Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Zilla: Nature can be the backdrop for the most exciting fantasy stories, and Betsy James brings us one of these with her fantasy thriller Practicing to Be Lightning. Betsy, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your book?
Betsy: Practicing to Be Lightning is my fifth fantasy. The previous one, Roadsouls, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award.
The flap copy makes me wince a little—the style of the book itself isn’t this purple—but here it is:
For Ben, reality is crumbling …
Pursued by a whistling killer through flash flood, rockfall, and storm, under a sky where even the stars have gone mad, skeptical scientist Ben and intuitive Zuni artist Trace flee across an uncanny desert wasteland, fighting to climb what is surely a mountain—or is it a cloud?
Ben thinks he’s the rescuer … until he isn’t. Trace has a GPS … kind of. But lovers and nightmares hunt them on the paths of their very neurons. Prisoners of their disastrous pasts, can they escape? Does anyone ever escape?
On an ancient earth where the land itself is alive, Practicing to Be Lightning plunges you into a terrifying quest where the lines between reality and imagination blur, and survival means confronting not just raw nature, but the wilderness of the soul.
Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?
Betsy: The setting and adventures are extrapolated from journal entries on about six hundred hikes into the seldom-seen New Mexico desert backcountry.
I could not ethically write the American West without its indigenous peoples. I taught in Zuni Pueblo for twenty years, so I know that no one can write those ancient cultures who didn’t grow up in them. But because silence or side-staging would also be unethical, with the help of friends and readers I’ve done my best.
Zilla: What made this story the one you needed to tell?
Betsy: Both my parents were scientists. I’m a fantasist. For me, a search for the Venn diagram that links and justifies fantasy and science has been—like backcountry hiking—lifelong.
Zilla: Do you surprise your readers?
Betsy: That’s an odd question. I don’t think about “my readers” when I write. Though if I don’t sometimes surprise myself, I’m probably not writing very well. By surprise I don’t mean anything on the scale of, say, a helicopter crash or zombie attack. (As a teacher I see a lot of those, thrown in hopefully if the action lags.) More like a sudden understanding or even just a suggestion, like an animal half seen among shadows.
Zilla: Why do you write?
Betsy: I don’t need to know, really. I’ve always written, the way ducks quack. My novels are all character-driven; I just get out of their way and let them write the rough draft. Then I winnow and shape it. That’s where skill and practice come in.
In the case of Practicing to Be Lightning, one of the characters is the land that I’ve loved and hiked on for miles and years. The human characters are in many ways aspects of myself: scientist and artist.
Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Betsy: No socials. My site, where you’ll also find posts on desert hiking, is here. Practicing to Be Lightning is here. It’s also on Amazon, but please support our indies.
