Author Spotlight: Lem McMillan
As a kid I loved telling stories through cartoons and drawings, heavily inspired by movies Return of the Jedi, Tron, and the animated Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t until High School that I took up reading in any recreational sense. That’s when I realized that I enjoyed the telling of the tale more then the drawing of it.
I started a few projects, but didn’t have the confidence of drive to follow them to completion. For years I dabbled through short stories and running TTRPGs. I didn’t take writing seriously until 2015 when I finished my first manuscript and realized with confidence, I could finish a story. I committed to writing everyday and took a Creative Writing Course. All to improve. Now here we are, nearly 10 years later.
Taking inspiration from every thing I see and hear, I write tales that interest me, sprinkled with bits of my lived experiences and what I see in the world around me. I prefer Speculative Fiction and Paranormal stories, but I’m always trying my hand at other genres. I love writing stories about marginalized people living lives not defined by that which would make them targets in the real world, I love feedback.
Author Links:
Wattpad: LemuelMcMillan
TikTok: @author.lem.mcmillan
Instagram: @author.lem.mcmillan
Threads: @author.lem.mcmillan
You are a prolific writer with 23 works available for people to read for free at the moment, but we’re going to be talking specifically about 3 of them – Raving Moon, Demon Hunters: Last Class, and Light, Glorious Light. First of all, tell us about these stories, where to read them, and a little bit about why the Wattpad route was/is a good fit for you and your work.
Oh, I like this question a lot! Raving Moon was born of a vampire story I started when I was Freshman in High School. Inspired by The Anita Blake series by Laurel K. Hamilton, the story was all about vampires and werewolves in a darker version of our world. Even then, it was important to me that the main character be a black man. Years later, I tried to rewrite it and the idea of the black vampire in a world reluctant to accept him grew even greater as did my vision for the world.
In November of 2018, I revisited my idea and it flowed out of me as if it had always been waiting for that moment. Vampires, werewolves, magic, and social commentary smothered in a murder mystery, dear to my heart.
Demon Hunters: Last Class is a novelization by a TTRPG I created and ran for my wife and sister years ago. It was a great adventure that brought us together and meant a lot to me as a game runner and as a storyteller. This story is a love story to those women and the time we had. It follows two young ladies as they discover that the world they live in is far larger than they grew up to believe. It’s a coming of age tale that is a prelude to a grand adventure that spans time and space.
Light, Glorious Light was the capstone project for my Creative Writing Course. The story started out as just the first three chapters, but I loved the story I’d started and could not leave it as it was. Over the course of the next couple of months, I lived in the land of The Bright Waste where roving bands of bandits kill and plunder to survive and Phalanx stands as the last bastion of peace and civilization.
Somehow, this story has become my most popular. Female protagonists fighting mutants, a harsh landscape, and bandit queens. It’s quite a rife. As I said before, I love feedback and Wattpad creates a space where readers can comment on your work in-line as soon as you post.
The community is strong and for me the experience has been rewarding. Book Clubs have helped me grow as a writer and reader feedback has inspired more than a few of the other stories I’ve written.
What sort of representation can readers expect to find in these 3 stories, and can you tell us anything about the reception of these characters with readers?
My protagonists are always people of color, usually black or green! Most of my many characters are women and more than half are queer. I just find a certain kinship with characters who love who they want and stand strong and secure in their differentness. People seem to resonate with my characters and the stories they tell.
Light, Glorious Light had very few reads for a long time, but when it blew up I received so much positive feedback from women who loved my characters that I was quite surprised. I didn’t expect the same sex relationship within to received the fanfare it did.
Let’s talk about the settings of these books – Light, Glorious Light is a dystopian future, Demon Hunters: Last Class is set in a contemporary USA where angels and demons are real, and Raving Moon takes place in an alternate universe in the fictional Gorgon City. What inspired the settings for each one, and how do you go about worldbuilding?
Once the idea starts to take root, I ask myself questions that will constantly make me think of the the story’s world. What inspires this world, why is it different from this one? Why is it the same?
Light, Glorious Light was an extreme vision of a world ravaged by climate change and science unchecked. If the world burned, what would grow from the ashes.
Demon Hunters: Last Class took inspiration from post-apocalyptic games where demons and angels fight over the remnants of humanity. How would a world destined for that fate have looked before the ‘end’?
Raving Moon has lived in my head for so long, it’s become kind of a default contemporary world for me. if I have a dark fantasy idea, my first thought is how does this fit into Gorgon City? I have to say the Anita Blake series and underworld have definitely shaped this world, but so have things like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Vampire: The Masquerade. In a modern world where monsters rule, what would a day in the life for said monsters look like?
What are the central themes of each of these books, and how do the settings and worlds of each book work to bring them out and help you explore them?
Light, Glorious Light: Love in a world where weakness will get you killed.
The Bright Waste is harsh and unforgiving so I attack the love between the two MCs from every angle. Forcing them to fight for their love constantly.
Raving Moon: Faith in one’s self and fighting the ghosts of the past. The man character is a vampire who believes in the Christian God and the power of his salvation. yet this very faith is a weapon against him, harming him as well as it helps him. How do memories and family secrets affect a man who’s centuries old?
Demon Hunters- Last Class: Found family and self-discovery. The ladies in this story have lost everything and are learning about the world with fresh eyes as newborns. Both are dealing with loss and betrayal, so I constantly asked myself how would they find each other or how did they find each other. This story was unique in it was based on characters played by people and so I had to reconcile my questions with how the characters behaved in the game they came from. This one was surprisingly difficult.
Do you find yourself revisiting the same/similar themes in your work, and if so, which ones?
A recurring theme in all of my work is faith and what does it look like to different people. There are always themes of acceptance, from self and from society. Learning to love one’s self is also a prominent element. The settings directly shape how these themes are approached. Whether in a desert wasteland or a school for misfits or a city ruled by vampire, the way the characters seek acceptance from themselves is very different and part of the protagonists’ tale is finding it in their own way.
What are you most looking forward to writing in the future, and are you/do you think you would consider other publishing routes?
Light, Glorious Light has a ‘Sidequel’, Roar, Lioness, Roar, which follows the antagonist of the first book. I loved writing it so much that I’ve been toying with the idea of writing another ‘Sidequel’ following the villain introduced in the second book.
Raving Moon and Demon Hunters: First Class were both always intended to be the first books in their own series. I look forward to returning to those worlds one day. I have the outlines finished or near completion and it’s just a matter of finding the inspiration and time. It truly feels like I have dozens of stories in my head and no time to write them down.
I want to pursue self-publishing, but I have to admit, I don’t know what needs to be done. People have pointed me towards videos and articles, but they confuse me more than help me. I’ll get it eventually, but I do sometimes become disheartened. Lol. The traditional publishing route is also an option, but I don’t write to market and it feels like that’s all the big publisher’s want. Wattpad gives me platform to post what I want, but what I really want is to hold my books in physical form.
Read Lem’s books for free online while you can!https://www.wattpad.com/user/LemuelMcMillan
Like This? Try These!
#blackAuthor #fantasy #fantasyBooks #freeFiction #indieAuthor #paranormalBooks #serialFiction
