Tell us about your most recent release or an upcoming release:

Austringer’s Wrath, second book in the Gifts of the Auldtree series, has been released into the wild. It’s a bit faster paced than the first book, but you get to explore new parts of the world, new characters, and new ways for Axly to make chaos.

Which authors have most contributed to or influenced your indie experience?

Steven William Hannah. This will always be my answer. Social media is such a swamp of a place for a bumpkin like me. Seeing all the back scratching and cliques and mile-long TBRs and toxic positivity made it seem impossible to get anyone to even open my book. I am not charming. I’m pretty sure I have an aura that is just offputting or something. Seeing that Steven was out here just opening 300 books from strangers, judging them on their merits, and doing it in a way that didn’t piss everyone off, was a breath of fresh air. I’ve since based pretty much all my social media interactions off my initial impression of his culling threads: Is it honest? Is it fair? Is it useful? Does it push the indie community in a more positive direction? If not I won’t post it. Unless I think it’s really funny. In which case there are no rules.

What element of writing life do you find the hardest?

The plot. In my mind, plotting seems very straightforward. I have a very clear idea of everything that will happen and many things that might happen. Then I get to the keys. It becomes apparent that I have to flatten this 3D plot structure into a new form. In my mind, multiple plot points are happening simultaneously, time is meaningless, and all things tie up in the time they need to. But sometimes that scene that was a 5-minute movie clip in my brain inexplicably takes 15 pages to write. Meanwhile a 15-minute brain-movie-clip might take only a page. So the timeline is now terribly lopsided feeling because I’ve poorly predicted the translation from brain to page. I feel this is less of an issue for those authors who have one character on one mission with their one side kick in one country. Alas, for reasons that are beyond me, my brain has decided that we should have many characters in many countries doing many things. Which isn’t even to mention the time skips. And having to keep track of seasons and ages. Heaven forbid you have to move a chapter to a different place and now the whole Jenga tower falls.

What real life hobbies or interests inspire your writing?

It will come as no surprise to those who read my books or follow me on any platform that I have a great love for being in the woods. Not just any woods but the woods of Virginia. I have gone a few other places and seen a few other forests. Nothing is quite so elegant and dense and dark as our woods here though. I spend a lot of time reading about trees when I’m indoors, and trying to help them in some fashion when I’m outdoors.

What have been your greatest indie author successes/milestone achievements?

The art. I cannot express how grateful I am to the people who have randomly done art inspired by my books. I have no words for that feeling.

What should people expect from your books?

Worldbuilding. But minimal explanation of it. Slow starts. Me making fun of tropes in various ways. Easter eggs from fairytales, myths, other SFF books, and history. I write dark epic fantasy, but also I am just a low energy person. I was raised on LotR and Morrowind and later found my way to Kate Elliott, then to Sando and Anthony Ryan. My books are rather serious, but I also tend to write in little jokes for myself. The world map is just a stomach.

What have you got coming up or what are you working on?

Book 3, the final book in the GotA series, is progressing at a snail’s pace. But the audiobook for the first book, Starlight Jewel, is almost done!!!

Thanks for answering our questions! You can learn more about EL Lyons over on her website: https://lyonspen.com/

This is a shortened version of EL Lyons’s interview. The full interview is available to our Patreon members. You can find out more about our Patreon and additional content here.