INTERVIEW WITH ALLISON ANDERSON
The one where I interview fantasy author Allison Anderson
Allison Anderson lives her best life as a wife, a mom, a dedicated member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and a fantasy writer. As a life long fantasy nerd, she finds it natural to create stories of her own and you can often find her jotting down new story ideas or talking about dragons. She’s spent most of her life across the southwestern United States.
Enjoy!
Well, The Shadow Lord was great. I really enjoyed it. I sorry to be so long to read it. I just have been swamped with personal stuff, and I wanted to finish it before we spoke. I'm so glad I did, because it was wonderful.
Thank you. I appreciate that
My first question for you is: What got you into writing? Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Or was this something you kind of slid into?
I think it was something that was more thrust upon me.
I feel like everyone in their childhood dabbles and things. You want to be an astronaut, you want to be a pilot, you want to be a ballerina, you want to be alll these things, and it changes so much. There was a time when I said that I could write a book. I could be an author, but it was never a reality until I was an adult. I never wanted to do this as a career. Let me rephrase that . . . I hadn’t hadn’t wanted to do it as a career. I didn't think it was in the cards for me, but I hit a point in my life where I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up.
I might’ve been 22 years old? That might not be true. I can’t recall how old I was. I realized that my life was not going to take the path that I thought it was going to. It was during this time that I was on a giant book reading binge. I've always been a really voracious reader. I love reading. It’s such a . . . I don’t want to say escape . . . It’s such a part of my life that I find important. I was on a crazy dystopian binge at this time and I remember waking up from a dream. It was this crazy dystopian dream.
I was on the phone with my parents at the time and we started talking about this team. My dad [straight up told me], “You should write it as a book! You should come to my writing group as a book!” I wasn’t doing anything. Like I said, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. So I said, “That’s fine.” I had two tiny kids at the time, and I was like, “I can fit this one writing meeting a month into my schedule. That’s totally doable.” I started writing this book and I quickly realized the book was garbage. It was a very whacked out dream but the writing process itself I was addicted to. So it kind of took off from there and here we are.
We're just happy to have you, because you’ve put out 2 books now. So who would you say are your primary writing inspirations?
As an author, Jeff Wheeler has been a huge inspiration and support to me the whole time. Before I wrote The Spring Maiden, he and I connected over social media. We’ve become really good friends. Since then, he has been such an inspiration to me. He’s helped me realize what I want in my author career, what things I can prioritize over authoring and over real life. He’s really really helped me find a really good balance in my own life. Every author has their own balance that they have to figure out.
I’m glad that I know Jeff because his process and author lifestyle is very different than the ones you see out there. We don't have to go on tour. We don't have to go to all of the cons. There's more of a picking and choosing, and you can prioritize that.
As I have two tiny kids at home, I can’t leave for weeks at a time to go on tours and go on big drives. It’s nice for me to be able to prioritize those things instead of getting pushed into doing those things as a writer. As a writer, his books are so amazing. If I can plot twist like that man, I know that I’ve hit a milestone. If you’ve never read anything by Kate Stradling, I would say her writing is so vivid. Within the first page, I just want to write like her. It is just amazing writing. Technique-wise, she is one of my biggest inspirations.
There are so many but those two are my biggest writing inspirations.
Jeff Wheeler is a really good one. A few months ago, I read the the first Muirwood book and that was fantastic. And really got me thinking about things I want to write too.
For those who might not be familiar, what can you tell us about your newest and latest series, The Cartographer’s War? It’s the series that contain both your debut novel, The Spring Maiden, and your latest novel, The Shadow Lord. What can you tell us about it?
It’s so fun. There is so much LEFT to get into. It’s funny because this story developed off of a scene I had in my head that I had in my head a long time ago. We haven't even gotten to that scene yet in the series. So I know there's a lot. There's so much more coming.
But about things I’ve already established though? The first two books are so fun to me because you get to see Penny - - the main character of the series - - as she was in these first two books.
I know her way differently than you guys are getting to know her right now, because I've seen her full growth So getting to see her as she was right now is really really fun. You see her as this 17 year old girl that doesn't know anything about the world. I feel like that's such a reality for all of us that are coming into adulthood. We understand the world, but we don't understand the world. And so in this book, you get to see Penny come to an understanding of the world and it is so so fun.
Also, when I was creating this character, I based it off of the Hades and Persephone myth, I realized that Persephone doesn’t get enough credit for the things that happen to her. I didn’t like that because Persephone plays a huge role in her myth but we never see it from her point of view. We see it from either Demeter, Zeus, or Hermes’s perspectiver but never hers. So, this series was about giving her a voice to show that she was the one making the call which I think was fun.
So you mentioned this series is a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth. What made you land on that particular myth of all the different kinds of mythological stories that you could have landed on?
I am addicted to a webtoon comic called Punderworld [written and drawn by Linda Sejic]. I found this comic on pinterest, of all places and I was just addicted from the start. She hasn’t finished with it yet. It’s not done. But when I got to where she had finished, I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more. I want more Hades and Persephone. And so I went looking. I don't know if you've ever gone looking for Hades and Persephone retellings, but there's not very many and if there are any, they fall into a certain category that I do not love, and I'm not going to go into it. But I didn't find what I was looking for.
I loved this story, and the way that this comic artist had portrayed these these characters that all of us know from the Greek Pantheon. Like we've heard the gist. We've seen the story but she portrayed them in such a way that got my my brain spinning and I wanted more of that. When I couldn't find it I realized that I needed to create it and so that's kind of how it started.
Did you always know the series would be four books? Was it a standalone novel at first and then decided to expand on it? And will be there be more than these four?
Well, it was originally going to be a trilogy. It was actually this book that made it from three books to four. I started writing this book and realized something that wasn’t in my outline. I wasn't giving a lot of these characters enough credit. We get to see our male main character more closely - - I'm not spoiling anything for anyone that hasn't read the first book - - and we didn’t really get to see his life very much in the first book. So I wanted to be able to show his side more and his relationships and all these things that happen before he needs Penny.
That kind of grew into Book 2, and it became its own book instead of the first. I think had it outlined for the first third of the second book of the trilogy. And Book 3 was the 2/3 left and another 2/3 after that. So it split into tewo books because the characters in this part of the story really took to life. I felt like they deserved more time on the page than I was given going to give them.
When you say seeing more of the male main character’s life, I know exactly what you're talking about since I just basically finished it. You did a really good job with that, and I liked seeing his. his family life, and the kind of politics that he has to deal with in relation to that. I won’t say anything more than that so people can read the books.
I know! It’s so hard not to be spoilery!
It is SO hard. Funny story . . . The third book is actually available for preorder and the synopsis says what happens to one of the characters in the second book. So I myself thought, “Well. I guess I know that now.” So when it happened, I unfortunately knew it was there.
So romantasy is obviously a big part of the book. That’s kind of a hot topic right now. Everyone has a romantasy book these days. What you did was actually really cool. You combined the genre of fantasy with the genre of regency romance. How did you know that you wanted to do that?
Again, it was kind of thrust upon me. It kind of just took over. Probably halfway through writing The Spring Maiden, I started getting into regency romance. Before that I didn't really read Regency. I of course read Pride and Prejudice. I read Sense and Sensibility.
I am a huge Pride and Prejudice fan. I love love Jane Austen. I love all of all of the stuff that she has written and the movies and all of that stuff.
But during the writing of this book, I was listening to one of Sarah M. Eden's book. I think it was the Lancaster series. Just the way that the society was tiered with those rules and societal systems, it made it really easy for me to insert that into my book.
Because when you're creating these social systems — any kind of rules or royalty tiers — It can get a little convoluted. You have to decide about clothing and manners and so many other things. Regency just made it really easy because it just lists out what the rules are. It originally started out a little bit more medieval. But again those societal structures were a little bit more fluid and it didn't really fit this story line and or even Penny’s story, especially with the way that her relationship with the world isn’t the way that her mom interacts with things. And so it gave me permission to do some things that I wouldn't have been really able to do in a medieval society.
And so putting the regency systems into a fantasy world was easy for me because the systems were already set up. It was just combining them.
So when you set out to be a writer, did you always want to do fantasy? Or did you wanna kind of branch out and do other things?
So, fantasy is where I'm probably going to write the most. So when I first started out writing, I tried with dystopia and that didn’t work. Apparently I don’t know how to follow rules. So, I decided I’m going to write fantasy so I don’t have to follow rules! That was part of it.
The other part was on the second book that I worked on — that will never ever see the light of day — was just a romance. It was just a historical romance and I quickly realized that I did not like that. I did not like real life things. I liked fantasy. I liked magic systems. I want to be on the tip of my seat, waiting for things to happen. In fantasy, you can have things explode. It doesn’t put me in a box like other genres would. So, I will primarily write fantasy. But it also very early in my career so you never know what might happen.
it says in your bio that you're married and that you also have children. You do all of these things. How do you find time to write? And what are your tips for making that writing time work?
I got advice early on that I had to treat this like a career from the getgo. This was never going to be a hobby for me. And I had to treat it as if it was going to to be a career, a lifelong career.
So when I started out, I sat down with my husband and I said, “Okay, if I'm going to do this, I need to separate time.” I am definitely a person that has to have everything in their boxes, and I pull one box out to deal with stuff. I have to put that box back and pull out another box. I can't switch.
We sat down together, and we decided that I would have a writing schedule right now. It is 8 to 11 am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That is my writing schedule. That is my dedicated time to write.
And with that I think once that decision is made, that I'm able to give myself permission to writ. As a writer, as a human, as a monm, as a wife, you wear different hats. Sometimes you have to be okay not putting a hat on for a minute because you're wearing a different hat.
And so the the schedule gave me permission to keep wearing the author hat when you know I had kids crying, or I had Church responsibilities or that people wanted to meet on Wednesdays or Fridays, or whatever it was. I could then say no. This is my dedicated time to do this thing, even when it wasn't a job. And I've done that for almost five years now.
It's worked best for me. There's definitely been times where we have to adjust the schedule a little bit. But yeah, sitting down and having the time helps you press forward in it and prioritize everything else.
The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield was a book that really helped me figure that out. He talks about how how people would ask him when his muse hit or how he accessed his muse. He says that when the Muse hits, he writes and the Muse hits every day at 7 Am from to about 12 Pm. He said that because he had dedicated that time to the craft.
So when you get into a rhythm or a schedule, it actually does help you. And I've found that when I do have times in my life that I maybe didn't write for 2 weeks because I was on vacation or other family things, it's harder to sit down and get into the writing, but when you're doing it consistently you'll find that it's a lot easier to sit down and instantly get into it.
So would you classify yourself as a pantser or a plotter? Or somewhere in between?
I am a heavy plotter. I'm a heavier plotter I think. But you have to leave yourself room to be flexible, especially as the story progresses and you think that you need it to go one way but you quickly realize that it needs to go another way.
Stephen King also always says that good writers are good readers. Do you read for the purpose of getting ideas, or do you just read for reading’s sake? Or do you read to write?
I'm a very voracious reader. I always have been. I'm a huge Twilight fan. When Breaking Dawn came out, and that book was huge. It had hundreds of pages. I was a teenager and my mom brought it home for me, and I read it in a single night. I have always been like that. My mom hated it because she's like “Those books are $35 books, and you read them in one night and then I have to buy another one.”
I've always liked reading, and it's just kind of gotten deeper for me as I've started writing cause. Now I recognize that technique or even reading craft books. It's like I'm learning something while reading!
I think that that being a reader is important if you want to be a writer especially because when you read things, echniques and things almost become an instinctual for you. And so when you're writing your own books, those instincts will come out into your own writing which has helped me expedite my writing even though I've only been writing for a few years. I'm not like a lot of these authors that have been working on the same manuscript for ten years. I did work on Spring Maiden for about a year and a half, and then I was done.
And so having that foundation of reading and understanding how story works, even if it was just instinctual rather than technical in my head. Now, it's more technical. But having that instinct has really really improved my own writing. Then when the technical stuff comes in, you can understand that instinct which I think is super important.
You've mentioned that you're a voracious reader, and that is a title that I've often applied to myself as well. Would you say you're also a voracious writer?
Oh yeah.
I thought so because you mentioned that you you finish the Spring Maiden, and like what you said a year and a half. Some people it takes years to to to get their book right, but that you got it done that fast is just awesome.
Yes, I have been very lucky that my publisher has put me on the schedule like that because most often authors don't get to pick how quickly their books come out. Most often it's the publisher. They have to put it into their publishing schedule right? And most often. It's a year or two out. I have a friend right now who signed her publishing deal before I did, and her book doesn't come out until this summer.
I got really lucky with my publisher in that I am a quick writer. And so my publishers able to count that my drafts will be in on time. So that publishing schedule can be a little bit faster. Yeah. I also have have a really really good relationship with my publisher and got really lucky with that. So that's been a big chunk of it. But part of that is that I write like a maniac.
That's awesome. T It's a skill that I think everybody wishes they could have. Now when did The Spring Maiden come out again?
The Spring Maiden came out October 3, 2023. Because it’s 2024 now not that I’ll ever be able to keep that straight in my head. The Shadow Lord is out now and The Unseen King — which is book 3 — comes out in August.
NOTE: The fourth book, The Unwanted Queen, has since been given a release date of Janury 14, 2025. But it was not announced at the time of this interview.
It’s awesome because I am a binge reader. When a whole series isn't out yet, I often wait to read later, and so I like that my books are pumping out at a pace that that whole series will be out by the beginning of next year. So it's really nice for all of us binge readers that we can just have it out and be done.
My next question for you is about Authors in the Dungeon. I found about this from author Aaron Hall, and that is how I got exposed to you was that event. So I looked up your book and it was one of my last books I read last year. I read it in like two days and it was fantastic.
So how did Authors in the Dungeon come about?
So Authors in the Dungeon is what I like to call the Anderson brainchild. So, every year I try to go to the Storymakers Writers Conference. I’ve been going since after first writing The Spring Maiden. I love it. It’s fun. The community is really great and I have learned a lot of things. Last year, I took a class from Charlie N. Holmberg called “Nailing your Book Signing.” I had been to this Conference right after I signed my contract so with my book coming out in October, I needed to know what to do for book signings. So I took that class.
She talked about getting other authors in a book signing with you as a new author because it will draw a bigger crowd and you can cross your audience with those authors. And then another class I took from Brandon Sanderson was a marketing class. He talked about how you need to establish a brand and find your people and then dig deep into that.
So I took all these classes and after this conference I went to Eric, who's my husband and who’s also a professional dungeon master [in Dungeons and Dragons] and he works at “We Geek Together.” We’ll do game sessions with people who come in. So we have a really good relationship with that store. We're really good friends with the owner and the family that owns it.
I said to him, “What if we got together a a couple of my author friends like I had and that I had really good relationships with a bunch of the authors over here in Utah and Jeff [Wheeler]. Jeff's not too far away. What if we just got like 3 or 4 other authors? And we we did like a tiny panel signing at ‘We Geek Together’?”
Eric said, “Let me think about it.” A couple of days later, he comes to me with an even better idea. He says, “Ok. We’re not going to do a tiny author signing. We're gonna do a giant event. And we're gonna do all of these crazy things together.” And so together we came up with this plan, and we named it ‘Authors in the Dungeon.’ After that, it kind of just exploded. We got “Operation: Literacy” involved.
I’m good friends with the executive director over there and we got a couple of other people involved that we know. We formed a huge committee. We've got Ryan Boucher, who is the 2025 committee chair for LTUE involved. We just had all these connections and we brought them all together, and Authors in the Dungeon was born.
What are you reading right now?
Right now I am doing a reread. I am wholly addicted to K.M. Shea’s writing of characters. If Kate Stradling is my idol of writing technique, then K.M. Shea is my idol in writing character. Her Magiford “serieses.” She has multiple in this one world and it’s an urban fantasy series.
Her last book in the newest trilogy comes out soon and I am loving it. That’ll last until the end of the day and then it’ll be time to find something else.
My final question for you is . . . What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Just sit down and write. Don’t worry about technique. Don’t worry about craft. Don’t worry about all of the stuff that comes with being an author because you will learn it.
The biggest piece of advice I have is just getting the first draft written. I can't tell you how many authors I know that sit and write their first draft for years. While it can get you anywhere, it's not going to get you anywhere right now and so getting your butt in the chair and getting it written is the number one largest thing you can do.
