in a war from her point of view. Like she is fighting against a invasive colonial force. And you know, there's kind of that old saying like that, like we give the name terrorism to acts of war that are committed not by countries, but instead by other entities, basically. and she's kind of in that position, she's in that kind of gray zone position between what is terrorism and what is simply war? And I mean, and war is, war is hellish. I think that that's one of the things that I also believe really, really strongly is that at the same time it's hard for me to be like, oh yeah, well then what she did is fine. No, I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that here. what she did was hellish, but what she did was also something that was, I think, fairly understandable from her position. You know.

Sara:

And she does say, I mean, a, again, not to justify her actions, but she does make a point of saying, yeah, we, made sure that the train operators got away. the fact that we were, were just gonna kill some, some rich douche bags, you know, collateral

Emily:

Yeah, no, exactly. That's her way of looking at it. And it's like, I see your point. You know, I've been watching a lot of, and or lately I'm like, every time Lutheran is like, I burn myself for a future, I'll never see. I'm like, yeah, I get it. So anyway,

Lilly:

So, this book is at its core, a murder mystery. There have, there things have happened. We wanna find out who did it, who done it, if you will. How much do you plan? Was the, was the murder mystery always what it is?

Emily:

Yes and no. So pretty early on I had this big list of characters and I was like, okay, I need to pick a murderer. And I was like a meth. I haven't developed him a lot. There's a lot of room to play around. I'll just pick a meth. it wasn't quite drawing a name from a hat, but like he kind of was the dart that the dartboard hit. And so I wrote the book always knowing that the ultimate reveal with him was going to be that he was the one who was killing off everyone. And I, I think I knew pretty darn early that it was the witches who crashed the train. Again, in terms of things I borrow from Christie, it is very, very common that multiple mysteries are going on at the same time in her novels and that there's like a double solution. Death on the Nile does this quite a bit. There's two completely unrelated crimes happening at the same time in that book. It's amazing. I'm not sure if it's in the movie. And so, you know, so in general I did not feel badly about the fact that I was spreading the, the blame out between two characters and essentially had two mysteries going. Even though that can be a little I know there's probably gonna be some people that are like, wait, shouldn't this all wrap up with one place? And I'm like, that's not how she did it. I kind of love that.

Sara:

Why?

Emily:

yeah, no, exactly. It's so much more fun if it's kind of more textured and nuanced and everything than that. And so, you know, so, so I knew those things pretty early on. There was a lot of juggling that happened. I think, I'll be perfectly honest, of all of the characters, the one who really took me the longest to lock in on, and it probably was because I threw a dart at, his name and landed on a meth being the killer and meth took a little while to like really strike the balance of understanding where he was coming from. I always kind of knew he was sort of a. a random, you know, destructive person who was like trying to act defiantly against a corrupt system, but that he also would like, it's like, dude, don't do this alone. This is not the type of thing you do alone. That's, that's honestly probably his biggest issue is it is a very, very bad idea to just take your violent instincts out on random people. I don't, Emily does not endorse

Sara:

a little bit.

Emily:

get involved in some political canvassing or something, man. You know, maybe find a more productive means of doing this. But you know, like I, I had to really sort of work on what was driving him to that edge and everything. And then in. A lot of them were in place from, from pretty early on. I always knew that it was going to be sort of like, first there's the train crash, and then eventually there's the beat where they find out that the trestle bridge has been destroyed. And then eventually there was always going to be the point where the mountain collapsed and that that was going to hit concurrent with Davina finding out that Kellen had a child and making that everyone's problem. And, you know, and so a lot of those really big events, I had a pretty good understanding of where they were going to fall. There were certain things like some of the red herrings and things like that that slid around, especially in edits with my editor. you know, I kind of explained in the earlier half of this that I picked up reading Agatha Christie later in life. And I'd more primarily been reading science fiction and fantasy before then. And so as a result, I would say that that was kind of where my strength lay was. It it lay in stuff that was character driven lay and stuff that was a little bit more sort of based around what I was doing with science fiction fantasy. And I ended up kind of really benefiting from the fact that the editor that I worked with at Titan Books rufuss, he came with a much stronger crime fiction background. And so when my agent and I were on the call with him talking about what we saw for the book and everything, he basically was like, all the character stuff is working great. All the world building is working really great. I want to help you tighten up the narrative. And I was like, oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. And. First draft. I like glazed past when the conductor got killed and he was like, this should be like a sequence. And I was like, oh, you're not wrong. And so there were definitely things that he kind of helped flesh out that sort of helped clarify it. You know, I think some of the other things that were kind of there from the be beginning, I always knew I was going to make a meal outta the fact that meth was the one character who all of his clothes look the same. So he could actually ditch his incriminating clothing constantly and swap out and look innocent, and yet if you track it, he's clean at points. He shouldn't be clean. And that's actually the clue, you know, so there were, there were things like that I knew I was going to be able to play with. You know, while everyone else is a mess and is in the same clothes, a meth is somehow able to like, keep looking like he hasn't been through a train crash. And it's because that actually his clothes are covered in blood from whatever the last thing he did was so, uh, charming.

Sara:

I mean, boy boyfriend material for

Emily:

Yeah. Yeah. She, you know, so sad she didn't date him instead of going after Carrie

Sara:

so would you say that there were any scenes that surprised you as you were writing?

Emily:

Yes. Definitely like I try to let my characters lead as much as possible in the way that I write them. And you know, and there's certain things I can anticipate about the way that they're going to respond to each other. I can't necessarily anticipate everything they're going to do. And, and I think probably like the, the characters who surprised me we're gonna end up talking about a meth a lot. Because he was the one who kind of surprised me the most, like the others I knew really, really well going in. I just, I knew what they were going to do. It was really, really apparent and everything. But you know, like I'd gone in initially with, you know, Carrie and Davina set up as a, as a pair. and this was really early on in the process, this was before I had an agent or anything like that when I was doing my revisions, I was rewriting the beginning. And I was retooling kind of the way some of the characters were introduced. And eth suddenly got introduced from Dina's point of view instead of just kind of in his own viewpoint chapter.'cause initially he had a chapter in that first like section of the book and everything as opposed to being after the train crash. And when I introduced a meth from D Venus's point of view, I really hadn't had them interact that much at that point. Like I hadn't really written that yet in the previous versions of the story. And as I did more and more revisions in general, I was like, okay, these two are going to face off at the end. They have to have some kind of a relationship. You know, they have to have at least thoughts and feelings and impressions of each other before they start trying to murder each other. because that's gonna be our climax is these two going at it.

Sara:

Enemies to lovers.

Emily:

yeah, it was the moment where like. he kind of turned and actually looked at her for the first time and interacted with her and was like, yes, I agree with you about this thing. And she was like, yeah, you do. And I was like, Davina, calm down. You know? And so I do think there's a bit of a weird chemistry between them and I sort of like that. But obviously it he's, he's a little too out there for her to explore that with, you know? And so she, she's running after Carrie instead. But yeah, like in general, their dynamic I always found really interesting and really fun. Similarly writing him opposite Hess, both when she interacts with him, when she's still like pretending to just be a nurse and everything. And then at the very end when he's like getting ready to fight her and she's like, dude, just like. Just don't, and he is like, uh, you know, and everything I really, really loved their dynamic and the way that like, she understood what she could use him for in a very different way from kind of some of the other characters and everything. yeah, and I'm excited about that again in hopefully what will, you know, again, I I still have to write a proposal. There's no guarantees, but hopefully the next book.

Sara:

I loved that Hess had the same pickup line for a meth as she did for Davina.

Emily:

Yeah. She'll just say what needs to be said. She's like, maybe it'll work this time.

Sara:

look, if at first

Emily:

Try, try again. Yeah. No, she's she's pretty determined. Yeah, she's, she's a fun character to write. She's very practical. and I, I always like writing a character who's kind ruthlessly practical. I think that's a lot of fun. So.

Lilly:

What do you hope readers take away from this

Emily:

I hope they have a fun time. I hope they just enjoy like the wild ride, the explosions, the, you know, kind of confusion at times. And then the other thing that I hope they take away, and we've, we've talked about it a lot already, is empathy for people in bad situations, making the best choices they can when those choices are not actually very good. You know, I think I always like to describe this book as a book that is fundamentally about found family with your real family. You know, it's about discovering that those relationships that drove you nuts all your life actually have value to you. and I I love that about it. I love that thematically, you know, like I joke that this whole book is essentially just a story about how badly I want a hug from my brother when he's been away for a long time. it is just about that yearning for connection between family members, even when there's been hurt in the past. And that I think is what I would hope people take away from it, you know, in addition to just having fun with it. I, I don't pretend to write the deepest thing in the world. I, I try to write things that are fun. I try to write things that are engaging and that maybe, you know, surprise you with some of the things that you end up feeling along the way.

Lilly:

Well, you hit probably all of my personal thing. Like we got the twenties, we got the murder mystery, we got the romance plot line. Like, You read me, you didn't meet me yet, but you, you were like, I know who this is for Yeah. I would throw out the um, the moral of the story might be hindsight is 2020

Emily:

I've always said thematically, the book is about forgiveness. And here, here's something we can say that's just complimentary to Carrie. He is the one who says, you know, when there's been heard on both sides, don't you think forgiveness might just be the way forward? and that's, I think what this, what this book is basically about is it's about the idea that people can change and people can forgive and and they can move forward and come together. And probably the, the people who drive us nuts love us more than we sometimes countenance, you know?

Sara:

And also sometimes people can murder.

Emily:

sometimes people can murder. can do that.

Lilly:

Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Sara:

Emily, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast to, to chat about this book with us. We have loved having you, we loved the book. I am desperate for book two. I know you've said that, that you have to write the proposal and everything, and it's not a guarantee, et cetera. But if we do get a book to which I'm, I'm speaking it into existence,

Emily:

manifest.

Sara:

can we look forward to?

Emily:

so you got a little bit of a hint of it at the end of book one. But the very simple thing is the question that Kickstarted book one has not been resolved yet, which is what happens when Mor Davina and Kellen come home. And at this point now they're coming home with a little girl and her mom and they're coming home to a court who might not be that excited about that. And on top of it there is now a very powerful witch who knows who is actually the power behind the crown in Helge. And she is coming to get hers, and she's got a certain, you know, psycho, psychopathic little wink on her side. You know, little boy, toy guy. I guess not twink, that's, that's specifically gay culture.

Lilly:

Do witches get to borrow gay

Emily:

You know, I've thought about that a lot because it's not something that I'd say I was primarily writing from. It, it's not my experience to write from, but it occurred to me like after I got deeper in you know, I was like, oh, I can see, you know, I don't know, leave that to the fan fiction people to come up with the way to really extend to the metaphor into presentation and what sides of ourselves we choose to present. And yeah. Also, just for the record, trans witches are witches in this world. Like there's, there's no way that doesn't exist. It, it definitely does.

Lilly:

I want that bumper sticker. Trans witches, or witches.

Sara:

Yes.

Lilly:

thank you so much for joining us again. Where can our listeners follow you for updates? More information? Where? Where can You be found? What's your web? Web tune? Neptune

Emily:

you want something very different in tone, go check out Neptune Bay. so listeners can find me at Emmy Pax or Emmy Paxman depending on the site, they can find me on Instagram, blue Sky, and I like just started a substack. So if you wanted to join in that and those are kind of the main places to find me. Your Instagram and Blue Sky and Substack.

Sara:

Awesome. you so

Emily:

Thank you.

Lilly:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Sara:

Come disagree with us! We're on Blue Sky and Instagram, at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com. Or leave a comment on YouTube.

Lilly:

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Sara:

We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Lilly:

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!