Author Q&A: Lydia Sherrer

Today we're interviewing urban fantasy author Lydia Sherrer.

Sherrer is the award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of the Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus universe of books, which has sold nearly a million copies worldwide.

Most recently she has published a gamelit series, TransDimensional Hunter, with NYT bestselling author John Ringo.

She runs her publishing company, Chenoweth Press, with her game-designing husband, David, and together they create things, wrangle kids, and are supervised by their feline overlords.

SADYE: Which of your characters would you most and least like to trade places with?

LYDIA: Good heavens, none of them! I like my life, my family, and my career, thank you very much, and am rather fond of NOT having my life in danger and NOT having the fate of the world rest of my shoulders.

But I suppose if I were forced to switch with someone, I'd most like to switch with Lynn Raven, the gaming prodigy protagonist of my TransDimensional Hunter gamelit series with John Ringo. If I were in Lynn's shoes, I'd get to play the augmented reality game TransDimensional Hunter and it would be sooooo fuuuuuuun.

I would least like to trade places with Mallory Caine, a skilled assassin and all-around secret agent type, a "mere" mundane in a magical world full of wizards, witches, and powerful beings from my Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus universe.

She is who she is and has the skills she has because she was trained from childhood to be that way by her megalomaniacal wizard father who only ever saw her as a tool.

Oof. Not fun. The training turned her into a borderline sociopath, and the poor thing has a pretty rocky path back to some semblance of humanity.

Love writing her (and my readers love reading her!). But man I do not want to BE her.

SADYE: Which of your characters would you most and least like to become romantically involved with?

LYDIA: The romantic interest of my protagonist in my main urban fantasy series (the Lily Singer Adventures of the Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus universe) is sorta kinda based off my husband, haha!

It's not like I set out with the intent to make them similar, more that my husband is adorably romantic on a regular basis and gives me the best one-liners in the whole world and I can't NOT put them in my books, obviously! Things like "I miss you when I blink." And he says them with such utter sincerity. ...

There are even a few multiple-line conversations between Lily and Sebastian that are quotes from conversations we've had (I'm giggling inside right now. It's fun being a writer!).

Who would I least like to be romantically involved with? Well, one of the antagonists of the Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus universe is loosely inspired by someone I had a relationship with a looooooong time ago (long before I met my husband), who was a self-professed sociopath and pathological liar.

That very painful part of my life inspired a lifelong fascination with the psychology of sociopaths and the dark triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy).

Most villains in stories are touched in some way by those sorts of personality traits, and I really enjoy exploring the psychology of them and how the relationships they have with those around them affects people's lives and stories.

SADYE: What have been the most surprising, rewarding, and challenging parts of your writing career?

LYDIA: Surprising — that people enjoy my writing, haha!

Imposter syndrome is a universal impulse in all writers, though of course the severity of it varies person to person. I can intellectually acknowledge that my books are of decent quality readily enough, but my inner child, my emotional core, isn't as easily convinced.

Somehow, despite the awards and sales numbers I have achieved, I am still surprised every time a reader says they enjoyed my stories. Writing as a career can beat you down, just the small everyday frustrations and insecurities that pile up on each other, so I treasure every word of encouragement from my readers. It's what keeps me going.

Rewarding — writing is a biological imperative for me. ... But publishing, now, I publish for my readers.

Before I had readers, I published because I hoped to one day give other people the same enjoyment I had found in many favorite books over the years. I wanted to give back, I wanted to perpetuate the magic, I wanted to fill people's hearts with wonder.

The thing that brings tears to my eyes, though, is when I get emails or notes from people who say my books got them through a tough time, maybe an illness, or the death of a loved one. Bringing joy and comfort to people during the hardest parts of their lives is more than I could ever ask for as a writer.

Challenging — writing is my passion, and I love it to death, but doing it for a career and to earn money to support my entire family is still work. A LOT of work. ...

I hold myself to impossible standards, and being my own boss there's no one to tell me to take a break. Even after eight years of this career I'm still very much a work in progress trying to wisely balance things (having four kids makes it that much more imperative that I get it right and set a good example for them!).

SADYE: What message or theme would you like readers to take away from your work?

LYDIA: There is much, much more to this world than we realize or take the time to consider in our busy, day-to-day lives. And it's the deeper things of this world, the big questions that can be frightening and challenging, that really give life meaning.

It is my hope that my stories give readers a chance to step outside of themselves and see the world in a different light, to face those big questions and be inspired to search for answers from the safe place of a fantastical story that is totally made up — and yet touches a familiar chord in our souls that nothing else can.

I hope they find joy in the trials, wisdom in the challenges, and hope in the darkness that my characters face. And, of course, lots of laughter in the love and friendship the characters share with each other, and through them, that I get to share with my readers.

SADYE: What experience in your past or general aspect of your life has most affected your writing? 

LYDIA: My older brother died when I was a teenager. It was a tragic and sudden accident. ...

That visceral knowledge of the frailty of life informs all of my writing. I explore themes of trauma and how people learn to overcome it, I dive into the hard questions of life that only something like death forces us to face, and I try to fill my pages with profound love and meaning because none of us know how long we have left to enjoy them.

Most of all, though, my stories point toward the hope that has been given to me, a hope that cannot be snuffed out even by the darkest of tragedies, because the author of that hope is the one who has conquered death itself.

Tragedy strips away our pride, our excuses, our prejudices, our assumptions, and leaves us drowning in yawning blackness. But there is a hope that is light in that darkness, the only thing standing between you and crushing despair.

If I can illuminate that hope, just point toward it for one single reader in my entire career, then every bit of my hard work over decades would have been worth it.

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Learn more about Lydia Sherrer on her website, where her books can also be purchased; like her page on Facebook; and follow her on Instagram.

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