I’d like to welcome the wonderful author, A.L. Lester to the blog today! Give their links below a look too!
Hello there and thank you so much to M.D. for inviting me to come and chat today. I’ve come to talk about my Lost in Time universe. So far there are three books and a free short story in the series and I am in the process of turning the short story into a novella.
The first book, Lost in Time, and it’s sequel, Shadows on the Border, are m/m romances set in 1920s London. Lew Tyler is from 2016. He gets pulled back in time by a magical accident and ends up as a suspect in a series of murders, meeting and falling in love with Police Inspector Alec Carter on the way. The second book, Shadows on the Border, resolves that romance and has the beginning of a relationship between one of Alec’s police officers and Fenn, a non-binary person from the Outlands, the world behind the Border.
The third book, The Flowers of Time, is currently a stand-alone, set in the same universe but in the Himalayas in 1780. It’s a romance between Edie, a plucky lady botanist, and Jones, a non-binary explorer.
The Gate/Inheritance of Shadows are set in 1919 in Rural England and are m/m.
Magic swirls through all of the books as an undertone and sometimes bursts out so it’s to the forefront. Some people can use it effectively, particularly the people who live beyond the Border in the Outlands — that we don’t see much of — but I have tried to make there be consequences if characters this side of the Border ‘pull’ too much energy and do big spells.
The Border is best described as a river of magic that runs between our world and the Outlands. That’s how it’s initially perceived by Lew and his friends. The monsters and mysterious deaths and peculiar goings on are the background to the history and the romance.
When I started writing Lost in Time I was interested in the contrast between the experience of a Londoner in their thirties from 2016 and the experience of someone the same age from a hundred years earlier. That was the genesis of the book. To make that happen I needed some sort of time-travel. To make the time-travel happen I needed either magic or science and I didn’t feel up to bodging together some sort of bastardised version of quantum physics! So magic it was.
Over the course of the different books, the magic system has effectively taken on a life of its own. I very much dislike the Oh! Magic solved THAT problem! approach to plotting, so I’ve tried to be subtle and let the magic cause more problems than it resolves.
This is definitely the case in The Flowers of Time, the most recent release. It was a labour of love for me, partly because during the writing process I came to terms with my own identity as a non-binary person and partly because I became really involved with the history. Initially I was planning the story to be about plant-collectors, but set in the same time-period as the previous books. However when I came to actually put words on the page, the characters simply wouldn’t stay where I put them. Instead of being flappers with bobbed hair fighting to get university degrees of their own, they wanted to meet in a ballroom with candles and rustling dresses and men with red army jackets with lots of gold braid and frogging, and wigs and beauty-spots and glittering mirrors.
In the end, I stopped fighting them and let them get on with it. The Border intruded on their nice, quiet journey over the Himalayas and in the meantime I learned all about how to make butter-lamps, the different languages of Northern India and whether it’s advisable to purchase ones mules for this sort of journey or simply rent them.
I read a lot of queer romance and I know that I prefer a slow-burn relationship, with lots of tension and a nice, chunky plot going on in the background. I tried to write what I enjoy reading and these books are the result.
I’m guest blogging on A.L. Lester’s blog today, talking about the magic system in the Fae Shifter Universe. Let’s visit her across the pond and check out her books and blog!
Website: http://allester.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CogentHippo
Instagram: http://instagram.com/CogentHippo
Books: https://allester.co.uk/lost-in-time/
M.D. Stewart's Writers Blog 