Author Interview: All We Have Left by Emily Paxman
Episode 246
Release Date: October 14, 2026
Your hosts welcome back Emily Paxman to talk about her new post-apocalyptic romcom All We Have Left. They talk about cozy dystopias, character motivations, trauma, and saving the world with gardening.
More from Emily:
Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:
- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Episode Transcript*
*this transcript is generated by Descript, please excuse the mess.
Lilly 0:04
Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily
Sara 0:10
And I'm Sarah, and I am so delighted to welcome Emily Paxman back onto the podcast to talk about her latest novel, "All We Have Left."
Emily 0:18
Hi, thank you. I'm so excited to be here again
Sara 0:22
Welcome
Lilly 0:23
We are so excited to talk about your book, but first we have our quick three introduction questions, starting with what's something great that happened recently?
Emily 0:32
Ooh, what's something great that happened recently? I reconnected with a friend who I hadn't seen in a few years, and that was just a wonderful, lovely thing. So that's my, that's my great thing
Sara 0:46
Ruff is a good thing
Emily 0:48
Mm-hmm.
Lilly 0:49
That's always something, like the longer it's been, the harder it is to reach out, but no one's ever mad. It's always like, "Amazing, great to hear from you."
Emily 0:58
Yep
Lilly 1:01
I rescued my houseplants today. We send them on vacation into the backyard over summer because they are happier there when the weather is nice, and I took way too long to bring them back indoors. Fall started earlier than I expected.
Sara 1:19
I hope they didn't suffer too much
Lilly 1:21
They definitely look sad, but they're not dead.
Emily 1:26
I feel like fall I, I wanna say one of you is in the Seattle region, right? And I feel like fall went from totally not there in early September to just suddenly there, like a week ago. I, for those playing along at home, I'm from Western Canada. I live basically, like, right above Seattle on Vancouver Island, and so we get very similar weather. So I know what you mean. It s- it was just suddenly here.
Lilly 1:51
Mm-hmm. down here, I feel like it was September 1st. It knew that it was September and not August anymore, and it was like, bam, storm clouds, wind. was lovely and atmospheric and not what my pothos wanted.
Emily 2:07
Yes.
Sara 2:08
some of that weather my way, please.
Lilly 2:10
yes, we'll try.
Emily 2:11
I don't quite know what the weather was like here right at the beginning of September because I was at WorldCon, which went right to the very edge of August in California, and so I had not made it back to Canada yet. It was still a few days before I got all the way up into Canada. It was definitely cooler, but I didn't get any storm weather or anything like that, so maybe it did something that I just was unaware of. So
Lilly 2:36
Sarah, what's your good thing?
Sara 2:37
My good thing is that I got my COVID and flu shot yesterday.
Lilly 2:40
Ah, congrats
Sara 2:42
And it has not knocked me out, and I'm not actually that sore
Lilly 2:46
Did you do same arm or different arms?
Sara 2:48
Same arm
Lilly 2:49
Yeah, I do that too. Then at least you have one arm that you can still use.
Sara 2:55
But like my arm, my arm today is mostly fine, so it's a success all around
Lilly 3:00
So what is everyone drinking this evening? I could start because I went extremely on theme and am drinking homemade wine that I thought our, the characters in our book would respect and appreciate.
Emily 3:14
They would. They would
Sara 3:16
I am also somewhat on theme. I have a mix of homemade limoncello and homemade... It's labeled in my refrigerator as mystery cranberry fermented question mark because I don't know when I made it. I don't know what was in it besides cranberries and it was fizzing. So mystery cranberry fermented question mark.
Emily 3:41
I love it. Love it. I return as your most boring drink guest yet again. And I'm very at least on brand. I'm drinking water.
Lilly 3:49
But that's healthy. That's the good for you choice, the self-care choice.
Emily 3:53
it's a mixture of things. I like why it's always water whenever I'm on here. I'm, I'm allergic to alcohol. I react really strongly to caffeine, so I tend to be pretty careful about what I put it in. I don't particularly like carbonation. It just like starts eliminating literally everything. So eventually I'm like, "Eh, I guess I'll have water." But you know, it's very healthy. And you could say it's on theme. Water is still accessible for them.
Lilly 4:19
Yes. A- actually, the most important thing, right? the characters in your book that we're going to talk about, but I'm jumping ahead a little bit, there is that survival element. More, I would say, it plays a stronger role in the beginning, but access to water is something we should never take for granted.
Emily 4:37
Yeah, I, I think in the very first chapter you know, one of the things that Kayla describes is her mother meeting a group of other survivors essentially at a riverbed that is considered relatively safe for harvesting water. And so y- water sources being a place where there's that extra bit of danger that you might meet someone, because everyone has to go there eventually
Lilly 5:01
Ja.
Emily 5:01
is, is something that does come up in the book. So, you know.
Lilly 5:06
Mhm.
Emily 5:06
really, when you think about it, a very daring and exciting drink.
Lilly 5:09
Yes. And later on, rain barrels which I h- have had a rain barrel. My mother-in-law got me one a couple of years ago, and I still haven't set it up, and I feel so bad.
Emily 5:22
Yeah. Well, 'cause water catchment in this region is huge because we have a fair amount of rain, but we're also a lot of really steep hills and everything, and so it's pretty easy for all of that water to just drain into the ocean. So, you know, you wanna try to catch it and collect it before it just ends up in the ocean
Lilly 5:42
Yes. It was so much fun. So this book takes place in Vancouver region-ish, right? I don't wanna s- say t- anything too specific, but recognizing the landscape and the weather patterns and everything was very, very fun.
Emily 6:00
in an early draft of the novel, I had a reference to there being an atmospheric river coming through, and my agent was like, "What is that?" I explained it. She was like, "I think you should come up with something more people know." I was like, "Well, but the people here will know what an atmospheric river
Lilly 6:18
Yeah.
Sara 6:19
I, I was gonna say there that's, that's not a phrase that people know
Lilly 6:23
This is a very West Coast podcast, and this is a very
Emily 6:26
is a very West Coast episode. It's the super West Coast edition of a very West Coast podcast.
Lilly 6:34
Okay, but one more question before we can truly dive into your book is, has anyone read anything extracurricular lately? I read your book, which is curricular and so does not count.
Sara 6:47
I've read an awful lot of fan fiction and not an awful lot of words published on a page
Lilly 6:54
That still counts.
Emily 6:56
The last thing that I finished was A Drop of Corruption, which is the second of the Ana and Din mysteries. And I enjoyed it a fair bit, and I'm currently on the wait list for the third and most recent one. So, yeah, so that was my extracurricular reading
Lilly 7:14
Nice Okay. So I would love to just start. We, we teased a little bit with some mentions of survival, but genre, one of the, the most discussed concepts. There's a lot going on with what genres are and are not, but
Emily 7:31
Yes
Lilly 7:32
would you tell our listeners what genres this book is?
Emily 7:36
Yes. So this book I like to describe as a cozy post-apocalyptic rom-com. And it, it tends to be that when I say that to people, they're like, "Those are a lot of words you don't usually hear together." And to me it made a lot of sense which is why I wrote the book. But it is something that often needs, I think, a little bit of an explanation for people 'cause they're like, "Cozy apocalypse?" And I'm like, "Yeah." It's like you're saving the world after it ends, but you're doing it by gardening, not by shooting zombies. Like, that's basically kind of what it is about. It's about rebuilding community and rebuilding systems to make resilient communities and that kind of thing.
Lilly 8:17
Ooh, I have so many thoughts about cozy and how cozy is applied. I s- I get it. I see that. 'Cause there is that, like, homesteading cottagecore thing. I think the book stressed me out too much for me to be able to just say, "Yeah, it's cozy."
Emily 8:36
interesting 'cause I've had a lot of conversations about the cozy moniker and everything, and I was on a panel recently about cozy fiction at WorldCon. And I'm going to be giving another presentation on cozy fiction in the new year with a with a writer's group and everything who saw that and were, like, excited about it, so that was cool. And one of the things that I ended up talking a fair amount about there is you know, all of the panelists, we were talking about the ways in which the moniker cozy is very vague, and it's very hard to really determine exactly what belongs within the area and what doesn't. And as we were discussing, like, okay, well, what are the deal breakers and everything? The things that we came up with were things like death of a beloved character or, like, on-screen sexual assault, things like that, were kind of things that we were like, "Those are deal breakers. There's not really a way of making those cozy." But most of us had pretty different ideas about what really made something cozy. For me, something is cozy when it provides a really strong sense of catharsis, when there is a really strong sense of becoming safe over the course of the story. Like, going from a place where things maybe felt chaotic and stressful, and landing somewhere that feels safe. To me, that's incredibly comforting and cozy. For some readers, and I can completely understand this, there is a certain level of emotional pitch that they don't want their books hitting because to them that's a little stressful, you know? They, they don't want that emotion at any point within a book. And so you will see a type of cozy stories that tend towards being lower stakes. They tend to sort of have conflicts between characters that resolve a little bit more quickly and everything, and we're never really at a high emotional pitch at any point because that's what makes the book cozy for certain people. And I, I will be perfectly frank, and like my book is not that. I definitely was like, "What I want is to write a story that is about people having ordinary problems again, despite the apocalypse." But ordinary problems can really suck. Like, I think a lot of, a lot of what I love about the book is that it is kind of about when you finally have the time to feel all of the feelings about your own, you know, kind of disappointing life and everything, and you have to work through what you actually want and what you actually wanna do with your life and everything else. And for me, again, that is a very cozy narrative, especially because like you said, there are those cottagecore vibes. There are these vibes of healing with the land and everything else, and being in tune with nature and the natural flow of the land as a way of kind of finding refuge in a time of seeming chaos. But I do understand why that there are people who don't actually want particularly high-stakes action in a cozy. And, and when I say high stakes, I, I'll qualify it that my work is not high stakes in a like world-ending sense. The world's already ended. Like, the worst thing happened already. This is about what happens after that. It's high emotional stakes. It's, it, you know, the, the, biggest question of the book is just simply will this woman ever be happy again? But I think that's a really important question, you know? I think that that can be emotionally a really high-stakes thing to ask of ourselves is, "Can I be happy after a bad thing has happened?"
Lilly 11:54
And not just a bad thing like Kayla's gone through
Sara 11:58
She has seen some shit.
Emily 12:00
Mm-hmm. Yeah. When, when I started the book, you know, we often kinda discover what our themes are as we write it, and there was a point about halfway through when I was drafting it where I went, "Oh, this book is about trauma." This, this book is about processing and recovering from trauma, and that ended up being the central thing that I was really writing about as I was writing about what I felt I had observed and, you know, where you'll have somebody who is remarkable in a crisis, absolutely remarkable at surviving a crisis, and then it's like the moment that that crisis is taken away, that is when they fall apart because they finally can. and it's, the way that a lot of people kind of process trauma and everything else. And so that is very much what the book is about, is it's, it's about processing trauma and being safe for the first time in your life and safe enough to do that
Sara 12:58
Going back to the question of genre briefly your first novel "Death on the Caldera," also kind of mixes genres in that it is a mystery, but it's got a fantasy setting, just like, All We Have Left" is a rom-com, but it is set in this post-apocalyptic scenario. Are there any other genres that you would want to mix up?
Emily 13:21
Yeah. I, I certainly have been looking at doing something that leans a little bit more historical fiction in the future, and you know, with me it's probably going to end up being historical fantasy, you know, or something like that. But that is technically another genre. I, I may lean more horror at some point. Like, I can kind of see myself sort of wandering in those directions. I think that in general, most of the ways that I tend to mix genre is I like to mix genre in the sense of taking something that is highly speculative, like, you know, kind of the major speculative genres are science fiction, fantasy, and then horror can or can't be, depending on, you know, a whole bunch of other things. Horror's interesting. It's more a genre of tone than it is a genre of setting or plot. It's a genre of tone. And then mixing that with what I would call a genre of plot. So romance is a genre of plot, mystery is a genre of plot, thriller is a genre of plot, you know. And I, I don't really read enough thriller that I, I doubt I'll ever do a true thriller mashup with these things, but I think that you'll end up seeing in my work over time probably a lot of these different, more plot-based genres kind of squished into some sort of speculative genre, where you're basically getting your world, your aesthetic from the one camp, and you're getting your plot from the other. I always find that that is really fun. I enjoy kind of seeing the ways that these things work together, and to me, most of the time they work together pretty darn well because of the fact that they're really only prescriptive in one camp or the other, you know? Romance is not prescriptive about where you set it, and fantasy is not prescriptive about what plot happens in it. Same with science fiction
Lilly 15:00
You kind of hit on, I wasn't gonna do this, but I can't help myself 'cause you brought it up first.
Emily 15:07
Okay
Lilly 15:08
it, I call it my pillars of genre theory, which is like every book has three genres. There's the, the setting, the plot, and the tone, I think were the, the three pillars that I came up with. And that's where a lot of the arguments about what genre was this piece comes from, 'cause some people are defining it based on the plot, whereas some people are defining it based on the setting, and anyway.
Emily 15:29
Yeah, and I think that really what my addition to that discussion would be is, in terms of, like, if I'm defining what something's overarching genre is, I would actually then turn it around and say, "Really what you need to be using is the audience of, like, who is it then for if you're, if you're mixing these things together?" Because the reality is, is that some of these genres are exclusionary and some of them are not. So I have an absolutely delightful grandmother who has read about a billion mystery novels over the course of her life, and when I was getting published with my debut, which was the fantasy murder mystery, she really wanted to read it, and she'd read murder mystery a million times in her life, and one of the first things she said to me as she was reading it, she's like, "They're saying that a witch maybe did it, but Emily, witches aren't real." I just lost it. It was the sweetest thing in the world. And I was like, "Well, in this world they are, Grandma." And she was like, "Hmm." You know? And, and so the reality is you're more likely to exclude a box of readers by putting something in a fantasy or science fiction world than you are by putting a romance or a mystery subplot in it, because fantasy and science fiction readers generally are not worrying about that particular aspect, but a lot of people who read realistic fiction do. So for me, the thing that tends to be the most exclusionary is actually that setting-based genre a lot of the time. So that, to me, is always what kind of rules that hierarchy and then probably after that it's tone, and then finally, if you haven't hit either of those, you're probably hitting genre based on plot.
Lilly 17:05
Mm-hmm. And then horror, of course, just takes over anything it touches. If there's even a hint of horror, the whole thing becomes horror.
Emily 17:13
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Though it, you know, but it's interesting 'cause I feel like when, when horror really intersects with, like, either fantasy or science fiction, it can be a little vague where it should go. Like, I think about Annihilation. That, to me, is a book that it's like, there's a piece of me that, that does wanna say, "Yeah, the sci-fi is actually really what's determining it." Like, I think that it's sci-fi readers who are reading Annihilation, and horror readers second, not the other way around, you know? So I, I don't know. I'm still inclined to give it to the aesthetic genre first, and then tone genre second, and plot genre third, so.
Sara 17:45
It's interesting you say that though, because I, when I think of, All We Have Left," where the setting is this post-apocalyptic setting, I definitely feel like the rom-com is stronger in terms of genre for this book
Emily 18:00
And, you know, and in fairness to, like, eat my own words I was at a book event recently that one of my local bookstores was hosting. They were doing a romantasy craft night, which was super cool. And I have a really good relationship with this bookstore. They invited me to come in. They were like, "Hey, you write fantasy. You write romance. You haven't written romantasy yet, but you write fantasy and you write romance," you know? "Do you want to come to our event and be, like, a guest author who's just hanging out to chat with people in between while they do the various crafts?" And I was like, "Yes, obviously. This is my demographic. I would love to be with all of these people." And, you know, and I sold a good number of books while I was there. And it was really fascinating 'cause it was dead down the middle. About half of them were like, "Oh, well, I love romantasy, so I want your romance." And the, the other half were like, "Well, I love romantasy, so I want your fantasy." And I was like, "Okay." You know? And romantasy has been interesting that way. Like, I think that it has broken down some barriers, and when I wrote "All We Have Left," I, to a certain degree, was like, I, I want this book to be in conversation almost with what's going on in romantasy right now, where we now actually have a genre that is being predominantly read by a real mix of what were before siloed readers, you know? It used to be the case that you had the romance readers in one corner, and you had the fantasy readers in the other. And now we're at the point where like, romantasy really pulled from both camps. It pulled from the fantasy readers, and it pulled from the romance readers. And you have romance readers that don't really move into the rest of fantasy, and you have fantasy readers that don't really move into the rest of romance, you know? And, and it has been, I think, kind of upending the conversation, and "All We Have Left" I see as basically doing a similar sort of thing within, like, post-apocalyptic fiction or science fiction, you know? It is very, very strongly planting its feet in both camps. Like, it is undeniably a romance, but it also undeniably takes place in a bit of a strange speculative world, so, mm-hmm.
Lilly 20:03
The only problem is that post-apocalmancy does not roll off the tongue the same.
Sara 20:09
that, that sounds like necromancy.
Lilly 20:11
It does, right? It
Sara 20:12
you're doing... Yeah, you're doing things with dead bodies there
Emily 20:15
a lot of, you know, like I've seen... I was at, I was at a talk recently well, not that recently, actually. It was Emerald City Comicon so it was back in March, and I went to a presentation that was being put on by Penguin Random House kinda hyping up some of their upcoming books, and one of the editors there, he was like, "This is another distomance." And when we all just, like, stared dead-eyed back at him, he was like, "Which I am trying to make that term a thing." Just like, I don't think it's happening. I don't think fetch is gonna happen. But, like, maybe it will. Maybe we'll hit the point where distomance is a thing. But, but it has been interesting because dystopic romance has taken off y- you know, like at least a little bit. Like, there's kind of a nice niche for it, and I've had a bit of a tortured relationship with whether or not my book... Like, I have made no attempts to promote my book there because I think that my book could be disappointing for people who are going in really expecting a dystopia. And there was one review that I really kinda loved 'cause it was just accurate. Like, it wasn't a happy one, but I loved it. It w- you know, on Goodreads, that was, like, somebody being like, Why is this dystopia just a normal Canadian town?" I
Lilly 21:23
Well, like, it- you're- we're in a square and rectangle issue, right? Like, mo- dystopians are post-apocalyptic, but not all post-apocalyptic settings are dystopian, I hope.
Emily 21:38
And yet at the same time, there's also been a bucket of readers who have read the book 'cause they've heard it's dystopian romance, and they've loved it. They've been like, "This is such a unique take on dystopia." And I'm like, "Yes, it's Canada."
Lilly 21:50
Almost like it's not a dystopia at all.
Emily 21:52
But, but at the same time, I get where they're coming from because it's still a community that is struggling against issues that are presented to it by a terrible setting, you know? And so I can understand why it still scratches an itch for them in a certain sense, and they don't mind that it's a different version of that. So like, I don't know. Like I said, I don't tend to use the term a lot when I'm promoting my own work because I, I don't want to confuse people and I, I don't want people to come in and be like, "This isn't what I wanted." but at the same time I'm like, maybe I should be saying it more 'cause there are people who, like about 50% of them do really like it. So I don't know. It's a hard choice to make, you know? Well, that's the thing about, I think, working in these places that are kinda halfway between on genres, you know?
Lilly 22:36
That's the fun of it, yeah
Sara 22:38
speaking of that balance, can you talk a little bit about like straddling that line in the novel where you do have this, this post-apocalyptic setting but it also is rom-com and even though, again, I've said that I think it's, the genre of the book overall for me personally is rom-com, you do manage to, balance them pretty well.
Emily 23:00
Yeah, I think, I think in general, part of why it worked for me is that I wanted... I have had this setting in my head for a very, very, very long time. This is something that I'd kind of been noodling on for quite a while, was the idea of writing a story that was kind of a hopeful take on the apocalypse. And as I was noodling along on that for a very long time, when I suddenly realized that I wanted to write a romance in that world, I was so excited because love is kind of inherently hopeful. It's very easy to write a story that is about hope and healing that has love as its center point. And so I think for me it was finding those places where you could draw the thematic parallels between what I was trying to do on a world-building level with what I was trying to do on a plot and story level, and the fact that those actually married each other quite well, you know, that trying to write something that is sort of a hopeful take on climate or disaster fiction, you know, that sort of thing married itself really well to also writing romance, because romance is one of the most hopeful genres out there
Lilly 24:10
Can you tell our listeners just a little bit about the apocalypse that this is taking place after?
Emily 24:17
Yeah, for sure. So the point at which the apocalypse begins in the novel is 32 years before the book itself happens, and the event that kickstarts it is a mega quake that happens off of the coast of Seattle and Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the US. Anybody who is from this region, like, it's just an existential threat that we live with all the time, is knowing that the big one can and will probably hit within the next 100 or so years. Like,
Sara 24:52
It felt like a very West Coast apocalypse.
Lilly 24:54
I was gonna say, that definitely reaches down to California as well.
Emily 24:59
It does. It
Lilly 24:59
The Big One is just a nomenclature, yeah
Sara 25:03
I was like, "I, I know what's happening to me
Lilly 25:05
Yeah.
Emily 25:06
It just, it just is this thing that's in the back of our brains all the time. Like, everyone I think up here at some point has thought about, like, "What would I do after the big one?" You know, "How, how would I handle it?" And then going from there, now that is obviously a regional apocalypse, whereas the book is taking place in a world that is post-apocalyptic. So the explanation for that is that essentially after this major apocalypse hits, there is a opening for a whole bunch of wars and invasions to s- happen because of the fact that, like, Seattle being decimated really, really hurts the US militarily, which it would. Like, a, an insane amount of the US's naval resources are in the Seattle area, as well as a lot of their Air Force capabilities and manufacturing and things like that. Like, Seattle is a pretty key city in terms of certain types of defense and everything. That kick-starts World War, you know, III. I don't know. We might end up needing to add more numbers in between depending on how h- history of recent goes. But,
Lilly 26:10
seven.
Emily 26:11
you know, that that kickstarts a big war. Things kind of spiral from there. Wars have a tendency to spread diseases. You get another COVID-like event, you know. And admittedly, part of, I think, one of the things that I, I talk about in the book is this idea of the world didn't end all at once, but end it did. So it's this idea of there kind of being these cascading catastrophes from climate change, from regional earthquakes and things like that, from war, from disease, just gradually leading to full-scale societal collapse due to ruining things like, you know, distribution networks and everything else until gradually places become more isolated and then spiral even more because they now don't have the... You know, we live very interconnected lives, and a lot of it is very, very delicate. So that's kind of the general setup. The book doesn't dwell on how the apocalypse happened for very long. It is much more interested in kind of like what comes next. But certainly the thing that is, like, really resonating in the memories of the characters in the book is the quake, because for them, that's when everything kind of instantly changed
Sara 27:17
What kind of research did you end up doing for like the setting and, and all of this post-apocalyptic world?
Emily 27:25
yeah. So, one of the reasons why the setting interested me, I already kind of had some niche interests that sort of overlapped with this. I, I do a lot of gardening. I do a lot of reading on sustainable agriculture and things like that. I also my undergrad is in anthropology, which is one of those things that's so general but can be really useful in a lot of strange places because it's very, very much the study of how interconnected all of our cultures are these days if you're doing stuff that's kind of more looking forward with a more modern lens. So there were certain things that I kind of already had backburnered from there, but the thing that really kickstarted the version of the story that eventually took shape was a midnight research binge I did on insulin And I was really, really curious because I knew enough about how insulin had been made when it was first discovered to be like, "How hard would it be? How hard would it be to get back this, like, life-saving essential miracle drug if everything was taken away? Like, what, what would, what would we need to do in order to get that back?" And I just, I just was, like, going down every single resource I could find until I finally found some historical sources that were on how insulin was actually purified when it was initially discovered. And essentially, the really, really early process before we had better ways of doing things and before we had any form of synthetic insulin boiled down to boiling pancreases, to boiling you know, pig or cattle pancreases, and then effectively, like, straining them through a cheesecloth. And I was like, "Oh, we would have those things." You know, like, that is still possible even in the apocalypse if you just have enough cows or enough pigs. At which point I then, like, it was, like, 1:30 AM, and I sent, like, the most sleep-deprived text to my type one diabetic relative, and I was like, "You're gonna survive the apocalypse. I know how now." And they were like, "That's the nicest news I've heard in a while. Thanks, Em." and then from there, I was-- I, I started working on the actual book, which is a story that is about a woman who is trying to find medical care for her very sick sister. Tiny spoiler, but I, I don't think it's that big of a spoiler. It's within the first few chapters. they go to the one place left on earth that they've heard still has a working hospital, and that is Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. And so they go there, and they're able... The the doctor there is able to diagnose this younger sister with type one diabetes, and they can treat her because they have rediscovered insulin. You know, they've been able to do that. However, insulin is not shelf-stable. It's not something that cures a disease. It's something that makes it manageable and makes it a chronic condition as opposed to something that is potentially deadly. And so these two young women suddenly have to live in this place whether they want to or not. Like, it's just the only option, and they are completely disconnected from what it is like to live among normal people. And the book kinda takes off from how does this older sister, who really is just there for her younger sister, how does she adjust to having to give up so many of the freedoms and strategies that she used to kinda stay alive in the wilds in order to reintegrate into a society that is somewhat functional?
Sara 30:52
As a, as an American reading this book, I was definitely taking diligent notes on how to marry a Canadian
Emily 30:58
Right? Yeah. So the other thing that I was excited about with this book is this book is built around a marriage of convenience plot, because in order to basically get healthcare coverage, the older sister marries who, at the time to her, she's like, is a random man that already has citizenship on the island.
Lilly 31:18
But also cute.
Emily 31:19
But how random is he? and it's a marriage of convenience story where he wants the appearance of looking like a settled family man for a political campaign that he is in the middle of, and she wants her sister to have a pancreas. You know? And they, and they are getting what they want out of it in that sense. and part of the other thing that I think, you know, again, you were talking about how do you marry the world-building of science fiction with a romance storyline so that they actually integrate properly. To me, this was actually the ideal way of writing a marriage of convenience story. I love a marriage of convenience. I really, really do. It's one of my favorite tropes. I will, like, go feral for it, and if it shows up in a book, I'm just, I'm always so excited, because I feel like a lot of romance novels, because they're so focused on the initial flush of love, they don't actually end up being about a relationship that has to survive. Whereas with a marriage of convenience, you jump straight into the relationship before anybody feels anything, and so you oddly enough actually get stories that are, like, about marriage, that are about making a relationship work, and I find that really interesting and compelling. That being said, I don't think it's a super easy trope to do contemporary for, and I was just not interested in writing a historical, and I wasn't really interested in writing it in a fantasy setting that felt like a historical, where it's like, let's just import all of the values from the past into this fantasy setting. Just none of that was speaking to me. And then it hit me that if there was one place that needing to, like, marriage of convenience someone in order to get stability made sense, it was the apocalypse. And so I was like, "Oh, my gosh," because to me it was like solving these issues, which was that I kind of wanted to write more modern-feeling characters, but I wanted them to have to do a marriage of convenience. And I was like, in the apocalypse it makes sense again. Cause you have to figure out how to, like, pool resources
Lilly 33:17
Okay. I had a called shot, which was that in your afterwords you refer to this as an indulgent story. I assumed it was the fake dating aspect, which is slightly different from marriage of convenience because it's not just that they got married for convenience, it's that they have to convince other people that they're actually in love
Emily 33:38
Yeah, yeah. And I think any good... Well, I mean, I guess no. I've, I've, I've seen some good marriage of convenience stories where they're able to be like to everyone in other lives, they're like, "No, we really don't love each other. Oh," you know? Like, and, and they do that sort of thing. I did really dramatic facial expressions for those playing along at home. And, and you're right that there's only kind of a few, there's, like, one type of marriage of convenience story is the one where they have to keep up the charade, and then another type of marriage of convenience story is the one where they're just pining quietly 'cause they're all too damaged to do anything. And I definitely went more strongly for the fake dating variety.
Lilly 34:18
Mm-hmm. It's all about that tension
Emily 34:22
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I just think it's fun. I also just like it because I think in general the thing that makes marriage of convenience work as a trope is you do want something that kind of forces proximity and forces people to have to really be together and have to overcome their initial hesitance romantically. But yeah, I just, I think forced proximity is really easy in a we have to convince them the marriage is real story. And I've seen the occasional marriage of convenience story that, like, struggles to get the fa- forced proximity going when they don't have something like that, and then, and then like why are we here? Like, if not to watch them struggle next to each other, why are we here? Anyway, so
Lilly 35:04
Okay, we definitely have a follow-up comment on that, but I know it is in the spoiler section. So before we move over onto there, Sarah, who should read this book?
Sara 35:15
Yeah. So you should read this book A, if you like marriage of convenience and fake dating as Emily has described at length. But also romance readers who want a grittier setting or post-apocalyptic readers who want a more uplifting story, I think this would be an excellent book for you
Lilly 35:35
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Sara 35:39
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Lilly 35:46
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Sara 35:54
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Lilly 36:02
The remainder of this episode contains spoilers. I actually wasn't sure if, if this question needed to be in the spoiler section or not, but I would love to hear your approach on developing the different factions that we meet in your world
Emily 36:22
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So in terms of developing some of the different factions that we meet in this world Salt Spring Island basically is a stand-in for, like, good faith efforts to try to preserve civilization that are falling short in certain ways. You know, I think one of the things that I really wanted to do with this book is Salt Spring is neither a dystopia nor a utopia. It's just kind of a place. It's, it's a place that's trying and is failing at certain things, and has administrative gaps in its legislation in certain places that need to be fixed. And so it's, it, like, through negligence or just, you know, everything else, and there's people who are trying to help everyone, and then there's people who are really isolationist there, kind of the way that we experience with immigration today and everything, too. So in a lot of ways, Salt Spring is probably the thing that feels the most just kind of like normal Canadian politics today. The other major factions that you see, you see TNS which stands for True North Strong. And I have a cousin who's from Alberta who wrote to me as he was reading it, and he was like, "You're just nailing it a little bit too much, writing, like, a raw, raw guns and oil, you know kind of post-apocalyptic cult that is based in Calgary that's called True North Strong." And he was like, "This is too familiar." anyway, we had a, like, good laugh about that. but 'cause you, 'cause you see, you know, I think in similar ways that you've seen in America, where there are people who kind of try to appropriate aspects of American iconography to be really exclusionary or to be kind of a symbol of guns and violence and that sort of thing. There's, there's been a certain amount of that within Canada as well. True North Strong, that's, you know, coming from our national anthem "our true north strong and free." So, you know, that's, that's where that's pulling from. And then the other major group that you see is a cult that is formed that is kinda like vaguely, vaguely hippie, vaguely counterculture, technophobic, grabbing from aspects of basically every religion you could picture, including, like, Christianity and everything. And that really is, again, something that I do feel like exists here in western Canada as well. Like, speaking as somebody who is from, you know, Vancouver Island and everything, you, you do see this kind of overlap between what a lot of people would assume would be very, like, hippie culture, as well as an overlap with kind of more sort of fundamentalist Christian ideals and things like that.
Lilly 38:59
We call it down here the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.
Emily 39:03
is exactly it. It's the crunchy to alt-right pi- pipeline. and so that's basically, you know, kind of what I was sort of trying to portray there is that kind of group. It's, it's pretty, it's pretty around, you know? And it, and it's funny because, like, knowing people who are kind of on various different parts of that spectrum and everything, I just wanna say that I know that my book is an exaggeration of things. Like, I'm not trying to say anything about, like, individual people or anything like that. Like, I think that in general, the other thing that I'm trying to explore with the book is the idea that in times of really intense stress, people go wherever they feel safe, and then things go badly after they feel kinda stuck there because they're so scared of what might be going on outside of their borders. And so a lot of the people who are in this are, are victims of just, like, one or two powerful people kind of thing. And so I, I hope that it's a position that's kind of empathetic to why some of these ideologies take seed, even though we know that ultimately they can be very, very destructive, And how do you deal with trying to kind of break out of them eventually, and how do you deal with, like, protecting people when you realize that somewhere is not safe kind of thing?
Lilly 40:13
Well, there, there is that aspect too. We as readers have the luxury of knowing what is true.
Emily 40:21
it's doing Yeah
Lilly 40:22
if, even from a first perspe- person perspective novel, right? Like, we can still say like, "I know it," to some extent some things are true. The people in the hippie cult were not wrong about the outside world being dangerous.
Emily 40:38
Yeah, they weren't at that particular time. Like, they really
Lilly 40:41
Yeah. Yeah. And so th- there is that, that aspect of like, yeah, this sucks, but it, it's not... Th- they aren't all lies. Yeah
Emily 40:51
Yeah. No, and I think in general you know, and I, and I hope, I hope that my book doesn't come across as, like, inherently judgmental or something like that. You know, I think one thing we talked a lot about with my previous novel is I, I really hope to provide more nuanced looks at why things happen and why people behave certain ways and why they make certain choices. But I do also think, you know, and I think that the book does deal with this, I do also think that there are people who are in power who will exploit a bad situation, and I think that we also need to be honest about that. And so you do see some of that happening in what's going on. So you know, you gotta, you gotta balance it.
Sara 41:26
Well, and, and I think, like, with both TNS and the Ana- Anatolia, the Grand, Astrologues... Anastol, yes, I knew I was missing an S. Because we see people from inside the community who have struggled with the community, I mean, there's, there's Sid, who is ex-TNS, there's Kayla who spent some traumatic time with the Grand Astrologues cult. You definitely, as a reader, you definitely get a nuanced view of the people who are, who are within those communities. And sure, we know the Grand Astrologue is an asshole but you don't, you don't necessarily think that about everyone who follows him.
Emily 42:03
Yeah, yeah. Side note I, I only name characters, even if they are terrible, after people I like, 'cause I don't like thinking about people I don't like. The Grand Astralogue was named after one of the nicest, sweetest men I know
Lilly 42:17
Did you send him a copy of the book like, "You're welcome"?
Emily 42:21
Just do, dear Gord, I'm sorry I think you're great. He has a farm with chickens. We get eggs from him. Anyway
Lilly 42:30
Our main character, Kayla, eventually finally gets her hands on the hunky farm boy. I know, like, farm boy is not quite the right name for him, but it, it, it's his vibe in that moment. Like, it, it's fine. And I just wanted to use the phrase hunky farm boy in the episode.
Emily 42:47
I know, right?
Lilly 42:49
So did you ever envision this story with a, a different level of sexual content, like maybe more of a fade to black or maybe more on the spice level, if you will?
Emily 43:01
know, I thought about doing fade to bla- black. I, I was, I would not have been particularly comfortable or interested in writing something that was higher spice level. Like, that just wasn't me as an author, you know? Genuinely no shade to people who, who read it. Like, absolutely none. But ultimately I was like, I want to write it at the spice level that I like best, which is, like, not super graphic, but still gives you some details so that you can really be there in the moment, you know, kind of thing, sort of more emotionally. And so that was always what I preferred. I, I knew that there would be people in my life that would've preferred if it was fade to black, but I didn't do that, so. but you know, and, and generally when I've talked to kind of the people who I really thought of as, like, that's my audience, for them the spice level was the right level. Like, it, it was, it was a slow burn, but then they got the satisfaction of having one kind of steamier scene that was not, like, overly, overly explicit, and they were happy with that, you know? And so, so mostly I think I went for just what to me felt both comfortable and the most, you know, what I enjoy reading the most. And, and I think in general that, like, if people are deciding what kind of spice level they want to write a romance at, that really should be the question that you ask is, like, what do you like reading? What do you like reading and why? Be honest with yourself. Like, I don't think you can write any kind of romance or spice if you're not honest with yourself about what it is that you actually like to read.
Sara 44:30
I think that is probably very true.
Emily 44:33
Yeah
Sara 44:33
I-- one of the things that I really, really enjoyed about the novel is how obvious it is to the reader that Tom is not the bad guy that, that Kayla has set him up to be to be in her mind. And then seeing that reveal as Kayla works through some of her trauma seeing her come to understand that he's trying to do what's best for well, what he thinks is best for the community. He's not always right about it, but, but he's trying
Emily 45:02
No. No, he's trying to do his best. I love Tom. It's funny you should say. The reader can tell 'cause I've had conversations with people who are like, "Why is Tom so mad at her in the beginning?" And I'm like, "She fired on a border officer who's his friend." And they're like, "Yeah, yeah, but circumstances." And I'm like, "He w- he wasn't there for the circumstances. She fired on a border officer who is his friend." Like, can you imagine a modern border patrol not taking that seriously?
Sara 45:30
Exactly.
Emily 45:32
Cast your mind into Tom's brain for a minute,
Lilly 45:35
And then the consequences are she gets a demerit. That's a very reasonable reaction.
Emily 45:45
Tom, Tom has seen some things. Like, I think in general he's one of those characters that, like, I, you know, I feel like I know him really well. I know a lot of his backstory and everything, and kind of what he's gone through. And he is actually quite compassionate, but, like, he's also really burnt out. Like, I think that you know, if you wanna talk about trauma, Tom's is all unprocessed. He has not left emergency mode for one day of his life since the, since the quake happened when he was about 30 years old. You know? He is just soldiering on and is like, "I never have to be happy again, so long as other people get to be happy." Like... And so he, he doesn't have a lot of warmth. He doesn't have a lot of emotional, like, space to give people that he's trying to help. But he's, he's logical, and he's good at kind of giving what they, what the situation actually requires from, like, an administrative standpoint. But he's so burnt out emotionally that, like, he's, he doesn't have great bedside manner. I think that's really what it boils down to. Like, I think, I think it is a genuine flaw, and Tom's greatest flaw is that he is not, he does not have the ability to actually really show the compassion that he feels. Like,
Lilly 46:55
Who doesn't love Tom? Who-- I need, I need names. I will fight them.
Emily 47:01
Who hurt Tom?
Lilly 47:03
No, who, like which readers? Tell me which readers don't like him. I, I
Emily 47:07
Oh, I don't know that they don't. Like, I mean, my mother, so please don't fight her. I
Lilly 47:10
okay, fine.
Sara 47:13
I mean, and to be fair, I do understand where Kayla's coming from. I just, as a a more, removed reader I also disagree with her vehemently
Lilly 47:22
Yeah. That's, Yeah.
Sara 47:25
One of the other things that I really liked about Tom, not specifically in the relationship that he had with Kayla, but was how he, in the book, is kind of set up as a foil for the the doctor that she meets in the hospital, the, the conservative one who seems, initially seems like he's being helpful, and then it turns out that he's maybe got his own agenda and is a little bit of a jerk.
Emily 47:50
Mm-hmm.
Lilly 47:51
Tiny bit.
Emily 47:52
Yeah, just a little bit. Yeah, it was, you know, it was interesting 'cause that actually arose fairly late in the editorial process, and it was because initially Tom was more of the obstacle for everything along the way, and it just wasn't working. And eventually I was like, "Wait, Tom doesn't need to be the obstacle," because overwhelmingly what I want his actual problem to be is just that, like, Kayla does not understand his point of view. Like, I, I don't, I don't actually want it to be that you call into question anything Tom does. So I was like, "I can give all of the worst things that need to happen to him, you, you know, that need to happen to her, to someone else to do, and Tom can still be the one who has to report them constantly." Like, in a lot of ways, Tom spends a lot of time getting blamed for what the doctor does, 'cause he's the one who's like, "Well, unfortunately I have to look into this now or else I would be considered negligent," you know? but because he's always the bearer of bad news, it's always him that Kayla's getting upset with, you know? yeah, and I think in general, to me it was important to show that you can, you know, like if you're dealing with, say, society again, if you're dealing with civilization and you're dealing with, like, a civil service and everything, you are going to have both people who really help you in those scenarios, and you're going to have people who are, you know, the classic terrible bureaucratic force that makes your life actively worse kind of thing, you know? Like, both are possibilities. And I really didn't want the book to not acknowledge that, you know? Like, at the same time I'm like, she's finally safe again. But, like, not safe in the sense that she's now in a place where nothing bad ever happens. It's safe in the sense that she's not in absolute chaos all the time, you know? And then the other thing that, you know, like, that I, I'd say is kind of one of the other themes of this whole thing, I actually really struggle with paperwork. It's, like, one of my greatest flaws. For those who don't know, behind the scenes I struggled with, like, even figuring out what time we were doing this because it's just so not in my wheelhouse. And, like, there is something to me that's very funny about the fact that, like, ultimately Kayla's, like, greatest villain that she must face on Salt Spring Island is paperwork, 'cause I'm like, "Girl, same." Like, I get it. And she's just like, "Ah, I don't know why they care about this the entire time."
Sara 50:04
I will say that I was as, as a reader, and maybe this is just like my own biases coming in, I was expecting that more of the external conflict that Kayla struggles with, would be resolved like visibly on the page because Kayla is so worried about it. instead we, we see it kind of in an epilogue where, where she's got this... She's, she's dealt with the paperwork. She's, she's survived seeing the, the Grand Astrologe again. And Tom has kind of helped smooth the way for for them to not cut ties with Astolia, but to investigate the, the community and
Emily 50:48
Change the terms of the relationship and everything.
Sara 50:51
change, the terms of the relationship, yeah.
Emily 50:53
Yeah. So one of the things that... A- and you know, and it's interesting 'cause I've, you know, I've, other people were like, "They didn't fight Astolia." And I'm like, "Of course they didn't fight Astolia. Th- this book is thematically about avoiding war." Like, this book is thematically about laying down your weapons effectively. You
Sara 51:11
I, I, to, to be clear, I wasn't expecting them to fight Astolia. I was just when I say expecting, I was really stressed about it. I was stressed that it was going to that Kayla was going to have to have be more of an active participant in resolving that conflict
Emily 51:30
Yeah, and I think that in general, you know, like to me the, the book is about kind of finally being able to have confidence that somebody else is looking out for you. And, and so that was, I think, one of the reasons why I avoided doing that, is that ultimately it is in fact a conflict that she does not have to resolve anymore. It is actually not her job to fix it,
Lilly 51:52
I was gonna say it's not her job. Yeah.
Emily 51:54
it's not. It is not her job. It is... She did, she was a victim of a terrible circumstance, and it's somebody el- you know, and she is there to be a witness to what happened, you know, like and I think in general that is a scary enough thing that we ask of survivors of, of all sorts of terrible situations. But it is not her job to fix it. It's her job to be a witness to what happened. And so, so that was something that to me was actually kind of important to sort of, you know, skirt around and everything. And you know, I, I feel like it's the, you know, it's the decision I intended to make. I can understand why some people maybe wanted something a little bit more active at the end. And I'm not saying that you wanted it, you just were thinking that that was maybe where it was going. But to me it, like that is the correct, if you will, ending. That is the ending that thematically I, I really, really cared about, is that ultimately it is a story about finally having somebody on your side, you know, who will fight the battle that is not your job, you know?
Sara 52:55
Yeah, I was, I was very happy that we didn't see it on the page because I spent a lot of the back half of the book really stressed about it, not gonna lie. I was like, "Oh no, things are gonna go so terribly for Kayla. She doesn't need any more of this shit. I just want her to have her happy ending." And she got her happy ending, so I was very pleased.
Emily 53:17
Yes. Yeah. Well, and you know what? I think that that's maybe getting back to that discussion of is this cozy or is it not? To me, part of what makes it cozy is that, like, some of the consequences are not the job of the of, of the protagonist and everything
Sara 53:32
Yeah. I, I think because I spent so much of the back half of the book stressed about that, I wouldn't necessarily call the story itself cozy.
Emily 53:42
Mm-hmm.
Sara 53:42
I, I can be convinced by the argument that it is
Emily 53:45
Yeah. No, it, it is something that is a really contentious, in a weird way point, I'd say, within the overall community because, like, in a, in a similar way, like, I think of one of my favorite, and you see it labeled as cozy books, is Nettle Bone, and I spent so much of Nettle Bone stressed out. But it did land somewhere very cozy for me in the end, and I was like, "Yeah, okay, that was earned. Yeah, it should be called cozy." so
Lilly 54:11
But if you have to earn it, is it
Emily 54:13
Yeah, I know, right? You have to learn your comfort. Anyway and not every- and again, not everyone agrees, and I understand that. I still feel like I want the space for my definition to exist. I think that it has val- it has value, you know? But I also, you know, I don't want to poo-poo people who feel differently, you know?
Sara 54:35
Well, I, I-- and I think that for me, specifically with "All We Have Left," is I would read it as much cozier from the beginning on a reread, knowing, knowing what happens at the end and how it gets resolved. But I'm also the kind of person who gets stressed very easily. Like, I will, I will look up spoilers for horror novels and things like that because I don't like the
Emily 54:58
that too
Sara 54:59
So
Lilly 55:00
And you only read the horror to begin with 'cause I force you.
Sara 55:04
so, so like, and I, I can't do, I can't do thril- like, I look up spoilers for thrillers too because that kind of uncertainty just, it gets me in a way that is not necessarily the case for every reader. So I, I do think that on reread, "All We Have Left" would be a lot cozier for me, knowing, knowing that there is... I mean, and I knew that there was the happy ending anyway, but, but yeah, because it's a romance. Yeah. But knowing how the ending is happy and how it gets resolved, then I can leave my worries aside.
Lilly 55:38
So I think that's all the questions that we had for you. Is there anything like, any projects that you'd like to plug, or obviously everyone should go buy and read this book.
Sara 55:50
And also "Death on the Caldera" because I'm still hoping for book two of that one.
Emily 55:54
I know, right. Yeah, no, similarly if you liked "All We Have Left," you might also like "Death on the Caldera," which was my debut novel. And you know, I don't, I don't have anything upcoming to plug. I'm, I'm working on some stuff that I'm really excited about, but, like, it is kind of early enough that there's not really anything to announce about it or anything like that. It's, it's a little preemptive. So instead, I would say if you like Agatha Christie and murder mysteries might I recommend after checking out "All We Have Left" that you check out Death on the Caldera," which is what you would get if you basically squished the Agatha Christie canon with, like, Brandon Sanderson-style world-building. So, yeah.
Sara 56:32
It's very fun. Listeners, you can also listen to our interview with Emily about that novel
Emily 56:37
Mhm
Sara 56:38
if, if you want more of a teaser for that than, than Emily just gave.
Emily 56:42
Yes
Sara 56:44
and Emily, where can you be found on the internet?
Emily 56:47
I can be found on Instagram @emmypaxman and on TikTok @emmypaxman. I can also be found on Substack at Emmy Paxman. And with all of those, Emmy is E-M-M-Y P-A-X-M-A-N. It's Paxman. Do not insert a T anywhere. It-- I promise it's phonetic.
Lilly 57:08
We'll link to those in the episode description as well.
Emily 57:11
Yes
Lilly 57:12
Thank you so much. This was so much fun. I always love talking to you about your work, and I also always love reading your work, so can't wait
Emily 57:19
you. I'm glad. I
Lilly 57:20
those secret projects.
Sara 57:24
an absolute delight.
Emily 57:25
Thank you
Lilly 57:30
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.
Sara 57:34
Come disagree with us! We're on Blue Sky and Instagram, at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com. Or leave a comment on YouTube.
Lilly 57:45
If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.
Sara 57:53
We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.
Lilly 57:59
Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated.
Sara 58:03
Bye!
