Author Interview: Mother & Slaughter by Liz Shipton

Welcome back to Fiction Fans! We’ll start off this Q&A with one of our standard podcast opening questions–tell us something great that’s happened recently.

I just got a mechanical keyboard and I’m obsessed with it LOL. I’m a big ASMR fan and the “clicky keys” thing is big in the ASMR world so I’ve been coveting them for a while. Finally got one this year as a birthday gift!

What are you currently reading or what’s up next on your TBR? What made you pick up this book?

The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst. I read The Line of Beauty earlier this year and loved it, and I’ve had this one downloaded in my Kindle app for a while but never got around to it. I had a long travel day yesterday and read it pretty much all day so I’m about halfway through now. I think his prose is beautifully intricate in a way that still reads very clearly, and his ability to wring meaning out of the tiniest human interactions is astonishing. Plus, he’s got a great deadpan wit that sneaks in so subtly you sometimes almost miss it.

Can you give us an elevator pitch for Mother & Slaughter?

Eleanor Skinner is a 35-year-old gladiator living in a kingdom where women are stripped of their magic at birth and given two choices when they turn 18: mother or gladiator. Eleanor’s a career woman – her job is slaying other child-free women for sport, and she’s very good at it. When a one-night stand leaves her knocked up, she realizes she’ll be forced to give up her job, have the child and (horror) marry some guy. She would literally rather be decapitated in the arena, so she and her gladiator friend Rosalind embark on a quest to find a witch who can end the pregnancy with magic.

It’s a female-rage-fueled dark fantasy satire about healthcare, immigration, and putting a sword up the president’s butt.

Your kickstarter was very successful, far exceeding the crowdfunding goal. What was one thing you wish you knew before launching the campaign?

Funnily enough, this Kickstarter actually didn’t fund as well as the first one I ran last year, and I think that was primarily because of the challenging/confrontational nature of the book. It’s really difficult to sell a book like this, particularly in today’s market, where everything leans “cozy” or “escapist,” and things tend to fit neatly into pre-established genres and categories (particularly on Kickstarter.) To put a fantasy book in front of people that deals directly with the US government, but uses pitch black humor to do it means a lot of folks are just not going to pick it up.

How did the process of crowdfunding this work differ from the publication process for Dot Slash Magic?

It’s a lot more hands on, and while that does give you a lot more flexibility, it’s obviously a lot more work. The benefit is you can move very quickly on things; the downside is you’re responsible for every part of the end-product, not just the writing. To be honest, I’m in this for the writing, and that’s the part I’m best at. I don’t enjoy trawling through the minutiae of international shipping regulations, figuring out tier pricing, sourcing printers, figuring out which place will result in the highest-quality product for the lowest cost, etc. etc. etc., and I’m terrible at logistics.

That being said, it’s nice to be able to make changes to things on the fly (for example, we’re testing a new cover for the ebook edition of Dot Slash Magic, which was trad-published, and it took almost a year to get that approved, designed, approved again, launched, and rolled out to all the various platforms. On my own, that process would’ve been a month, tops.

In the author’s note, you say this book “it’s not exactly subtle–but then, neither is this administration.” More and more often these days we see opinions gaining support that have completely missed the point of a story. Was this a concern or consideration at all when you were working on this book?

Yes, but ¯\(ツ)/¯ hahaha. I’m getting to a point where I feel confident enough in my ability to defend my work, that if someone comes at me with a blockheaded wrong take, I can explain what I was actually going for. And then there’s the new motto I’m trying to live by, which is, “Just let people be wrong about you.” (Thanks to Contrapoints on YouTube for that one.)

Now, if a member of one of the marginalized communities who are represented in the book told me they felt I’d gotten it wrong, or was offended or hurt, that I would listen to. So far, I’ve heard only positive feedback, so I hope I’ve done a good enough job that that doesn’t happen. In particular a few trans folks have reached out on IG to let me know they really appreciated the way Sam was portrayed, which I was happy to hear.

In the novel, you include illustrations by Daniel Lorca of some scenes. How did you choose which scenes you wanted illustrated? Are there any scenes you would have liked to see illustrated that didn’t make it?

Most of them were chosen because they’re the highest-action parts of the story. Daniel’s style (particularly the comic-book illustrations we did for this) really lends itself to high action and lots of movement. He’s amazing at capturing that, and at telling the story through imagery. There is one scene near the end of the book (the bloodbath) that I would’ve loved to see illustrated, but ultimately, I went with the very final moment of that scene, rather than illustrating the entire thing, because I think it lands better.

What was your favorite part of writing the book?

I love writing dialogue. I think it’s probably what I’m best at, and it’s so much fun to let two characters riff and see what comes out. Sometimes I’ll have a bit or a joke that I’ve thought of in advance that I know I want to work in, but more often than not, the characters end up kind of taking over and that joke becomes the catalyst for a lot more material. I find that process fascinating.

The themes and conflicts of this book are heavily influenced by current events in the US, and one character in particular is a direct reference to an actual political figure (and boy, your portrayal of him was pitch perfect). Can you talk about how you choose which aspects of current events you wanted to represent more broadly, and which you wanted to satirize more directly?

The original idea I had for this book was a story set in present day, about a woman who is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, and is so pissed she goes on a mission to assassinate a supreme court justice (with the baby in tow.) But that seemed a bit too close to the bone, and I was afraid people might see it as some kind of manifesto hahaha.

I knew I wanted to write about the state of reproductive care in the US after Roe v Wade was overturned, and then, as the election neared, so many other issues became front and center in American politics. It felt wrong to write a book solely about abortion when there were so many other things going on, and the more I thought about the way these issues intersect and overlap, and are weaponized by the right, the more obvious it became that the book should be about all of them. 

I think there’s part of me that wants there to be some kind of explanation at the root of that kind of bigotry/hate/violence/oppression. Yes it’s “systemic” but I do feel that word can become an excuse for not holding individual people accountable (and there are certainly individuals in power right now who need to be held accountable.) What makes a person that way? The last couple of chapters were about exploring that and trying to tie all those threads together in a way that made sense to me. I don’t know if I really got there, but then, I’m not sure if any of this will ever make sense to me.

We were delighted to learn that peeing on barley was a real pregnancy test used in antiquity. Was that something you looked up for the book? Were there any other things you researched for this book?

Yes! That was fun. And what an awesome thing to learn! Apparently it’s something like 70% accurate, and scientists think it’s due to the estrogen stimulating germination. A lot of the stuff I looked up was worldbuilding – I’ve never written a straightforward medieval fantasy world before, so I had to learn stuff like, “What kind of things would Eleanor pack for the trip?” and “What kind of house would she live in?” “Where would her water come from?” “How does the toilet work?” LOL. Fun stuff like that.

I also had to do research into pregnancy symptoms, as I’ve never been pregnant myself. For that, I actually reached out to some of my readers on Discord, who were extremely generous in sharing their experiences. The conversation that sparked was actually a major factor early on motivating me to write the book.

In many of the dystopian stories focused on the oppression of women, the fictional society enforces meekness. Can you tell us about how this violent version of the trope in Mother and Slaughter came about?

So, I didn’t realize this until about halfway through writing, but I think subconsciously, I was writing about my TikToks (just wait, it makes sense, I promise.)

Folks who’ve read my work or talked to me about it know that all my main characters are just thinly-veiled versions of me, and usually, the veil is pretty thin. I always wanted Eleanor to basically be a way for me to tell people my reasons for not having kids, lol. But what I also realized I was doing with her was examining my own relationship to other women, particularly on social media. The “Women Writing Women” videos I’m known for (dissecting tropes prevalent mostly in romance and other female-led genres) could be construed as attacking other female authors. That was never my intention, and thank God, most people don’t take them that way, but it is always in the back of my mind when I put one of those up. Sometimes I worry that I, like Eleanor, am doing little more than slaughtering other women in a very public forum.

Consciously what I was trying to get across with the gladiator conceit was the ways in which people in power tend to pit the rest of us against each other so we don’t notice what they’re doing behind the scenes. The arena is a very visible spectacle that draws a lot of attention, and as long as everyone is watching what Eleanor is doing with her battle ax, they aren’t noticing Thral Reknaw rounding up the incomers.

Although the story focuses on sexism, it also addresses elements of racism and transphobia. Can you talk a little bit about including adjacent topics without minimizing them when they aren't the main focus?

It’s always tough knowing how to do that, particularly when those topics are being addressed via side characters. My approach was to try and highlight the ways in which all the characters’ struggles were both different and similar. A major theme of this book was empathy – learning how to understand where other people are coming from. That meant I had to show characters connecting with each other, and I felt the most interesting way for them to do that was over their individual struggles. So you show, for instance, that Eleanor understands Sam’s perspective about what it feels like to have magic inside her because she has her own experience of not wanting the baby inside her. I think when you do that, you’re automatically giving somewhat equal weight to everyone’s issue, because you’re using each issue to clarify another issue. 

In the book, we see Ellie struggle with the realization that even though she’s benefited from the gladiator system in Draconia, it is still a harmful system. Can you tell us more about writing characters with internalized misogyny that living and succeeding in the system engenders?

I think about my own privilege a lot, especially as a white person living on a sailboat and spending a lot of time in countries and communities that are often much less well off than the part of the US that I’m from. My ability to step into and out of these places at will – and at the same time to be somewhat removed from the immediacy of what’s happening at home – is an incredible privilege that I don’t take lightly. A lot of what I write is me grappling with that.

As far as misogyny specifically: a major component of Eleanor’s arc is realizing how her insulated life has shaped her view on “other women” (primarily mothers, who she spends no time with at all) and men. It was important to me to show how misogyny harms men as well as women – but at the same time, not to let anyone off the hook for their behavior. That’s actually one of the great things about writing a diverse cast: you can have characters tell each other off in ways that ring true, because a character who has been harmed by someone’s actions can be speaking from their own experience.

How different is the final version of this book from the first draft?

The first draft didn’t dig as deeply into immigration or the right’s obsession with population decline. But I realized fairly quickly that, at its heart, that was actually exactly what I was trying to write about. Initially, Phillip’s character wasn’t as well-developed, and the backdrop to the action was a slightly vague “threat of war.” It felt generic and not what I was going for, so I spent a lot of time with Phillip, working out the connection between the magic hoax, the gladiator system, and the incomers. 

What would you like readers to take away from this book?

First and foremost, I hope it’s a good time. It’s heavy subject matter and parts of it are quite dark, but at the end of the day, I hope I did a good job balancing all that with the levity of the dialogue and love between the characters.

Second to that, I’d love for people to get some catharsis from seeing President PeePee get kebab-skewered in the booty-hole.

Thirdly, I secretly wrote this book for J.K. Rowling and her band of TERFs, in the hope that they might see, through Roz, a way to come to a better understanding with their trans sisters.

Do you have a favorite quote from Mother & Slaughter that you can share with us? What about this quote in particular makes it your favorite?

I think it’s probably, “Anyone shitheaded enough to be inspired by me deserves to get exactly what’s coming to her.”

It sums up Eleanor’s character perfectly, and at the same time highlights the absurd tone I was going for with the book.

Is there anything you can tell us about any current projects you’re working on?

Yes! I just finished the follow-up to Dot Slash Magic, and will begin writing the third and final book in that series this fall. I’m not sure what the publishing timeline looks like for those books yet, but my hope is to have at least one of them out next year. 

I also started a pen name for gay hockey smut, so if anyone’s into Heated Rivalry and looking for more of that kind of thing (but with a smidge more social commentary) check out The League of Extraordinarily Gay Gentlemen by Hailey Reaves.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for us! Do you have any parting thoughts or comments you’d like to leave for our readers?

Thank you so much for giving me the space to ramble on about my work! It’s such a joy to get to do that.

And finally, where can you be found on the internet if our readers want to hear more from you?

I recently started a Substack, so if folks are interested in checking that out, it’s at lizshiptonauthor.substack.com. My social media handle is @lizshiptonauthor on all the platforms, and everything can be found at my website lizshipton.com 

---

About the book:

The Handmaid's Tale meets Kill Bill...but make it a fantasy book.

A hundred-and-fifty years ago, the women of Draconia were stripped of their magic. Since then, every girl who comes of age in the kingdom has been given a choice: have kids or become a gladiator.

Eleanor Skinner chose gladiator, and at 35, she's now the oldest undefeated gladiator in the history of Draconia. She's wealthy, she's notorious, and overall, she's pretty happy being a child-free lady-killer, thank you very much.

Then a one-night stand leaves her knocked up.

Eleanor would literally rather be decapitated in the arena than have to raise a child. Unfortunately, she gets no say in the matter. So when she hears about a witch who lives outside the kingdom and might still have her power, Eleanor and her best friend Rosalind embark on a quest to find her and end the pregnancy with magic.

But the journey takes an unexpected turn, bringing Eleanor face-to-face with old flames, new friends, and secrets about Draconia that would make any self-respecting feminist want to stand up, pick up a sword, and use it to slaughter the patriarchy.

This is a found family tale about healthcare access, female friendship and putting a sword up the president's butt. It uses humor to engage with sensitive topics like trans rights, immigration, and a woman's right to choose, and directly satirizes the US administration under Donald Trump. The enemies-to-lovers romantic subplot is secondary to the plot and politics, but the banter is second to none. Perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood, Terry Pratchett and Quentin Tarantino.

Content warning: deals directly with the trans experience, the US government's current approach to immigration, racism, infertility, and a woman's right to choose. Very strong language. Very dark humor. Gore. There is NO birth or pregnancy termination actually in the book. MC experiences mild first trimester symptoms.