Barbara Truelove is an Australian author and game designer who writes about werewolves, monsters, space, and sometimes other things. Her interactive novel, Blood Moon, was released in 2023. When she’s not writing, she’s adding to her motley collection of rocks. Her latest novel is Of Monsters and Mainframes and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Of Monsters and Mainframes?
I have a quick, quippy answer for this question, one I practiced before publication date, just in case anyone asked. That is: "I tandem read Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries, and that did things to my brain chemistry that cannot be undone."
And while that’s true, it’s not the whole truth. The truth is, my inspiration for Of Monsters and Mainframes is messy. Dracula is part of the mix, yes, and so is Murderbot, but so is the Universal Monsters, the autopilot in an Airbus, R2D2, my experience coding interactive games, and (perhaps most of all) my life in 2022.
I didn’t have a permeant address when I wrote Of Monsters and Mainframes. For most of that time, I was living and working in hostels, constantly meeting new people and putting out different fires. Back then, Of Monsters and Mainframes was my zany little side project. A fun and silly thing I did between folding towels, booking room reservations, and tutoring children (you do what you gotta do when there’s bills to pay).
When I reread it now, I think of my life at that time, the chaos, the adventure, the fun, but also the lack of permanency, the longing for connection.
So, short answer: Dracula and Murderbot.
Long answer: Dracula, Murderbot, and everything else.
Are Demeter, Steward, Agnus, Isaac, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals?
Yeah. Me.
All of my characters have some piece of myself in them. Demeter’s awkwardness, Steward’s blustering overconfidence, Agnus’ tendency towards impulsive and sometimes questionable life choices—all of these things come from me.
When I write, I tend to bleed onto the page (my thoughts, my feelings, the way I see the world). Even when I’m writing characters I dislike, I’ll always try to understand them, to zero in on why they’re doing what they’re doing. In that way, they are a reflection of me, too, even if it’s just a reflection of the bounds and limits of my imagination.
If I can’t imagine why a character would behave in the way they’re behaving, I can’t write that character.
So, yeah. They’re all some version of me.
How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
The opposite, actually. The draft of Of Monsters and Mainframes that I submitted to my agent was roughly 15,000 words shorter than the version that hit the printers. The editing process for this book was all about adding scenes, fleshing out characters, and giving certain bits of the narrative a little bit more space to breathe. Not much was left on the cutting room floor.
In fact, there’s only one little snippet that I wish was in the final draft, but isn’t. It’s a very short, very silly exchange between Demeter and Steward where they argue about (of all things) a long-dead historical figure. It’s goofy, it’s weird, it’s exactly their brand of dysfunctional, and if there’s ever a sequel, it’s the first thing I’m putting in.
The novel is divided into five parts. Each part has a title, followed by a string of binary code. Is that a coded message of some sort? Something else? What was your inspiration for this? Any suggestions/recommendations for decoding if it is a message?
It’s binary, and I added it just for fun. Each piece translates into quote or phrase that is relevant to that part of the story. For example, the first one translates to ‘artificial is the best kind of intelligent’, which is exactly the cocky attitude Demeter has at the start of the story before everything goes wrong.
The easiest way to translate it is to copy and paste it into a free online translator. Or, you could nip on over to Reddit. I’m pretty sure they cracked the code on publication day, which makes me so happy. I love that people are so keen to engage with my story.
I know it’s a little odd slipping secret messages into books, but I’ve always liked codes and secret messages. I read We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer earlier this year and had so much fun trying (and often failing) to find and solve all the puzzles.
Those pages are also just a piece of interactivity, which I like as well because of my history as an interactive fiction author.
Demeter has encounters with several classic monsters (Dracula, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster, a mummy). Was it fun to take such well-known characters and play with their "rule books" to make them your own for Of Monsters and Mainframes? Was it intimidating? A bit of both?
It was fun. A lot of fun. It was a game.
The rules were: put a monster onboard, try to slip in as many jokes or references to that monster as possible, think about ways in which these classic monsters would work (or not work) in space, and have the computers solve the problem without breaking the laws of physics (anyone on team monster was allowed to use magic, but anyone on team mainframe had to follow the rules set down by Einstein).
It was like a thought experiment. I’d sit on the bus and try to puzzle out these problems. There’s a werewolf onboard! What stops a werewolf? Werewolves are allergic to silver. How would a spaceship get silver? Next thing I know, I’m on NASA.gov learning about silver electrolysis and ways of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. Perhaps that doesn’t sound fun to some people. But, for me, it was a lot of fun.
I didn’t worry as much about sticking to the rules when it came to the monsters. I read the source material, took what worked, and left behind what didn’t. It was the science that I really wanted to get right.
Do you have a favorite classic monster or cryptid story (novels, films, or television)? A least favorite? One that is so bad it is fun?
I have an inexplicable fondness for werewolves. Anything ‘werewolf’ I will give a try… and there is some very bad werewolf media out there. But, hey, no matter how bad it is, at least it’s got werewolves.
Your biography says that you published your interactive novel, Blood Moon, in 2023. Can you tell us a bit about it? What is an "interactive novel"?
I love talking about this.
Do you remember those old Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure books? The zombie attacks! To run away, turn to page 18. To fight back, turn to page 34. That’s an interactive novel. The only difference between those books and interactive fiction today is the technology. Nowadays, interactive novels are games and apps.
I published my interactive novel, Blood Moon with a company called Choice of Games. Choice of Games (CoG) publishes a ton of these books every year, and you can read them on your phone like an ebook. They come in all different genres and stylistically can be very different. The one thing that unites them is the interactivity. The reader makes choices that will alter the outcome of the story.
I owe a lot to interactive fiction and the interactive fiction community. Back in 2020, I was really insecure about my writing. I still wrote, because that was how I processed the world around me, but I very rarely shared my writing with others, and never spoke to people in my real life about it. Then in 2020, I started writing Blood Moon, releasing it chapter by chapter online for free. I finished it in 2022 (I was working on both it and Of Monsters and Mainframes at the same time for a while), and it was published in 2023.
It was a transformative experience (and I’m not just saying that because it’s a story about werewolves). Being able to write something, to express myself, and connect with other people online (who not only liked my work but loved it) really helped me overcome my insecurity. I don’t think Of Monsters and Mainframes would exist if I hadn’t found interactive fiction.
Your biography also says that you have a "motley collection of rocks." Are you a rockhound or a more casual collector? Can you tell us a bit about your collection?
It’s genetic. My mum collects rocks, and I do too, though my collection isn’t half as impressive as hers. Mostly, I just pick up stones in places that are special to me. I have a small piece of quartz from the farm I grew up on, sea glass from a beach near where I lived in Sydney, a tiny lump of concrete a small child gave me in Seoul (I was a teacher there for a while), a pebble from Lake Wānaka in Aotearoa, and a red rock from the side of a lagoon in the Northern Territory, which I took just because I wanted to remember how red the dirt gets in certain parts of Australia.
Financial value is zero, but sentimental value is high.
The ending of Of Monsters and Mainframes seems open to joining Demeter, Steward, and the crew on another adventure. Do you currently have any plans to take readers on another voyage with them?
No, but I wanted to leave that door open, just in case. Also, Demeter is a spaceship. She’s never going to be happy staying still. Setting out on another mission with her favorite people on board is the happiest ending I could imagine for her. After everything she’s been through, I think she deserves it
If Of Monsters and Mainframes were to be adapted into a film or series, who would your dream cast be (including preferred voice actors for Demeter and Steward)?
The voice actors who did the audiobook did such an amazing job that they snatched an AudioFile Earphones Award. If this whacky, wee story of mine were being adapted for the screen, I’d want Charlie Albers and Eve Passeltiner to reprise their roles as Demeter and Steward. It’d be amazing to hear them sass back and forth without chapter breaks in between.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
I’ve just started reading Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. No spoilers!
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
No, I cannot. I can’t possibly pick only five. And, even if I were, the five I pick today might not be the five I’d pick tomorrow.
I read a lot of horror and my current favourites are Stephen Graham Jones, Rachel Harrison, Tananarive Due, Nat Cassidy, and Grady Hendrix. For science fiction I’m obviously a massive fan of Martha Wells, Becky Chambers, and Tamsyn Muir, but I also really love the recent work of John Scalzi and Andy Weir. For nonfiction I reach for Stan Grant, John Green, Kate Moore, and Amanda Montell, though Omar El Akkad stilled me this year. I think R.F. Kuang is a genius, that T. Kingfisher deserves every bit of praise she gets, and that no one does dark fantasy like Joe Abercrombie. And all of this isn’t getting into classic authors, or childhood favourites, or my cohort of Bindery authors (Samantha Bansil, Maren Chase, and Denise S. Robbins) who all did such an amazing job on their debuts.
So, you see why I struggle with this question. Five is a very short list.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (which is now four books, and thus no longer a trilogy, but it was a trilogy when I was its #1 fan, and so I’m still gonna use the word trilogy).
It’s about a sassy djinni and a sour-faced wizard boy. They’re not heroes. Not really. Actually, sometimes, they’re the bad guys of their own story, but that’s okay. Eleven-year-old me was obsessed with this disastrous duo, and thirty-one-year-old me still has a soft spot for lippy, smart-arsed characters who aren’t all the way good, but aren’t all the way bad either.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
There is a moderate to high probability that my mum will read this. For my own protection, no comment.
Is there a book you've faked reading?
While I suspect the odds of my high school English teacher reading this aren’t astronomically high, they aren’t zero. Again, for my own protection, no comment.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
No, I can’t. I can name books that I’ve avoided buying for the covers, but that might get me into trouble. For the third time, no comment.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Can I say Of Monsters and Mainframes? That seems like a cheeky answer, trying to slip in another quick promo for my own book, but it’s honestly true.
Of Monsters and Mainframes is not the first thing I ever wrote. Heck, I have a dozen dead manuscripts lying in my wake. My journey as a writer has been slow and steady and filled with as many setbacks as it has successes. But, honestly, that’s fine. In fact, it’s great. There’s something genuinely beautiful about the piebaldness (that’s a word, right?) of it all.
Of Monsters and Mainframes feels like the beginning of a new era for me, but also the culmination of everything that has come before. From my awkward nine-year-old self scribbling down long, rambling epics about girls who take over the world, to the escapist fanfiction I wrote during university, to that terrifying moment in 2020 when I posed the first couple of chapters of an interactive novel online.
Now, I’ve written and published a book I’m really proud of, something that feels very deeply me, and what’s even more incredible, it’s finding its way into the hands of people who love it. I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful and humbling this experience has been. Life changing? You betcha.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
The Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers. I read them all comically out of order, and while that turned out okay, Wayfarers it is the sort of series you can read in any order. I really wish that I’d experienced them for the first time the way they were meant to be experienced. If a brainwipe were imminent, I’d line those books up (in the correct order!) on my nightstand.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, TV, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
I watched James Gunn’s Superman a couple of days ago and I thought it was so fun, and so sweet, and so silly (and so punkrock). Superman was my favorite superhero as a kid, and I have a lot of nostalgia for the character. It was deeply comforting to see him smiling, helping people, and being a loveable dork on the big screen again.
That might not be a major impact. Being comforted won’t alter the course of my life. But sometimes those sorts of stories are exactly the sort you need.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
I’d like to wake up feeling well-rested, have a nice coffee, play with a dog, hang out with my friends, splash around on a beach, and find a good spot high in a tree to read a book. Then I’d like to get superpowers.
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been?
Would you like a bajillion dollars, no strings attached?
What is your answer?
Yes.
What are you working on now?
That’s a secret. Information request denied. My lips are sealed. No, that’s not a wink, just an unfortunate twitch.
