We chat with author Melanie Dale about Girl of Lore, which is an atmospheric paranormal novel that’s perfect for fans of Tracy Wolff and Maggie Stiefvater and follows a girl who’s used to battling the monster of her own mind and discovers there’s a sinister evil lurking in her small town.
Hi, Melanie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi, Nerd Daily! Thanks for having me! My Maltipoo, Khaleesi, is curled up on my lap while I’m doing this interview. I also have three grownish kids. I published four nonfiction books before switching to fiction, played zombies on The Walking Dead for years, and teach yoga just like Mina’s mom in my book, GIRL OF LORE, which, actually, is life imitating art. When I started working on this book six years ago, I wanted to give Mina’s mom a fun job, so I made her a yoga teacher. I was not a yoga teacher, but over the course of trying to get the book published, I became a yoga teacher and, yep, it is a fun job.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve been a writer my whole life. I used to hide in the closet as a kid and write in my journal. I wrote plays in college and my twenties, and then through blogging I fell into writing nonfiction books. To get out of the office, I started moonlighting as a zombie on The Walking Dead, which was filmed in Georgia a few minutes from my house. I met Greg Nicotero, the executive producer, and when he started developing his horror anthology series, Creepshow, he said I should pitch him a story. I told him I wrote nonfiction. He sort of shrugged and smiled, and I went home and thought, “Can I write fiction?” I decided to try, because the worst that could happen was I fail, and hey, who cares? Anyway, I ended up writing several episodes for Creepshow, and it unlocked this whole fiction side of me. Now my brain sees stories everywhere!
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Old Hat, New Hat
- The one that made you want to become an author: In a Dark, Dark Room
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Dracula
Your latest novel, Girl of Lore, is out April 21st! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Gasp, dead body! Monsters real?
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect to have a good time! Mina starts a club at her high school called Lore Club to explore her town’s folklore, but when she discovers a mysterious book and a body drained of blood, she begins to wonder if the legends may be true. There’s funny banter, friendship drama, maaayyyybe a love interest (wiggles eyebrows), and a lot of spooky mysteries!
Where did the inspiration for Girl of Lore come from?
GIRL OF LORE started with the question, “What if the characters from Dracula were teens living in Georgia?” My favorite novel is Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mina Murray is my favorite gothic character. She’s so smart and underestimated by the men. When my son was in middle school I gave him a boxed set of some of my favorite horror classics, books like Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Call of Cthulhu, etc., and he gamely tried to plow through Dracula but petered off when Jonathan Harker was still trapped in that castle and I thought, “What if I could make this story more accessible for him?” The book is rooted in gothic classics but the flora and fauna of small town Georgia really provided so much to play with and Mina and her friends took on adventures of their own.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing all the banter between Mina and her friends. They made me laugh a lot! And I loved researching graveyards for the book. Mina spends a lot of time in a graveyard and I wanted to really picture it, so I started online and in books, then actually went and explored local graveyards here in Georgia, as well as legendary ones like Greyfriars in Edinburgh, Scotland, and St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans. The older and wilder the better. I googled things about burying bodies, mausoleums, obelisks, crypts. I’m probably on a watchlist somewhere with the kinds of things I was googling. A friend of mine used to work in a morgue and I called her up and asked her what do to with a dead body, then threw in “FICTIONALLY” when there was a pause at the other end of the line.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Oof, after my first attempt at the book was rejected by every publisher in America, I was diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t open the manuscript for a whole year. Chemo scrambled my brain so much I couldn’t remember my own email. An entire book was too much to hold in my head, but I managed a short script for Creepshow, and I spent a month writing a first draft for a book about going through cancer which may never see the light of day. A few months later, I finally opened my manuscript back up. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to fix it, but day by day, I pulled it apart and put it back together. My book got better as I got better and we found our way.
What’s next for you?
I have so many more stories to explore with Mina and her friends! I’ve been hanging out at Lore Club uncovering more mysteries, and maybe more monsters hiding in the town of London, Georgia!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay! I’ve already preordered it. I love horror and sci-fi and Tremblay wrote a couple of my favorite books, A Head Full of Ghosts and Survivor Song.
