Travis interviews fantasy author Lindsay Smith about her latest project, Marvel’s Black Widow: Bad Blood series from Serial Box. Lindsay Smith is the co-lead of a team of writers bringing the Russian super-spy into a serialized story that releases new episodes each week.
Travis and Lindsay talk about how her experience as a Russian cybersecurity analyst applies to her writing, the joys of working with a collaborative writers room, and how iconic superheroes have evolved over time with the changing political landscape.
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About Lindsay Smith
Lindsay Smith is the author of the YA espionage thrillers Sekret, Skandal, and Dreamstrider, all from Macmillan Children’s. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and dog, where she writes on international issues in cybersecurity.
Black Widow: Bad Blood
Someone has stolen the Black Widow’s blood. As Natasha Romanoff follows the trail across the globe, she discovers she wasn’t the only target. Whoever is responsible stole Bucky Barnes’ blood, too. And one thing is certain: anyone who wants the blood of the Widow and the Winter Soldier needs to be taken down, and fast.
Despite a tangled web of shared history stretching back to their Red Room days, Barnes and Romanoff must join forces, confronting the demons of their past as they race to protect their future. A single drop of blood could be all it takes to save the world—or destroy it.
Written by Lindsay Smith, Margaret Dunlap, Mikki Kendall, L.L. McKinney, and Taylor Stevens. Edited by Taylor Stevens. Art by Jamie McKelvie. Narrated by Sarah Natochenny.
Transcript
[intro music fades in]Travis Tippens: With the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you don’t have to be a die-hard comics fan to recognize the name Black Widow. Now, the super spy is making her way from comic books and the big screen into a new format.
Welcome to the Fantasy Inn, where we share our love for all things fantasy and discuss the broader speculative fiction industry. I’m your host, Travis Tippens.
This week’s interview is with fantasy author Lindsay Smith. She’s currently one of the lead writers for the new serialized Marvel story, Black Widow: Bad Blood, produced by Serial Box. Lindsay and I discussed her fascination with Russia, the joys of collaborative writing, and how changing times can affect iconic superheroes.
Let’s jump right in and see what she had to say.
[intro music fades out]Travis Tippens: Lindsay Smith, welcome to the Fantasy Inn. It’s great to have you here today.
Lindsay Smith: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Travis Tippens: Yeah, of course. I know everyone’s schedule is a little crazy right now. So I’m glad you’re able to take the time.
Lindsay Smith: Yeah, no, I’m looking forward to it. Thanks.
Travis Tippens: So I guess first question I kind of like to ask everyone is: How did you first fall in love with the fantasy genre and what set you on the path to becoming a writer?
Lindsay Smith: I think the first true kind of fantasy book that I read, I came across Slaughterhouse Five on my parents shelf when I was like, way too young. I want to say I was maybe like nine or ten. But I just loved how much it played around with different genres. There was definitely fantasy and sci fi, but also historical, and like a family drama and all these wonderful mixes of things. And it just kind of really opened my mind to how fantastical literature can be and inspired me in that way.
Travis Tippens: Yeah, that’s definitely a hell of a first book to get started on the genre.
Lindsay Smith: Yeah, and I was already in love with writing, you know, big fan of all kinds of storytelling at that. I think I had my first big Star Wars obsession when I was six or seven, went through that fandom multiple times in my life, but just always said being in love with storytelling and the potential there.
Travis Tippens: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess, looking into sort of your back catalogue of books, you have kind of a history with several Russian and not-Russia inspired fantasy series. So I guess, what sparked this fascination with Russian history and culture?
Lindsay Smith: Yeah, so I kind of grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. So the first kind of big, current events thing that I remember was the fall of the Berlin Wall. So it was always kind of curious to see, to be growing up around that transition period from the Cold War into post Soviet Russia and learning about it that way, as kind of this almost forbidden society that suddenly was opened up to us.
So that always kind of fascinated me as a child, and I ended up having the good fortune to be able to study Russian at school. Basically from middle school, onward into university, I just really fell in love with the language and the culture and the literature and music, the history, everything about it just really spoke to me as being familiar and yet not and just the rich culture and history that I enjoyed learning about.
Travis: And have you actually been able to make it over to Russia at all?
Lindsay: I have. I went twice, or I went three times during school, and each time was completely different. It was wild. I went twice during during Yeltsin’s administration and once during Putin.
It’s been a while but every time it was just such a strange thing to see what had changed and what happened over the period of time. And it’s there’s so much richness there. I would love to be able to go back again someday soon.
Travis: Yeah, absolutely. It seems like an interesting place to say the least. I’ve never had the pleasure.
Lindsay: Yeah. Both Moscow and St. Petersburg have very different personalities that I love. And I try to remember that when I’m writing both things set in our world and also fantastical stories, just the way that even the slightest geographical shift or historical change can affect the way cities grow up or how their character feels.
Travis: Right. And I imagine, even if you’re not writing something directly inspired on a certain setting, being able to kind of see the location for yourself and be immersed in it definitely carries into the writing.
Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely.
Travis: Well, speaking of the writing, your most recent project is Black Widow: Bad Blood from Serial Box. So what can you tell us about it?
Lindsay: Yeah, so Black Widow: Bad Blood is a serial. Are you familiar with the Serial Box format?
Travis: I am, but feel free to explain a little bit in case our listeners aren’t.
Lindsay: All right. Yeah, so Serial Box. Their goal is to produce episodic fiction and audiobooks at the same time. It’s the same text but you can get it in digital ebook format and audiobook simultaneously. They want it to almost feel that wonderful episodic quality like a television series, or podcasts that you would tune into.
So I’ve been with the company since pretty much the beginning. I was a co-creator and showrunner on one of their first serials, The Witch Who Came in from the Cold. And The Witch Who Came in from the Cold is a Cold War Soviet spy thriller that also has a bunch of fantastical elements as the name might suggest–
Travis: I’m sensing a bit of a theme here.
Lindsay: Yes. Getting to kind of really build with them what their format was going to look like and how we like to do the writing room process and so on was really cool. But yeah, so I’ve been with Serial Box, working on various projects with with them since then. I recently was on their Orphan Black: The Next Chapter series as well.
Obviously, when they got the opportunity to work with Marvel–especially on Black Widow–I was ecstatic, because I’ve been such a big fan of Black Widow in particular, for obvious reasons. And then the whole Cold War and espionage genre as a whole really spoke to me. So being able to work on this project has just been a dream.
But yeah, Marvel’s Black Widow: Bad Blood is an episodic series that follows Natasha as she is unraveling a new conspiracy that is actually affecting her personally, too. So, being able to write on that and really get to show a side of Natasha that hasn’t been seen before that you don’t really see when you’re watching a movie or looking at a comic book, how much we get to go inside her head and see the way that she’s kind of reacting to situations and how she’s calculating her approach.
Being able to kind of dive into her voice that way has been a wonderful experience and exploring what it means to be in the head of the Black Widow.
Travis: Yeah, I know, from the few chapters that I’ve been able to read so far… As a casual Marvel fan myself, my main experience with Black Widow is from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I feel like we don’t really get to see a lot of Natasha there. So it was nice being able to kind of dive deep inside her point of view.
Lindsay: Yeah, I would agree. I love getting to really have more of her on display and have her take center stage like that. And make her the star as well. And there are other characters who show up that people will be familiar with from the comics and movies and so on, but we’ve also kind of incorporated them in our own setting. So it’s definitely still the Natasha show, which is wonderful.
Travis: So I guess this is not even the first time that you’ve written for an established IP. First, I guess with Orphan Black and now Marvel so what what’s it like kind of taking the reins on an established universe that a big company has already put out into the world?
Lindsay: So it is definitely intimidating. Because in both cases, I came to it already as a fan of the property. And I had my own deep thoughts and head canons and so on for various characters and how I viewed their voices and behavior.
And obviously those are just my own personal takes. And I want to make sure I represent those authentically to what the IP actually wants t0o from it. But being able to work on that with a team of writers, especially for both of these series, has been fantastic because we… We basically, to some extent, when we did the writing room for this project, we just got to sit around and gush about Natasha and everything that we loved about her and just really focus in on what we thought was great and what we wanted to make sure we were bringing out in her characterization.
So yeah, that’s a big part of it, is finding those deepest elements that really attract people to the given IP. So yeah, being trusted with the opportunity to do that. And it’s really kind of cool to have this framework already in place for you to play with, you know, but it’s not completely set in stone, you still have liberties to find new angles, or really dig in onto something that hasn’t been explored yet with those characters. And that’s a wonderful feeling.
Travis: And even just the whole writing room environment sounds fascinating and like a ton of fun.
Lindsay: It is, the way that Serial Box does it is that we all just get together for one long weekend. And there’s lots of food, lots of sitting around and talking and hashing things out.
Travis: [laughs]
Lindsay: And it’s kind of chaotic at first and then it really synthesizes into this beautiful season arc that we’ve built together. And you just get to see how all the different writers in the room, their different strengths or how they’re adding that into the conversation in ways that you never would have thought of just sitting on your own. It’s always really cool to see that happen.
And then poke holes in each other’s ideas, really kind of reinforce these things. And yet, it’s such a good collaborative experience. I have not had any issue where it felt like you know, people were tearing each other down. It’s obviously a really good environment to create with because Serial Box does such a great job picking the writers for it, and everybody is just so enthusiastic about the projects. It’s wonderful to feel.
Travis: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I know, as a science fiction and fantasy fan, Serial Box is great at tapping some fantastic talent for these serials.
Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. My co-creator on The Witch Who Came in from the Cold: Max Gladstone, obviously immensely talented. And then Malka Older was our showrunner on the Orphan Black: The Next Chapter and she’s amazing as well.
And then getting to work with Mikki Kendall and L.L. McKinney and Taylor Stevens on this project has been phenomenal. Everyone I’ve gotten to work with is so talented, and I have a huge bookshelf just of my Serial Box co-creators at home.
Travis: Yeah, well, I guess as one of the lead show runners for Black Widow, what does that mean? Does that mean you’re writing more chapters by yourself? Does that mean you’re kind of directing the overarching story?
Lindsay: Yeah, I think of it almost as kind of being you know, like a traffic cop, making sure that we’re all flowing in the same direction when our episodes come in. Because we build out the series arc, or the season arc, in the writers room, but then we go off into our little corners and suddenly, we find all these connective tissue that we didn’t know we needed at the time.
And there’s flurries of emails and so on, someone needs to make a call on you know, “Oh, what do we what this character’s name to be?” Or their backstory? The side character. Little things like that, but then also making sure we’ve got a consistent tone flowing across the episodes, and pacing and so on.
Because it can feel almost a little disjointed when you’re just isolated in on your single episode that you’re writing. And it just needs a little pass to smooth that out. So that’s predominantly what my job entails.
Travis: Gotcha, that makes sense. And so speaking of jobs, your day job involves writing about Russian cyber security–
Lindsay: [laughs]
Travis: –and you have experience in the past for writing Russian-themed fantasy books. So how much of this experience are you able to work into the Black Widow story?
Lindsay: My favorite thing has been getting to use my Soviet history background to really flesh out Natasha’s character. Because depending on which canon you’re looking at for Natasha, whether it’s like you mentioned the MCU or the comics or anything else. It’s a little different, her backstory, and it also changes what Soviet era she grew up in.
So if you’re talking about the 1960s, it’s going to look like the space race, Cold War, everything is really neck and neck. But if you’re looking at her growing up in the ’80s, under Gorbachev and so on, then there’s a very different field and approach to how she would be thinking about things politically, and what her goals might be or how she might be, whether she’s feeling jaded with the system around her and what that looks like, how that plays out.
So getting to use that was kind of my favorite thing, and making sure we really had a good authentic pacing to her backstory, and the way that she went through the Red Room training and then eventually broke out of that and then became her own independent person.
Travis: So I guess you mentioned the multiple established canons. Is this story its own new canon or does it adhere to the comics? How does that work?
Lindsay: It is its own universe. We tried our best to really be canon-independent in that we just wanted to say this is our Black Widow. This is how her story plays out. And make her feel familiar no matter what, whether you’re just now being introduced to her or you’re coming from a different universe.
Travis: That makes sense to me, and I imagine that gives you more creative freedom to work with as well.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Travis: Well, are you reading anything good right now that you’d recommend?
Lindsay: I just started reading the book called Docile by K.M. Szpara, and it’s pretty intense so far. That’s a slightly more sci fi than fantasy book right now. But I’m enjoying that so far. And then next up, I really want to read the Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger. Which has been pitched to me as a sort of Eastern fantasy Pokemon-style political intrigue drama.
Travis: I think that’s pretty much how I’ve heard it pitched too, so it definitely sounds fascinating.
Lindsay: [laughs] Yeah.
Travis: And then I guess looking forward to the future a little bit, are there any future projects that you’re working on or any new releases that you have coming out soon?
Lindsay: Yes. My next novel is The Shadow War. And that comes out this October from Penguin. And that’s a YA historical fantasy. I like to pitch it as Inglorious Basterds meets Stranger Things. Because it’s about a group of teenagers who for various reasons have found themselves in the woods of Nazi Germany in 1942, and end up having to draw on dark energy from an alternate universe to try to fight the Third Reich.
Travis: That’s an amazing pitch, you’ve sold me.
Lindsay: [laughs] Thank you.
Travis: Well, I guess to close things out, one thing I like to ask everyone who comes on the podcast is what’s one thing that you’re just really, really excited about right now?
Lindsay: What a strange time to be asking that.
Travis: Isn’t it though?
Lindsay: Yeah.
Travis: Just like talking to someone face to face could be that thing.
Lindsay: Yeah, I think I think that might be nice. Just being able to see my friends in person for a little bit. I’m an introvert, a huge introvert, as many writers are. But it would still be nice to go have a writing date with one of my friends and so on.
Travis: Yeah, as an introvert as well, I think I’ve described it as: it’s nice to have alone time, but when that’s the only option you have, it’s not as nice.
Lindsay: Right [laughs]
Travis: Well, that is about everything I have for you. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat, Lindsay. It’s been a pleasure.
Lindsay: Thank you so much, Travis. I appreciate it.
[outro music begins playing]Travis: You can find Lindsay Smith on Twitter as @LindsaySmithDC, or at her website, LindsaySmith.net. Whether you’re looking to get your fix for new Marvel content or just into a spy thriller with a hint of the fantastic, you can’t go wrong with Black Widow: Bad Blood. The first season is currently releasing new episodes in both ebook and audio formats from Serial Box.
And as always, you can find us over at thefantasyinn.com, or click the invite in the show notes to join our Discord server and chat with us in real time. If you enjoyed this interview, consider supporting us on Patreon, where you get early access to episodes before anyone else, and we get to improve the podcast.
And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to this show so you can catch all of our future episodes. That’s it for this week. Until next time.
[outro music fades out]