Author Alethea Lyons - The Writer Story
Meet Alethea, author of The Hiding, a supernatural contemporary fantasy, as we talk about integrating technology and fantasy into worldbuilding.
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Writer Story newsletter.
Today I have a wonderful fantasy author interview for you. But before that, I am overjoyed to announce that our little newsletter community has grown over 100 subscribers. Yay!!
I want to thank each and every one of you for finding, supporting and subscribing to my humble newsletter space— a minuscule entity in the vastness of the world wide web. So, thank you!
Okay, let’s begin.
I am absolutely thrilled about today’s Writer Story interview with Alethea Lyons as we talk about The Hiding, a supernatural contemporary fantasy and merging technology and fantasy to build an immersive world.
Before we start, here’s Alethea’s official bio.
Alethea (she/ze) writes various forms of SFF, with a particular love for science-fantasy, dark fantasy, dystopias, and folklore. Many of her works take place at the intersection between technology and magic. She enjoys writing stories with subtle political and philosophical messages, but primarily wants her stories to be great tales with characters readers will love. She also has soft spots for found family, hopeless romances, and non-human characters. Her short stories can be found in a variety of publications and links for these are on her website. Alethea lives in Manchester, UK with her husband, little Sprite, a cacophony of stringed instruments, and more tea than she can drink in a lifetime.
Hello Alethea, and welcome to The Writer Story. I am absolutely excited to chat with you. So to start with, tell us a bit about your debut, THE HIDING?
Hi Anima! Lovely to be here. The Hiding is perfect for people who enjoy shows like Buffy and Charmed or play games like World of Darkness. It's got those Del Toro./ Gaiman type vibes. Basically, it's a dark contemporary fantasy about a supernatural spirit who is killing humans to protect the rest of her community and the witch who has to catch her.
The book is written from both perspectives, although mostly in the witch's, Harper. Being a witch is illegal and carries the death penalty, so she's stuck between the human world and the supernatural world, being a bit of both. Harper gathers a rather unusual team, a demonhunter (also her foster sister), a forensic scientist, a technowitch, and a demon, to help her stop the killing on both sides.
Where I think it differs from a lot of other witchy fantasy is the moral grayness of both sides, the blending of science and magic, and its focus on familial and platonic relationships.
That’s sounds so intriguing. Would you please share how this idea came to you and what made you want to write the book?
It actually started as a dream. I've written two books and a bunch of short stories in this universe, and the dream scene hasn't actually appeared yet, but maybe it will one day. It was basically the core group of Harper's friends I mentioned before, plus one that will be introduced in the next book, playing video games at home when some supernatural crisis happened. I couldn't remember much of it when I woke up but the image of the characters stayed with me. I started to write some short stories about them, a lot of which are in the upcoming Reawakening, and really enjoyed their banter and the world that was starting to emerge. So I used them for a NaNoWriMo book. I liked that I could focus on non-romantic relationships and also show a friend group who have a lot of cultural and religious differences but who are friends and work together well.
The found family trope features prominently in your book. What do you think makes it so relatable for readers? And how should writers make the best use of it?
There's a lot of adoption in my family, so it's always one I've found particularly relevant. I don't think you need experience of adoption to find it relatable though. Everyone makes their own families of close friends, the people we rely on as if they were siblings and we'd trust with anything. It's an extreme for Harper in that these are the people who know secrets about her that could get her killed.
Like Harper, I think all of us want to find a place to belong and people we feel safe with. I love seeing it in books whether it's the close friendships version or a more official adoptive relationship. It can up the stakes if there's tension between the characters or any of them are in danger, and it gives the reader a lot of insight into both characters in the relationship. I think it works best when the characters take it as a given. They're not thinking, 'This is a person who is like my sister.' That puts in a degree of separation. They're thinking, 'this is my sister.'
I agree with that so much. A lot of it is just the separation in our heads. Another thing I’d like to ask you about is the world in your book. I find the merging of technology and fantasy so intriguing and the way you used it in the story. Could you share your world building tips?
Thank you. I love playing with magic and technology and the thin line between them. When I'm creating a magic system, I like it to have an internal logic and method. With both tech and magic, I usually know quite a bit about how it works that won't appear explicitly in a book. The science museum is a great place for inspiration. Ours does open nights where they do an adult version of the kids' interactive exhibits. Looking at the future of medical tech gives ideas on how healing magic works, for example. I've always been fascinated by astrophysics, which is visually stunning and infinitely mystical so it lends itself to magic. The portals and 'realms' coming up in book 2 are based loosely on wormhole physics and alternate dimensions. A more 'at home' world building method I use is simply looking at tech in my house and going 'what if I added magic to that?' What purpose would the magic fulfil? Would it change the function? Would it mean the technology was available earlier and is therefore more advanced now? Read and watch sci-fi and do the same. What if you made a holodeck out of illusion magic? Can magic overcome the problems of creating cold fusion?
Tell us a bit about your writer origin story? How you started? And your publishing journey so far?
I've been writing since I was a kid. I'm fortunate to have parents who enjoy and encourage both reading and writing (my dad is also a writer). I didn't write for other people to read until a few years ago. I'd already got a few supposedly completed books under my belt and a bunch of short stories, and decided to see what the next steps were to get something published. I knew I needed to learn a lot more so I joined an online writers' group. It was a complete flop. Only one of other person consistently showed up, but they're still a very good friend. They were the first person to read and critique my work and the first person who let me do the same to theirs. I learnt a great deal and have done beta swaps with loads of other writers since. They also introduced me to the Twitter writing community and taught me the basics of querying. The first book I queried didn't go anywhere. The Hiding didn't to start with either, then I got a personalised rejection that lead me to swap chapters one and two around. Suddenly, I was getting requests. Not many, but some. In the end, I got a few offers from indie presses. I'm now querying another book that is heavily science-fantasy, so fingers crossed. I've had a few short stories published as well. It's a really tough market (I slush read for an indie press and the volume of submissions was astounding), but there are also loads more indie presses out there these days so go find them and shoot your shot!
What is your writing process as your write and edit? And any writing quirks you have?
A lot of my books have been drafted during NaNoWriMo. For anyone not familiar, the challenge is to draft 50k words of a book in November. So my first drafts are messy and inconsistent, but I get to know the characters' voices and have a good idea of the plot. When I start, I usually know the beginning and the end then see how the characters get from one to the other. I tend to then do a plot edit where I get everything in the right order and try and solve any plot holes. Then I make it pretty and send it to betas. I try and have a couple of rounds of beta readers. Last thing, I read it out loud, or get the computer to. It really highlights typos or an odd cadence.
I'm very character-led and mine definitely have opinions! When I'm really immersed in a book, the characters start commenting on random stuff in my non-writer life. I'm writing a cat character at the moment and I find myself interested in the fish aisle at the supermarket. I worked in a fish factory as a teenager so I try to avoid most fish, but he keeps wanting to go stare at it. They have opinions on more serious things too, like politics and religion. My husband gets told background stories about them when we're out for a walk. They become real people for me (and for him by proxy). I guess that's pretty quirky. More obviously, I'm a physically expressive thinker so I can often be found in bookshop cafes waving my hands around as I try and argue with my characters or fix plot holes.
What is your advice for writers starting out?
Find your people. Both the ones you can trust to pull your book apart and help you put it back together, and the ones who are just there to be your cheerleaders and commiserate with you about the tough publishing industry.
And finally, where do we find you online?
I'm on a few social media sites, most regularly Twitter so that's a good place for a chat. I have a monthly-ish newsletter and there's some bonus content on my website as well as links to my works.
All my socials, places to buy, website etc... can be found on my link tree: https://linktr.ee/alethearlyons
A big thanks to Alethea for spending the time with us for The Writer Story interview. Make sure to order THE HIDING and REAWAKENING and support her writing adventures.
Thanks for reading the Writer Story. If you aren’t subscribed yet, consider hitting the subscribe button below to receive writing and publishing articles and author interviews every week right in your inbox.
Until next week,
~Toodle-oo~