Q&A: Maria Lewis & Her Upcoming Book ‘The Wailing Woman’

Written by Jayse Smith

Early last week Australian author Maria Lewis released the cover art for the fifth novel The Wailing Woman, which tells the tale of a nineteen-year-old banshee who has lost her voice. Lewis was the recent recipient of the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel for her 2018 release, The Witch Who Courted Death, and it appears this lady is on to a good thing, with her quirky mix of strong female leads, sass and fantasy! Our reporter Jayse sat down with Maria and discussed the upcoming novel, the award and more.

Heya Maria! Long-time no chat!

Hi there Jayse, cheers for talking with me.

You’ve just released the cover art for The Wailing Woman, what can you tell us about the art and the book itself?

HOW SICK IS THE ART?!?! Honestly, I could just talk about the cover forever, I’m truly obsessed with it! It was the result of the talents of British illustrator Sam Sephton, who specialises in a very technical type of fantasy illustration and has this amazing back catalogue of wolf artwork that would make for an amazing Who’s Afraid? cover one day. Steve Panton at Profile Books was the art director and of my five books, it’s my favourite cover by a mile: it just really captures the tone of the story and the elements of banshee mythology that I’m diving into with The Wailing Woman. The book is set in Sydney, Australia, and a few other international locations (because I love literary tourism). It expands the supernatural world of my previous four novels a little further with a paranormal creature we haven’t spent a whole lot of time with: banshees. Plus a few wombat shapeshifters as well, just for good measure.

You recently won an award for your previous book, The Witch Who Courted Death, firstly congrats, secondly, how did you celebrate that awesome win?

Thank you so much! I’m so absolutely chuffed and still can’t quite believe it, honestly, as one of the first official bookish things I ever went to when I was starting out my career – before I even had a book out – was the Aurealis Awards in Brisbane back in 2016. To win one all these years later feels very special, especially since my pal and fellow author Marlee Jane Ward collected the trophy with me and she was the person I was with at that very first ceremony. Even though it was a month ago, unfortunately I haven’t had time to celebrate yet with a lot of other stuff that has been going on at the moment. I really want to take a breather and commemorate the Aurealis at some point, as it’s a huge professional milestone for me and I’m a little sad there hasn’t been an opportunity to properly to do that yet.

Each of your books has a strong female lead, how important is it, particularly in today’s climate to have strong female representation in books?

In today’s climate? In front of my salad? Don’t even start on me, it’s enraging. And probably a good thing that my first two novels – Who’s Afraid? and Who’s Afraid Too? – were all about examining female rage and the idea of the feminine grotesque through the vessel of a female werewolf. As I thought there was a lot of anger to fuel Tommi Grayson back then, but that’s nothing compared to what she would be feeling today! The Witch Who Courted Death was about spotlighting dual characters that don’t usually get to have the spotlight focused on them in mainstream pop culture – queer women, women living with limb-differences, women of colour – and making the narrative entirely about their shared journeys. It Came From The Deep was about examining the things that frighten us and looking at why, albeit through the conduit of a woman discovering a merman. The Wailing Woman is very overtly political, because it’s about finding your voice and learning how to use it. In 2019 particularly we’ve seen this resurgence of men in power determined to take away women’s voices, women’s rights, and women’s freedoms. Now more than ever I feel like it’s very important to try and protect that, even if it is through fantasy fiction.

For those who don’t know, you recently hurt your ankle!! Can you share what happened and how’s the recovery going?

Lol, love that you brought that up. I fell down a hill walking my mother’s dog and tore all the tendons in my ankle and a few up the side of my leg, across my foot, etc. I’ve just gotten off crutches, which is great, but that happened the same week I won the Aurealis Award so it was this bizarre thing of my professional life going very well and my personal life just imploding in ways I totally didn’t expect. Life has a way of keeping you humble by making you eat a shit sandwich every now and then, I guess.

You seem to base locations for your books on locations from the real world, Lake Pelutz (It came from the deep) and Berlin’s Bierpinsel (The Witch Who Courted Death) for example. How much of the ‘real world’ influences your fantasy world and are any of your characters based on real life people?

Well, the Bierpinsel in The Witch Who Courted Death is actually a real place in Berlin, albeit perhaps not the supernatural headquarters for all of Germany like I make out in the book. In fact, most of the locations that pop up in my novels are very real, very specific places – like the Museum Of Witchcraft And Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall – that I have visited and researched carefully for the purposes of the story. Most of them have supernatural tweaks, clearly, but I like the fact that readers end up visiting those locations in real life and send me pictures. Especially Dundee and Wigtown in Scotland, which weren’t exactly popular tourist locations but both popped up in my Who’s Afraid? books. Lake Pelutz was like that too, as it was based on Lake Hugh Muntz on the Gold Coast which I used to swim and train in every day. However, I switched the name up to something fictional so I could take some liberties geographically for the purposes of It Came From The Deep.

What advice would you give young writers looking to get published?

I would ask yourself ‘how badly do you want this?’ Because this is a very tough business and it can be heartbreaking in many ways, even after you’re published. Getting a book deal is hard, getting representation is hard, going through the publishing process is hard, and then once your book is out … it doesn’t get any easier. You have to keep going, keep persisting, and hope that your work connects and you find an audience. Even then, that’s not necessarily enough of a payoff for a lot of people both financially and personally. Comparison is the thief of joy and there’s always going to be someone doing better than you, but there’s always going to be someone doing worse than you as well, so the only thing you can focus on is the work and the specific elements of it that you can control. Publishing is a hard business, so my advice to young writers looking to get published is to ask yourself – really ask yourself – how badly do you want to do this? As there a lot of easier jobs and a lot of easier routes to happiness.

I hear that some of your favourite films include Jaws and Alien! I adore the Horror/Thriller genre, what are your favourite contemporary horror or thriller flicks and are you excited for the upcoming remake of the Childs Play?

I mean, my other hustle is writing about and working on genre films so my answer to this question could extend for thousands of words (no joke). But yes, Alien is my favourite film of all time and I love all the classics – The Thing, Jaws, Scream, An American Werewolf In London, Halloween, The Craft – but there’s also so many more recent genre films I’m obsessed with. Flicks like Attack The Block, Byzantium, Summer Of ’84, Little Monsters, Punisher: War Zone, Ginger Snaps, The Love Witch, Hot Fuzz, Green Room, When Animals Dream, It Follows, The Descent, and more that I’m equally fanatic about. The next book I’m working on at the moment is actually about film – So Bad They’re Good: Movies You Don’t Know But Should – and it’s all about shining a light on some of those forgotten gems from the past 25 years.

It’s been a year since The Witch Who Courted Death was released in the UK – did you do anything to commemorate the anniversary? Did you expect the book would be as successful as it has been?

The Witch Who Courted Death was actually only released in the UK last week and has just been out in the world for seven months all up, so it’s still a relatively new book baby. But to celebrate the UK release, I had a big, dumb, unicorn birthday cake and ate way too many slices. It’s kind of a mini ritual I have every time one of my books is released: get a cake and throw a wee book birthday. It’s so easy to get swept up in all the work that’s involved and forget to celebrate those milestones when they happen.

You and I share a common love, Witchcraft, Wicca and Tarot – what is your favourite crystal, element and which tarot card do you think best represents you?

I have a small pounamu pendant that I like to have with me at all times, even if I’m not physically wearing it, as it’s a reminder of who and where I’m from.

Recently your article about Captain Marvel appeared on Junkee.com. You said that superhero films aren’t what they once were i.e. shit (giggle, giggle, scoff) do you have a favourite recent superhero film?

My favourite recent superhero film is Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. It would be one of my favourite superhero films, period. It’s the best translation of the comic book medium on to the screen that I’ve witnessed and not just visually: it’s modern in the way it represents characters of different races and genders, so that all types of heroes feel seen.

With all the travelling you do to events such as Supanova, author signings, book launches, film premiers, what are your best travel tips?

PREP!!!!! Prep till you die! I’ve learned this purely from doing lots of Supanova tours back-to-back but also international book tours with several dates and film junkets. I like to prep ahead of time, not just my outfits and accessories (I’m a lil OCD, sue me), but things I know I’ll struggle without like back-up makeup wipes, aspirin, hairspray, emergency tampons, chargers, power adapters, and noise cancelling headphones. A really aggressive lipstick shade is also a must, even if you don’t use it it’s hand to have in the arsenal.

Other than the amazing talents we already know you for, do you have any hidden skills, talents or hobbies?

I keep my hidden skills secret for the impending zombie Apocalypse.

Back to The Wailing Woman what was the motivation for writing this book?

I addressed that above in the political question, but to expand a little further with this shared supernatural universe where all the stories are connected, where all the characters crossover and pop up in each other’s books,  I wanted to keep trying to tell the stories of different types of women. Tommi from Who’s Afraid? is a brash and impulsive 20-something learning about who she really is (a werewolf) and what she can really do (physically maim and kill, if she wants). Kaia from It Came From The Deep was a teen on a healing journey, while Casper from The Witch Who Courted Death was a queer woman in her thirties, someone who had always known who she was both as a woman and as a supernatural entity. The Wailing Woman is me trying to feature a different type of leading lady again, Sadie Burke, someone who is a lot sweeter and softer than the heroines my readers are used to. She’s also a banshee, which is a type of ‘monster’ I haven’t had a chance to play with much in the world yet besides stating that they exist in the glossary of The Witch Who Courted Death. That was a lot of fun for me, as I got to dive deep into researching the mythology and deciding what my version of banshees would look like as there aren’t that many pre-existing examples in pop culture to use as a jumping off point (unlike werewolves, witches, and ghosts, for instance).

When will TWW be available?

It’s coming out in November.

Finally, what’s on Maria’s schedule for the next few months?

I’m in the middle of Supanova tour at the moment and it’s hard to even think about what’s on the other side of that besides … hush hush things. Oh! But! My very first audiobook is coming out in the next few months from the amazing folks at Thaumaturgy and it was incredible to watch It Came From The Deep come to life through the narration of an actress I adore, Sophie Parr. I’ll be posting links to all of that across my social media channels soon and on my website.

Quick fire round!
Marvel or DC? I’d rather die than choose between my two loves.
Converse or Sketchers? Converse.
Pizza at home or A meal out? Pizza.
Book or Film? Depends on either the book or film.
Twilight or Harry Potter? Vampire Academy.
The Meg or Deep Blue Sea? DEEP BLUE SEA, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Did The Meg have an LL Cool J theme song? No? Well, there’s your answer.
Sydney or Melbourne? This is a trick question, I don’t wanna start a turf war with either city.

Thanks so much Maria – I adore you!! 😊 😊 😊

I adore you too! Thanks so much for continuing to care about my monster ladies!

Have you read any books by Maria? Tell us in the comments below!