Author Interviews

I’m so excited to about these author interviews! I hope you’re enjoying them. Today we have E.M. Anderson, author of The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher and the upcoming The Keeper of Lonely Spirits. Today, E. is going to tell us more about Peter’s book, and then we’ll end with Edna. It’s her birthday on the 22nd, so get excited!

Meet E. and Peter

Family in general is important to me, and I'm lucky to have extremely supportive and accepting parents, which I know isn't the case for all writers (or queer folks, or neurodivergent folks). But my family is scattered, and my grandparents are gone now. It's a comfort to me to write about people who are grieving family—whether because their family is dead or wants nothing to do with them or simply lives far away—but still get to have that experience of family, one that's built on mutual love and acceptance.

I also love writing intergenerational casts and intergenerational friendships. Found family feels like a natural extension or consequence of that.

Very first, it was that my favorite character in The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher, if I can say I have one, is Amir, who is a soft old man. Like I just really wanted to write a story with a soft old man as the protagonist.

And then one day we were driving past a cemetery, and I suddenly had this vision of an old man working on the grounds in the cemetery, and that was where Peter came from.

He's kind and works hard to take care of other people, but he's gruff because he's trying not to form actual connections—since he's cursed with immortality, he's lost everyone he's ever cared about, and he doesn't care to repeat the experience. Essentially, he's my grandfather, which perhaps is why he's cursed with immortality.

(My agent and editor describe Peter as grumpy; I tend to say "gruff.")

He also has anxiety, senses and communicates with ghosts, and communicates with plants.

Literally and figuratively, ghosts are the Big Plot Thing. Cursed with immortality, Peter is haunted by the past losses of his sister, his mother and brother, and his partner. While he doesn't regret the time he had with them, the losses don't seem worth repeating—so he avoids forming connections with living persons, because his curse means he'll only lose them someday. Instead, he spends his time finding and sending on troublesome spirits: it's a way to help the living without getting too close to them, and it gives his long and meaningless life some semblance of purpose. It's a lonely life, and it does absolutely nothing to combat his feelings about the past (however he might try to repress them), but he's convinced it's for the best.

My love of cozy fantasy extends back beyond the start of the pandemic, but let's start with the pandemic: while fantasy—usually not cozy—has always been my go-to genre, my reading tastes changed when the pandemic started. I'm not as interested in sweeping epics with high, global stakes and a lot of uncertainty. I started reading a lot more romance at that time because the guaranteed HEA—no matter the struggles beforehand—is a comfort to me, while I find the lower, more personal stakes cathartic. Not that a sweeping fantasy epic can't have characters struggling with the same fears and difficulties I do in real life, but there's something comforting about seeing characters more at my level, if you will. It's very unlikely that a wizard will appear at my door and tell me I'm the Chosen One. It's very unlikely that I will change the world on a large scale.

I think of cozy fantasy like that quote from that person's professor somewhere on Tumblr: "You all have a little bit of 'I want to save the world' in you... I want you to know that it's okay if you only save one person, and it's okay if that person is you." Cozy fantasy says to me that a better world is possible, and your role in creating that better world might be something small—like being a home for someone without one, or overcoming your own old traumas—and that's okay. It says that there is beauty and importance in small things. That's what cozy fantasy is to me.

The ghosts are maybe not quite what you expect! While they occasionally take corporeal form, it's pretty rare because most of them aren't strong enough to do so. I can't wait for readers to see my take on how the main character usually experiences them instead.

Meet The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher

When you’re a geriatric armed with nothing but gumption and knitting needles, stopping a sorcerer from wiping out an entire dragon-fighting organization is a tall order. No one understands why 83-year-old Edna Fisher is the Chosen One, destined to save the Knights from a dragon-riding sorcerer bent on their destruction. After all, Edna has never handled a magical weapon, faced down a dragon, or cast a spell. And everyone knows the Council of Wizards always chooses a teenager—like the vengeful girl ready to snatch Edna’s destiny from under her nose.Still, Edna leaps at the chance to leave the nursing home. With her son long dead in the Knights’ service, she’s determined to save dragon-fighters like him and to ensure other mothers don’t suffer the same loss she did. But as Edna learns about the abuse in the ranks and the sorcerer’s history as a Knight, she questions if it’s really the sorcerer that needs stopping—or the Knights she’s trying to save.

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Thanks!

Thanks E. for chilling with me, and thank you all for reading. Like the new feature? Let me know in the comments! Stay tuned for more this week.

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