Marissa Lingen is joining us today to talk about her novel, A Dubious Clamor. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Ever since she broke the curse that made her live as a harpy for two years, Jules has worked as a cursebreaker, taking on magical odd jobs for minimal pay and the occasional spot of cake. In a society obsessed with propriety and status, she must tread carefully to maintain her ties to both her aristocratic mother and the wild clamor of harpies with whom she once flew. The delicate balance she has struck is disrupted when her childood friend, Anthony, begs for help with a disgruntled sword. At first, she assumes it will be a job like any other, but the sword soon reveals itself to be an ancient, powerful weapon: the dubious sword forged by the magician Wayland Smith that can literally cut through human certainty. Now, it has awakened to challenge a new law in Parliament that would strip millions of their rights-magical and mundane people alike. The man behind the law, Lord Ventstock, was the very person who once cursed Jules, and she’s determined not to let him hurt anyone else.As her connection to the sword grows, Jules begins to appreciate the double-sided power of doubt: how it can create healthy skepticism or fuel deep anxiety. Certainties can be safe but also dangerous traps. After walking a razor’s edge for so long between two worlds, Jules must call upon all her connections and finally merge the two halves of herself if she is going to defeat Lord Ventstock, embracing doubt and having the courage to be undefinable.

What’s Marissa’s favorite bit?

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that art is shaped by the artist’s lived experience. True almost to the point of being trite, right? But our biggest cultural touchstones are so much a part of us that we have trouble letting go of them in alternate and fantastical histories: a Shakespeare whose world is infused with magic still writes As You Like It and Hamlet in the forms we know them. Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, inspired by the ardent revolutionary he hoped Napoleon Bonaparte was, is somehow composed all the same if Napoleon is a vampire, a warlock–or doesn’t exist at all.

In a secret history, of course it works that way. The whole delight of secret histories is coming upon the piece of the backstory where you find that actually there are five lines from Richard III that illuminate the plot in new and wondrous ways. But in an alternate history…I feel sure about some of the same artists, but the same art?

I mean, I get it. I didn’t want to let go of some favorite cultural touchstones either–and they’re genuinely fun to run into, I see why people love them.

When I was writing A Dubious Clamor, the answer seemed obvious, and also it was enough fun for me that I honestly think it’s my favorite part: some of my favorite historical personages are still working in their fields, but I got to think about what they might do instead, with the fantastical changes I’ve made to their settings. My protagonist, Julia, really loves George Eliot and resonates with one of her heroines–just not one you can find in our world’s libraries. As a Swedish-American kid with family on both sides of the pond, I grew up revering the great Jenny Lind. What else might she be doing with her powerful voice in a spell-touched milieu?

And most importantly for the plot, there’s that wonderful squabbling pair: W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. They’re still themselves here! They have the same relationship to each other that they did in our world, but they couldn’t have written The Sorcerer or Iolanthe in the same way if there were known to be Jenny Greenteeth living in Hyde Park–or if the very D’Oyly Carte Theater itself had magicians coming in regularly to refresh the glamor and anticipation spells on the lobby. What would they write instead? I have a few ideas you’ll find in this novella–and if you’re really lucky (or unlucky, that’s your call!) and find me at a convention, I’ll sing you a line or two of a confrontation song between two characters who are mythical in our world and very real in the world of A Dubious Clamor.

LINKS:

Book Link*

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BIO:

Marissa Lingen is a freelance writer who lives in the Minneapolis suburbs with her family. She is the author of over three hundred works of short science fiction and fantasy and has no intention of stopping any time soon. She also writes essays, poetry, and whatever comes to her next. Her debut novella, A Dubious Clamor, is [coming in September of 2026/now out] from Horned Lark Press.

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