Lauren Smyth is an economics journalist at World News Group. Since signing her first publishing contract at age thirteen, she has written five young adult novels, coded two narrative video games, and started a blog enjoyed by readers and writers around the world. When she’s not in the broadcast studio, you’ll find her crafting episodes of her Grammar Minute writing podcast or training for her next trail run.
FF: What inspired the story in your book?
All That Glows is set in the Mojave Desert, a parched corner of the planet where I lived as a child. There’s an Air Force base out there where jets land on the dry lakebeds, and where Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1.
Something about this place exudes mystery. Maybe it’s the fact that you have to stay inside when the wind blows because the dust contains toxic spores that can kill you. Or maybe it’s the fact that you can’t play with the kittens because they’re not kittens at all—they’re mountain lions. Or maybe it’s the owls that burrow in the ground, since there aren’t any trees. Everything in Mojave is backwards and upside down, and most of it is trying to kill the unwary. When you’re young with a big imagination, it’s a delightful place to grow up.
My friends and I used to pretend—somewhat seriously, and quite pretentiously—that the military base was under attack, and we’d be the ones to solve the mystery and save the base. This book is a distant, better-developed, standalone offshoot of that childhood fantasy.
FF: What can you tell us about the main characters in your book?
Maple is a reader favorite. Although she’s not the first-person narrator, she plays a significant role in the story and catalyzes several of the main events. She’s a clever engineer, devoted to her found family, observant, and surprisingly optimistic all things considered. And she’s mute.
Why can’t she speak? Good question. It’s never explained in the book, though it’s implied she damaged her vocal chords after barely surviving the green-rain apocalypse. If you’re a reader and that explanation satisfies you, stop here.
The truth is, I just thought writing a mute character would be an interesting challenge. My stories are heavily dialogue-driven, as I’m an auditory (and not visual) creator. Maple’s character development was practice for me to focus on non-auditory cues that a person might use to communicate thoughts and feelings. It didn’t occur to me until the book’s second draft that I needed to explain why Maple never spoke!
FF: Which character surprised you the most?
Now for the other side of the story. Hunter is not a reader favorite—at first. He’s a father figure to Maple, but he’s everything she isn’t: loud, abrasive, abusive, and addicted to the village’s homebrewed alcohol supply.
At the beginning of the story, he appears thoroughly corrupted. But I found that writing an unredeemable character isn’t all that interesting, nor is it particularly realistic. A much better challenge was to write a character who had a reason for what he did—not just because of what had happened to him in the past, but because of a goal he was still trying to achieve.
So I gave Hunter a goal and made him pursue it, relentlessly, to the detriment of himself, his family, and his village. This is what redeems him in the end. The reader may not like it, but they can probably see themselves in Hunter, whose good intentions have led him so far down the wrong path. His story is a reminder that no one is beyond saving.
FF: What can you tell us about your next book?
Have you noticed that many bookstores shelve sci-fi and fantasy together? That’s partly because they both fall under the “speculative fiction” umbrella, but also because it can be hard to pigeonhole some of these stories. I’m a sci-fi writer through-and-through, but I’ve long wanted to try my hand at a book that blurred those lines.
All That Glows was my first attempt. If you didn’t read the back cover, you might think it’s fantasy until you’re about a third of the way through. Next, instead of writing sci-fi with fantasy elements, I’m writing fantasy with sci-fi elements.
Doing things in this direction is much harder than I expected, but I’m having a blast. I’m about to break the 100,000-word mark. All I can say right now is that the entire book is based on a clever title idea I got in high school. Which isn’t normally how I come up with plots, and I don’t even know if that title will survive until the final draft—but I’ll take inspiration where I can get it.
FF: What kind of research did you do for All That Glows?
I wrote parts of this book in college physics class. I’d take notes on one side of my paper, and on the other, I’d write bits of dialogue or plot, sometimes inspired by whatever we were talking about. (They say you can’t really multitask, and maybe that’s true—but I did well in the class and managed to finish the book, so I’d say it worked out.)
If you’ve finished All That Glows, you know there’s quite a bit of physics in the plot. But I’m an economist, not a physicist. And in the first draft, a gaping plot hole opened up when I realized I’d made a serious scientific error. I’m not sure how many readers would have noticed it, and maybe it wouldn’t matter in fiction anyway, but I didn’t want my wrong assumption to go to print.
So I went to my professor’s office. His walls were lined with sci-fi books, and he knew right away what kind of help I needed. I worked through the plot hole with him and sanity-checked some of the other mechanics—and then he endorsed the book. Thank you, Dr. Paul Hosmer!
FF: What are the biggest challenges you face when writing?
In a recent panel discussion, I jokingly pointed out that my characters are only as smart as I am. If I get them into trouble, I also have to get them out of it. I have more time to think about it, of course. But if they’ve got fancy technology that can alter the world around them, I have to invent that tech, know how to use it, and understand its constraints—at least enough to convince the reader. If they’re supposed to be super-smart strategists, I have to understand the basics of strategy. And so on.
That’s one reason why authors love characters who don’t always get it right. In All That Glows, I remember putting one character into a situation that was too clever by half. I’d set the trap and sprung it—and left myself with no way to get out. Sometimes, after a few days of thinking, I’ll find a way. Other times, I have to spend a lot of time rewriting. In either case, I’m not moving forward with the story, which can be frustrating both for me and for my editors who have me on deadline.
Sci-fi is especially difficult because you’re essentially trying to predict the future. It can get outdated quickly, so you have to be careful setting things too close to the present day. On the other hand, it can also feel too far removed from reality, so you also should at least be aware of the fundamental rules of humanity, science, and behavior that don’t change much over time.
One author who did this well was Jules Verne, considered the father of modern sci-fi. Although he didn’t get everything right about the future, his stories still feel surprisingly fresh today, even though they were written in the 1800s. I keep his stories in the back of my mind for inspiration.
FF: What authors or books have inspired you as an author?
I’m told the first book I “read” was a kids’ book about Snoopy. I turned the pages in all the right places, but when my parents took the book away from me, they discovered I could still “read” just fine without it! I’d memorized it from all the times they read it to me. I wasn’t in school yet, but my mom, who was a college professor, figured it was time to teach me how to read for real.
The first book that completely captivated me was The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I found an ancient copy of it in our family book stash when I was a child. It was a quick favorite, and slowly I started collecting other books in that series. I could tell which ones were ghostwritten by different people, and I think that helped me learn about different styles of writing and how to make my voice my own.
The first “adult” book I read was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, a late-1800s novel by one of the original science fiction masters. It was on my school reading list—why, I don’t exactly know—and I had a copy with a perfectly flexible spine, the kind that just makes you want to sit down and turn the pages. My parents took me out to lunch, and I propped that book up against my plate to finish it. I couldn’t put it down. I ended up reading almost all of Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages series after that, and I knew I’d have to write sci-fi of my own.
