Meet JL Peridot
Hey, I’m JL Peridot, a SFF writer living and working on Whadjuk Noongar country in Western Australia.
My latest book is Yet We Sleep, We Dream, a romantic Aussie space-fantasy retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It features friends to lovers, second chances, ancient gods, magic dust, and a semi-sentient robot.
How long have you been writing?
All my life, in some shape or form. But I only started taking it seriously in 2017 after leaving a web design career to write professionally. I thought I’d given up on fiction until that point, but one day some beast woke up inside me and got to work. I released a novella and three short stories that year. I’ve been writing and publishing ever since.
I kept this side of my life a secret for ages. There were people I wasn’t comfortable telling about this because they’d been snide or judgemental about other things in the past. But once I’d figured out what motivated me, what inspired me, what I wanted to inspire in others, and who I could count on, it finally felt safe to talk openly about my moonlight career — which has since become my day job.
What kind of research do you do for your books?
My process is different for every book, but for this one the initial research was obvious. Because it’s a re-telling, I looked into different productions of the original play. The text itself is light on stage directions and setting, which I understand is typical of Shakespeare’s scripts. It leaves plenty of room for interpretation and casting new light on the characters and story.
Quite separately, I was also learning about climate science and horticulture (one of my special interests), which gave me access to plenty of knowledge and vocabulary I could use in my writing.
If there’s one thing fiction writers, both beginner and advanced, should know is that writing gets a lot harder over time if it’s your only hobby — which can and does happen. Developing other interests is both a form of writer self-care and an excellent way to get research done while having fun in the process.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters of the opposite sex?
Trying to write an authentic, respectful, and relatable perspective when you don’t have personal experience can be very difficult unless you have easy access to research material and trustworthy sources. I’m glad you included this question because I think the difficulty applies not just to writing genders but to writing [about] other races, cultures, orientations, lived experiences, and species as well. I second-guessed myself the whole time I was writing Nick Button’s story because I have zero experience of living as or being close to a 20-year-old Aboriginal man.
It’s too easy to reduce “others” to simple ideas and characteristics. Stereotypes, if you will, and I want to believe it springs from from economy of thought (perhaps from tired human brains trying to conserve energy) rather than from a person choosing not to acknowledge another person’s humanity.
Some of the difficulty in writing “others” can be made easier by slowing down and really thinking about how another person might experience the world. Beyond this, finding honest critique partners, sensitivity readers, and beta readers can help a lot.
Do you believe in writer’s block?
Absolutely. I believe many things can bring it on and there’s no one-size-fits-all way to deal with it. Some people say to keep writing through it, but that only helps if the block is a matter of skill and practice. If the root cause is [a] lack of knowledge or hyperfocus, you can easily write yourself into a rut; getting out and finding inspiration might be a better approach.
Writing can be a painful experience. Not just emotionally painful, but mentally too, especially if you’re challenging yourself to write something hard or learning to apply your writing style to a new technique. It’s like the pain of a hard gym workout, but you feel it deep inside your head.
Sometimes writer’s block comes from avoiding pain like this, perhaps procrastination, which researchers have linked to negative health outcomes. In these situations I’ve found success in taking it slow, being kind to myself, and continuing to write just a little bit until I feel able to write a little bit more.
What advice they would give new authors?
This is a tough question because good advice is hard to come by and equally hard to give! Often, people who are good at something won’t know what’s good for you unless they know your situation. They can only tell you what worked for them, and they might not know how to frame it in a way that’s useful to anyone besides themselves. In saying that, here’s something I would like to tell my younger, less experienced, writer self:
You feel like your work needs to be perfect before it’s worthy. STOP THAT. Perfect is the enemy of good, and society has an unhealthy obsession with the exceptional. If you’re an inexperienced writer, aiming to open with a bestseller is like a couch potato aiming to win a marathon without training. Find your focus, hone your craft, and approach your goal in small and focused steps, one step at a time.
About JL Peridot
JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices from the past. She’s a qualified computer scientist, former website maker, amateur horticulturist, and sometimes illustrator. But most of the time, she’s an author of romantic science fiction. She lives with her partner and fur family in Boorloo (Perth, Australia) on Whadjuk Noongar country.
Visit her website at jlperidot.com for the full catalogue of her work.
Other ways to connect with JL: Newsletter | Bookbub | Goodreads
About the book
Yet We Sleep, We Dream by JL Peridot
Genre: Scifi Fantasy Romance, Shakespearean Retelling
Love triangles get bent out of shape when restless gods come out to play.
Relationships are complicated enough when only humans are involved — something the crew of the starship Athenia know plenty about. These children of a changing climate are no strangers to conflicts of the heart. And it seems there’s a lot of conflict going on, even out in space.
When an alien dust finds its way on board, the veil between realms begins to fray. Old gods of a long dead planet resume their own romantic bickering while ancient magic wreaks havoc across the ship. Grudges resurface, friends turn to enemies, unrequited love turns to passion — or does it? It’s kinda hard to tell with everyone at each other’s throats.
Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; but wonder on, till truth make all things plain. Yet We Sleep, We Dream is a romantic space-fantasy inspired by Shakespeare’s endearing hot mess, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.” — Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Content guidance: This book contains strong language, drug use, on-page sexual encounters, references to bullying, references to harassment and infertility, depictions of perilous situations, depictions of marital disharmony, awkward social situations, and technical language.
Contains:
*Friends to lovers
*Second chances
*Aussies in space (casual swears)
*Sex, weed & waking dreams
*Hot robot love action
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