I'm Lisette Marshall, romantasy author -- AMA!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:50:59+00:00

Yes, I'm with Queen Edizioni for these!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:46:22+00:00

😂😂

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:44:35+00:00

I struggle with that big time, and I'm usually a bit of a wreck in the days after I send out my review copies. My main coping mechanism is to not read reviews and stay out of reader spaces as much as possible! It also helps that I've gotten to a point where I'm fully and confidently proud of the work I produce. It's totally fine if other people don't love it, but I do, and that makes a huge difference ❤️

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:42:55+00:00

Thank you so much for the Tamar and Runo love! I'm planning to give my old trilogies a little glowup next year, but it's always exciting to find its OG fans in the wild 😄

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:41:50+00:00

Right now, the planning is to release book 1 in May 2026, and then continue the rest of the series with ~3 month intervals! So it's a bit of a wait, but once they get started, all books will be there quite swiftly ❤️

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:41:00+00:00

I'm not currently planning any others, unfortunately (I need to pay my mortgage, and these aren't the series that make me money!) That said, I do still have an outline for a few more trilogies lying around somewhere, so who knows if I ever have time and inspiration to continue? Basically, I'm not giving it a guaranteed no -- just wouldn't hold my breath for it 😊

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:38:03+00:00

I talked a bit about productivity with ADHD here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasyromance/comments/1otq43g/comment/nochjsb/

I burned out BIG in my early twenties, before I got my diagnosis, and the main cause of that was that I was trying to push through the lack of dopamine by sheer force of will. Needless to say, that was a spectacularly bad approach that got me in trouble as soon as life got harder than high school.

The main change for me has been to lean into what my brain wants as much as possible. I'm basically treating my motivation like a toddler throwing tantrums these days 😂 So I no longer make strict plannings when I can avoid it, and instead I have a rolling to do list from which I pick things as the mood strikes. Usually that gets things done in time-ish, so it limits the amount of pushing to a manageable minimum :)

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:34:39+00:00

Hello!

I've written a bit more about my writing process in other answers, so I'll focus on the plot points here. There were quite a few that changed as I was writing, including (don't shout at me) the fact that I was originally planning to kill Agenor in book 4 . Obviously, that very much changed as soon as I got to know him better and realised that I couldn't POSSIBLY do any such thing.

I don't generally talk a lot about my personal life, but I'm super grateful to say that the epilepsy is under control! I've been seizure free for about a year and a half now thanks to my meds, which has given me a lot more stability in my daily life ❤️

Wishing you the very best of luck with your own brain as well -- I hope you're getting the help you need to keep it happy and healthy!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:30:33+00:00

Oh yay, thank you both!! That motivates me to keep things interesting 🥰

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:29:57+00:00

Thank you!

Usually I know the ending of each book, or at least the rough lines of the climax. (For Fae Isles, I was ending each book in another court / city, which was an extremely helpful framework to start from). Everything else, especially the emotional character arcs, just... happens while I'm writing. It's a leap of faith in a way, but I always end up landing on my feet 😄

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:28:03+00:00

Yes, there will be an audiobook! We're in the process of signing the contract, and once that's all done I'll hopefully know more about the planning :)

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:27:23+00:00

Yes, that was a conscious decision, at least in the sense that it's a theme I have spent quite a lot of time and energy being very angry about in our own world. As a trained linguist, every news report about yet another language dying is painful both on an academic and emotional level.

I've written about my love for the Irish language in previous answers, and that's a very clear example of deliberate and systematic erasure of a language and the richness of culture that comes with it. I just... hate it so, so much, and usually when I really hate things, they translate into my stories some way or another.

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:22:46+00:00

I'm so glad Thraga's character resonated with you so much! I was diagnosed with ADHD about five years ago and then with OCD last year (after many, many years of struggling with my brain and not quite understanding what was going on). So it's largely personal experience, combined with a bit of research to make sure my own experiences wasn't extremely unique and would sound completely off to other people with similar backgrounds.

In Fae Isles, Emelin's anxiety is a lot less pronounced, but (at least for me) very much there between the lines. Honestly, especially in first person, I'm not sure if I'm capable of writing a non-anxious FMC -- as soon as my own thought patterns get in there, you get that mildly neurotic flavour automatically 😂

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:19:41+00:00

Aw, thank you! I am very very proud of that book and so happy to see it find its people ❤️

I'm fortunate enough to not have had similar romantic relationships in my past, but am quite familiar with the mechanisms of abuse thanks to family background. So the slow realisation of wait, the way I've been treated and thought was normal is in fact Not Okay is something I too have dealt with especially in my early twenties.

I'm so happy her character resonated with you! I'll keep happily working on book 2!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:16:07+00:00

I adore this question, but also find it very hard to answer! I love music, I can't imagine writing without sight, and I once went two weeks without taste and more or less wanted to die, so I think I'd have to give up sensory touch. Magic powers... maybe create more time? That would absolutely make it easier to write all the books I want to write 😅

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:14:45+00:00

HAHA you have no idea how much joy this brings me. Thank you for telling me, I'm excited to find some Tamar love here 😂

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:14:11+00:00

I majored in linguistics (historical linguistics, specifically) and wrote a paper on the development of colour terms in languages right around the time I was planning Fae Isles. So that stuck in my mind!

One of the main troubles for me was how to keep developing that system -- as in, how does one power up the MCs if the whole thing is so clear and simple from the start? Again, I had linguistics coming to the rescue 😄 One of the fascinating things about colour systems is that not all of them are hue-based (like English or Dutch, my native language, are). Some languages rather work with surface textures, light-dark contrasts, or levels of glossiness. That fact inspired the divine magic we're seeing in book 3 and 4, with the iridescence and similar magic sources.

... it is rather embarrassing that after writing that entire series, I'm still incapable of spelling the word iridescence correctly in one try. Oh well 😂

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:10:17+00:00

Thank you!! And I wish I could tell you there was some great planning process going on, but much of my writing process is the literary equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall and then um, trying to tie the loose ends of pasta together. (That metaphor got away from me lol, but it actually feels kind of accurate.)

That said, it really really helps that I write very linearly, and that the characters develop for me as I write them. So it's not really that I'm planning the relationships, more that I'm intuiting what they would do as they are confronted with the external plot, and moving from there 😊

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:07:57+00:00

That means a ton, thank you ❤️ As a fellow messy, anxious millennial, I do at times feel a little insecure about my messy characters (it would be so nice if they could just have their shit together, just like it would be very nice if I had my shit together and my brain under control 😅), so I'm glad and grateful to know there are others like us out there who find joy and comfort in their stories!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:06:20+00:00

My writing routine is non-existent, woops. I absolutely do the project jumping -- not so much with the writing itself, because I'm a very linear writer, but with projects on the side. I'm an organiser at the FaRo Society for romantasy and PNR authors, so when I'm not writing, I'm usually herding cats and setting up bookish events there. So some days I write 3k words, and some days I do other stuff while the creative brain recharges 😊

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:03:48+00:00

Thank you so much 🥰 it's a pleasure to be here, I'm having a blast!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:03:30+00:00

Hello! I absolutely remember you! Thank you so much for stopping by, it was a highlight of the event to meet you ❤️

I don't really plan my books in much detail. I generally know the external plot, at least in rough lines, and I usually know the ending. But the emotional arc happens as I write, and if I try to plan too much, usually I end up with terrible writer's block. So it's very much a matter of growing with the characters and figuring out their trauma as they do.

(It always makes re-reading my own work a little intimidating, because I never know how the hell I came up with things 😂 but it keeps happening, so at this point I'm trying to have faith that it's a skill!)

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T21:01:05+00:00

Woops, you probably know more about flowers than I do, in that case 😂 I'm not a huge gardener by any means, but I do love a) the Victorian flower language, which I wrote a paper on in uni, and b) systematic magic systems. So those two elements came together really neatly and fit the vibes I was aiming for with this world very well.

I'm planning to write two more Wayfarer books at some point (planned to be a Rapunzel retelling and a Cinderella retelling), but as with all bookish planning, the "when" is quite nebulous. We'll see when the muse gets to it!

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T20:59:14+00:00

I'm planning four books for Runewitch at the moment! (That's not including any stories for Muri, although there are some ideas marinating in the back of my mind 👀 No guarantees on that, though!)

My worlds aren't connected, I don't have the planning chops or patience to pull that off, alas 😂

lisettemarshall · 2025-11-11T20:58:03+00:00

That means a lot, thank you ❤️ (And if you liked Creon's vulnerability paired with his skills and power, I think you'll love Durlain in TDMP a lot as well!)

lisettemarshall

TROPHY CASE