 So hello everyone, my name is Laura and I have the YouTube channel Laura's Little Library and I am joined by Emma Bevan who is the author of Where the Briar Sleep and it came out this year. It's a really amazing Victorian Gothic novel. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. So I have some questions for you obviously. The first one is, I know that you, so you grew up where the book is set in around Baltimore, is that right? So I grew up in Southern Maryland. I moved, the sort of the house is based on where I grew up, but I moved it just because I thought it would be better if it was closer to the city. Right. That's really cool. So, I mean, yeah, can you tell me, did you ever experience any fantastical, interesting things while you were in the house or in the area or was it just inspiring? It, I definitely was really creeped out when I was living there. Like my friends didn't like to spend the night in that house. My grandmother was friends with all these old ladies in Solomon's Island and they would get together and play bridge in her sitting room. And they all thought the entire island was haunted, like everybody's house was haunted. And they used to say that, you know, they could hear talking in the walls at my house. I did not experience that, but it was definitely creepy. I definitely was creeped out by the wardrobe because the door kept coming open like in my book and my friends wouldn't sleep in the twin bed in my room. They would only sleep in the same bed with me because they said the hangers were rattling in the closet at night. I for the most part feel like I constantly had that sort of heavy oppressed feeling when I was in there really didn't experience a lot of notable incidents. It was more the compounding of the atmosphere. I know when I was little, I can say I remember waking up, I was pretty young, our radio and the living room. So we lived in the what was formerly the servants quarters was my grandmother's house, but me and my parents, my sister lived in the third floor. And I remember being woken up by the radio being on at top volume. It woke everybody up. My parents are like, what's going on? So I have no idea what the explanation for that would be. I definitely I once woke up when I was I'd moved down to the second floor because I was older and didn't want to share rooms with my sister. And one morning I awoke and everything in my room was sort of vibrating, trembling, kind of like you could hear the clacking on my dresser says to have all these little knickknacks on the dresser things clacking, nothing fell over but it just kept shaking shaking, shaking, shaking, shaking. And I remember I was like, okay, I'm just going to go upstairs. So I went upstairs. I did my hair. I came back down and the stuff was still shaking. Really? Yeah. So I definitely I don't know. There was a room I used to call the haunted room, which was sort of across from my bedroom because it had that like ultra oppressive feeling. You had the feeling of being watched in there. And I definitely like I thought when I was a kid that there was an old woman who used to pace back and forth behind the bed because it's sort of like what I saw in my mind's eye. And strangely enough, my grandmother had a psychic come there who said the same thing and I didn't know that at the time when I said that. So. Wow. Creepy. Oh, I can definitely see that wood and did make the perfect setting for your novel. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, that's insane. So you are a big fan of horror thriller genre in general. Have you always been a fan of it because of like your house where you grew up or was it something you came more into? I've always been a fan of like horror and dark stories. I remember being like five years old and reading Anderson's fairy tales. And one of the stories I really liked was the red shoes with the girl. She keeps dancing and dancing and dancing to the point where she has to have her feet chopped off and the shoes with the stumps of her feet dance away. So I think that part of it was just something I was naturally inclined to. But yeah, living in that house definitely helped. Oh, wow. So what were some other things that inspired the novel? Did you have people inspire characters? I mean, other than your house, just where do you get your inspiration from? So I guess for that, it was mainly the house. But also I am a voracious reader of Gothic romance. I used to read pretty much nothing but. And so I read so many, like they were typically short stories in these multiple collections. And eventually, you know, I was kind of like, well, I want to write my own. I have all these ideas. I think about these stories a lot. So I just went ahead and started. Do you have any favorites or recommendations of some of your favorite like horror romance? Well, I would definitely say that if you like those sort of like Victorian stories that you should definitely return of the screw by Henry James. He's also got a great short story that I love that was in, you know, in one of these collections, I was constantly reading collections that was called the romance of certain old clothes. I would also recommend Elizabeth Gaskow. You can find a lot of her short stories, my favorite being the old nurse's tale. OK, thank you. I'll have to check those out. Definitely. Yeah, do you have any. So you mentioned some authors, but do you have any advice for people who want to write a novel, whether it's specifically horror or just in general? Well, if you want to write, then you should write. I know a lot of people say, you know, oh, I want to write this. I want to write that and they never write. So you really have to be dedicated. Like I was writing every single night, regardless of how creative I was feeling, regardless of how terrible my J was at work. I was always writing and that's the dedication needed to create a book. Yeah, no kidding. That is amazing. I am definitely one of those people who is like, oh, I want to write this kind of book and then I sit down and I read instead of right. So that's amazing that you have that dedication. So how long did it take you to write a first draft of where the buyers sleep? The first draft was a long time ago. I'm trying to remember this like actually, I think the second draft of that took longer. The first draft was initially maybe like six or eight months. And then I wrote the whole thing and I decided I didn't like it. So I scrapped the whole thing and then went on to the draft that became where the buyers sleep. Wow. I have a tendency to do that scrapping entire drafts. I just it's like, I'll write it and there's just something that just I just don't like. That just isn't, you know, what I envisioned and I end up scrapping the whole thing. Well, did you do any editing of that draft before you scrapped or did you just write it all say no and start again? I basically, yeah, I wrote it all and then I read through it and I decided that it just wasn't it wasn't what I intended to write. And yeah, so I actually originally wrote it in first person. So I changed it over to third person. I changed some relationships within and I definitely didn't have that same ending that ending came later. I was writing the light route of work and I thought of it. So, yes, I won't ask you too many things about the endings. I do want to keep this a spoiler free interview so that people are encouraged to pick it up. Obviously, but so the book takes place obviously in the 1800s. It's Victorian. Did you have to do a lot of research for the book or did you already have a lot of knowledge? Like, what was that aspect like? Oh, I used to like reading a lot of nonfiction and also true crime from the 19th century. I was really big on that. One of the books that I found really helpful is called Bowling to Necessities and it's about manners from the 17th century through the 19th century and you sort of really kind of learn a lot about how people behave, how they were expected to behave and it was really helpful when I was writing Rose's character because I wanted her to have this kind of like she knew how to act but she couldn't quite behave. Yeah, I really picked up on that especially at the party scene that that was like so good and just the whole book had an amazing atmosphere of having that old Victorian but also just the constant creepiness. It was so amazing. Did you ever have any hard moments or moments you felt like giving up or that you weren't going to finish it or was it all just kind of scrap it and just trying in that with that story with that second drafts that I wrote. I was very intent on finishing it. It was definitely a goal for me. I do get that sometimes when I'm writing and some of my other manuscripts, I get to a point where I say, I don't know where the story is going and sort of drop it into the bin. All right, so these may be some dreaded questions coming out but do you have a favorite character of yours? Of mine, I would say that Rose was my favorite. Rose is your favorite. Good, good protagonist there and then do you also have a favorite scene or a scene that you're really proud of or you felt the most confident with? I think it was more so the scenes where Rose is interacting with the wardrobe and she's sort of imagining what can creep out at night when she's not looking when she's asleep. That was sort of the scene I really identified with and it kind of reminded me of how I felt when I was young. So I really liked that part. All right, and then I do have one more question. Are you writing anything else? I am, yes. I have actually another finished manuscript that I again, I had scrapped its original. I guess that's sort of my habit now and I wrote that and read through it. I had another manuscript as well, which I decided recently to scrap and I'm rewriting that now. So I'm, I'm doing for that a vampire type story. So yeah, that was that's something that always sort of interested me with sort of the the old school vampires, you know, not not not the new ones nowadays, but you know, the vampires who bewitched you to drain your blood and that kind of thing. Good old fashioned Dracula. Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me again. Everyone pick up where the briars sleep. It's an amazing book that came out this past July. Also fun fact. There is a giveaway happening and the best way to enter this giveaway on YouTube here is to subscribe to my channel or as little library comment down below letting us know if you've picked up the book, letting us know that you've subscribed maybe your favorite book. But then also please follow Emma on all of her social media. She has Instagram and Facebook. The links to that will be in the description below and those will give you more chances and opportunities to enter in the giveaway to win a free copy of where the buyers sleep. So yeah, thank you all so much for joining us and thank you Emma for doing this with me. Thank you very much. Yeah, so alright until I see you in the next video. I wish you happy reading.