Interview with Author Lachelle Seville

Welcome Back, Booklovers! I'm back with another interview and this time it's with author  Lachelle Seville. They recently published Darknesses, a sapphic dracula inspired gothic romance. If you do a lot of reading on KU it's included.

What was your inspiration behind Darknesses? And why Dracula?

I’ve always been obsessed with the Victorian, the gothic, the Romantic movement, and so on. Between stylistic conventions and sociopolitical contexts, there’s something about nineteenth century literature that fascinated me long before I gained the academic understanding that I do now. I’d been trying to generate a spin on Dracula since 2014 before Darknesses took shape in late 2019. I had fewer inhibitions back then and felt like trying to put a new spin on a figure as iconic as Dracula would literally be like reaching for the stars. An epiphany preceded the first draft, and I realized that my error was conceptualizing a retelling where he was still the star. As I was revising another project, I had a very distinct visual of Vlad the Impaler picking up Dracula in a bookstore and being like, “Uh? Wtf??” From there, it was a matter of crafting a protagonist with a backstory that could resonate with that new “what if”.

How would you describe your brand of storytelling?

Succinctly, fucked up but funny. I love exploring trauma in a way where the reader isn’t sure if they should be laughing, but they’re laughing anyway. I write for myself first and foremost, and it’s so rare to come across media that does justice to survivors/neurodivergents, let alone gives them the breadth to find whimsy in the darkness.

How did your writing journey start?  What made you decide to self-publish?

My writing journey, or at least my initial foray into professional publication, started in 2015/2016. I started querying a relatively personal book about two teenagers in post-apocalyptic Detroit. I queried another 3-4 projects from then until 2019/2020 (pandemic has jacked my sense of time so I really can’t say) before I said F it and decided to self-publish. I had built rapport with several prominent agents who kept insisting that they wanted to see more from me in the future, and every time I provided more, I was rejected. Not only is Darknesses the book of my heart, but it’s the most well-crafted story I’ve ever written.

I considered diving into the querying trenches with it, but then when I thought about the chain of production, I was like, “Do I really want to find an agent and have them tell me to do x, y, z to go on sub? Am I really gonna let some editor tell me to do x, y, z for publication? Am I really gonna wait 2-10 years for this whole process? Am I really gonna get paid dirt and be treated like dirt just to suffer the way my tradpubbed friends do when I can suffer in a way where I at least have control over pretty much everything?” It was like looking down a tunnel with no light at the end, and I realized that at least for this story, I would prefer to micro-manage and put out the book I want than sanitize the material and strive towards the exposure that traditional publishing provides.

Are there any books or guides you used that really helped you while crafting?

It’s been a long, long time since I read any craft books, and whenever I read craft books, I tend not to read them all the way through because I’m so impatient, BUT! One that I read a long time ago that has stuck with me for years and years is Martha Alderson’s The Plot Whisperer. Her four act plot planner is pretty much embedded in my mind, and I can’t start writing any story without making one on a big piece of paper.

And I’m being 100% serious when I say that reading Dracula while drafting Darknesses really helped shape the prose and structure. On one hand, it was technically a fact-checking source, but diving that deep into a work that’s culturally and time-wise so far removed from my own helped me to reject conventions that are entrenched in mainstream storytelling. People were doing ridiculous but effective things with their writing before publishing became the industry that it is.

What advice do you have for writers starting their publishing journey?

Do not put all of your eggs in one basket. And do not treat self-publishing as a last resort. I’m incredibly pessimistic about the state of publishing, but even an objective bystander can see how unsustainable, socially destructive, and static the current system is, not to mention the big question mark over who’s getting paid if neither editors nor authors are seeing the money. I wasted years of my life hoping someone would see the same value in my work as I do, and I deeply regret not taking more of that time to explore options for self-publishing. I gave up on stories that I had no business giving up on because I didn’t think they were marketable or that an agent would ever pick them up, and I regret that, too. I’ve met some incredible, empathetic, like-minded people while self-publishing, and I’ve gotten a lot of support from all directions. So yeah, if you’re writing, don’t pigeonhole yourself into thinking one route is easier or more fulfilling than the other.

If you could write any IP what would you write?

Batman.

How has living on different coasts affected your worldview?

I’m from Detroit. I’ve lived in the Bay Area, LA, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and have been back in my home town for almost four years now. My worldview is that despite the infrastructural problems that plague many deindustrialized cities, the thought of not living in a majority Black city like Detroit makes my spirit hurt.

If you were to plan a writing retreat where would it be held?

Cologny, Switzerland. It’s where Mary Shelley and the lads had their ghost story writing competition.

Outside of writing and drawing, do you have any hobbies you enjoy?

I make music. I put out an album for Darknesses, but I don’t have anything in the works right now. But for the most part, if I’m awake and doing something, I’m either writing or drawing.

Do you have any other projects you’re working on at the moment?

Many! Seven standalone projects, a sequel for Darknesses, a series set in the same universe as Darknesses but starring a different character, and a separate series are all vying for my attention right now. The project I’m feeling most tuned into right now involves vampires, Greek mythology, and Islamic mythology. I have a World War Z-esque Frankenstein retelling that’s been in the drafting stage for months and months while Darknesses pulled itself together. And then I have Moonblink, which is an adult SF/F about a family being targeted by a pharmaceutical company that manufactures lucid dream drugs. I tend to work on 2-3 projects at once until one of them starts to demand the most attention, so I’m excited to work with this lineup.

Follow Lachelle at @L4CH3LL3 on Twitter.