Interview with Douglas Lumsden

By Sebastian Vice & Douglas Lumsden

1. Tell the readers a bit about yourself.

I’m a human cis-gender he/him Left Coast Caucasian middle-class card-carrying liberal baby boomer, born in Central California in 1952. After kicking around for a few decades, I earned a Ph.D. in Medieval European History in 1995 at the University of California, Santa Barbara—go Gauchos! I taught history at a couple of colleges before settling into a private all-girls college prep school in Monterey, California, where I taught World History, African-American History, and Human Geography before retiring in 2018. After binge reading crime novels, science fiction, and fantasy books for nearly two years, I sat down one day to write a novel of my own that I hoped a few people would find entertaining. Three months later, in November 2019, I self-published A Troll Walks into a Bar: A Noir Urban Fantasy Novel, a murder mystery featuring a hardboiled private investigator named Alexander Southerland. Writing the book was fun, so over the next four years I wrote five more novels featuring Southerland, plus a novella featuring a side character from the main series.

I live with my wonderful wife, Rita, who is a constant source of inspiration, support, and encouragement. She co-edits my books, and I couldn’t do any of this without her. We share a condo with two cats—Cinderella and Prince—who, in the way of cats everywhere, pretty much run our lives.

Alexander Southerland, P.I. (6 book series)

2. Your Alexander Southerland, P.I. Series is, as the Amazon page describes, noir and urban fantasy. I wager most of our readers know what noir is. Mind telling the readers a bit about your series, and also about urban fantasy?

Alexander Southerland runs a one-man private investigation agency in a city that culturally resembles the San Francisco of Sam Spade, but with our familiar twenty-first century technology. And also trolls, gnomes, a few dwarfs, a Dragon Lord, elementals, a little magic, and femme fatales with gills. Beginning with my second book—A Witch Steps into My Office—I began using inspiration from Native North American and Mesoamerican folklore for my magic and paranormal critters. Each book in the series features a murder (or murders) that Southerland solves while navigating the mean streets of Yerba City, my fantasy version of San Francisco.

“Urban Fantasy” as a literary genre covers a lot of ground, and, like all genres, the more you try to define it, the harder it is to pin down. In my experience, when most people think of urban fantasy, they think of sexy young women dressed in skintight leatheroutfits kicking ass and doin’ the dirty with werewolves and vampires. That’s not what I write about. My books are closer in spirit to the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher, stories about a professional wizard working out of an office in modern-day Chicago. I decided to call my stories noir urban fantasy in order to distinguish my crime-oriented books from the ones about beautiful people and paranormal romance. Noir urban fantasy blends the cold, gritty, modern world that we know with elements of fantasy, including magic and fantastical creatures that exist only in our collective imagination. In the spirit of existentialist neo-noir, the fantasy in my stories tends to be dark, even bordering on horror, especially as the series has developed. I’ve been having a lot of fun with supernatural creatures inspired by Aztec and Mayan folklore. I spend a lot of time wondering how Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe would react to demonic spirits, such as the Sihuanaba, and ritual blood sacrifices to gods like Huitzilopochtli.

3. What are your top recs for people wanting to get into urban fantasy? You highly recommended Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga to me. What makes that trilogy great and what are some others?

The Green Bone Saga is an amazing work, blending inspirations from crime-family sagas, such as The Godfather, and Shaolin-influenced martial arts movies, with their supernatural battle choreographies. Even if you are not a fan of fantasy, The Green Bone Saga has enormous appeal for fans of crime fiction and complex stories of powerful rival underworld families. Fonda Lee is a fabulous writer, and you can’t help but find yourself emotionally invested in her intriguing characters and their struggles.

I mentioned the Harry Dresden books, a popular favorite among fans of urban fantasy, and an easy gateway into the genre. The original idea for the stories evolved as the series grew, and the later books have a different vibe from the first half dozen or so, but they remain enjoyable.

Peter Hartog’s Guardians of Empire City series (two books so far with a third on the way) are a terrific blend of hardboiled crime fiction, cyberpunk, and noir urban fantasy in a near future setting where disasters have opened our world to dark magical influences. Anyone who enjoys my books will absolutely love his.

M.C. Hunton’s terrific Martyr series features supernatural forces representing good and evil fighting an ages-old battle in the streets, boardrooms, and political offices of the modern world. I like this one a lot!

Peter McClean’s The Burned Man series is a wonderful example of ultra-dark urban fantasy that should appeal to fans of neo-noir wanting to expand their literary horizons a bit. I’m a huge fan of this series, even though it was cut short by McClean’s publisher after three books.

For something a bit different, Assaph Mehr’s Stories of Togas, Daggers, and Magicseries features a private detective in a fantasy version of the Late Roman Republic. Purists question whether it should be classified as “urban fantasy” because it isn’t set in the modern world, but what environment could be more urban than the city of Rome? Two novels, a novella, and several short stories in this series so far, and I highly recommend them all.

I could suggest many more, but these books are a good start.

4. You’re quite productive. If my research is right, it looks like you’ve cranked out about a book a year (perhaps more). Each has hundreds of reviews, mostly positive. How do you do it?

When I wrote Troll, I figured maybe ten people would read it. I was amazed when it gained a following, and when the following grew with each successive book in the series. I never felt like I had the time to write until I retired, and I have tremendous respect for authors who manage to complete books in their spare time while working at full-time jobs and caring for families. I love to write, and now that I’m retired, time isn’t a problem. I’d write even if no one except my wife read my stories. The fact that I’ve attained a moderate amount of success is gratifying, and I appreciate everyone who has ever read any of my books, even the ones who have given me bad reviews (because bad reviews are marketing gold). I promote my books on Twitter and Instagram, and some extremely kind and generous people have helped spread the word. I owe them all a big thank you!

5. What’s some writing wisdom you’d like to share?

When it comes to “How To Write a Story,” there is no shortage of tips and advice for writers. My advice is to take it all in, choose what makes sense to you, and ignore the vast bulk of it. Every writer has to approach their craft in their own way. Especially ignore any advice on writing that begins with “Always” or “Never,” even if the advice comes from a best-selling author. For example, I recently read a quote from a noted author advising writers to never read what you’ve written until you’ve completed your first draft. That may work for some writers, but it doesn’t work for everyone. It certainly doesn’t work for me. I edit as I go (with help from Rita), and I can’t move forward until I’ve got a firm foundation to move from. And I still get my books written in a timely manner. Others, however, would find themselves stuck in the mud if they didn’t leave the editing and polishing until they’ve got a completed draft in place. You’ve got to do what works for you.

I only have two pieces of writing advice that I think should be universal. The first is to write the story you want to read. How does the old adage go: You can’t please everyone, so be sure to please yourself? I believe in that completely. And remember, no one is going to read your work more times than you will, so you may as well write something you’ll enjoy reading. That way, at least one person will like your book.

My second piece of advice is to be confident. Arrogant, even. If you aren’t a naturally confident person, fake it. You’ve heard of “imposter syndrome”? Guess what: everyone has it. Not just writers—everyone! Albert Einstein had it, and if it’s good enough for him, well, you get the picture. If you’ve got a book, talk about it. Market it on social media. Let people know about it. If you’ve published a book (and, yes, self-publishing is publishing), then you’re a damned author! Tell people! The reading public is huge, and you only need a small percentage of them to be as crazy as you are in order to build a readership. Chances are that if you like what you’ve written, and if you let the world know you’ve written it, some other people are going to find it and like it, too.

Alexander Southerland, P.I. (6 book series)