Fantasy life can be hard! A chat with Z. Lindsey – #NewAdultFantasy #CharacterDevelopment #Giveaway

Lisabet:

Welcome back to Beyond Romance! Six months ago, you introduced my readers to Essie in The River Against the Sea. How has she changed and grown since that book? What characteristics have remained unchanged?

Z. Lindsey:

I’m super happy to be here to follow up on the growth and change of Essie Darkenchyl, the devil bureaucrat at the heart of my fantasy trilogy THE SALTWATER CHRONICLES.

Fantasy life can be hard! Besides a few new powers, Essie’s got a lot of trauma to unpack from her last adventure. She started off as a naive, young bureaucrat fresh out of college, trying to do a great job. But when she got stuck in the middle of a civil war, she saw some stuff, man. 

Now what she needs to do is talk about what she’s seen, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Her people love to talk--about legal codes, about magic, about flaying--but it’s not their habit to talk about their emotions. Maybe that’s because they’re servants of the god of death. 

Essie’s people are important in this book. When she finds one of them murdered, she becomes determined to bring the body home. But the more she learns about the situation, the more she realizes it’s one of her own people who committed the crime. As if that’s not bad enough, she’s got to deal with her brother who is jealous she left, her coworkers who want nothing more than to get drunk, and the fact that her childhood crush grew up to be super hot. 

In some ways, I actually think this book is the growth and change caused by the traumas of the first book playing out in real time. It’s only a few months after the first. In the first book, she was rescuing strangers, which was something I wanted as a way of showing the kind of person she is. I wanted to show that she will risk her life to save innocent people even if she doesn’t have a connection to them. But it meant there were a lot of unanswered questions about what her people are like and what her relationship is to her people. 

This book shows her with family, so rather than a lot of changes, we see more sides of her. At home, she’s a little stubborn, and she’s geeky, and sometimes silly, and she’s bad at talking to people about her emotions, but she’s great at convincing them to do things through confusion or annoyance. If you read the first book, that probably sounds familiar, but we get to see them with more depth, and we see what kind of cultural upbringing inspired those traits. (On one hand, the devils in this book do flay people, and on the other, the men have shirtless speed-writing competitions.)

One thing that’s important to me about Essie is that she’s not power-hungry or really interested in power at all, and this also hasn’t changed from the first book to this one. Yes, she wants to do a good job, but it’s not about moving up in the hierarchy. She enjoys her work, so she wants to do a good job because it feels good. 

But what she’s really after is the sense of freedom that work on the ocean inspires. There’s a lot of tension surrounding her. For much of her life, she’s been told that she should be something more than a rank-and-file bureaucrat, but that’s what gives her pleasure. Even her bosses see her as a missed opportunity; they wanted to promote her high up the chain to turn her into a diplomatic weapon against her own people. 

In the plot sense of needs versus wants, Essie wants to do a good job, and wants to not be eaten by whatever monster she’s got to deal with this time around. She thinks she needs to prove herself to her family, but what she really needs is to have some space to relax and breathe a bit. What she really needs is a nap. This was true in the first book, and it’s true in this one as well. But she’s getting closer to realizing that no one will make space for her to take said nap unless she makes that space. It’s a very philosophical nap. 

There are also some cracks appearing around her dream job. When they ask for her to choose them over family, she doesn’t even consider it. There are certain things she doesn’t really have doubts about. It’s not that she has no doubts or insecurities, but on certain issues, like protecting her friends or her family, she doesn’t weigh the pros and cons. She just leaps into action.

Of course, stubbornness of this sort carries consequences. Despite her meticulousness, she often goes off without a plan. She plans as she goes, which can get messy. And she has more than once regretted her instinct for leaping into action. I like that trait about her, though, so I usually don’t make the consequences for this behavior too harsh. Her real problem is failing to speak about her emotions when necessary. Being closed off about her trauma is going to cause her more problems than leaping without looking ever will. 

So yes, Essie grew between the first book and the second one, but if she’s going to make it through the events of this one, she’s going to need to do a lot more growing. But I don’t think it’s a huge spoiler to say that, although this is book is a dark humor, there’s hope in the darkness for her. I mean, obviously, because this is a trilogy …

Blurb

Devilish intrigue in a magical library...

Devil bureaucrat Essimore Darkenchyl barely made it out of the jungle alive, but next she’s going straight to hell—aka her hometown. When she finds out about a dark and desperate plan for immortality originating from her own people, her family ties, her sense of right and wrong, and her silly sense of humor will all be put to the test.

• A strong and geeky female lead

• A doomed romance

• A dark but hopeful storyline

• Llamas!

In the second book of The Saltwater Chronicles, the stakes are higher, the villains are scarier, and the jokes about cannibalism are more common.

Excerpt

“I had a bit of an incident,” Essie said, stepping into his office.

“Not surprising,” the duende said.

“There was an attempt on my life. I’ve filed the required paperwork with the security agents, but I need a less inferior pen for protection.”

“Uh . . .”

“I’m not scared, in case you’re wondering,” Essie said, glancing around the room to see what books she recognized on his shelves. She was unaware that she did this when lying. “But I am investigating the attacker, which may expose me to more danger. And more importantly than what happened to me, I need to deflesh and repatriate the remains of an Aordés body. I can’t do that with a pen that’s exploded.”

The duende frowned and adjusted his glasses.

“Pens are not weapons,” the duende said in a low hiss, his nostrils flared. “Or for . . . flaying, or whatever you want it for. They’re for signing shipping contracts, approving payroll, and weighing cargo.”

“Yeah, I need it for that, too, but—”

“And I told you, pens do not explode, even one as, to use your word, ‘inferior,’ as the one I loaned you—”

Essie smiled, unbuttoned the leather quill pouch on her belt, and removed the corpse of the inferior loaner pen. She dropped it onto the desk. All the barbs were burned off. When it hit the wood, it should have wiggled with the chance to do some signing. Instead, it hissed, shot off a few blue sparks, and produced a single smoke ring before expiring.

“Whoa,” the duende said.

About the Author

Zac Lindsey is an anthropologist and a linguist who focuses on the Maya people of Quintana Roo. Since childhood, he's had a not-so-secret love of weird, silly, and well-structured fantasy. When other people's parents were reading them picture books, his mom was reading him Terry Brooks. He typically writes hopeful and character-driven fantasy.

Today, he lives in Quintana Roo, Mexico with his wife, daughter, and various stray cats.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/z.lindsey_fiction/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550498257222

Cargo of Bones at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cargo-Bones-Saltwater-Chronicles-Lindsey/dp/B0D7M5GGZK

Amazon link to the first book: https://www.amazon.com/River-Against-Sea-Z-Lindsey-ebook/dp/B0CH3TW3YD/ref=sr_1_1

B&N link to the first book (for paperback): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-river-against-the-sea-z-lindsey/1144077772

Z. Lindsey will award a randomly drawn winner a $25 Amazon/BN gift card plus a digital copy of the book via Rafflecopter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway