Lily-Brooks Dalton: A discussion about THE LIGHT PIRATE

foreign [Music] [Music] welcome everyone to authors on the air I'm your host Pam stack I am so thrilled to be with Lily Brooks Dalton today she wrote one of my favorite books of the year called the light pirate not having known anything about Lily or this book when I got a note from the publicist he said well it's kind of dystopian and it's kind of weather related and I said okay sure I'll give it a try and that was right after Hurricane Ian blew through my hometown so Lily Brooks Dalton welcome to office on the air Thank you Pam it's very fun to be here I'm so happy that you're here and that we can talk about this book The Light pirate is I kind of don't like to say dystopian but it's a weather related um kind of could be reality in set into the future and it starts with a girl named Agnes who is named after a monster hurricane grows blows through her home in a town in Florida take it from there sure uh so we um we meet Wanda the day that she's born um that's all right one of the book begins um uh you know there's a huge hurricane happening and she's born in the midst of it um and from there we really follow her throughout her lifetime and the clock of the book is you know the from the beginning to the end and throughout that time we see her grow up and change alongside this landscape that is also really rapidly changing um as she's growing up living there so um you know she and her family are struggling to survive in this place as um as things are becoming more and more difficult and um yeah it's really just the story of how she how she does that the interesting thing to me about Wanda is that she knows she's named after the hurricane and a lot of her contemporaries are angry with her because the hurricane Wanda has changed their lives so much and this is when she still has neighbors and schoolmates and all in the town that she's grown up in is that correct yeah so you know she's kind of branded from birth in this way that her mother you know didn't didn't really think it through um and so the town has suffered so much tragedy and so much damage from this hurricane that um growing up with the same name it's a burden for her and it really kind of Sparks this um superstitious I think gaze that that people can have um so she's not well liked and she's she's bullied and she feels like she doesn't belong um but of course as she gets older we see that Wanda is pretty uniquely equipped to to belong in this place as it changes um and so you know it's it's like a a landscape that she grows into let's say um it's interesting to me that you chosen water as your wind and water but particularly water as your dystopian element because it very much is a character in the book it's not named but but the book doesn't happen without water and um I always said and I always have lived very close to water I I've always said I'm a water baby now I want to move to the center of a dry State someplace that will never have water you know just I'm joking but it it is such an amazingly detailed book about how Wanda learns to adapt to the absolute horror of climate change in her community so and she doesn't know if anybody else is alive she doesn't know if her family's alive she assumes they're not she doesn't know if any of her former neighbors or classmates or anything else and somehow she has one neighbor an elderly woman who she teams up with let's talk about that character because I think she's critical to the shaping the story for Wanda absolutely and uh so her name is Phyllis and she is a survivalist so she has spent almost her entire life preparing for this kind of um dissolution of society she sees it coming she's a biologist by trade and a teacher as well so you know she is watching these gradual changes in the environment and seeing them stack on top of each other and become more and more drastic and so she's prepared she spent all this time preparing for what might come next so she's um really able to guide Wanda through this transition and to show her how to live in in this new kind of environment and you know what you're saying about water um I'm so glad you teased that out because um kind of so the book has four parts it begins with power water light and time and so kind of choosing those elements as a structural component for the book was something that I was really excited about doing um because I because the elements are so important to the story but also because it opened the door to allow each section to mirror that element both in like Tempo and it's and in the narrative that's unfolding within it and so you know the beginning is really fast it's really um energetic it's we're going through this hurricane and then we kind of move into a more gradual pacing and we're thinking about the you know the sea level rising and that doesn't happen overnight that's you know something that takes a while so it as we move through the narrative I think we're we're also using taking cues from those elements about about how to do that yeah it's interesting because the four separate story arcs are really their own little composite sketch of what's happening in Wanda's life but when you go through the book one just kind of layers right on top of the other it seems like a very natural thing to move into the second then the third and the fourth Arc in this book so um I it also was very I didn't understand but it became very obvious after the second Arc of the story that there's something a little Supernatural happening with Wanda and um it was interesting to me that Phyllis noticed it but didn't really didn't want to pay attention to didn't understand why it was happening and Wanda herself doesn't catch it until maybe the last story arc is that true yeah well I think they're you know Phyllis is very as a biologist as a scientist she's really interested in facts right and she's really interested in what is quantifiable so um these this thing that want this ability that Wanda has this relationship to the environment that she has that is a little bit inexplicable makes Phyllis really uncomfortable and you know she's curious about it but at the same time she doesn't understand it she doesn't know what box to put it in um and you know Wanda is still a child at that point so I think she's kind of growing into it and seeing how it can help her live in this place and ultimately it does become a tool for her that's that's really important but in the beginning I think it's a little more um ambiguous as to how it can help her whereas we do also see how it can hurt her yes it's fascinating the way that you've woven that in there and it really magnifies and becomes a very important part of the story uh halfway through the book and um I I just enjoyed that part so much I also enjoyed the fact that I will tell you what one of the strongest parts for me uh was phyllis's story and um because she's an older lady and all that part to me I had to read over a few times very traumatic reading that um seeing what happens to her and all and um and but it was so powerful it was so powerful that it absolutely changed Wanda through all that part even though she didn't understand it at first but it changed her and I I don't know if it changed her made her stronger or if it made her more sad it's hard to know until the next phase when Mad Dog comes into the life and so I just I just found that whole dynamic there so interesting one is gone and replaced by another but in a totally different way so you know you brought somebody from the first Arc into the fourth Arc and it was absolutely pivotal for for the story congratulations thank you so much I mean it's really great to hear from you that um that the progression of the parts felt as natural as it did and that that you were um that you were along for that ride because I think when I was writing it it felt like I was writing four books I bet it did because it could have been it could have actually been for novellas put together in one book you know and I kept I kept being worried that like maybe they wouldn't fit together right and it was it was really challenging to make them work together and also every time I ended one section and began the next it felt like this really big um just like brain recalibration for me as a writer um and it's this book took me a long time I bet it did I will tell you what I found interesting and I would imagine in Wanda's life her the life you know her lifespan she felt the same way I had no concept of time of Aging or you know anything like that I had no concept of it because of the conditions of the weather of the earth of Wanda not being able to she couldn't didn't have a calendar to check everything up and and you certainly never mentioned age of Wanda in any of them it is only when you get to the last portion of the book do you recognize that you're now looking back on Wanda's story so that to me was very interesting um and and in reality I would imagine if you're living I don't know I'm thinking you know people who would live in the desert do they pass time do they calendar off time the way we do you know Nomads who are wandering around or or people who live you know indigenous peoples who live on an island who are not necessarily looking at a calendar how do they Mark time so that was a nice little twist for me also so I I'm so glad that I've read this the light pirate is magnificent and I want to say I recommend this highly to anyone who's not read it you don't have to live in Florida and have to live through a hurricane to really appreciate it because we are living in a changing World our climate is changing it may be dry one place freezing someplace else or water someplace else but it is changing so I highly recommend it Lily you write other books too and none of them are connected you have written about repairing motorcycles you have written about all these other things tell us what drives your interest in your subjects to your books um that's a really good question I you know I really enjoy uh moving from topic to Topic in in my books it's really exciting that this is part of my job that I get to do things like that but I think something that probably ties um all of them together is something that I'm really interested in writing about and I think will always be interested in writing about is um loneliness isolation and with that of course comes connection so that tension between the two um but I but and also Solitude right because um loneliness and Solitude aren't aren't um the same thing there's another friction between them and I'm really interested in that and you know it probably makes sense as a person who works alone and lives alone and spends a lot of time alone that that is on my mind a lot but interesting yeah are you have you thought about the next thing you want to write oh yeah I'm working on it I'm deep into a rough draft of my next novel um which I can't say too much about not because I want to be mysterious but because it's so in process um and it's an everyday difference it's an ever-changing thing you're changing the recipe a little bit each time you go through it right I love it yeah but this one is a fantasy which I haven't done before um and is kind of like a surreal fantasy uh so I'm really excited it's a very topical genre right now it's a very very hot genre as a matter of fact I'm creating a new podcast with one of the other hosts called the other worlds podcast and it's going to be paranormal Supernatural on fantasy so I'm I'm really anxious to hear what you're gonna do so next year when your book is out you'll be sure to let me know you know absolutely that sounds like a great podcast yeah it's gonna be fun I think um whose books are on your nightstand right now oh um okay right now I'm reading Babel by RF Quang um I am listening to into the Mist by PC cast um and I actually just finished um dreams memories wait how does It Go um memories dreams uh Reflections by Carl Jung I'm sorry I might have just butchered the title um which uh was really inspiring for me uh just in the context of the book that I'm working but I love okay well here is a really fun Insider thing um so I met PC cast a couple years ago when I was promoting my previous book and we made a deal we made a bet and so I the deal was that I would include her in the acknowledgments of my next book and here I was working on my next book and I was taking years and years and years so I decided I would name a character after her and do her one better so Phyllis is actually named after pizza oh my gosh okay yeah okay oh my gosh I should really get you together on a podcast because she's so I love that she's blowing out with her books right now I mean she's so popular and I'm really fantastic yeah she really is and um it's a genre I love I'm I'm not a fan of horror and I really don't like historical that much because now historical encompasses the time that I was born and so I say well I'm not historical you know I'm really not so it's a little bit more literary than I'm used to I am a genre girl although I have to tell you this is very literary it really is it's spectacular um what is something that people don't know about you that you don't mind sharing okay oh um oh gosh that's uh that's a that's a good question let's see um well I wanna um I guess one thing well gosh I I like who knows if if anyone knows this about me I've kind of lost track of what I talk about in public and what I what I don't but um I used to live out of the back of my pickup truck and actually that's where I was living when I was um sort of conceiving of this book I was driving around the country and like camping and national parks and doing a couple writing residencies so I was leading a somewhat nomadic life when the idea for this book uh kind of knocked on my door is that when you went to Key West mm-hmm that's when I went to Key West and I still have the same truck I don't live in it anymore but it's parked out back did you enjoy that Adventure you know I did and it was also challenging it's it's hard to not like have a home base and it was hard for me to work at that time but in hindsight I can see that I did a lot of imagining and a lot of um just like filling my cup creatively even though I wasn't writing a lot of pages so um yeah I can imagine that's a character building experience for you and for sure yeah how wonderful where can we find you on the web and do you use social media um I'm occasionally on Instagram and my handle there is just at Lily Brooks Dalton um but I actually don't do any of the other ones lucky you just try to keep it simple you know I don't blame you one bit congratulations on the light pirate I I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time and I wish you all the success promise me you'll come back thank you Pam I would love to come back and I'd love to have you come back and talk to PC cast and you can talk about Phyllis with her okay absolutely let's do it okay I want to thank everybody for being with me and Lily Brooks Dalton today the book is fabulous I can't recommend it highly enough go get the light pirate um it's an eye-opening book it's she's not preaching anything to you but she's telling one heck of a story have a great day everybody we'll see you next time and thank you mom and dad we'll see you later