TSM: What can you tell us about your latest novel, Ghost Tamer?
ML: Ghost Tamer is a paranormal suspense about Raely, an aspiring comedian in Chicago, who survives a train crash that kills her best friend and awakens an ability to see ghosts. One of them claims to have been with her all her life, another wants to destroy her and steal her soul. While she’s (avoiding) dealing with her grief, she tries to get rid of her new ability, seeking the help of ghost hunters, and in desperation a psychic. Ultimately Raely must try to wield her gift, delve into her past, and deal with some awful truths, and hope that it will be enough to survive.
TSM: You have pursued and fostered passions in multiple disciplines, such as theater, piano, and painting. How do these other interests influence your writing and storytelling?
ML: I feel like they’re all storytelling to a degree. Storytelling with your physical self, with music, with visual creations. I do feel like acting gave me a sense of writing natural dialogue. I do love writing banter. But I also like my main characters to have a passion, whether it’s essential to the storyline or not. Raely’s passion in Ghost Tamer is comedy. I have a character in another story who loves to run. So one of my passions will often make it into a character’s ingredients. It tells you something about who they are and makes them relatable. Everyone has a passion.
TSM: Ghost Tamer has been described as “Equal Parts Spooky, Tear-Jerking, and Laugh-Out-Loud Hilarious.” Why do you think that comedy and horror work well together?
ML: You need highs and lows in a story. You can have an incredibly well-written piece, but if it just takes the reader through grief page after page, they won’t want to live there. For me, humor has to be present to balance out the dark stuff. When I’m stressed or nervous, I’ll often crack jokes.
(No, they’re not always good.) I’m looking for a release. And the readers need that too. Especially if they love the characters and the characters are going through it, you want to see them have bits of fun, even if it’s just light sprinkles. Just like painting! The dark looks darker when contrasted with some light. Much more interesting than a bunch of medium shades.
TSM: You have stated that you loved writing about the gritty Chicago winter and that Ghost Tamer was inspired by a nightmare that you had in which you rode the El train in Chicago and it went off the rails. How did your experience living in Chicago help to inform the writing of this novel?
ML: I loved so much about Chicago, but I could not take those winters. They were just pain in and of themselves. I miss those trains though. Something nice about being able to leave an area with nothing but a couple of bucks no matter where you’ve ended up. When I lived in Chicago, I did a lot of reading bundled under blankets during the darkest, coldest parts of winter and I gravitated toward stories that took place in frosty settings. You’d think I’d want to immerse myself in stories about warm beaches and heat, but no. I wanted someone to be in the dark, cold with me.
TSM: Similarly, you also described your encounter with a ghost when you were younger. How did this experience, or any other experience you had when you were young, influence the story in Ghost Tamer?
ML: I don’t tell this story much because a lot of people don’t believe me, which doesn’t bother me, but I think it makes some folks uncomfortable. I’m glad you asked because I think it’s a nice story. When I was very young, I would occasionally wake in the middle of the night and see a girl pacing at the foot of my bed. She was always talking, but if I ever tried to comment, she would stop, look at me, and disappear. I was tired, so I just went back to sleep. I never remembered it in the morning and I don’t remember anything that she said. One night I woke up and she was standing right next to my shoulder, smiling down at me. I’d never seen her smile before. She looked heartbreakingly joyful. She said, “Goodbye!” and I asked, “Where ya goin’?” But she faded away. I recall the tone and inflection of that exchange as if it’s recorded. When I woke up, I remembered everything. I never saw her again. Often anyone who tells a story of a ghost they’ve seen in life is frightened, or at least freaked out. But I was never frightened of my ghost. And I’m glad she left to go somewhere that made her so very happy. In Ghost Tamer, Raely comes to know Casper—named by Raely specifically because he’s not an evil spirit. He really just wants the best for her and tries to keep her from doing dumb things. I guess I wanted the nice ghosts to get some representation.
TSM: The main character of Ghost Tamer, Raely, also has experiences with ghosts. Did you do any research into the paranormal prior to writing Ghost Tamer? If so, how do you go about doing research for your novels?
ML: I did do a little bit. Raely runs into some ghost hunters, so I did some research to find out what equipment ghost hunters will use when trying to detect spirits. I also looked for different types of ghosts. There are the obvious poltergeists, but in my world, all spirits have the ability if they work hard enough, so I wanted something more nuanced. As you can imagine, there wasn’t much that’s considered a ‘universal truth’ among ghost types. So I just read a lot about ghosts in different cultures, protections, summonings, etc. and let it all wash through me. Then I created my own rules and stuck to them. I’m the worst kind of pantser when it comes to writing. Sometimes I don’t know what’s happening next until I start writing. So I tend to research things as they come up. Most of the time the internet will suffice because I pull a lot from my own experiences, but occasionally I’ll ask people to fact-check me. I definitely did a group poll on Facebook from all my Cajun friends to make sure I had the Cajun French spelled correctly.
TSM: Ghost Tamer is very clearly a haunting story, so what attracts you to the horror genre?
ML: Hilariously I fear the horror genre. I don’t like being scared! I am a big wus, I will not even watch Aliens. My friends tricked me into seeing The Blair Witch Project in theatres when it came out and I did not sleep for three days. So when someone told me they thought Ghost Tamer had some horror elements, I was like, “Huh. Didn’t know I had it in me.” When I was writing it, people would ask me the genre and I would say… “It’s a ghost story! But it’s also funny and very sad.”
TSM: Besides Ghost Tamer, you also have several full-length manuscripts, such as A Dagger of Lightning, Igniting a Vacuum, and Earth Elemental. Unlike Ghost Tamer, these manuscripts are mostly science fiction. How is writing a horror novel different from writing a science fiction novel? What are the different genre expectations that you have to abide by?
ML: Ultimately, I write character first, which I think links all of my writing. Some characters that I love pop into my brain and I put them into some interesting situations and see what happens. With the sci-fi fantasy works, I mean, you have space travel and you have some magic. I wanted both of those. I like my science soft, so throwing in magic helped a lot. You can’t have an open flame on a spaceship? What if it’s a magic spaceship? (See also Star Trek, they had woks in action.) Horror is basically a nightmare. And Ghost Tamer was literally spawned from a nightmare. As far as how writing them was different… it’s hard to say as my basic writing style didn’t change. Except that I was in a darker place myself when I was writing Ghost Tamer. When I was writing my space-opera-magical-alien romps I was having a delightful time inside my own head. I also based Ghost Tamer very much in a real world that people recognize and inhabit, the other books are escapes from this world.
TSM: Through podcasts and working with Onyx Publications, you have also worked heavily in the digital sphere, which is growing at an exponential rate in this day and age. In your opinion, what are the advantages and disadvantages of both digital media and print media?
ML: Digital media moves much faster. The publishing industry moves like a glacier. With print, you have to check for errors, you have to do rewrites, you have to check again, then you have to send it to the printer, check those proofs for errors, and then you have to wait for it all to be printed and shipped. With digital media—especially with podcasts—the trend is fast and loose, people like a conversational feel. Yes, you still have to do some editing, but we’re talking hours instead of weeks. The great thing about print is that you have a physical thing. You can hold it in your hands and take it with you. You can revisit it—or just skip to your favorite parts—whenever you’re in the mood. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve gone back to a podcast episode just to hear it again. Print is also fun to give as gifts. You can give books, or gift cards to bookstores, as gifts. I’ve never received a Patreon subscription as a gift. But I think the two are becoming intertwined in many ways. A lot of the inner workings of print are digital now. That already saves a ton of time, not to mention paper. Another great advantage to print is that you can receive it in the mail. Getting anything in the mail that is not a bill is highly underrated. There’s a reason there are so many book unboxing videos on TikTok… and now we’ve crossed over into digital again…
TSM: What advice would you give to someone who is trying to publish their debut novel?
ML: Feedback is precious. Listen to it, take notes, say thank you—even if you’re internally screaming that it’s all wrong—then sleep on it. After a night or two, go back to those notes and see if any of that feedback resonates with you. If you’re really resistant, ask yourself why. Could be that it truly isn’t right for the story you’re trying to tell. Or it could be that it’s just tough to incorporate and you don’t wanna. I don’t think anyone intentionally goes on submission with their manuscript before it’s ready, but I think a lot of people do it accidentally. Even so, feedback from betas is one thing, feedback from the industry is another. If you want to be traditionally published, you have to listen to the industry and give up a bit of control. And if you’re getting the same feedback from multiple sources, you need to make a change. It’s a process, and not a quick one. I’ve written seven complete manuscripts. Ghost Tamer is my first out of the nest. No writing is wasted, no draft was unnecessary, just keep an open mind and remind yourself that there’s something to be learned from every challenge and every person.