Paige E. Ewing tackles climate change and diversity in her new cozy fantasy novel Explosive Chemistry .
Including a neurodivergent main character, a diverse cast of quirky companions, and a variety of romantic and platonic relationships, Explosive Chemistry is the second installment of the Liliana and the Fae of Fayetteville series that started withPrecise Oaths.
Explosive Chemistry is an urban fantasy, paranormal slow-burn romance set 30 years into a hopeful future where fossil fuels are obsolete. Liliana, a reluctant spider-kin fortune teller, is faced with the task of solving the mystery of who killed four soldiers at Fort Liberty. Follow along as Liliana reluctantly bands together with irritating (...at first) Fae Colonel as they defend their close friends, an oak goblin doctor and a fairy with a penchant for machine guns, from becoming the next victims.
I had a chance to learn more about her book in this interview.
What was the inspiration for your book?
I used to love the TV show Grimm, and I love the idea of a vast mix of legends from many other countries coming to the United States and hiding in plain sight among us “Normal” humans. That got me started, and I added in a lot of the legends that shaped my childhood, including some of the native myths and legends I heard growing up in Oklahoma. Like many stories, Liliana and the Fae of Fayetteville started with a “What if?” question. What if all those legends from the folklore of so many other countries actually came to the U.S, and found native legendary beasts and monsters already here? So, that lies underneath a lot of the stories. Legends hiding among us, and legends of the old world meeting native legends that were here before they came.
Why is it important to have books that include diverse, relatable characters, including neurodiversity?
As a young girl, I devoured fantasy and science fiction classics from Jules Verne, Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkien, magnificent stories of fantasy and possible futures. But the overwhelming majority of those stories were written by white, straight men about white, straight men. When I did my first few drafts of the Liliana stories, everyone was white, everyone was straight, and the men were soldiers, police officers, scientists, while the women were homemakers, teachers, and wives. This is not the world I live in. My mother is a single mom of three with a Master’s degree. My daughter is bi, my foster brother was gay, my grandsons are bilingual and hispanic. My step-father was Cheyenne-Arapahoe, and the first man I was engaged to was Sioux. I’m neurodivergent and female and a recognized leader in the data analytics community.
The books I read, the classics of SFF forged my concept of what a good story looked like more than my own life experience. I want my children and my grandchildren to grow up reading stories where a black woman from New Orleans can be a police detective, where a hero scientist can be gay, and still be a hero scientist, where teachers can be men, and a neurodivergent woman can be the main character. Heroes aren’t all one color or race, orientation or sex.
I want to be proud to have my grandbabies grow up reading books with many types of people in them. I don’t want the young people of today or tomorrow to think that stories worth reading only look one way. My stories are just a drop in the bucket of the literature of the age, but my drop is a colorful one that will hopefully forge a far less whitewashed body of literature for young people to grow up reading.
I’d love for some young person to see themselves in there, to know that even though they’re not white, or not straight, or not whatever folks expect heroes to look like, they can be a hero too.
Your book mixes a variety of themes - mystery, solar punk, fantasy, paranormal, romance. How do you make it all work?
I’ve never met a genre I didn’t want to mix. The books I love always have action, adventure, a touch of romance, a hint of mystery. Liliana is a fantasy creature, a spider-kin, living in Fayetteville, North Carolina of thirty years into a climate-fixed future, so a bit of solar punk there. She lives among Normal humans in a town that looks a lot like the real world, so urban fantasy. She has a slow-burn romantic interest in Colonel Alexander Bennett, who is secretly a Fae prince and the commander of Fort Bragg’s Special Enemies and Tactics unit, created to combat more fantastical threats, so paranormal romance. Each story tends to begin with something bad, usually murder, either happening, or with Liliana’s gift of seeing the future, about to happen. The plot is frequently centered around Liliana trying to find out who did or will do it, and stopping them from doing harm again, so there’s the murder mystery aspect.
I just tell the stories that are in my brain, the kind of stories I’d love to read, and since I enjoy cozy fantasy, mystery, action, all those things, they tend to shape the stories I write.
If you really want to know how it all works, I suggest you pick up Precise Oaths, the first book in the Liliana and the Fae of Fayetteville series that came out this year and will be on sale for 99 cents for a week or two when Explosive Chemistry, book 2 comes out Nov 21.
I used to love the TV show Grimm, and I love the idea of a vast mix of legends from many other countries coming to the United States and hiding in plain sight among us “Normal” humans. That got me started, and I added in a lot of the legends that shaped my childhood, including some of the native myths and legends I heard growing up in Oklahoma. Like many stories, Liliana and the Fae of Fayetteville started with a “What if?” question. What if all those legends from the folklore of so many other countries actually came to the U.S, and found native legendary beasts and monsters already here? So, that lies underneath a lot of the stories. Legends hiding among us, and legends of the old world meeting native legends that were here before they came.
Why is it important to have books that include diverse, relatable characters, including neurodiversity?
As a young girl, I devoured fantasy and science fiction classics from Jules Verne, Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkien, magnificent stories of fantasy and possible futures. But the overwhelming majority of those stories were written by white, straight men about white, straight men. When I did my first few drafts of the Liliana stories, everyone was white, everyone was straight, and the men were soldiers, police officers, scientists, while the women were homemakers, teachers, and wives. This is not the world I live in. My mother is a single mom of three with a Master’s degree. My daughter is bi, my foster brother was gay, my grandsons are bilingual and hispanic. My step-father was Cheyenne-Arapahoe, and the first man I was engaged to was Sioux. I’m neurodivergent and female and a recognized leader in the data analytics community.
The books I read, the classics of SFF forged my concept of what a good story looked like more than my own life experience. I want my children and my grandchildren to grow up reading stories where a black woman from New Orleans can be a police detective, where a hero scientist can be gay, and still be a hero scientist, where teachers can be men, and a neurodivergent woman can be the main character. Heroes aren’t all one color or race, orientation or sex.
I want to be proud to have my grandbabies grow up reading books with many types of people in them. I don’t want the young people of today or tomorrow to think that stories worth reading only look one way. My stories are just a drop in the bucket of the literature of the age, but my drop is a colorful one that will hopefully forge a far less whitewashed body of literature for young people to grow up reading.
I’d love for some young person to see themselves in there, to know that even though they’re not white, or not straight, or not whatever folks expect heroes to look like, they can be a hero too.
Your book mixes a variety of themes - mystery, solar punk, fantasy, paranormal, romance. How do you make it all work?
I’ve never met a genre I didn’t want to mix. The books I love always have action, adventure, a touch of romance, a hint of mystery. Liliana is a fantasy creature, a spider-kin, living in Fayetteville, North Carolina of thirty years into a climate-fixed future, so a bit of solar punk there. She lives among Normal humans in a town that looks a lot like the real world, so urban fantasy. She has a slow-burn romantic interest in Colonel Alexander Bennett, who is secretly a Fae prince and the commander of Fort Bragg’s Special Enemies and Tactics unit, created to combat more fantastical threats, so paranormal romance. Each story tends to begin with something bad, usually murder, either happening, or with Liliana’s gift of seeing the future, about to happen. The plot is frequently centered around Liliana trying to find out who did or will do it, and stopping them from doing harm again, so there’s the murder mystery aspect.
I just tell the stories that are in my brain, the kind of stories I’d love to read, and since I enjoy cozy fantasy, mystery, action, all those things, they tend to shape the stories I write.
If you really want to know how it all works, I suggest you pick up Precise Oaths, the first book in the Liliana and the Fae of Fayetteville series that came out this year and will be on sale for 99 cents for a week or two when Explosive Chemistry, book 2 comes out Nov 21.
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