cmrosensAuthor Spotlight: Alexandra Beaumont
Alexandra Beaumont (she/her) is a fantasy novelist with a passion for folklore, playing musical instruments and exploring the wilds of the UK. Her latest release, Dissonance of Bird Song, is praised for being a “visceral and lyrical” page turner with “praiseworthy worldbuilding” and was recently named Distinguished Favourite in the Independent Press Awards.
Specialising in gothic and folkloric literature, Alexandra’s lyrical books weave together myth, magic and intrigue.
Author Links:
Find her on Instagram: @ABeaumontWriter
Linktree with buy links: linktr.ee/AlexandraBeaumontAuthor
Website: alexandrabeaumontauthor.com
Your novel Ballad River Bones is the concluding part of your duology that begins with Dissonance of Bird Song – can you tell readers more about your influences for this duology, and how it came to be 2 books rather than a series or a standalone, or a trilogy?
I grew up with Cornish folklore: stories of mist and moors. I wanted to write a fantasy book that brought together these elements with another passion of mine: folk music.
The story follows two sisters on either side of the divide of the myst shifting across the earth, and so it made sense for the story to split into two books to tell both their stories through their own eyes.
What particularly draws you to folklore fantasy, and how would you describe it to readers who have maybe never heard of this subgenre before?
Folklore tells the tales veiled in magic, sometimes to explain away strange things or to put mysterious stories to safety morals like not going into the forest. I find that endlessly fascinating as there are so many stories that have grown and changed over the years to make sense of weird phenomena.
This also blends perfectly with the landscape of the gothic, which I specialised in, and this also draws on the mystery and landscape that folklore fantasy does. I am also a LARPer and LARP often draws a lot on folklore and also blends folk music, so it feels like a perfect match in a lot of ways.
What drew you to ancient Cornwall as your setting, and can you tell us more about the way you use the landscape and mythic history of the region in your writing?
My mum grew up in Cornwall and told me stories of the land, and so in these stories and the land that brings them to life I tell the stories she inspired me to love.
The world of folklore and folk horror relies on landscape, and Cornwall brings this to life in a very special way with its rough cliffs and so it felt like a perfect setting for my tale of myst, magic and bird song.
What folklore can readers expect to find in Ballad River Bones – or indeed, are there any folk ballad influences? How did you incorporate that folklore into your worldbuilding, can you tell us about that part of your writing process?
There’s a range of folk ballads that influenced both Dissonance of Bird Song and Ballad of River Bones, and probably the best way to experience this is by listening to Storm Tongue – the album I put together to show the music that I wove into my books.
ListenIt captures the strange mysteries of Cornwall and the raw power of nature magic in Cornish tales.
The themes of “love, loss, and sacrifice” are very prevalent in the medieval romances and tales like Tristan and Isolde (set in Cornwall, of course) – why were these themes important to you, and why did you choose the characters to be sisters, and use the ties of family and sisterly relationships to explore these themes?
Tristan and Isolde is a great inspiration of mine, but I wanted to tell the story of two sisters who were so close and then torn apart by circumstance as the two siblings run out of sacred Myst and are named outsiders by their people.
Despite all that they still fight to protect the other, and make life-altering choices to do so.
There’s so much wonderful conflict and magical intrigue to play with when you introduce a bit of folklore into the mix and throw love into the recipe too.
I wanted to discuss themes of humanity and how much of it someone will give up to save someone they love, and this provided the perfect setting for that – not unlike Tristan and Isolde.
How did you develop the characters of the sisters, and what is your character development process like? Can you share any tips on character building?
I had a wonderfully fun time running creative writing workshops at a school in Cornwall where we talked about how to build characters and write stories based on folklore.
My tip is always to take a trait you can relate to as your character’s motivation and then throw in a piece of conflict that challenges that view, and test it to its limit.
I use the same approach for writing characters for LARP, and it leads to wonderful and magical dilemmas.
What other work do you have available for readers to pick up after Ballad and do you have anything in the pipeline for readers to look out for?
My debut, Testament of the Stars, is a Tudor inspired fantasy based on the astrological beliefs of Dr John Dee. It takes these ideas and turns into a fantasy religion where people are fighting over who gets to drink the blood of the stars and steal their memories.
I also have a few short stories published, which you can find on my website.
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