Lorraine Wilson's New Novel Announced – The Way The Light Bends

Lorraine Wilson will be releasing her second novel with Luna Press Publishing. After the incredible success of This Is Our Undoing, Lorraine is ready to take us back into the world of dark fantasy and folklore, this time set in Scotland, with The Way The Light Bends. Lorraine’s skills as word-weaver are captivating, bringing life to characters and locations alike. If you haven’t yet discover her work, take a look at This Is Our Undoing, her debut novel, and read some of the many reviews on the publisher’s store page. And now, let’s find out more about her new novel. Lorraine on The Way The Light Bends This book has been with me a while. I wrote it, edited it, lost then rediscovered my faith in it, revised it, and now, finally, it gets to fly free. It is a very different beast to my debut – where This Is Our Undoing came from a sort of existential anger, this one comes from the memory of loss, or more specifically, of becoming lost. Grief is an odd sort of thing, it’s a universal emotion, just as much as love or hate, and yet our language is so poorly equipped to express it. We ourselves as a society are so poorly equipped to express it that it can create its own fractures between us; it can isolate people like nothing else quite does. I have always thought that many folktales stem from loss, from attempting to explain random disasters to justifying infanticide during famine. Nature is cruel, death is cruel … and thus so is the folklore around both. There’s one particular bit of Celtic mythology that I always thought especially sad (you’ll have to read the book to find out which one!), full of lost children, desperate adults and a pervading sense of families broken apart by tragedy. When I started to think about a story exploring how grief can feel like a haar – a sea fog – that you cannot get out of, and of sisters who have lost one another but are both trying to find a way back, it was this myth that instantly came to mind. And so this book became filled with Scotland, its mythology and haars, and its persistent echoes between nature and the human heart. It wasn’t an easy book to write. Like I’ve said, grief is not something we speak about comfortably so to write about it is equally hard. But this book isn’t just about grief, it’s about love too, and how infinite and multi-faceted love can be. It’s about how sometimes we are too lost to see love, but how that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and that it isn’t holding us like an anchor or a kite-string or a compass. The sisters in this book are both, in very different ways, lost; The Way The Light Bends is about how they find their way home. Lorraine lives by the sea in Scotland, writing speculative fiction set in the wilderness and heavily influenced by folklore. She is fascinated by the way both mythology and our relationship with the natural world act as mirrors of ourselves and lenses for how we view others, and with a heritage best described as a product of the British Empire, she is drawn to themes of family, trauma, and belonging. After gaining a PhD in behavioural ecology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland she spent several years as a conservation researcher in odd corners of the world before turning to writing. She has been stalked by wolves, caught the bubonic plague, and once had a tree frog called ‘Algernon’ who lived in her sink. Her first novel, This Is Our Undoing, was published by Luna Press in August 2021. She has short fiction and creative non-fiction in magazines and anthologies including Strange Horizons, Boudicca Press, Ellipsis Zine, The Forge, The Mechanics’ Institute Review and Retreat West, amongst others. She also runs creative writing workshops and mentoring for under-represented writers. This Is Our Undoing by Lorraine Wilson. Cover art by Daniele Serra. Praise for This Is Our Undoing: ‘Beautifully written’ Will Dean ‘Cinematic descriptions are intricately woven with engaging characters, intense narrative, and delicate relationships binding the past and the present. The narrative explores identity, loss, family, acceptance, and the secrets that hold families together often in spite of the forces determined to break them apart. Then there are the ghosts, monsters, gods, and heroes. An incredible story about the costs of accepting everyday violence, losses of privacy, intrusions on wildlife, human trafficking, the legacy of harm, loss, and trauma. It’s also a story about family, healing, forgiveness, and possibilities. It’s a touching experience that just might indeed be our undoing.’ Yvonne Battle-Felton ‘Wilson concentrates on the emotional journey of her main characters, while orchestrating the weather to provide a suitably cinematic accompanying score. The end result is a well-worked and well-written novel with a protagonist who consistently engages the sympathy of the reader.’ ParSec Issue 1 ‘Brilliant in concept and haunting in execution, This is Our Undoing is a fantastic first outing from an author whose work I, for one, cannot wait to see more of.’ Jennifer deBie ‘Take a near future with fascist states and extreme weather events. Take a woman in an Eastern European forest, hiding from her past. Add a sprinkling of unexplained events. Then you’ll have an incredibly engrossing novel.’ The Middle Shelf ‘Reading This Is Our Undoing was a delicious reading experience. A world that pulls the reader in, characters you constantly fear for and a sense that anything can happen all made this a story I could not wait to return to repeatedly over the weekend that I was reading it. Haunting, beautiful, thoughtful, and surprising story that fans of speculative fiction need to get a hold of and gives us an author I think we should definitely be paying attention to in the future. One of the best debuts of the year!’ Runalong the Shelves