An Interview with L.L. Madrid
As a child, L.L. Madrid wasn’t allowed to watch R-rated movies. However, her library visits were unsupervised, so she spent her summers reading Anne Rice and Stephen King.
Nowadays, she lives in Tucson with her family. When she’s not pretending to be a mild-mannered office worker, she writes dark, moody stories about misfits.
L.L. is the 2021 recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship. She is a proud member of the Bi+ Book Gang, a Pitch Wars alum, and an Odyssey grad. Her short stories are scattered across the internet. My Lips, Her Voice is her debut novel.
What inspired you to start writing this book?
When I write, I often start with a location. My Lips, Her Voice stemmed from visiting three darkly quirky towns in Arizona. One of my favorite weekend adventures is stopping in Tombstone for lunch at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon and maybe watching Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clayton gang have a shoot-out in the O.K. Corral. The first snippet of an idea for MLHV came with seeing a young woman in period costume leading a tour group through Tombstone.
While I love Tombstone, I tend to think of it more as a pit stop on the way to the old copper boom town of Bisbee where I like to spend the night at the supposedly haunted Copper Queen Hotel. On this particular trip, I started blending the two towns in my mind. A couple of months later, I visited Jerome, a mountainside hub in Northern Arizona nicknamed ‘the wickedest town in the west.’ The town is gorgeous and oozes spooky – even the sidewalks are said to contain human bones from the days when the deceased were cremated in the blast furnace and their ashes mixed into cement. In Jerome, I went on a ghost tour, and that night, I was inspired to combine the three towns to create Copper City.
Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?
Multiple rewrites of the entire book were less daunting than finding a title! The original title was Copper City Wishbones, which didn’t reflect much of the book other than the name of the town. It was always just a placeholder. When it was time to go on submission, I wrote out dozens of potential titles and pulled lines from the book, and it felt like every time I’d find something I liked, there was already a book with that title. When I finally came up with My Lips, Her Voice, it was like the world stilled. It works perfectly for a possession story with themes of bodily autonomy, consent, and challenging power structures.
Describe your dream book cover.
The cover for My Lips, Her Voice IS my dream book cover! It’s surreal, striking, and catches your eye and keeps it. Luisa Dias is the designer, and I’m so in love with her work. She captured so many elements of the story. Like my book, the cover is a little bit creepy, unsettling, yet lush and inviting. The way the torn images go together hints at the braided timelines and the multiple points of view. The color choices are perfect for the high desert setting. I’m so obsessed with my cover that I even had earrings made of it!
If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?
I created a playlist for my book while I was writing it to get in the mood – you can look it up on Spotify under My Lips, Her Voice. It kicks off with Alanis Morissette’s Uninvited and has songs from Zoe Keating, Mazzy Star, PJ Harvey, Nouvelle Vague, Halsey, Electric Youth, and CCR. It’s a feminist, moody mix of songs.
What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?
I read widely across genres and am always discovering new authors to admire. Most recently, I’ve been learning a lot from reading authors like Nova Ren Suma, N.K. Jemisin, Alexis Henderson, and Alisa Alering. I love it when books somehow imprint on my brain. For instance, I read Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah a year ago, and I’m still thinking about the ending.
Where is your favorite place to write?
It may be a boring answer, but I like writing at my desk at home. It’s probably the messiest spot in my house, but it has everything I need, and other places just don’t feel right. Plus, I get up early to sneak in an hour of writing before getting ready for work, so often I’m in my pajamas while I create. Writing is almost a ritualistic activity for me. I get my coffee mug just so, put on a writing music playlist (instrumental only – lyrics are too distracting), and I light a candle when the mood strikes. I also have a collection of crystals around my desk, not for magical reasons, but because I like pretty rocks and I enjoy fidgeting with them when I’m stuck on a scene.
What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?
There’s quite a bit of darkness in My Lips, Her Voice, but it isn’t just a story about missing girls and serial killers. This is a story about characters finding themselves despite tragedy. I hope my readers are inspired to find their voices and never lower them.
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