Interview with Barbara Barnett – Author of ALCHEMY OF GLASS

I’m very happy to welcome Barbara Barnett to the blog today to talk about her new book, Alchemy of Glass, which is now available from Pyr Books!

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Welcome to the blog, Barbara! I’m excited to talk about your latest release, Alchemy of Glass. Can you please start by telling us a little about yourself?

Yikes. I like to think of myself as an enigma wrapped in a mystery, but I guess that might sound a bit pretentious. I suppose, I’m one part science geek (with the academic credentials to prove it!), one part SFF fan (since I was but a wee lass and saw my first Twilight Zone episode), one part political science wonk (with the academic credential to prove that too!) and several parts writer with an often too-wild imagination. Is that too many parts? Hmmm.

Ha ha, not at all! Alchemy of Glass is the second book set in the world of The Apothecary’s Curse. Can you tell us about this series, and for new readers, is this a continuation of the story, or can your new book be read as a standalone?

The Apothecary series follows the adventures of apothecary/antiquarian bookseller Gaelan Erceldoune, the descendent of Lord Thomas Learmont de Ercildoune (aka Thomas the Rhymer from British Legend). Made immortal by an error in judgement employing his ancient elaborately illuminated book of healing, Gaelan fears discovery most of all.

A 2017 Bram Stoker Award nominee, the first book, The Apothecary’s Curse, is an alchemist’s brew of historical fantasy and cutting edge genetics. The Apothecary’s Curse, and its sequel Alchemy of Glass present to readers complex, intertwined narratives spanning the centuries.

While Alchemy of Glass can definitely be read as a standalone, and would not be lost starting with Alchemy, it’s always good to start with book 1.

If you are already a fan, Alchemy of Glass is a hopefully worthy sequel, both building upon the events in book one and diving deeper into the past, with an entirely new historical story woven into the novel, taking place eleven years before Apothecary’s Curse, exploring the origins of Simon Bell-Gaelan Erceldoune friendship, while taking Dr Anne Shawe on her own journey fraught with an ethical dilemma that might lead her to uncover what might be terrifying secret behind Gaelan’s immortality. Here’s a bit of a teaser for Alchemy of Glass:

In the catacombs of an ancient ruined monastery, hidden away in the Eildon Hills of Scotland, a land of myth and mystery — the place where immortal apothecary Gaelan Erceldoune found sanctuary as a lad — Gaelan discovers a journal, apparently written by his old friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, chronicling an adventure into the Otherworld, a land of fairy castles and filigree trees hung with Spanish moss.

Falling from the journal’s pages, a small piece of glass, which Gaelan recognizes as a fragment long missing from a stained glass panel he’d created a century earlier. When the opalescent glass seems to come alive in his hand, Gaelan is suddenly thrust into strange world far from the fantastical dreamscape Conan Doyle describes.

I understand you’re a big fan of SFF television. What are some TV shows that have inspired your writing?

I’m much inspired by The Twilight Zone (the amazing storytelling and underlying social messages). I tend to love character-driven stories, especially those with damaged, troubled anti-heroes: Fox Mulder (I was a hugh X-Files fan, and cut my writer’s teeth writing endless fanfiction about XF!); Dr. Gregory House (again, lots of fanfic! But also wrote a hugely successful blog about the show, its themes and characters, which led to my first book!) Though House was not, strictly speaking SFF…big influence!! I loved Stargate Universe as well, and was intrigued by the character of Dr. Nicholas Rush—didn’t hurt that he was played by the brilliant Robert Carlyle!! Rush, like House and Mulder, were all damaged anti-heroes, tortured, but brilliant, emotionally scarred, but redeemable.

On your website, you mention another project coming out this year, a 2021 Lord of the Rings Trivia Boxed Calendar. I’m intrigued! Can you tell us a little more about this project?

I am really excited for this. Thanks for asking. The calendar is the first of three annual Middle Earth inspired trivia calendars. It’s coming out mid-July from Sellers Publishing. Three-hundred fifteen trivia questions of all difficulty levels. It’s for 2021, then two more: 2022 and 2023. Never thought I’d do a project like that, but it was so much fun revisiting the trilogy. I hope you all like it!

With all that’s going on in the world right now, everything seems to be changing, including publishing. What are some of the effects you’ve started to feel as a writer, and how are you copying with all these changes? Are there opportunities for writers to continue to publish and sell books?

It’s really crazy—we’re all hooked up together on Zoom these days, aren’t we? I think I live my life in Hollywood Squares box these days (or a Brady Bunch credits sequence!!) So much of everything is virtual now. Brick and mortar bookstores are mostly shuttered, including the wonderful bookstore where I was going to do a fab launch party! We’re moving it online (if you want to come, I’ll be posting information on my Facebook page and on my Twitter feed (@B_Barnett). The other thing is, it’s very hard to write fantasy while so many people are suffering with this plague—and SFF in general is rather difficult to conceive from within a real-life science fiction setting. And in publishing/marketing, you have to make sure you don’t become tone-deaf and stay sensitive to the the world.

The other, very unexpected, irony is that at the heart of Alchemy of Glass is a terrible epidemic threatening London. It’s a respiratory pathogen that confronts my hero. I was a bit nervous about it, writing about what we would understand as a virus in our era, but a couple people I’ve shared the book with have thanked me for offering an escape from the craziness. So that’s a relief.

What’s next for you? Are you currently working on any new books?

I have a couple of works in progress, including a third Apothecary book I’ve set partially in a future Chicago and partially at the turn of the 20^th Century. All the characters are back, including Conan Doyle, but also Harry Houdini makes an appearance. I’m also working on an urban fantasy that explores Jewish mythology and demons.

These sound wonderful. Thank you so much, Barbara!

Thank you for the chat. You can find out more at BarbaraBarnett.com.

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About the Author:

BARBARA BARNETT is author of the Bram Stoker Award nominated novel The Apothecary’s Curse. She is also Publisher/Executive Editor of Blogcritics Magazine, an online magazine of pop culture, politics and more, for which she has also contributed nearly 1,000 essays, reviews, and in-depth interviews with writers, actors and producers over the past decade.

Her book on the TV series House, M.D., Chasing Zebras: THE Unofficial Guide to House, M.D. is a critically acclaimed and quintessential guide to the themes, characters and episodes of the hit show.

Always a pop-culture and sci-fi geek, Barbara was raised on a steady diet of TV (and TV dinners), but she always found her way to the tragic antiheroes and misunderstood champions, whether on TV, in the movies or in literature. (In other words, Spock, not Kirk; Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker!) It was inevitable that she would have to someday create one of her own.

She is an accomplished speaker, an annual favorite at MENSA’s HalloWEEM convention, where she has spoken to standing room crowds on subjects as diverse as “The Byronic Hero in Pop Culture,” “The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes,” “The Hidden History of Science Fiction,” and “Our Passion for Disaster (Movies).” Most recently, she gave a lecture at MENSA “The Conan Doyle Conundrum,” which explored the famous author’s life-long belief in fairies.

Find Barbara and her books: Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Indiebound