{"id":1809,"date":"2022-02-23T01:22:30","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T09:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=1809"},"modified":"2022-01-31T13:23:18","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T21:23:18","slug":"author-interview-louise-marley-on-the-great-witch-of-brittany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2022\/02\/23\/author-interview-louise-marley-on-the-great-witch-of-brittany\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Interview: Louise Marley on The Great Witch of Brittany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Award-winning author Louise Marley has long been one of my favorite writers. From the chillingly prescient\u00a0The Terrorists of Irustan<\/em>\u00a0to the deeply touching\u00a0The Glass Harmonica<\/em>, to the YA “Horsemistress” series (as Toby Bishop), to the music-themed\u00a0Mozart’s Blood<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Brahms Deception<\/em>, the scope and insightfulness of her writing mark her as a major voice in fantasy and science fiction. Her newest novel,\u00a0The Great Witch of Brittany<\/em>, will be released in February 2022.<\/p>\n

Deborah J. Ross:\u00a0<\/strong>Tell us a little about yourself.\u00a0\u00a0How did you come to be a writer?<\/p>\n

Louise Marley:\u00a0<\/strong>Like so many of us, I was an avid reader as a child, and it followed logically\u2014since I am by nature a performer\u2014that I wanted to write stories myself. My musical ambitions dominated the first part of my life, but I always meant to return to writing. It has been amazing to learn how much the two careers have in common.<\/p>\n

DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>What inspired your book?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>There is no one factor that inspires any of my novels, but the witch novels definitely had their origins in my fascination with witchcraft and the practice of it. I had fallen into the habit of writing historicals, and so the historical settings for\u00a0A Secret History of Witches<\/em>\u00a0and now its prequel,\u00a0The Great Witch of Brittany<\/em>, came naturally.<\/p>\n

DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>What authors have most influenced your writing?\u00a0\u00a0What about them do you find inspiring?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>I love many writers, from the Western authors I read as a girl to the Golden Age gothic mysteries to the great feminist science fiction writers of the latter half of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century. I\u2019m often inspired by the most recent really good novel I\u2019ve read, and I find that enriches my own imagination. I\u2019m not tempted to copy, fortunately, but I learn and absorb from some of the amazing prose and incredible plots I find. Thrillers have been my most recent indulgence, and wow! do those writers know how to plot!<\/p>\n

DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>Why do you write what you do, and how does your work differ from others in your genre?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m extremely lucky to be in a place where I can write what I want to write. My last four books have featured witches and witchcraft, and I do hope they have my own particular stamp on them, which is working witches\u2014women who have to study and practice and explore to make their magic work. I\u2019ve found that the witch genre has many facets, and lots of excellent writers are working in it, with results that vary from terrifying to downright funny.<\/p>\n

DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>How does your writing process work?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m very active physically, by necessity. High metabolism, I suppose. I need to move and exercise, especially in the mornings, so in the past few years I\u2019ve developed the habit of practicing yoga and walking the dog in the morning, along with any chores that need doing. 1:00 p.m., I sit down to write, and that\u2019s pretty much my day until 5:00, when I almost always close my computer, with confidence that I will return the next day. (Yes, I write every day. Almost compulsively.) This is one area in which my musical life and my writing life are parallel, because as a singer 1:00 was the ideal time to vocalize and study whatever music was coming up.<\/p>\n

DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>What have you written recently? What lies ahead?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019ve been both busy and lucky since 2017, when\u00a0A Secret History of Witches\u00a0<\/em>was published by Orbit\/Redhook. That book did very well, and gave me the freedom to do a quite different novel,\u00a0The Witch\u2019s Kind<\/em>, which is hardly witchy at all, but a solid historical.\u00a0The Age of Witches<\/em>\u00a0came next, a book that is very witchy indeed, and now, happily,\u00a0The Great Witch of Brittany\u00a0<\/em>comes out next month. That book, I\u2019m pleased to say, was inspired by the readers of\u00a0Secret History<\/em>, who asked to know the story of the Orchi\u00e8re witches\u2019 ancestress, the great Ursule. It was an absolute joy to get to discover her story.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>What\u2019s the strangest or most touching fan mail you\u2019ve ever received?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>One I will always remember came after my novel\u00a0The Glass Harmonica\u00a0<\/em>was published. The medical condition at the heart of the story was one the writer told me her husband suffered from, and she asked if I had any non-fictional information about the treatment used in the novel. Sadly, I did not. I\u2019ve always wondered about her and her husband, and hoped they found help.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>DJR:\u00a0<\/strong>What advice would you give an aspiring writer?<\/p>\n

LM:\u00a0<\/strong>Write. That\u2019s the big one. An hour a day might produce a page or two, and at the end of a year, there\u2019s a draft.<\/p>\n

I have lots of other advice, but so much of it is specific to the writer and the project they\u2019re working on. I\u2019m a big believer in classes and conferences and workshops, all of which I\u2019ve taught, and all of which I\u2019ve taken myself. I\u2019m a big avoider of anything advertised as a \u201cmethod,\u201d an aversion I developed as a professional singer. Every writer needs to find her own process! Also, take critiques with a grain of salt. Use what works, and say thanks for the rest, but let it go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Louise Marley<\/strong>\u00a0is an award-winning writer of fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction.\u00a0\u00a0Much of her work is influenced by her first career as a classical singer, most recently her novel,\u00a0Mozart\u2019s Blood<\/em>.\u00a0Writing as Louisa Morgan, she is the author of\u00a0A Secret History of Witches,<\/em>\u00a0The Witch\u2019s Kind,\u00a0<\/em>and the newest book,\u00a0The Age of Witches<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Louise lives in beautiful North Idaho with her family and her spirit familiar, Oscar the Border Terrier. Visit her at\u00a0www.louisemarley.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Award-winning author Louise Marley has long been one of my favorite writers. From the chillingly prescient\u00a0The Terrorists of Irustan\u00a0to the deeply touching\u00a0The Glass Harmonica, to the YA “Horsemistress” series (as Toby Bishop), to the music-themed\u00a0Mozart’s Blood\u00a0and\u00a0The Brahms Deception, the scope and insightfulness of her writing mark her as a major voice in fantasy and science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions\/1810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}