Being a Southern Storyteller

My flash drive has died, so I have rush-ordered a new one, and it's now blog time.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen me post on the thirteenth that it was the four-year anniversary of the release of the full, combined edition of Fearless. This coincided nicely with my monthly book club meeting, which happened the Thursday before, and at which we talked at length about a long, sprawling southern novel that was obviously influenced by the literary stylings of Pat Conroy. Most of my book club has not, and will not, read Fearless, and I don't blame them, given that the outlaw biker thing is a very niche book market. But our conversation got me mulling over my own influences as a southern writer, and had me thinking about my aims with Fearless, and, despite its distinct lack of being a southern novel, Dragon Slayer.  

The phrase "southern writer" doubtless conjures images of Spanish moss, and porch swings, sweet tea, and airless summers scented with brackish marsh water. Southern novels are populated by cotillions, and wicked, smiling mothers, and hapless, big-handed sons with Oedipal complexes; by high-cholesterol dinners, and relentless traditions, and biting portraits of the haves and have-nots. These stories take place in Atlanta, and Birmingham, and Charleston, and New Orleans, and, like night-blooming jasmine, offer a doomed, fleeting sort of beauty; fragile lives crushed beneath the trampling feet of ignorance and inevitability. 

Now. I'm southern, and I'm a writer, and I've read the southern writers after whom I'm, by birthright, supposed to model myself. But I'm also thirty-one, and my Atlanta is not the Atlanta of Pat Conroy or Anne Rivers Siddons. And so, for me, being a southern storyteller means something a little different. 

A good many of my books are set in the south, and probably some in the future will be as well. Even in my Sons of Rome series, despite a globe-trotting tendency, we keep coming back to that manor house in Virginia, Blackmere Manor. And I'll probably write more southern fiction eventually, even if I want to wallow in my fantasy roots for the next little while. But for me, the thing that makes my books "southern" is not the setting. At least not the setting alone. For me, it's about the approach.  

Drafting Fearless was the first time I sat down with the intent of writing a book that was not merely a love story, nor an action story, nor a generational examination of the bonds of family - but of writing all three at once. Stupidly ambitious, I said to myself that I was going to write that monolith of southern fiction; that staple in the canon that borrows from the tradition of English novelists, and which draws a range of impassioned spiels at book clubs: the character epic. I was going to writer a great, big, wildly inappropriate rager of a book, rife with tropes, but peopled with figures too specific and prickly to be mere caricatures; a meet-cute wouldn't do, nor would a romp. I wanted flashbacks, and childhood memories, and crushing realizations; I wanted second chances, and old vendettas, and plots, and schemes. I wanted my very own Gone With the Wind, and I wanted it modern, and I wanted, for the sheer reckless challenge of it, to put Ava and Maggie in it, which meant it had to be about a biker club, and it was going to be ridiculous. 

I wrote it over a July, an August, a September, and October; I wrote it in fits of rage, of spite, and in fits of what sometimes felt like divine inspiration, over-caffeinated and without much sleep. After, breathless and dizzy as a track runner, I stepped back and really looked at it, and asked myself if I'd done it. 

Some folks loved it, some loathed it, lots scratched their heads, unsure how to categorize it. Some started off nit-picking and blasting it, and eventually, a couple years later, begged for more books along the same vein. But had I done it? Yes. Yes, I had. 

Val feels like that. Dragon Slayer feels like that. Like a boulder going downhill, a steam engine without a prayer of stopping. Childhood memories, old vendettas, failed plans; like heartbreak, and messy tears, and turning pages with a lump in the throat, heart beating wildly. It feels like a lot. Like a whole life pressed between two covers, and a lot of it hurts, but it's a hurt that is worth it. 

Val is real in the way that Mercy was real. Realer, truly, because he's been with me longer, patiently waiting his turn. He is a character lovingly crafted not to appeal to anyone specifically, not to serve a purpose, but to exist. To be himself. To walk, and talk, and think, and invite you to know him, and dare you to love him. And even if we're going to 15th century Romania, and not some sultry summer field in the south, his story is a character epic, make no mistake, and he is a character haunted, and stricken, and bloody, and trying, and still hoping that he can have that happy ending that people luckier than him always seem to get. 

Am I being dramatic? Yes. That's a southern writer's job. We might sit here in yoga pants, drinking too much caffeine, old sitcom reruns playing in the background while the dog stretches up to lick something off the edge of the counter. But it's our job to throw a veil over that and paint you a different picture; just as raw and real as our own truths, but better, more worthy of being read on paper. 

Wherever my fictional wanderings take me, you can't take the south out of me. The places we go will always be painstakingly rendered, their people fully-formed from scratch. Weekly and monthly progress updates aren't exciting, I know, but the wait is worth it. The work is worth it. 

You've already met Val, but I can't wait for you to see him. There's a dozen things I want to accomplish creatively this year, but it starts here, with this book, getting back to all the little things that I love about being a storyteller. A southern storyteller at that. 😊

From Dragon Slayer

Copyright © 2019 by Lauren Gilley

“He’s been wanting to broker a peace treaty with the Romans, you know.”

“I’ve been in your presence when he’s urged it,” Val said. He didn’t say that Halil Pasha had come to him on more than one occasion now, begging Val to help him sway the sultan. “He’s not a young man anymore. And war is expensive, and stressful, and gets people killed.”

“War is progress,” Mehmet countered. “You have to conquer people before you can shape them into what you want.”

Val held his gaze, and his hands tightened into fists in his lap. He thought of the taste of salt tears, and the roughness of tree bark under small fingers. Thought of a young sultan’s face tipped back, bathed in early light, eyes shining like a panther’s.

“Yes,” he said mildly, and his face felt stiff. “I suppose conquering really is the only way.”

Whatever Val’s expression was doing, Mehmet turned away from it with a smile, humming softly under his breath, pleased.

The problem with his plan, Val thought, but didn’t say, was that sometimes people didn’t stay conquered.