Lindsay Edmunds is the author of New Sun Rising: Ten Stories. This weekend, we bring you an interview with her.
We Read That Too: We know that you are an author. As what kind of an author would you introduce yourself?
Lindsay Edmunds: Late at night a few months ago in a state of exhaustion, it dawned on me what kind of stories I write: magical realism for the internet age. Ghosts coexist with e-beasts, mobiles with magic.
I’ve always been interested in the relationships people have with machines and have always liked fairy tales and fantasy. Magical realism for the internet age is the logical result of those interests.
WRTT: What do you do apart from writing?
LE: I work as a freelance editor in the areas of ecology, managed care, and pharmacy. My home is a semirural part of southwestern Pennsylvania, about 12 miles south of Pittsburgh.
WRTT: What genres of books do you read?
LE: I like biographies, speculative fiction, and traditional fairy tales/folk tales. However, a book I reread almost every year, Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban, has none of those elements. Best to just describe me as a book omnivore.
WRTT: Given a chance, how would you describe New Sun Rising: Ten Stories in just one sentence?
LE: It tells the story of Kedzie Greer, a girl who looks beyond the walls of her perfect community in search for more.
WRTT: What prompted you to write this story?
LE: It began with a dreamlike image: angels bending over the bed of girl who was balancing between life and death. They told her to live.
This image makes a brief appearance in the story “Fallow Time”
“Kedzie remembered tall, blue-robed angels mouthing words she could not understand. It had to have been in the hospital. Before the hospital was a blank.”
WRTT: What inspired you to write a dystopian fiction?
LE: In New Sun Rising, I first created a utopian community, Stillwater. It was logical, in terms of storytelling, to show the world outside Stillwater’s walls as dystopian. That is how the young heroine, Kedzie Greer, would see it because she was raised in a kindly and beautiful place.
WRTT: With which other dystopian fiction would you like to compare New Sun Rising: Ten Stories?
LE: Rather than answer that question directly, I will talk about influences on my work. Every story in New Sun Rising begins with a quotation from eitherDandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, a writer whose work I have enjoyed since a teenager.
Shirley Jackson, author of “The Lottery,” wrote a little-known 1950s apocalyptic novel called The Sundial with definite dystopian elements.
I also like the great post-apocalypse/dystopian novel Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.
I admire all these authors, but would never compare myself to them. They are heroes to me.
WRTT: Apart from New Sun Rising: Ten Stories, name any one dystopian fiction which you would suggest your readers?
LE: I really liked Susan Kaye Quinn’s YA novel The Legacy Human. She just published a sequel, The Duality Bridge, which is high up on my to-be-read list. http://www.susankayequinn.com/
WRTT: Are there any other works of yours in the pipeline?
LE: Yes, two!
First one: USA Today best-selling urban fantasy author Anthea Sharp just greenlighted my story “The Skeptic” for inclusion in the Chronicle Worlds: Feyland anthology. Chronicle Worlds is a sibling series to The Future Chronicles,a best-selling science fiction/spec fiction anthology series. This is the premise of Anthea Sharp’s Feyland: “What if a high-tech computer game was actually a gateway to the Realm of Faerie?”
Second one: A novella set in the early years of the 23rd century about a husband and wife, both expert programmers, who have devoted their entire lives to making Networld a better, richer experience for people. They believe that advances in artificial intelligence and robotics offer the hope of immortality. Now that the wife is dying prematurely, they look back on their 25-year marriage.
Its name is The Paradise Fix.
WRTT: Anything else that you would like your readers to know?
LE: I love watching bad movies with good friends. The more terrible the movie, the more fun we have. I suppose that’s a dystoptian/utopian thing: the bad movie is the dystopia; friendship and laughter are the gold.
WRTT: Thank you, Lindsay. With your suggestions, our list of to-read books has grown and we look forward to add your next book to the same list.
We Read That Too 