Author Interview: The Phoenix Feather by Sherwood Smith

Episode 17

Release Date: 9/15/2021

The Phoenix Feather by Sherwood Smith

Your hosts interviewed Sherwood Smith about her recent novel, The Phoenix Feather: Fledglings (and only brought up all of the other books of hers they love a little bit). They talked about Chinese literary traditions and discussed the appeal of familiar tropes in literature. Sherwood also compared experiences with both traditional and independent publishing.

Find Sherwood Smith Online:

her website her goodreads her patreon

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” - Scott Buckley for the use of “Twilight Echo”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly 00:04

Hello, and welcome to fiction fans, a podcast where we read books and other words, too. I'm Lily.

Sara 00:11

And I'm Sara. And I don't think that I have ever been as excited to announce a guest author on this podcast as I am to announce that Sherwood Smith is here with us to talk about her new book. Thank you.

Lilly 00:23

listeners probably know how much we love your books by now. We talk about it an awful lot. But we are going to focus on your new novel, phoenix feather. But before we jump into that conversation, let's start off this episode with some sunshine. What's something great that happened this week?

Sara 00:42

I went to the opera on Sunday. Oh, what did you see? I went to go see Tosca at the San Francisco Opera. And it was just a fantastic performance. The entire cast was amazing. The woman who was playing Tosca was just brilliant. She blew my mind. But at the very end during curtain calls, the guy who was singing Ancelotti proposed to her Oh, she was just so visibly over the moon. It was absolutely wonderful. Wow, that is the sweetest thing I've ever heard. It was it was amazing. Like it was it was a great experience before that. And then it was just, yeah, it was incredible.

Sherwood 01:26

cucine is my favorite offer, right?

Lilly 01:30

Sure. What do you have something great. That's happened this week?

Sherwood 01:33

Not really, I've been mostly staying home, you know, with the pandemic and writing and taking care of an elderly dog. So most of the good news I've seen it has been other people's, which I really enjoy seeing friends books have come out and so forth. Trying to think if there's anything special to share. One of my writer friends was named Melissa MC Shane, and she writes fantasy Oh, that I really enjoy. And she had a new one in her dragon series that came out today. So I'll I'll make that my awesome up because I'm really enjoying the series.

Sara 02:10

Well, Happy. Happy book birthday, Melissa McShane.

Lilly 02:13

Yeah. And that's absolutely a great thing. Mine is very silly. What's that? I most makeup that I buy is in the $10 range. So when I buy something nice, it better fucking work. I had eyebrow filler that dried out. But it was something I actually spent more than $10 on. So I googled ways to revitalize cream makeup. And it totally worked. And it works again. I'm so happy.

Sherwood 02:45

What did you put in coconut oil?

Lilly 02:49

I just used like moisturizer. Oh, wow.

Sherwood 02:53

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Lilly 02:56

So I also don't believe in expiration dates, which I'm sure would make some people very uncomfortable. But I paid money for it. So I'm gonna use the whole thing.

Sherwood 03:05

Yeah, I agree. My sister once yelled at me because I had a 25 year old lipstick. And I said, Well, you know, I use it once a decade. So you know if there were any germs on that there. They really have staying power.

Lilly 03:20

At this point, they earned it. So what's everyone drinking tonight? Sara?

Sara 03:25

I was going to make something exciting. And then work fried my brand today. So I'm just sticking with Rosae

Lilly 03:33

Rosae is always exciting. It's delightful. Do you have a beverage with you tonight, Sherwood

Sherwood 03:37

just water it's 85 degrees in here. So I finished some tea a while ago and you don't want to hear me if I've imbibing something delicious. So I am sober as a judge.

Lilly 03:54

I don't know about that. But I'll take you're

Sara 03:57

gonna say that sounds like a good time. And you Lily.

Lilly 04:02

I have made some unholy amalgamation of gin and tonic slash gin Mint Julep with mint from my garden which is exciting. And a local gin from the Rainier brewery, which is funny because Rainier is a very cheap beer. But it's a very delicious gin. So, cheers. Yes. And of course we are here to talk about books after all. Anyone read anything good lately.

Sara 04:28

I finished reading dial a for aunties by Jessie su tonto, I believe is the author's name. And it's a romance novel, entirely a romance novel, which is a little out of rare for you. Yeah, it's it's quite unusual for me to read just straight romance, but I enjoyed it a lot. I had to turn off my suspension of disbelief quite a bit at near the end of well throughout the entire book, but particularly near the end. And the romance aspect was probably the thing I least enjoyed about it, but it was really a very funny book. And I like did

Lilly 05:00

a lot, but it was a romance novel.

Sara 05:03

It was a romance novel, but it also had to deal with and this isn't a spoiler because I think it's on the back of the book, the main character accidentally murdering her date.

Lilly 05:16

Oh, yeah, that's way more interesting. Okay. So

Sara 05:20

the high jinks that ensue, there were fantastic. And the aunties totally stole the show.

Sherwood 05:26

I would totally read that.

Sara 05:28

It was a great book. Yeah, I would recommend it.

Sherwood 05:32

I love funny romances. Absolutely.

Lilly 05:35

I am smack dab in the middle of the mare cycles, I think by Dan Fitzgerald. I've talked about it before. I haven't gotten that much farther. But I have enjoyed them immensely. And I'm sure I'll talk about it once I finished the series.

Sara 05:50

Are you reading anything Sherwood?

Sherwood 05:51

I'm usually reading several books. There's a daytime book or downstairs book or before bedtime book. And then I'm always running research for various projects. I think the weirdest one I'm reading right now is a it's in Chinese, which I'm trying to teach myself. And it's Oh, wow. Well, it's a kid's version of Journey to the West. And it is such a weird story. It is so weird. It's so popular and has been for centuries. But it is the magic in it is it makes no sense. You just can't. Really you might

Sara 06:31

not be familiar, or you might involve right. Well, I was I was gonna say sigh Yuki Yeah, yeah. Oh, sigh

Sherwood 06:38

Yuki, definitely. You can make sense.

Sara 06:43

Doesn't make sense. Based on that. Yeah. On that story. Yeah,

Lilly 06:47

I know, at least that much.

Sherwood 06:50

Only hot guy is instead of a pig guy and the wonky guy.

Lilly 06:55

You know, I'll take what I can get.

Sherwood 06:58

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was in it for the drawings. What I read Satyaki

Sara 07:04

beautiful artwork. Oh, yeah.

Lilly 07:07

Yeah, beautiful, right.

Sara 07:11

I mean, in all senses of the word.

Lilly 07:14

Well, today, we are here to talk about the phoenix feather fledglings, which is the first book in a series that you've launched fairly recently. I'm not gonna that's not a question. Yes. I'm aware that this is true.

Sara 07:30

As I was reading, I was thinking that this book is maybe a little bit more accessible to younger readers than some of your other books. Particularly I was thinking of India, where even though India is similar in age at the beginning to mouse, I wouldn't necessarily recommend into to young adults the way that I would recommend the phoenix feather to them. Was that something that evolved while you were writing it? Or was that a decision that you made a conscious decision that you made at the beginning of the project?

Sherwood 07:59

Nothing was a conscious decision. This was my pandemic project. And I thought at first it was going to be a short story. And I said, let's add a little. Oh, let's just have some fun and add a little more. And before I knew it, I completely PIP specs. I knew no outlines, no nothing. I'm just going to throw in all the tropes I love and just see where it takes me. And so that's pretty much what I've been doing. Although I have to say I have orchestrated a couple of set pieces farther up the line when it gets more complicated. The first book is, I think, just because it concerns kids. And it's fairly simple and simplistic. I wanted to keep it as one one. Because I don't know enough about Chinese culture, even though I've been immersed in it for the last six years. It is such a complicated subject, it would take a lifetime to know enough to write with confidence and to set aside Western sensibilities. And this particular sub genre. Wuxia is very forgiving, as far as I can tell. Writers borrow blithely from different mythologies from Korean, from Japanese, a little Chinese all up and down the centuries, a few Indians, particularly Journey to the West, which is they're traveling to India, to find you know, Buddhist teachings, other Western ideas, so I thought, yeah, okay, then. It doesn't feel to me like cultural appropriation, if I am first respectful of what I do borrow, and second, if, if I'm doing something that's already been done by writers, both Western and Eastern, in this sub genre, and it was, of course, meant to be fun. So, like the naming, Chinese naming is really complicated. People can have especially in the upper ranks in historical China, you can have a number of names for a number of different reasons. And I don't get into any of that. people's names are very simple in this in this world, and things like that, I just kept it as simple as I could just let the story roll. And I thought I would run out of gas. Well, I thought, the pandemic landed a couple of months, and now we're running out of gas, back to my regular projects. I'm in book four, and the pandemic hasn't ended yet.

Sara 10:37

How many books do you intend the series to be? Or do you? Are you just writing until you completely

Sherwood 10:43

pantsing it?

Lilly 10:47

That's incredible. I knew that you had been sort of releasing this in pieces. But I wasn't aware of how truly sort of chaotic the planning process was.

Sherwood 11:00

Yeah, on my Patreon, I put up a chapter a day, when I run out of chapters, which will happen when I catch up where I am in book four. I'll just put stuff up when I've written it and see what people think. Well, let's give

Lilly 11:15

a little bit of background. So you alluded to the fact that you are borrowing from or honoring some genres, Lucia and tshwane. One, which, again, I watched a 10 minute YouTube video about these genres. And that is the extent of my pronunciation and understanding. But it sounds like they are sort of will Wuxia at least is a long standing genre in Chinese literature, centered around martial arts.

Sherwood 11:45

Yep, goes back 2000 3000 years, there's a reference I found somewhere five years ago to a scholar bitterly complaining about the trash that young people are reading and how cliche, it is that people are reading this trash. And that was, I think, in the second or third century BC. It's nice.

Sara 12:11

Well, people don't change.

Sherwood 12:16

Yep. So it's been around a long time. But it's come up in different forms, particularly when governments get oppressive, and it's been squashed. And then reform is again. And that's happened in the 20th century with Chinese history has gone through pretty violent con convolutions, and during Mao reign, it was forbidden. It was wet to underground. And of course, writers on the internet. Right in all areas of it. I'm sure you've heard of untamed and Guardian so forth, BL. Which, you know, boy love. Well, those writers are. They're expressing through story there subverting the traditionalist laws, let's say, and I, I don't think that's new. I think that's centuries

Lilly 13:10

old, one could even say human nature. Yes. Well, China's

Sherwood 13:14

a traditional society. It's very layered. And that's fascinating. And I think a lot of that goes back to Confucius, who we call Confucius. And it's a desire for order. And, unfortunately, when you have that much, try to control everything that much things happen around the sides. And that's what this genre is, I think, I think.

Lilly 13:45

Wonderful. I have to say, when I was reading this novel, your novel specifically, I felt like this was what that horrible remake of Mulan wishes it had been.

Sherwood 14:00

I know that Disney one.

Lilly 14:01

The live action Disney one. Yeah.

Sherwood 14:04

Yeah, that was so disappointed. There's a, there's a Chinese person whose novel just came out this last month, who just does a takedown of Disney's Mulan. Oh my gosh, she is so funny. I'm gonna see if I can. I'm calling up my good reads a review about one in 10 books that I read.

Sara 14:27

I actually follow you on Goodreads and that you are such a prolific, both reader and reviewer. It kind of astonishes me that you're able to do that much and write as much as you do.

Sherwood 14:39

Yeah, well, that's why I review maybe one in 10 books that I read, although a lot of them don't get reviewed for various reasons, including if I don't like a book I an author puts a lot of work into their book and ups I don't like when nobody's paying me to write views. So I just don't say anything. Unless it's super popular, but I figure anything though. It's not gonna hurt them.

Lilly 15:02

That's basically our take to, ya know, review is quite a review in and of itself.

Sherwood 15:09

Yeah, I don't like blood seafood reviews. I just stay away from those areas. Iron widow, iron widow. There it is. Yeah, I just found it. See Ron J. Zhao.

Sara 15:22

I think I've seen this book on Twitter actually. Good.

Sherwood 15:29

Good. I hope she's getting plenty of attention and plenty of readers are really enjoyed that book. And I look forward to more of it.

Sara 15:36

Yeah, well, we'll definitely have to read it. It's pretty violent go.

Sherwood 15:41

Know that I'm trying.

Lilly 15:44

Yeah. Good to know upfront, though. Like, yeah, I've completely lost my train of thought. I think I was, oh, well, in your novel, it also does follow. I've not even a young woman, a girl, a little girl who follows her brother into training, and so disguises herself as a boy to do that. But we also get some really well, I thought really quite delightful magic. That was such a an understated, but still extremely powerful system, which I now know, after talking to you, is inspired by Wuxia. I assume we'll see.

Sherwood 16:20

onsea that's definitely you get once you see that? There's there's a blend there. But basically, she wants to this is the magical, WUSA sub genre. Okay, how can you get magical kingdoms? You know, sometimes you've got the demons against the people in heaven. Gods were 1000s of years old, down to magic like this one where, you know, basically magic works,

Lilly 16:47

right? I'm looking for a question you haven't answered yet?

Sara 16:50

Well, so we we have kind of talked about this, when you were talking, talking about how quickly that you had written this and how you were just basically pantsing it the entire way. So I gather from that, that that's not your general writing method? Well, it

Sherwood 17:07

depends. There are some books that I call the white fires, where I just wake up one day, and the story is all there a movie in my head because I'm a visualizer. And I just write as fast as I can. crown jewel was one of those

Sara 17:23

silly and I are trying to distract us now are both really restraining ourselves from not asking questions about crown jewel, because we're here to talk about the Phoenix powder. But

Sherwood 17:36

I was 20 When I first wrote the first half, and it really shows. But when all it's still a fun story, and then it just sat there. It was written in a notebook while I was in Europe, and I was homesick. And then a couple years later when I was in grad school, the second half, plopped into my lap. So I wrote that, and then typed it up a number of years later, as a sort of what the hell, why not try. So anyway, that was a white fire, and I've had other ones, you know, they're not always successful. They like dreams, dreams can be very intense. But then you think about them later. And they don't always have logic. So sometimes that's hard to discern when you're inside of it. But anyway, this one wasn't quite a white fire, but pretty close. When I got the idea, I thought it was a short story. It was a monk and a child telling a story of their parents. And I thought that was going to be it. And so you have that is chapter one. And when I first wrote it, you don't even get the identities. They're just a monkey and a child talking to each other in complete dialogue. There's no descriptions, whatever. But when I put that up, people didn't like it. So I added in. And then one day, I just thought, you know, I just really liked these characters so much. I'm going to start with the kid. And so I did.

Lilly 19:01

And it took us from there. Do you have an example of a project? That's what would you call the opposite of a whitefire? Book?

Sherwood 19:10

One that takes incredibly difficult planning, the Norse underwater, which hasn't come out yet, but will come out in a year or two. Oh, good. Yeah, I have to finish up the rise of the Alliance arc. So the second book is going to come out in December and the third one in February. And then there's one more and then the North's underwater, which is been written for 25 years, but it took 20 years of planning to get back together because it was drawing everything together everything, history, precedent, you know, hundreds of characters, blah, blah, blah, but I had to track through that because you just don't want to be overwhelmed by a massive scene of hundreds of people. So There's kind of a central line, let's say, between a couple of characters, and then branches out from there. Anyway, that took, I can't tell you how much planning and maps and books and books of planning.

Sara 20:18

So I feel like that kind of segues into the next question that I had, which is a lot of your previous stories, although not all have taken place in like the same universe, if not necessarily the same time period. And here we're we're in a just a completely different literary universe. So what's it like jumping to a place where you have a clean slate like that?

Sherwood 20:40

Fun, it was meant to be fun. And that's what I wanted to keep it simple. I have not, I have fought against and won the fight to make a map. So far, is no map. I do not have 50 pages of family connections. Although I do have a couple of family trees they snuck in on me, but only a couple.

Sara 21:10

I mean, I'm not any kind of writer. But it looks like a lot to me.

Sherwood 21:15

For me, that's real simple. Mostly names, keeping track of names.

Lilly 21:21

Are you primarily a hand writer then? And you type up afterwards? Or does it depend on the project?

Sherwood 21:27

I was until arthritis came with old age and I can't write 25 pages a day anymore? Unfortunately, I could. There was a time typing is so much easier on my hands. Yeah.

Lilly 21:41

It's such a different physical motion. I guess I was thinking from a creative standpoint, but from the practicality standpoint as well, it is such a different way of doing something putting words on a page.

Sherwood 21:52

Yeah, I never had any problems switching over to computer. I loved typing up my stories because they looked more professional. I started sending books out to publishers when I was 13. And for some reason they came right back again. But I love typing about

Lilly 22:14

Do you remember any of those? Oh, I have some of them? Would you be willing to share an idea of just like what was the synopsis of one that you had written back then Oh,

Sherwood 22:23

there's one that I wrote with a friend in eighth grade is called the fight for our crown. We put together a kingdom in the Netherlands, a little tiny kingdom. And we had twin princesses. And we started off by writing letters by these princesses to each other. We put them in each other's lockers every morning. Oh my gosh. And then we decided that it was so incredibly good that we were going to tape it up and send it to a publisher. But first we were going to submit it to there was a junior high, you know, Creative Writing Contest. So we have this 400 page manuscript badly typed by me, on my mother's World War Two era typewriter with a ribbon that had never been changed. And I remember, we turned it in. And, you know, there was the usual poetry and all that from, you know, regular writing kids. And I remember sneaking up to the building where the teachers were judging these things. And I looked through there used to be little glass, kind of windows in the doors to the classrooms. I don't know if they still do that anymore. You know, this was the mid 60s. And I peeked in there to see because I in my mind, they were just going to be jaw dropped with amazement at this thing. And I remember immediately spotting as we're the only ones who turn in a book. And the teacher was turning over the pages kind of like you lift up a piece of lettuce and find a caterpillar underneath what is this horrible thing? And I crept away thinking maybe somebody else turned in a book and I didn't know what I didn't tell my friend because I just that appalled look on the face. And sure enough, we did not when

Lilly 24:26

you should have at least gotten an honorable mention for commitment.

Sherwood 24:30

I have a feeling that this was back in the days of conformity and I have a feeling they just did not know what to do with with us. We were not writing at all the kind of thing that they expected junior high kids to be writing we had, you know, you could tell right from the start when you the introduction to this thing made it clear that we were rebels and that just didn't fly back in 1966 1967. I think it was turned in So, at that point, I went underground, I realized that the adults around me were never going to approve of any of this stuff. And so I just never turned any of it in. Just kept writing.

Sara 25:12

Do you still have a copy of that? Boy? Yes,

Sherwood 25:15

you bet. Every once in a while I take it out, particularly if I'm depressed, and I laugh my butt off and how bad it is.

Lilly 25:28

That's wonderful.

Sherwood 25:29

The adults in it Oh, my God. The adults, we didn't have a clue. Can action is actually pretty good.

Lilly 25:41

Yeah, and not having a clue wasn't going to stop you. And you were eventually recognized, you have had many works published, both by traditional publishing and self published. And I was wondering, if you just had a few comments on what some of the differences are between those two processes?

Sherwood 26:02

Well, publishing is going through such revolutions right now. And basically, it takes a long time, you submit and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, you either submit, sometimes you feel lucky, you can submit directly to an editor. But editors these days are doing all of the jobs that publishing that editors back in the 60s and 70s, editors had teams of people to do all this stuff. And now editors are having to do it all. So they've got their work. And they've got their homework. And they're they're behind. A lot of them are just behind all the time. It has not helped the book industry to have big conglomerates owning them, because to them, books are a product. And if you're not an instant bestseller, get rid of them. Because there's always another writer around the corner. And hopefully they're young and hot. And they can be made into a celebrity. And old people get rid of them. So you know, it's kind of the book industry can be a heartbreaker, it can be awesome. When something clicks, and it works. But there is no more building a readership that there was in the past, there is somewhat with with Java, the smaller publisher that I've been with, they're not afraid of big books, and they do try to develop their authors. But they too are, you know, under the gun, everybody is in New York these days. Can't blame them. So with self publishing, you have more control over the cover art, which sometimes you don't in traditional publishing, I've been pretty lucky. Most of my books, they've at least sent me a copy and said, Do you like the cover? And whether I liked it or not? It was gonna go on. And sometimes sometimes they would ask for my advice. And particularly with dogs, sometimes they would accept my sketches, and take it to the artists. So you know, that's cool. Yeah, it sounds great. But you know, it kind of depends. And with self publishing, the downside is you have to put the work in and you're a writer, you don't really want to do all this other labors. So trading for labor is pretty good. Marketing is the hardest thing for mostly introverts. It's so painful to try to get out there and sell yourself when everybody else is doing it, too. It's, it's very dispiriting. But as far as books are concerned, the upside is you have control over the material, you're not going to have anybody say, Nope, this doesn't fit into X genre, it's gone too many pages for the price point. So either you cut out 25,000 words for the price point, or else we can't publish it. And it by the way, you have two months to turn it around when you've been waiting for two years for them to get to it. So self publishing, you can go with your own rhythm. The problem is sometimes particularly beginning writers think every word is so precious, it doesn't need to be edited. Because you missed it passion for getting it in a shape that's going to appeal to readers. And I'm sure you've read some books, but then also books and traditional publishing get by too. They're full of grammar errors and spelling errors or continuity errors, where you can tell an editor just didn't take their time with it. So, you know, that's, I think that's a basic rundown. Yeah, absolutely. It

Lilly 29:39

sounds like books are a hell of a lot of work. And someone has to do it, whether it's the publishing house or you find someone to help you with it on your own.

Sherwood 29:49

Yes. The ideal thing I think, is to trade whatever skills you got, it's something I belong to a consortium of authors called Book view Cafe, and that's where all my indie books come out. From, and there's several people who are really good at formatting. And they do that formatting and I'll trade them for a beta read or a copy, edit, read or, you know, that type of thing. We trade back and forth different skills. That's wonderful. Takes A Village, right? Yeah, exactly. Except that was the approach and it works.

Lilly 30:20

Well, I would say, based on the Phoenix better.

Sherwood 30:24

Well, thanks. Yeah, I had a couple of good, good betas on that one. I was very grateful for for my beta readers. Wow.

Lilly 30:35

Did it go through that process? Before you started releasing? Parts of it on Patreon?

Sherwood 30:40

Yes, because when I released it on Patreon, I was almost done with book two. Okay, so books one, I, I send it to one friend, who knows something about the different genres, let's say Asian, let's just call an Asian, not necessarily Chinese, but, and I said, you know, can you kind of be a sensitivity reader, not putting you responsible to speak for all Asian people, because that's noxious. If you see something to go wrong, oh, you're gonna get major trouble here. You know, you're clueless white waspy background is sure showing it's but here, you know, I want to, I want to first the person read it and didn't find anything like that in it. So I was very grateful for that. And that I had a, you know, a beta reader in Brookfield cafe was another white person. So they were reading for different things. And then, you know, went forward from there.

Lilly 31:35

You sort of already mentioned that you have plans for phoenix feather? The plans are until it stops. Yeah.

Sherwood 31:44

Yeah, I see seem to head

Lilly 31:47

My understanding is that this was a trilogy. But it sounds like if you're working on like, five,

Sherwood 31:52

yeah, well, one thing I didn't I deliberately one of the reasons why I wanted to pants it is because Chinese literature has a completely different structure from Western. In Western, we kind of breathe in Aristotle, in the three act structure. With mother's milk, almost, you know, we read so much, that is the three act structure. So trilogy, just sounds natural to us. But that's not true. In Chinese literature. It's more like a river. It flows and flows and flows. So if you read dream of red branches, or also the marsh, or even three kingdoms, there's definitely a different structure. So I thought, you know, if I pants this thing, if I deliberately don't plan it out, I could get as close to that as possible, and just let the river flow. And so that's what I've been trying to do. I mean, there's no getting away from my Western sinking. But I'm trying as hard as I can.

Sara 32:50

Do you anticipate that all of the stories are going to follow mouth and her brothers or or Have you have you not considered like, are you just letting that happen as it happens as well.

Sherwood 33:01

Now, so and her brothers, and there's at least one other important character who we meet at the end of phoenix feather, I see them as central so far are you can do that to us.

Lilly 33:21

There I'm teasing

Sara 33:26

will talk to will be out October 14. And I think that I read it in the back of fledglings that book three is going to be out in January.

Sherwood 33:34

Yep. January server force. So we at

Sara 33:37

least have a lot of content to carry us through the next couple of months.

Sherwood 33:43

Yeah, I don't know when book four I have to get a little farther into the story. I started what a week and a half ago and I've got just under 30,000 words. So and they are rough words. They are so oh boy, are they rough. So?

Lilly 34:00

Well, it sounds like we all have some great things to look forward to in this universe then.

Sherwood 34:06

Well, I'm glad you liked the first one because it seems to be kind of tame and simple. But it's that's where it starts.

Lilly 34:13

You know that I do think there's something comforting though, in in the familiar tropes. I think you haven't mentioned that was why you were writing it that way. But just also as a reader, these are some beats that I was familiar with, but handled in a fresh way I thought, which we have some comments on that we'll get to in the boiler section of the podcast.

Sara 34:34

I feel like it's the kind of books that I can enjoy as an adult and I did enjoy it quite a bit. But I also if it had been released when I was a younger, a younger girl I would have just read and reread and read again, this book so it's nice to feel that kind of comforting come have that kind of comforting, read now.

Sherwood 34:56

I'm glad that came across it. It was my go To comfort particularly when I started it last summer, before the election. Yes.

Lilly 35:10

We all have our coping mechanisms

Sherwood 35:13

November coming, you know, I don't want to sidetrack into politics, but oh god, the stress and the pandemic. And, you know,

Sara 35:22

there was a lot going on. Yeah,

Sherwood 35:25

there was a lot, so I was hiding as much as I could, or struggling with my, with my story where I felt at least I can have some control there. And by God, I'm gonna put in all the fun tropes I want to including book two. There's only one bad

Lilly 35:43

Oh, okay, we got to start talking about spoilers, otherwise, I will die. But before we get to that section, Sarah, why should someone read this book?

Sara 35:53

So if you like coming of age stories, if you want a story that treats children as people, if you're bored of vaguely European fantasy worlds, you grew up reading more appears?

Lilly 36:06

Or? Like,

Sara 36:09

oh, yeah, and I did, you should absolutely read this book.

Lilly 36:14

To avoid spoilers skip to 5042. I had such a hard time writing questions for you. Because all of my questions about this book. We're just like, spoiler questions for the next books. What about this character? Well, what's going on with this guy? But who is Am I right about who this person actually is? Although I will say, the two characters that we had the most theories about when we were trying to come up with things to ask that were actually reasonable. Do leave on the boat with mouse. So I'm pretty hopeful that I'll learn some more things about them. In the near future, was not a question. Okay, good. Yeah, I even highlighted I think there was one moment where mouse had a question for Jaso that I myself was very curious about. And then she dismissed it saying, Well, I can't ask because then Yassa will ask me questions. And I screamed at my phone. Because I wanted to know the answer. I understood like that made so much sense for mouse as a character. I was like, No, I was so close. That was anyway, my chaotic reading experience. We've teased a little bit about some of our tropes that we've noticed, are some of the familiar tropes that we've noticed and how they were. Our expectations were subverted or sort of toyed with in this book, we were wondering how much of that was us, sort of not seeing the the Asian literary tropes that we aren't familiar with? Or maybe you were using those tropes to subvert Western expectations? I think this question got away from me, but hopefully it made sense.

Sherwood 38:10

Like what, like what?

Lilly 38:12

Well, I think one of the things that I noticed is that the the secret girl warrior, that's, that's one that I know and love quite well. But in this book, that sort of experience is used to explore class inequality, versus gender inequality, which is normally how I see it, you know, Oh, girls can be just as tough as boys. But this novel doesn't harp on that note, almost at all, really. And instead, we get this exploration of privilege that the noble children have versus these not actually a low born children, but that everyone perceives that way. And so I thought that was sort of a fascinating way of exploring something that I was not expecting, just again, based on my trope expectations.

Sherwood 39:01

I think I, you can get both. I think I'm tired of the girl who has to prove herself just good as boys. Although I loved those when I was young, because there weren't any. And one of the reasons why I started writing is because I wanted girl adventures. But when I started writing this one, I finally decided, well, one of the things I can do with with this particular sub genre, like with the two moons when they that is an immediate signal that no this is not exactly mapping onto ancient China. So I don't have to have a widow's doing chastity. Suicide in order to gain credit for the family and you know, girls being killed because they lost their virginity and all I just don't even want to I am not interested in And a new version of The Handmaid's Tale. You know, I've seen too much of that over the decades, so I just shifted at once, because human beings still have a lot of things to work out. And so in this, I posited a universe where that, yes, that's the background, but people are working their way out of it sort of, sort of a mirror image to our times now, you know, I, I put in, I figured that the men seus figure was actually a woman, an empress, and, and went from there. And so she gave women the right to own property and took away them being sold and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I didn't have to. So there's a lot of tradition, still with the pressure. But women are still have agency. And so they're, as you get farther into the story, there's a there, there are women all over the place, as well as men

Lilly 40:58

absolutely. can never get away from them.

Sara 41:04

I think one of the things that Lily and I both picked out, we when we were talking about our notes, for this discussion, we both had highlighted that we loved the very real consideration that mouse has to put in to be perceived as being masculine, like the bamboo pea funnel and, and what to do about periods. Because I feel like a lot of the times in a novel that involves a girl dressing up as, as a man, or as a boy, that just kind of gets hand waved away. So are there did you have any other ideas that didn't make it into the book about how a mouse hides her femininity? Or?

Sherwood 41:47

No, I wanted to keep that broad strokes. No, this is not reality. There's always that tension between what reality is you want to put into a story, and you know, where the fantasy is, and, and what serves the story. And that's going to, of course, that's going to be different from writer to writer and from reader to reader. Now I can't buy this is bullshit. Oh, this is this is just as much reality as I want. You know, that's, that could be to two different readers of the same text. So for me, I figured, let's go with it until mouse is about 16. And then let's get rid of it. Let's let her decide. Nope, she's gonna figure out who she is. And she's small, and she's sturdy build, and she's got big, thick eyebrows, just like her brother and her dad. She's a boy, she is convinced against a boy, because no, people look at her and they expect to see a boy. Also, with another character, I wanted to deliberately get away from the squeak Enos of somebody being attracted to somebody way under age. And so while she's accepted as a boy by everybody around her, I could keep away from that, until she herself, starts discovering her own feelings, and starts acting on them. She is not acted upon first.

Sara 43:16

I really love that. And this is not so much about the phoenix feather and in specific, but just the agency that all of your female characters have and all of your books like I think, what is it Danner of the damned was the first book that I had read with ace representation. And I just I loved it. So I love seeing that come out in not not that I think mouse is Ace because she said very, like, she's while she's eight years old. I mean, she she's still kind of figuring out who she is. Right, but

Sherwood 43:48

well, she was 10 actually. Okay, when it starts, but that's close.

Sara 43:57

quite young. Yeah. Yep. So I just I really appreciate the care that goes into. And the consideration that goes into that.

Sherwood 44:06

Yeah, I just I'm not interested right tails of any kind. Other people can write those. Yep.

Lilly 44:15

We're gonna agree there. Yeah. Sarah, and I had a very long conversation disagreeing with each other over which of your previous works. This sort of reminded us of or maybe had some echoes of, I'm telling you.

Sara 44:34

So I should I should clarify to begin with, but we haven't read everything that you've written. Although I that is my goal.

Lilly 44:41

Oh, no. I wanted the answer to be some, like a completely third choice that neither of us had brought up. Well, it could have been even better. Without telling you what we thought which one of us was right. Do you see to make it less of a joke. Do you see any sort of some liberties between this in your previous works that are particularly striking. Are we just grasping at straws?

Sherwood 45:07

Well, I actually I tried to stay away from a stranger to command, which would be the most obvious or into the beginning. But no, I, I've done so much research on before I wrote into on boys boarding schools and the culture, and also military academies. I just did years and years and years of research into that stuff. So I kind of know how the, and there's Surprisingly, a lot of similarities in how those structures work in different cultures around the world, including over the ages. So I wanted to try to not to try to keep that section of that book from following the same pattern as, as I as the academy stories, you know, in my sartoria, Stella's things, but still, you have certain things you just can't get away from if you're going to write about a military academy. And also, I kind of fell into it, because it's easy. I know this stuff. So and I thought it'd be fun to have a girl in there, who's, you know, who is the stranger who comes to town. And so we look through her eyes. And she's not particularly impressed and does not want to be a boy, what she wants is a certain kind of training, and she gets good military training. But she comes out the other end, no, this is the kind I want. And so she leaves it. So in that sense, I would guess that you would have said into an or stranger command. Spreadsheets command.

Sara 46:46

Yeah, I was. I was thinking that that there were not not that. Not that they were the same, obviously, because there are a lot of differences, right. But there were a couple of similarities and what yeah, you've got you've kind of touched on this a little bit. But what were the differences between writing the academy scenes from from indice point of view? And then writing them from mouse's?

Sherwood 47:05

Well, Mel says an alien, she doesn't want to be there, in the loved the academy. Yeah, he loved it from the first day he was there. For him. It was, it was absolutely the right thing. He loved his companions. He didn't like the older boys when they were assholes. But he figured out a way around it. And he was really good at it. And he loved that for mouse. She's also good at it because she's got this sort of magical talent. But hers actually isn't quite it doesn't map for army training, which is everybody working together. She is pretty good at tactics. She's very good at strategy and tactics, especially strategy, she picked up tactics, but she is a strategic thinker, in spite of herself. Because she doesn't want to run wars,

Lilly 47:57

I really loved how the tension in this book came from mouse's natural aptitude towards the things she was working on versus her personal desires, instead of, you know, like we mentioned, trying to prove herself just as good as everyone else, or some of the things that have been done a huge number of times. I thought that just made for such a more interesting story. And again, even though there were familiar tropes in it, because the main sort of internal conflict was from such a different source, the whole thing felt new.

Sherwood 48:30

Oh, good, good. Well, she's hiding her talent. She's working hard to be mediocre, until she meets she can. Yeah,

Lilly 48:45

mine is entirely or my side of the argument is entirely in my head. And none of it has actually happened yet. But I want the similarities between now I haven't read crown and court duel in a very long time. But the the eventual love interest in that sort of has also a comrades slash rivalry relationship with the main character, but does eventually grow into something more. And I could see that happening. And I'll stop there because I'm not going to ask you to give spoilers but I'm very excited to see what happens next.

Sherwood 49:25

Yeah, there are twists and turns coming.

Sara 49:27

I look forward to seeing how she get in mouse's relationship develops whether it's friendship or antagonism or anything else see?

Lilly 49:35

Okay, I'm sorry. Now I'm just theorizing about your own book and you know, all the answers so

Sherwood 49:44

it's okay because it's nice to see how it's coming across to a reader.

Lilly 49:49

Good. I also feel like she can might be a noble woman who's also disguised as a as a man. I think when we got more of the discussion Should of how tall he is that that struck me is less true. But I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if there was a second girl disguised as a boy? And he has all of this training that's sort of inexplicable because he's not actually good at fighting when he first shows up. So how was he trained for all these things, but not fighting could have been a I could have been a high board, lady. We don't know. But that was a that was in the back of my head while I was reading it.

Sherwood 50:26

I do have a little bit of gender fun going on. But I'll just stop there.

Lilly 50:30

Okay. Luckily, the next book comes out soon, otherwise, we don't I would be pressing harder to give me all the secrets. So I was thinking we could talk about our pet peeves in girls pretending to be boys

Sherwood 50:52

books, like books, a lot of slack as writers just sometimes want to go in directions I'm not interested in but they can't be blamed for it. But the only ones and, and writers under 40 aren't doing this anymore. Thank God, the ones where we're the woman, the woman pretending to have man finally breaks down in some way emotionally and becomes all weak. And then of course, you know, the the day new mall comes on man, rescue, sir, those those used to fry my eggs. But I haven't seen that kind of thing for a long time. That's the only one I can think of.

Sara 51:37

Incidentally, I really liked the phrase fry my eggs in this context.

Lilly 51:45

I always feel like that trope leaves a lot of by awakening confusion on the table, or at least the ones that I've read in the past. If you know, there's often a love interest introduced before, it's revealed that the main character is actually a woman. So what's going through his head when he's falling in love with him? Who he thinks is a man?

Sherwood 52:06

Yeah, and why don't they get into that. But if there was, that's another that's a good point. Because there was always this. Well, in publishing, there kind of had to be this assumption. It has to be an ET relationship. And of course, there's a certain amount of tension there. So she had to reveal her femininity in some way. But yeah, you know, authors now can can get into the, you know, the gender fluid, which I think makes it much more interesting. Oh, so that is a hands off we read a book

Lilly 52:48

recently called smuggler's fortune, was that by Angela bored,

Sara 52:53

yeah, I was actually just gonna mention Angela board. Because she, the main character in her books, and she has their smugglers fortune, which is a I think, technically, it's a novella that takes place before fortunes full which is the first novel, although I would it chronologically it takes place first, but I would not necessarily recommend reading it first. But the main character there is disguised as a man. But it Lily you're being you're better than with words. Yeah.

Lilly 53:23

It's for for safety reasons she guys so that she doesn't get found. But in that book, or that novella, which is what I have read the the sort of loose love interest is just has no cares at all. So it's just doesn't even come up because he's so clearly sort of pad interested. And so that was a sort of, I thought, an interesting way of sidestepping the question without hand waving it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I really liked the way she handled that. Yeah, that sounds like fun.

Sara 53:58

Yeah, she and she's a great writer. I mean, her books are really good.

Sherwood 54:02

I'm making note of that.

Sara 54:09

Well,

Lilly 54:09

sure what I want to thank you again, for coming on to our podcasts. This has been just such a wonderful evening, and it's so great talking to you.

Sherwood 54:17

Well, I really appreciate you guys inviting me I'm I was thrilled to to meet you and to be able to talk about this and just that you liked the book.

Sara 54:25

Yeah, absolutely. I don't I don't think that anything can beat arthro When When you agreed on.

Lilly 54:35

That was sort of a peak moment of what's the worst that can happen. She'll say no.

Sherwood 54:42

I'll just say yes. Oh, but it'll be 2000 bucks. Every 15 minutes.

Lilly 54:50

Okay, you're right. We didn't.

Sherwood 54:52

You can always ask these three questions. So that's all about my marketing.

Sara 55:00

Ah, as we were saying, Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Two questions for you. One, can you tell us a little bit about what you're currently working on? I mean, I know that you've said that you're working on book four, and that you have a whole ton of books that are releasing coming up. And then the second question is, could you just tell our listeners where you can be found on the internet,

Sherwood 55:20

I have a website, just look up. Sherwood smith.net. And I try to get to Twitter once in a while, but I don't get there very often. It's, I'm dyslexic. And it's a format that just plays havoc with my eyes. You know, the little bits swirling back, I can't even abide Facebook for a second. So forget Facebook. I do have a blog on dream with. But I haven't been putting much up there. I've been sort of a hermit, you know, with the pandemic writing. But I want to get back into that because I enjoyed putting little essay lets up and you know, having people interact. So in good reads, those are the main places to find me.

Sara 56:03

And I should point out also that you have a Patreon.

Sherwood 56:11

Thank you. Yeah, that's new. I just started that June. So it's, it's not in my head as yes, this was my social media. Please join.

Lilly 56:21

does sound like we could go get some early sneak peeks of the next couple books if we go on there.

Sara 56:27

I mean, yeah, I'm already signed up. So

Lilly 56:31

yeah, but it would be cheating. If you sent it to me. And I'm not gonna do that. I wasn't I wasn't saying

Sara 56:35

that. It was saying that I already have access.

Lilly 56:39

You were just bragging, I guess. Yeah.

Sherwood 56:42

I think I'm up almost halfway through Book Three, posting a chapter a day. And you're not just posting the phoenix feather? No, I'm also posting a chapter a day and the the rise of the Alliance. I'm in Book Three now just started a week or two ago.

Sara 56:58

So there's lots of lots of content on some of it. The one

Sherwood 57:01

One person wrote to me and said, you have to put so much up there, they were really well, you don't have to read it.

Lilly 57:13

I will take it I will take their share of the content.

Sherwood 57:18

It's been interesting finding out that how different people approach content like this, like a couple of people ignore it for like two or three weeks, I'm gonna do a zoo. And I get these comments, a whole raft of comments on like 15 chapters all in one day. And then some people are waiting TV attire book is done before they will look at any of it as a very few are following along day by gay. And so I say your however people want to do it. That's okay. By me.

Lilly 57:49

That's interesting. I. So the content I'm familiar with published chapter by chapter is fan fiction. Yeah, that's what I know that usually publishes that way. But the risk was fanfiction is that they're usually posting before they've actually finished the work. Yeah. So if you start reading it, it might never end like it might never be completed. And that's very difficult for me, psychologically, but knowing that you have the book done, and it's just coming chapter at a time, that feels completely different, even though it's not actually I don't know, I can't explain it.

Sherwood 58:23

Well, that makes sense. And I've seen that and I've had been in situations Well, in the past, before there was an internet with friends who would share a chapter a day, it was something you really get into it. And then they've run into a wall and just never continuing on so you can't get mad at them. If they run out a story. They wrote on a story or lose interest or you know, whatever happens, or one case, a woman decided to get married, and then she went to did knitting. That was her creative outlet. I can't blame her.

Lilly 59:01

Well, I can I'm far enough away that I can for you

Sherwood 59:05

know, that was it. It was not knitting. It was quilting. And she made beautiful quilts,

Lilly 59:11

I'm sure but I can't read a quilt.

Sherwood 59:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Lilly 59:16

We'll let you get back to your evening. Thank you again for joining us. This has been such a blast. Well, thank

Sherwood 59:21

you both of you for having me. And I'm sorry if I talk too much.

Sara 59:25

No, not at all.

Lilly 59:26

There's literally what we asked you to do.

Sara 59:34

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of fiction fans.

Lilly 59:38

Come disagree with us. We're on Twitter and Instagram at fiction fans pod. You can also email us at fiction fans pod@gmail.com

Sara 59:49

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Apple podcasts and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Lilly 59:55

Thanks again for listening and may your villains all Please be defeated by