Meredith Lyons
Ghost Tamer
Death is one thing, it’s what you do afterward that matters.
10/8/2024 update
The Writer Stuff podcast with Meredith Lyons
9/17/2024 Dossier interview:
DOSSIER: You absolutely slayed it at the International Thriller Writers Debut Author’s breakfast in New York City when you announced that you’ve seen a ghost and you’ve been in a bar fight. Please explain. We need details! Afterall, the title of your debut novel is GHOST TAMER.
LYONS: Oh, man, that breakfast was so much fun. I imagine that’s what it must have felt like being a medieval king, eating at a big long table onstage while a crowd of other people eats at small tables below you. I did have several people ask me about the bar fight afterward, but it’s a difficult story to get right if I’m not acting it out, so I’ll tell the ghost story. When I was young, around ten or eleven, I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night to see a girl walking up and down by the foot of my bed. She was always talking, really trying to figure something out, like in impassioned monologue, but if I ever tried to comment on anything she said, she would stop, look at me, and then fade away. I was never scared and always went right back to sleep afterward, never remembered it in the morning. Until one day I woke up and she was right by my pillow, staring down at me with this huge, delighted smile on her face. She said, “Goodbye!” and looked so incredibly happy. I said, “Where ya going?” and she faded away. I remembered everything after that and never saw her again. I tried to tell people about it at first, but adults would tell me that I was dreaming, and other kids would make up their own ghost stories to try to top mine, so I just let it go. Years later, in my early twenties, I was coming back from the bar with some friends in Chicago. I have no idea why, but I told the ghost story to one of them. She asked, “Did your mother have a miscarriage before you?” Shocked, I said yes. “It was your sister coming to check on you.” That explanation struck me as kind of cool, so I like to think that maybe when she said goodbye, she was finally going to be born.
DOSSIER: Do you remember what you were doing or what you said when you found out you won the IPPY Award for Best First Novel? What about the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold winner award? How did all that go down? Was there paparazzi involved?
LYONS: Hahaha! With the IPPY I was sitting at home at my desk and CamCat’s marketing director told me, but said we couldn’t announce it on social media until they put it up themselves. With the Ben Franklin, I actually flew to Denver for the ceremony with my husband. I didn’t know if I would win, and it was a lot to just fly to Denver for a weekend, but with how up and down the publishing industry is, I thought, you know, how long before I’m nominated for another award and get invited to an awards’ ceremony? A bunch of other CamCat authors were up for awards and we all sat together. When they announced my name we all kind of shrieked. And then I went up and I had written NO speech because I didn’t want to jinx it, but the cool thing was that they were live streaming it and my parents were watching it at home so they got to see me win.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Thrilling music/deadly silence/the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar in downtown Nashville?)
LYONS: Ha! This is funny because I just did an event a few days ago and a guy came up to me and said, “How did you manage to sit down and write a book when you never stop moving?” In my defense, they put me in the middle of this very long table against a wall, so I either had to crawl over dozens of people or crawl under the table to get out and crawling under the table was much less disruptive. But I have a regular desk, and a treadmill desk, and two different lap desks, one by my bed and one in the living room. I also like to write on the front porch when it’s nice, or the back porch by the fire pit. I have a laptop and a tablet and when I use which one depends one what stage of writing I’m in. Where I end up depends on the time of day, the weather, my mood, and if I’m having coffee or wine. Sometimes I do listen to music—usually when my husband is streaming video games, noise canceling headphones ftw—and I have a playlist for every book I work on. But really, I just like to write, I will find a spot.
DOSSIER: Your award-winning debut novel GHOST TAMER did well, your follow-up, A DAGGER OF LIGHTNING, is scheduled for a 2025 release, and you’re hustling out there like few others do. How do you handle the shifts from writing, to marketing, to home, and everything else you’re doing? Is it all a digitally-organized pristine life where you seamlessly knock out a to-do list like a soulless sniper, or is it a tornado of laundry and loose papers flying about at your place?
LYONS: Oh man, I feel this question right now. I like to say that I am incredibly organized in life and a chaos demon when I write. I like to-do lists, I like spreadsheets, I like calendar notifications, and I like my time filled. However, there are some pushes during publishing where I feel like I’m literally just surviving. Three weeks ago, I got my edits back for Dagger, which would be fine, but during those three weeks I had ThrillerFest, this local festival, and a few friend’s debut book launches that I couldn’t miss. So those three weeks were more like two. My to-do lists basically had two line items crossed off each day: “edit Dagger,” “clean cats’ litter,” I ignored all marketing besides sharing other people’s posts, I did not get to sleep on time, and my limited coffee intake regime went out the window. (I also somehow got a twinge in my shoulder?) I turned in those edits today and am just now looking around at the mess I need to wade through. And the sleep I need to catch up on. I have two other events coming up this weekend and next and I feel terrible for not posting yet, but I’ll get back on top of it!
DOSSIER: Please tell us about your selection process. How or why did you end up writing in the science fiction / fantasy genre, and if you hadn’t become a writer at all, would you do more acting, fortune telling, or own a kickboxing studio?
LYONS: Honestly, I’ve always written. I wrote my first book when I was thirteen on that gray recycled paper they had in the ’90s. I still have it somewhere. As an adult I wrote articles and stuff for online publications just as a hobby, and took a creative writing class in 2018, which is when I started seriously thinking I might actually go for fiction writing again. As far as scifi/fantasy, I just have trouble staying within real world parameters, I guess. Ghost Tamer was actually an attempt at writing a ‘normal’ book, but then these ghosts just started showing up and yapping. I’ve always had some kind of creative obsession. When I was younger it was piano, then visual art, then finally acting for a very long time. Around the time I “took a break” from acting is when I started really writing. I think with any kind of art, you have to be kind of obsessed with it to get anywhere. I’m not sure what I would do if I wasn’t writing, but definitely something creative. I don’t think I could be really happy if I weren’t creating something.
Website: Meredith Lyons | Amazon Page