Speaker A
So the main character of Hemlock and Silver is the toxicologist, and her name is Ana. She's a woman who, and this is set in sort of quasi-Renaissance times. And part of that is that I had
Author T. Kingfisher discusses her new book Hemlock & Silver, her writing journey, and inspirations in fantasy and horror genres.
Key Takeaways
- Hemlock & Silver is inspired by historical toxicology and features a strong female scientist protagonist.
- T. Kingfisher embraces adult themes and creative freedom not allowed in children's literature.
- Writing horror and fantasy serves as a way to channel inner demons and explore darker themes safely.
- Early media influences like Star Trek shaped Ursula Vernon's love for genre fiction.
- The author works across multiple genres and mediums, maintaining a distinctive style.
What the video covers
- T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) talks about her new book Hemlock & Silver, featuring Ana, a toxicologist in quasi-Renaissance times.
- She shares how reading historical poison books inspired the novel's themes and setting.
- The episode introduces hosts Adrian M. Gibson and Greta Kelly, who promote their own works and the podcast's Patreon.
- Ursula Vernon explains her transition from children's books to adult horror and fantasy writing under the T. Kingfisher pen name.
- She discusses the creative freedom in adult fiction, including swearing, gore, and unconventional solutions like arson.
- The conversation touches on her early influences, notably Star Trek, and her diverse genre explorations.
- Ursula reflects on the therapeutic nature of writing horror and fantasy, contrasting it with the tension in children's literature.
- The episode includes a sponsor message for a related science fantasy novella, Shattered by Nicholas W. Full.
- Ursula also mentions her work in various mediums, including webcomics and fantasy romance novels.
- The discussion highlights her unique voice and approach to genre blending and storytelling.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Hemlock and Silver and its protagonist Ana
- 03:06Podcast hosts intro and book promotions
- 06:19Ursula Vernon's transition from children's to adult fiction
- 09:11Creative freedom in adult horror and fantasy writing
- 12:14Early influences and genre exploration
- 15:29Therapeutic nature of writing horror and fantasy
- 22:21Sponsor message and related works
- 26:11Ursula's multi-genre and multimedia work overview
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
just read a fascinating book about historical poisons called The Royal Art of Poison. I think that was a lot of just various individuals in history who died of something that might have been poison, might have been food poisoning, might
Speaker A
have been malaria, might have been what, and they would go through and be like, okay, this is, but since, you know, they didn't have an advanced science of toxicology, they just assumed everything was poison, particularly if you were, you
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know, a ruling individual. So, you know, people are like, it's like, no, he probably just had malaria, or no, this guy died of dropsy, and occasionally, oh no, there was so much arsenic in him that, you know, his hair was preserved for the next
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thousand years, kind of thing. But just occasionally I will read a non-fiction book and be like, "Oh, this is amazing. I have to, I have to write a book that uses this idea."
Speaker A
[Music] What is up, everybody, and welcome to episode 168 of SFFF Addicts. I'm your host Adrian M. Gibson, and welcome to your weekly dive into the world of science fiction, fantasy, and writing craft. Joining me this week is my
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co-host, my bestie from Mid Midwesty, the Queen of My Days, Greta Kelly. How are you, Greta?
Speaker A
I'm doing good. How are you, Adrian?
Speaker A
Doing very well, thank you. And if you want to support the Queen of My Days, you can buy her book, The Queen of Days, but you can also get Seventh Queen, The Frozen Crown.
Speaker A
Yeah, if you want to. Yeah, you got that huge ass post. I know.
Speaker A
I love it. So, go support Greta, help her feed her children, make her life better.
Speaker A
That's right. And enjoy a nice story. And get your daily dose of murder, mayhem, and mushrooms by checking out Adrienne's book, Mushroom Blues, available wherever you buy books now.
Speaker A
And if you want to support MJ and her quest to quit her day job and feed her cat, you can go buy her books, Among Thieves and Thick Assieves, which are books one and two in the Tales of Tomorrow duology. So, you know, you get a complete
Speaker A
a complete story from start to finish. You don't have to worry about, you know, just all those fantasy books that are just in limbo these days. As well, a
Speaker A
quick note for listeners, don't forget to support SFFAX on Patreon. If you want to join, you can get bonus episodes, author readings, and much more. So, check the links in the description to help us do what we do here. Also, don't
Speaker A
forget to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the FanFhatic YouTube channel where this and every other episode of the show is available in full video. And now welcoming to SFhatics for the first
Speaker A
time, Ursula Vernon, aka T Kingfisher. Talented author and an artist and a kick-ass person whose work spans many genres and mediums, including Nettle and Bone, What Moves the Dead, and so much more, including the newly released Hemlock and Silver, at least when this
Speaker A
episode airs. Welcome, Ursula. How are you today?
Speaker A
Hey, thank you. Delighted to be here.
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And I, here I'm holding up the book. She's got it. It really is. The cover artist, Katherine Rosk, does amazing work.
Speaker A
It's very beautiful. I am thrilled to be here. Very, very glad to have you here. Before we dig deeper into the episode, a quick word from our sponsor. Poet Targ's job was to stand at detention and look good
Speaker A
in a uniform unless someone earned themselves an ass-kicking. He spent years climbing the ranks to be a master sergeant in the Sarrento Royal Senate Guard, and now he has the top-tier gig.
Speaker A
He's guardian to High Senator Sarah Brand, one of the leaders of the planet Sarrento. Life is going pretty good for Poe, and he's looking forward to a future of settling down and retiring from service. But all that changes when
Speaker A
High Senator Brand receives troubling news. Shattered is the story of doing the right thing and the consequences of those actions. Following Poetarge, Sarah Brand, and their friends as they struggle to keep their planet safe, Shattered, a Sanguin Stars novella, is a
Speaker A
short, action-packed science fantasy read that features political intrigue, fun action, and a touch of humor, all while setting the stage for everything to come in this universe. Visit nicholaswfull.com to get your digital copy today.
Speaker A
And now enjoy the rest of this episode of SFFF Addicts. Um, so let's just start off with a bit more of an in-depth introduction. For listeners who aren't familiar with you, your work, can you tell them a little bit about yourself?
Speaker A
Uh, let's see. Uh, I, I, I never know quite what to say at this point because the things that I think are interesting are often the things readers don't find interesting. Uh, as Ursula Vernon, I was a children's book
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author for many years. I did a series called Hamster Princess and a series called Dragon Breath. Uh, they were fun.
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If you happen to be under the age of 12, they're awesome. And all the rest is T Kingfisher. I wrote mostly for adults. Uh, some kids stuff kind of has crept in there now and again. Uh, I
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started out self-publishing them because I was, uh, the joke is that inside every children's book author is a frustrated horror author, and all the things they tell you that you are not allowed to do in a children's book just kept like
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compressing tighter and tighter until finally one day I was like, I'm going to write a book for adults and I'm going to do everything and no one will stop me, and it's just going to be swearing and
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gore and arson. Uh, arson was a big one, and which aggravated me because sometimes the solution to your problem really is burn down the haunted house.
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This is the absolute most logical thing to do. Uh, but you're really not allowed to do that in children's books. So, uh, anyone who has read my work may realize that on at least two occasions the solution has been burn the
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house down. And I regret nothing. Uh, yes. And so that's basically me in a nutshell. I write fantasy, horror, fantasy romance, or romanty or whatever you want to call it.
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The name does not matter to me if it helps you find the book. And, uh, so yeah, I dabble in a lot of genres. And, uh, once did an epic web comic about a wombat.
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I think that's all the important stuff. I love that you're able to let out your inner demons through horror.
Speaker A
Yeah. You know, it's weird. I've said this before, but talking to booksellers and whatnot, they will almost always say that horror authors are the most chill, laid-back, nice people. And children's book authors, I mean, they
Speaker A
will never say anything bad, but I've been to the conventions. Like, we all live on our nerves and are just, you know, extremely tense. Uh, so yeah, there's something to be said about just anything that crosses the id can go on
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the page. Yeah. Grimdark authors too are always like so cheerful and like, yeah.
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So it just must be something about getting the demons out. Yeah. People every now and again talk to my husband and they're like, "Aren't you a little worried that that's sleeping next to you?" And he's like,
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if it's on the page, I don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Well, we have to ask you, like, what got you into horror and fantasy in the first place? Was it books or shows or movies? Like, was there any foundational
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pieces of media that you consumed as a child that really spawned your love of genre fiction?
Speaker A
Uh, it was absolutely Star Trek. I was young, and my parents were divorced, and one of the things that I knew about my dad was that, like, he liked Star Trek, and so I was like, I will
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watch this too as sort of a way of connecting and fell madly in love with these were the days when, you know, the original series was all we had, and so I watched that. Then I found out
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there were Star Trek tie-in novels, so I, you know, had a whole bunch of those.
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And
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chartered accounting or something because I had enough talking animal books. So, oh my god, Red Wall was my jam. Well, I'm from Canada, so it's like that, you know, that was The only people that I ever fi find who have also read red wall
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is like people in the UK. So it's like Canada and the US. I think they were they were UK published, but they had no like distribution in the states until uh uh much later for whatever reason. And and
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they were a lot of fun. I mean they got a little repetitive after about book 12, but that's 12 books of of you know mice fighting weasels.
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Yeah. And when you're a kid, repetition doesn't mean [ __ ] read and watch to your heart's content.
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Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm also an artist and I wanted to kind of pick your brain about your journey as an artist because I love I love that you have dabbled in in all these different uh art forms, but um I
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wanted to to hear the story about how like anthropology, studying anthropology was kind of your gateway into professional art. Uh, and if you found that there were some mediums that you fell in love with, uh, early on.
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Well, uh, my mother was a, uh, professional artist, a fine artist, uh, still is, has an MFA, and so even though, you know, I drew a lot as a kid and, uh, did a bunch of art stuff, I
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never I was always just like whatever, you know, there was no mystique to it. I I really wanted to be a writer. And then I got to college and realized that oh there's no money in being a writer and I
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wanted to I I was taking anthropology classes mostly because of a obsession with the Indiana Jones films and later with the Clan of the Cave Bear books and I was like anthropology yeah okay that's great and uh then realized that uh there
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was not a lot of money in that field either and I was like maybe I'll become an illustrator because you if you could tell I made great life choices in college. And so there was a large stretch of my life where I was basically
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supporting myself by uh doing uh uh furry commissions and I love the furries to pieces. Uh you know I will hear no evil said of them. They buy a lot of art. They pay their artists and they are
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like the safest conventions that you ever go to at all. So, uh, for years that was basically what I was doing was, uh, selling, you know, art of, uh, animals and wildlife art and stuff and then doing a weird comic and then got an
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agent because of the weird comic, sort of by accident, who was like, can you do a children's book, an illustrated children's book? And I was like, yeah, sure. That's probably a thing I can do.
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So uh that was that was kind of how it uh how it evolved. I most of my career has been made by not planning anything at any point and uh just kind of not realizing what wasn't impos what was
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impossible. So kind of stumbling into success. Yeah. Like exploring different mediums. Did that just kind of come about organically or was it something you actively searched out? It sounds like it came up whenever it came up. A lot of it
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was organic. I I did a lot of digital art because I was in the the very first generation where digital art was a thing. We had uh uh um Deluxe Paint 3 on the AmIGGA and like five of your
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listeners just went, "Oh my god, I remember that." And the rest are going, "Huh?" But uh it uh uh so I was used to doing digital art and you know it was just sort of progressing and uh I mean I
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could draw with a mouse if I had to. And the I went to college and my mother had been you know just take one art class because I was still doing the I am not interested in art thing. She's like just
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take one. So I took one and it was really good. Uh it was basically a a speedrun of all these different media and so you know it's like all right uh pastels and uh gesso and ink and why
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don't we scratch into lithop plate and uh you know all kinds of things. And so that was a really great sort of uh way to get through a bunch of mediums. And then later on whenever I would get bored
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with what I was doing, which is frequent because I have terrible ADHD, I would be like, I'm going to go do something else or something else would look interesting and I would be like, maybe I'll go carve lenolium blocks for a bit or uh uh I
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usually wind up coming back to like uh either uh acrylic and colored pencil or um uh digital art because that's what I'm really best at. But uh whenever I you know things started to get stale I could go to a different medium and then
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there would be all the new challenges and solving those problems would be interesting. I feel exactly the same way. It's such a It's such a I don't know. It's such a thrill to to be able to try something
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new. And it's like I had probably the most shocking shocking for me was like experimenting with tattooing being like, "Oh, this is this is really interesting." Like skin is Yeah. High stakes. High stakes art.
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But it was like coming from the world of of acrylic and oil painting and and you know just like pencil illustration, sketching and stuff like that. Uh, and then coming into tattooing, I was like, "Holy [ __ ] this is really interesting."
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But there's kind of this beautiful moment where you're like, "I have no idea what I'm doing." But at the same time, it's really exciting to jump into a new medium and figure out like, "Okay, how does this work? Like, how do I make
Speaker A
this?" I would suggest not telling the person on the table that you have no idea.
Speaker A
No, no, no. But just I did it on myself first. I did it on myself.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Very like very willing friends. is like very comfortable friends with cooking.
Speaker A
There you go. Yeah. I I've said sometimes that uh uh a lot of times uh with art you're sort of finding creative problems to solve. And if you don't have a creative problem to solve and you're stuck, a technical problem is almost as
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good. And if you don't know how to do the medium, you are solving technical problems and that's interesting.
Speaker A
Yeah. Exactly. And how did that kind of uh stretch over into writing? because it's like you're working in comics and illustration, so many different forms of v visual art and writing is something that that you wanted to do for such a
Speaker A
long time. So, how did all of those artistic mediums, visual mediums kind of affect and influence your writing?
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Uh, honestly, I wish this was a a better answer. Uh, but the true answer is that uh I had done so many comics where like I would say, "Okay, the action takes place in a cathedral." And then I would
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sit there and have to draw the goddamn cathedral that I was like, or I could just write the sentence, "They went into the cathedral and I'm done." Maybe throw in something about flying buttresses.
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All right, that took five minutes. I can knock off for lunch. Uh, writing is just faster.
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So much faster. which sucks because I love comics. I love what comics, you know, do as a medium. I love how much readers of comics will will give you of themselves when reading and the intensity that people will get involved
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in them. It's just uh there's so much work compared to uh writing a novel having done both.
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Are there any other storytelling parallels that you can kind of draw between them? Because it's like I have talked to to comic author, comic writers and comic artists. Um, and I find that a lot more of the people who are in the
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writing world tend to just do the writing on the comic side of things, but it's like you've done the art as well.
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So, are there any kind of story storytelling parallels that you can draw between them?
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Uh, comics are a lot of of show don't tell by by necessity. Um there's like a a story that frequently when you work with writers uh which I try never to do because writers are terrible and I get
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to say that because I am one. Uh you will get these descriptions of panels where you know the and the character looks wistful as if she is looking back on on her life and whatnot. And someone famously and of course I forgot who it
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was basically came back in one of those and said look they can look mad, sad, happy or startled. That's all you get.
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Pick one. I cannot do wistful gazing at the [ __ ] wistful. Yeah, it's like only so many lines I can make around the eyes. Uh so uh uh there's a uh a lot of um I I think
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probably as a result I tend to describe people's expressions to convey emotion more than I, you know, say she felt wistful, you know, kind of thing. Uh, so I don't know if that's a a result of that, but uh I could certainly see that.
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And that isn't something I've I've really thought about much before, but now I'll have to go through and and stare at my books and go, am I doing the thing?
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Well, speaking of being wistful and looking back into your past, just touching on your anthropology studies briefly, do did that field of study teach you anything about like just being humans and humanity in general and how have you carried those lessons forward
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into your career as an author? Well, there were basically two things and uh one was abstract and one was very practical. And the abstract one was uh to a certain extent much like being exposed to different media, being
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exposed to different cultures and different uh foundation myths and things because I w up taking a lot of like uh uh folklore and mythology classes and whatnot. And like one of the very best uh classes I took was about uh
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indigenous Brazilian tribes. And this is this is not really a a topic that uh you would necessarily think to recommend to upand cominging writers, but it was fascinating just all of these groups often, you know, in very close proximity
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with with wildly different uh systems of everything, you know, uh uh faith and government and uh dealing with the afterlife and all kinds of things. And so it was really uh uh intense and amazing. And part of it was the
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professor was awesome. Sometimes you get those classes that where it almost doesn't matter what the topic is. You had the professor is like, you know, just sells you on it completely. Uh I think he actually went on to head the
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Bureau of Indian Affairs in Brazil for a while. So he he was he was an interesting person. But uh uh so that was was fascinating and just like almost the the speedrun of of cultures in the world. And you know, because of the way
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college is is broken up, uh you'd be studying, you know, uh Catholic nuns for an hour and then you'd go off to uh like Native American religious traditions and then you'd be off to uh learning about the uh the torape or something and then
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uh over to the class on uh uh African-American religious studies. And it was just amazing all of these different uh uh elements that and some of which are, you know, very similar because people fundamentally mostly want the same things. But just the the wild
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diversity of workarounds uh for the world and the environment and other people that uh that people come up with was was amazing. The practical one was that I took a class which frankly I hated uh which was called ethnographic
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interviewing where you had to interview people, record it, go and transcribe it which is ungodly tedious and it also teaches you an unbelievable amount about how people actually talk and the amount of filters that our brains put in
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between how people how words come out of people's mouths and how they get into our brain. And if you tried to write dialogue like people actually talk, it would be absolutely unreadable and your readers would throw the book out because
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it's agonizing. Like we start a sentence, we stop a sentence, we meander, we stop, we repeat the entry of this sentence like five times. Uh going, you know, the thing the one place with the the thing and the Yeah. And
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if but if you can write dialogue that sounds like it comes into your ears or like the way it comes in past the filters which a lot of times was basically what you were trying to condense these these horrible you know
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uh transcriptions into uh it it comes out feeling very much more natural and more interesting. And so, uh, I have been told my dialogue is good, so I attribute it all to that one class, which I was agony.
Speaker A
You hated it, but it gave you something. Yeah. It gave you something useful. That's what it did. Yeah. And, uh, they they had these weird ass machines to do it that were not I It was like, you know, slide
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projectors in the 80s or something. The technology was probably state-of-the-art at the time they bought it, but by the time I had it in 1997, it was Yeah.
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Anyway, and now all this like speech to like speech to text AI and all this [ __ ] everyone's got.
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Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that class is wildly different now, which uh uh I am torn between, you know, you should suffer as I suffered and oh god, no one should suffer as I suffered. show the dilemma of aging.
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Yeah. Oh man. Well, I wanted to kind of touch on uh I mean because you're talking about speech and and how people speak and you know as a a parent and Gret is a mom as well like talking to kids. I want
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to kind of touch on on writing kids book kids books again. um talking to kids, you really have to kind of not necessarily dumb yourself down, but you do have to put yourself in a different headsp space of like how to describe
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things, how people speak, how to convey information. So, when you're writing kids books, how did you approach the UPS guy has come to kill us all? How did you how did you approach just like the sheer the sheer um task of trying to
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speak to children as opposed to like us right now talking to each other as adults?
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I tried not to panic. Um I would uh uh the big thing is just that you you just don't have as long to dick around. And it's like uh when uh uh I have two stepsons and at first when I would try
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to explain why you know okay we need to do this because you know you need to make sure that there's no food in your room because otherwise there will be ants and then it will be terrible. And my husband would look at me and would
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just be like go get all the food out of your rooms and throw it away.
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I'm like he's like don't try to explain it. Don't don't you don't need to go through the whole, you know, explanation and whatnot because they they will have forgotten what you were talking about by the end of the sentence. Just say what
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you want done. And I'm like, okay. So, and the thing is kids are very very intelligent. So, it is it is certainly I I it is definitely not dumbing down because I feel like if people consciously try to dumb down books, kids
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like recognize that immediately. And kids are so sensitive to cond to being condescended to like I I would uh vow lifelong hatred to any adult who talked down to me when I was you know 10. Um I still have not read Janeire because my
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mother was condescending about asking me to read it. Um and I vowed I never would. And uh yes. So that is the hill on that is the hill I will die on. So part of it is just having to be uh fast
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having you know you have to start the book fast. You cannot you know spend three paragraphs describing the setting unless you're doing it in a really fascinating way. You uh uh you have to you can't noodle around with the plot
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for you know 50,000 words trying to figure out where it's going. And I say that with love as someone who does that routinely in adult books. Uh you just have to be like there and get moving and uh say what you mean
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and clearly. So a lot of it is just clarity and uh and you don't have to necessarily belabor the point all that much. like maybe repeat once just as a reminder, but don't keep hammering on about something to the kids like, "Yes,
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we know already. Get on with the fighting." So, uh yeah, other than that, uh it's not all that different from writing for adults. I I only have like one authoral voice, so writing for kids for me was just sort of like the
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Reader's Digest condensed version of writing for adults, except again, swearing, arson, and gore. Yeah. And uh and which is funny because there were so many things that I would write that I would remember being a kid and be like, "But kids will love this."
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And my editor would be like, "Yes, they will, but their parents and their grandparents buy the books and they don't want to think that their beloved child is, you know, uh, wants the the splatter fest." So, yeah, let's face it, painting a whole
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generation of children also. I mean, and I don't know about you guys, but how many science fiction writers do you know whose origin story was, I read Stephen King way too young?
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All of us. I read or watched X thing way too young. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Uh like, you know, I probably clan of the cave bearer I should not have picked up at 10, but it had Neanderthalss, which I thought was
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interesting. And uh yeah. Well, I love that group. Like books in general, but especially for children. I mean, it's just so essential to the human experience. And I'd love to hear as someone who writes both in children's and adults, like what do you have to say
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when you get you're at that dinner party with someone who has a hot take about how children's literature isn't real literature.
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Just burn. They also say that they also say that about sci-fi and fantasy, too.
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First, I something I should have clarified before we started. Am I allowed to swear on this podcast?
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I've sworn already and you're And mostly what I just say is, "Oh, [ __ ] off." Uh people don't say this to my face at uh at dinner parties. Uh because when they start down that road, I usually just go,
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"I'm a children's book author." And wait, and hi, Cat. Uh yes, I am a children's book author. Hello. Uh and it's a rare person who can keep like plowing forward to explain why your uh genre isn't real when you're just going
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But uh uh for anyone listening at home that was the the pleasant direct look and uh the which is very similar to the all right how much rope are you going to take to hang yourself friend? Uh so yeah that's
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the the thing if I am not allowed to be there in person and shame them is just I encourage you to try to write one which is often what I say about everyone likes to slag on romance uh romance gets no
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respect. I'm like have you tried writing one? Uh also a lot of times when was the last time you read one? was it in the last 20 years kind of thing. But uh uh people think things are easy because
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they don't necessarily respect it and I have found that if they have to go and do it themselves, they realize, oh my god, this is incredibly brutal or that was easy and why is no one buying it and
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everyone ignoring it. Uh the you see some of it with the people who were like I'm going to get rich having AI write children's books for me and attempts were made early on and it was like oh honey first of all even leaving aside
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every other topic let's have a chat about uh discoverability in children's books being school libraries and bookstores first uh and how just putting it up on an Amazon page is not actually going to lead you to fame and fortune
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and then we can get to the rest. But uh it's people think it must be easy and that kids must be stupid and it's like no kids are very cleareyed about things that adults have forgotten sometimes.
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But at the same time as uh uh I think you you said earlier kids love repetition. Like uh uh if if a kid reads a book they like they want 50 more that are just like it. And and I did that
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too. God knows uh uh most of us I think went through a phase where we would watch the same movie over and over and over again.
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I still do that with TV shows frequently. Yeah. It's like I think it's it's getting time for a rewatch of you know uh fill in the blank. But, uh, I watched, I think, um, Lady in the [ __ ]
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uh, An American Tale, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were all on the same VHS, and I would watch all three of them more or less daily, which in retrospect may have worked me a little bit, but uh, anyway, it makes sense. I
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can see it. That combo, that combo is phenomenal. It's just like, yo, I got my burn VHS. I got these three hot dude. It must have taken him so long to rewind that VHS tape to go.
Speaker A
That's Oh god. Yeah, that is Yeah, it might have been one of the double-sided ones where you could like watch the the the No, I don't think it was. I think that was the the cassette thing. Yeah, I have no idea. I think I
Speaker A
would just set it to rewind and then wander off. But three hours later, three hours. Like Indiana Jones alone is like at least an hour and 45. So yeah, uh and and that was certainly the worst of the
Speaker A
three movies and today, you know, has infinitely wrong with it that I can all see, but at the time, you know, I wanted to be Indiana Jones and they went to great places. And I still think we need
Speaker A
the movie that is short round grownup repatriating all of the artifacts that Indiana Jones stole in like reverse heists around the world. That would be amazing.
Speaker A
And the and the actor who played Short Round has had like a bit of a comeback in the last few years.
Speaker A
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's perfect for him. He could absolutely do it. Yeah. Hell yeah.
Speaker A
Well, um we touched on it at the very beginning when you were talking about uh you know the you know the the desires that you had within you to burn [ __ ] and and put gore and swearing into your
Speaker A
books and all that. Um, I love the fact that you're able to explore so many different genres because a lot of authors tend to find their niche and stick to it because they find success there, because they find an audience
Speaker A
there. Um, but you've dabbled in so many different genres, so many different age groups and whatnot. Um, so what appeals to you about that kind of experimentation and if you have any advice for authors out there who are
Speaker A
afraid to dip their dip their toes into a new genre? Uh to be honest, I uh uh it was another one of those accidental things that I'm sure my agent would prefer it if I picked a genre and committed, but uh
Speaker A
part of it again comes back to the the ADHD and being bored and I'm like, "Oh, I could try this." Um, but uh I went into horror specifically because uh I had started writing for adults and I would write all of these things often
Speaker A
with the gore and the dark stuff and people would be like, "Okay, this is a fantasy novel, but this is some horror stuff going on here. Do are you aware this is horrific?" And I'm like, "Oh, I hadn't thought about it." Uh, and uh I
Speaker A
um my brain may be a little warped in places. Uh, I I would just do things that felt logical and the next logical thing and the next logical thing and then my editor would be like, "Oh, sweet Jesus." Uh, so one day I was like, "What
Speaker A
would happen if I sat down and tried to write a horror novel instead of just having weird things happen in the middle of, you know, a fantasy novel?" And uh so I tried to write a horror novel and
Speaker A
it was uh uh set in contemporary North Carolina and uh that was the the twisted ones and which was a great title. And then after all everything was set and all the marketing material had been done, Five Nights at Freddy's came out
Speaker A
with a tie-in called The Twisted Ones. So I still am a little bitter about that, but uh anyway, it was it was and it was fun. It was it was like, you know, horror. All right, let's do horror
Speaker A
things. Let's uh and and I really do not have a good back not a good uh have any background in horror because uh like when I brought home the Stephen King book, my mom made me take it back to the
Speaker A
library. She was going through a very evangelical phase. So, we did not watch horror movies or anything like that. So, uh, uh, and then later as an adult, I read like I I binged read most of Stephen King and was like, "Okay, that
Speaker A
was fun. Uh, what else is like Stephen King? I'm going to try Clive Parker." Okay, nope. We're done here. And uh uh maybe shouldn't have started with a Magika. That's a very very long book.
Speaker A
Amazing little set pieces and then like just the rest of the book around it. Uh so I I think to a certain extent uh I was coming at horror entirely fresh because I did not have the the I I did not know
Speaker A
what I was supposed to be writing. I had sort of a mental image of how horror novels probably go. And my basic unit of of horror is a uh woman alone in the house with her probably dog, possibly
Speaker A
cat, and something terrible is happening outside the window. And uh you can actually get a lot of mileage out of that uh after a point. So um I you know wrote one and then I was like that was
Speaker A
fun. Let me do and it was sort of it was also uh the the first one was uh halfway through turned into uh sort of a pulp pastiche of Arthur Mason's the white people because I was like I should learn
Speaker A
about horror if I'm writing I will start by reading foundational texts of horror and I had already read Lovecraft who I felt I think was sort of more like a foundational text of science fiction almost but that's another argument and
Speaker A
so I started reading Arthur Mason and Aldron on Blackwood and whatnot. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to get something in the last uh century, but I wanted to go back to basics and I was
Speaker A
and so much of the pulp was was terrible. I mean, it's pulp. It was it was never meant to be enduring literature, but every now and again I would like trip over one that actually scared me and I would wind up sort of uh
Speaker A
pastiching it into a book. like the one was The White People. Uh, The Hollow Places is based on uh The Willows by Blackwood, which is a a brilliant uh still bit of really creepy ass uh not Eldrich Horror. What's the the name
Speaker A
of the horror where the weird things come in from outside? Like, thank you. Cosmic horror. That's it. I was drawing a blank. Uh yeah, it's it's great. And uh so it was it was often I would just read like you know I would go on to
Speaker A
project Gutenberg and read like 20 or something read an entire anthology and one would stick with me and I would be like there is something here and I want to pick at it and maybe you know get uh
Speaker A
uh find some chunk of a book in it and mostly it's something that scared me. I will now confess that occasionally it was, "This is a great premise and oh my god, you [ __ ] it up. So, I'm going to
Speaker A
take it and fix it now that it is out of copyright. I'm going to make this better.
Speaker A
I'm going to write this the way I want to write." I love that. Yeah.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of taking old stories and making them new again, let's talk about Hemlock and Silver, shift gears a little bit into your new book. Uh for anyone in the audience who may not have heard about it yet, I'm sure there are four of
Speaker A
them. Can you give us the elevator pitch for the book? Uh yes, this is uh uh Hemlockk and Silver by Tek King Fisher is a uh it's sort of a retelling of Snow White, but it uh I realized rapidly that
Speaker A
Snow White was frankly the least interesting character in the story. And that the really the cool meaty stuff was in the creepy things in the mirror and the uh and the poison. And I sort of went in with, well, what if, you know,
Speaker A
if we're dealing with poisons, uh, what if someone knows that Snow White is being poisoned and tries to fix it?
Speaker A
Because, and you go back to the fairy tale and this is this is not plausible because it's always like one bite of the apple and she falls down dead or something or it's a poisoned hairpin and then somebody has to pull it out. But,
Speaker A
uh, I was thinking, you know, forget this whole uh, Prince Charming thing. What if somebody has to show up and figure out what the toxicology is and deal with that? And uh and it was also uh because you know the the uh magic
Speaker A
mirror was such an interesting sort of figure and I have always found mirrors kind of creepy like uh like I'm okay during the day at night I just don't want to look in them because I'm like what if there is something there and if
Speaker A
I see it then it'll know I've seen it and then we'll have to have a confrontation whereas if I just ignore the mirror everybody's fine.
Speaker A
Uh, same in our house. I have a 5-year-old and we cover her mirror cuz too many nights she's woken up, seen herself, we hope, in the mirror and freaked out. So, we just keep I mean, if taught us anything is that
Speaker A
mirrors are bad news. So, yeah, absolutely. I uh and and I don't know what it is. Like the world seems to be divided in some ways between people who find mirrors kind of creepy at night and then people who are like, "What the
Speaker A
hell are you talking about?" And my husband is one of the what the hell are you talking about? And I'm like, but you know, I mean, what if there's there's like things in there? And he's like, and you think about this every night. I'm
Speaker A
like, it's my Roman Empire. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't look in the mirror and it's fine. And and oh god, if if most of humanity is like you, we are woefully unprepared for an invasion from the mirror people. And uh yeah,
Speaker A
god forbid there's like an alien race of mirrors. [ __ ] that. Doctor Who, are you listening?
Speaker A
Uh uh actually China Mavville did a really great nolla called the tain that is about uh uh things in mirrors that was definitely uh some of an inspiration in Hemlock and Silver but it's it's really good.
Speaker A
Uh but anyway, yes, so the main character of Hemlock and Silver is the toxicologist and uh her name is Ana.
Speaker A
She's a a woman who in and this is set in sort of quasi renaissance times. And part of that is that I had just read a fascinating book about uh uh poisons called historical poisons called um the royal art of poison. I think that was a
Speaker A
lot of just various individuals in history who died of something. might have been poison, might have been food poisoning, might have been malaria, might have been what? And they would go through and be like, "Okay, this is but
Speaker A
since, you know, they didn't have an advanced science of toxicology, they just assumed everything was poison, particularly if you were, you know, a ruling individual. So, you know, people are d it's like, no, he probably just had malaria or no, this guy died of
Speaker A
dropsy." and occasionally, oh no, there was so much arsenic in him that uh you know his hair was preserved for the next thousand years kind of thing. Uh but just occasionally I will read a non-fiction book and be like, "Oh, this
Speaker A
is amazing. I have to I have to write a book that uses this idea." And uh unfortunately, I've also read a very interesting one about sewers. And one of these days, I will write a fantasy romance that is all about sewer design.
Speaker A
I haven't gotten there yet. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see about the marketability of sewers compared to poison. But yeah, you can make it work. If anyone can make anyone, I think it's we believe in you.
Speaker A
But I love how your obsession with with poisons uh just kind of came into this character of Anja and the fact that it's like, yes, this is a reimagining of Snow White, but it's kind of like, yeah, well, [ __ ] Snow White, she's boring,
Speaker A
whatever. Um, and Ana became the the main character, the point of view character. So, why from your perspective was she like the ideal POV character, and how does she contrast Snow White and and kind of like the Snow White story,
Speaker A
which is something that we're all super super familiar with at this point, especially like growing up watching Disney and all that stuff.
Speaker A
Uh, well, Snow White has no agency at all at any point in the story. like it's the only thing that uh that she has is basically actually running. Uh and that's usually because the huntsman is like, "Will you
Speaker A
get the hell out of here?" Um nothing. Uh uh she she is might as well be the the you know, the rug and the big Labowski. She ties the room together kind of thing. And uh that's a good reference. Deep cut. Well
Speaker A
done. I'm old. Uh so and and yes, to a certain extent in in Mlock and Silver, the character of Snow uh ties the room together uh but ties the book together at least. But uh and she by making her a
Speaker A
kid, I think she's like 10 or 12, she uh uh it's more understandable that she has very little agency and is being acted upon. uh in an adult it got it it would get gling to write as a viewpoint
Speaker A
character because I would just be like will you do something and uh and I I wrote a Snow White retelling ages ago that was a nolla uh called uh boar and apples where I replaced the the dwarves with uh talking truffle pigs. Um it was
Speaker A
actually a very fun little story. But uh the uh uh in this one uh I needed a character that had agency and I wanted a character who was sort of a scientist uh because I hadn't really written a I I've always
Speaker A
wanted to write a scientist viewpoint character, but uh the one horror novel I had where uh uh she was a herpologist uh wound up in limbo and uh it was going to be so cool. she was going to find frogs
Speaker A
with external gills and there are no frog species with external gills. So therefore discovering that would mean that she had found the the portal to the other world uh which happened to have among other things frogs with external
Speaker A
gills. Anyway, uh I just wanted to bring the kind of you know because I know a lot of scientists and uh and I love the malt pieces. Uh, I have a book coming out next year called Wolfworm. That's a
Speaker A
horror novel where the heroine is a botanical illustrator and uh and it's about bugs and it's actually extremely gross and I'm very proud of it. But uh anyway, this book uh I just wanted someone who, you know, could use the scientific method
Speaker A
basically in a fantasy novel and uh who was observant about very specific things that I am frequently observant about, but uh that other people aren't like I I have set a firm rule that uh I most characters in my books do not know
Speaker A
different tree species apart down to the species level and I have got to stop uh pretending that they do kind of thing.
Speaker A
You can't make you cannot make everyone a gardener. Uh so things like that and uh you know and also she's she's very nerdy and has a tendency to lecture at the drop of a hat about things uh about
Speaker A
you know horrible animal facts like if you get stung by this centipede you know or there's a a species of rock fish in this place that if you step on one you will wish the sharks had eaten you kind
Speaker A
of thing. And I am also a font of horrible animal facts. So, uh, you know, we all hate small talk.
Speaker A
Whatever gets you through the small talk, right? And yeah, so that was that was how I got there.
Speaker A
Yeah, I loved Ana. She's such a fun character. I mean, she's so fascinating. I I She's a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways. like a she wasn't like a 19-year-old Anenu like ready to head off
Speaker A
with a sword like we see all the time, but she's also just unapologetically uninterested in motherhood in a way that you don't often see a in stories, but also like in this day and age almost feels radical in a very liberating way.
Speaker A
So, did that did like the current political climate, the the state of the world kind of affect the way that you created Anja when you were writing her?
Speaker A
Uh, not in that sense because uh uh the roots of that go back a ways. I uh uh I love my stepsons, but I had I I they were already housebroken by the time I got to them. So, uh I had no interest
Speaker A
whatsoever in having my own. So even though I write uh romance novels uh I have a a couple of series uh uh of fantasy romances uh they are not the kind that ends with you know everybody has kids and in at least one of them the
Speaker A
heroine is like we can't do anything because I might get pregnant and I cannot deal with that you know I everybody keeps dying in childbirth I am tired of it also you know there were five kids in my family cannot cope kind
Speaker A
of thing. And uh I just uh I love romance as a genre. I read a lot of Regency. I I am a huge champion of it.
Speaker A
The everybody ends up having kids thing I can really do without. So I just set out basically to be like I am going to have heroins who are older, fatter, and not having kids. And uh the system's worked so far.
Speaker A
I love I love that mantra. Just older, fatter, and no kids. make it work.
Speaker A
Well, you've also got another book coming out. Uh I mean, it's a ways out from when we're recording, but by the time this episode releases, it'll be out in uh about a month in September. Uh and that is What Stalks the Deep, which is
Speaker A
third installment in the Sworn Soldiers series, which I really love. Like I adore Edgar Alan Poe. And so, uh What Moves the Dead was actually as like a fungi lover and everything as well was the first book of yours that I came
Speaker A
across and I was like, "Oh [ __ ] this is my jam. Let's go with this.
Speaker A
Oh, I'm glad that was the first one you found cuz that was basically like uh uh let me let me tailor make a book specifically for you.
Speaker A
No, that's what it felt like. It was like horror Edgar Alan Poe Mushrooms. Yes, please. Every account.
Speaker A
But um I really I really enjoy the series, but um if you could tell listeners a little bit about what uh is coming for Alex Easton in uh in book three.
Speaker A
Oh yeah. Uh well, what stocks the deep is um uh it uh uh Alex Eastston lives in Europe in and occasionally gets to say sarcastic things about Americans, which I enjoy writing to no end. I'm like, haha, I can say anything I want about
Speaker A
Americans. Haha. Uh because I am white. But um yes, it's it's really fun to make fun of yourself sometimes. Uh and uh in this book they wind up having to go to America because their old friend from uh
Speaker A
uh what moves the dead uh Dr. Denton is like something horrible is happening here and I need someone who understands that weird ass [ __ ] goes down and won't say like this is impossible while it's eating their face off. So could you come
Speaker A
over? Here are two two uh boat tickets. And uh it uh is set mostly in a coal mine in West Virginia and uh I in areas that I have visited and I had to writing the the uh historical fiction. Uh this
Speaker A
one is set in 1890 something. I'm a little vague on the exact something. Uh, I keep winding having up doing doing so much research on these because I'll be like halfway through a sentence and be like, "Wait a minute. When was canning
Speaker A
invented?" Like with tin cans. Oh, Napoleon. Okay. But they didn't have can openers until when? Uh, I uh uh you know uh having to stop and be like, would they be using toothpaste or tooth when was the toothpaste tube
Speaker A
invented? things like that. Uh this one, uh I read a lot about coal mining in the 1800s and uh just should the the issue ever arise, never ever be a coal miner in the 1800s. There are so many ways to
Speaker A
die. Just unbelievable numbers of ways to die. Like actually in the mine, if you get out of the mine, it's pretty much blackl long. But uh once you're while you're in the mine, like anything can happen. I there are like so many
Speaker A
different kinds of mine gas and I wound up on a website that was basically from a place that uh that sold uh ventilation systems for mines and had these lovely listings of all of the gases you had to
Speaker A
worry about and whether they were poisonous, explosive, or both. And uh and it was like yes, you can have fire damp, it's explosive and poisonous.
Speaker A
Okay. and black damp, which is actually carbon dioxide. It'll just poison you. It won't explode. And you know, so on and so forth. Uh read some uh uh interesting thin little one of those local uh history sort of books that was
Speaker A
called Mine Disasters of North Carolina. And it was about like uh a mine or two that you know exploded, fell down, sank into the dark tarn. And uh it it was I'm like this is amazing. This is handy.
Speaker A
This is horrible. My god. And then you just went supernatural horror to the next.
Speaker A
Exactly. Yeah. And uh although the funny thing is that uh uh for most of the book, the the supernatural horror is actually fairly tame. is like uh uh I I sort of set out I wanted to do something
Speaker A
that uh without too much spoilers uh I was like Lovecraft did shags. How would I do shags? And uh it kind of went from there. But the mine is actually way worse than pretty much anything in in it
Speaker A
for 90% of the book. So the reality always Yeah. And uh uh I I have actually been in a uh a mine uh long long ago in my misbent youth when uh it was midnight.
Speaker A
There was nothing to do in town. Somebody said, "Let's go up to the old mine." which sounds like the beginning of a either a Hardy Boys novel or a and then you know half the bodies were never recovered. But uh uh we drove up some
Speaker A
mountain roads in in Ashland, Oregon to a mine that had been boarded up at some point, but uh forget that. What does no trespassing really mean? and uh went inside it and it's really dark. That's about all I have to your inside of mine.
Speaker A
Wow. That is that is darkness on a a very elemental scale. And that was probably an incredibly stupid thing to do now that I think about it.
Speaker A
But uh but we all learn from the [ __ ] that we do. Yeah.
Speaker A
Right. Well, I mean, Gen X, we we we had to make our own fun in those days. We didn't have the internet. I also discovered horrifyingly that there are tons and tons of abandoned mine shafts that are not listed anywhere. And one
Speaker A
thing the federal government is trying to do, assuming they still have the money to do it now, it's probably been cancelled, was just trying to map all of the abandoned mine shafts that are just lying around that people could fall
Speaker A
into. Oh wow. And they estimate there's like thousands that just Good lord. Yeah. And I'm like, well, that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker A
Yeah. Next time you go on a hike, especially in like the east coast of the United States.
Speaker A
I was thinking Appalachia. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah. The all the old Lassie things about Oh, no. You know, Timmy fell into a whole said lassie. They were probably all abandoned mine shafts. I'm I'm pretty sure
Speaker A
they're not wells. We all knew where the wells were. It's just abandoned mine shafts.
Speaker A
Yeah. Well, I I I did actually. There was a an abandoned well on a a property uh that I knew of, but it was only about this big. And you'd have to Timmy would have had to work really hard to fall
Speaker A
down that as opposed to Yeah, exactly. You know, as opposed to uh falling into mine shafts, which were, you know, sometimes huge. So, well, I'm very excited.
Speaker A
This has been mine shaft safety. Mine shaft 101. I'm very excited for this though. Yeah, the more you know.
Speaker A
Oh my god. And knowing is half the battle. But I love this series. So I'm very very excited for I'm very excited to see how you incorporated mine shafts into book three. It's going to be a wonderful experience.
Speaker A
Um but just just in general like I I love your work and and it's been wonderful uh chatting with you. So, just to close out, I want to ask you a two-parter, uh, for listeners and viewers, if you could give them a good
Speaker A
bit of sound bite writing advice, and then I know out of anyone we've ever talked to that you will indeed have a weird or random fact that you find to be utterly fascinating.
Speaker A
Uh, okay. Uh, uh, writing advice. Uh, actually, I am stealing this one from Billy Collins, the poet laurate, who said that, uh, the don't worry about being good. write the thing that only you can write. And that sounds very sort
Speaker A
of twe. But uh then I read uh Chuck Wendig's Black River Orchard, which is entirely about heirloom apples. Chuck is obsessed with heirloom apples, has been for years, is always posting about them.
Speaker A
And I was like, this was the book that only he could have written. And this is perfect. This is this is exactly the encapsulation of this. So, uh, yeah, write the book that is all your weird obsessions and things and, uh, the rest
Speaker A
will come out in the wash. Beautiful. From heirloom apples to mine shafts, whatever tickles your fancy.
Speaker A
Exactly. All right. Well, Ursula, give us some give us a weird or random fact to close us out.
Speaker A
Uh skunk cabbage is one of the uh a number of plants, but it's the one in North America that uh generates its own heat. It will melt the snow around it.
Speaker A
It is uh it is a plant that metabolizes more like a mammal in some regards. And it does this so that uh there can still be snow on the ground and it's warm around it and it starts growing. And
Speaker A
then once it gets uh uh warm enough that there are bugs moving around because the air over it is warmer, the smell goes farther and it stinks to heaven, which is why it's called skunk cabbage, and it attracts flies that pollinate it that
Speaker A
come for the weird smell. Uh some other plants like that are are basically all smell horrible, like the uh ones that smell like kerrion or whatever, and it's uh often to attract insects uh that will pollinate it like that. Yeah,
Speaker A
but the fact it can melt snow is just awesome. Shouldn't do that. That's weird. Yeah.
Speaker A
Amazing. Yeah. There was scum cabbage in like a swamp near my grandma's house when I was growing up and my brother and I always used to love like traversing it as if we were [ __ ] jungle explorers
Speaker A
or something and it smelled like ass. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Some Jurassic. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know.
Speaker A
Yeah. It is a weird plant. uh also has surprisingly pretty flowers in some regards, but but yeah, it's just this bizarre, you know, dinosaur thing that stinks.
Speaker A
Smells awful. Yeah, that was a great fact. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for chatting with Gre and I today. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker A
Delighted to be here. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. Uh and just to wind down, if you could let everyone know where they can find you online.
Speaker A
Uh yes, if you want a list of the books and links and things like that, uh redwombatstudio.com uh is where I have all that. Although honestly, tkingfisher.com should get you there, too. And if you want to see me uh
Speaker A
go nuts about the fact that, for example, I just found out today there are prairie dogs next to my post office, uh go to blue sky, where I am tea kingisher. And uh it was great. They're amazing. Sitting
Speaker A
up little heads. Yeah, prairie dogs are so cute. They carry the black plague. [Laughter] I love how macob you made it. They're so cute. They carry death.
Speaker A
They'll adorably, can you? I'm just saying don't pet them because of the plague. But we can fix that with antibiotics now.
Speaker A
We're We're fine now. We're fine. It's okay. Yeah. And you can also follow SFAX across the board at SFAX Pod. You can follow me at AdrienM Gibson. If you want some weird fungal [ __ ] in your life, you can go
Speaker A
check out Mushroom Blues, my debut novel. Greta, what about you? Yeah, I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok at Greta K. Kelly. And of course, you can get my latest book, The Queen of Days, wherever you buy books. If you're
Speaker A
ever wondered what your what it would be like if your D and D party decided to fight a fallen god and rolled natural wands on all their checks.
Speaker A
And you can also support MJ. Go check out Among Thieves. Uh support the Thoren Food Fund. Thorn is her cat and he's more fat than No, he's more fur than fat. So feed him. That's That's how we do it. All right. Well, that's it for
Speaker A
this episode. Stay tuned next week for part two with Ursula for our writing master class on fairy tale reimaginings.
Speaker A
Until then, keep reading, keep imagining, and we'll see you next time on SFFF Addicts.
Speaker A
[Music]
Topics:T KingfisherUrsula VernonHemlock and Silverfantasyhorrortoxicologywriting craftscience fictionauthor interviewSFFF Addicts
