Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandtites.com. I'm your host, Justin Soderberg. This episode, we welcome author Liz Karen to the podcast to talk about her novels, Knight's Edge and the upcoming first light coming out from tour nightfire in April. We talked about the books, about the relationships in it, about writing them and so and on and so forth. Before you listen in, though, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Blue sky, as well as subscribe rate review, all those things over on Spotify, Apple, and all your major podcasting platforms. This is author Liz Karen of Night's Edge and first light. First light comes out April 23 from tour nightfire. Enjoy. Everyone's welcome to the podcast. Liz, how are you today?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: I'm awesome. How are you doing? Thanks for having me.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: I'm doing wonderful. It's actually sunny. We were talking a little bit before we recorded here in Maine. It's actually sunny and it's getting warmer. I think the forecast does say 50s coming up here pretty soon, so it's getting warmer.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably nicer in Maine than it is in California today. Like in LA, it's just been gloomy and rainy and gross. It's like my friend the other day said that we all are suffering from a serious case of the febs because it's still February here and it's just disgusting.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Well, I think the groundhog see its shadow or whatever happens. We have early spring or whatever, and we were like, oh, six more weeks of winter. And for us, that's still an early spring. People are like, oh, I think graduation in Maine. At University of Maine, which is near me, the University of Maine graduates like the first weekend in May, I believe it is. And in 2020, there wasn't any actual real graduation. Or maybe it was 21. It snowed on that day.
Oh, my God. Can you imagine walking into commencement and having be like, oh, there's some flurries coming around. And so for us, it's like, oh, could get 50 degrees out. But then all of a sudden, I know where we could have, like, a blizzard and we're shoveling again.
Otherwise, I really can't complain about living in Maine, I'll tell you that much. I do like Maine.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it's beautiful.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: It's very beautiful up here.
But I lived down the street in Stephen King. People on the podcast have heard that multiple times.
But I like to bring it up to people who write scary books. It makes sense. I'm sure you're a Stephen King fan, or at least have read Stephen King, of course.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: And his work made me love that part of the country even more. Like New Hampshire, Vermont. I lived on the east coast for a long time, but there was always something so mysterious and creepy and interesting about, ooh, what if you go north of New York? What happens?
And I love it. I just love it up there. Anything.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Vampires, possessed pets.
That's all what mean is right now?
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the answer. Anything happens.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Anything happens. Well, I just finished. I actually literally just finished last night or yesterday afternoon, the Dead zone. And so when I was getting some work done this morning, I was like, you know what? Let me watch Christopher Walken's the Dead Zone. And I'm pleasantly happy that the book was better than the movie, I'll tell you that much. I do think that more recently, I have read some books, know, I might be making some people mad, but like jaws and Jurassic Park, I do think that the feature films were better than the books, the original material. But Stephen King, it seems like most of his books are better as books than they are as movies, which is a good thing.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm fascinated, actually, because I didn't learn this for a long time. But, like, how he feels about the shining adaptation. This is something I only recently learned about because I've been doing some of my own adaptation, and that's another story. But, yeah, people are like, yeah, he doesn't really like the Kubrick movie. And I'm like, but that's one of my favorite movies.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: But then take it as its own entity, it's fine. I think as a horror movie, the Shining is unbelievable. But then when you say, okay, the source material was this, and it was slightly different and yada, yada, yada, I think then you go, okay, that understanding. But if you take each individual entity and not compare them, they're both amazing. It's just when you start to compare them, it's the problem.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And I totally get, like, in the book, the thematic resonance he was going for and what he was trying to say with these characters, like, maybe that's not in the movie.
And I feel for that. So, yeah, that's a whole interesting topic in and of itself, is just adaptation and how authors really feel.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Exactly. Yes. It's a big thing. I just felt like there's certain things. I kind of realized that after I finished Jaws, I was know by Peter Benchley is amazing. However, there were some romanticizing or some romantic things that happened in the book that didn't happen in the movie. And I was actually really happy because it took away from, I think, what the actual story was about.
It almost felt like in the book, he was like, oh, we need to put some romance in here. And they put some romance in there to, I don't know, check a box or do something. And in the movie, it wasn't there, which I was actually pleasantly happy about. So my wife's never seen jaws, and so I'm showing it to her right now. We started last night, but we were getting tired. She's 37 weeks pregnant, so she's ready to go to bed at like 08:00 at night.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's like, great time to watch jaws. Like, all right, let's get scared.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Let's just say it's winter and she can't swim for a little while. So I'm like, actually, this is a good time to watch it because you're not going to get in any water and be scared of being in water because of jaws. So you want to do that kind of like wintertime seems like a good time to watch something like jaws and not be scared about getting in the water. But we could talk about other people's books all day long because there's thousands out there. But, Liz, so when did you know that this is what you wanted to do, is craft novels and write and things like, oh, wow.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: I mean, like, when I was a little kid, I would narrate stories aloud to my mom, who know, really old school computer with the first version ever of Microsoft Word, and she would type it out for me. And then I would draw the pictures because I couldn't even really write yet. I was sort of reading, so I must have been, like, in kindergarten or something like that. And so I was writing from when I was, like, a wee child. But then when I was a kid, I was actually an actor. And that was a whole life path that I went off on for a while, but then started writing again in high school because I wanted to write plays, I wanted to write my own stuff. And I was a better writer than I was an actor. And I was really grateful to my drama teachers who always just gave me a platform, told me it was cool to write stuff. And so I kind of came into this world as a short story writer as, like, a wee child, and then was a playwright in high school and in college, and then kind of found my way back to fiction during college, wrote a bunch of short stories and wrote a supernatural horror novel that never really saw the light of day, but it reconnected me with what I knew I loved.
So I went to film school, but I was also writing fiction on the side. So I graduated, and I was like, hey, I studied playwriting and screenwriting and television writing. Cool. I know how to do all that stuff. I know how to be on set, yada, yada. But there was always just this tug that insisted that I should also be writing. You know, over the years, while I cobbled together this weird Hollywood career, I was always writing a novel on the side. And then that sort of started to eclipse everything else. And now here we are, and I'm very happy about that. It's been a long journey to kind of find my happy medium because I always was worried, like, oh, if I go full force into film and television, I'll lose my connection to writing fiction, and I'll get rusty, but then vice versa. Like, oh, my God, if I just devote myself to writing fiction, I'm going to lose all my connections and tv, and I'm never going to get a job again. So I'm like, now I think I'm doing both. And I'm really happy.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: We're happy that you're doing both, too. I tell you that as the readers of your books, we're happy that you're continuing to do both. Because night's edge was phenomenal. I stumbled into it. So a little background on me. I was mostly into comics and things like that, but growing up, I wasn't a very good reader. I took actual reading classes, and they read this, read that, and I was very good at it. I always felt OD in school because the only special class I had was my reading class. I could do everything else amazing. It was like the reading class. And so comics always were that thing to me that were smaller blurbs, easier to read, shorter stories, things like that.
When you pick up a novel, it's very daunting compared to when you pick up a comp book. It's this, like, 20 page thing. And so I just read comics. And to my adult life, I just kept on reading comics. My wife can read extremely fast.
She always made fun of me because I never used to read books. And then over the past couple of years, I really got into it and have just full force been reading more novels, honestly, than I am even comic books. And I don't even remember how I stumbled upon night's edge, but I stumbled on after it was released. And I read it, this, I think, in January, I read it, and I reached out to you. I was like, oh, we need to talk about this. And then lucky enough to get an advanced copy of First Light, and I was super excited to get into reading that as well. And so night's edge, first light, this universe, this world that you've created with these. I say the word vampires, they're saras, but they're an easier thing to say to people a lot of times is the word vampire. But where did this come from? Is this something that was originally created as a novel, or was this a different way you wanted to go about it and then it ended up a novel? Was it planned to be two books originally? What's a little bit more about what happened here to get this going?
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah. The short answer to all of that is none of the things that happened with it were planned at all. My master plan was none of this, but I'm delighted by how it turned out.
I initially conceived of the characters from Night's Edge as an indie horror movie I thought I wanted to shoot a couple of years ago, I had written out of treatment and applied for this filmmaking grant with it, didn't get it. So I was like, okay.
I had always been fascinated with, I just love really grounded, character driven horror, specifically horror that probes our relationships and our family relationships. And I think there was something about vampires that always scratch this itch for me, that was not the itch that was being scratched for everybody else. I was like, oh, there is something so intriguing about vampire and human relationships. They're very parasitic, they're very toxic. Literally, one is siphoning life from the other in order to survive. What does that say about us as people in our relationships? And I had some personal experiences that I was kind of sifting through. And I was just like a parent child vampire relationship is not something we've done. And it makes a lot of sense to me personally to explore some of my own stuff through the lens of horror and vampires. So that's how we ended up with these characters. And then I just sort of was having them bounce between different mediums. Like, there was the indie film thing that didn't pan out. And then I wrote it as a short story right at the beginning of the pandemic because I had nothing to do. I lost my job. But the movie I was working on went away, and I was like, oh, my God. So I had nothing to do. But I kept thinking about this idea, and I was like, let me see if it has legs as fiction. Wrote a short story, was really happy with it, and then my agent was like, do you want to just do all of this? You have nothing but time. We're in a pandemic. So if you want to just go write a book, now's the time. And I said, yeah, let's go for it. So that's how this came about. And the short story ends exactly the same way the novel ends.
And I will say no more because spoiler soup. We're not going to have spoiler soup today.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: I'll almost put that at the top, saying that night's age came out in June of last year.
The paperback comes out March 19.
We're not going to try to spoil anything. I'm going to edit it out if we do. But if there is something, please read it. If you want to pause doing this episode until you read the book, that would be great. But if not, then just in case something slips out that's not, and I don't think we're going to say this is what happens. But I don't know. Sometimes you try to try to broadly explain something and someone's like, I don't want that at all.
Here's the weird thing, is I'll go to read a book, and I hybrid read. So I read the physical copy and I also listen to audiobook because I like to listen to and from work if I'm doing the dishes or whatever, but I still like cracking open a novel and actually reading it. So I do a little bit of both. And I'll start a lot of times the book as audiobook and I'll get the first sentence in and I'm like, wait, let me read the synopsis again about this book because I don't know. I want to know what's going on. Some people don't want to do that. Some people don't even want to read. Like, they want to read the title and they want to be like, okay, this is about this and this and that's it. They don't want to read a synopsis of something because they don't want to be spoiled for them. And I thought that was, I'm like, I need a gist of what's going on here. Need to know a little bit.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Mean. It's crazy for me to not read a think. Also with night's edge, sometimes people are like, oh, it's mothers and daughters and vampires. So it's cute. So it's funny. So it's the Gilmore girls, but they're vampires. And I'm like, oh, why do you think that? If you're expecting cute, I have an unpleasant surprise. It's for, but yeah, I will do my best to preamble. Like, if I think I'm getting into spoilery territory, I'll be like, headline, headline. Here are spoilers.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Exactly. Spoiler alert. Spoiler. Spoiler. No, because I think you can talk about a book without spoiling. I think it's possible. I don't think it's one of those things that a lot of times you want to do some of these conversations prior to a book coming out because we want to let you know it's out there, pre order it with your local know, pre order on Amazon, whatever you want to do. So you have the book when first light comes out. And this is a good thing that it's not even a year between the two novels coming out, right? I mean, technically, June and April, was that planned to do this? Did you already have most of first light done when night's Edge came out, or did you just slam it out?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Okay, so when I finished night's Edge and we sold it to Nightfire, a two book deal was proposed, and they were like, oh, we can do a night's Edge sequel if you want to. And I actually hadn't thought of doing it as a duology up until that point. And now I cannot imagine it any other way. I look back on the way night's edge ends and I'm like, oh, my God, if that was just it, that's like, what.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: It is. But I can see how if you said to someone, someone's like, I read night's edge. I have so many books on my to be read list, and they don't get to first light for a number of months or something like that. It's not like you'd be completely disappointed. I think that night's Edge is great. It's a great book. You can read it the way it is. First light adds so much more to the relationship part of this whole story as well. Like different relationships and how it affects the future of these characters. But what's funny about it is I don't like vampires.
It's not like I don't like vampires. I've never really had this go towards that type of story.
But the funny thing is, over the past year, I've read Salem's lot. I've read CJ Tudors, the gathering. I was able to get an advanced copy of that, which know similar.
And then your two books here, and Christopher golden has a comp book called Mortal Terror, which is also about vampires. And I was thinking about something like, whoa, did I just all of a sudden come to be a vampire? Person. But I think it's different. I think that what these stories and what you and these other people I mentioned are doing with vampires is you're kind of, like, not turning on its head, but doing it from a different angle, in a different know. Mortal terror from Christopher golden is literally the opposite of what vampires are. It's basically like if you get bit by a mortal person, you'll turn mortal. And so it's really kind of cool. It's like just taking Bram Stoker's Dracula and then just changing it to the fact that the vampires are actually the people that are around them more than the mortal people, which is really cool. And then this one, this is more about relationships, in my opinion, and I like to compare it. I've always been a walking dead fan, both the tv show and the comic book. And people are like, I hate zombies. And I'm like, it's not about the zombies. It's how you would react to a world with zombies in it. How would you protect your loved ones? What would you do to protect them? What would you do to stay alive? And so on and so forth. That the zombies are just a vessel. And I feel like that's the same thing. The Saras are a vessel to tell the story of the relationship between a mother and a daughter, relationship between friends, things like that.
It's a different vampire story. So I want to tell people off the top here. If you're not like, oh, it's more like vampires. This is not twilight.
Much different.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: I'm so glad you said that. And I think I was literally talking about this two days ago with someone where I was just like. And I posted a very long thread about this because I was like, get this off my chest.
Writing about vampires in this day and age is a bit of an uphill battle because there is this baked in cultural expectation of, like, well, it's romance, right?
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: And I'm like, what happened to the scary ones? And I think also, because I am a female writer, I think there just comes this, like, I don't know, it comes with this weird expectation of what I'm offering. And there have been people who have reached out to me and said, like, this isn't a vampire book. What are you doing? Somebody told me that I grossly misunderstood the genre, and I was like, I think you did.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: No. Is Twilight the only vampire book you've ever read?
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah, they probably haven't read the book. It's probably more along the lines that they just saw the movies, and that's no offense to anybody who just does that. I'm not saying that you have to read to, but thanks. Stephanie Meyer. I really appreciate you putting all vampires in a box, no pun intended there. But the idea that don't put it in a box, because there is other stories, and I feel like that's what I'm into mostly. If I talk to anybody about whether it be comics, whether it be books, whether it be movies, is that I want you to take what the stereotypical genre is, or the area of that novel or book or whatever, and tell it a different way and explore different avenues. Because there's not like, this is how you write a vampire book.
This is how Dracula was written by Bramster. That's that book. But that doesn't mean that every book has to have that same specific model to it. And that's something you've done with this series.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I also was really interested in telling very modern vampire stories about, like, this could happen today to a young woman. It includes stuff about social media, stuff about that's adjacent to the pandemic that we all just experienced, things that just feel like stuff we just live through. I have kind of grown a little bit weary with gothic vampires. I think it's just what the go to has been for so long, and I'm like, not. So this was to be a world just like ours. Present day.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: I think I can relate to it in a way that some people might not be able to either, because I'm such into comic books, is that it's kind of reminded me of how a superhero's alter ego would be. Whereas these vampires, these sars, they have to hide from people, and the people found out who they really were, their lives would change and things like that. And I think that's why maybe it connected a little bit more with me. But, I mean, not the only one. I definitely have a lot of people who are friends with mine on goodreads and things like that that have rated your books highly. So it's not like I'm the only one that feels this way. But speaking from a personal experience, I think that you've done a great job of, like you said, turning it on its head in a way that's made it, I don't know, accessible to everyone, in my opinion.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: But thank you.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: I guess that's on my own personal opinion.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: And on that is. Is Mia Bruce Wayne? Is that what you're saying?
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Well, I mean, financially, not, but yeah, no.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: If only all their problems would be solved.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: I mean, Bruce Wayne did live in a bat cave. So there's the connection to that.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: It's not totally off base.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: No, it's not.
And they think, well, Bruce Wayne's parents are dead, so it's not the same way. Because in night's age, there's a little bit of relationship between mother and daughter. So obviously.
Well, yeah, I don't know, but I'm just saying it's a secret identity in a sense. It's not like for sure they're fighting crime or that kind of thing. But it's the idea that you have to hide you from yourself. And the fact that she can't, being a daughter, having the ability not to do anything extra because she's afraid that someone's going to find out their secrets is a different thing. Maybe Mia is more like Bruce Wayne's kid, if that makes any sense.
You can't come over and see my dad because people might find out my dad is so, like.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: It's the same thing. Yeah, that's like a great spin off comic.
Don't come over. You'll find out my dad is Batman.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: This is rewrite Batman story as the knight's edge has the body of it. And the plot to the whole thing is just with Batman, with swap out characters for Batman. Batman, Robin, his.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Let's just make Batman a sarah. There we go. Make him a vampire in that thing. That's it. Done. Good to go.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Maybe that's the way I need to sell the movie from now on. Like, forget the source material. I'm just going to walk into my pitch and be like, picture this.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Picture this.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Batman's a vampire and he has a kid.
It would probably work.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: And then you have the relationship. Obviously, you move on. You have the relationship between father and, sorry, father, mother. And now I'm picturing Bruce Wayne and his kid in this book instead know Mia and Izzy. But then it probably seems like for most people, and again, we're not going to spoil anything here, but if you think about reading the actual synopsis, some of this stuff is the idea that she meets Jade. Mia meets Jade. And if she never met someone like Jade, maybe they would. No one ever. The book would end, this would be over.
Because maybe you would have been able to do it and maybe not. Because Mia does definitely want to explore other things. You can tell that she's ready to seek other friends and things like that. And again, relationship, but not romantic relationships like you'd see in most other vampire stories, in a sense.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: And I also think it's true that at the same time, her mother's pulling away from, like, Mia would never have just gone off and explored her crush on this girl had she also not been getting these signals from her mother that her mom was also feeling kind of done with their way of life and was lying to her as well. So I think that that was, for me, always the important push and pull where I was like, well, she does something, then she does something, then she does something. And that's how these codependent relationships sometimes they fray and then they fall apart.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: The mom couldn't get away with what we get away with. I get away with, as a parent, being like, why can't I do this? Because I said so. Because at some point is going to find out. Because I said so isn't totally fair. And if you're know, you can't have a cookie after 08:00 and then I'm having a cookie after 08:00 it's like, well, what's the heck's going on here? So this is push against, but as someone gets older and understands when Mia was younger, it probably a little easier. Just, this is how things are. I'm your mom, figure it out. Whatever. As you get older and you get your more independent thinking, that's when things start to fray. And I think that's where the pressure became on the relationship with their mom, and then so on and so forth. And again, the mom being able to do whatever she wants, but then has to tell her daughter, you can't do this, that and the other thing, because it could hurt the way of life that we have, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, it's a definitely great, and that's where I think I kept on turning the page and wanting to know what was going on and so on and so forth. I think night's Edge did that to the point where I wanted. It was like, can you do this? Can you do a third book, please? Can you figure this out? I don't know how you're going to do it, but can you please do a third?
Your writing is great, and that also helps with it, too. So I think that people should definitely pick up night's edge. Don't you agree?
[00:26:37] Speaker B: I agree, I must say.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: But yeah. So if you want a different vampire style story, I think that's what knight's edge did to me. And it made me open up the idea that I can have maybe a different. If someone said, and I think that's some of the reason, honestly, that I got to read the gathering from CJ was that I was like, okay, I read this, and I was like, oh, I can handle vampire story. I can. Do you. Have you read it or heard of the book the gathering yet?
[00:27:06] Speaker B: I have heard of it, and I haven't read it yet.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: It has tones that we put on the same. If someone does like your book, I would highly recommend that because of the fact that it is, again, more about fringe vampire.
You're not following Dracula around. It's your fringe. It's more a vessel to get the story moving along, less about the actual physical biting someone's neck or those kind of things in.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: I was going to say, I think that we're kind of entering this era of vampires being scary again, which I love. And what you just said about it's this fringe group.
There is so much that's been going on for us culturally for the past four or five years that has to do with illness and being secluded and being on the fringes and arguing about what's the better philosophy and the better way of life. And I know that night's edge and first sight explore a lot of that. And it sounds like some of these other ones that are coming out are also getting into that. And I think that you have to kind of look at history and culture as a whole and understand, like, oh, well, that's where all this is coming from.
It makes me think of empire.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's funny you mentioned that. It's like one of those things that through the past couple of years when someone you close to you or you know of got Covid and you're like, did I see them? Where's I around them? Did I talk good daddy? Too close to them. And all I could picture is the same thing, but way more serious to the point where, like, oh, wait, they're a sara. Oh, crap.
Was I too close to them? What happened? Did blood touch my blood? Did something happen that I'm now going to become ill with something? And, yeah, it can bring that. I don't think a lot of people want to read, specifically someone writing a horror book. There was a horror movie I saw online about COVID something, and I'm like, I don't want to watch a Covid horror movie, but I would like to watch one that had similar tones and similar ideas with something like vampires or zombies or whatever it may be. That is a different vessel of communication on this because I like the idea of how scared we were, how staying in our homes, lock ourselves down. I don't like the idea of that, but I think you get what I mean.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I want something else.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: I want something more unrealistic. Yes.
And that was the biggest thing, I think, for me, and I think a lot of people will agree with me, is that my favorite horror stuff is such realism with the slight change to make it unrealistic. So we live in a world that we don't have vampires, or at least we don't think we do. We don't know. We likely don't. But so you just take a world that's kind of scary in itself, and then you add vampires to it, which is a slight different change, and it makes it even scarier, which is know, that's, I think, why this also fits into that niche for me and why it's like a perfect spot for it. And that's why I was lucky. I'm lucky enough to talk to only people that I like things that they do. I'm not being told by a bigger producer, being like, you've got to talk to Liz. Her book came out, and I'm like, well, the book sucked. I don't want to talk to her about this. And I'm lucky enough to be able to say I'm reading something and I'm going to gloat about it, and I'm going to say I liked it a lot. And that's one of, and that made me want to read first light. And I think I'm glad Tor nightfire, had you write a sequel, would you have done a different book? Was that the idea?
Instead of doing the sequel, you had a two book deal. It's like you potentially could have done something else, but it just made most sense to do first light.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I could have, in theory, done something else, but when it first came up, it was kind of talked about with the expectation that the second one will be more. And I was like, yeah, it was really funny how I wasn't sure initially where else it could go because of the way the first one ends. And then I was like, oh, of course we know where it's going.
There's a loop we didn't close, and it's a big loop. And there was also so much world building that we hadn't had a chance to really delve into because the first book is just mia and her mom so isolated in their little jewel box of a home and of a life, and it's just this very insular story. So getting the chance to open it up was huge, and I had so much fun.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: And I think it's cool because I think a lot of people, one of the cool things about first light compared to Night's Edge. Night Sadge is more like of a linear story, whereas first light has this in the future kind of thing, and then also going back to right after the end of Night's Edge, basically. So there's this dual storyline, but the same storyline. I don't know how to explain it. That was cool, because you could have easily just been like, here we go. It's a week after the end of the last book, and let's just continue the story along. But I feel like you were able to do a different. It changed it up. I had this conversation with a couple of people the other day about should you read series or dual books back to back to back to back, or should you put something in between? Should there be a palette cleanser? Should I read.
I was thinking of it when I was reading wool by the silo series, and I read wool, and then I'm like, should I go and immediately read shift? Or should I read something in between escape the world of the silo and then come back? And a lot of people said that. They said that they liked the idea of reading one book, then someone else's book, and then going back into the sequel or the next book in the series. And I feel like the way you wrote first light allows me to read Night's Edge and then that, because it's a different way of storytelling, in my opinion. Your voice is still there, but I think that you just changed it up slightly in the second book, which I liked a lot.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Thank you. It was fun to kind of play with the nonlinear storyline and where you planted reveals and where you sprinkled information that made sense later. That's kind of my favorite way to tell a story and kind of unwrap it slowly. But I don't know. I think it's really fun to allow readers to experience the stories back to back if they want that. I also could see the first one being emotionally a little much, and maybe they want to take a break and that's fine, too. But I've heard from a couple of people who have had early copies of first light who read them back to back, and they're just like, this feels like a complete arc when you get them both in at the same time.
So I would say that's a great way to experience them. And there are also two short stories that are in this world that come like, you can read them separately, standalone anytime, but they come at different points in this whole timeline. And that's also fun if someone wants to dig those out.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Interesting.
It's also one of those things that night. Sage is like 300 pages. What's 330 something pages? So it's not like you're talking back to back. I'm going to bring Stephen King back up. It's not like you're writing back to back Stephen King, 600 page. It's not like reading under 1200 pages and then reading another 1200 pages.
There's books that are this long together. You could have told the story as one story and people wouldn't have balked at it. They wouldn't have been like, oh, my God, it's 500 and something pages. You would have been like, cool.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe someday they'll print, like, an omnibus where it'll just be one chunky novel and it's like 600 pages and it's like, it's all of it, which. Fine.
Exactly.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Good.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: I was also at the time developing the story for television at the same time that I was writing the sequel. So for me, I was also thinking a lot about, like, where is this show going and what is the world we're building? So those two creative journeys really informed each other every day. So I think that that was also super cool and just a very rigorous brain exercise that I was doing the year I wrote the sequel as well.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: You're writing the adaptation of it yourself or you have a team or how does that work?
[00:36:00] Speaker B: So right now, it's not moving forward anymore. We just found out, like a week or two ago, so I'm now allowed to say that. But it was in development for a couple of years, and I was writing the pilot and I was a producer on it, but we had, like, a whole team and a studio and producers, et cetera, et cetera. And it was really cool. It was an awesome group of people.
Just the industry just experienced some seismic changes over the past six months to a year, and it didn't fit anymore. And the network we were set up at kind of doesn't exist anymore.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Exactly. I was thinking about that because I forgot that I had been optioned. I forgot that you had optioned option. I was like, oh, let me google that for a second. And I was like, I read the title. I'm like, wait, is that even a thing anymore?
[00:36:47] Speaker B: No, it was three years ago. But the point I'm making is what was so cool about getting to do that at the same time I was writing the sequel was that it just really helped me think about the bigger world and the other characters we'd eventually be introducing and who they were and then picturing, like, what does their bottle episode look like? Who's this guy? So that really helped me and made it fun.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: That's awesome. You can live in that. You get to live in that world for a lot longer. A lot more than even us reading the novels for you read the back to back novels and you've been living this life for a couple of years. You've been in this world for a couple of years now working on something for tv as well. This doesn't mean it's dead. Dead in the water, right? Is this just dead at this moment? Right?
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's dead at this moment. And I'm really considering my options super carefully in terms of what will happen with it next.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: That's pretty cool, though. It's such a weird world we live in because I am excited. I would be excited. So if you said it's moving forward, it's actually going to air next week, I'd be like, awesome. Let me tune in.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: This is amazing.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: I want to live in this world a little bit more. I just mentioned earlier I watched a Red dead zone, then watched the movie. It's kind of nice to see the different sides of things and so on and so forth, how someone adapt something. But in the same sense, if you said it's never going to be made into anything else again and only ever going to live in a book form, I'd be like, cool. That's okay, people. It'd be great for you financially for you to make it into more. It's great for you to get to tell new stories, potentially, and you have new, different parts of it. But this was created as a novel, so it's nice to also, if it ever has to, just stay as a novel, let's just keep it as a novel. Not saying, I love that. Yeah, it's just one of those things. There's too much of us wanting. Even in the comic book world as well, there's too much of us wanting, oh, when is it going to be made into a movie or a tv show? And it says, well, sometimes it just needs to stay at that. Not saying I wouldn't watch it and I wouldn't like that to happen. It's just, if it does, then cool, I'll just read the book again.
You know what I mean?
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. Because I've been thinking a lot about that as well. Like I said earlier, coming into this world as a screenwriter and a novelist, I'm just like, well, is it not complete until we do a movie? And I've recently come to understand that doesn't matter. I finished the story.
The two books exist. Her story is complete. I feel great about it, and that's all it needs to ever be. And that feels amazing. To make peace with that.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Yes. And if you want a visual medium, there's always the world of comics that you could just adapt it, and we can see it in comics. You can have someone illustrate it instead of put it on tv or on a movie and so on and so forth.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Oh, my God. A really creepy graphic novel would be sick. That would be so cool.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: And now, I mean, that's the other thing.
I could picture 100% picture this as a novel, as a comic book, because horror comics are so big right now, too. There is so many artists I could picture drawing these people. That would be unbelievably beautiful to see. But in the same also sense of that. Speaking of adaptations versus books, I have a picture in my head. What Izzy, what Mia, what Jade. All these people look like, and I sometimes hate when they make something like, oh, and they cast such and such as. I'm like, really? Who decided that that's not what it looked like up?
[00:40:17] Speaker B: So it can really just mess with me. It made watching the Hunger Games movies for me years ago very confusing.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Well, it can work to benefit opposite wise, too. If you read the Hunger Games after watching the movies, you might be what she looks like now because you gave me what she looked like. But when you do the opposite, when I read Salem's lot and then watched the salem's lot made for tv thing back in like, that is not what I pictured these people looking.
Don't. In my version of what Mia and Izzy and Jade look like in my head is different than what it probably looks like she looks like. They look like in your head, too. And so that's what's cool about it. You had your own imagination on it.
Where night's edge is a lot about Izzy and Mia and the relationship between mother and daughter, can you explain to those who don't know about it what the difference between that and first light is? What's the difference in the novels?
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Well, first light focuses less on Mia and Izzy's everyday drama being stuck together and more upon Mia seeking. It's a revenge story. It's Mia seeking revenge upon the man who turned her mother into Asara in the first place. Because Mia was ten years old when her mom started dating this creepy dude who one night did something terrible, and then they were living with it for the rest of their lives.
And so her Izzy's ex boyfriend Devin is still out there recruiting saras and literally just doing domestic terrorism as a vampire.
And Mia has decided, like, she's got nothing to lose anymore, so she goes after him.
And so the story really focuses more on her understanding who her mother really was through the memories that he shares with her about her, and then also understanding why her mother fell under this person's spell and how this all really happened from an emotional standpoint and whether or not forgiveness for her mom would ever be possible because of that.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: Do you find it hard to promote a book, a sequel like this, with there's things that happen in this sequel and things you'd like to talk to people about that you need to read the first book to kind of understand what's going to happen?
[00:42:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's tough to talk about first light in detail without explaining certain things about night's edge. But basically all you need to know is, like, this is about a girl who goes after the vampire who turned her mom and ruined their lives, period.
And that's all the stuff you think it might be and more.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: I mean, I tell you right now, it's a good way, I guess, an emotional roller coaster to both books together, to crafted characters that I care about. Like, I care what happens to them, whether they're bad people or good people. It's just like you care about them. I do think that your villains in these things have a. Again, I don't relate to walking dead. A negan aspect to it, where you love to hate them, you want them to be present and see them a lot and read them a lot, but you don't want them to succeed. But in the same sense, if they went away, you'd feel like something was missing. You know what I mean? I don't know, something about you want to root for them, and that's a weird way to put it, but I care about every character that was introduced in these books that some people just can't do as an author is write something that you care about everybody, and you did that, which not to make your head any bigger.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: I'm so glad that that worked, though, because this is a despicable villain in every sense. But the truth is, in order for this person to succeed at starting a cult of vampires, you have to imagine that he's very fun, he's very interesting, and he knows how to get you to watch him.
I had to always keep that in mind. So I'm glad that worked, because even when I was writing it, I was just like, yeah, in this scene, can I cut back to the story? So it's true.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: It does keep things really interesting, and it does. And that's one of those things. Like I said, I think that I'm always for a sequel and seeing the hard. I'm a big Marvel fan, and Marvel's done this really bad thing over the years. The movies, at least, where they put a villain in there, and then they kill the villain off, and then it's like this weird thing where it's like we have to kill the villain at the end to make it worth the while. And I'm like, well, you could gravely injure them or make them disappear or put them in jail or do something that makes this or even do that just at the end of the movie, like, sorry, we didn't succeed, and the next movie comes.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah, we didn't get them.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: The building a character up to be the Thanos style character, over altering all these movies was a successful thing for them. I think that's what made them billions and billions and billions of dollars. But the street level villains or the lower villains are the ones that they just like, okay, that one's dead now that one's dead, and so on and so forth. And I think the villain, not only does the agonists need to carry over like it does in this book, but I do think the villain part needs to be there too. And I think that's what is nice about this book, is that they're not ever present, but they're there, and they're creepy as hell, and they're someone you wouldn't want to mess with. I tell you that much. I wouldn't want to be in the same room.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: I like that you brought up Thanos, actually, because another thing that was very successful with Thanos, that I want to take a page out of this book forever, is that wasn't wrong.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: Yes. And that's what got me on the Thanos thought. Thanos is my favorite supervillain in all comics, books, everything. And Thanos always, he wasn't wrong, but he also 100% believed what he was doing was right. And that's some of the scariest thing. And I think that's the same thing in here where you think you're doing the right thing and you think your mindset is, I know it sounds like we're doing something wrong, but promise me this is right. And we're all like, it's wrong. You are wrong. Or it might be right, but it's not the right way about going about doing yeah. So he was right. There's too many people. Yes. Okay. But that's also.
Can't.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: You can't do it.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: You might not be wrong. I mean, what was it on the office? Dwight said on the office, he's like, you know what we need? We need another plague. And I was like, well, you're not wrong. But in the same sense, it's also not right.
I feel like there is this mentality that the villain in these books thinks that they're doing something, or wholly in their mind thinks this is the right way about going about doing things, or at least portrays that and explains that to people in a way that this is the right way about going about doing things, but it's not the best way about doing it, and so on and so forth. There is a comparison there. I can see that we're just going to get a nice infinity gauntlet.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: The hand on the front of nights are just missing something.
Should we do a variant cover like they do in comics for this one with the gauntlet on the. No kidding.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: I would love for someone to Photoshop that for us. That would make me very happy.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: I don't know. There is something I could just gloat and say all these great things about these books, but I think people should find out for themselves, in my opinion, what they like about them or not.
The paperback comes out March 19. Is that correct, of night's edge? Yeah. Am I right about that?
Which is great for those people on a budget because it's nice that they're a little bit cheaper, so on and so forth. I'm always a big hardcover person because I'm a collector, as you can see behind me. So you pull this off the shelf, you put it back on the shelf, and it's pretty much going to stay in pretty good condition.
But if you're looking for a cheaper option, the paperback is always good. It's also a little bit easier to read. Let's be honest, people holding a paperback is a little bit easier to read than holding.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
But I will say the hardcover of night's edge has something really cool under its dust jacket that the paperback won't have. So have you looked at it?
[00:49:07] Speaker A: I have. So here's the deal. I am an original person. I try to get things in dust jackets and things like that, and this is not the same. There's so many different books out there that have such a great book without the dust jacket on it that I really wish that I could just take all of the dust jackets off and there's no way I could get myself to. So the only way I have books on my shelf that don't have dust jackets is that I bought them used without dust jackets. But it's always fun to look at them. And as you can see if you're watching this, this is a cactus on the fire, which is pretty in silver.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really pretty. So can't do that on a paperback.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: You can't.
But that's March 19. That's available, and you can preorder that at your local bookstores. I've always recommend buying them at your local bookstores. But if you just want to buy it on Amazon, buy it on Amazon, too. Because, listen, I'm for local bookstores, but I'm also for the people who create these things. And if more people buy your book because they buy it on Amazon, that's also okay to me. My budy Gibran owns a bookstore in downtown Bangor, and he's probably going to yell at me for saying things like that, but he doesn't even want me to say the a word. But again, if Tor sees this paperback fly off the shelves or the first light fly off the shelves, they're going to be like, well, we should probably do more work with Liz.
[00:50:29] Speaker B: Yeah. It helps me personally, no matter where you buy it.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: And also where all of us are on budgets, let's be honest, most of us are on budget. So wherever you can get a good deal on things, if you're buying a bunch of books, then it is what it is. So that's March 19, but then first light comes out roughly a month later on April 23. So you give yourself, you buy it on the 19th, you read the book, take some time, soak it in, and then you can go out and buy first light and hardcover on the 23rd. I'm guessing hardcover, right? I'm guessing it's hardcover.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that one's out in hardcover first.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Okay.
I'm still learning the book market a little bit, too, which is really cool. I like the idea you have time to promote things. I also love the idea that you basically get to promote it for two years for most books, that you get to do a promotion of a year, and then the paperback comes out, which puts it back in the limelight again, which is pretty cool.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that it was great the way they did the calendar for this because like you said, first light is out less than a year after the first one, and then the paperback is out really soon. And so they did a good job of saying this is when we're going to have second wind. Now we're in it.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: Yes. It's very exciting. I will say that there's very little that tour nightfire has done wrong. I'll tell you that much right now.
They've put out some amazing books from some amazing authors and I'm really excited to see what happens. You're writing stuff now, but are you writing more novels?
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I am. I'm not sure what's going to become of the next one I've got.
I'm just trying to get to the end of it and see what it is.
It has something to do with alien abductions and that's all I can really say right now. But I'm really excited about it and I hope it works.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: That's awesome.
I always like that because when someone says, I don't have anything I'm working on right now, I'm like, maybe you should get on something because it doesn't mean you can say anything about it because a lot of people say, I'm working on something. I can't say much about it right now, yada, yada, yada. But if you can't say that, then there's probably come on, get back to doing something. Because at some point I wish I.
[00:52:42] Speaker B: Were writing more than just this thing. I always wish I were a little busier, which is probably not good.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: It is what it is. And if you come up with books that are like this and they continue to be amazing books and do what you need to do, Dan L. Krause is one thing. He's like, I've not never been a guy who's like, I'm going to write a book a year. I'm going to write a book when it's good and people like it. I want to write good books. I want to write books that I like to write. I don't want to just be forced to continue writing books and things like that. And I was like, that makes a lot of sense to me.
Work on and write something that you want to write and if someone likes your writing, they're going to buy your book. And I don't think that's going to be a problem with these two books, to be honest with you. You put something out, we're going to buy one so that you know that you have one.
And then are you working on tv stuff still or is it basically focusing on the books? What's going on in your life otherwise?
[00:53:35] Speaker B: I'm focusing mainly on books right now.
To be frank, Hollywood's been a tough place since the strikes ended.
I think some people got back to work really quickly if they had a project that was already in production or something when the strike happened. But a lot of things did not come back. And so I'm navigating that and really thankful that I have book writing to keep me creatively stimulated and what have you, because it's been hard out there. Hollywood's weird, right?
[00:54:10] Speaker A: So it is. And I also feel like when I'm like, oh, wait, this tv show is back, but this one's not. When is this coming?
I don't even know. And I remember the previous strike was the same thing. It's like you go back and you watch previous episodes of seasons, you're like, why did this one only have ten episodes? And everything else was 22? And then you remember that's the season that they shortened and so on and so forth. And I do think that there's, we're waiting longer for things nowadays because I feel like they are doing more production. The last of us, for an example, was amazing. And then they're like, well, the next one's not even coming out for another 18 months or two years. And then the writer strike happened, and it's like, well, now it's actually not coming out for another 18. And so you don't know.
True detective had like three years off. It was, the whole thing is like, you just don't know nowadays. And then you added the strike in there, and it was a whole messing it up. But the strike was also necessary. So I think that's necessary. It shouldn't have happened in the first place. Let's reiterate that. But because of what happened, it was necessary to do what you guys all did for sure.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: There was no question that there was going to be fallout. And I was expecting this, and it's okay, but that's the reality of, like, are you doing any tv right now? No, I'm not.
Maybe next year.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Yes. And so I hope so. I said, your name will be on a book I'll be grabbing. Your name is on anything else. We'll be watching it because we were very happy with everything you've put out so far, and I'm really excited to see what happens next. March 19 is Night's Edge, and April 23 is first light. But also, I believe if you want to get hardcover, you can get hardcover right now. Of night's Edge. Edge. So don't wait. Just buy the book now. Yes, get reading. The audiobook is also really wonderful as well of Night's Edge. If anybody wants to read Night's Edge, is there going to be an audiobook for first light?
[00:56:03] Speaker B: Do you know? There is, but it's stalled for reasons. So it won't be out in April right when the other one is, but it will.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Yeah, there's the second book. Christopher Golden's book also was delayed for some reason too. I don't know what the reasoning behind that one is too. But like I said, I like to hybrid read unless I'm reading, obviously read advanced copy. So I was able to read just that because again, the same way we like to visually see some people, I also like to see someone else's interpretation of what someone sounds like or the way they reflections is on certain words and things like that. Audiobook is always fun to pop into and pop out of in that sense.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I read in a similar way. I like to hybrid a lot. So yeah, we're getting an audiobook. It's just going to be a second.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Because I always used to like if you do have it. So nights Edge is available on Libro FM if anybody wants to do the audiobook version of that helps support local bookstores as well. So check that out on there. You also own the rights to it, so unlike other audiobook companies, they actually give you the file. It's yours, it belongs to you.
You're not renting it. Basically, it's your book to own the digital version of owning an actual book, which is pretty cool. But enough of that.
I appreciate, Liz, for you. Come on and talk your books with us. I really appreciate you taking the time out.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: Of course. This was so fun. Thank you for having me.
[00:57:29] Speaker A: Absolutely. And we'll come on again. Maybe we'll do a spoiler edition of this episode.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: Oh, my God. All I want to do. Yeah, I just want to do spoiler episodes so bad.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: We'll talk night's edge first and we'll just talk about the book, if you've read the book, so on and so forth. But yeah, I'm excited for more. I can't wait to read these again because it's going to be amazing to read them again and I think everybody else should pick them up and read them. Highly recommended.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:57:56] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Liz. I really appreciate it. You have a wonderful time in California. I hope it's better for you mean, we're getting sunnier weather here. Hopefully the clouds go away or the gloominess goes away in Los Angeles or in, you know, we need bright sunny there. Not that the sun comes out that often anywhere because it is pretty hazy over there. All the.
[00:58:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm over this. I'm over the febs.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Exactly.
Again, I appreciate it so much. I really do. Liz. Thank you so much.
