Transcript
Speaker: Welcome everyone to Contents May Vary.
Speaker: I'm Angie Fiedler Sutton talking to geeky people about geeky things.
Speaker: I'm a proud fangirl geek with pieces published in Stage Directions, Den of Geek, The Mary Sue, and more.
Speaker: This episode's guest is author, screenwriter, and lapsed academic J.M.
Speaker: Fry.
Speaker: She has a BA in dramatic literature and an MA in communications and culture, and has discussed all things geeky through the lens of academia.
Speaker: Jess grew up in the comic book convention circuit, consuming copious amounts of sci-fi and Japanese TV, spending all of her pocket money on manga, and honing her skill as an award-winning cosplayer.
Speaker: and all the while watching her fellow fans, which later became the basis for academic studies in theater, performance, sociology, anthropology, and gender.
Speaker: Jessa is also a professionally trained actor who takes absolute delight in weird stories, over the top performances, and quirky characters.
Speaker: She's played everything from Marmee to the Red Queen, Jane Eyre to Annie, and dozens of strange creatures and earnest heroines as a voice actor.
Speaker: Welcome to Contents May Vary, Jess.
Speaker: Thank you very much, Angie.
Speaker: Let's start with your writing.
Speaker: I'm a big fan of origin stories, so kind of talk a little bit about that moment when you realized that what you were doing was more than, quote unquote, just a hobby that you wanted, that you knew that this was something you wanted to do as a living.
Speaker: Are we talking prose or academia?
Speaker: Either way, pick your choice.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Well, for academia, I went to theatre school.
Speaker: So I was a child actor.
Speaker: And then I went to theatre school for university, as you do as a child actor.
Speaker: And while I was there, I enjoyed the acting part of it.
Speaker: But I really enjoyed learning about theatre and learning about performance and the history of performance and the history of artifice and the history of pretending.
Speaker: Because, you know, that's not part of your education as a child actor.
Speaker: When, you know, when you're five, you learn how to sing and to dance and to read music and to count to eight.
Speaker: and to follow stage directions and to listen to the director and to look into the right camera.
Speaker: But no one ever talks about the history of performance or declamation or why we call part of the theater a VOM.
Speaker: So getting to actually learn about what it is that I had been spending my whole life doing was really fascinating.
Speaker: And the more I dug into it, the more I wanted to dig into it.
Speaker: You know, when professors assigned pages 10 to 20, I'd read pages 10 to 100 because I just couldn't wait to see.
Speaker: Like, I'm the person who has read every textbook that she's owned cover to cover.
Speaker: And I really, really enjoyed that.
Speaker: So when I finished my theater education, I actually switched majors from performance to dramatic literature because I enjoyed the history of it so much.
Speaker: And I wanted to take more classes in theater.
Speaker: performance analysis and character analysis and things like that.
Speaker: And I wanted to start writing my own plays and screenplays and shorts and things.
Speaker: Cause I, again, I didn't have any training in that.
Speaker: It was the first time I'd, I'd ever had the opportunity to make up my own stories and have other people act them out.
Speaker: So yeah, I really enjoyed that.
Speaker: And then I moved overseas to basically to pay off my student debt.
Speaker: I went to become an English teacher in Japan.
Speaker: partially because I had done my BA thesis project on the semiology, trying to figure out how to describe it without using buzzwords.
Speaker: The visual history of Japanese theater and how it influenced manga and anime and by extension, cosplayers.
Speaker: I found it really interesting to watch Bunraku and No and Kabuki
Speaker: And then to go watch Inuyasha and be like, oh, I can see specifically in Inuyasha, I can see the kabuki influences, which in turn were influenced by, or which was created as a reaction to no, which was influenced by Bunrako.
Speaker: So I could see the through line.
Speaker: And then you go to a convention and you're looking at Inuyasha cosplayers.
Speaker: You're like, oh my gosh, they look like kabuki actors.
Speaker: This is fascinating.
Speaker: So that's what I did my undergrad thesis project on.
Speaker: And I moved to Japan because I wanted to teach English and pay off my student debts, but also to go see more theater and to study more and to see what cosplay was like in Japan and to see what performance was like in Japan.
Speaker: And I actually had the great privilege of studying with a seiyuu, a voice acting sensei, and a nihonbouyo, a women's dance sensei for a little while until I got hit by a car.
Speaker: Ew.
Speaker: and shattered my knee.
Speaker: So that kind of ended my acting career.
Speaker: And I came home with kind of no idea what to do.
Speaker: I could still do the voice acting, but it was really hard to break into.
Speaker: And I came back and I was like, well, okay, so now what?
Speaker: And I, it's very weird to say, but I just, I went and did my master's degree because I literally had no idea what else to do with my life.
Speaker: And at least I knew I was good at academia, if I couldn't be an actor, if I couldn't dance anymore, if I couldn't stand on a stage, then at least I knew I was a smarty pants and I could make a living as a smarty pants.
Speaker: So I went back to school to do my master's degree and ended up doing it on Mary Sue fan fiction.
Speaker: So I ended up doing my thesis on Mary Sue fan fiction, but, you know, gave papers in San Francisco and upstate New York and here in Toronto at academic conferences on cosplay and gender and 9-11 and superheroes and with Doctor Who and all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker: I actually was sent to Cardiff to give a paper on Doctor Who in Canada to some people from the BBC and to fellow academics, which was
Speaker: really, really lovely.
Speaker: I actually met Rob Shearman there, who was the fellow who wrote the episode Dalek.
Speaker: Really, really wonderful guy.
Speaker: Amazing playwright.
Speaker: Beautiful horror short stories.
Speaker: I can't sleep after I read his collection.
Speaker: So yeah, that's what I sort of ended up doing.
Speaker: And then while I was doing all of that, I sort of thought that I would be an academic for the rest of my life.
Speaker: Like I would
Speaker: become a TA, I'd be a professor, I'd eventually get tenure, although no one gets tenure anymore.
Speaker: And I would just spend my life giving papers and teaching kids.
Speaker: And I mean, that sounded amazing.
Speaker: It still sounds amazing to me.
Speaker: I'd love to be a professor at university.
Speaker: I still would love to do it.
Speaker: I just haven't managed to find a position.
Speaker: But while all of that was happening, I was also a huge fan fiction nerd.
Speaker: And I loved writing fan fiction.
Speaker: I wrote my first fan fiction for Sailor Moon in 19, no, not Sailor Moon, Dracula the series in 1991.
Speaker: When I, that's, I will not tell you how old I was, but in 1991, I shared my very first fan fiction on a Yahoo group.
Speaker: Ooh, I remember those.
Speaker: I'm actually friends with the person who helped me share it the first time.
Speaker: Her name's Ruthann.
Speaker: She's a phenomenal author herself now.
Speaker: And she actually is designing the covers of six of my forthcoming books for me.
Speaker: But while I was doing all of that, fan fiction was a hobby.
Speaker: Writing stories was a hobby.
Speaker: It was just something to do with no pressure.
Speaker: I could just be creative without anybody judging me or having to audition for it or having it have to go through judges or adjudicating people.
Speaker: committees and things like that.
Speaker: It was just something that I could do and then put it out there and share it.
Speaker: And if people loved it, they didn't have to buy tickets.
Speaker: They didn't have to pay me.
Speaker: It was just something that I could share for the love of it.
Speaker: And while I was doing that, so I told you I got hit by a car.
Speaker: I had been writing fan fiction up until that point.
Speaker: And then I was laid up for six months and I was like, well, I guess this is where I try to write a novel.
Speaker: So I tried to write a novel.
Speaker: Now, I had been trying to write a novel before, but it got bloated and it ended up being like 350,000 words.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, that's not the novel that's going to get me an agent.
Speaker: That's not the novel that's going to help me break into the industry.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: I'll put it out somewhere where I can share it, but that's not the one.
Speaker: I'm going to sit down.
Speaker: Well, I'm not going to sit down.
Speaker: I'm going to lay on my butt because I've broken my knee and I'm going to try to write a novel that I can sell.
Speaker: And that novel ended up being Triptick, which was my debut novel and came out in 2011.
Speaker: So I just sort of kept writing original stuff because people kept paying me for it.
Speaker: Well, that is a whole lot of information to go through and we'll be hitting each and every, well, not each and every one, but we'll, there's a lot of things that you mentioned that I want to make sure that we cover, but there's a lot of stuff in there for those who are longtime listeners to my podcast.
Speaker: They know I also am a theater nerd.
Speaker: I was a theater minor in my undergrad and actually my writing first started with Casey stage magazine back in Kansas city, where I covered the theater.
Speaker: industry voluntarily for the Kansas City area.
Speaker: And that's kind of when I first started writing journalism.
Speaker: And then it wasn't until I went for my master's that I first started going, you know what?
Speaker: I could also go into entertainment and geek media and kind of flip from there.
Speaker: But so I've also covered academia.
Speaker: One of my thesis advisors was Henry Jenkins, the head of the major player in ACA fandom.
Speaker: So I have to tell you, when I applied for my master's, I specifically applied to MIT specifically to work with Professor Jenkins.
Speaker: Because obviously I wanted to write about Mary Sue, so obviously I wanted to work with him.
Speaker: And I got on the wait list for MIT, and he announced that he was going to NorCal.
Speaker: So I declined MIT.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Weird thing.
Speaker: Well, if he wasn't going to be there, I didn't see the point in spending.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know, so I, I just went Toronto Metropolitan University with York university mixed in.
Speaker: They have a joint program.
Speaker: So I am unbelievably envious that you work.
Speaker: Well, I mean, it wasn't that I worked with him massively.
Speaker: Um, he was one of three of my advisors.
Speaker: And so I maybe saw him like three or four times throughout the school year.
Speaker: Um, it was only a nine month program.
Speaker: So, uh,
Speaker: But that's actually a good step in.
Speaker: Let's talk a little bit more.
Speaker: I think that's probably what caught my interest in the first place with you, is that you work on Mary Sue's.
Speaker: For those who are unfamiliar or may only have a brief idea of what Mary Sue's are, can you kind of give me the elevator pitch of what Mary Sue's are and why you would want to write about them?
Speaker: So a Mary Sue is technically a derogatory term.
Speaker: for a character in any kind of media, but specifically fan-created media, fan work of some sort, who is the central...
Speaker: gravity well of plot and character.
Speaker: So it comes from a short story by Paula Smith in Star Trek magazine from 1972 or three, something like that.
Speaker: And she had published the short story in the zine about Ensign Mary Sue, who shows up on the Enterprise and Kirk falls in love with her and Spock falls in love with her and she saves the day and Con listens to her because she's so reasonable and she's cute.
Speaker: And she looks good in a mini skirt and she has violet eyes and she can do everything that Chekhov can do, but better than Chekhov can do it.
Speaker: And everything that Sulu can do, but better than Sulu can do it.
Speaker: So she's...
Speaker: this author substitute character for those of us who wish we could fall into these worlds and be everybody's love interest and everybody is better than everybody else.
Speaker: And it's wish fulfillment.
Speaker: Now, Paula Smith wrote this story in reaction to all of these wish fulfillment stories she was seeing get published in zines.
Speaker: And she,
Speaker: To this day, the term Mary Sue is pejorative.
Speaker: It's meant to insult the writer.
Speaker: This character is just too much like you.
Speaker: It's just too much wish fulfillment.
Speaker: It's just too perfect.
Speaker: And I, as the reader, am frustrated by it.
Speaker: And I think it's pedantic and stupid and silly and childish and girly.
Speaker: And my thought, first off, I would like to say, if you look at Mary Sue characters in fiction, what people call Mary Sue characters in fiction, when they're a male Mary Sue, it can be a Gary Stu or a Marty Lou or whatever, but I would just call them Frodo Baggins.
Speaker: A lot of people, what they're willing to accept in a male character, they're not willing to accept in a female character.
Speaker: And you see a lot of people on the internet screaming about like Captain Marvel or strong female characters.
Speaker: It's a term I don't like either, but well-written female characters.
Speaker: or violent female characters in media, people deride them as Mary Sues simply because they're female, not because they are a Mary Sue.
Speaker: You have to be all those things I listed to actually be a Mary Sue.
Speaker: Captain Marvel is not a Mary Sue.
Speaker: Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, that's not a Mary Sue.
Speaker: You're just a dude who doesn't like women in the lead.
Speaker: Just admit that.
Speaker: Don't misuse the term.
Speaker: So I did look into that a little bit.
Speaker: I think some of my favorite Mary Sues are Frodo Baggins, the doctor.
Speaker: Like tell me that Sidney Cecil Newman wasn't using wish fulfillment for Doctor Who.
Speaker: The doctor is perfect.
Speaker: He's everybody loves him or them or her, whatever gender they feel like this time round.
Speaker: They're the center of every plot.
Speaker: They know everything.
Speaker: They can do everything better than the person who can actually do it.
Speaker: They can fight ghosts better than Charles Dickens and they can
Speaker: save the world better than James Bond.
Speaker: Like, the doctor is a Mary Sue, but people won't call them that because the character is male.
Speaker: So some of my work was surrounded by that, but that's, people have done that work before.
Speaker: I didn't need to do that work.
Speaker: For me, my thesis was about why Mary Sues are actually quite important in the development of a young artist's life.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Again, I'm trying to encapsulate 1500 pages in like three seconds.
Speaker: But basically the idea is that as a child, you engage in elastic play.
Speaker: So you go out onto the playground with your friends and you say, okay, I'm April O'Neil and you're Donatello and you're Splinter and you're Shredder and we're going to play Ninja Turtles.
Speaker: And you inhabit those characters.
Speaker: You inhabit those places.
Speaker: You put yourself into those stories.
Speaker: And in my mind,
Speaker: creators, the next logical step for that, for a creative child, is to say, okay, you're Donatello, you're Michelangelo, you're Shredder, you're Splinter, and I'm a different turtle.
Speaker: I'm going to make up my own character.
Speaker: And a lot of, we see a lot of girls doing, because, or female identifying children, because there's a solid lack of representation on television and in films.
Speaker: And the parody is better now.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: The parody is much better.
Speaker: But you're still not seeing as many trans kids or as many BIPOC kids or as many queer kids.
Speaker: So when kids don't see representation for themselves on television or in film or in books or in games, then they invent a character for themselves to inhabit.
Speaker: Halluxson and Boos wrote this really great essay called Making Room for Mary Sue at Hogwarts.
Speaker: And they talk about
Speaker: a Mary Sue character in an established media text as being a wedge.
Speaker: And you as that Mary Sue character, that self-representative character, you as the writer, drive that wedge into the narrative and force space for yourself.
Speaker: If I don't see enough
Speaker: I don't know, black kids like me in Hogwarts, then I'm going to drive a wedge into the narrative, crack it open and build a space for myself as a black writer or as a queer writer or as a trans writer.
Speaker: And I think that's vital as creators because the minute we can start seeing ourselves in the stories we love is the minute we can start creating stories with people like ourselves.
Speaker: I think it's an absolutely vital stepping stone into a creative life and being able to create your own stories and your own worlds and your own characters.
Speaker: So as much as people deride Mary Sue's, I firmly believe that they're an extremely important part of a creator's development.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: No, I'm actually one of the people who are in the field or in the idea of reclaiming the term.
Speaker: So kind of how, I mean, you did the anime first.
Speaker: How did anime turn into Mary Sue?
Speaker: It was honestly, there was a class that I took in fourth year theater school about, I remember the professor's name was David Fancy, but I don't remember the name of the course.
Speaker: But in that course, I wrote like a five page course.
Speaker: five to ten page essay on the value of fanfiction.
Speaker: He had made some, somebody in class, not him, not Professor Fancy, but somebody in class had made some derogatory comment about fanfiction, not knowing, of course, that I was a mildly BNF, I'm not going to say I was like Cassandra Clare, but I had a fan following.
Speaker: not knowing that somebody who did this seriously was sitting beside them.
Speaker: And I was like, fuck you.
Speaker: And then I wrote this paper in response to it, whatever our next assignment was, I can't remember, but I wrote this whole paper that the class had to read about
Speaker: Why fan fiction matters?
Speaker: Why Mary Sue's matter?
Speaker: Why creativity for the sake of creativity matters?
Speaker: And especially when you were in an arts program, you know, having done one yourself, there's so much talk of monetization, monetization.
Speaker: How do you make money?
Speaker: How do you get people in the seats?
Speaker: How do you sell tickets?
Speaker: What about creation for the sake of creation's sake?
Speaker: And for me, that's what fan fiction and fandom and cosplay and fan art and filth and now fan binding.
Speaker: My gosh, I don't know if you know anything about fan binding, but I just learned about it and it's blowing my mind.
Speaker: I'm assuming it's when you print out a fanfic and bind it.
Speaker: Yeah, there are people out there who are learning ancient and traditional book binding techniques specifically so they can print out their favorite fan fictions and bind them into these gorgeous books.
Speaker: unbelievable editions with flyleaf paper and illustrated edges and gilt and leather.
Speaker: And I saw somebody did one where they inserted LED lights so that when you open the book, it lights up.
Speaker: I think it was a Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: Like, why does all of that have to be monetized?
Speaker: Why can't it just be a hobby?
Speaker: Why can't we share what we love for the sake of loving it?
Speaker: And this essay was basically me flipping the middle finger to this classmate.
Speaker: And I was so impassioned about it that when it came time to sort of decide what I wanted to do for my master's, I was like, I'd like to expand on that essay.
Speaker: I would like to take that 10 pages and, as I said, turn it into 15 pages.
Speaker: One five zero zero zero.
Speaker: It was big.
Speaker: That's what master thesis are.
Speaker: Speaking of fan fiction, one of the other things that caused me to put you across my radar is that I read that you were doing a screenplay based off of To a Stranger.
Speaker: To a Stranger was years ago.
Speaker: At around that time, I was actually working professionally in film.
Speaker: I was a PA and I was an actor and I was a background artist.
Speaker: And I was trying to break into the writing side of things.
Speaker: I was writing a web series.
Speaker: I had written a couple of features.
Speaker: I was trying to find a script manager.
Speaker: And while all of that was happening, Mad Laurie was...
Speaker: writing or was releasing performance in the leading role, which is a Sherlock AU fan fiction where Sherlock and John are actors and they have been cast as lovers in a film called To a Stranger.
Speaker: And I loved the story.
Speaker: But the most important thing for me is that Laurie set it in Toronto, which is where I live.
Speaker: And she said it in the film industry in Toronto, which is where I work.
Speaker: And I was convinced that Laurie must, she must work in the film industry.
Speaker: I must know her.
Speaker: I must, like the details that she put in were perfect.
Speaker: And I finally reached out to her and I said, okay, okay, who are you?
Speaker: Because you just released a chapter where they cross a field and kiss.
Speaker: And I'm literally on set for a movie of the week where the characters are about to cross a field and kiss in the dramatic clinch,
Speaker: which one of the PAs are you?
Speaker: Tell me.
Speaker: I'm on the show.
Speaker: And then she was like, yeah, no, I live in the States.
Speaker: I volunteer at a zoo.
Speaker: I don't work in film.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: So we started talking and I couldn't help but start getting these ideas for what the film was going to be.
Speaker: Because in the story, Laurie never really describes the plot of the film.
Speaker: You find out a little bit about the scenes that they're filming and the kinds of characters they're playing.
Speaker: But she had expressed that she was not writing a film.
Speaker: She was writing a story of two people making a film.
Speaker: And the ideas just kept spinning and spinning and spinning in my head.
Speaker: And I mentioned to a group of other friends that,
Speaker: that I think I'd sort of figured out what the screenplay would be.
Speaker: And they were all like, oh my God, write it, write it, write it.
Speaker: So I wrote the first act and I messaged Lori and I said, is it okay if I continue?
Speaker: And she was like, yeah, go ahead, write the rest of it.
Speaker: So I actually ended up finishing the entire screenplay and posting it.
Speaker: You can read it right now on AO3.
Speaker: But what ended up happening with it is
Speaker: I was so proud of it and I thought it worked so well that with Laurie's blessing, I went back in and I de-Sherlocked it.
Speaker: So I scrubbed the serial numbers off and shortened it significantly because the difference between a screenplay written for fanfiction and a screenplay written to sell is that
Speaker: as a screenwriter, it's not my job to tell the actors how to do theirs.
Speaker: And it's not my job to tell the director how to do theirs.
Speaker: And it's not my job to tell the scene artists how to do theirs.
Speaker: So I had to go back in and erase a lot of like motivation and descriptions of what the rooms look like and things like that.
Speaker: The things that I put in the fan fiction specifically, so everybody was imagining the same thing I was.
Speaker: Rachel Replogle, Actual screenplays when you read them are extremely bare bones, they are blueprints and nothing else.
Speaker: Rachel Replogle, And yeah, and I started submitting it around to festivals, it actually was accepted into five international.
Speaker: Rachel Replogle, Five or six international film festivals, it won a couple of awards, I pitched it to Netflix to the CBC to a couple other places, I had some really great interest with it, there was a company.
Speaker: that had said, yeah, okay, we'll do it.
Speaker: We were still working on the final details of the contract.
Speaker: I'd done a couple of table readings.
Speaker: I had done heavy revisions based on those table readings and then pandemic and it died.
Speaker: When it comes to writing, do you find yourself using different muscles, I guess is the best way to do it when you write fiction versus screenplay versus a playwright?
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: Yes, but only in terms of what I'm putting on the page itself.
Speaker: When you're writing for the screen or for the stage, you have to be a lot more concise.
Speaker: You have to get your point across in the fewest number of words possible.
Speaker: You can't have long rambling dialogue.
Speaker: instances of dialogue, I mean, you can, but you have to make sure that, I guess what I'm saying is that when you're writing for screen or for the stage, you have to convey the entirety of the story in 90 minutes.
Speaker: So everything that you write has to do triple or quadruple duty.
Speaker: Whereas when you're writing prose, although I am a chronic overwriter, you can...
Speaker: have people come to Revelations slowly.
Speaker: You can have dialogue that rambles a little bit.
Speaker: You can spend a page and a half describing the view of the garden.
Speaker: And that's one of the joys of prose is that you get to take a little bit more time with it and let the story breathe a little bit more and let the reader come to Revelations in a bit more of an organic, natural way.
Speaker: And with a script, you have to
Speaker: make sure that everybody is understanding the same thing and that every line of dialogue conveys character but also forwards plot but also but also but also so it's i find it a lot more difficult to write a script because i triple guess
Speaker: every word I put on the page.
Speaker: And again, because I am a chronic overwriter, usually what I'll do is overwrite the thing and then tighten, tighten, tighten, tighten until it's 90 pages.
Speaker: That kind of leads into a question I like to ask all of my writers.
Speaker: It's not a where do you get your ideas per se, but it's more of, but it's kind of in the same idea of writer's block.
Speaker: How do you combat burnout?
Speaker: How do you combat make, you know, showing up at the page and feeling like,
Speaker: what what am i doing why am i doing this i'm sorry life against this book that's due in what day is it today the 20th it's due in 10 days and that's the that's that's the extended deadline so first off i don't believe in writer's block right in burnout burnout
Speaker: I believe in, I am in the middle of it.
Speaker: I'm in the middle of a two year length of burnout.
Speaker: It's not like anything's been happening these past two years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Two years of burnout.
Speaker: But so for me, I don't believe in writer's block.
Speaker: If you, if you can't sit down and write the thing and you're blocked, quote unquote blocked, that's the story telling you something.
Speaker: or your life telling you something.
Speaker: It's one or the other.
Speaker: There's an internal reason why you can't write the story, or there's an external reason why you can't write the story.
Speaker: Is the external reason that you don't have the right coffee and you haven't lit the right candle and it's not the right time of day, or is it that
Speaker: your mother is in the hospital and it's all you can think about, or is it, there's something external happening.
Speaker: And when you deal with that, then you'll be able to come back to the page and the story will flow.
Speaker: Or if it's something internal, then it's something in the story that's not functioning, that's frustrating you, that's blocking the creativity.
Speaker: So it's that you're telling it from the wrong point of view, you're in the wrong tense, you've started in the wrong place.
Speaker: you don't love the story the way that you thought you did, and you're going to have to put it down.
Speaker: And that's okay.
Speaker: By the way, you're allowed to start something and then go, you know what?
Speaker: Nah, and put it down.
Speaker: Just because you started it doesn't mean you have to finish it.
Speaker: So that I feel is what people call writer's block is actually something stopping you.
Speaker: In terms of burnout, I mean, what makes me go back to the page every day right now is that it's due in 10 days and you received my advance, so I have to finish it.
Speaker: Or they take the money back and they can't take the money back because I paid off my credit card with it.
Speaker: Yeah, for me, that's finding something in the story that excites you.
Speaker: I know the reason that I'm hesitating with the story right now is because I'm about to write the, I'm literally about to write the lover's spat and I don't want to, I don't want them to fight.
Speaker: I know they're going to be fine at the end of it, but I don't want them to fight.
Speaker: So I know that's why I'm hesitating with that.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Creativity is like, it's like you said, it's like any other muscle.
Speaker: It's like any other thing that you practice.
Speaker: If you don't pick it up once a day, then it's going to atrophy on you.
Speaker: And I'm not saying you must write every day because that's BS.
Speaker: That's absolute BS.
Speaker: But I feel like you have to do something creative every day.
Speaker: So if you're struggling to sit at
Speaker: the computer and write, then go embroider.
Speaker: Go sing.
Speaker: Go for a walk.
Speaker: Make a decoupage.
Speaker: Sew some curtains.
Speaker: Bake some cookies.
Speaker: Do something that fulfills your soul in a creative way just for yourself.
Speaker: And just turn your brain off and let it stop spinning and stop reprimanding yourself.
Speaker: And it will turn back on.
Speaker: For me, I find when I'm in my worst burnout, when all I want to do is just lay in bed and sleep, and I'm resentful of the book that I have to write, even though I love it, I hate it.
Speaker: I go and read fan fiction.
Speaker: I go and watch movies.
Speaker: I go and watch a TV show.
Speaker: And I make a game with myself of like, okay, if my characters...
Speaker: This goes back to the Mary Sue thing in the elastic play.
Speaker: If my characters suddenly fell into this world, how would they react?
Speaker: I'm rewriting Time and Tide right now.
Speaker: So I have a time traveler character named Samantha, and I'm struggling to understand her character, and that's causing, that's blocking me.
Speaker: It's causing me issues.
Speaker: So I went and watched Red, White, and Royal Blue, and was like, okay, so if Sam was Alex's best friend,
Speaker: What would she say to Alex when he realized that he's bi and he came out?
Speaker: Or what would Sam's lover's Daisy, what would Daisy say to Prince Henry if he was questioning his sexuality?
Speaker: And that helps me sort of get out of my own head and play with the story again.
Speaker: And when the story becomes fun again, then I find it's easier to sit down and play.
Speaker: I was going to go into some more writing tips, but that you brought up bisexuality and that's something I wanted to talk about too.
Speaker: I was looking over your author frequently at media thing and you have that your Fry's Tales features insightful, thought-provoking meta-narratives, socially relevant tales surrounding themes of feminism and sexuality wrapped in engaging human stories.
Speaker: And you also mentioned that you're proudly bisexual.
Speaker: So let's talk a little bit about that and kind of how that...
Speaker: informs your writing, I guess is the best way to put it.
Speaker: I don't think I've ever thought about how my sexuality informs my writing, except for the fact that my characters are, generally speaking, not straight.
Speaker: And it's not so much that I'm making a conscious decision, although I have, I kind of have like a Pokemon of queers in my characters.
Speaker: This one's bi, this one's femme, this one's butch.
Speaker: That one's gay, this one's a lesbian, that one's trans.
Speaker: I don't mean to do it, but yeah, I think you could line them all up in order of the shade of the rainbow they are.
Speaker: But it's just because that's what my life looks like.
Speaker: Queers attract queers.
Speaker: Good people attract good people.
Speaker: Except for my siblings and my parents, I don't think I know any straight people.
Speaker: So that's what my books look like.
Speaker: And if that's an informed choice, then I guess that's a choice.
Speaker: It's, I want the world that my characters live in to reflect the world that I live in.
Speaker: I'm stumped because I'm just a person.
Speaker: And who I love is just who I love.
Speaker: In the same way that Danielle Steele loves who Danielle Steele loves and Stephen King loves who Stephen King loves and Neil Gaiman loves who Neil Gaiman loves, that obviously...
Speaker: informs the characters they write.
Speaker: That obviously freights the narrative, that obviously shows up in hegemonic beliefs that inform the characters' choices and narratives.
Speaker: And I don't see why just because I could stick my hands down the pants of my lover and be happy with whatever I find is anything different than anybody else.
Speaker: Back to, you know, the nuts and bolts of writing.
Speaker: Something else I always like to ask my writing interviewees.
Speaker: George R. R. Martin joked that there are two types of writers, pantsers and plotters.
Speaker: What do you consider yourself?
Speaker: A plancer.
Speaker: A little bit of both, huh?
Speaker: A little bit of both.
Speaker: So I'm definitely at the beginning of,
Speaker: Of the story, I'm definitely a pantser, meaning I fly by the seat of my pants.
Speaker: By about midway through the process, I stop and I step back and then I plan what the rest of the story is going to look like.
Speaker: And then I become a plotter.
Speaker: I say that I write like laying a garden path.
Speaker: So for me, the first kernel of an idea is usually like a sentence or a phrase or a scene.
Speaker: For Triptych, for those of you who've read it, the very first line that I wrote for Triptych was, there's a UFO in my strawberries.
Speaker: I loved this idea of a UFO crashed into a strawberry patch in a rural Ontario farm.
Speaker: And then, of course, for those who've read it, it later became raspberries because I realized I set the story too late in the year for it to actually be strawberries.
Speaker: But the image still holds.
Speaker: And I saw write whatever that first line or that first scene or that first thought is, and then I'll sit back and go, okay, what is this?
Speaker: Who is this?
Speaker: Let's just dive in and find out.
Speaker: And I think this goes back to the acting training where you, I just, I just improv and freestyle and play.
Speaker: And this is when I get up and talk as the character and I,
Speaker: answer back as myself where I stare in the mirror and interrogate who this person in my head is.
Speaker: I do a lot of acting exercises to figure out what the plot, what the story is, where the jokes are.
Speaker: And I sit down and I start writing the tent poles, the set pieces, the big things that I want people to draw fan art of.
Speaker: And those I would call like the big interesting stones that you put in a garden path.
Speaker: So I know where the path starts.
Speaker: I've sort of figured out where the path is going to start.
Speaker: And then I've found all the big interesting stones and I lay the big interesting stones or I move them.
Speaker: Maybe that stone doesn't look so good there.
Speaker: Maybe if I flip it like this or if I turn it over here and I sort of get a vague idea of what it's gonna look like.
Speaker: And then I go find the end of the story.
Speaker: And I usually write, if not the climax, then the denouement, like second or third.
Speaker: I write the opening first,
Speaker: the cool bits, second, third, fourth, whatever.
Speaker: And then I write the ending.
Speaker: And now I know where the path ends.
Speaker: So I know where I have to shift the cool stones to make it work.
Speaker: And then I go in and I sprinkle in the gravel and I connect the whole thing together.
Speaker: And I like this metaphor because I'm not paving anything.
Speaker: So I'm leaving space between the stones, between the gravel for other people's interpretations to sprout up.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: which is my long-winded way of saying, if you want to write fan fiction of my stories, please, please do.
Speaker: Well, that, you know, kind of leads into my next question in terms of if someone wanted to get into writing, what would be some of the tips and tricks that you would, if someone came to you and said, hey, I want to start writing, what would you tell them?
Speaker: That's a really hard one because everyone...
Speaker: Everybody has to find their own way into it.
Speaker: I can't say you, you have to do it exactly like I did.
Speaker: I can't say you have to go and start writing fan fiction.
Speaker: I'm not going to say you have to go take an MFA.
Speaker: I'm not going to say you have to go read Stephen King's on writing or any of the 500,000 other books that are out there on how to do it.
Speaker: I think you have to, somebody who wants to be a professional writer has to write with joy.
Speaker: first.
Speaker: You have to find a way to enjoy it.
Speaker: You can't, I mean, I guess it's like being a ballet dancer, right?
Speaker: You can't wake up one day and say, I'm going to be the prima ballerina of the royal company.
Speaker: You have to like dancing because that's what makes all of the discipline worth it.
Speaker: You have to enjoy doing it and find joy doing it because you may break a knee doing it or you may
Speaker: you're going to spend hours and hours and hours and hours working your body and not sleeping enough and having to change your eating habits and everything.
Speaker: All of these agonizing things that you have to do to be able to just dance.
Speaker: And writing is the same.
Speaker: It's not as physically intensive unless you're using a treadmill desk.
Speaker: But if you don't already love telling stories, then you're going to hate being a writer.
Speaker: because the telling stories part of writing is about 10% of it.
Speaker: And the rest of it is sitting your ass down at the computer for literal hours every day
Speaker: just typing and it's so goddamn boring.
Speaker: Gingerbread is the most boring thing on the planet because the only thing that's happening is in your head.
Speaker: And then after you write it, then you have to edit it.
Speaker: And after you edit it, you have to revise it.
Speaker: And after you revise it, you have to edit it again.
Speaker: And then you have to polish it.
Speaker: And then you have to give it to a proofreader.
Speaker: And then your editor looks at it and goes, I want to change everything about act one.
Speaker: So then you have to change everything about act one and the fun is gone.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie, the fun is gone.
Speaker: By the time you hit draft 10, you hate the thing.
Speaker: So if you don't already love it, that's going to be 10 times worse.
Speaker: So if somebody wants to be a writer, the first thing I would say is find a way to make writing joyful for you.
Speaker: And honestly speaking, talking about the burnout that I've been going through since 2019, I did, I wrote a whole, I forced myself to write a book over the pandemic and I adore the book.
Speaker: I think it's one of the best things I've ever written, but I despise it because I forced myself to do it and I didn't find any joy in it.
Speaker: And then I actually have that book.
Speaker: out on query right now, I'm looking for a new literary agent.
Speaker: And I've had a lot of rejections on it.
Speaker: And it's very difficult and it's very frustrating and it's very heartbreaking.
Speaker: And then, and then I got this deal with Wattpad for the book I'm revising right now.
Speaker: And because I wrote this book so long ago, I've sort of forgotten the joy that came with originally telling the story.
Speaker: So right now this, this revision has only been work.
Speaker: And I'm gonna find the joy again in it.
Speaker: I know I will.
Speaker: When I've handed it in and we're doing all of the publication for pre-release and all of that, I'll be like, oh yeah, right, I enjoy this, right, right.
Speaker: But right now it's agonizing, worthwhile, but agonizing.
Speaker: And having been for the last three years just stuck in this burnout mode where I hate writing, where I was telling my writing friends I'm going to quit, that I'm never going to write another novel again.
Speaker: A friend said, you know, you like this sort of genre of YouTube video.
Speaker: You could have.
Speaker: And I said, yeah, it's something that I would have liked to have done in a past life is this other occupation.
Speaker: or in not a past life, in another life.
Speaker: That's I would have liked to have done that.
Speaker: And she said, well, you could just write a story about that instead of dropping everything in training to go do that.
Speaker: Why don't you write a story where the character does that?
Speaker: And I was like, God, another book.
Speaker: I, it's just, I don't, I don't feel the joy in it right now.
Speaker: I don't know how.
Speaker: And, and then she said, so write a fan fiction.
Speaker: When was the last time you wrote a fan fiction?
Speaker: And I was like, I don't know, like six years ago.
Speaker: And she was like, so write a fan fiction.
Speaker: Angie, I wrote, I wrote 70,000 words in 11 days.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I haven't written like that.
Speaker: It's just the Yahoo Groups days.
Speaker: I was, I, it was so joyful and it was so amazing.
Speaker: And I got to share it with people who cared, who cheered me on, who gave me little hearts, who gave me kudos.
Speaker: And I'd forgotten in all of this, trying to be a professional writer, that writing is fun and that there's joy in the storytelling.
Speaker: And I'm so glad I wrote that fan fiction.
Speaker: It's now actually, it's a little series.
Speaker: It's 135,000 words now.
Speaker: And it took me like a month to write all of that.
Speaker: And I am so grateful to my friend and so grateful to the fan fiction community for reminding me that I actually like doing this.
Speaker: So for me, I guess that's my advice.
Speaker: Find something that makes you passionate like that.
Speaker: And enter writing that way, because you're going to hate it at some points.
Speaker: And the only way you can get yourself to sit down at that computer is to remember why you love it.
Speaker: Well, and I'll admit that's part of the reason I ask about the burnout question is because I myself have gone through burnout with my own writing and my own fiction writing.
Speaker: And that's actually kind of why I started going into the nonfiction writing.
Speaker: It's so much easier.
Speaker: Yes, you still get blocked and still get, why do I do this?
Speaker: But at the same time, it's so much easier for me to do nonfiction and to do like this podcast and to write reviews of stuff rather than the fiction.
Speaker: But I also found myself, you know, just not...
Speaker: loving writing.
Speaker: And I was like, I need to take a break.
Speaker: And that's thankfully I did not have a deadline like you do.
Speaker: And so I was able to take that break.
Speaker: But at the same time, that's part of the reason why every time I interview an author, I ask kind of how do they, how do they re-put that joy back into their life?
Speaker: Because I'm, every writer is different.
Speaker: And so I'm always curious what different writers come up with to keep that joy going.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: that and and it's it's it's such a silly little secret wonderful thing but i commission art for every new book that i write so i actually just got the art i commissioned for time and tide the book the book i'm working on now it's the background of my phone it helps you know like i look at my phone and i'm like oh look at how in love they look right i need to actually write the part where they're in love yes yes
Speaker: And it helps sort of motivate me.
Speaker: But I get to share that on social media.
Speaker: I get to show people what I think my characters look like.
Speaker: But the most important thing for me is that I get it professionally printed and framed each time.
Speaker: And it goes on a gallery wall in my dining room.
Speaker: So I sit in my dining room and every time the imposter syndrome or the burnout or the writer's block tries to eat my brain whole, I look at that wall and I go, no, screw you.
Speaker: Look at all of those incredible people I've invented.
Speaker: Look at all those fantastic stories I've done.
Speaker: Look at all those books I've written.
Speaker: I can sit at my dining room table and see the amazing things I've accomplished.
Speaker: So God bless fan artists.
Speaker: Back again to the nuts and bolts, kind of, do you have a daily routine or do you kind of, it just depends on what you've got due or kind of, you know, tell me how, how writing fits into your day, I guess is the best.
Speaker: So I have three jobs, including the writing.
Speaker: So I get up in the morning and I go to my day job.
Speaker: And if things are not crazy in the office, I try to write over my lunch hour or,
Speaker: If not right, then at least handle my writing admin or my acting admin, whatever has to happen.
Speaker: Things like sending emails, setting up social posts, responding to things.
Speaker: And then I get home from work.
Speaker: Afternoon, I work some more.
Speaker: I get home from work.
Speaker: I eat, try to go for a walk.
Speaker: Usually I have to do an audition.
Speaker: So try to bang out the audition before dinner.
Speaker: before I ruin my voice with dairy products, eat, and then depending on what's due and what my energy levels are like, just sit down and get at her, which means I'm terribly behind on all the TV shows that everybody is watching.
Speaker: And I haven't gone to see a movie since...
Speaker: I don't know, the first Wonder Woman.
Speaker: So I write probably until probably between like seven and midnight.
Speaker: And then I go to bed and I started all over again.
Speaker: This is not ideal.
Speaker: I'm getting too old to be able to do this anymore.
Speaker: I need more sleep than I'm getting, but I have a close deadline.
Speaker: I, ideally, when I get to take time off the day job, I love getting up and spending the morning doing all my little chores and the laundry and the sweeping and the dishes and everything.
Speaker: And then having a luxurious lunch.
Speaker: And once the lunch is over, then committing the afternoon to being creative because I'm fed, my apartment is taken care of.
Speaker: I don't have to worry that, you know, those dishes that are sitting in the sink are going to distract me.
Speaker: And then getting to spend the evening with friends or refilling my creative well.
Speaker: That's ideally what I would like to be able to do, but gotta pay around.
Speaker: Hello, I'm Petrea Burchard.
Speaker: I'm an audio book narrator and the voice of Ryoko in Tenchi Muyo.
Speaker: I'm here geeking out with Angie Fiedler Sutton.
Speaker: I think you should do that too.
Speaker: Want to support the podcast on my website?
Speaker: Be sure to rate and review the podcast on whatever platform you use, as well as podchaser.com.
Speaker: You can also support me financially through my Ko-fi account.
Speaker: You can find me there and on various other social media platforms with the handle Angie F. Sutton.
Speaker: Also, be sure to sign up for my monthly newsletter and see links to my social media at all the places you can listen to the podcast and episode transcripts.
Speaker: They are all available at my website, AngieFSutton.com.
Speaker: Finally, I want to hear from you.
Speaker: Call my Google voice number, 424-341-2252, and leave a short message about what you're geeking out about.
Speaker: You may wind up on a future episode.
Speaker: And now, back to my interview with J.M.
Speaker: Fry.
Speaker: You mentioned auditions.
Speaker: We've talked about how you're a voiceover actor.
Speaker: Kind of a little bit more into how you broke into that.
Speaker: I mean, you mentioned it briefly, but just a little bit more about that.
Speaker: Yeah, so the voice acting, when I moved back from Japan, I had to spend a lot of time doing rehab on my leg.
Speaker: I still can't dance.
Speaker: So I sort of thought, well, if I still want to be a professional actor, I need to find another way into it.
Speaker: And of course, like a huge anime nerd, or like the huge anime nerd I am, I've always wanted to dub anime.
Speaker: So I started just going to...
Speaker: The workshops that they give at conventions.
Speaker: I took workshops with Roland Parliament and Virginia Ray and a bunch of people here in Toronto who work in the voiceover business.
Speaker: When I started doing conventions as a writer, I would hang out with the voice actors and be like, how did you get into it?
Speaker: Like, hey, Kirby Morrow, help me figure this out.
Speaker: What needs to go on my demo tape?
Speaker: What do I need to do?
Speaker: Actually, Kirby was, you know, rest in peace, Kirby was phenomenal.
Speaker: I had such a wonderful conversation with him in Newfoundland when we were guests of honor together.
Speaker: It was actually, I will directly point to that conversation I had with Kirby.
Speaker: helped me sort of finalize my demo tape, which got me my agent.
Speaker: Him and Kyle McDonald, who's an actor here, a voice actor here in Toronto.
Speaker: reviewed my demo tape.
Speaker: And once they had both finished finessing it, I got an agent 48 hours later.
Speaker: So it was just really phenomenal.
Speaker: But I will admit I have that privilege, right?
Speaker: Like I have access to people that, and information and help and support that a lot of people don't trying to break into this because I used my being an author at conventions to slide sideways into that
Speaker: into those connections.
Speaker: And then, yeah, from there I got the agent and I just, you just start doing the audition grind.
Speaker: I think I do about probably 200 to 500 auditions a year.
Speaker: That was going to be my next question.
Speaker: And how, what would you say is your ratio of auditions to actual getting cast?
Speaker: I've gigged once per year.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So between 200 and 500 auditions a year, and I work once or twice a year.
Speaker: And that's pretty normal for a working actor.
Speaker: I would say that's very normal until you become like a top tier voice actor and you get cast in everything.
Speaker: But I'm not there yet.
Speaker: I would like to be, but I'm not there.
Speaker: Do you have a favorite voice actor that you...
Speaker: follow and admire and whatnot?
Speaker: Or is that like choosing a favorite child?
Speaker: So this is a very unfair question because I hang out with them.
Speaker: But right now I would say it's Alison Court.
Speaker: So she's somebody, I actually did a web series with her.
Speaker: We were on Rufus the Dog's steampunk adventure together.
Speaker: But for those of you who don't recognize her name, she was Lunette the Clown in The Big Comfy Couch.
Speaker: And she was also Lydia in the Beetlejuice cartoon.
Speaker: That was actually her first...
Speaker: job out of school and she's in all the Resident Evil games but I met her through on camera acting and we've been thrown together at events and parties and things and she's just she's one of my favorite people because she's just
Speaker: so honest and she's got such incredible stories and she's never afraid to share advice or make suggestions but in the kindest possible way so for and this is kind of for either voiceover acting or your writing do you have any favorite resources that you like to use that we can that if somebody was listening that wouldn't be interested in
Speaker: Yeah, so in terms of voice acting, I have a Yeti microphone like everybody else, and I use Audacity because it's free to edit my auditions.
Speaker: In terms of writing, I use Scrivener.
Speaker: And for screenwriting, I love the desktop version of Celtics, but they don't make it anymore.
Speaker: So I'm just determined.
Speaker: They're like, would you like to update?
Speaker: I'm like, no, no, we're not in the wrong case.
Speaker: No, we're not.
Speaker: I love to compose screenplays in Celtics, but then export them into Final Draft, partially because that's industry standard, but partially because I like the view in Final Draft better, but I like the way that Celtics will build a production binder for you as you're writing.
Speaker: They'll just automatically start pulling settings and characters into a binder, which I adore.
Speaker: It just saves you so much work.
Speaker: In terms of writing resources that aren't software, NaNoWriMo is the best resource that I could ever recommend to anybody, no matter what kind of writing you're doing.
Speaker: National Novel Writing Month really helps you get something on the page, figure out your own habits.
Speaker: Like for me, NaNo is the most important part of NaNo is not writing my 50,000 words every November in a community of
Speaker: millions of people over the globe, but I have been doing it for 20, well, it started in what, 2000 and 2000 and I've been doing it since 2002.
Speaker: It taught me my own habits.
Speaker: It taught me what I need to be able to write.
Speaker: It helped me figure out what software I prefer, what time of day I like to write, how many words I can write in a session, how many hours I can sit, what kind of tea I need to have while I'm writing.
Speaker: And the supportive community is fantastic.
Speaker: Like going out for writing sessions is wonderful, but going out for beers with people in your area who are also struggling with nano and like weeping into your wine is also a really important part of writing to me.
Speaker: So nano is a hugely important resource, at least in my writing journey.
Speaker: And it doesn't work for everybody.
Speaker: I have other writer friends who I've tried to entice to come to do Nano.
Speaker: And they're like, no, I hate everything about that idea.
Speaker: And I'm like, that's fine.
Speaker: You don't have to like it.
Speaker: I've tried doing it myself.
Speaker: But I also know that they also have some great resources that I've used, too.
Speaker: So I'm kind of on the, I can understand why people use it.
Speaker: But me trying to write that, it just, for some reason, it just didn't stick for me.
Speaker: But here's the thing, you learned that by trying.
Speaker: And that's why I say everybody should try doing NaNo because you might learn that this is perfect and this is exactly how you need to write.
Speaker: But like you, you might find out that this is awful and this is exactly not how you would like to write.
Speaker: And now you've learned the thing about yourself.
Speaker: Now you understand your own habits better.
Speaker: Now you understand your own creativity better.
Speaker: And that's a gift that NaNo gave you.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: You mentioned steampunk.
Speaker: I know that you are a cosplayer and that your author bio mentions that you're heavily into steampunk.
Speaker: Let's talk a little bit about that.
Speaker: I know that cosplay and anime kind of are crossovers, I guess would be the best way to put it.
Speaker: Is that where you started doing the cosplay or was it something else?
Speaker: Honestly, I went to my first convention
Speaker: In yeah, in 2002 again.
Speaker: So in high school, I had gone to some Star Trek conventions, just some local ones, very small in my area.
Speaker: I remember the Drayton, Ontario one.
Speaker: And I just loved that.
Speaker: Mom took me as like a Christmas present the one year.
Speaker: And I think I was, I don't know, like nine or 10.
Speaker: And I saw these people walking around in these Star Trek uniforms and I didn't, I didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker: I was an actor.
Speaker: I just thought these were people playing.
Speaker: And then I went to my first anime convention without my parents, with just my friends.
Speaker: Mom drove us to Toronto in our teal-blue caravan in the 90s and dropped my friends and I off and was like, okay, I'm going to come back in three hours, which was not enough time to see everything.
Speaker: And there were all these people dressed up and I was like, wow, this...
Speaker: this is great, but as an actor, looking at the people who were getting their photographs taken and getting all this attention on them because of what they were dressed as, I was like, I want to do that.
Speaker: Like walking around shopping, okay, this is fine, this is interesting, and I can get things that I can't anywhere else.
Speaker: That was back in the days before internet shopping.
Speaker: So, you know, there was fan art and merch and books that I had never seen anywhere else.
Speaker: It was before local bookstores started carrying manga.
Speaker: But the cosplay, as the little attention whore that I am, that looked fun.
Speaker: And the next year, my friends and I were like, let's do that.
Speaker: And unfortunately, I didn't end up doing the cosplay with those friends, but I had bought everything for a cosplay.
Speaker: And my university friends were like, well, we have to do a wardrobe class.
Speaker: Why don't we just make your costume for wardrobe class?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So then...
Speaker: I went to the convention dressed as Mariame Akusharnata from Gundam Wing and Lewis Walds.
Speaker: And then of course my theater friends came with me and they saw that I was getting all the attention and all these photos taken.
Speaker: And then they were like, wait a minute, we want, we're an attention horse too, because we're theater people.
Speaker: I was going to say, there's a crossover there too, between theater people and cosplay people.
Speaker: The cosplayers I like best are all theater kids.
Speaker: So then the group of us just started doing cosplays at convention after convention after convention.
Speaker: And we started learning new techniques.
Speaker: And of course, it all crossed over with what we were learning in theater school.
Speaker: So the wigs and makeup and lighting and electricity and all of that, skit writing and editing skits together and audios and stuff.
Speaker: And then we all just, we all became masters.
Speaker: And we sort of earned out of cosplay competitions.
Speaker: And there was sort of a conversation between us where we were like, do we keep going?
Speaker: Like, we've all hit the highest level we can.
Speaker: Do we try harder and keep competing and doing bigger and more elaborate and more expensive stuff?
Speaker: But by then I was a published author and my friend was running a business and my other friend was
Speaker: training to be a professional horror FX makeup artist.
Speaker: And we all sort of were like, this has been fun.
Speaker: This has been a great, you know, 15 years, but I think, I think we're finished now.
Speaker: And that was fine with me.
Speaker: I think I commissioned one or two more costumes after that.
Speaker: And I specifically say commissioned because they were ones where my imagination outstripped my skill level.
Speaker: And I have a lot of the costumes that
Speaker: still like they're all in my closet i don't fit any of them anymore but i still have them all because i'm all very i'm very proud of it but when it comes to what i go to conventions for now if i'm a guest of honor i can't show up dressed like inyasha i mean i'd love to but i can't do you have a favorite cosplayer or again is that like choosing your favorite child
Speaker: Uh, Inuyasha or the TARDIS.
Speaker: So for Inuyasha, I, when I was living in Japan, I got this idea to do, because the character Inuyasha, he's a prince or the half-breed bastard child of a lord.
Speaker: So he's technically royalty and they don't really talk about it in the show, but I was going to all these incredible secondhand kimono markets and thought, what if I did, what if Inuyasha had been born a girl?
Speaker: and raised as a princess, what would Inuyashiko's outfit look like?
Speaker: So I found this gorgeous, like, hundred-year-old red kimono in all the right colors for Inuyasha.
Speaker: And added furisode big long sleeves to it because it was just the married women's sleeves.
Speaker: I added the unmarried women's sleeves to it and hand painted to match the embroidery and bought an obi that was about 200 years old and literally wet.
Speaker: with my eyes closed looking away as I was cutting it into pieces so I could put a zipper into it and I built this whole costume like on a framework because you can't really if you're gonna do like a super elaborate kimono you can't really put yourself into it it's you know it's like those old Victorian ball gowns you needed servants so I
Speaker: cut the whole thing apart and hid metal framework and zippers and buttons and everything inside of it so I could dress myself in the kimono without any help.
Speaker: So I'm very proud of that one.
Speaker: I sewed the wig myself out of like five different wigs.
Speaker: I went to Kyoto and I bought all the correct geisha makeup for it, learned the proper way to
Speaker: Hold the, what's the English word?
Speaker: Parasol.
Speaker: All of that stuff from my Nihon Buyo sensei.
Speaker: So I put a lot of work into that one to try to be both respectful of the culture I was representing, but also like really clever with it.
Speaker: That one, so that one I made myself.
Speaker: And then the TARDIS is my favorite.
Speaker: I think it's the one that I'm best known for.
Speaker: And it's one that I commissioned.
Speaker: And simply because I just didn't have the tailoring skills and the embroidery skills of the people I commissioned.
Speaker: did and I like that one a lot but I'm frustrated that everyone says oh it's Idris it's the doctor's wife from that and I'm like okay so first off I conceived of this costume like a year and a half before that ever aired
Speaker: And I actually wore the costume to a couple of conventions before that episode ever aired.
Speaker: I am not the doctor's wife.
Speaker: I am the TARDIS.
Speaker: And I'm really proud of that one because I think it was one of the first, if not the first TARDIS gown that I really saw any pictures of anywhere.
Speaker: I hadn't seen anyone else do what I had done.
Speaker: And then there was a lot of TARDIS gowns.
Speaker: after that all over the internet and I just thought, oh, that's so cool.
Speaker: I don't know if these people are influenced by me or if it was a zeitgeist and we all just kind of had the same idea at the same time.
Speaker: But I love this idea of everybody doing a different interpretation of what they think the TARDIS would look like if it was a person.
Speaker: Talk a little bit more about your love of steampunk for those who may not.
Speaker: How do you define steampunk?
Speaker: So it's not my love of steampunk.
Speaker: I have to say this.
Speaker: I have a friend who adores steampunk and it affected me.
Speaker: So I have to give all credit to Adrian Kress for my enjoyment of steampunk because her love of it really helped me find joy in it.
Speaker: To me, steampunk is, as Mike Pershing, the steampunk scholar, would say, it is not a genre.
Speaker: A lot of people say it's a genre.
Speaker: It is not.
Speaker: It is an aesthetic.
Speaker: So an aesthetic is basically, he describes it as a teacup.
Speaker: Steampunk is the teacup and you can put a vampire story into the steampunk or into the teacup and you end up with a vampire steampunk story like the Gil Carragher series.
Speaker: Or you can put an exploration story into the teacup and you end up with, you know, something like Mainspring.
Speaker: Or you can put an action movie into the teacup and you end up with Sucker Punch.
Speaker: Or you can put a Western into the teacup and you end up with Wild Wild West.
Speaker: So steampunk is an aesthetic and...
Speaker: people laughingly refer to it as what goths, what happens when goths discover brown.
Speaker: Is that it's sort of an earth toned, pseudo Edwardian adventure kind of forward aesthetic where the world that these people come from stopped evolving technologically at steam power.
Speaker: And what would happen if you tried to have today's gadgets with yesterday's technology?
Speaker: So the other thing I've heard is Steampunk calls it yesterday's tomorrow, today.
Speaker: It's very much that sort of mid-century modern idea of, or sorry, not mid-century, mid-last century.
Speaker: So 1880s, 1890s, Jules Verne idea of what the future would look like.
Speaker: And it's just playing with all of that.
Speaker: It's the rocketeer, it's jet packs and goggles and face masks.
Speaker: And I have to say, steampunks, we were ready for the pandemic.
Speaker: Oh, you need a face mask.
Speaker: And we're like, all right, I got seven.
Speaker: Who wants to borrow one?
Speaker: But it's top hats and bustles.
Speaker: It's beautiful fashion.
Speaker: It's getting to take everything that you like about the past and leaving the colonialism and the...
Speaker: you know, the racism and the misogyny behind and embracing the aesthetic of the past or what the past thought the future was going to look like.
Speaker: And as somebody who adores world building, my favorite part of storytelling is the world building.
Speaker: I love this idea of being able to nudge history in different directions and think, okay, if we have a world where let's say it's not set on the world that we know, we've got different
Speaker: different geography, different cultures, different people.
Speaker: But if I put them in a World War I situation, how is that going to be different if there's rocket packs and there's steam power and there's dirigibles and all of this kind of stuff?
Speaker: And then you get into the techno fantasy side of steampunk.
Speaker: So what happens if there's a little bit of magic?
Speaker: What happens if...
Speaker: You know, there's the steampunk version of a kyber crystal.
Speaker: Can you make a lightsaber?
Speaker: What would you do with that?
Speaker: I think that's what I love about steampunk is taking everything that's pretty, removing the ugly parts from it, and celebrating the pretty.
Speaker: Now you've written Steampunk.
Speaker: I'm looking at your website now at the Skylark song and others.
Speaker: Talk a little bit more about that and kind of how writing Steampunk may be different from writing just quote unquote regular fantasy.
Speaker: Well, like I said, I really enjoy the techno fantasy aspect of steampunk and the world building.
Speaker: That, for me, when I was creating the Skylark's world, the world building was my favorite part of it.
Speaker: Trying to figure out what a military would look like, trying to figure out what a vigilante would look like, trying to figure out what these people would be going to war over.
Speaker: But where I actually came up with the idea for Skylark is...
Speaker: at a convention.
Speaker: So I'm at the Canadian National Steampunk Exhibition and I had a couple of leftover kimonos and happy and stuff from when I lived in Japan.
Speaker: And I had, with the help of a friend, turned one of them into this really great sort of late Victorian, early Edwardian flight jacket and, you know, goggles and stuff.
Speaker: And there was no character involved with it.
Speaker: I was just like, let me just pull cool stuff out of a bucket in my tickle trunk and put together a look.
Speaker: And then I got to the convention and then my cosplaying friends had all put together a look and we were sitting around in a room drinking and as you do,
Speaker: And someone was saying, what's the next book you're going to write?
Speaker: Like, Triptick has just come out.
Speaker: You're working on this other book.
Speaker: What are you going to do after that?
Speaker: What are you going to do next?
Speaker: Have you done a fantasy book yet?
Speaker: Have you done a hardcore, like a space opera book yet?
Speaker: Have you done?
Speaker: And someone said, well, are you going to do a steampunk book?
Speaker: And I said, oh, well, I like dressing up, but I don't think I'm going to write a steampunk book.
Speaker: And they said, I bet you can't.
Speaker: Oh, oh.
Speaker: And then they said, I bet you couldn't make up a story about everybody sitting in the circle.
Speaker: How would all of these characters interact in a book?
Speaker: And I went, and then I, you know, the night went on.
Speaker: And the next morning I came down to breakfast and we were all sitting around again.
Speaker: I said, right, this is how it goes.
Speaker: You're this character.
Speaker: You're this character.
Speaker: You're dating this character.
Speaker: You're the king.
Speaker: You're the vigilante.
Speaker: You're the, the, and I laid out the entire story of how we all knew each other and what was happening in this world.
Speaker: And someone went, great.
Speaker: Are you going to write that?
Speaker: And I went, yes, that was the Skylar song.
Speaker: You mentioned world building.
Speaker: You have also written a book on world building, world building through culture, a workbook for storytellers.
Speaker: I don't want you to give away the whole book, but kind of what would be the one thing that a takeaway from, from that book?
Speaker: The most important thing about that book in particular.
Speaker: So it's based on a workshop that I used to give again, pre pandemic.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: When we all went into lockdown and I wasn't giving those workshops anymore, people were still reaching out to me and saying, but I want to know this information.
Speaker: I'm disappointed that the workshop was canceled.
Speaker: So I was selling people the PDF for like $2.
Speaker: And I thought, well, if people wanted this information, I can put it together in a workbook and people can just have it.
Speaker: And then they can...
Speaker: buy it when they wanna make another world.
Speaker: So every time they make a world, they can just buy the workbook and work through the workbook and have their entire world in their hand.
Speaker: And the most important thing about that is that you are going to have that entire world in your hand.
Speaker: So you don't feel compelled to put everything on the page.
Speaker: And for me, that's my biggest advice on world building is just because you know the thing,
Speaker: doesn't mean that the reader needs to know the thing.
Speaker: The whole point of the book is that you put the world in the book so you're not tempted to put it all on the page and bog down the narrative with admittedly interesting details, but you have to remember you're writing a book, not a textbook.
Speaker: The only person who ever got away with that was Tolkien, and you are not Tolkien.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, again, looking over your bio, you also mentioned that you are also the erotica novelist Peggy Barnett.
Speaker: Do we want to talk a little bit about that?
Speaker: We can.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Peggy Barnett came about.
Speaker: She was my childhood pet in the street I grew up on.
Speaker: Hopefully none of your password...
Speaker: No, no, I don't use any answer.
Speaker: But it came about because I write adult market science fiction and fantasy.
Speaker: And by adult, I mean not middle grade or YA.
Speaker: And so there are in some of the stories, sex scenes.
Speaker: And my editor at Dragon Moon Press, Gabrielle Harbowie, was also working with Circlip Press, who is
Speaker: now part of, I think, Riverdale Avenue Books, which was an erotica-forward romance website, a science fiction and fantasy erotica website.
Speaker: And she was working as an editor for them, and she reached out to me one day and she said, help, I'm putting together an anthology.
Speaker: I need one more story, and I'm just not finding it in the slush pile.
Speaker: And you're really good at writing porn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: can you write me something?
Speaker: And I went, yeah, how many words do you need?
Speaker: And what arrangement of humans do you require?
Speaker: And she was like, what do you mean?
Speaker: And I said, well, do you have a gay story?
Speaker: Do you h ave a lesbian story?
Speaker: Do you h ave a trans story?
Speaker: Do you have a, you know, what kind of sex are there in the other stories?
Speaker: What kind of sex are you missing?
Speaker: What kind of, what do you need that you're not finding in these other stories?
Speaker: And so she told me and I wrote erotica to order.
Speaker: And then she's like, okay, what name am I putting on the story?
Speaker: And I was like, I don't know.
Speaker: It's Peggy Barnett, my childhood pet in the street I grew up on.
Speaker: She was like, okay, great.
Speaker: We'll do that.
Speaker: And then another editor reached out to me and said, hey, I just found out that you wrote Erotica to Order for Gabrielle.
Speaker: Could you do one for me too, please?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I started writing these...
Speaker: stories for people who had gaps in anthologies and needed something specific.
Speaker: And then my agent at the time was like, we're going to put together an anthology of Christmas or holiday inspired stories.
Speaker: Anybody on our roster who would like to submit a holiday inspired erotica story, we're going to do a charity anthology.
Speaker: And I was like, well, I guess Peggy Burnett exists now.
Speaker: So sure, I'll do one.
Speaker: So I did it for three or four years running.
Speaker: I submitted a story.
Speaker: And then I suddenly had enough stories to do a short story collection.
Speaker: So I wrote a couple of original stories to round out the short story collection.
Speaker: And then one day I was like, I wonder if I could just write a whole novel.
Speaker: So I wrote Lips Like Ice.
Speaker: And again, it was one of those ones where it wasn't commissioned by anybody.
Speaker: No one was expecting it.
Speaker: My agent wasn't going to represent it because she didn't represent erotica novels.
Speaker: I could just play with it.
Speaker: I could just have fun.
Speaker: And I enjoyed it very much.
Speaker: Erotica is a lot...
Speaker: easier than writing non-erotica and at the same time a lot harder because when you're writing prose or regular prose every major character moment or every narrative beat is a revelation
Speaker: hiding a secret, revealing a secret, forwarding the plot.
Speaker: Like there's a specific list of things that have to happen in every major, every major moment in erotica, every major moment is, and then they fuck, but you still have to hide something or reveal something or push the narrative or, so you still have to do all those things you're doing in non-erotica, but then you have to do it in erotica while they're fucking.
Speaker: So it's both harder and easier because I know the next scene is they're going to have sex, but in the next scene they have to have sex.
Speaker: And also he has to figure out that she betrayed him and hid the poison vial or, you know, like, so I have to make it do double duty.
Speaker: And of course, having grown up in fan fiction, I am totally comfortable with writing sex.
Speaker: So yeah, I enjoyed that very much.
Speaker: It looks like ice originally was supposed to have a couple of,
Speaker: Like maybe a trilogy, maybe a series, but it didn't end up working out that way and I never ended up writing them.
Speaker: So yeah, I mean, Peggy Barnett and then there was no more demand for custom bespoke smut.
Speaker: So I kind of stopped doing it.
Speaker: And I never ended up writing any more Peggy Barnett novels because by then, J.M.
Speaker: Fry was getting more work and I had to focus on those ones.
Speaker: I started writing one over the pandemic since Lips Like Ice came out.
Speaker: There are now all of these amazing story reader apps like Radish and Wattpad and all these things.
Speaker: And I thought, oh, I'd really love to write an erotica for Radish and see if I can do something with it.
Speaker: But then, you know, that burnout hit and I never...
Speaker: I think I got 10 chapters in it.
Speaker: I never really did anything with it.
Speaker: Let's talk theater.
Speaker: You mentioned getting into Japanese theater and no one and Kabuki and the other stuff.
Speaker: What about American theater?
Speaker: Is there a specific genre you like?
Speaker: I mean, musical theater, obviously, but is there a favorite style in terms of, you know, do you like a particular artist more than others or?
Speaker: I love musical theater.
Speaker: I grew up in musical theater.
Speaker: I'm definitely a musical theater kid.
Speaker: I can't, I mean, if I were to say, if you were to say, do you have a favorite musical theater creator?
Speaker: Well, then it's the same answer as literally everyone else.
Speaker: Jonathan Larson, Stephen Sondheim, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Speaker: Not that I could ever sing anything that Lin-Manuel Miranda writes.
Speaker: It's, gosh, I like, I did a patter song for a musical demo,
Speaker: Once somebody was pitching a musical, so he hired a bunch of singers to sing the demo.
Speaker: And I got the patter song and it was just like, I don't know how anyone does this.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: And so just, you know, watching Hamilton, I'm like, oh, I could never, I could never, it's too fast.
Speaker: I sound like a Disney princess when I sing.
Speaker: So I would say the closest quality of voice to me is like Jodie Benson or Jennifer Cheesey who did all the Sailor Moon music.
Speaker: So obviously that's what I like best.
Speaker: I love the Disney Renaissance.
Speaker: I love, yeah, anything that gives you and I want song that I can use for an audition.
Speaker: Well, you've heard that the rumor is circulating that there's going to be a musical episode of Doctor Who in this next season.
Speaker: I have opinions about musical episodes.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I think they're a really fun gimmick.
Speaker: And I have to preface this with the fact that I have been in a musical episode.
Speaker: I was in the musical episode of Out With Bad, and I sang.
Speaker: I love them, but like any other choice in a TV show, it has to make narrative sense, or I'm just going to resent it.
Speaker: I haven't seen the musical episode of Strange New Worlds that just dropped a couple weeks ago.
Speaker: I have listened to a couple of the songs and they're quite well written.
Speaker: So I like them.
Speaker: I do not like Joss Whedon as a person and I barely tolerate him as a creator, but the Buffy musical episode was genius.
Speaker: Absolutely straight up storytelling genius because it came out of nowhere.
Speaker: Nobody was expecting it.
Speaker: It made complete narrative sense.
Speaker: It forwarded the plot of that season.
Speaker: It forwarded the character revelations like a good musical should do.
Speaker: Everybody spoke until the emotions were too big that they couldn't speak anymore, so they sang.
Speaker: And then when the emotions became too big to sing, you dance.
Speaker: It followed all the rules of musical theater.
Speaker: And the songs were really, really good.
Speaker: Like, I have the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the musical songbook,
Speaker: on my shelf, I sing those songs at auditions.
Speaker: They're very well constructed.
Speaker: And that's my bar.
Speaker: So if you're going to do a musical episode of your TV show, it has to make narrative sense in the same way that Buffy did.
Speaker: And if it doesn't, then it's a cute gimmick.
Speaker: But come on, just tell the story.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I love, I love musicals.
Speaker: I just, I love the heightened emotion.
Speaker: I loved Schmigadoon.
Speaker: I love, I love musicals.
Speaker: I sing constantly, but all the time in my life, I will be working at my day job and people will stick their heads in my office and be like, shut up.
Speaker: You sound fantastic.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I didn't even realize I was
Speaker: singing six while I was doing data entry.
Speaker: My apologies, guys.
Speaker: I love them.
Speaker: But yeah, if you're going to do them in a TV show, they have to they have to work.
Speaker: Speaking of Doctor Who, have you been a fan since old series?
Speaker: Are you a new series only or both?
Speaker: So, no, I was not a fan of the old series at all.
Speaker: It actually took me watching the new series to remember that I hated the old series because here in Canada, you'd get up, you'd watch Saturday morning cartoons.
Speaker: And then when the cartoons were over at around 11 or 11.30, there would be this really scary music.
Speaker: Yee!
Speaker: And this guy's face would show up and he had this giant grin with a smile that looked like he was gonna eat your face.
Speaker: And his hat and his scarf that just went on forever and it was terrifying.
Speaker: I was so scared.
Speaker: I was so scared of the doctor.
Speaker: And then I just turned it off.
Speaker: There was nothing appealing about that when I was a kid.
Speaker: And I completely forgot that he featured in my nightmares until I was actually, I was at a convention
Speaker: and somebody walked by dressed like the fourth doctor and I went and like fell on my butt.
Speaker: I was still on a cane then so I wasn't very stable and I crashed and everyone was like oh my god are you okay what happened and I was like what is that character he terrifies me I forgot that he terrifies me but he terrifies me who is that and they're like it's the doctor and I'm like
Speaker: Doctor Who!
Speaker: So I never watched the old series because Tom Baker scared me.
Speaker: However, having said that, I was living in Japan.
Speaker: I got hit by a car.
Speaker: I was laid up.
Speaker: I had nothing to do.
Speaker: And a friend of mine who was living in Britain at the time
Speaker: was like, this new show just restarted here.
Speaker: It's based on an old show.
Speaker: It's a reboot.
Speaker: It's this huge cultural phenomenon.
Speaker: I've never heard of it before, but I'm going to send you some bootlegs.
Speaker: So she sent me the bootleg DVDs of the first season of New Who.
Speaker: And I was hooked.
Speaker: Absolutely hooked.
Speaker: Like, adored it.
Speaker: And that's what started my Doctor Who obsession.
Speaker: And it's funny because I had two British friends in Japan.
Speaker: So when I started talking to them, I was like, have you ever heard of this show called Doctor Who?
Speaker: And they were like, what do you mean?
Speaker: Have we ever heard?
Speaker: Like, are you serious right now?
Speaker: They thought I was having it on with them, but they didn't realize that I'd literally, I'd never seen it before.
Speaker: And of course, because I didn't know anything about it, I had been reading up on the lore and I didn't know how to pronounce it.
Speaker: because I'd only ever read them before.
Speaker: So the first thing I said was like, is the next episode about those villains, the Daylecs?
Speaker: Like, oh my God.
Speaker: So they got me nice and filled in, which was nice.
Speaker: But I really appreciate it, especially in the first season, the care and attention that went into character development and storytelling.
Speaker: I think 10 is my favorite Doctor, but nine is my favorite stories.
Speaker: Yeah, that's sort of how I got into Doctor Who.
Speaker: And then when I found out I was doing, because I'm such an academic nerd, of course, I research everything that I love.
Speaker: While I was doing research into it, I found out that in New Who, it's actually a Canadian co-production.
Speaker: So the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, actually funded and did some of the post-production for New Who.
Speaker: I don't know if we still do.
Speaker: I don't think we do.
Speaker: But that really interested me because, of course, Sidney Newman, the guy who invented Doctor Who, was Canadian.
Speaker: And that's what led me to this paper that I did about the Canadian, the missed Canadian connection or the hidden Canadian connection.
Speaker: And I argued that the Doctor is the ultimate Canadian character because he's a pacifist.
Speaker: He's a peacekeeper.
Speaker: He roves the universe fixing it instead of
Speaker: You know, he carries a screwdriver instead of a gun.
Speaker: And to me, that's a very Canadian trait, that he's polite and he tries to save everybody and he gives people chances and he talks people down and he's a peacekeeper.
Speaker: So I saw a lot of the cultural stereotypes of my nation in this, at least in the old version of The Doctor in the first two or three seasons of New Who.
Speaker: Now, back before when I first started this podcast, it was called Geeking Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton.
Speaker: And I'm keeping tradition from that podcast.
Speaker: I ask everyone I interview, or I try to ask everyone I interview with, what are you currently geeking out about and why?
Speaker: And basically, what about that draws you?
Speaker: I am currently geeking out about historic social history.
Speaker: Which, so for me, it's Tasting History with Max Miller on YouTube, or all of the short little videos that Jay Draper does on YouTube, or Eleanor Janega, or Lucy Worsley, I'm saying, or it's Aunt Alice Luxton.
Speaker: All of these incredible sort of history hits, YouTube, BBC kind of social history, domestic history stories.
Speaker: documentaries and stories.
Speaker: I have been mainlining them.
Speaker: I love them.
Speaker: I love social historians.
Speaker: I mentioned earlier in the podcast, if I could go back and redo my career, I think that's what I would have done because I did my undergrad in theater.
Speaker: Yes, but I also did an undeclared minor in classical studies with a focus on mythology.
Speaker: So for me, if I hadn't been an actor, I
Speaker: Before I got hit by the car, the idea was that I wanted to be a museum curator.
Speaker: I wanted to do living history, museum, open air kind of stuff.
Speaker: And seeing all these people marry that love of social history with performance is like, oh, I want to be Lucy Worsley when I grow up.
Speaker: Ooh, I want to be Ruth Goodman.
Speaker: So I just consume these constantly.
Speaker: I love them.
Speaker: I bought Max Miller's cookbook.
Speaker: I'm trying to set up with my friends a potluck where we all do one of the different historic recipes.
Speaker: And he does recipes from like ancient Rome and Sumeria and Egypt and medieval England and revolutionary France.
Speaker: And they're all in this cookbook.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: I love the idea that...
Speaker: The history of the world is more than just wars and revolutions.
Speaker: It's more than blood and pain.
Speaker: The history of the world is in how the woman down the street bakes her bread and how bees used to be kept and what beds used to look like and all of these incredible things about how humans live and support and love other humans, the kind of communities we built, the feasts that we shared, the drinks that we had, the laughter.
Speaker: that we inspired in one another.
Speaker: That's to me the most fascinating part of human history.
Speaker: It's, I don't know if you've seen Kunk on Earth, the Philomena Kunk.
Speaker: I've heard of it, but it's on my list.
Speaker: It's phenomenal.
Speaker: I loved that one too, because she's mocking everything that I love.
Speaker: Like she's not in a bad way.
Speaker: It's a send up, right?
Speaker: It's a pastiche.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: So for me, I cannot get enough of Bernadette Banner and mostly YouTube personalities.
Speaker: All I do is when I'm done writing and I need to sit down and chill, I watch these micro documentaries on YouTube about the history of humanity through clothing and food and architecture.
Speaker: And that's where I was saying to my friend, we were watching Victorian High Street, which is one of those BBC productions where they
Speaker: take over a small town and they dress everybody in an era and they make them do the jobs that their great grandparents would have done.
Speaker: Oh, your great grandfather was a baker?
Speaker: Great, you're a baker for a week, deal with it.
Speaker: And I was saying to a friend of mine, this is what I would have liked to have done.
Speaker: If this job had existed when I was in theater school, if I had known that this was something I could do, this is what I would have done.
Speaker: I would have gotten a doctorate in history and been a television presenter.
Speaker: And I would still like to do it.
Speaker: We don't do them here in Canada.
Speaker: I would really love, we've done like Pioneer Farm and a couple of other things, but I'd really love to do something like that.
Speaker: I'm actually working on a pilot.
Speaker: But my friend said, well, if you can't do the thing, why don't you write a book about the thing?
Speaker: And that's where the fan fiction came from.
Speaker: I was watching Sandman.
Speaker: And I loved the Hobgagling episode.
Speaker: He was my favorite character when I read the books.
Speaker: So I was really happy to see what Ferdinand Kingsley did with him in the television series.
Speaker: And I thought, oh man, Hobg in the book series hates Renaissance Fairs.
Speaker: He hates going to Ren Fairs.
Speaker: There's a whole issue about how much he just despises being there because everything's wrong.
Speaker: Everything is a fun house.
Speaker: And in the books, he becomes a writer in the modern era, but in the TV show, he becomes a professor.
Speaker: And I thought, oh, isn't this the perfect setup to have him become a television presenter in one of these shows?
Speaker: What if I wrote a Ruth Goodman analogist character and a Peter Ginn analogist character who asked Cobb to come onto their TV show
Speaker: to recreate an Elizabethan manor, but, you know, where they're filming is Hobbes' actual Elizabethan manor, which he used to live in.
Speaker: Well, here's an interesting question for you.
Speaker: A hundred years from now, assuming humankind still exists, how would they see the current year?
Speaker: What would, what would be their, you know, you talked about rent fairs and how they're not accurate.
Speaker: What would be, do you think, what do you think is going to survive?
Speaker: I think there's going to be a lot of nostalgia for the connectiveness that we have, the ability, you know, this was the golden age of video chat.
Speaker: This was the time when humans realized that during a plague, that human connection was the most important thing and that we did virtual board game nights and cocktail nights with our friends.
Speaker: And even though we couldn't see each other, we made a point of inventing entire technologies to stay connected.
Speaker: I think that's something worth celebrating.
Speaker: I think that's worthy of human history, that when millions of people were dying, we got our neighbors' groceries for them, and we drove people to vaccination appointments for free, and we invented Zoom so we could look at our new cousin's new babies and
Speaker: be present and celebrate connectedness.
Speaker: I think that's something that they're going to see this as the moment when humans realize that community matters, even in a world where we're so separated from one another technologically.
Speaker: Before we go on to the lightning round, how can people find you?
Speaker: Drop all of the handles in terms of where people can find you.
Speaker: My website is jmfry.net.
Speaker: If you scroll to the bottom of the website, there will be links to all the places I'm on social media.
Speaker: I do need to update it with my Threads account.
Speaker: Depending on which autocrat billionaire is in charge of which platform, I'm more or less active in some of them.
Speaker: So the way to stay the most up to date with what's happening in my career, maybe not so much my daily life and my balcony garden and my breakfasts, but if you just care about my acting and my writing, then please do sign up for my newsletter because that's where I share my professional correspondence and successes.
Speaker: Again, that's at the bottom of my website, jmfry.com.
Speaker: dot net.
Speaker: And then on that website, you can find videos of most of my performances, audiobooks that I've recorded because I have not had the opportunity to have professional audiobooks, but I've recorded some of my work for people who prefer that format.
Speaker: And all of my books are there too.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Now on to the lightning round for those who are unfamiliar with this aspect of my podcast.
Speaker: Basically, these are silly questions that I came up with that kind of I feel is a good way to kind of get to know somebody without actually answering, you know, getting it, you know, more fun way.
Speaker: So I've randomized the questions and here we go.
Speaker: This is just answer the top of your thing.
Speaker: Don't worry about trying to think too hard on these.
Speaker: Favorite meagal.
Speaker: Favorite what?
Speaker: Meal.
Speaker: Favorite meal.
Speaker: Bacon and pancakes with real maple syrup.
Speaker: Favorite smell?
Speaker: Fresh laundry.
Speaker: When getting dressed, do you button and zip or then zip and button?
Speaker: I thought about this because you gave me a list of some of these questions.
Speaker: I do both randomly.
Speaker: I was paying attention the last couple of days and I just...
Speaker: I do both whenever my body feels like it.
Speaker: Would you rather see Captain Kirk become a Jedi or Luke Skywalker become captain of the Enterprise?
Speaker: I would rather see Luke Skywalker become captain of the Enterprise because he would immediately use it to support the rebels and destroy even more terrible Imperial.
Speaker: Because isn't the Enterprise like
Speaker: twice the size of an Imperial Starcruiser or something like that.
Speaker: I can't remember what the... Yeah, so I would love to see the Rebels have the Enterprise as a resource.
Speaker: Would he join Starfleet?
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: That is a man who doesn't follow anybody's rules, not even the Jedi's, which is what makes him a great Jedi.
Speaker: He's friends with a Mandalorian, for goodness sake.
Speaker: Would Captain Kirk?
Speaker: No, don't give him those powers.
Speaker: Don't.
Speaker: He's already enough.
Speaker: He's already too much for the galaxy to handle.
Speaker: He doesn't need telepathy.
Speaker: We already answered who's your favorite doctor.
Speaker: So who's your favorite James Bond or Batman?
Speaker: I have no opinion on either.
Speaker: Yeah, I have no opinion.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Favorite drink?
Speaker: Rosé.
Speaker: What is your favorite stovetop burner?
Speaker: Top left, top right, lower left, or lower right?
Speaker: Lower right.
Speaker: Who would you want to play you in the movie about your life?
Speaker: Lindy Booth.
Speaker: What's your comfort movie?
Speaker: The Young Victoria.
Speaker: What's your go-to song to sing in the shower?
Speaker: Whatever the big Disney hit is of the season.
Speaker: Favorite or lucky number? 1228.
Speaker: What is your favorite curse word?
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: What's your favorite time of day?
Speaker: Sunset.
Speaker: Favorite color?
Speaker: Purple.
Speaker: Thoughts of pineapple on pizza?
Speaker: It's actually really good, but not with ham.
Speaker: If you do it with a garlic white sauce, grilled mushrooms, and grilled chicken, it's fantastic.
Speaker: What's your favorite superstition or conspiracy theory?
Speaker: You don't have to believe it.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's a hard one.
Speaker: I was thinking about this earlier.
Speaker: Um, I, I believe in ghosts.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then if you were a superhero or villain, what power would you have?
Speaker: Um, I would like to be able to understand any language and speak any language, maybe not animals.
Speaker: Cause I don't need to hear cats talking about licking their buttholes, but, um,
Speaker: The ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere I am.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And that's a wrap for this episode.
Speaker: Thanks to J.M.
Speaker: Fry, otherwise known as Jess, for being interviewed.
Speaker: As always, anything noted that has a URL, it will be in the show notes for the episode on my website.
Speaker: Thanks also to actor and voice actor Petraea Burchard for the mid-show plug.
Speaker: I interviewed her as in episode 41.
Speaker: This is Angie Fiedler Sutton from one-on-one interviews to red carpets and conventions to round table discussions.
Speaker: I bring you a little bit of everything.
Speaker: After all, contents may vary.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to contents may vary.
Speaker: The theme song is schoolyard haze by Yari Picnican available at the free music archive.
Speaker: More information about the podcast is available on my website, Angie F. Sutton.com.
