Lucy A. McLaren

It’s been a little while, but I’m here with a new Introverted Indies interview with D.L. Lewellyn (who I did chat to on our YouTube channel but whose video was cut short due to good old technical issues!).

So, let’s jump on into the interview…

Lucy: Hi Darci! Thanks so much for joining us at Introverted Indies. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and your writing. So, to get things started, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Darci: Hey, Lucy, and Lydia! I’m super happy to be here. What a great platform for indie authors who need these inviting spaces to entice them away from the writer’s den. Thanks so much for having me. 

While I’m not shy, I am an introvert, and escaping into my she-cave to dream and create has been my lifelong joy. I’ve never been ambitious for normal things and instead, worked as an admin and paralegal to put food on the table and play with my crafts.

I’ve been married to a wonderful, supportive man for 34 years who’s given me leeway to go off and make everything I ever wanted. But playing with color, whether paints, ink, or fiber, was always the creativity that kept me busy in my alone spaces, never words. None of my crafts entailed much discipline or expended real blood, sweat, and tears. It was all about relaxation and trying new things.

For most of my life, I pursued the easy crafts as I danced around the idea of writing, dreamed about it while reading voraciously, and wondered if I could achieve the same magic with words. But I never tried giving life to a story until the pandemic, maybe because I knew deep down it would require actual hard work, and I had enough of that with my day job. You could say I’m a creative, easy-going, lazy introvert.

My uncle, Lauran Paine, was listed in the early 1980s in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Prolific Living Author. From 1934 to 2001, he wrote over 1000 books, westerns, romances, and other genres using dozens of pseudonyms. Two books were made into movies, one posthumously that brought his name to the big screen in my lifetime, Open Range. I’m bringing him up because, well, Uncle Lauran was really cool in his retro cowboy writer sort of way, and he encouraged me often to write.

Locking down in 2020 prompted a new reading kick that saw me adding nearly 200 fantasy paranormal romance books to my Goodreads challenge in one summer. Plowing through most of them on Audible was how I finished a record number of cross-stitching, diamond painting, knitting, and crochet projects, and got a nice crick in the neck for my efforts.

By the end of that year, after absorbing those books and writers’ styles and maybe subconsciously tapping into the memories of my uncle, I was compelled to sit at my computer and bang out a paranormal romance. I even went on a writer’s retreat to McCloud, California, the setting for my first story, which is waiting in a file for a do-over. Still, that Mount Shasta werewolf tale led to Ursus Borealis, also set in the mountains in Northern California with a bear shifter.

Over the next three years, Selena’s and Andras’s romance turned into a three-part, 325,000-word novel while I learned about writing, self-publishing, and marketing. Discovering this new, surprising passion prompted an early retirement and had me settling into the ideal reclusive lifestyle… Just as I dreamed during each stress-filled 10-hour workday. Sigh…

Uncle Lauran said anyone could write like he did if they were disciplined, passionate, and used the right formula. I’m still perfecting my formula, my passion hasn’t waned, and, for the first time in my life, I crave working hard. I wish that for all who dream about writing.

L: What a great answer. I love the idea of a she-cave, and your creativity sounds like it was a great way of expressing yourself. To be fair, with a stressful day job, I’m not surprised you didn’t have the energy to push yourself to write. Until you did! The lockdown brought with it a lot of changes for us all. It sounds like, for you, something clicked in your mind and, as you said, you felt compelled to write your first book. You note that your first story is waiting for a do-over, but what can you tell us about it? Did you write a plan for it, or did you just dive into writing it?

D: It’s amazing how many authors I’ve interviewed over the last three years started their journey during the pandemic or went back to a project and finished it. I love hearing about the positives from that dark period in our modern history and I’m very glad to have my own tale to tell. When I sat down to write that first time, all I had was my usual desire to try something new, decades of reading all sorts of fiction, and a command of grammar and the English language thanks to my professional life as an admin and legal assistant. But those were good tools to start with. My biggest motivation was the sheer volume of books I’d absorbed over the summer. All those imaginative romantic tales were jammed up in my gut and needed regurgitating! I had no idea about plotting or planning the structure of a story. I wrote by the seat of my pants, using what I knew from reading fiction and editing legal arguments. It would be at least another year, and even publishing an entirely different story, before I became familiar with the term pantser. But that’s my nature. I love jumping in with both feet and seeing what happens. Probably not the greatest way to publish your first book. 

Though my initial draft will likely never see the light of day, it served its purpose as my “first try.” I wanted to write romance stories involving shifters and/or vampires set in places I knew and loved… Namely the mountain towns of northern California where I was born. Mount Shasta, part of the Cascades and a dormant volcano, is surrounded by magic and myth, and McCloud is an old lumber mill town at its base. What better setting for a werewolf story? I braved leaving the house during the pandemic to visit my folks who were there for a golf tournament and stayed in the charming McCloud hotel (bed and breakfast) while my parents glamped (glamour camped) in the RV park by the golf course. That’s my stepdad on the green in front of the mountain. He’s 86 and one of my best beta readers. My mom told me stories about going on ski dates to Mount Shasta during high school and rolling bottles up the slope. That’s just one of the myths. An Article in Big Think says this: In fact, the mountain is associated with so many otherworldly, paranormal, and mythical beings—in addition to long-established Native American traditions—that it’s almost like a who’s who of metaphysics.

Still, I had no idea how inspiring writing would be in that environment. I credit that retreat as the glue that cemented my passion.

My fledgling story’s main characters were a woman who discovered she’d been born in McCloud and was returning to her roots and a recluse man who was a wolf shifter and a chainsaw carver (sculpts art from logs with a chainsaw). There was a rustic lodge, a friendly diner, and a trip up the highway to Burney Falls, which President Theodore Roosevelt called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Hmmm. Maybe I will get back to their story one day. I put that draft away when I got stuck. In January 2021, I tried again.

This time the town in northern California is Quincy, located in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the alpha male shifter is a bear, the MFC, Selena Aires, is an artist who can street fight with the best of them, and aliens (of the extraterrestrial variety) get thrown into the paranormal mix, namely three immortal princes from the planet Anurash who came to Earth during the Mesopotamian age (influencing Earth’s history and eventually taking up residence inside a dormant volcano in the South China Sea). Intrigued yet? Ursus Borealis was published in July 2021. I’m still not sure how I did that (and you probably aren’t surprised that it has gone through a couple of revisions). Drago Incendium continues the story and features a dragon shifter. Drago introduced more supernatural beings, namely a vampire and a witch, and was published that December. It took two more years (adding more supernatural characters and delving into the Anurashin princes’ backstory) to conclude Selena’s romance adventure and publish Book Three, Tigris Vetus.

Thanks for letting me travel down memory lane, Lucy!

L: I’m so glad you were able to travel down memory lane, and what wonderful memories you have to share Darci! I’m not surprised you took inspiration from the beautiful scenery around you. I must say, I love how you brought together so many different elements to make up Ursus Borealis (and yes, I am intrigued!!). You’re a pantser, so I’m interested to know how the different elements turned up in the story – such as the immortal princes from Anurash! Did you have any idea they were going to be in the story, or did they pop into your brain one day whilst writing? 

D: Hey, that’s another great question, and it makes me chuckle, probably because it ties into my early inspiration at Mt. Shasta, which, of course, has its alien legends. What mythical mountain doesn’t? So, yes, my aliens were an original element in my story. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that the Sumerian people sort of popped into history mysteriously and invented all these cool things maybe they brought them with them from another planet. I linked you to what Carl Sagan had to say about this.

By the way, Anurash is a Sumerian word combination for Anu and Urash, two deities representing heaven and earth, loosely. I stayed away from delving too far into the Sumerian religion, but I had fun with a lot of other things like the Song of Gilgamesh and the gisghudi, the Sumerian lute. Peter Pringle is a Canadian musician who does amazing things with ancient songs and instruments and inspired my scene during a banquet in Book Three, Tigris Vetus. The link takes you to one of his YouTube videos. So, see how this works? My aliens actually became an ancient history element as well. That’s what I love about writing!

I enjoyed playing with the idea that beings from another planet were banished to Earth and were behind the rise of an early and remarkable civilization. They kept their home planet name, migrated to Asia, and mated with tiger shifters primarily because tigers impressed them, and they wanted shifter abilities, and then they morphed over time into their own supernatural race. They sequestered themselves in a hidden kingdom in the South China Sea and only came out every so many hundreds of years to wreak havoc. It was an easy leap from there into my paranormal settings with vampires, fae, and shifters.

So, set against my shifters and a few exciting allies like a vampire spy, an elf princess, and a beastman hybrid are the three antagonist princes–two really horrid beings, and one antihero, all of them having lived way too long, and it’s finally time for them to move on. You could say the three nasties got the ball rolling. The rest was as you mentioned, a pantser crap shoot that turned into a really fun adventure.

My current WIP is a spinoff for my dragon shifter, Michael Elliott. The main female character is the daughter of one of the evil alien princes, so the Anurashin backstory gets more playtime while Halil, being a hodgepodge hybrid banned from using her inherent abilities, grapples with who she is. And in case anyone is wondering, she looks entirely human, so there is no blue skin, horns, or other extra appendages for my aliens–in this world anyway, I’ve got a couple of other sci-fi romances in the works to explore those avenues. That’s what I love about fantasy–endless possibilities.

Oh wait! The three princes, being original Anurashin, have three hearts and green blood. I’ll end this third very long answer with an excerpt of a conversation between Selena Aires, the protagonist, and Prince Aviel Enair, the antihero. We’re in Selena’s POV.

My conflicting reactions to this being were frustrating beyond measure, but I swallowed them down with the delicious food because keeping this conversation going was important.

Aviel seemed to have the same idea. “Are you ready to tell me your theory, human… about how I’m the answer to your destiny?”

“Do you have a problem with my name, Aviel?” He bowed his head.

“Tell me your ideas, Selena.”

I took my time finishing my coffee before sitting back to speak.

“First, let me ask you something. What do you believe is the source of your attraction to me? Do you even feel things like humans do?”

He scoffed. “My hearts work no differently than yours except they pump green blood, and the journey I’m on today started many thousands of years ago because those organs experienced pain worse than you can imagine.”

“Hearts? As in more than one?” I cringed at the squeak in my voice.

His eyes gleamed. “Surely you don’t believe a being from two galaxies away would be constructed the same as you. The Anurashin have three hearts. Though we evolved similarly to life on this planet, our journey ran along the lines of your cephalopods, like the octopus.” That set my mind off in all sorts of directions, but I stifled my questions. “We also stayed in the oceans longer before transitioning to the surface. Anurash is a water planet. Most of our cities are built on water, and we maintain close ties to that element. Of course, our offspring on Earth have evolved quite differently and are closer to humans… and shifters.”

L: Another fascinating answer, Darci! I love how you have took real-world inspiration and ideas and implemented those into your story with your own twists, which is great. From your earlier answers, it seems as though you absorbed a lot of ideas from the books you were reading too. Your first series (Selena’s story) concluded with Tigris Vetus, and you’ve noted that you’re now working on a spinoff for the dragon shifter, Michael Elliott. Have you found that writing your books has become quicker and/or easier as you’ve learned more through the process of creating those stories?

D: Ooh, another excellent question, Lucy, and I wish I could say yes! It has gotten easier and faster. But I can’t. For one thing, I’ve found that doing a spinoff comes with a whole different challenge than other standalone novels. It’s really hard to know where the story should begin. My characters and worlds come with so much backstory, and I know them so well. They started life in a previous novel, and I have to determine how much needs to or should come into their own story. It has to be relevant and presented in the right places without info dumping. The new novel must feel like a whole separate story for a new audience while including elements my Starlight Chronicles readers want to see. This means it feels like it has taken me a long time to get going.

However, at this stage after some excellent critiquing by my amazing writing friends, I finally got past that hump and nailed an exciting start and inciting incident. In other words, I’ve found my voice, and my characters are coming to life and telling their story the way they need to. I’m approaching a solid 40,000 words (probably half of it rewritten four times), so I’m feeling hopeful that the writing will speed up from here. If it doesn’t, I’m reminded of the wise words from a few of my Spotlight guests: An indie author makes her own schedule, and there are no deadlines to rush headlong into. I’ll add that this year, I’ve decided to recapture the joy of writing and step back from all the anxious promoting and social media craze (while maintaining a degree of outreach, of course). I don’t want to lose touch. But this journey needs to be all about the storytelling.

L: Yeah, I can absolutely see why you’d had that challenge writing a spinoff. I’d never thought of that! 

Good for you for deciding to take a step back from the social media and marketing side of things. I am totally in the same headspace at the moment, and know of other authors who are too. It’s so easy to be sucked into a frantic sort of compulsion towards promoting, when really, like you said, this journey is about us telling our stories. They are most important, for us and for anyone who happens to find them along the way. 🙂 

That struggle and the fact that you were able to work through it and find your voice with the help of your writing friends just highlights, to me, the importance of having such friends when you’re going through your author journey, creating your stories, riding on the emotional rollercoaster that is writing! Can you tell us more about that—do you have a dedicated writing group, or a few friends you share your ideas/progress with? 

D: Where would we authors be without our fellow writers and this amazing, supportive community? And by community, I mean readers as well. There are so many layers to this. I’d like to break it down here because it truly emphasizes that the journey doesn’t have to be embarked on alone. That’s an intriguing concept to explore in this group of introverts. However, I’ve learned much about introverts in these last years as a writer. We aren’t necessarily shy people or solitary ones. We simply tend to avoid large crowds and small talk, opting instead for one-on-one interactions or smaller groups for deeper conversations.

As to the layers that have evolved for me over these last four years. During my very first draft, I made a wise decision to seek a friend’s advice. Dee was the only writer I knew well enough to impose on, and she’s a great writer and mentoring is sort of her thing. Plus, her genre is so cool. Bonanza Fan Fiction! As in the Cartwrights; Ben, Little Joe, Hoss, the Ponderosa Ranch near Virginia City… You probably have to be an American to appreciate what that is (actually huge populations of Europeans are fans, too). I live near the lake in the center of the burning map in the opening credits, so yeah, her stories are cool! Oops! Getting side-tracked again, but Dee deserves a shout-out.

She was my first beta reader and the perfect blend of honest criticism and encouragement. In those early days, a few more long-time friends volunteered, including a neighbor. Susan helped nudge me into the next stage. She surprised me in two ways. First, she told me that she completely forgot that I, someone she knows well, was the author of the story she was enjoying. Second, she was the first to tell me my book was worth publishing.

Forgetting that I’m the author is significant because there is a lot of conflicting advice about seeking feedback from friends and family. I’ve had many surprises in this arena. For instance, my 80-plus-year-old stepdad is one of my best readers. My sister, bless her heart, refuses to read my work because she can’t stand the idea she might hate it and hurt my feelings. You all probably have the same types of stories to tell. I still haven’t learned my lesson very well and continue to pester a few long-suffering family members more than I should.

Then, through social outreach and by joining groups like the Fantasy Sci-Fi Alliance, I connected with writers. Many of them participated in my writer interviews on my blog, and a few of them became close friends and collaborators. I truly don’t know where I’d be today without the support of friends like Nicolas Lemieux and Lucky Noma. In the past year and a half, two of those connections joined me in a writing group: Isa Ottoni, whom many of you know and love, and Dylan, another wonderful friend I’ve been chatting with regularly since the start.

To illustrate the value of this team, in addition to what I mentioned in your previous question, Dylan is the brain behind my tagline for Tigris Vetus:“When destiny gives you three paths, choose the fourth.” This is important because it shows how key elements of our work often arise from a friend’s different perspective. Dylan often strikes my funny bone with his quirky humor, and the line made me laugh when he said it, even as it resonated. One of those aha! moments thanks to someone who got what I was trying to express.

I’ll finish this list of layers with my readers. Feedback from readers is honestly what the reward side of things is all about. Most of us write because we want people to enjoy our stories as much as we enjoy telling them. I truly wish more readers would leave feedback. I’ve watched many Kindle Unlimited readers speed through all three of my books in as many days, so to me, that’s got to mean they enjoyed them, but they won’t leave ratings. As for taking the time to write a review, those are precious rare gems. But then, you get that one reader who reads everything you put out and gushes about it everywhere, and you realize that’s all that matters.

So, I’ll sum this up by encouraging fledgling writers to build those layers… and enjoy all those little surprises along the way.

L: YES, I totally agree about introverts. Just because we don’t want to spend time in large crowds and enjoy our own company, doesn’t mean that we don’t value real connections with others. And I’ve found that invaluable as an author, as you clearly have too, Darci. It seems as though you’ve been really fortunate, having people close to you who were able to offer you encouragement and advice early on, giving you the confidence to push on with your writing. You then met authors online and formed relationships with them. Did you find there is a difference between the feedback provided by fellow writers and that provided by your friends/family?

D: I ran down my mental list of feedback from friends and family vs. writing friends, and I think I have a brief answer this time… One can only hope…  

Both categories have provided me with many wonderful surprises, nuggets of wisdom, and a fair share of aha moments. All the feedback I’ve received has contributed in some way to my growth as a writer and better storytelling. That’s the overall commonality. The differences are in the perspectives, as in harsher honesty vs. measured professionalism. Can you guess who provides which?

One thing I’ve embraced in life is being a sponge and soaking up new ideas, i.e., learning. That desire has only intensified with age. I thrive on acquiring new skills, tools, and techniques. That also means I’ve spent decades flitting from craft to craft, impatient to try new things… until I landed on writing. Now, I’m committed to one craft, but as writers know, the things to learn within this craft are endless. I’ve accepted that I’m a fickle sponge and that’s okay because it means I’m open to all perspectives, and all of them these past four years have astonished me in some way. I mentioned my sister earlier, and I’ll use her as an example.

I’ve shamelessly tried guilting her into reading my stories. She has stubbornly refused. We even got into a few fights over it. In her efforts not to hurt my feelings, we hurt each other’s feelings more than once. But that’s sisters for you. The point is this. Every single time, I learned something about my writing and what this journey means to me and those around me. I will clarify one point. She has read and enjoyed some of my short stories. Now, if she’ll just give my novel a try… Love you, Sis!

My husband is another great example. Talk about going on the emotional roller coaster ride with your spouse. He’s had my back every step of the way and is truly my best (and most long-suffering) reader while also being one of my harshest critics, which means he has let me rant and rave at him when he dares to tell me something is crap, and I can do better. I can hardly quantify how many ways our brainstorming and critique sessions over coffee and breakfast have contributed to my growth. 

In summary and in contrast, my family’s balder truths have balanced nicely with my writer friends’ gentler feedback. That’s not to say it hasn’t been just as pointed or any less invaluable. They just know how it feels from the other side and how to talk the talk. So, for feedback, I say, “Bring it on! All you readers, too.”

L: It’s fantastic that both sides of the feedback have been able to offer you different perspectives. It does seem as though each relationship has been invaluable in giving you things to think about, reflections on your writing, ways to improve etc. I think the harsher critiques can only really come from those who know you best, because they also know what you can take in terms of criticism—whereas fellow writers are more likely to be professional, like you said, and to be coming from a craft perspective. 

Well, Darci, I must thank you for your thorough, insightful, and interesting answers! It’s been wonderful chatting and learning all about your inspiration and experiences as an author. As a final wrap-up, do let us know where the best place is to keep up-to-date with you and your latest releases.

D: I’ve had such a blast chatting with Introverted Indies. Thank you for having me. You can find me and my books at bydllewellyn.com and subscribe to my newsletter for updates and all things authors and books. I’m also active on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and Tiktok, and I’ve just started reaching out on Bluesky. Happy writing and reading!

L: Thanks, Darci! It’s been a pleasure.