Tower of Ash and Darkness by C.L. Shivers is a dark fantasy romance, set in a cutthroat kingdom of vampires, humans, and witches. It is an atmospheric story that touches on power and trauma, with dimensional characters with incredible depth. A few weeks ago, I sat down with the author to learn more about this book and how it came to be.
My conversation with C.L. Shivers wound up being less of an interview and more of a wide sweeping discussion about her characters, her journey, and the evolution of Tower of Ash and Darkness, with some hints about what’s to come in the trilogy.
**This interview contains spoilers for Tower of Ash and Darkness**
Tower of Ash and Darkness stuck me with the characters, of course. I’m a character-driven sort of girl. I like interesting characters. I like messed-up characters. I like characters who have something that makes them painful in a way, I suppose. And these characters have that in spades, but I was also really impressed with the world you built. It felt very atmospheric.
When I wrote this book, it’s a dark fantasy romance, and so I understand the idea that each character has pain or a tragic aspect to them. Because I think that if you look at the people that we surround ourselves with, or just people in this world, there’s always some depth to them that either is on the surface and they tell us, or most people who don’t want to be vulnerable, hide that side of them.
And I think that that’s the beauty of dark fantasy romances. So when I was looking at Casper or even Callum, and [Lailah’s] having all these raw emotions that go inside her and are festering, you get to see every aspect of that before the action of kissing someone or holding their hands or touching them.
I know there’s this tragic backstory for Casper and Callum that we don’t get to see in book one that I just can’t wait to find out in book two. What drives these two? We get hints, but we don’t get the full story.
My second book comes out this December. So what you’re going to see is all the secrets that are hidden, the past, the trauma, all the layers and the depth to these characters are actually going to be revealed in the second book. Because this is a trilogy, the second book will be the moment that everyone is waiting for, where all the secrets come out.
And there’s a bigger storyline that everyone is, I wouldn’t say missing, but there’s a bigger storyline. The Easter egg is right there, but I think most readers are so fixated on all of Casper’s secrets. I think that they’re fixated on that so deeply because I think everyone loves Casper or Callum. Everyone loves Callum. But there are all these secrets that people are so fixated on that they don’t see the bigger storyline. So it will be really interesting for the readers to read the second book and get it all figured out.
Did you anticipate when you wrote Callum’s character that he was going to resonate so strongly? You have such strong main characters, and then you have this side character that comes in and kind of steals certain scenes. I’ve read a bunch of reviews and I’ve seen a bunch of stuff on social media, and readers just gravitate towards this character. Was that intentional? Did you put him in there with the idea that readers were going to love him, or was he just someone who spoke to you, and it’s just a happy coincidence that we all love him so much?
Callum was supposed to be a side character, and he was supposed to stay on the sidelines. He was not supposed to be a fan favorite. I don’t know if you’ve heard this from other authors before, and I always thought it was so silly until it happened to me. You hear authors say, this character just blindsided me, came out of nowhere when they wrote the story. I always thought that was so silly because I’m like, you’re the author. You’re in control. That is such BS. On my part, Callum came out of nowhere. He was supposed to be a side character.
The moment that I realized that he wasn’t was when I was writing the part when he and Lailah met in the woods, and they were fighting off guards. And so in that moment, he was not supposed to say, “in another lifetime, beautiful.” That was not the plan. And then it just was an opportunity, because he’s so hot, right? It just happened. I think the one thing that readers have really said is that Callum just resonates so strongly with them because, like Casper, he carries this deep trauma.
He survived a lot of things that people, which you guys will figure out later on, but he survived a lot of things that would make people really be scared of the world. And what he has done is he’s become hardened to the point where he doesn’t believe that he deserves love at all. And I think his crudeness, his blunt humor, the sharp wit, or his way of coping and keeping the world at arm’s length, has really made people want to get to know him even more.
And also his unwavering loyalty. Even though he can come across harsh, he’s always honest. And I think that sometimes we live in a world where people aren’t as straightforward as he is. And that’s just magnetic to meet someone who’s authentically just going to be honest, no matter the situation at hand.
I love Casper, but Cal’s my man. I fell in love with that man so deeply. It’s a problem.
What does your writing process look like? Are you an outliner, or do you just go where the story takes you, as happened with Callum? What’s the first step in your process to crafting these books?
Everything starts with the characters. I think it’s important for their emotional arc to feel authentic. And the plot in the world-building naturally grows around them.
I’ll sketch out all the key beats of the story and the big elements of the world early on. But I let the emotional journey lead the way. I think we can all look back at a handful of moments in our lives that really changed who we are. And that’s kind of how I approached the writing process.
I start with the big emotional moments for these characters, because I think once they have these big emotional moments, they’re able to be changed forever. And then from there, I build the world around the plot around these moments. Of course, there’s a larger storyline in the background, but I focus on those turning points where characters evolve and grow.
For example, the scene with Lailah and Casper, where Casper hasn’t fed and she wants to slice her palm, which already has scars all over it, to feed him. And he said, “I would never let anyone hurt you, including yourself.” And I think Lailah really needed to hear that. I don’t want you to hurt yourself for others anymore. Those are the scenes that shape the world and the plot around them.
What drew you to the fantasy genre?
Being able to go into a fantasy world to be able to check out of true reality is such a blessing. I think it’s beautiful.
Not a lot of people actually know this, but when I first wrote this book, it actually wasn’t supposed to be a fantasy novel at all. It was actually nonfiction. It was my life on the pages, every painful experience that I had to go through. I wrote it actually on paper in the first manuscript as a therapeutic way of processing the trauma that I’ve endured, but what happened was even though the writing was therapeutic to put all these experiences down on paper, when I finished it, I realized that I wasn’t ready to put the truth of what I had experienced out in the world, but it also hadn’t brought me the healing that I feel like I needed. I think the shift happened when I created Lailah, because giving my pain to her and letting her carry it allowed me to step outside my own grief.
I could rewrite her stories in ways that I could never rewrite my own. So I think through her, I could explore strength and hope and survival from a safer distance. So I guess when I say Lailah’s story is my story, I really mean it. Her scars are my scars, and the heart of her journey comes from the place I know all too well. But in writing her story, I found a way to begin rewriting my own. That was a beautiful aspect of writing fantasy versus nonfiction, to be able to give myself an opportunity to explore healing in a different realm.
I find it really fascinating that so many readers connected with Casper, Callum, and Lailah, but there’s a different love triangle going on with Lailah, Casper, and Jason. I even saw some reviews raising the question of whether this is going to turn into a why choose. What was going through your head as you were crafting this love triangle?
Everyone hates Jason. I get it. I understand. But I have a sweet spot for him because he’s the kind of man who’s loyal to everyone, and sometimes that’s to his own detriment. At his core, I think he’s fiercely protective of Lailah, but that same loyalty extends to his family, which can create some heartbreaking moments where his choices aren’t always aligned.
Readers have told me that Jason reminds them of a real-life relationship where a partner loves you deeply but still feels tied to their family dynamic and their priorities previous to them. That’s kind of where Jason’s at. As much as everyone hates the decisions he’s made, what makes Jason so simplistic is that he has a hero complex. He wants to be the good guy, and he just goes about it in all the wrong ways by being loyal to everyone.
I feel bad for him because I truly believe he loves Lailah deeply and just keeps making some really stupid mistakes. Casper, on the other hand, he’s wrapped in secrets, and he wears masks all the time, depending upon who’s watching. It’s part of what makes him so compelling.
To talk about the why choose aspect, I have to say, everyone is rooting for a why choose between Callum, Casper, and Lailah. When I was writing this book, that was not the intention, but at the end of the day, people fell in love with Callum. I did not mean for him to steal the spotlight the way he did. He’s become an unexpected favorite for so many readers, and I’m here for it. So, if you’re asking for why choose, I’ll say this. It was never really Jason versus Casper.
If anything, the triangle has shifted into something more like Casper versus Callum. I do love a good why choose.
For the record, I know you thought that readers would hate Jason, but I don’t hate Jason at all. I think he’s kind of a goof. But I think he’s a lovable character.
That makes me so happy. You have no idea how many people have messaged me. Like, I hate Jason. He’s a boy. He’s just doing dumb boy things. It’s fine. He’s 22 years old, and he’s making dumb decisions. Casper and Cal are over 200 years old.
I saw a meme actually yesterday on Instagram, and it was a quote to dark fantasy readers, and it said, a man could kill someone as long as he doesn’t cheat and will be fine with it. If he had never cheated, then we would all be more heartfelt towards the position that he’s in.
For me, it’s what makes him real. Unfortunately, people do cheat sometimes in relationships, and for stupid reasons. He had a better reason than most.
I know. I think that men in general, through their masculinity, have an innate nature to be protective and to want to be the hero. And sometimes they get mixed up with what that actually looks like.
At the end of the day, a grown man can come forward and say, I’m going to protect my family. I’m going to protect my priority in life, whether that’s like you get married and then protect your spouse, or you protect your original family. A boy doesn’t know how to make those decisions. So yeah, I think it makes him real.
He’s a young adult male who makes stupid decisions. So I’m glad you don’t hate him. That just made my whole day.
I did not hate him at all. I very much understood what was happening there. For so many readers, the cheating is a nonstarter. Almost everyone has been cheated on, so it’s this trauma that everyone is carrying around with them. It becomes a no-go for the whole genre. I don’t have that no-go. I want you to tell me a story.
Well, isn’t it funny that when the roles were switched, Lailah did cheat on Jason as well, and no one has a problem with that.
So it’s nice to hear that you don’t hate Jason. That is a first for me. I’m hoping that more readers will try to find some compassion. Because I do think that he loves her deeply, and I think that that shows in the book.
I think that’s like the complexity of humans, right? When you make decisions, you shouldn’t ask advice from other people about what you should do, because they are completely different, living different lives. They’ve experienced different things, and they’re gonna make a decision that’s best for them, not what’s best for you.
So the best thing that you can do for yourself is get to know who you are and be authentic about who you are. So then when you have to make tough decisions, you can look internally and be like, “Okay, I know my worth, I know what I need to do. This is what I’m going to do.
That what’s so beautiful about Callum, Casper, and Jason, they’re all displaying three very different ways of protecting her. And it’s due to their experiences in life, of how they choose to protect. And so I think it’s a fun little spider’s web of connection going on. I think that readers will be wondering exactly where Lailah’s heart will land between them all.
In this world, there’s only one witch born in every generation, and these witches are powerful and dangerous, and Lailah has been dealing with this constant fear that comes her direction because of it. This one witch born in every generation element is such a unique history and portrayal of these witches. What inspired that? How did you come up with that?
I have felt an immense amount of isolation and loneliness in my life, and that feeling of not feeling worthy or accepted by those around me, even within my own family growing up, created this idea that Lailah is not only the only witch of this century, but she’s completely and utterly alone.
And because I know what that feels like, I didn’t create Lailah’s history or lore just for the sake of world-building. I made her the only witch of her generation because she’s literally, physically and emotionally alone. So there was no other being in her world who was like her, and so she will never truly be understood.
I think that what’s beautiful about her story, and what I hope readers will take away from it, is that this world will try to place you in categories or draw lines around you in a way that they can understand you. And when you refuse to stay within those lines, people don’t really know what to do with you, so they become confused, or maybe they seem fearful.
But that’s what makes you unique, and that’s what makes you magnetic and authentic. And for Lailah, people view her as a monster for very different reasons. And, as you know in the book, she did massacre a whole kingdom as a baby. No one knows that about her, but people still view her as a monster, even though they don’t know that information about her. And so I wrote it, even though it was perfect for the kingdom and the magic and the history.
And that’s fun for the fantasy world that I created. But it’s metaphoric in the sense that I know what it feels like to be misunderstood and to be alone and isolated. And this was the best way to depict that because no one truly would ever understand her in the way that she deserves to be understood. Everyone knows in some sense what that feels like to not feel understood or to feel misunderstood or not accepted.
Found family is one of my favorite tropes in any book, but especially in fantasies. What drew you to this dynamic for these characters? Was it a conscious decision? Or was it like Callum, where they kind of just grew together in that way?
No, actually, that was very purposeful. Just in general, I feel like found family or family of choice, that’s another way that I say it, has always been deeply important to me since I was a kid, even though I didn’t grow up technically embedded with that belief. But through trauma and the abuse I experienced as a kid, I learned that family of choice can be so much more profound than family by blood. You know, Lailah does still have a stepmother and a stepbrother, and while they weren’t technically related by blood, they were still considered her family from the time that she was an infant. With that, she didn’t really get to choose her family. She was born into a dynamic that withheld love, had pain, and had limitations that came with it.
I wanted to give her a chance to experience the opposite, to know what it meant to actually build a family of people who actually saw her and understood her and loved her without obligation. That’s why I love Callum so freaking much, I can’t get over him. At that fire pit with Lailah, he talked about what the difference is between love and obligation. The world often tells us, because they’re family, you have to accept the pain, or because they’re family, you have to accept neglect or abuse. But I don’t believe love should be out of obligation.
I think family choice is about finding people out of the millions in this world who truly just see you and choosing them because you want to. And for me, that is the purest expression of love. It was essential to reflect that in Lailah’s relationships because you can choose. Anyone in this world can choose to be loved and be seen, and it doesn’t have to stem from your family that you grew up in. It could be through a found family. So for me, I have plenty of people in my life who I would call family of choice, and they see me more deeply than my own family. That feeling of being accepted and wanted is so profound.
Your writing style is really unique in almost a lyrical way. You have a lot of emotion and drama, not just in the plot, but in your actual writing style, in the words that you use, in the way your sentence structure is organized. It speaks to a deep connection with your characters and their emotions. How did you develop this style? Is it something that just came to you naturally?
Actually, you’re not the first person to say that. A lot of readers have said just how lyrical and poetic it is. I think that that’s such a beautiful compliment because it is the way I write. It’s funny that you say that because a few years back, you know how I told you that this book was actually supposed to be nonfiction. Four or five years ago, the first manuscript of this book was actually written in a journal-slash-diary, poetic approach.
So it was through a poetic lens. I was even coming close to publishing it from a UK publisher, and I was really excited, but I realized, as I said before, it wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t the right moment.
It was too much information, too many specific details about the trauma that I wasn’t ready to share with the world. So that’s why I created it into a fantasy world. But I’ve always gravitated towards writing lyrically, because I think that there’s something powerful about creating the opportunity to visualize the feeling rather than just naming it.
When you can immerse a reader in the color or the texture or the rhythm of an emotion, it becomes way more than black or white, and it turns into something layered and alive. I think that the same thing applies to scenes.
I don’t just want to tell you that the ceiling is gold, right? I want you to feel the weight of the room, the way the light moves, the quiet attention it creates. To me, that’s where the magic happens, not in just stating facts, but in making every detail breathe. That’s just how I visualize the world. It’s very alive in my head. And, I’m very redundant. So my em dash is my favorite best friend in the entire world.
Oh, I can tell. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with more em dashes in it in my whole life.
You have no idea. My redundancy and repetitiveness and my run-on sentences all got taken back because I love my em dash. I’m able to give more detail and give more opportunity to explain how I visualize the world and to immerse you in it without, obviously, having grammatical errors. But, yeah, my editor loves it. I feel so bad for her. She’s had to reel me in with redundancy. You have no idea how many times she’s been like, you have said the same thing five times, just five different ways. And I’m like, awesome. Sounds great.
For the first couple of chapters, it was a little bit of an adjustment because there were so many em dashes. And then you sink into the rhythm of it.
It’s a problem. I really mean it. It was a short story long. I’ll just go on into the detail. I’m so thankful for my editor, or I would be blown to pieces by, I think, my readers. I just visualize things very clearly in my mind that I want you guys to be immersed in it the way I am.
Tower of Ash and Darkness is the first in a trilogy, the next of which will be released in December.
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