Author Spotlight: Philip K. Dick Award Finalist Lisa Mason
This Author Spotlight
features
Lisa Mason
author of
The Garden of Abracadabra
This week's author spotlight features a returning guest, Lisa Mason.
Lisa is the author of ten novels, including Summer of Love, a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book, The Gilded Age, a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book, a collection of previously published science fiction and fantasy, Strange Ladies: 7 Stories, and two dozen stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her Omni story, "Tomorrow's Child," sold outright to Universal Studios and is in development.
Lisa also served as a judge for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award.
Lisa also served as a judge for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award.
Lisa is herself a Philip K. Dick Award finalist, which you can read about HERE.
She shared her book Summer of Love with us in December 2012. You can read that interview HERE.
She visited again to share her book Strange Ladies in September, 213. You can read that interview HERE.
Today's interview is Lisa's third visit with us, making her the first three-peat. Thanks, Lisa!
Tell us about your
new book, The Garden of Abracadabra.
At
her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College
of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through
school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a
mysterious, magical apartment building on campus.
She
discovers that all of her tenants are some stripe of supernatural entity—witches,
shapeshifters, vampires, and wizards—and that each apartment is a fairyland or
hell.
On
her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder
scene. One of the victims is a man she picked up hitchhiking the day before.
Abby
is compelled into a dangerous murder investigation and torn between three
men—Daniel Stern, her ex-fiance who wants her back, Jack Kovac, an enigmatic
FBI agent who is also a magician, and Prince Lastor, her mysterious and sexy
tenant in the penthouse apartment who may be a suspect.
Abby
will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between humanity
and the demonic realms, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn
that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or
death.
A
reader on Goodreads wrote, “So refreshing! This is Stephanie Plum in the world
of Harry Potter.”
How would you
categorize The Garden of Abracadabra?
The
book, the first of a trilogy, possibly a series, is squarely within the
subgenre of Urban Fantasy. I love this subgenre, which falls within Fantasy and
first became recognized about ten years ago.
What
is Urban Fantasy? It’s that rich blend of fantasy tropes (magic and magicians, witches,
wizards, vampires, shapeshifters, demons) in a contemporary setting, often an
urban area (as opposed to the rural, medieval settings of high fantasy), and
mystery tropes (detective work, murder and crime, police procedural), spiced up
with dicey romance, troublesome relationship issues, and wit and whimsy
interspersed with the murder and mayhem.
Books
I adored when I first began to read as a child have shaped my love of Urban
Fantasy. Supernatural people in a real-world setting and wise articulate
animals in all four volumes of P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins (such beautiful and humorous writing, a true sense of
wonder, and wonderful pen-and-ink illustrations). Myths and Enchantment Tales adapted by Margaret Evans Price and
illustrated by Evelyn Urbanowich (illustrated Greek and Roman myths). Then
there was the Giant Golden Book of Dogs,
Cats, and Horses (61 short illustrated stories, a Newberry Award winner).
Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books
(my edition has dazzling pastel illustrations). Who could have missed Charlotte’s Web (a rare book dealer in
New York is selling the edition I own for $3,000! I wouldn’t part with mine). I
took all of these books (lovingly
wrapped in plastic) with me to college in Ann Arbor and lugged them all the way
to California where they sit on my bookshelf to this day.
Did anything in
particular inspire you?
Yes!
Like every author on the verge of a special, big new project, I well remember
that transcendent moment of first inspiration for The Garden of Abracadabra.
Often
inspiration springs from something quotidian, mundane. You’re in the shower. Or
shopping for groceries. Or going on a jog
Or,
in this instance, searching for a parking place in Berkeley.
Berkeley
is a small historic university town across the Bay from San Francisco, and the
town is so crowded now, searching for a parking place on the street is
something of a quixotic quest.
As
Tom and I cruised through unfamiliar neighborhoods looking for that elusive
space, we passed by a spectacular 1920s Mediterranean apartment building and
were both instantly struck by its beauty. But more than that, the place had a
powerful vibe or atmosphere. It was downright spooky!
The
idea sprang instantly to my mind: what if you were the superintendent of a
building like that and discovered that every tenant was some stripe of
supernatural being and every apartment was a portal to a fantasy world? To a
fairyland or a hell?
I
knew I had my book!
So you had a magical
apartment building and a super. What then?
I
had a high-concept setting and a heroine, but I didn’t think that was enough. I
didn’t want a fantasy knock-off of an old TV situation comedy, “One Day at a
Time,” with witches.
I
wanted more plot, more tension, more to the heroine.
I
don’t like slacker characters. Abby Teller is a vital, lively, witty woman and
she needed an excellent reason for signing on for a mundane job like that.
Well,
of course! She’s going back to college to learn Real Magic. She needs a job with flexible hours and a lot of
independence. And she must learn to
master her power to save her life.
Is Abby’s life in
danger? And what is Real Magic?
Abby Teller must learn Real Magic to defend herself against
the Horde, gangster-sorcerers who murdered her father when she was a child of
eight. It turns out that she’ll use techniques of Real Magic to deal with all of
the supernatural people and entities at the Garden of Abracadabra.
She
applies to and is accepted by the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts.
In
Volume 1, she learns the First and Second Fundamentals of Real Magic. As
research I consulted several volumes in my own library, including Real Magic by R.E.I. Bonewits, Natural Magic by David Carroll, Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P.
Hall, The Secret Doctrine of the
Rosicrucians by Magus Incognito, and The
Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies & Magic by Migene Gonzalez-Wippler
among many others.
The
First Fundamental of Real Magic is “Knowledge is Power” and, as a corollary, “Know
Thyself.” The great philosopher and teacher Pythagoras coined that adage 2,500
years ago, but it still rings true today, especially in this age of media up to
your eyeballs.
“Know
Thyself.” Think for yourself. Investigate and research issues, then exercise
your own judgment and will. Only then may you practice Real Magic in the real
world.
Makes
sense, doesn’t it?
Yet
how many people allow themselves to be whipsawed by the media? Not to mention
by other people?
Abby
Teller applies the First Fundamental of Real Magic to come to grips with her
feelings about her mother’s wasting illness and recent death. Her grief and
guilt seriously compromise her ability to master her power.
You have a lot of detail about the apartment
building. Is that based on the mysterious building you glimpsed in Berkeley?
Yes,
partially, and also on The Garden of Allah. This was a Mediterranean apartment
complex with bungalows and a pool in Hollywood. Sheilah Graham wrote a memoir
of about the place, which was inhabited by many famous actors of the 1940s,
like Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, and Greta Garbo, usually before they
attained their fame, and also by the New Yorker crowd of writers, like Dorothy
Parker, John O’Hara, and Robert Benchley, who came to Hollywood to write
screenplays. Sheilah and her lover, F. Scott Fitzgerald, also spent a great
deal of time there.
I
loved the idea of an apartment building inhabited not by famous actors and
writers, but by all sorts of supernatural people and entities!
As
you would expect with a crowd of professional exhibitionists living in close
quarters, the Hollywood denizens of the Garden of Allah were infamous for their
shenanigans. Several scenes from Marx brothers’ movies were based on incidents
that took place there: people hiding in closets, people charging through doors
into someone’s bedroom. Various scenes in “A Day At the Races” or “Horse
Feathers” were inspired by life at the Garden of Allah.
So,
too, the Garden of Abracadabra is “the biggest, coolest party place in
Berkeley.” I take the reader to several of the parties that supernatural
entities throw!
Is the Garden of
Allah still around?
No,
urban development in Los Angeles moved on after the war years. The Garden of
Allah fell into disrepair and was leveled in the 1960s. A strip mall and
parking lot were built over the grave of the beautiful Mediterranean apartment
complex.
Joni
Mitchell’s delightful ditty, Big Yellow
Taxi, is about the demise of the Garden of Allah. The song goes, “Don’t it always seem to go; you don’t know
what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot.”
I
never knew that, did you? I read about the connection recently in an article in
The Hollywood Reporter. I’ve received
that trade journal for free ever since I sold my Omni story, “Tomorrow’s Child,”
to Universal Studios. I don’t know who comp’ed me! It’s pretty funny. Every
year I receive an email from THR
begging me to renew my free subscription!
The
Garden of Abracadabra was built in
Berkeley in 1850 during the California Gold Rush. This beautiful Mediterranean building won’t be demolished any time
soon!
Ryan: No, I didn't know that about Joni Mitchell's song. I think I first heard it when Counting Crows covered it, or perhaps it was John Mayer. I thought it was a general commentary about urban/suburban development. Thank you for identifying that it was about an actual place.
You mention that Abby
Teller is “torn between three men.” She sounds like she’s rather busy!
Abby
is searching for true love. When we first meet her, she’s just broken up with
her fiancé of three years. Daniel Stern has no magical power the way Abby does,
and Abby’s mother pleaded with her to leave him. Daniel can’t protect her from
the Horde and he may even turn against her one day. Their relationship has been
floundering, anyway. So Abby returns her engagement ring, but not without
misgivings.
Now
that she’s free, she immediately attracts the attention of three very different
men of magic: the sorcerer-hitchhiker Brand, the enigmatic magician Jack Kovac,
and the mysterious, alluring Prince Lastor, a tenant in the penthouse who may
be a suspect in the supernatural murders.
Abby
is also searching for her own identity. Every person with magical power who she
meets when she arrives in Berkeley is shocked when she introduces herself. Why?
Because, they tell her, Abby Teller is legendary and Abby Teller is dead.
Of
course, Abby isn’t dead, she’s very much alive, living a private life and taking
care of her sick mother in Buckeye Heights until the mother’s recent death.
Why
does everyone in the World of Magic believe this strange story? And how did
they learn of
it?
The
answers to these questions drive Abby’s quest to discover her true identity as
a woman of power destined to fight evil magic.
Central
to Abby’s development as a woman of power is her confrontation with and
resolution of mysteries of her past, especially the mystery of her father’s
death. And why did her mother contract an incurable wasting illness, requiring
Abby’s care for years, beginning when she was a young teen?
Stop
me before I give away any plot spoilers! People need to read the book!
Okay! And you say The Garden of Abracadabra is
just the first book of a series?
Yes, I’ve been working
on Volume 2, The Labyrinth of Illusions,
for some years now and have a third in mind. I’m structuring the first three
books on a plot arc that should be resolved by Volume 3, The Shadows of Illyria.
Depending on how wide a
readership the three books receive, I may then proceed with another set of
three books. But we’ll see!
Charlaine Harris ended
the Sooki Stackhouse (True Blood) books with twelve books (I think). Same for
Kim Harrison and the Rachel Morgan books. Jim Butcher, on the other hand, is
still going strong with the Dresden Files after twenty-plus books. Same for
Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake books. Both of those authors have
expanded their original premise—a supernatural detective—beyond strict Urban
Fantasy, with Butcher incorporating high fantasy tropes into the mix and
Hamilton resorting more and more to porn.
Career-wise, I think an
author will do well to develop a series, or at least a trilogy, for a concept
that fits into a recognized genre like Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, or Science
Fiction. The trick, though, is keep the momentum going!
As for me, I’m also
developing a new high-concept Science Fiction world and publishing stories.
I’ve published two this year in The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, “Teardrop” in the May-June 2015 issue, and “Tomorrow Is A Lovely Day” in the November-December issue. Visit me
at Lisa
Mason’s Website for more details.
Thank you, Lisa! This has been a fascinating peek inside your new novel. Please let us know about future developments with the story.
Be sure to visit Lisa's website to learn more about her recently-published stories. And be sure to buy your copy of THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA today!
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