Episode 90
Exploration vs. Exploitation: Diving into Dark Literature with Author Deirdre Swinden
On today’s episode we get to chat with Deirdre Swinden, a dark fiction author with a penchant for ghost stories. After twenty+ years as a leader in corporate communications, Dee took a leap of faith and set out to build her creative writing skills. She dove into the realms of sci-fi, horror and speculative fiction during her MFA. Her thesis novel, Somnium, offers readers a blend of psychological horror and high-tech science fiction via a fast-paced nightmare journey where dreams can kill. It’s a novel that explores the shadowy boundaries of fear and technology and is sure to thrill fans of cutting-edge psychological thrillers and high-stakes survival horror. But it is also a journey through the darkest corridors of the human psyche and the lingering effects of emotional and psychological abuse.
After extracting herself from an emotionally abusive marriage, Deirdre is now looking to give a voice to those who suffer verbal and emotional abuse in silence. She has chosen dark fiction as a means to explore that horror and the myriad beliefs and situations that can lead a woman to surrender her voice. She hopes that by exploring her own trauma via fiction, her readers will unearth the courage to rise and rediscover their own voices—as she has rediscovered hers.
You can learn more about her on her website www.deirdreswinden.com and follow her on Instagram @dswinden531
Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of Somnium from Crystal Lake Publishing at Bookshop.org.
A little about today's host-
Kristi Leonard is a modern Renaissance woman deeply rooted in the book world. When she's not immersed in crafting novels, she's orchestrating writing retreats through her business, Writers in the Wild, or lending her voice to non-fiction audiobooks. She leads the Women’s Fiction Writers Association as the president of the board, and interviews her writer pals as one of the hosts of the Author Express Podcast. She will start querying her first book in 2024.
Beyond the realm of words, Kristi embraces the Florida sunshine by hiking with her writer-hiker group and leisurely walks on the beach. She and her husband juggle a couple side businesses and take turns sharing the couch with their goofy Golden-doodle, Maddie. Kristi enjoys travel adventures with her twin sister and living vicariously through her grown children. You can learn more about her and connect at: https://linktr.ee/kristileonard.
Be sure to follow or subscribe to Author Express wherever you listen to podcasts and to follow us on Instagram @AuthorExpressPodcast
Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
Transcript
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Kristi Leonard [:Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kristi Leonard, owner and host of Writers in the Wild Retreats, nonfiction voice over artist, and president of WFWA. I'm excited to share with you a little about today's guest.
Kristi Leonard [:Deirdre D Swindon dwells in the realm of dark fiction. Her debut novel Somnium was released by Crystal Lake Publishing on May 31, 2024. Reviewers call it a visionary wander into the nightmare realms and likened it to Blade Runner and the Matrix. After a successful career in communications, she chose to explore her creative side and earned her MFA in creative writing from Arcadia University. Her short stories have been published by Grimm and Gilded and Grifel literary magazines, and she's a past winner of the Philadelphia Writers Conference Popular Short Story Contest. Dee currently lives in North Carolina with her dog Jasper. Alright. Welcome Dee.
Kristi Leonard [:It's so great to have you.
Deirdre Swinden [:Thank you. Appreciate it.
Kristi Leonard [:I have had the pleasure of knowing you through the Writers in the Wild retreats, and you joined me for both Blue Ridge retreats that we've had so far. And if I'm not mistaken, I think you worked on this book potentially at one of those retreats?
Deirdre Swinden [:I did some editing on this one at one of those retreats. Yes.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh, that is so awesome. Well, we always start with the same question. Tell me the most interesting thing about where you are from.
Deirdre Swinden [:Well, I'm I'm not real sure that this is where I'm from, but I did live there for a good bit of time. I actually lived and worked in, a little town outside of Philadelphia called Exton. And Exton also encompasses an area called Downingtown, and there is this one house that was literally right on the campus of my company. So my company's here. The house is right next to it, and it's boarded up, and it's broken down. And it's this massive house that's got graffiti all over it. And I couldn't understand you because it's in a prime location right in the middle of town. So I finally looked into it, and it was what is commonly known as the Exton Witch House.
Deirdre Swinden [:Oh. And there is a rumor that says that there's an entire family that has been buried face down underneath the house, and face down is done so that their souls can't escape.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh my word. You are kidding me.
Deirdre Swinden [:So, you know, for me, I don't know if that's the most interesting thing about where I live, but for me, that's the most interesting thing I've come across in in all of the places that I've lived.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh my goodness. Yes. My writer brain is having a lot of fun with that.
Deirdre Swinden [:Yeah. As was mine.
Kristi Leonard [:I can imagine. Well, let's get to know you a little bit about as you as a person before we go into your author persona. Was being an author what you always wanted to be when you grew up, or did you have other aspirations when you were little?
Deirdre Swinden [:Yeah. I have always been writing. I started off probably you know, I was that kid who would deliver the blow by blow, you know, ask me how my day was, and it was, and then and then
Kristi Leonard [:Alright. Awesome.
Deirdre Swinden [:And I started writing, you know, short poems and little odes to my dog, Charlie, who was Charlene, when I was in 1st grade and second grade. And, you know, she really had no opinion about my writing whatsoever. Sure. Yeah. But, you know, by the time I was 12, I had read Stephen King's It, and I was just thinking, wow. This is amazing. This is what I want to do. So I had started writing on my own, and I wrote an entire really crappy, totally awful novel in 3 Garfield notebooks.
Kristi Leonard [:Excellent.
Deirdre Swinden [:By the time I was 12. So Woah. It was always part of my being part of who I wanted to be. And I took all of the creative writing courses I could in both high school, college, and then, of course, the MFA later on, and really would have just been writing all my life.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh, that is so great. I think a lot of writers start out that way, and I'm pretty sure many of us have a crappy first novel from when we were 12. We should all get them together and, like, swap them and then try and rewrite them. I think that would be really fun. Maybe we'll do that on the next retreat.
Deirdre Swinden [:Seems reasonable.
Kristi Leonard [:What's something you wish you would have understood more deeply when you were 20? You're not too far away from 20, of course. Right?
Deirdre Swinden [:I'm on the further side. I think that I wish I would have understood that you just keep writing, that you get better with time. That, you know, no matter where you are in the stage of rewriting, whether you think you're the best writer in the world, you can always get better. And I wish I had known that when I had started trying to get that very well, it was probably, I guess, my 3rd novel by that time out there because it was all very much you know, I look back at it now, and I see that it needed some help.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah.
Deirdre Swinden [:It was a really good idea, but before the writing, while good for me at the time, wasn't good enough. But I let the not good enough get hold of me.
Deirdre Swinden [:And so I put my my creative side away for a long time and, you know, just recently revised it and got Somnium published. So if you just keep writing, if you just keep going, if you keep learning, you're going to get better. And sooner than you're going to get that novel out there.
Kristi Leonard [:That's awesome. That's such great advice. I'm excited to ask you about your book. I haven't actually read the horror genre much in the past. And, honestly, it's kind of hard for me to describe your book as horror even though I know it's in the horror genre. And I think people might not pick it up because they think it's gonna be super scary, which will hint people it is scary, but it is not like I couldn't go to sleep at night. Although, it is about dreams.
Kristi Leonard [:Why don't you tell us about it? Give me your one sentence summary of your book and then maybe people can hear what I'm talking about.
Deirdre Swinden [:I think to describe it in one sentence, I'd say it to that. It's a nightmare journey through 1 woman's mind, body, and soul.
Kristi Leonard [:Okay. Tell me a little more about it. How would you describe it to somebody?
Deirdre Swinden [:So the book centers on Jillian Hardy, who has suffered from persistent nightmare disorder for most of her life. What that means is that she is constantly having nightmares, and she has trained herself to be a lucid dreamer so that she can interact with her dreams and kind of help herself get through those nightmares better. What she doesn't know is that the nightmares themselves were actually triggered by technology that was built into Somnium Corporation's dream advertising. So anytime that she gets hit with tech, anytime she sees something that has Somnium's technology as a base, she is triggered. So she gets these horrible nightmares. And because of the way her body reacts to those nightmares, they can actually kill her.
Kristi Leonard [:Wow. There's so much more to it than that, but that really helps to sort of set the picture for people to understand what it is that you're reading about. And it is so well done. I enjoyed it so much. So much so, I actually went out and read another horror book, which I also enjoyed. So I am a convert, which I would never have told you that I would like those kinds of books, but I am super enjoying them. I think it's good for writers especially to read outside of your genre because I learned a lot from reading your book, and I'm sure you feel the same way when you read other genres.
Deirdre Swinden [:Yeah. There are different beats to different story types. You know? You you look at rom com and you know you know exactly what's going to happen. There's going to boy meets girl. Boy does something redeemable stupid. Yeah. That is something good to get girl back. That sort of thing.
Deirdre Swinden [:So you follow those beats. I mean, you know, you can pull those beats into different types of stories and you follow horror beats. But maybe you throw in one of the beats from a from a romance and see how it fits and see how it fits with the characters. I think everybody in their life experiences these different stories, different genres in your life as well. So why not read horror? Why not read romance? Why not read gothic? You know, anything that tells the story of life itself is something that we as people should be reading.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah. I totally agree. Which part of the book was hardest for you to write?
Deirdre Swinden [:I think, you know, Jillian's emotional journey where she is really going through what ends up being self forgiveness. That was one of the hardest things for me to write because it's a journey that I'm still on. You know, I think we have to go back and look at our past and kind of accept who we are and who we were and who we're becoming. And a lot of that is gonna be good, bad, and ugly.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh, yeah.
Deirdre Swinden [:So when you accept all of those parts of yourself, you can really start to become a whole as a person and live your life in the best way possible and be more authentic.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the process of writing. I'm sure the process is very similar to what I do. But in your process, I imagine there had to be a little bit of research. Like, how did you like, companies that have dream software. I mean, a lot of what you're creating is doesn't exist, but then how dreams work and all that kind of stuff. Did you have to do research when you were doing it?
Deirdre Swinden [:Yeah. Absolutely. I I did a deep dive into dreams to see how they worked. As a lucid dreamer, you know, I did some research into that as well. I did some research into the archetypes of dreams. With sleep paralysis and things of that nature, there's this archetype that you literally are awake and can see where you are, but you can't move.
Kristi Leonard [:Oh my gosh. How horrifying.
Deirdre Swinden [:So it's a it's a form of dream that's really frightening to most people, and it's where the archetype of the succubus and the incubus came from. That something sitting on your chest and breathing out breathing your soul is, you know, one of those dreams that everybody's had. Yeah. So I did a lot of work into the dream state. I did a lot of work into AI so that I can extrapolate what's been happening now and take it further, take it to where it can actually penetrate your dreams. And that's something I learned from Margaret Atwood. Her speculative fiction and her her Earth based science fiction, Oryx and Crake, and all of the wonderful things that were in that story were actually science at the time.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah.
Deirdre Swinden [:So that's one of the things that I try and incorporate into my own writing.
Kristi Leonard [:That's so cool. I haven't had to do too much research, although I do have a character that does something I've never done before, so I'm just starting to do that a little bit, but yours sounds way more interesting. Okay. So back to the house. I keep thinking about this boarded up house. Did you write a story about that house?
Deirdre Swinden [:Not yet. Oh, no. Incorporated parts of it, the face down, which is actually in Somnium. So
Kristi Leonard [:You're right. Huh. That's awesome. That is super awesome. So what are you working on next?
Deirdre Swinden [:Well, I just finished up my most recent project, which is kind of a genetic engineering sci fi horror crossover again, and this one is almost new species. So it's, you know, a bunch of unsavory characters come together. They're experimented on, and bad things happen. So, you know, much.
Kristi Leonard [:Wow. Okay. That sounds interesting. So what would you call the genre of your book? I meant to ask you that earlier.
Deirdre Swinden [:This one is probably a little more science fiction with horror elements.
Kristi Leonard [:And then what would you call somnium?
Deirdre Swinden [:Somnium, I would probably aim more as horror because of the subgenre that it falls into that dreaming nightmare ghost state.
Kristi Leonard [:Yeah.
Deirdre Swinden [:With science fiction elements.
Kristi Leonard [:Very cool. Have you always written in that genre?
Deirdre Swinden [:Pretty much. Yeah. I have spent a lot of my crew in the pharmaceutical industry. So I've learned a good bit about strange things and and delivery of of drugs and, you know, viral vectors and weird things that, most people might not have heard of. So a lot of that feeds into my brain on a regular basis, that science, and I I geek out of over strange stuff. And so
Kristi Leonard [:Okay. That's awesome. Well, they say write what you know. So Yeah. That's that's an interesting twist on it, but super fun. Where is the best place that people can find you? Do you have a website?
Deirdre Swinden [:I do. It's just deirdreswindenauthor.com.
Kristi Leonard [:Okay. And I'm probably gonna guess this because I think you gave us a hint at the top, but what book or story inspires you the most? Let me guess. Was it Stephen King?
Deirdre Swinden [:Oh, yes. Okay. Yeah. I I like any horror writer, I love King. I like his early works best And The Shining is one of the stories that has stuck with me forever and ever and ever, as as the girls say. I think, you know, he took the haunted house story, and he created a haunted man.
Kristi Leonard [:Right.
Deirdre Swinden [:In Jack Torrance. And so there's these internal influences and the external influences from the house that just hung together in this wonderful blend of story that can scare the crap out of you and also enlighten you, which is really what I think good horror is supposed to do.
Kristi Leonard [:Well, I think you did it in your book. I highly recommend to anybody who's been scared, wink wink, of picking up a horror book. You don't need to be scared. It's really, really good. Well, that is our 15 minutes if you can believe it. So I have really, really enjoyed, especially because I know you. I've really enjoyed having you on the show.
Deirdre Swinden [:Thank you. I appreciate it.
Kristi Leonard [:Thanks for joining us. We hope you take a second to give us stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram @authorexpresspodcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.
