Location, location, location with Lesley Livingston

Adam Sockel:

You are listening to Passions & Prologues, a Literary Podcast. For each week, I'll interview an author about a thing they love and how it inspires their work. I'm your host, Adam Sockel, and if this is your first time joining in, thanks so much for being here. If you've been listening for a while now, welcome back.

Today's episode is an interview I did with young adult author, Lesley Livingston. Lesley has a new book out called Queen Among the Dead, which is just freaking delightful.

I get into it with Lesley, of course, a little bit later in the episode. But if you are a fan of dark fantasies, kind of fantasy series type books, this is the perfect time of year to fall into a fantasy novel and I highly recommend Queen Among the Dead. Our conversation today is all about how Lesley finds her stories and builds them out through place.

She's all about location and in this discussion, we talk about how in her past books, she has found little unknown pockets of various cities that she's traveled to and delved into the history of those small places and how she builds out stories that way.

It's really, really fascinating, especially for me as a person who I tend to be much more, I suppose, character and like conversation driven for stories. I love emotions, of course, which we talk about in this discussion. I love when books are very emotional and when they kind of hurt me, as I like to say.

I don't often think about the location of a specific book to pull me into it, but I'm going to now, after this discussion with Lesley. I think you're really, really going to like it.

As always, if you want to get ahold of me and give me some feedback, offer some questions, if you're curious about something, if you want some book recommendations, you can always reach me at [email protected].

As I have been mentioning, if you want some customized book recommendations specifically for you, just feel free to send me a screenshot of any rating or review you do of the podcast and I'll give you some custom book recommendations.

I also, every month give out a gift card to bookshop.org. So, I reached out to the winner last month. And yeah, if you would like that, again, just send me an email, tell me what you are passionate about. I love seeing those. I've been getting some really fun responses from people. And yeah, I will pick at random at the end of the month, somebody to send a bookshop.org gift card to kind of pay it forward, as it might be.

So, before we get into the conversation with Lesley, I do want to give you a book recommendation of something that I am just absolutely loving. I don't usually do book recommendations for books that I haven't yet finished, but I'm reading Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott and it is so unique and weird and wonderful that I just know I'm going to continue loving the entire book.

So, I'm going to make a recommendation based off of a third of the book that I've currently read. So, Thistlefoot is a modern fairytale and it's like a sweeping epic novel. It's based in Eastern European folklore, a lot of Jewish folklore, which I love as someone who has Jewish heritage in my family.

It is the story of two descendants who are siblings of Baba Yaga. If you're unfamiliar with Baba Yaga, I don't want to give anything away. If you are familiar with Baba Yaga, you might have an idea of some of the things in this book.

Basically, these two siblings receive a package from their ancestral home. They're living in the United States. And what that package is (this is not a spoiler, it is literally on the cover of a book), is a giant house that is sentient and walks around on giant chicken legs.

And what they do is they tour this house, which they call Thistlefoot all around the country, doing puppet shows to make money, all while being chased by this mysterious, dark, shadowy figure who is trying to end their lives and the lives of Thistlefoot.

It is weird, it is funny, it is intense, it is magical and just strange. It's been a while since I've read a book that like, I'll find myself stopping every few pages and just saying out loud like, “Ugh, I just really, really love this.”

So, that's Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. Again, I'm not finished with the whole book, but so far I am just obsessed with this. So, hope you'll enjoy that.

And I also hope that you will go check out Queen Among the Dead, by Lesley Livingston, after this discussion. I'm not going to keep you here any longer. We're going to dive right into our chat about the importance of location. So, I hope you enjoy this chat, with Lesley Livingston on Passions & Prologues.

[Music Playing]

Okay Lesley, what is the thing you're super passionate about that we're going to discuss today?

Lesley Livingston:

I'm going to say places.

Adam Sockel:

Places. Okay, I love this.

Lesley Livingston:

Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

Alright. Let's start with like a initial question of like what is it about kind of places that fascinates you and like when did you sort of discover this?

Lesley Livingston:

I'm fascinated by the personality of places. Because it does actually wind-up tying into my writing. But characters are fun and necessary for books. But I find I have a really hard time getting into a story ever, unless I have a setting and I'm fascinated by places and histories of places and all the sort of the layers that are underneath what you can see, in someplace that you might just walk through every day.

I'm an actor by trade, like that's my background. And I did a lot of Shakespeare and Shakespeare's a little fit on the ground when it comes to things like stage directions and really descriptive things. It's like; it's nighttime, it's daytime, it's red castle or whatever.

But it was funny, when I was in grad school, I was writing a paper about setting and the England speech is this … I can't go to the whole thing because I'll start going on-

Adam Sockel:

Yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

We take — and we will never get those out, but the England speech is in itself the description of not just a place, but really a character and a motivation and a deep and profound love. And I did this weird thing where I equated it to (and this is going to sound very strange), the scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Stay with me.

Adam Sockel:

Go on. No, I love a long walk.

Lesley Livingston:

Where Kirk gets on the shuttle with Scotty and he hasn't been back at the Enterprise in ages and they've done this entire refit. And so, Scotty takes him on this like extended journey where they circle the Enterprise and it's just this building soundtrack and there's all these extended loving shots of the ship and the saucer section and then the cells and you get the NCC-1701 and it goes on forever.

And it's like, okay, I understand what they're doing here. And I absolutely adore it because the ship is the biggest character in the series, really. It's Kirk’s one true love interest, never mind the green Orion slave girls or the women he falls in love with, Edith Keeler, never mind any of that.

The ship is his one true love. And in doing this … they're beauty shots and they're a love scene almost, in Kirk's face when they cut back to him. And him just seeing this love of his life. Even as a kid, it struck me as so incredibly powerful and so important, not the whole series, but to like his entire journey.

And there's such a fascinating history, just with that ship. And — it's all different. And he's kind of lost and confused, and he has to re-fall in love with the ship and the ship has to kind of re-fall in love with him too, in a weird way.

And I just love that. And I love the idea of places being as important to stories as the people that you put in them.

It was funny when I was writing my very first trilogy, way back again, my Wondrous Strange trilogy. It was at New York City. And I didn't have the book before I had actually gone down to New York. I grew up in Alberta, in Canada, out west and it was eighties, and all I heard about New York City was, “Oh God, it's a terrible place. Never go [inaudible 00:09:53] the minute you step off the plane.”

And I grew up with this idea of New York City as just like this horrible place. And I got there and instantly fell in love with it, like just madly. Like, it was just like, it hit me like a ton of breaks. I was like, “This place just grabbed my heart instantly.”

And I found myself wandering through like Central Park and just the Upper West Side and SoHo and just everywhere and finding these weird little parts of New York City that wound up writing themselves into the book that I was sort of-

I kind of slightly imagined in my head, because I was like, “Okay, what is this book going to be?” And the Shakespearean thing came into … because I was writing about this young actress in New York City and I have a sort of deep abiding love of history and mythology and folklore and that kind of thing.

And so, I was going to basically write a fairy tale in New York City and with like real folklore fairies, who were beautiful people and that was great.

But it was the city itself that really spoke to me and kind of gave me so many plot points. And I was coming up with all these really strange things, like I was inspired initially for my main male character, my love interest by a statue in Central Park of this hunter with a dog figure. And it's kind of tucked away in the corner. And I was like, that guy, I know who that guy is and that's fine.

And then I would be wandering around and there was like — and then I go down research rabbit holes like crazy, like a lot of-

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. As an author will.

Lesley Livingston:

As one does. Yeah. You've got like 82 tabs open on your desktop and things start to slow down and grind to a halt and you're like, “Oh God, no, I need all of these.” And I found things like the Hell Gate Bridge became a huge part of not just that trilogy, but the next trilogy. The place where the library is now, the main branch, the library is-

Adam Sockel:

Yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

With the lions and the park, that used to be the Croton Aqueduct reservoir, that's where the water came down. And it was like this huge structure that when it was originally built, it was built to resemble an Egyptian temple, it's not there anymore. But you can see pictures of what it used to look like and … used to like wander around the top of it and gaze into the reflecting pool at night. And it was all very evocative for him.

But that became a huge part of that entire story, because I needed an entrance to the underworld and of course it was the state Egyptian temple. And so, all of a sudden, I had like this ancient God wandering around the streets of New York City. He was a Nubis and he had a jazz bar on the upper West Side all of a sudden. And then the Obelisk in New York, in the park. Like all these weird little factoids started to happen.

And I knew that the setting itself was so like — I was almost like, “I don't even have to write this story, it's just writing itself.” I remember I was working on book two in that series, Darklight and I was kind of stuck on something. And John, my partner texted me from the basement where he was watching TV. I was just like, “Yeah”.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

We were probably yelling at each other. He just like texted me and he's like, “Hey, did you still need like a creepy fairy layer?” And I was like, “Yes. Why?” He's like, “You just come downstairs.” And I was like, “Okay.” So, I go downstairs and he's watching an episode of Life After People.

Adam Sockel:

Okay.

Lesley Livingston:

And it's the series where it's like what would happen if everybody disappeared off-

Adam Sockel:

Right. Yeah, yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

What happens structures and everything else? And this one had to deal with a place called North Brother Island, which is in the East River. It's just north of Rikers Island. There's these little tiny islands there that used to be a sanatorium, like Typhoid Mary actually spent some time there.

Adam Sockel:

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Lesley Livingston:

Yeah. And so, but it's abandoned now and it's deserted and you're not allowed to go there. But there are these urban explorers who have posted a bunch of pictures of it and it’s like there's these gothic buildings that have been taken over by vines and nature and it's the creepiest, coolest place. And I just got chills when I saw it, I was like, “That's it.” I soon as I saw it, like that became this huge set piece.

And so, it was like another piece of New York was slotting itself into place. And I would keep coming up with all these little pieces. There was like a place down by the High Line that I made like a layer for one of my characters. And that one, I was like, okay I knew about the High Line, but I hadn't been there yet. But I researched it. I came up with this idea for a little warehouse that I wanted to kind of put beside it that I needed. I went down to go see the High Line and there was a little warehouse exactly where I needed it.

Adam Sockel:

In the Meatpacking District?

Lesley Livingston:

Yeah, exactly. It was exactly the right distance from it. And there was a window where I needed it to be. I was like, “Did I write that into existence?” And it was this weirdest thing and it was hilarious, because my editor at the time, I kept telling her all these things and giving her all these little bits of history of New York City. And she's like, “Wait, that's there. That's real?”

And I was like, “Yeah, yeah. It’s a real thing there, we can use it in the book.” She's like, “You're freaking me out. And I've lived in New York my whole life, and I didn't know any of this was here.” And by the end of it, she started calling me New York, supernatural, biographer. It's like-

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. Especially like from New York, as I say, like there are so many pockets and things that if you know where to look, you can find incredible stories. But I'm curious for you. So, like this is really interesting because I'm a character driven, like my sort of entry point into books and stories is people who have listened to this podcast for a while and they're like, I always say I like small stories with big emotions.

And so, I love when people are sitting and having conversations. And looking back now, I always used to be jealous of people who could be like, “Oh, well, this is the reason why I like the types of books I do.” And I always be like, “How do you know that?” I've since come to realize, like when I was younger, probably a little bit too young, like I discovered Kevin Smith, the film director, he did Clerks and Chasing Amy and Mallrats and all these different movies.

And I saw Chasing Amy when I was, I don't know, like seventh or eighth grade. And at its core, it's just a bunch of people sitting around having different conversations about random, obscure things. And like it just spoke to me.

And then one of my favorite movies of all time is Good Will Hunting. And there's a scene where Matt Damon and Robin Williams are just sitting next to each other in a park and it's just like a seated two-shot. And they're just having this conversation that like, even to this day, I can do the entire monologue Robin Williams does.

Speaking of being able to do monologues, I won't bore you with that, but like looking back I'm like, “Oh, when my brain and emotions and everything were forming to become the adult I would become, these were the things that spoke to me the most.”

So, now it makes sense, where like I will tell someone, “Hey, I would love for you to read this book.” And they'll be like, “Why?” And I'll be like, “Well, the emotions of these two people having a conversation back and forth.”

And so, like that's for me, like I can go back and I can pinpoint like, this is why I am drawn to these types of stories. Like do you remember, was there an experience? Was it seeing that original Star Trek movie? Or was it something else? Like you can look back and now realize like, oh, that is the thing that triggered my love for places and how they can spark stories.

Lesley Livingston:

Interesting. Because yeah, I think the book, the one that probably actually made me want to be a writer as well as being the book that I've read more times than anything else is actually a book called Firelord, by an author named Parke Godwin. And I read it, God, back in the eighties, and it's a retelling of the King Arthur myth from Arthur's point of view, as he last died in Avalon.

And it's a very realistic retelling. Like he sort of became, by being century in the Reagan of the Roman Army, when Rome pulled all their troops out. And at the beginning of dark ages is all very historically based. There's like a very tiny hint of, I guess you'd call it magic, but it's mostly just very realistic and very sort of true to that historical time period.

And the way that he describes Britain and I'd never been to Britain at that point, but the way he describes the countryside that Arthur lives in and loves with every fiber of his being, which is a beautiful, occasionally terrible place. Up on like Hadrian's Wall and the Midlands and Wales, the way he describes it, just hooked callans into my brain and it felt like I knew it. The way he describes the place.

But at the same time, God, he’s got such a gift for dialogue that his characters in that book and the conversations back and forth and it almost gets almost bantery at points. Like the quickness and just that … but it's also kind of weirdly poetic and like the character interactions in that particular — like it was both of those things.

It was the conversations between the people and the settings. And then on top of all that you get to throw in these glorious, incredibly well described battle scenes and things like that. And I have some stage combat training. So, I love a good fight scene. It's the way I write my love scenes. I write them like I'm choreographing fight scenes, which is weird, but fun.

Adam Sockel:

I love it. No, I love that. That's awesome.

Lesley Livingston:

Yeah. So, it was weird because I felt like all of a sudden, I knew this place and I felt like I knew Hadrian’s Wall and I felt like I knew the places where he was putting Camelot and the terrain and the geography and the weather and I could feel it. And the very first time I ever went over to Britain, it felt like I'd been there. And I could feel the place in my bones.

And again, that's one of the places that really hooked its claws into me. And again, which is one of those things where I love setting so much. And the first book that baby Lesley ever wrote was an Arthurian story as well, except it was this sort of wants the future king thing, where it was a guy in modern day who goes to Britain and all of a sudden, finds himself with these members when he was King Arthur, yada, yada.

But I found places when I was there with that story that all of a sudden, again, not just wrote themselves into the story that I was telling, but became plot points, like important ones. Like, there was this just this random weird little castle ruin that I went to in the middle of nowhere at Wales.

And then the … and I climbed up to the top of this little castle with the guy I was visiting Wales with. And it was like this weird, almost haunted experience. Like we both felt really, really strong sense of place.

And again, once I got back to Canada and I started researching this tiny little ruin, I found out that it had really, really deep roots in ancient Celtic mythology and the [inaudible 00:21:41] which ties into really early authoring mythology. And it became this thing that I needed that I didn't know I needed which was — it's like ah the goosebumps up and down your arms and you're like, “Oh, yay. I get it. Alright. Alright. I'll write it. I’ll write it.”

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. It's so interesting you say that. A past guest and a friend of mine, her name's Dawn Kurtagich, she writes Young Adult horror and she's Welsh, she's lived in Wales a long time now. And like she told me off recording, because I asked her, I was like, you're … because her stories are super atmospheric.

And she jokingly said — like her most recent book is about basically like, she was walking around Wales and like there was this cave and it was like super creepy. And she's basically said, she's like, “Yeah, if you live in Wales, it's kind of hard not to feel atmospheric.” She's like, “Everything around me is atmospheric at all times.” But-

Lesley Livingston:

Yes.

Adam Sockel:

So, you touched on just there like kind of an ancient Celtic aspect. So, for your new book, your latest book, Queen Among the Dead, it's like a fantasy telling of ancient Celtic mythology. So, how did you go about … this is two separate questions.

One, like how did you go about like, the research of this and like what was the impetus, because it sounds like when you're researching for a book, like you discover something that may no longer be here and then you deeply research it and you can kind of see that place in your brain. It's like, what was the impetus for this particular story?

Lesley Livingston:

Okay. Well again, this is one of those things where like place became such a huge a huge part of the story. And it was interesting because this one started out actually with the character of Neve. Even though I didn't know that was her name at the time.

I started out with the idea of this sort of kind of rogue princess, second daughter in line for throne. But because she was the second daughter, really was aimless. She was like the spare not the heir. And she was almost a little Shakespearean in her formative years in my brain. She was almost a little like quintile because she wasn't even going to take the throne. So, she spent a lot of time just like being irresponsible and hanging out in the towns and the taverns and not being sort of groomed for rule.

So, she was this interestingly roguish character who wound up with sort of an interestingly roguish gallery of characters surrounding her, but I didn't have a place for her. I didn't know where she lived, where she existed in … and like I say, I always need that thing.

So, she was a bit untethered in my brain to begin with and her backstory is interesting, because I kind of took a bit of it. What wound up being like her ancestors, not her story, but it becomes very important from again, a very tiny snippet of mythology of Egyptian mythology, interestingly enough about two different characters there.

One of whom was an apocryphal queen named Nitocris, who took revenge on a bunch of her enemies who killed her brother the king and built a banquet hall, invited them all to dinner, sealed them in the room and then like let the floods waters of the island. And then I was like, “Ooh cool, I like this girl. Don’t piss her off.”

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, seriously.

Lesley Livingston:

So, she became this interesting voice in my head that sort of wound up becoming a voice in Neve's head. And also, interestingly enough, while I was searching for a place to land Neve, so I could tell her story, again, I got one of these texts from my partner saying, “Hey, here for a second.” I was like-

Adam Sockel:

I love this through line in your story. This is great.

Lesley Livingston:

I swear to God I wouldn't write books if it wasn't for him going, “Hey, come here for a second.” “Like, what?” And he's like, “What about Newgrange?” Because he was just looking up something online and something across the story about Newgrange, which is an ancient monument site in Ireland.

And I was like, “What about Newgrange?” He's like, “You know anything about it?” And I was like, “Yeah.” He's like, “Well, why don’t you put story there?” And I'm like, I can't do that. Sorry, no that’d be silly.” And he’s like, “Okay, whatever, do you.”

So, and a couple weeks later I was flying out to LA and I know I had to get up like at ridiculous o'clock in the morning. So, you know I never sleep, but I — so, I was like, I was laying in bed, I was like, “Oh I got have some sleep.” And it’s like, I’m like, “Wait a minute, Newgrange. Shit.” Like, “Ah, I’m not going to sleep.”

And so, like next morning, like I'm packing and I'm like I'm blind and so tired, like I can't see straight. And John's like, “What's wrong with you?” I’m like, “It's your fault.” And he’s like, “What?” And I’m like, “Newgrange.” And he’s like, “Oh, God you're so odd.

So, like I fly out to LA and I like call my agent, I'm like, “I got it.” And she's like, “You got?” I'm like, “I got the story.” Because we were pitching the idea of the story at the time to the marvelous woman who would wind up becoming my editor.

But again, I was like, didn't have the setting. And I was like, “I got it, I got it, I got it. I know what to do. I know where to put it.” And I'm in my hotel room in LA and I'm pacing back and forth like a crazy person on the phone. And she's like, “Okay, well that works. And do you want me to call Tiff?”

I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell her I'll get a hold of her when I get back to Toronto.” Because I had to kind of come up with this thing in my mind. And the amazing thing was, is that I'd had this, like this little idea of the Egyptian princess and while I'm trying to find Neve's place, I discovered that there was another Egyptian princess who apparently, the reason why Scotland is named Scotland is because she went on this epic journey. Left Egypt, wound up in Ireland, her name was Scota. She spent some time in Ireland becoming this incredible thing. And then wound up going to Scotland and ruling there.

And of course, there's almost nothing to this legend. It's very, very sparse on the ground. But it's this like, “Oh, cool. Why is Scotland named Scotland?” And it's this like weird little apocryphal thing. And I'm like, “Egyptian queen, what are you talking about?”

And then I started to research Newgrange again and get even deeper into that. And it was built before the actual building of the pyramids. It … the Pyramids and Stonehenge. And it's this amazing structure that is actually really similar in construction to the temples that the Egyptians built before the Pyramids. The mastaba or mastaba, I'm not even sure how you pronounce that because I've only read the word.

But it's these sorts of low temples with the single doorway kind of thing. If you saw a picture of Newgrange, you wouldn't know the exact. And these Egyptian structures were the same. They start like the Step Pyramid. Started off as one mastaba and then another one on top of it and another one. And then eventually, they start filling the size and they became the classical pyramid shape.

But to have that sort of through line from these weird character bits that started out in my head that gave Neve this incredibly rich backstory for her people coming to Ireland, initially from somewhere far away. Because I knew I wanted that to happen, it was all because of the setting and “Hey, what about Newgrange?”

And then again, then the setting and the hill of Tara and all of this incredibly rich stuff in Ireland, which is hilariously … nobody really knows a whole bunch about why this stuff was built.

Adam Sockel:

Right.

Lesley Livingston:

Or that Newgrange is aligned with the Winter Solstice and the shaft of light, with the rising sun. They know sort of the physical mechanics of it. But There's these incredibly intricate carvings, but they don't know really why.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

It’s like was it a tomb? Was it a temple? Was it both? Was it neither? What was this thing and what did it mean? And there's so many lovely kind of misty spaces around the actual place. I got to fill in the story myself. And the remains of Tara, they're like circles in the ground and low bumps in the terrain kind of thing. There's not a lot left of it.

And what I wound up doing is I wound up building civilization there that was almost … like, I could almost feel something that was sort of almost Atlantean. Like this lost civilization that was glorious and the structures of majestic and artistic.

Because you look at some of the archeological artefacts from those time periods, like the jewelry from the Mesopotamians and Macedonians. And like pre, prehistoric stuff that is so intricate and the artisanship in it and the craftsmanship is so sophisticated and some of the weaponry that's being found back then.

And I just wanted to build the civilization that was incredibly advanced in a lot of ways. And a lot of that has to do with like a certain amount of magic that's woven into the actual building of Tara and Newgrange and weave that into it.

And then the magic starts to fall apart. And so, you can see this civilization just disappearing to nothing. And so, what we have now is conjecture and I can pull that in with all these lovely myths and monsters and magic.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. I was just going to say, like I have to imagine, it feels like it would be more (I don’t know if fun is the right word), exciting to do a “retelling” like this where it's so sparse and I can definitely see where having the knowledge and the historical knowledge specifically of a place would help with this. Because people like to think about retelling, back to your point about Shakespeare, like if you do a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, like everyone on earth knows throughout what the story plot points have to be.

And like, “Oh by the way, you missed this thing.” And like, “Wait a minute, why are they both happily ever after at the end? You did this wrong.”

Like whereas this story, like you said, that it's so sparse, but there's these like kernels of knowledge. And then if you're willing to do the research of the place, like I absolutely see, and again, like I have to imagine, you have so much more space to play in when it comes to this type of retelling, it seems like.

Lesley Livingston:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Like Newgrange is the tent pole and then I get to like hang the canvas and decorate the inside of the tent around it. And it does, like sometimes if it's too sparse, you don't have enough to hang the story on.

There's enough there that — and I kept finding all these little places around that were evocative of the story and it gave me little bits. Like I needed sort of like a rough and tumble town, not too far from there. There's this place where there's two rivers that meet and it's called Blackwater.

And I'm like, “Okay, well that's always been it’s name and it's always been Blackwater and why is the water black and what kind of sort of rough around the edges town, could I set there?”

And so, I got to do that based on just like a name I found on the map beside the place exactly where I needed it to be. And then there was like, I needed a place north of there that I needed something kind of dramatic. And I found this little tiny lake on like the Headlands of Ireland, but there's like this huge cliff that drops down to the sea.

And on the Headlands there's this like little tiny lake that used to have a little tiny, tiny prehistoric fortress in the middle of it on a little tiny island. And then the ruins are still there. And I'm like, “I need that. Okay. And now I need this over here.” And I was just connecting all these wonderful little dots all over the map.

It's so weird and so exciting when that happens and you're like, “Oh, actually it’s there, I don't have to make that up. It's there. And I'll just have to explain why.” And that's the kind of thing, like when I was writing the New York story, that was the same thing.

One of my other series, my Never books … in ancient Britain during reign of Boudica, well, I guess, reign yeah. Queen Boudica, yeah. And the army. And like I literally needed something incredibly specific because I needed three hills in a line with the larger hill and two smaller hills on either side because I wanted to actually match topography to the shape of the Battersea Shield, which was a relic that was found in the tip, which is like … you've seen it.

Adam Sockel:

I’ve seen it. Yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

I needed that exact formation in gray barrows somewhere in Britain. And I was like, I'm going to have to absolutely make this up. And I didn't, and there are these three hills exactly where I needed them, exactly the right shape, exactly the right height. And when I found those, I was like-

Adam Sockel:

That's amazing.

Lesley Livingston:

“Okay.” And this keeps happening to me. And I'm just going to go with it.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. You might as well enjoy like the serendipity or kismet, whatever word you want to use. Are you able, this may be a silly question. It seems like even writing aside, because obviously you love writing and I can tell like the way that you're describing this, that you love the hunt for these pieces of information.

Do you do this when you're going just on like a vacation or traveling to a new place? Do you find yourself being like, I want to find some like historical nuggets? Or can you take a trip somewhere that you've never been without knowing the historical background of it?

Lesley Livingston:

I can. I try. It's like, “Oh, why don't I just go somewhere, relax.” And then I'm like, “Oh, oh, well that's interesting. Let's go there.” I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that I was unfamiliar with, that I didn't find something that wound up in notebook that it's like, “Okay dude, yeah, let's, let's see what we can do with this.” Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

Oh, that's so interesting.

Lesley Livingston:

Exhausting.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. But I don't know. I feel like I find myself … it does depend on the trip. Like if I'm going camping, I will just like — I want to know the like area I'm going to, but like I'm totally fine just sort of like exploring nature or if I'm going to a beach, maybe I'm going to like relax.

But like if I'm going to like a city I've never been to, I do want to know the history and I want to like have some semblance of an idea of what's an interesting thing I can go look at or uncover that I've never seen before.

And the same thing, I feel like you're talking about New York City, like because I used to be in the literary world, I would be in Manhattan at least once a year for work. And so, I feel like anytime I go there now I'm like, “Okay, what's a new thing I can discover about this place?”

So, I do know what you mean because you don't just want to — I don't know, I feel like every time I have a new experience, like I want to make it, I guess worthwhile would be the right word. So, I understand what you're saying.

Lesley Livingston:

Yeah. Don't get me wrong. I love unplugging and sitting on a beach and drinking margaritas and doing that for a couple of days and then I'm like, “Okay, so what now? What's the local history?

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. I totally agree. I feel like if I'm doing like a beach vacation, it's like, okay, one day off, one day on, one day off, let's do a score one day, let's relax. Yeah, I know what you mean.

Lesley Livingston:

Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

I have one last question for you. I always end with a recommendation from the author. It could be a book recommendation. Lots of people have given book recommendations, but it could be a place that you think more people should explore or whatever, anything you want to recommend you think more people should know about

Lesley Livingston:

Niagara Falls.

Adam Sockel:

Ooh, okay. Yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

This is a recent one. Just because I moved fairly recently into a not far away from their place. And it's hilarious because it has this reputation of being kitschy touristy, technically tired spot and it's not that. It's something else.

It's hilarious because — I keep saying hilarious. I don’t know, that's my word of the day. I don’t know what's going on with me. It is so interesting to me that, again, having not grown up anywhere near the falls and having grown up with sort of this I guess cultural idea of it as just being this like, “Oh, it used to be this like tacky honeymoon spot with like champagne glass shaped jacuzzies and drive-through, wedding parlors and that type of stuff.” Sort of like a tackier Vegas, if that's even possible.

And then I got here and it's gone through its times. And I’m of course on the Canadian side, which is very different from the American side. And I recently went across to just have a wander on the American side of the falls, for an afternoon. And it's a very different perspective there too.

Like you have to drive through some sort of really industrial stuff to get to the falls themselves. And then when you get there, you're not as close to Horseshoe Falls, which is the Canadian Falls.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the-

Lesley Livingston:

The Canadian Falls are better than the American Falls. Because I loved the American Falls and there's this Goat Island and you get really, really close to the falls on the American side. And like you can feel them in your chest, when you're standing near them, you get this sort of like this hollow roaring sensation.

And over on the Canadian side, there's like Clifton Hill, which is basically an outdoor amusement park. It's like a street that's lined with just the kitschiest.

Adam Sockel:

Oh, yeah.

Lesley Livingston:

There's a dinosaur park, mini golf and the Ferris wheels and just incredibly kitschy stuff. But at the same time, you turn the corner and Horseshoe Falls is right in front of you and it is gobsmackingly awesome. Like just the side of it.

And they recently opened the Power Station Museum here. It's an exhibit where you go through and see what one of the first power stations was like there, it's been refurbished with all the incredible, the stone work and the machinery that was in there.

But then you also go down in this glass elevator to what would've been the spillway for art when it came through the station. Then it would all empty out back into the river. And you can actually walk through the spillway now to where it comes out at the river and Niagara Falls is right there. Like Horseshoe Falls is — you're basically standing at the base of the falls and it is mind blowing.

For one thing, the tunnel itself, the actual construction of it is awe inspiring. What they actually did to build this thing with rudimentary dynamite and pickaxes. And it's huge tunnel. It's like a monumental. It's like the Pyramids of Egypt. The construction of it is mind boggling.

Adam Sockel:

People, if you've never been in Niagara Falls, like there is no way like to properly explain without seeing in person. Like it is one of those things where you're just like … it just takes your breath away. And like-

Lesley Livingston:

Absolutely.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. I wholeheartedly love that recommendation because yeah, you're absolutely right. Like it is something — even just like if you look at photos, it's like that doesn't … you have to see it.

Lesley Livingston:

Exactly, yeah. It's a place, it's a setting.

Adam Sockel:

It's a place. Well Lesley, this was so fascinating. I said I love getting to understand the brains of the people who come in and have these conversations with me. This was so, so interesting. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Lesley Livingston:

Thank you so much for having me. This was a riot. I really enjoyed it.

[Music Playing]

Voiceover:

Passions & Prologues is proud to be an Evergreen Podcast and was created by Adam Sockel. It was produced by Adam Sockel and Sean Rule-Hoffman. And if you are interested in this podcast and any other Evergreen Podcast, you can go to evergreenpodcasts.com to discover all the different stories we have to tell.

Hide Transcript