LILY BROOKS DALTON ABOUT THE AUTHORS TV SEASON 5 EXCLUSIVE EARLY EPISODE PREMIERE

[Music] hi and welcome to another episode of about the authors TV I'm your host Jake Brown authors can often be as interesting as the characters in their novels and Lily Brooks Dalton is no exception writing her way onto the page first with a hip one-of-a-kind debut with motorcycles I've loved and Memoir which inspired El mag azine to Rave about a young woman of passion and velocity Brooks Dalton has written a bright brisk Ode to her beloved two wheelers while Cosmopolitan amused that with the PCT is to Cheryl stray the open road is to Brooks Dalton while US Weekly felt that her Memoir about finding purpose and courage on the back of a bike is an empowering poignant Journey she expanded that critical chorus of Praise outward when she released her first fiction bestseller good morning midnight which The Washington Post celebrated is a beautifully written sparse post-apocalyptic novel that explores memory loss and identity fans of Emily St John Mandel station 11 and Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora will appreciate the Brooks Dalton's Exquisite exploration of relationships and extreme environments the world was so moved that the film adaptation the midnight sky soon Followed With The Hollywood Reporter sharing on its success that directed by and starring George Clooney the film reached Netflix as number one spot in 77 countries with 72 million household watching the film in its first week of release alone more recently she's kept readers mesmerized with the light pirate where Publishers Weekly discovered upon first read that she tells a gripping story of a Florida family devastated by a hurricane with hints of magic and a transformed landscape as the timeline stretches into the near future promising the climate fiction of fish andad will eat this up she's with us today to talk about it all and we couldn't be more excited Lily welcome to the show how young do you first remember being enchanted with storytelling in terms of early authors I always think about mateline langle um a wrinkling time in that whole series and I I think I've probably read almost everything she's ever written I was really a a completist with her work when I was a kid um that was the first author that I was like oh this person wrote this book like I was a reader before then but that was the moment where it kind of clicked for me like a single imagination created all of these different worlds um and in terms of of um you know books as artifacts I remember going to the public library with my mom when I was a little kid and being like magnetized by the all the like the leatherbound Shelf you know which is like where all the Dickens and um all the like fancy Old English stuff was but it was like and so I read a lot of that stuff before I could understand what I was even reading but um to me holding such a special book and like getting to take it home with me and getting to have this time with it is something that I've definitely um never forgotten when did your talent first begin to glimmer off the page was it a grade school book report that a teacher maybe wrote an encouraging note on I remember um I guess it would have been like a book report or something that I was writing and um and I was like trudging through what was it I think it was um Charles Dickens the old curiosity shop is that what it's called um and I was like had very little uh awareness of you know I was just like reading it because I because I loved the the physical object um but I was like drinking in the way that he was writing at the same time and so I was writing this very lofty book report about something that I think was probably not lofy at all and um and I think I asked my mom to spell check it for me and she was like this sounds like an eight-year-old trying to be Charles Dickens what's going on like so yeah I think I I think a lot of writers are really porous like that you know like they just kind of soak up especially early on like if you're reading a really particular kind of voice it's um hard not to just suck it up like a little sponge and spit it back out um but it's part of fun get to try on different voices like different hats you know beautifully put do you remember reaching a moment where you found one you felt was a natural fit for you whether it was short stories or essays or any lengthier forms of early writing that you did I went to a very small elementary school so it was so small that the teacher the teachers would do two grades at the same time in the same room so my seventh and eighth grade teacher uh was named Joel how Mr house and he was very encouraging um of how much I love to read and um would sometimes let me do um like little creative writing projects instead of like the straightforward book report I think I think I think that's right um and that was really special for me to have someone encouraging me in that way and um and we've stayed in touch over the years um when my last book uh was made into a film I like zoomed in and spoke to his class about it and it was really cute I had a great professor at UMass um named John Hennessy who I've also still kept in touch with who um W yeah there was definitely I mean I kind of um I had gotten my associates degree at a community college and um and then was traveling for a few years and so by the time I made it back to college I was a little bit older than everyone else and you know I was like working full-time at a restaurant while I was going to classes and um so I didn't feel I wasn't I was excited to be back in school but um I also felt kind of separate from it I wasn't quite sure like what I was there for um and there this moment where I was taking these really intensive Japanese language courses and then also um taking this creative writing class with John Hennessy and um I really was so fascinated with both of them and then it just got to this like fork in the road where it was like I couldn't make both work with my schedule and it was like which one am I going to pick um so I went with the creative writing was it during this key period of discovering just how much you had to say on the page and in your own unique way we might add that you began working on what became your first published work the non-fiction motorcycles I've Loved A Memoir which oprah.com Rave was a rip roaring Memoir that traces her journey from a difficult breakup to a rebound affair with a series of motorcycles well with my first book I had no intention of writing um a memoir like that wasn't a goal or a a thing that I even was envisioning but I was writing these essays about motorcycles um which I was really fascinated with at the time and um and I turned some into John and he was like this this could be a book and so that was um how that happened that's how I started conceiving of it in those terms I had been riding for a couple years at that point and I was kind of um my mother had been a motorcyclist as well as a younger woman and I was in that way where you discover things about your parents later on and it just kind of like reorients your gaze a little bit you're like oh you were young once also and are also a human being fascinating um so those things were happening at the same time for me and I uh wanted to write about it so that was the first essay that I did and I was also struggling through a basic Physics course at the time which I found incredibly challenging on a math level um because I had like dropped out of high school halfway through algebra and so I was just like this is so hard but so interesting on a concept level to me um and I was just really wanting to be able to explore um those ideas as ideas as opposed to um you know equations um so that those are kind of the pieces that all I was thinking about all at the same time and they just sort of coalesced in this one essay um and I really liked it and so I wrote another one with those three pieces again like some personal history motorcycles and the physics piece and I think it was probably the second one where John picked up on those themes coming together um and you know could see them continuing how cool what kinds of motorcycles were you racing down the road while writing this book there were a few um I guess I guess the motorcycle I rode for the longest was a Triumph bonnaville but that was after you know the book came out actually that's what I bought with my um advance so before that you know I started on a Rebel 250 and then um and then I got an a GL Interstate bike uh also a Honda and then I got a Magna a 750 Magna I think and then the Triumph Bonville and then for a while I was freelancing for motorcyclist magazine and that was really fun uh because you know it's like whatever bike you can dream of they have in their garage um but that magazine folded um a little while ago now this is going to sound really in advance but how do you feel like the writing affected the writing oh that's interesting um yeah H it definitely affected the writing I mean how could it not I I think I wrote like the first half of the book while I was still in college and I was um you know waiting tables and I was commuting to work and to school on my motorcycle um so and I you know I'm living in rural western Mass so you have to like drive for 30 minutes to get anywhere um so I's spending a lot of time on two wheels just like cruising through like Farmland basically um so that's pretty conducive to like rumination uh and then after I graduated I had like this sort of thesis I guess like a collection of essays that wasn't really a book yet but I knew that I kind of knew that I wanted to keep writing and um so I you know did this big trip uh down to Florida on my motorcycle which is is part of the book um so that yeah I think um taking that trip while I was thinking about the shape of a book was definitely impactful probably on the story I worked on it with my agent for about a year before we sold it and so before that I had probably been working on it for two um maybe three somewhere around there were you ever in any unique situations or scenarios that you first put yourself in because you then wanted to write about them that's a really great question [Music] um I don't think I was really being that intentional like I think for me um the idea of writing like the idea of writing a memoir at all was not something I encountered until frankly I had an agent before that I was like this is a collection of essays and there was some other stuff in there and you know I was just like thinking about my writing in a different form or that piece of writing as a different form in terms of publishing it I had no idea what I was doing and I had no idea like how that would feel to put that much of myself out into the world and um I didn't like that feeling that much and so like if I I would never write another Memoir I guess is where I'm getting to with it and I'm like you know we we take the road that we take and I'm happy that I wrote it and and and all of that but um it was like a very it a complicated experience I think that helps explain your brilliant turn into fiction next with good morning midnight which The Washington Post would celebrate is a beautifully written sparse post-apocalyptic novel that explores memory loss and identity honing in on Brooks Dalton's Exquisite exploration of relationships and extreme environments to that end please travel back in time with viewers where you first conjured up astronomer Augustine Iris and of course astronaut Sullivan this always felt like a novel to me I'm actually not I'm not good at short stories I can I can pull out an essay but in terms of short stories that's just never felt like my form um I was working at a public radio station in Massachusetts and um I was kind of uh like the office gopher I was just like doing everything answering the phone um sorting the mail all the boring stuff um but I had you know a sense of every Department because of that so I was kind of doing odd work for everybody and um Augustine is a character that came out of that time of just thinking about um the engineering side of radio um and uh you know it it's like I think during a particularly snowy winter um I just kind of had this flash of like what would it be like to be alone in a in an environment like this and um yeah that's where that started so I started with Augustine I was um I wanted this I wanted this person to to be totally alone totally in the dark like I was really into like pushing all all those extremes um and was learning so much about um radio engineering at the at the station um and just like figuring out what was possible and I was experimenting with ham radio on my with my free time a lot um and just kind of getting the hang of that um so I started with Augustine and I the more I kind of thought about him and what kind of story could happen for him the more I realize there has to be I can't just have there has to be another half of this story like if you're G to write about isolation you're also going to write about connection and that's just kind of the way fiction works if you pick one extreme you have to bring in the other as well um and so then it became uh this really fun adventure of learning more about uh radio astronomy and and thinking about this other kind of radio and wanting to put those together and and trying to figure out what was actually feasible like what could work um and it turns out it's super simple to use radio to communicate with people in space it's like not that hard um people you know like elementary schools do it all the time It's Tricky right when there's like with Augustine especially for a while there's no one for him to really bounce off of so it's just kind of this portrait of him on his own and then Iris the child that he finds kind of comes into it and that was her function as a as a writer I was like okay I need there to be some kind of interaction here that I can work with um but you know I think developing a character like that is is you know both a function of what you need out of the plot but also just like pulling in pieces of of um people you've known experiences that you've had you know I think a lot of my grandfather found its way into Augustine um and the more that happens the Richer it becomes and the more life they take on of their own there wasn't really a muse for Sully um I think um yeah initially I just knew that I needed her what's the balance between making a character imperfect but still likable the first that's coming to mind is that is that balance of giving them enough but not too much so you want them to be recognizable like this is the person that um you know left their child behind that like had this unhappy marriage that like you want to give them some meat but you don't want to leave them looking like a caricature like oh that's the grumpy one that's the Sleepy one that's the Sneezy one like you want to strike that balance of um depth but also um you know they're there to Shepherd the story along um so you know it's making me think of like when you see a movie and a supporting character just absolutely steals the scene and you're like well I want to watch that movie like that's the movie I I was watching um it's really it's fun but it's also not quite the effect that we want like we want the book that we're writing to be the book that you want to be reading not the book that we chose not to write so um yeah that's what comes to mind did you have any other original working titles beside good morning midnight I think I was calling it The Midnight Sun for a little while and I knew I didn't love that because the the title is both originally from an Emily Dickinson poem and then was used by Jean Reese for her novel good morning midnight and I'm not going to get it right which I read first but I was familiar with them both and um it's such a wonderful title it was on my mind for a while I was like can I do that can I like is that allowed to steal someone else's title in this way and I remember talking to my agent about it and she was like no that's fair game for sure um but there was a little piece of me that felt like maybe it was overstepping um but in the end I um included a little epigraph from Jean ree's novel which in a funny way I think is dealing with a lot of similar themes in a super different way um because in Jean Reese's novel she had included the Emily Dickinson poem as the graph so it felt like this kind of um nice leap frogging moment what was that call like to get when word came Netflix was adapting it into a film that George cloney was going to not only be starring in but also directing too alongside an extraordinarily talented cast featuring kayn springall as Iris and Felicity Jones as Solly as this became the Smash Hit midnight sky that 72 million houses watch in its first week of release and then hit Netflix as number one spot in 77 countries around the world it was very surreal um you know I think with movie stuff like some A good rule of thumb is to not take it seriously until it's 100% happening so you know I was getting phone calls for a while that I was like well that's incredible but I'll believe it when I see it and then suddenly I guess it was October 2019 I think that sounds right um they shooting was beginning and they were like do you want to come I was like yes I need a winter coat though um so it all hap like it both was a cumulative piece of news but also felt like it happened very suddenly um and yeah it's hard to even really describe that one it's the word I always come back to is extraordinary because it's just kind of Beyond it is like a complex experience and not a lot of people I think really understand how complicated it can be um and you don't no one ever wants to sound ungrateful for something incredible happening to your work like it's a gift it's such a gift um but at the same time it's tricky to like see something be taken in another direction that you would not have chosen at the same time I felt very um very welcomed by the the crew I visited set twice and I and I am aware that that's not always the case and so I was really grateful for that experience and that um generosity um that was really special especially getting to visit them in Iceland where they were shooting the um Arctic sections it was it was like a landscape that I had spent so much time envisioning and imagining and had never been to um despite growing up in a very snowy climate but like getting to stand on a glacier there was this moment where we like rode out onto the glacier in these ridiculous vehicles and they had set up this shot and you know there like in this direction is George Clooney and um like a bunch of stuff on the glacier and behind us is just empty ice like this expanse of white and I just couldn't help but like keep turning around and like looking this way while they were shooting so it was special on on many levels to get to go there that was a real treat getting to um getting to see her work uh and getting to see um the crew be so like tender and um gentle with her uh and just like making sure she got her homework done like between takes and stuff like that now we understand that the original inspiration for light pirate arrived to you during a writer's residency good morning midnight had come out in August 2016 and right after that I had a residence I had two residencies lined up and kind of coincidentally they both happened in Florida not really a coincidence because I applied to them both but I had applied to many and the two that happened to say yes were both in Florida which is also where my parents live um so I was suddenly spending way more time in Florida than I usually do even though I you know have these roots there so I do visit um a fair amount and I think I was yeah I was at the residency in Key West at the Studios of Key West is what it's called um and a hurricane was coming and um I was so taken with the ritual of preparation for that um the way that this community just like Snapped into action they're like oh we know what to do we got to stock up on this we gotta tie this down we got to put this away um and it was just like clockwork and I was just kept thinking about that I was actually there to work on something else um which I was really having a hard time with and so I kept thinking about this idea of a community responding to um not just one hurricane but many you know that that sort of repetitive nature of it um and yeah that's where it grew from what first gave you the idea to strategically plot the book in four parts Power Water light and time it definitely started with power that section with the hurricane and I knew from the beginning I knew that I wanted the book to a lifetime I wanted the clock to be you know one person's Lifetime and um I think it yeah I I I remember I spent a long time on those first hundred pages I think I spent like two to three years on that like it was the the rest of the book happened much more quickly but I was really kind of struggling to figure out what I was doing like what I was up to to what kind of book This was um and so I think ironing out that first section and then bringing in this voice of the hurricane or this point of view that was unhuman uh you know that had this sort of Elemental quality to it was when I started thinking this is cool and I don't want to just do this with the Hurrican and I also don't like this gaze can't really work for the entire book but what else could like what other Elemental gaze could kind of step in and fill those shoes so I think that's started when I started thinking about it when you're building out an ensemble cast like the one readers get to know here and Kirby and Freda and flip and Lucas and Wanda and others over the course of the story do you tend to meet the characters one at a time or in group say taking the couple Freda and Kirby as an example they work piece by piece you know I started with Freda um and I mean I knew that her her child was going to become kind of the the main character but I began with Freda the mother and um you know then you add Kirby then you add a son then you're like maybe another son you know it's like this kind of cumulative thing and the more characters you add the more they start to bounce off each other and in doing so kind of reveal more of of who they are and and what I think my favorite is bird dog who doesn't really come in until later in the book but you know it's funny I feel like um you know Florida has obviously had a few a few notable hurricanes this season and um I have been in touch with you know my parents obviously making sure that they're okay and it just dawned on me recently like I finished this book you know a year or two ago I was like oh my God my parents are are Freda and Kirby how did that happen how did that make its way into the book and I didn't even notice like the the like the dread that my mother feels every time a hurricane is coming closer and the sort of cavalier like I got this vibe that my dad has um it's totally the same they both must be very excited to see all that's happened for you over the past few years they liked it it was fun for them you know um they're they're good they're good folks they're proud out of curiosity do they both ride motorcycles they do actually not currently um that's not that's not the mood right now but they both have in the past for sure I've ridden a fair amount with my dad but at this point my mom is like I've done that I'm good do the three of you ever ride together as a family I don't have a motorcycle right now um but um I still like to rent one every once in a while and like take a or borrow one and take a big trip for me at the moment living in Los Angeles I'm kind of like I don't want to ride in this I don't want to commute like I don't want to get from A to B on a motorcycle here um but I love a long distance Trek you know that's kind of what I like the best what's been inspiring you lately on the page that readers can look forward to getting their hands on next after the light pirate I felt I mean the light pirate was a really taxing project to work on it took me a number of years um like five I think to do it and to kind of return to this world day after day was just really sad and um kind of weighed me down and so when I finished that book I felt very clear that I wanted to do something more fun um and so what I'm working on now is sort of a like a surreal fantasy um and yeah I don't want to get to into the Weeds on it because it I feel like it changes every time I look at it can we look forward to seeing any more of your work being adapted to the TV or Silver Screen in the near future and did seeing your imagination up in light so to speak inspire you to give any screenwriting of your owner try I kind of um you know I wanted to be really thoughtful about what what I did with the light the lights the excuse me the rights for the light pirate um and since all the movie stuff happened with um good morning midnight slthe Midnight Sky um I've started to dabble in screenwriting more and have gotten some work out here doing that and so it kind of became clear to me that I wanted to write it myself um or be in collaboration with someone else with it um so yeah I'm working with a great production company right now um called appan way and um I think you know we'll probably start pitching it soon uh this take that we have but yeah I'm just I'm kind of moving slowly with it this time around I Don't Feel the Rush I think there's this mood also when it's um the first time that that kind of thing is happening where it's like oh thank you so much for everything and anything that you're willing to bestow upon me this measley writer and it's not wrong but at the same time I'm like oh wait this is mine and I get to decide decide like what happens to it and I'm not in a rush so sounds like the best place to write it while you're working on a new novel what are a few elements of your approach that you found to be successful that you share here with the aspiring author watching and hoping to be as successful in getting their own stories out onto the page I think the way I think about it is um I want to touch something every day like I want to touch it I want to open it I want to be in that document um if that's not the day that I write 2,000 words that's okay like I don't I mean I love the days when I write 2,000 words that's a good day we all like that but it can't be like that every day I think for me the the thing that um both cultivates momentum and allows space for um like an unconscious process is to to just keep it close in whatever whatever way that means um so for me that's just making sure that I'm spending a little time with it every day um yeah but you know in terms of other advice I think um I think I'm a big you know I'm a big fan of outlining and I know that not all writers are I think it's so interesting to hear writers talk about like you know characters that just sort of tell them what the story is and uh they they are just there to write it all down I love that for them and I don't work that way I I like I need to spend time not only writing words that will go into a book but also just like noodling around on yellow legal pads with like timing and pacing and characters and and little scenes and just like how it's all going to fit together what about the importance of developing a good relationship with the editor at your Publishing House oh that's a really interesting question so I've had a different editor for every book and and not on purpose you know my first editor left the industry and my second editor left editing to write her own books and we're still very close um but you know she's a full-time novelist now so I'm on my third editor and um I have also been lucky enough to work with the same agent this entire time so I think there's a way in which you know I think sometimes editors don't edit that much anymore sometimes they do but sometimes agents step in and do a lot of that work and so I like I think edit I think editors and editing is very important but it sounds like Landing with the right agent Beyond simply selling books is equally important yeah I think there are other ways to fill those shoes um in your writing life and even if you don't have an agent like I think if you just have a really um important first reader or like you know I think there are different ways to bring that sort of perspective into your writing life um so for me that has been the most consistent person has been my agent whatever reader you can find that can be a reliable resource is and that is aligned with what you're trying to do is is That's Where It's At Lilia has been Illuminating thank you so much for spending time with us today and for taking out time to be on about the authors TV thank you so much I loved it [Music]