Long Story Short Ep-23: Taming the Dragon, with Shen Tao

About this episode

Shen Tao discusses her debut novel, The Poet Empress, exploring themes of bravery, love, and the challenges of writing.

Shen Tao joins Robin and David to discuss her debut, The Poet Empress, which released a day or so after us recording. A captivating and challenging story that does not shy away from difficult choices, inhabited by darkness, but shining brightly with bravery and love. We discuss Shen’s remarkable novel, matters of author self-care, character empathy, the experience of writing, and mice bombing asteroids. https://britishfantasysociety.org/blog/bfs-podcast-long-story-short/ Are you a member of the British Fantasy Society yet? Join us here: https://britishfantasysociety.org/about-the-bfs/become-a-member/ Find out more about Shen here: https://www.shentao.ca Visit David’s: https://www.davidgreenwriter.com/ And Robin’s website: https://robincmduncan.com/ Time stamps (01:00) The Poet Empress and Shen as an author (03:28) a precis of the story and the writing of it (06:00) not for the faint of heart, how Shen looked after herself (10:27) the evolution of style, considering the follow-up (14:40) empathising with your character, escaping negative head-space, a tapestry of light and dark (19:40) shifting POV, ‘time travel’, THE QUESTION, from 90K words to 130K, emergent themes (24:03)…

People in this episode

Hosts: Robin, David

Guest: Shen Tao

Topics covered

• The Poet Empress
• author self-care
• character empathy
• writing experience
• debut authors
• feminist stories

Keywords

• darkness
• bravery
• love
• writing style
• character development

Mentioned in this episode

Products: The Poet Empress, Scratch Moss

Books & works: Long Story Short Ep-23, Taming the Dragon, The Poet Empress, Scratch Moss

Places: Glasgow

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