Building Worlds, Breaking Genres and the Limerent Series with Lexy Delorme | Episode 136

Lexi Delor, welcome to the Bookaholic podcast. Hello. How are you? I'm doing great. And we are talking to you from Par Paris, France. Yay. We One of my favorite cities in the world. I'm so jealous. I wish I was over there. We're just I live here for six years. Oh, wow. That is fantastic. Wow. Okay, so since we were talking about Paris, let me get into that little part right quick. So, how is it to be an expat? What is that like and how does that inspire your writing? Really does. Um, but I have to kind of go a little bit back because the reason I'm an expat is because I kind of always was. I grew up as in a military family and so we moved. I never lived anywhere growing up more than two years, but it was mainly within the US and I also lived in Hawaii for four years growing up. That was a hard assignment. So rough. So rough. Yeah. Um and then you know we went through I was born in California, Texas, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Orleans, and then to North Carolina where I went to high school. Um then I went where I'm located. Exactly. I went to UNCC um for school myself. Yep. It's the UNCC girls. We're great. And um and then I got a job doing um international startup work for a bank. Then I I basically went out did uh new country entry work for South Africa, for Spain, for France and for China, for Shanghai. Wow. And opened up new countries, did for the for the bank. did um did mergers, did uh denovos, did holy subsidiaries, a whole bunch of things. And then my parents were getting older. So I came back home. But as I came back home, I met a French man at my work. And I said, I am tired of working with French people because I've been working with French people. And uh and my boss was like, oh, no, no, he's great. And then three years later, we were married. Um, yeah, because I was on the legal side of the house and he was on the business side of the house, so it was kind of nature to argue and we figured we did so well, we just do that on a regular basis, right? Absolutely. Right. But then we moved to California. My first son was born in in uh Virginia and then we moved to California and then um he got a job doing basically working for a bank as an international manager and I decided I was not going to take the bar everywhere we moved. So I started writing um and it started out for me doing travel writing. So I wrote for Bonjou Perry um and a few other places doing travel writing when in Hong Kong I wrote for um play times and when I came to when I moved to London a few years what 2015 I decided I'm going to start doing fiction because I have I've always wanted I've always been kind of written short stories. That's the one thing that's been the same in all of my jobs which is I I I wrote. So I my undergrad was in the sciences. Um and then I went to but all of its writing. I did legal writing, did science writing, did you know and um Oh yeah. And I was when I was young I was in a band and we had a video on MTV in the middle of the night one night. I won't say what it is but and so I wrote and did music too. Right. Right. Absolutely. Not getting any bad. I love it. So, so, so I decided that I wanted to try actually doing a longer form and it took me literally probably six years to craft the world. So, it's a series built in full world building. Lot went into this. Um, yes, I can see that because you do an amazing job across genre, which we're going to really dig into uh in just a few minutes. So, let's go back. So, again, you are a recovering attorney. Yes, recovering recovering attorney. You never disease, right? Well, I've had so many guests on this channel who are or have been recovering attorneys and they turn to writing. There must be something there. You know, you got your John Gishams and maybe even Scott Ter, I think, was a recovering um attorney. But anyway, it just seems to be a natural crossover for a lot of people. I saw I wor in the legal department I was in. I worked with a lot of people who had been artists before. Um and then they went legal and what happens yeah what happens is we all so I did music and stuff. So what happens we we're all doing this stuff and we're realizing I'm not going to get any money with this right when we're first doing that and we go okay what do I have going for me? I'm smart. Okay, I took the LSAT and we all kind of ended up in the legal profession and I don't know a whole lot of lawyers that are actually happy, right? Um, so you do it for a while and you I as a legal jobs I had a good one, but it's then when we get a chance to get away from it when we've earned enough money, when we've had enough experience, we're like, okay, what can I do now to go back to that thing that I love so much and has always infused my life with meaning and so, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, your depth of life, your depth of living has given you a very rich experience um to knowing about different cultures. Even even in the United States where it's, you know, each state has a kind of different culture. They don't realize, right? Exactly. And so yes, because they see us as the whole United States, you know, and they one thing. Um, but so you've had a a very rich life. Now, when you were younger, I'm sure, and when your family was moving around and you couldn't make concrete friends for very long before there was any social media, you probably didn't feel that way. But that's what it has evolutionized uh into. And that's where I see, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that's where I see you have this ability. And I really will say to you, I don't think I've interviewed anyone today on my channel who has done this cross genre writing and to this degree and can keep up with all of this. I I don't think I've I've ever had anybody to do this. So this is something I really want to dive into. Sure. Because it's it's definitely genius. And one of the audiences I do talk to are also people who are aspiring writers because avid readers a lot of the times are aspiring writers. Okay. So you said just a few minutes ago that it took you six years to create the world. And I've had some book coaches on this channel. One guy that really specialized in only fantasy world building because well that's the main area where you'd have to build a world is in fantasy. Right. But tell us about your process over the course of six years of building this world. So it kind of started it started a bit small. So it started with I had characters in my head, right? I had people that I had crafted in my head just from news stories or hearing something, right? And a few of them I liked so much that I wanted to find a space for them, right? Wow. Um and I was always a reader as well and I read cross genre. I read a c a bunch of different things. Was big fan of water down was one of my favorite books. Very fantasy. Um I read horror. I read HP Lovecraft and Stephen King. I read um I read all the cheesy romance teenage romance novels when I was I read Flowers in the Attic, right? Oh, I did too. I read the whole thing. Yeah. And watch the Lifetime movies. Exactly. You know, it's like we look at the You look now at like the Gen Z's and they're like cuddled with the Oh, we only want empathy books. We read this this stuff, right? You know. Absolutely. We were traumatized by this. Um Stephen King. Yeah. So, so I I use all of those things. I used the the things that I had um loved in characters and I sort of use it to combine characters. And then how I kind of created the world is I had a mindset that one of the reasons I want to write is that I have seen a lot of beautiful and interesting things. I have experienced a lot of things that maybe people haven't experienced. And what I decided I wanted to do is capture those moments in books so I can share them and they don't die when I die. Right. That's right. That's right. So this is this is part of what the world building thing is for me crafting. And also they say write to answer your own questions and this series which is a long series. It's eight books long. I've written all of them. Some are in various various stages of edit. The first four are out. The fifth one will come out this fall and the others are in done but in various stages of edit. my what the question I'm answering for myself through the end is what is consciousness the big questions right um how does love question yeah how does love play into this and so that and then to do this I crafted different stories and this kind of gets into the books but the first three books of the series are can be read in any order. It can be read in any order. Okay. No order required. All of them are but yet but there's the same characters in the three. Oh, this is what Oh, because they're in the same world. Yeah. So, what happens? What happens is the the all these three books have paranormal and romance, but they also have a subgenre as well. So, Kyo is a paranormal romance, but it is also a legal fiction. And it it works with the themes of appearance versus reality. Okay. It it has in it a woman a woman meets someone who appears to be a late teenager and clearly is not. And all this is with a legal mystery as well. The second book, which is called Bright Midnights, is a paranormal romance, but also a coming of age novel. Um, high school setting US, right? Yes. High school in North Carolina. Wow. Okay. Okay. And it's YA. It's YA. Yeah. Um, and Wow. The third book you'll love is was set was actually set in North Carolina. It is called Fanning Fireflies. It is a paranormal romance, but also historical fiction set in the 1940s in World War II. And it is partially a family story for me. I put it stuff with my family in it. And it's the story of a poor white woman living in the South who works in a cigarette factory who works at the draft office on the weekends and ends up processing an African-American soldier who she falls in love with. And all of the the stuff that comes from that. Wow. Oh, so all of Yeah. Yeah. Um that book's going on book tour uh in a few weeks, I think. But absolutely. And then all of those books um all those characters, all these stories come together in a fourth book called Ghosting Academy. And that is a psychological thriller with VR technology, elite agents and spiritual unraveling. Oh man. So Oh. Oh gosh. I just like taking a back. They all come together in Ghosting Academy and it does make sense. Oh my goodness. Okay. Now, let me ask you. So, you're saying that um some of these are paranormal. So, sometimes I think I mentioned Stephen King just in passing a few minutes ago. So, I used to read all of his his books, but then I was like, well, I can no longer read this type of book anymore. So for those readers who can't see themselves reading paranormal, can you tell us a little bit about your paranormal activity in these books to maybe maybe it's not like horror but what h how is that infused? So in my books the horror you see is only the horror people do to other people. Ah um and there is some of that in states I will tell you. Right. Um, right. Right. But mo all my books are urban fiction, right? So it's there is there are paranormal elements in it and it's there's no vampires, there's no werewolves, there's witches casting spells. No, nothing like that. Um, but you do have spirits and you have um uh ghosts and you have um different different types of of spirits like um and it but it's not it isn't he it isn't hardcore um it isn't hardcore horror. It starts getting more more horror and ghost academy. But I will tell you, check your trigger warnings because as I said, this is what people do to people and there's a lot of that in this and there's there's a lot of people who have been abused like like in Kyo Sarah, right? Starting out, I actually based her on a number of my friends who have been in relationships and she is in an abusive relationship when the book starts. Gosh. and and is so deeply entrenched in abusive relationship, she doesn't even see it as abusive. She just sees it as she's not worth anything, right? Um and so this book is about her coming out of that and seeing a world Yeah. is seeing a world that exists that is not just beyond what she thought of herself, but beyond what she knew for the good and bad. Basically, the scope of her world went from this to this with with it's the spectrum. the bad gets much worse, the potential for bad, but also the good gets much better. So the creation and destruction there. So this is in this the book of Kaio, it's all really about appearance versus reality. So what is being presented as being good and right is actually not. And what is presented as this isn't good, this isn't right is actually okay or good or loving. Right? So it's very much looking at that. And the people that I found that had some issues with this book because what an appearance of an age gap, right? The truth is the character of Kaio although looking about 167s and 136 years old. Oh, okay. And it becomes pretty apparent really fast for her because she's super smart, very trained in this stuff. But there's a connection between them and there's a connection that goes on from past lives, right, as well. Ah, got there's a lot of stuff in that. So, but she has to learn how to step up, how to value herself, how to value doing something that is good and right. And I will tell you that the legal bit in this, the legal is partially something that I dealt with and the reason I loved family law. Oh yes. Yes. Wow. So, so I do bring my life into this and things that I've experienced. Absolutely. Absolutely. and the and as you should is well it's I feel like you know it's it's kind of hiding my life and things like I would never be bold enough to write an autobiography I just hide it in stuff right um I'm not that I'm not that brave um but it allows you it also allows you to um to give voice to people you wanted to give voice to so and the the third book Fanning Fireflies is the one that's set in the Um, there's I put characters in this for people I knew and people that for example, one of the characters um I gave her a good ending because she she was a good friend of mine and she got me my first job and she actually got killed by people who came into her house and killed her and stuffed her body into a an oil bin. Um Oh my gosh. Yeah. and she was a beautiful woman and a wonderful person and she didn't have a chance to have a life, right? So I wanted to give her a chance to have a life and so I put her in this. I put my uncle who was a stutterer shows up as a character in this. So this one is very very much a lot of my friends and family and the the it does talk about the really horrible systemic rac systemic just awful racism in the south at that time. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. and how the separation was driven so much by the powers in control, right? There was a there was a lot of cultural commonality between the poor working-class white people and the African-Americans. Right. But they were kept separated, right? Absolutely. As they are today. As they are today. No, that's exactly what they're doing. What people, we won't talk too political, but people in power, right? Right. What they want to do is those who are those who actually achieve their wealth by having wealth before and just investing and having this history of wealth. They are they are different from literally everybody else. Everybody who's working for a living, right? We're all pretty much the same and we all have the same goals the way I mean and across the world, right? When I went to China, I remember I remember thinking that first time I went to China, I went by myself. It was the day after we bombed their embassy accidentally. I was like, I'm gonna die right here. I am. I'm gonna die here. And I walked through the airport, the guys in the communist outfits, and like I was like, oh yeah, they're taking me. It's going to happen. And I get out. There's my blue American passport. They're seeing me and I'm like, damn, I'm screwed. And um so so but I get out make it through and I go and the first thing that happens is this little girl comes up to me and says in English my grandmother would like me to practice English with you and that was it. It's just people want and she wanted it because it was good for her you know to learn English better to get and people just want to have their family take care of people they love. We all have these very basic needs and very basic wants and it's when people start getting that thing for power. That's when things start going real wrong. Right. And there we are. Right. Absolutely. And you you have me right there. I I I will not challenge you on that at all. Movie that comes to mind. It's called The Free State of Jones. If you've never seen it, check it out. It stars Matthew McConna and that points out everything you just said, Free State of Jones. Matthew McConna. Check it out. Um, so now you've got the fifth book that's coming out this fall. And what's the name of that book? Limrance. Limrance. Okay. And so what what is that? This is the Limrance series. What does that mean? So limrance is the the type of falling in love that people do that people consider crazy, right? It's like it's like when you when you meet someone and it's like you're just overwhelmed and it makes you nuts. Vincent Van Go cutting off the ear stuff, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. But when I looked at this, I'm question I've questioned that because because of the nature of attractions, right? Is is it always that or is that something that's almost chemical and biological like there's a lot of physics in this series as well but you you don't even have to really think about it. It's just it's it's basically told to you so you don't have to worry people don't have to worry about it that much but right um the second book uh Bright Midnight is about attraction in all of its forms good bad and ugly um and the this book liance coming out is seeing the other side of these stories. So, up to this point, the you've seen these characters, the point of view characters have been Emily, who's a 17-year-old girl in Bright Midnights, Sarah, who's a woman in her 40s, and um Veronica, who is a woman in her early 20s. Okay. And they've been And Ghost Academy is back to Emily's point of view, but when she's older, she's like in her 30s, okay? And you've seen kind of the paranormal stuff that's been around them. shadowing them, things that happen. You learn a bit a bit more about it in Bright Midnights. But in Ghosti Academy, you see you learn about these agencies involved in controlling power in the world. Right. Ah. And so there's one that they're all encountering and and this one says this other group is evil and Limrance is showing you the other side. Right. Yes. Um and and those characters from Limmerance show up in Fanning Fireflies. You see them a little bit. a lot of crossover in in my books. I have spreadsheets all over the place of setups and payoffs and Yeah. Oh, wow. I can't even imagine. You're a North. Yes. Well, definitely. You know, you said you can read the first three in any order. Yeah. They're on Kindle Unlimited right now. Oh, okay. Okay. I think Well, I've got my Kindle. I think I'm g I am really intrigued by Fanning Fireflies. Definitely. And so the other books that are in the editing process, give us a just a little overview of how those three are going to come to play and will that end your series? So in the series will end in the eighth book, but there will there will be because this is a full world and because you meet a lot of people in it, there are side stories that come from their stories. So, right now I'm actually writing a book, a new book about one of the characters that you see in Ghost Academy. It's kind of her backstory. So, I like I'm an author who everybody I put on page because I'm neurotic. I have thought I I know their full backstory. I can tell I'm not making crap up, right? And if I don't know, I will tell you I don't know. Right. But um Right. But that I could ride in this world for literally 20 years. There's that much in it. Yes. Well, it took you six years. So, definitely make the most of this world. Absolutely. Y I can tell you for the next three books, I can I can't tell you too much because it's, you know, because I'd be giving too much away, but I can tell you the point of view characters. So, um in Limrance that comes out in the fall, the point of view character is a person you haven't you haven't hadn't had the floor before, which is Dante, who is a ghost. Um comes up And then and he's so much more. A ghost and so much more. Um he actually was when he died he was um in Carthage and he was from Tunisia originally. So he um we're going ancient times. Yeah. And um and then uh Cara is his partner and she was al she was actually from that same kind of time, right? And um so they're the point he's the he's the point of view and she's kind of she has created this thing. And then um for the book after that it's called Mirrored Lands. The point of view is is um Emily again who's the one from Bright Midnights but also a character I can't tell you about because it's really a surprise. And then the um the next book after that is called Outliers and it is point of view of Sarah from Kyo again and Dante. And then the last book is called Verite and it's got three points of view, but I can't really talk about those, but that's kind of different. So, wow. Wow. I love this. Okay. I just love this. This is very, very fascinating to me. And so I'm sure all of these will be very fascinating to my listeners and my blog readers because you know you could literally take one and move on if you wanted to because the first three are not to be read in order or anything like that. Um but then this oh that's what a beautiful cover. These are the pretty shiny covers. By the way, I will be at New York Comic-Con this year. Oh, really? What is that? It is October 9th through 12th. Okay. And this is Fanny Fireflies. The pretty cover. Oh, another beautiful. Oh, that's beautiful. Oh, I love these new covers. I love them. Oh, beautiful. And the the edges. Have you seen the books with the beautiful edges? Yes, I thought about that, but I haven't done it yet. Yes. Oh, it's beautiful. Okay. All right. So, now I want to go get all your books. As if I'm not reading like eight books right now at the same time. I admire that a lot. This is why this channel is called Bookaholic. I have a problem. I'm telling you. So, Lexi, thank you so much for joining me today. I think your book and thought processes about your book are totally fascinating, but of course you came from UNCC Chapel Hill. So, yes, to be brilliant. And so, what we'll do is we'll have in our podcast show notes and in the video description box on YouTube, we'll have your information, links to your books, etc. Lexi, thank you so much for joining me from Paris, France. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.