Jul 10

Meet Em Fyre

Em Fyre is a debut novelist from El Paso, Texas, where she was born and raised. In a city rich in storytelling, it is no wonder that she was enchanted by the role of the story-teller. She has now gone from telling bedtime stories to writing her own original stories.

Em spent any amount of spare time reading or writing between mommy duties and working to put food on the table. Several things were made clear to Em during these growing pains, books were essential. It did not matter whether she was reading them or writing them, if there was one within arm’s reach then life could throw all that it wanted her way.

“How Could I Forget?” was written as a family project after a wild dream, but Em would have never published it if her daughter had not made her put her money where her mouth was when it came to sage advice about putting in the work to make a dream come true. Her daughter was not talking about the project itself, but about a young girl’s dream to publish her very own book.

Please share a brief synopsis of How Could I Forget?

Dreamwalker Liv Bane took her son and daughter and disappeared into the dead of night. For seventeen years, they’ve been on the run, hiding in plain sight and doing their best to blend in with the skins who live in the towns they stay in. Once upon a time, Liv loved a boy and he loved her back. A shadow just out of reach, she can never seem to remember the face of the boy who once held her heart. Convinced that memories have been stolen from her, Liv is determined to uncover the truth of her past and destroy the nightmare her future has in store for her. With the ability to wield life-altering power, Liv must decide if love is worth the price of remembering. As the truth unfolds, Liv and her children, Revna and Falkon, are forced to take a strong look at their nature and determine which light they must walk in. For a dreamwalker, it’s a fine line to tread between being a dream or a living nightmare.

The process of drafting a novel is different for every author. Please share your writing process. How did you begin drafting How Could I Forget?? Did you sit down one day and start typing, did you outline the story first, or use a storyboard?

At first, I looked into software and tools that authors have been talking about, like Hemingway and Reedsy. I keep a general plot line in mind, but I don’t write it out and it’s not something I make myself stick to. In the end, I took the Stephen King approach and sat down and started writing until I was done with the story.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication?

From the moment that the idea sparked to publication was about two and a half years.

Were there any surprises on your road to publication?

So many surprises. I had a very naive idea of what it would be like to publish a book. I was not expecting all the work that goes into marketing and building a following. I was happily surprised to find an amazing network of authors and writers that inspire and encourage me so much.

Categorizing a novel can sometimes be difficult. How Could I Forget? is categorized as Urban Fantasy/Dark Urban Fantasy. Please tell us how you settled on this genre?

There are still times when I wonder if I chose correctly, but I ultimately settled on Dark Urban Fantasy because of the violence and horror depictions in some of the scenes. I set the story in modern times, and fantasy because so much of the magic system is new to literature, hence the urban fantasy. Sometimes I want to call it a paranormal book, but the beings are part of nature, they are not made, unlike vampires, werewolves, ghosts and witches.

There are words in your novel, some invented, such as dromvisa, drometja, stelled, metya, etc. What tips and tricks did you employ to help create these words and their meanings?

Maeres and dromvisa are as old as time. In the first manuscript I used dream walking, dream eating, and dream thieving, but I felt those words were easily confused with regular eating and thieving so I researched ancient languages, avoiding the ones that use symbols in their writing and chose ancient Norse to pull from.

Drom = dream

Visa = guide

Metja = eat

Stela = to steal

After that, I made up my own conjugations to work within English grammar, which proved to be a tad difficult with metja/metya as I changed the “j” for a “y” to distinguish the noun (dream eater) from the verb (to eat a dream or memory).

Authors of Fantasy novels often choose unique character names. How did you choose names for your characters?

Liv, Revna, and Falkon are Scandinavian inspired. Liv’s parentage, which is not revealed in this book, makes this more apparent later. Most of the character names were chosen to give my characters a bit more diversity. Felix was the only name I chose just because at the time I really wanted a troublemaker character named Felix.

Your story mixes supernatural elements with real-life struggles such as domestic violence, sexual assault, raising children as a single mother, and teenage angst. Was this intended from the beginning or did the story evolve as you continued writing?

This was definitely intentional. As an avid reader myself, I find myself peeved that I can’t relate to most characters as I level up in age. Most of the time (in fantasy and paranormal) it is because the main characters are in their twenties. Their adventure starts at a time when they are pushed into independence for the first time. I wanted a story about fantasy from the eyes of a character that has lived a little and is still able to climb new mountains and conquer different kinds of monsters. I wanted to write a story that shows that you do not become an “ancient crone” at thirty. We are not brittle and beyond our prime, and that day to day living, without the benefits of privilege, can be just as magical as any other.

Were there events in your life that prepared you to write this novel?

That is a loaded question. As far as it goes with writing alone, I do have a degree in linguistics and did enter several writing contests as a teenager. As far as the content itself goes…I am a survivor of domestic violence. Those experiences of overcoming trauma and rebuilding a life prepared me for a lot of the darker content that I wrote. It was still hard to write, but when I looked over the scenes I did not feel they were exaggerated or understated.

Your characters Liv, Revna, Falkon, Doli, and Kai are very likeable and as a reader I found myself rooting for them. In contrast Jaxon is abusive, nasty, vile, and unlikeable. I’m curious if when building your characters you made use of character sheets to help organize their traits, appearance, personal information, and personality, as well as their flaws and issues, and how that information impacted their growth or demise?

I only used character sheets to remember what they looked like, especially because their dromvisa eyes were very specific and an action on their own. When it came down to their development, it was in beta reading edits that I was able to fine tune each of the characters. Originally, Jaxon was a bit less menacing but a reader said after a certain, rather humiliating, scene for him, she was no longer afraid of him. Revna was also critiqued as “unnecessary” so I amped her dromvisa scenes to show the other side of dromvisa nature. I had to restructure a bit of the story to contract her human nature from her dromvisa nature and then bring it all together in one story.

Many authors are including a playlist with their novels nowadays. How Could I Forget? has an awesome playlist. You took this concept a step further by adding music references (song titles and artists) to some of your scenes. Was this planned? What led you to choose those specific songs and include them by name and artist?

Adding the songs to the story was definitely planned. Music and art are my muses. Every song on the playlist helped me imagine the scene that I was writing, and the lyrics or just the beat of the music helped me connect with their emotions.

I love the vibrant cover of How Could I Forget? Who designed it and did you have input in its design?

My daughter designed the cover for How Could I Forget? I basically told her what I wanted, and she took off with the concept. She is an aspiring artist, and I am beyond proud of the work she has done for the cover.

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating How Could I Forget?

I learned that, as an author, you get so attached to your characters, even the villains. I was so sure when I first started writing that I would be happy with the way things ended for my villain, but instead I found myself attending an emotional sob fest of my own making.

What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Write something you would enjoy reading and something you actually want to write. Whether it is a novel, lyrics, a poem, a comic book…the words you put on paper affect you just as much as they affect other readers, so make sure you like what you write.

Do you have any new books on the horizon or a sequel to How Could I Forget? and if so, can you share a tidbit?

I have two more books planned for this series. The Bane family is about to embark on one hell of an adventure, and I don’t think dreaming will ever be the same once their story is over.

I am also co-authoring two other paranormal books. Both are about vampires, or vampire-like beings, and I am very excited to be a part of these projects.