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283 Lindsey Byrd | Fantasy Author and Historian
185 Plays8 hours ago
What happens when your day job as a medical historian collides with epic fantasy?
Lindsey Byrd joins us to chat about finishing her fantasy duology, A Tale of Two Crowns with the recent release of the second novel, The Moon Blessed King.
Lindsey breaks down her high-stakes magic system that was inspired by real-world healthcare inequalities and the difference between fantasy romance and romantasy. Lindsey talks about being a reformed pantser and explains how her plotting style has evolved over the years.
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Transcript
Introduction to Lindsay Bird and 'A Tale of Two Crowns'
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? You can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by fantasy author and historian, Lindsay Bird. Hello. hi thank you for having me.
00:00:25
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on. Let's jump right in and talk about your new book, which is out right now. It's the second and final book in your duology, A Tale of Two Crowns. Tell us a little bit about The Moon Blessed King and and the duology as a whole.
00:00:43
Speaker
um So I guess to start for people who aren't familiar with the duology, um the Tale of Two Crowns duology takes place Naturally, the course of two books. um And it follows three point of view characters.
00:00:58
Speaker
um Kat and Elisean are the two male characters who, over the course of the duology, do eventually have a very slow bird romantic subplot.
00:01:09
Speaker
um And then Fenlia or Fen is the third point of view character and she is Elisean's sister. And the story of the book series is very much, there are two countries that are at war with each other. They both have very different religious ideological viewpoints and Kat and Elisean are an opposite sides of this war.
Magic Systems and Characters
00:01:30
Speaker
They both have different types of magic that comes from the different gods that their countries worship um that are very much life and death oriented. So givers are able to resurrect the dead and heal any wound. Reapers on the other side basically kill anything that they touch.
00:01:49
Speaker
And these two countries have been at war with each other for a very long time and The characters are essentially trying to find their way to end this war. And the crux of the story is basically looking at what does life and death mean to these people? What is the um ability of these people to actually find a common ground after centuries of warfare? um And on a very subtle side, it's also looking at health inequalities. That is kind of the pervasive undercurrent throughout the story as well.
00:02:23
Speaker
Okay, that's cool. So there's there's quite a lot going on here. And you said it's it's a subplot slow burn romance, the sort of Romeo and Juliet part of the story. Yeah, I don't know if I'd
Romance and Ideological Conflicts
00:02:35
Speaker
necessarily call it Romeo and Juliet because...
00:02:38
Speaker
I think, well, first off, they're not 14.
00:02:43
Speaker
They're a little bit more developmentally advanced beyond that. um But they are opposite dueling perspectives and kingdoms. And um I think as well, the story is not necessarily driven by their romance. And so i wouldn't call it a romanticcy. I think ah fantasy romance if you want to apply that because there is a romance subplot could exist but i think romanticity kind of implies it's a little more focused on the romance and it's not um but there is definitely this attraction in the first book that comes into fruition in the second okay okay so less romeo and juliet more enemies to lovers
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah. And then only in like the basic point, because like they meet each other and they're not like, I hate you. You are the worst person I've ever met. It's more of ideological enemies. So you have countries who have been at war. They don't personally have beef with one another. It's more of just like, you're my enemy on the
World-Building and Societal Implications
00:03:40
Speaker
surface. And so that side from like a purely technical standpoint, yes, enemies to lovers. um But they don't personally dislike each other. It's just that's just what fate has given them.
00:03:52
Speaker
Okay. Okay. In terms of, so, so it seems like the theme of death and, uh, some inequalities while you you were exploring here in terms of the world building, when you were designing kind of how the systems would work, the magic and and the, uh, war and everything and the ideal, the, the clashing ideologies, what, how, where did you start with world building? What was like the first thing and that that everything was built out from there?
00:04:18
Speaker
So I wrote this book in 2020, or i started writing it in 2020, where I was very much influenced by the fact that we were all in lockdown and people were dying constantly, and it was very difficult. And the first thing that came to my mind was um really this access to healthcare issue of if you had somebody who was capable of healing any wound, anything at all, raising the dead, what would that look like? And then immediately following that was the idea of the opposite of somebody who just could kill somebody at the same um capacity.
00:04:58
Speaker
And so the magic system formed first.
Writing Process Evolution
00:05:00
Speaker
And then from there, I started falling into, all right, well, if you had a world that had these types of people, what would that look like? So what would your healthcare look like if you had doctors, quote unquote, who could literally just resurrect you?
00:05:16
Speaker
um How would that influence how people behaved towards health or interacted towards health um and so on? And would that look like if you were in a war with somebody? Because if everybody's just getting healed and resurrected, what does that mean for warfare? Because like, no, it's a zero sum game. Yeah.
00:05:34
Speaker
So the world really built out of the magic system. Okay, right. and then And then did you kind of discover the characters once the world was fully fleshed out? It was a bit of the same, like happening at the same time. so i think i imagined...
00:05:53
Speaker
the character of like, all right, if somebody could just resurrect somebody, what would that be? And so the character of Elysian came very quickly. And then almost immediately on his heels was Kat, because i was looking at that inverse. And then as the world started to build, then it was, all right, culturally, how would their experiences have been shaped?
00:06:14
Speaker
And then going backwards from there. so it's a little bit like reverse engineering the world from the characters. Yeah. Okay, that's cool. So based on that, then, i would guess that you see yourself as more of a planner than a pantser.
00:06:30
Speaker
Absolutely not. No, um I think at this point, if I had to be very glib about it, I'm a reformed panster. ok um Only in the sense that um my agent really appreciates it when I give her synopses. sure yeah um But when I sat down to write this story, um the first draft that I was writing, I literally just sat down and here are these characters who have these abilities and they're in a war zone. And I just started writing. And as I was writing it more and more filtered in. And so i think you can kind of tell when you're reading the story of just like when information starts slipping in. um a lot of this has been smoothed out in the editing process, of course, but
00:07:18
Speaker
I think it also helps for the audience of how they're also getting introduced to the world. um So we're all discovering it together. okay um But yeah, I think it's one of the joys of editing once you really get a better idea of how everything comes together. But when I was first writing it, it was very much, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. And then I was just seeing how it played out as I was writing it and feeling what the words and the dialogue was actually coming across as.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. It's funny. That's not the first time I've heard something along the lines of I'm a reformed pantser. And it's, it's usually when an author has, is, it's when you sort of are
Adapting Writing to Market and Projects
00:08:00
Speaker
experiencing being on contract and having ah a book deal where it's like, Oh, i I actually need to get my acts together a bit here and I can't just mosey around discovering new things. Yeah, because the way I mean, for this book, definitely it was a pansting book for other stuff that I've been working on and submitting to my agent with the hopes of, you know, publishing in the future. It helps for her before I start a project to say, here's my idea. Here's what the thought is. And she can go, you know what? I think that's marketable. I don't think that's marketable. Let's see about changing this and that. So before I start throwing spaghetti against a wall, i actually have an idea if the spaghetti might even stick in the first place, if that makes any sense. So it's it's a little bit more collaborative. And she's so giving in the sense that she doesn't need
00:08:46
Speaker
a 50 page outline. it's just more of for me putting on the page, here's the structure and the arc that I'm imagining. do you think this will work? And then we take it in stages. And I think so it's I don't think I've given up being a panster. I think it's just more of being a little bit more tight so that when I collaborate with other people on those different stages of the project, they know what's in my head. Yeah.
00:09:10
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. so It's sort of evolved from being a bit more than a panther, but you do like to still discover the story as you're writing it, even if you've set up a framework around it Yeah, I think for me, um the actual process of writing, if I write a very detailed outline,
Influence of Experience on Writing
00:09:30
Speaker
somewhere in the back of my head, I'm just like, oh, the book is done. i don't need to write 500 pages because the book is clearly right there in 50. And so i like being able to say, you know what, this is these are the characters, this is what I want them to do. This is the general arc of where I want them to be at the end of the book.
00:09:51
Speaker
um But all the fine details, all of the deeper moments, all of the, you know, connections and the conversations and the evolution of the characters that get them from a to Z, that is stuff I get to discover while I'm writing. So it's a blend of pansting and planning, plansting, if you will, where um i kind of mix the two together and find a good way that doesn't make my agent pull her hair out at the end of the day. Yeah.
00:10:19
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And I'd imagine it's, it's sort of constantly evolving with every new book. You kind of hone it a bit more and you kind of experiment with new things. Yeah. So i don't have any like
Media Influence and Market Trends
00:10:30
Speaker
specific details on like what's going to come next, but the book that I sent to my agent as my potential option book, because of the nature of that specific book, it required a lot of planning because there's just a lot of moving parts that if I get the opportunity to share it with the world will make sense once it's there of why I needed to have a very clear plan.
00:10:52
Speaker
um So that book very much was very structured. I knew how I needed to plan in advance to get it out. um The current thing that I'm working on right now while we're waiting to hear back from folks is absolutely just, I have no plan. i am going in and just enjoying the experience, mainly because there's no pressure. It's like the book after the book after the book that I'm just kind of like writing while I'm waiting. And so I get to just return to my panster roots because no one expects much of this book at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it depends on the pressure. It depends who's waiting on it. And I think that helps in some way with the creativity and allows me to be a little bit flexible when I'm able to.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. And I'd imagine by mixing it up like that, by doing something which is a bit more structured and then doing something that's a bit looser and moving between the two you're going to kind of, um that's going to crystallize. And so like, even if you're now pantsing, the way that you pants now will probably be very different than the way that you pants like five years ago or went and whatever.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting. I saw someone talking on threads recently about the fact that pansters just don't do structure. And i don't agree with that necessarily, at least from my perspective. Everybody has their own experiences. I don't want to tell you how you're writing.
00:12:14
Speaker
um But for me, i feel like there's a structure that's just inherent in the back of my head where i know, okay, this book is going to be 80,000 words, 100,000 words, whatever. It's going to be X amount of words. And I know by, it's going to be X amount of words, then 30% is where I need to have this amount of action happening so that we can move the plot along. And so naturally, even when I'm Just I have no plan. I haven't written an outline while I'm writing. I go, oh, this is the moment where I need to have my call to action. This is the moment where I need to have this happen. And so just naturally from practice, I'm familiar with where I need certain moments to happen for the story to take shape in like a good word count. So I'm not like redacting thousands of words at the end of the day. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
And so like, I do think there is a structure that pansters have because they're just used to the practice after a while. um Or at least I can say that for myself. I don't want to prescribe other people's
Historical Background and Writing Influence
00:13:20
Speaker
experiences. um And so for me, even if I don't have a rigid structure at the beginning, that's like,
00:13:27
Speaker
a very clear, this is what happens in this chapter, in this chapter, in this chapter. i know where it's going, how it's going. And even while I'm in the process of discovering it, I know, okay, time to move along um yeah so I can get the story out.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think even, obviously that's going to be true of someone who's written a lot and you've practiced a lot and and you kind of understand the way of things. But I think even for for kind of newer writers, most writers are readers and often like, you know, love reading and have been reading their whole lives. And I think just...
00:14:02
Speaker
<unk>ve they've probably imparted a lot of that pacing just from reading so many books that it will be there in the subconscious where like this feels like about the time that a certain thing should happen like that this is where we should move into acts two or like this is where the pin the peak should happen or the dark night of the soul or whatever it might be Yeah. And I think what might trip up new writers is depending on the type of medium that they really invest a lot of time in So for instance, if you're used to reading standalone novels, I think you're going to have a pretty good idea of the pacing of that type of standalone novel. If somebody has watched a lot of TV shows or a lot of anime, for instance, um and that's usually where they collect a lot of their medium, they might have a problem when they're trying to write a novel because they're so used to the 500 episode arc.
00:14:51
Speaker
And then suddenly their novel is 300,000 words and they're confused at why they're not getting any pickup because it's just so long. the 300,000
00:15:03
Speaker
mega series works really well if you're used to that really long, expansive, here's 500 episodes of whatever. and so I think definitely if you're trying to work your pacing and understanding the size of what you need to do, just really look at, all right, well what's on the market right now? What am I trying to add to? Does my story fit into that medium in the shape that most of the other things...
00:15:32
Speaker
are currently out as. And that's not to say you can't break the curve or, you know, your book isn't going to be the special book that, you know, is going to be huge and magical and fantastic.
00:15:44
Speaker
um But it's a much harder sell. Yeah, absolutely. I think Brandon Sarneson's talked about how he, The Way of Kings, I think was one of the first novels that he wrote, but he could never publish it because no one would take, however long it is, 300,000 words, 400,000 words as a debut novel. So he had to publish and kind of prove himself with other novels before he was able to have the leeway to be able to publish his like 400, 500,000 word novels.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I will say for this duology, um for me, I started writing it straight through. And so I wrote both books at the same time, more or less.
00:16:21
Speaker
And what happened was I hit the 80,000 word mark in the first book and I was like, this is getting long. Yeah. I wasn't anticipating it to be a duology at that time. This was just the story. yeah And when i realized, okay, this isn't going to work. That was when I said, okay, where am I going to split this? How am I going to break this into two in order to make sure we don't have 300,000 page novel at the end of the day? um And so there is a break. and um luckily that I knew it was going to happen before it got too intense. So it wasn't a huge amount of editing,
00:16:59
Speaker
And I do think for me, the first book ends in a really good point to set up for everything that happens in the second book, but they're very much married together. And it's, it starts the next day in the second book. There's no giant time skip. um And so the books can be read very well from first to second straight through. and I think it is a nice read like that.
Choosing a Pen Name
00:17:20
Speaker
um But it's something to keep in mind that, you that most books are 300,000 words as a debut novel. Yes, almost never, because it's a huge risk for for a publisher. and it's a lot of paper. Exactly. It's a lot of paper. It just costs a lot more. The production costs a lot more. Your book is twice the size of most books. So yeah, it's a huge risk for a publisher. But i have people I've been speaking to recently,
00:17:46
Speaker
I have, there is a sense that duologies are quite popular at the moment. I think a published publishers feel a bit safer kind of signing off in into duology because they don't really want to do trilogies anymore because it's a big commitment on their side of things. So you might be on something with the, with the duology there.
00:18:03
Speaker
Well, I'm not an expert and I'm not an acquisitions at all, so I can't comment, but I'm glad that mine got through. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's all you can hope for. yeah Um, so when you're not writing fantastical stories, uh, am I right in thinking that you are a historian?
00:18:19
Speaker
he am a historian. Yes. I'm a historian of medicine. Okay. That's interesting. So what, what is it as in, do you have a medical understanding or is it, or do you not need that to just study the history of?
00:18:34
Speaker
Okay, so the obligatory answer is I'm not a medical doctor and I cannot prescribe medical advice. um Just to make that very clear. um What I can do, though, is as far as like the medical understanding, a lot of it is things that I have learned while doing the history of it. um So in my master's, um I was looking at how the British Enlightenment impacted mental health care in British asylums during the 18th century. um So it's really applying philosophy to mental health care and what that was doing culturally.
00:19:14
Speaker
um But the work that I've done at in my PhD and postdoc has been very much completely different on um the history of antibiotic development.
00:19:26
Speaker
Oh, see. Okay. And so in that there's a lot more modern medical um work. And so I've been looking from the 1980s until today, what has stopped pharmaceutical companies from investing in antibiotic development? How is antimicrobial resistance um proliferating? What can be done about it? so a lot of my research at the moment is in tuberculosis actually, and vaccines for tuberculosis and vaccines for other bacterial infections.
00:19:54
Speaker
what is going on in that particular market and how to bring them out. So there is a lot of medical knowledge that I have, but I would never tell somebody, you should take this antibiotic. You should not take, I would never do that. I'm looking at policies and culture and social um interactions, looking at the experiences of physicians and practitioners and people who are involved in the medical field and then how that actually relates to um the prescribing and the interaction with medicine itself.
00:20:24
Speaker
Okay, right. so So, okay. History is your A-plot and medicine is your B-plot, your subplot. Yeah, I mean, i think it's basically I'm doing history, but on a very specific focus and topic. And so I have all of the experience of what it means to be doing a historical research. But the thing I'm researching is medical and medical related things.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah that that makes sense. Like ah if you were a medieval historian, you wouldn't necessarily need to know how to fully make a suit of armor, but you would know a few things about armor and how it was put together and things. Okay, I get it.
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. um So a lot of medical doctors do become historians of medicines and vice versa. We're a blended field. So we have a lot of experience um talking to people who are practitioners or people who are in the pharmaceutical industry.
00:21:16
Speaker
Okay. That's interesting. Well, my next question was, does that kind of background and knowledge ever serve as inspiration for your stories?
00:21:27
Speaker
Absolutely. Um, so I think it really helped me with, um, the tale of two crowns specifically in the sense that, um, so In 2020, when I was first writing the book, I was really heavy into finishing up my master's dissertation or master's thesis rather, um
Cozy Cabin Reads and Personal Choices
00:21:50
Speaker
which was dealing a lot with philosophy and mental health care and imprisonment really in asylums, which does come across in various themes throughout the book.
00:22:02
Speaker
um And then while I was still writing it, that's when I ended up moving to France to do my PhD. And um in that mix of the pandemic and everything, um it was very much, all right, well, what is equitable access to healthcare? What is the life of a practitioner? What are they struggling with? How are they able to do that? And so all of that really played into the characterization I had with the givers themselves who very doctor coded. But what comes across a lot more in um the second book, Moon Blessed King, is there is a plague that happens in the second book that's on the back of the blurb. So you can you can see that, that's not a spoiler. um So there is a plague and it's really talking about, well, one country has a functioning healthcare infrastructure, the other one doesn't. And what that looks like um when you're dealing with crisis um And a lot of that played into just the world building and the construction of the different cultures as well. And so especially for The Tale of Two Crowns, it was very prominent.
00:23:05
Speaker
um And I think in other things I write as well, just how people um prioritize, I think, um whether or not it's related to their health. But I think I've had such a good understanding of The way different things impact decisions, the way your environment impacts your decision, the way your social network impacts that decision. All of that is stuff I i study so rigidly um to understand how things are shaping history that it I think it does come across very well, or at least for me in the books that I'm writing. Yeah, I mean, that sounds great. It sounds like being what where you are kind of between those two things of history and um medicine gives you like ah unique insight into not just obviously the medicine or just the history, but the kind of both. And like you said, the way that people and communities and cultures react around different things to do with that.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. um I just had one more question before we head over to the cabin. um And that was about, so you obviously you you are you work in academia and I presume you you publish in academia. So Lindsay Bird is a pen name and I'm always interested with pen names is like the how and the why that you chose that specific name. So is there a story behind Lindsay Bird?
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. So you're right. I do publish in academia, which is why I do use a pen name because I don't want people to um be researching ah the fiction history or the fiction or the the fictional medicine that I'm talking about and then be like, oh, she thinks that doctors can just touch you and heal you. It's like, no. I don't think that that's fantasy. Very aware. um but I do split them up and use a pen name for my fiction work. um My middle name, ah my legal middle name it is actually Lindsay. And so I kept that. And then um when I was a very little kid, my mom asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I told her I wanted to be a bird.
00:25:04
Speaker
okay so it is simple I made it very simple. I was like, you know what? I'm going to follow this life dream. i will become a bird. And so it was just Lindsay Bird.
00:25:15
Speaker
Okay. and And then obviously, cause you're a fantasy author, it was bird with a had to be, you know, it just had to be. There was, I, it didn't even occur to me to keep it as an eye. I was like, I'm just keeping it with a y and that's just what it's going to be.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Awesome. I always love to have hear a little story about why people choose certain certain pen names. yeah um Awesome. That brings us to the point in the episode where I ask you Lindsay, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
00:25:47
Speaker
um So I have a author friend who recently, last year, published a book called The House of Frost and Feathers. Yeah. And as soon as I heard that this was going to be one of the questions you asked, that was the first book that came to mind because it is like you can look at the cover online and it's very clearly like cozy woodland cabin in the middle of, you know, winter. Oh, yeah, I see it And for those who are unfamiliar, it's a very Baba Yaga-esque story where you've got a house with chicken legs running around and there's magic involved. And it's a lovely, lovely book that I've really enjoyed. It's by Lauren Visebron.
00:26:24
Speaker
Um, and it's, it's a great, uh, cozy esque book to read and when you're in the middle of a winter forest. Yeah. I mean, perfect. I'm looking at the cover now. It sort of looks like a gingerbread house on chicken legs.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yes. And they have a whole ah moment where they have to clean the legs and the chicken doesn't want to be, you know, scrubbed. It's very funny. Okay. so this isn't the scary kind of Baba Yaga story. This is the cozy kind of Baba Yaga story.
Podcast Wrap-Up and Engagement
00:26:50
Speaker
There's definitely tension in there, but um yeah, it's it's not as violent and worrisome as some other stories could be. Yeah. Okay, cool. That's a great choice. I love that. And I'd love to hear about new new books that that are coming out. So yeah, that's awesome. The House of Frost and Feathers. um Check it out, everyone. Next up, we are going to chat about how Lindsay first got into storytelling and her journey through publishing, finding an agent, landing a book deal, all that fun stuff. That will be available along with all of the other extended episodes at patreon.com forward slash write and write.
00:27:27
Speaker
And so it is in their best interest to get that book sold and sell well because that's how they get money. um So talk to your agent, really ask them questions, really be open and honest with your agent. And if for whatever reason you're getting the ick from your agent, talk to the people in your debut group and other authors about, hey, my agent is doing something I'm not really sure about. to get perspectives because if your agent is sabotaging your career or doing something you really don't think is right, it's really good to ask people for perspectives on whether that's true or not.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's basically just ask questions. And yes if you don't know what the the answer is, people will tell you. No one was born with the knowledge. Everyone had to find out at some point.
00:28:14
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, some great advice and, uh, it depends. M Stevenson, look out for it. If you're, if you're interested in going deeper into that sort of, uh, line of questioning and things like that. And that brings us to the end of the episode. Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me and telling us all about your writing and publishing um journeys. And of course, the new book and and the the finishing of the duology, A Tale of Two Crowns. It's been so cool chatting with you.
00:28:41
Speaker
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. wonderful. And for everyone listening, the Moonblest King part two of the duology is out right now, completing the series. So you can pick up both books and have the whole story all at once. um And if you want to keep up with what Lindsay is doing, you can follow her on Instagram and threads at thelindsaybird on Tumblr at lindsaybird and her website lindsaybird.com. That is bird with a Y.
00:29:07
Speaker
um To support this podcast, like, follow and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again, Lindsay. And thanks to everyone listening. we will catch you on the next episode.