Jennifer DeLeskie on Everclear: Memory, Identity, and Resistance
What happens when the stories we inherit—and the truths we are taught to forget—shape who we are allowed to become?
In this edition of The Arrow Dispatch, we speak with author Jennifer DeLeskie about Everclear, her debut upper-YA speculative novel from Flame Arrow Publishing.
Set in a near-future Northern Québec, Everclear follows a teenage girl searching for her missing father. Her journey into the wilderness draws her toward buried truths about language, memory, identity, and her own changing body—and toward the forces determined to keep those truths hidden.
Listen to our conversation with Jennifer below, then continue to the complete edited transcript.
Listen to the Interview
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Interview Transcript
Dave Dufour 00:01
All right.
Jennifer DeLeskie 00:32
Hey, Dave.
Dave Dufour 00:34
Hi. So, welcome everyone. I'm Dave. I'm the publisher from Flame Arrow Publishing, where we publish stories of resilience, resistance, and rebirth. And today we are going to have a live talk with our dear author Jennifer DeLeskie, who is the author of Everclear, a YA sci-fi dystopian book that is going to come out this summer by the end of August, on August 25 if I'm correct. So Jennifer, how about you talk a little bit about yourself so that people know a little bit who the author behind Everclear really is.
Jennifer DeLeskie 01:20
Oh my gosh! Okay, well, I am a writer. I live in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal, with my family. I used to be a lawyer, and I still do a little bit of lawyering, but mostly I write, and I have been working on Evercure for a very long time. The project has taken different forms over the years, but I'm so delighted that it's finally coming out into the world. And I also write short fiction. I write a lot of horror. I write literary fiction, and. yeah, that's that's about it.
Dave Dufour 02:06
By the way, thank you so much for accepting to come. I know being on a live is not necessarily something we do every day, but I'm sure everyone will really appreciate it.
Jennifer DeLeskie 02:15
I'm so happy to be here.
Dave Dufour 02:18
All right, so if you had to describe Everclear in one sentence to someone who's never heard of it, what would you say?
Jennifer DeLeskie 02:28
Oh my gosh! Okay, I guess I would say that it is a fast-paced, coming-of-age outdoor adventure. M dash eco dystopian science fiction in the tradition of The Marrow Thieves, where a girl on the run discovers a secret encoded in her body. How about that?
Dave Dufour 02:56
Yeah, that sounds pretty mysterious. And so, for those who don't really know what echo fiction is like, could you help us understand a little bit more what this is?
Jennifer DeLeskie 03:10
I mean, gosh, Dave, you'd probably be better than than me.
Dave Dufour 03:14
I mean, you wrote it. I'm sure you know better than I do.
Jennifer DeLeskie 03:18
I mean, so eco fiction, I guess, is any sort of fiction that is deeply concerned with the impact of of climate change and human intervention on the land. And if it's eco science fiction, it's sort of how that plays out in the future. So it would be authors like Kim Stanley Robinson, for example, who is sort of like one of the the founders of eco fiction in some ways, writing about the consequences of of climate change and how it impacts human human society and human individuals and human relationship with the land.
Dave Dufour 03:58
Okay, that paints a good picture of it. So you said that you do write a lot of different in a lot of different genres, right? And so, what made you pick this one in particular at this specific time?
Jennifer DeLeskie 04:14
Well, as I mentioned, I started writing this story a while ago when my kids were a bit younger, and it was sort of thinking a lot about their journeys growing up and the world that they were going to be moving through, and it seemed like a young character was the best way to sort of tell this story, and a lot of the themes that I was thinking about at the time that I was writing about belonging and diversity and and the land and who gets to decide, you know, what's neutral, for instance. I wanted to have a young character who was was encountering these sorts of questions for the first time and trying to figure them out.
Dave Dufour 05:31
So, do you see the average reader as being a little bit like your main character, Kai?
Jennifer DeLeskie 05:31
Yeah, a little bit. I would say. I mean, my main character Kai is 16. She's really intelligent. She is part of the dominant system, the the same as you know I am, and my kids are. And but she's questioning it. She has lots of lots of questions, and she's encountering a lot of of pressure on her understanding of the world and how it works. And I think a lot of readers of science fiction are curious people and who have questions about the society that they live in as well. And so, yeah, I think there's definite similarities.
Dave Dufour 06:01
Great. So, what's the thing you like the most about Kai?
Jennifer DeLeskie 06:07
Well, I like the fact that she's actually kind of grumpy sometimes, and and that she's not like she's she's not a pushover. She's not really a people pleaser. She's she's somebody who's a little bit introverted. She's a little bit awkward socially sometimes, but she's she's quick and she's sharp and she does know how to be a good friend and she does know how to sort of work on a team, and I like that complexity in her.
Dave Dufour 06:45
And during the revision process, did that change a little bit, or did you make her even grumpier?
Jennifer DeLeskie 06:53
No, Dave, I made her even nicer. Oh, okay. I wonder why. Exactly. Yeah. No. I mean, she's she's she's always kept her core. Like it's funny. She's she was really the first thing that came to me with Everclear. It wasn't the the world. It wasn't the plot. It was this character Kai, and she really hasn't changed that much. I mean, she definitely changes over the course of the story, a lot I would say, but her her kind of DNA, her personality has has been there from the beginning.
Dave Dufour 07:28
All right, and would you say that she was the hardest character to write, or perhaps the easiest? Since you said you know, basically the idea that you had was originally Kai.
Jennifer DeLeskie 07:52
I'd say that she was easiest character for me to write, for sure. I mean, you know, I was able to kind of channel a lot of my feelings at that age of both wanting to belong and feeling like a bit of an outsider, and having a lot of questions about the society that I was growing up into, and I found it fairly easy actually to kind of channel those into into her.
Dave Dufour 08:07
That still makes her a very complex character, as readers will see in the book. She does have a lot of emotional challenges, I would say.
Jennifer DeLeskie 08:18
Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Over the course of the book, I mean, I don't want to give any spoilers, but she she comes to realize that a lot of the things that she's based her sense of herself on, and her sense of of family and safety, she really sort of has the rug pulled out from from beneath her, and she has to essentially reconfigure who she is and what matters to her, and you know what family is, and so for sure.
Dave Dufour 08:54
Okay, now I'm really curious. I want to know which character was the hardest to write. I've never gotten to actually ask you this question.
Jennifer DeLeskie 09:03
Oh my god! Interesting. I mean, I think Angel was a really challenging character for me to write because even though I had a very kind of clear sense of who who they were and and how they acted and how they behaved. It took me a while to sort of figure out why they are the way that they are, and to have empathy for the character really based on sort of understanding their journey and how how they arrived in in this place, it took a lot of thinking about their their sort of backstory and their family, and you know, thinking really carefully about how they would be interacting with the other with the other characters in the book. So Angel was definitely a challenge for me to write, and I feel like I really got to know them over the course of of the book and over the course of rewrites. And I really hope that they come across as a complex three dimensional character, and that their journey-you know-they're not they're not the main character. This book is written very closely in Kai's perspective, but I really hope that Angel's journey really kind of comes across and resonates as well with readers.
Dave Dufour 10:34
Yes, and Angel, yeah, is a very complex character. You know, I I felt like you know when I read your story at the beginning, I had opinions, and then that that shifted a couple times actually, not just once, but a couple times, and yeah, I thought I thought yeah, Angel was a very interesting character, and I hope the readers will also appreciate how much work you put into Angel and making them, you know, quite different from Kai in a good way. I think maybe bring something that Kai desperately needs as he struggles. But as we say, we can't spoil too much. So talking a little bit more about the plot. So what what is Kai searching for the beginning?
Jennifer DeLeskie 11:24
I mean, at the very beginning of the book, Kai just wants to go back to her fairly privileged life back in New Fran, and New Fran, just in case it isn't obvious, is New San Francisco, and it's a compound because in this world, a lot of citizens, most citizens, actually live inside compounds, like domed, big domed compounds, because of a combination of government policies and also because of environmental destruction. So that's what she wants at the beginning. She wants, she basically wants like her father to ditch his girlfriend Harper, and for the two of them to go back home so that she can like hang out with her cats and her friends and go to parties and basically just have a normal teenager's life. And then as the story goes on, you know she essentially wants to figure out why everything that she thought was one way is actually another way, and she wants to figure out what that means for her, for her physical health, because she's somebody with a chronic condition, and at the beginning, the reader learns very early on that she's on pretty strong meds, and that she's not very happy about it. And that, like a lot of teenagers, she actually has some some compliance issues with taking her her medicine. And then she realizes that you know this is actually a lot more complex and kind of shrouded in mystery than that she understood. She wants to understand why her father is doing the work that he's doing and what its implications are, and why her father has also serious doubts about the work that he's doing. And she basically wants to understand if if his company and which is called Blackshell and the unity government and this policy of integration, which means that you know essentially no one is allowed to have any sort of ethnic or cultural or linguistic or religious affiliations outside of the kind of dominant culture, I think she wants to understand whether there's anything salvageable from any of this, whether it's good, whether it's bad, and and what it means, and that's sort of her process going through.
Dave Dufour 13:52
And I think something that's really interesting also about your story, you did mention new friends, so that's your reimagining a little bit, you know, in in the future what it would look like in the United States, but your story basically is happening in northern Quebec in Canada, right?
Jennifer DeLeskie 14:10
It is. It's happening. It's pretty much all set in Ewishti, which is James Bay area, and that's what the Cree call their homeland or Eastern Cree Uishi, and that's where it's set.
Dave Dufour 14:42
Great, and there's the yeah.
Jennifer DeLeskie 14:42
Oh, go ahead.
Dave Dufour 14:42
I just wanted to add because you did mention Cree, right? Cree people, and I think this is a very important aspect of your story because Indigenous people and their voices are included in your story, which is not something we see a lot among writers who are non-indigenous.
Jennifer DeLeskie 14:48
Yeah, that's for sure, 100% So this, I think, is important for. Settlers like myself, who are writing characters on stolen land, basically to write self-consciously as settlers. So this book is deeply engaged and concerned with the question of sort of what it means to be a settler, the long-lasting impact of colonialization on the land, on settlers themselves as well. When I was writing the book, I made sure to hire an authenticity reader, Terence Duff, who's actually from Chachasi, which is where some of the story takes place. Thank you, Terence. Terence did an amazing job helping me out with with characters and with setting, and so there's that aspect of it. And then the other aspect of it as well is that what Kai is actually encountering in these spaces is this kind of pressure between her mindset as a settler and the mindset of characters like Brandon and Stacy and Katie and Sapati, who are Indigenous characters, both Cree and Inuit, who she encounters and who she ends up essentially working working with, but it's definitely not a it's it's not a a seamless sort of partnership. Like Kai has an awful lot of learning to do. At the same time, I didn't want to just write a story about like the kind of the sort of bigot or the settler who learns to do better. I mean, Kai's coming into this already with a sense that there are some really messed up things about integration and about her background. And as she moves through the story, she starts to understand what it is that people within the dominant system, like herself, lose and and sort of have to trade by being part of that. Of course, it doesn't. You know, it's it's not equivalent to to genocide and cultural genocide and all of that stuff. But there is the sense that it's it's complex and that this dominant system, like you you you kind of can't necessarily just just shed it or escape it. You have to, as a settler, reckon with it, and that's what Kai is doing.
Dave Dufour 17:28
Yes, and I think your story does a really great job through Kai, but also Indigenous people, the whole world building that you've done, and also the emotional arcs of your characters to show basically what we like to publish at Flame and we're publishing, which is there's a lot of resistance, there's resilience, and perhaps there's some form of rebirth too. But just so readers know or viewers, Everclear is actually book one of a two-part series. It hasn't really been announced, but yeah, there's just so much going on in this world, right?
Jennifer DeLeskie 18:07
Yeah, it's funny. Actually, the book originally was going to be one gigantic book, and then I sort of realized that no publisher was going to publish like 150,000 150,000 word debut novel by Jennifer Doleski, so I I really decided to just focus on one half of the story. And while I think it is still a very satisfying story on its own right, you know, it it hasn't it has an ending. It it definitely continues on and it continues exploring a lot of the questions that are sort of introduced and examined in book one, just in a bit of a different environment. We'll say.
Dave Dufour 18:55
Yes, and I just can't wait to read it, of course. But we'll have to wait for that.
Dave Dufour 19:02
That's great. Okay, how about we talk a little bit more about the themes? Because I really feel like you know, people usually they think about science fiction, dystopian, and young adults, and they think it's going to be something not necessarily deep, right? Perhaps something shallow. It is not. Okay, so this is not the case for Everclear. It's very, very deep, and we like to call it more like speculative fiction, just because it's at the intersection of literature, actually, and dystopia, because the themes are very deep. So one such theme is environmental collapse. It shapes the entire world of Everclear, and so my question for you, Jennifer, is why was that theme important to explore specifically? Because there are quite a lot of things going on in your story, but why include environmental conflict?
Jennifer DeLeskie 19:07
I can't wait to finish writing it.
Jennifer DeLeskie 19:55
I mean, I think, I think anyone writing right now who's looking, say, 100 years in the future, it it it it's something that has to come up. It's something that you have to reckon with because you know we all see the trajectory that that we're on. We're we're sort of on a runaway train in many ways at this point, which isn't to say that people shouldn't be taking action, and that governments and corporations, especially, should not be taking action, but it-it just, you know, speculative fiction, science fiction, the best of it has always been grounded in what's plausible or or possible or likely, but it's it's had a grounding in the real world, and so there's that. You know, there's the fact that how we organize ourselves and our societies to live in relation to nature, to other species, with each other is the most pressing issue that faces us right now. So, you know that that's sort of the main thing. Also, I always loved reading like so-called wilderness adventure stories when I was a kid growing up. I loved Jack London. I loved Scott O'Dell. Like I don't know the Blue Dolphins. I loved Brother Mowit, and I, you know, as an adult, I started thinking about, oh, this is really interesting. Like this idea of wilderness, what does it really mean? And actually, it's a really kind of colonialist settler-based idea of the wilderness as like this unexplored place to sort of be essentially exploited in in many ways, and at the same time, I recently read or not recently, like probably several years ago now, but Robin Wall Kimmerer's book *Braiding Sweetgrass* and that had such a profound influence on me because she speaks. You know, she's writing as a scientist, and she's also writing as an Ojibwe woman, and she's writing a lot about our relationship with with nature, with the natural world, and the difference between an indigenous mindset and a colonialist, like settler mindset, where it sort of exists as something out there, something other, something to be conquered, something to be exploited, versus something to be in relationship with, and that was something I really wanted to work into my book. You know, it's something that Kai starts to learn. She's spent her whole life in a compound. Her experience of nature has been largely simulated. She's never experienced rain. She's never seen a sunrise or a sunset that wasn't simulated. She gets out there, and suddenly it's black flies and it's like torrential downpours and nature's like really uncomfortable at first and she doesn't really like it very much and then she starts sort of seeing a different way of being on the land and one thing that I sort of like or one character I really like in the book is is Sapati, and Sapati is a scientist, and she is she's you know university trained scientist, and she's Inuit, and she's out there on the land doing science, and her version of science is completely different than Kai's father's version of science and Kai's understanding of science. It's it's science in service of of communities, of people, and of the land, as opposed to science in service of capitalism. Essentially, so sorry, I'm rambling on a little bit. It's very interesting.
Dave Dufour 24:01
I love that part of your book where we can see those two different views, you know, different takes in science, and and sometimes it's a bit funny too. Like since you know the book is written first person point of view through Kai's perspective, it's very interesting to see, right? How you know how isolated she had been, you know how disconnected from nature she had been, and then she's thrown in the wilds in northern Quebec, in somewhere in the future, and those black flies. It's so funny that you mentioned them because I just remember those black flies, and it's just so funny the way you wrote it in that scene, and it's funny because as you know, we're definitely not living in that world in the future and all that. But as readers, we-it's interesting to see how Kai experiences that because then you have a lot of different questions, right? You're like, "Well, is she making?" A big thing, you know, like making such a fuss about like those black flies. Like it's fine. Like especially, I grew up in Quebec, so you know those black flies they're everywhere, so it's okay. But if you try to put yourselves in her shoes or in the shoes of someone who's just been living in the city all the time, and now in this possible future where perhaps people would get even more disconnected from nature. What it would be like for them to have this first contact with nature, and yeah, no, it's it's it's scary at the same time. I thought it was funny first, but then once you start thinking about it, then it's a bit scary because you're like, okay, is this where we're headed? The point where the basic elements of nature are scary because she is scared a lot, Kai.
Jennifer DeLeskie 25:48
Yeah, I mean, at the beginning, even just sleeping outside, like real outside, without a dome over her, completely freaks her out. Like it, it just feels deeply unsafe to her. Not because she thinks that she's going to be attacked by wolves or anything like that, but it's just-it's almost existential. Like she's she's kind of like a goldfish. Like a goldfish is happy in a you know a fishbowl, and she's been in a fishbowl her whole life. Are they happy? Well, they may not be actually. You're you're you're right. We like to think that they're happy and a fishbowl, but the thing is, though, is that once she gets out there, like this book is also really about the body, because we have a character who has had kind of things done to her her whole life. Like she's been kept on really strong meds for her epilepsy, and then going. You know, she's had her movements kind of constrained because her her parent or her father was really overprotective because of her illness, etc. And she's been really kind of cut off from the physical world in a lot of ways. So she goes out there, and those black flies are actually kind of a blessing because, along with the black flies and like portaging, like there's a portaging scene in the book, and I don't know if anybody's ever portaged like with black flies, and like you know she's in the bad position in the back, and she's got it, and she can't see anything, and it's stinking hot, and there's black flies everywhere, but it it puts her in her body in a way that she's never been in her body before, and she ends up feeling kind of really good about the fact that she can that she can do these things, and she starts feeling an actual genuine sense of place that you don't get unless you've gotten some blisters and you've gotten some bites and you know you've sweat a little bit, or gotten cold, or whatever. So, yeah. So that's another strand.
Dave Dufour 27:48
It's super interesting in your story, as you said. So not only does she kind reconnect with nature, but she has to reconnect with her body, right? And this is not necessarily something that we think about, or at least not something that I've read a lot about in dystopian fiction. That you know, there's there can be a point where the disconnect is so strong it own so affects your own body, right? Medicating yourself, or I mean, it can be necessary, but in Kai's case, she doesn't really have a choice, right? Yeah, I think it's just at this point in your book, and this is where it really starts. It's when Kai's make a choice about it.
Jennifer DeLeskie 28:35
Yeah, I mean, again, not wanting to give away too many spoilers, but there is a there is a scene where you know she loses her meds, and it's just like, okay, what what is that going to look like for for her, and how is she going to? What's it going to do to her body? How is she going to understand what's happening to her? And essentially, I mean, that that carries on through the entire book. Actually, is this sort of understanding or this this sense of of what's going on. I mean, she's also somebody who has oh gosh, I can never pronounce this this word, even though I know it very well. She she pulls her hair the the trichotilamania. So she's somebody when she's really stressed and anxious, she she goes for her hair and she she pulls it, and in a sense, it's like she's been you know, she goes to the body when she's when she's stressed. She just goes to the to the body in a way that's hurting her, and that's something that that sort of goes through the book as well. And it was something that I wanted to work into the book because, as somebody who has a bit of anxiety herself, and you know, I have my own ways of of coping with it, and some of them are are body centric ways as well. I thought that it was truthful to to the character that this was something that she experienced too.
Dave Dufour 30:07
I think another thing that is connected to this is the sense of belonging guys have, right? So you you did mention that for a part of the book, which is the first part of the book, she has built this very strong connection to a new friend where she comes from because she has not been asked whether she wanted to go to Northern Quebec. She just follows along her father and she has to, you know, stick with it. Although she doesn't really want to, and that really puts into question where she belongs, because then she starts meeting people, locals, and right. So, what would you say, Everclear? Okay, let me let me reword that. What do you think Everclear is trying to say about belonging through Kai's experience?
Jennifer DeLeskie 31:03
Oh wow, that's a good question. I think, I think what I get out of it anyway is that belonging belonging takes work, and it's something that has to be earned. In Kai's case, certainly, you know, she's somebody who's always felt like a bit of an outsider. Even a new Fran, it took her a while to sort of make these friendships with Joe and Regan, and even though they don't appear in the book, they're sort of important, especially Regan is kind of in her head a lot. The Kai went from being on like even stronger meds, where she just really couldn't make any friends because she was just kind of doped out all the time, to to somebody who finally had kind of created these friendships as an introvert, which can be hard to do, and she's ripped out of that. And suddenly, she's in a new environment where she does meet some kids. She meets Angel, Brandon, and Stacy, and they they don't necessarily like her immediately. They don't necessarily share a common, you know, kind of language or or culture, and it takes time. Like Kai has to kind of prove that that she's trustworthy, and she also has to accept them and their points of view, even when their points of views are ones that she sometimes finds kind of hurtful or threatening, or that make her feel defensive. So I think on the kind of personal level, that's where I'm going with belonging. That it it takes work to belong in a in a family, in a space and a community, you've got to contribute something. In a more general society sense, again, in the book, there's these kind of two poles of what belonging looks like, and in this world, there's this kind of philosophy of integration, which is from Kai's world, and integration is where people to be in the dominant culture give up a lot of stuff. So nobody knows anything about like their ethnic background or their cultural background. Nobody's allowed to sort of have these affiliations. And the idea is that this will create a neutral space, much like Quebec, where everybody can just sort of get along because everybody has the same views, and in public you don't express any you know identity that isn't part of this dominant culture. But then Kai meets Haiti and Sapati and Brandon and Stacy, who really value aspects of their identity and their culture, and would never try to sort of flatten out anybody else's identity for the sake of of harmony. It's an idea of harmony that is based on lots of different ingredients of diversity, and I think there's like one line where Katie says it's like it's like moss and it's like lichen. It's like moss and algae, like kind of forming a something better, like that the whole is made stronger and better by all of its different component parts. So that was something I was interested in exploring with belonging as well.
Dave Dufour 34:41
Super interesting. Thank you for sharing. I'm just thinking we we've talked about a lot of tough things for right. I mean, she she doesn't have it easy. Let's be honest.
Jennifer DeLeskie 34:53
No.
Dave Dufour 34:54
But it's not all bargain gloom and all of that. There is a bit of hope, I believe, in Everclear.
Jennifer DeLeskie 35:04
Oh, for sure, I think so. Like, you know, there's some, there's some fun. I mean, it's it's it's fast paced. I mean, the thing about this book is that it is very fast paced. There's a lot of there is a lot of plot, but the the kids get to sort of hang out and get to know each other and and have a bit of fun. And in terms of hope, like for sure, there's a whole there's a lot of resistance in the book. There's a lot of resistance to black shell, to unity, to this idea of integration, and there are different models of sort of how to how to live with other people, how to live on the land, and that's kind of where we see Kai arrive at by the end of the book. You know, there's no there's no going back for her. There's no basically just going back to her privileged life in in Newfoundland, like for the reader will have to read the book to figure out why that is or how that happens. But but even just sort of in her heart and in her mind, like she's she's grown out of that model that doesn't fit her anymore.
Dave Dufour 36:18
Great, yes, there is some hope. Thank you. We need it. We thoroughly need it. All right. So if we take this little step back, because otherwise we're going to spoil the story. But just one more thing, because I'm curious. I want to know more too. I'm sure everyone wants to find out about this as well. What scene are you most excited for readers to experience?
Jennifer DeLeskie 36:46
Oh wow! I don't feel like I can necessarily share the scene that I'm most excited for readers to experience because it comes sort of toward the end of the book, and I don't want to give any spoilers away. But I will say that I am such a huge fan of Miriam Makeba, who was a Kosa singer from from South Africa who lived in exile from South Africa, and I managed to work one of her songs into a scene, and I absolutely adore that scene because it also involves like a sort of potential falling or height situation, and I'm absolutely terrified of heights. And so I find the scene really thrilling. Yeah, exactly. Like I could never ever do what these characters do in this scene. I would just be like, just kill me, like leave me behind.
Dave Dufour 37:44
The cool thing about writing and having your own characters, you can make them do whatever.
Jennifer DeLeskie 37:48
Exactly. So I'm really excited about that scene. I'm also excited. Like there were a couple of scenes set up on James Bay, like basically right where James Bay and Hudson Bay meet, and this isn't a huge spoiler because it comes out sort of in the first in the very first pages. Like in this world, that's been dammed, and it's been dammed actually with technology developed by Kai's father to provide to provide fresh water to basically like the United States and territories, but the southern parts of it. And there's a scene where I is sort of in this area near the dam, and she sees beliggal whales, and that scene is sort of directly inspired from experiences and a particular experience that I had when I worked up on Baffin Island in the 1990 s. I was doing archeology, but I was I was working with a largely Inuit crew up there, and we would sit on the cliff sides and we'd be able to see beluga whales and walrus and all of that stuff, and it was so marvelous to kind of think about that time in my life and think about some of those experiences and try to to work them into the into the book.
Dave Dufour 39:15
It's so nice that you could you know draw from your own experiences you know to to write your book, and I'm sure the readers will be able to feel that as well. I could definitely feel it, which is nice. Good. So that's a big source of inspiration, right? So your travels. Were there any books or authors also that have influenced novels?
Jennifer DeLeskie 39:38
For sure. I mean, the the marrow of thieves is is one like that that is such an amazing book and I'd say it really you know again I'm writing from a settler perspective and my character is a settler but I think that that's such an incredible story and such an incredible book and the the the prose is so beautiful as well. So that definitely influenced the book. All of those sort of those sort of outdoor adventure stories that I was mentioning, like my Jack London and the Farley Moet, and all of that stuff. But again, also wanting to interrogate them through this book, I would say. And then, you know, the the why books that moved me the most as as a kid growing up were the ones that really took the readers very seriously. So I'm thinking of A Wizard of Earthsea and those books by Ursula K. Le Guin that was just diving into really profound, deep questions about about despair, about identity, about about friendship. So those are huge inspiration to me as well. Ursa is always a huge inspiration to me in everything I do.
Dave Dufour 40:58
Yes, she's such a great author. I just finished *The Dispossessed* and that would change my life. Oh my god!
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:04
Yeah, my whole family has read it. I think we've got about five copies in that book here. Yeah,
Dave Dufour 41:10
yeah. So definitely an author to read, you guys, if you want to, you know, read a classic. Honestly, she's a classic now. Yeah. Okay, are you ready for a rapid fire round to relax a little bit?
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:23
Absolutely, hit me.
Dave Dufour 41:25
Okay, ready?
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:27
Ready.
Dave Dufour 41:28
Coffee or tea?
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:29
Tea.
Dave Dufour 41:31
You can't think too much. Just morning writer or night writer.
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:36
Night writer.
Dave Dufour 41:37
Plotter or pantser?
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:40
Combination.
Dave Dufour 41:42
Pantser.
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:43
Combination. I do both.
Dave Dufour 41:46
Plantser.
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:47
I'm a plantser.
Dave Dufour 41:48
Yeah, there's actually a word for it. Though it was not an option. Plantser, plotter.
Jennifer DeLeskie 41:54
I'm a plantser.
Dave Dufour 41:56
They have words for everything. Okay, favorite speculative fiction book.
Jennifer DeLeskie 42:01
Ah, The Dispossessed.
Dave Dufour 42:04
Oh, okay. Favorite Canadian author.
Jennifer DeLeskie 42:07
Canadian author. Oh my God, you are killing me. Stop it. I'm a fan of you know it would have been Alice Monroe a few years ago. Yeah. Okay. Good. I'm not. I just can't. So. So Margaret Atwood. Okay.
Dave Dufour 42:28
Dream casting choice for Kai.
Jennifer DeLeskie 42:31
Oh my God! Stop. Like a really young Lucy Liu.
Dave Dufour 42:41
One word that describes Everclear.
Jennifer DeLeskie 42:44
Oh wow, alcoholic. Why? Because Everclear is great alcohol.
Dave Dufour 42:55
Oh okay, got it.
Jennifer DeLeskie 42:56
Yeah yeah yeah.
Dave Dufour 42:57
I did not expect this word for Everclear.
Jennifer DeLeskie 43:00
Lab alcohol. That's what it is.
Dave Dufour 43:03
Love it. So for clothing. So who would you say this book is for?
Jennifer DeLeskie 43:11
I honestly, I'm gonna say that it is for anyone who wants to read a fast-paced book set in the future with a kind of grumpy but ultimately very sympathetic main character, and to to explore some of these questions that are really pressing right now about how we live on this land, how we live on this land as settlers, and basically how we contend with capitalism, with corporations, with with all of this stuff. But ultimately, oh, go ahead. Sorry,
Dave Dufour 43:56
I have so many questions. I'm sorry, you go ahead.
Jennifer DeLeskie 43:58
Oh, I was just going to say, but ultimately, like I think this book is for for somebody who wants to be entertained because it is fundamentally entertaining.
Dave Dufour 44:06
Yeah, and it's an easy, quick read. I mean, it's funny to say this because you probably spent years and years surviving.
Jennifer DeLeskie 44:13
It's I know, and because it's so profound, right? Like it's yes. I mean, more about once you're
Dave Dufour 44:18
in it, you're in it. Like honestly, I well, I've read it many times, but every time it's just it's it's a breeze. Honest, it's around what 360-380 pages.
Jennifer DeLeskie 44:32
No, no, no, no. I think it's less than that.
Dave Dufour 44:34
I mean the whole package.
Jennifer DeLeskie 44:36
The whole package. I don't know. That's right. We have some extras. I don't do pages. I do word count. I I only know the word count, Dave. I leave the the I leave the formatting and the pages to you. But it's a quick read, not long.
Dave Dufour 44:51
Yeah. What do you hope readers feel when they finish the novel?
Jennifer DeLeskie 44:56
I hope I hope they feel hope. I do. I hope they feel. I hope they feel satisfied. Like I, I hope they don't feel like, oh, good lord, when is you know? I do hope they feel like when is book two coming out? Because you know, obviously, but you know, I hope they feel satisfied. Like I, I hope that they feel like they read a complete story and a complete arc, and that they are happy and satisfied with where Kai has has arrived by the end of the book.
Dave Dufour 45:28
The next one: What are you working on next?
Jennifer DeLeskie 45:33
I'm working on the sequel called Instar, and and. And you know, one or two little short stories because it's good to to have those when I need to take a little pause from from novel. It's it's good to to have like a maybe 5000 word project that I'm working on as opposed to a 90,000 word project.
Dave Dufour 45:58
Yes, it's a lot faster.
Jennifer DeLeskie 46:00
It is, and it gets published faster.
Dave Dufour 46:04
Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much, Jennifer. This was really interesting. I hope we can do this again. I've learned a lot, and for our viewers slash readers, Everclear is available for pre-order now through our website on Flame Arrow Publishing. So if you enjoy speculative fiction that combines adventure, environmental themes, compelling characters like Kai and Angel, and thought-provoking questions, this is definitely a book you'll want to discover. Right. So we'll see you in the next one. Bye.
About Everclear
A missing father. A changing body. Truths buried within language and memory.
Everclear is an upper-YA speculative novel set in a near-future Northern Québec. As a teenage girl searches for her missing father, she ventures deeper into the wilderness and uncovers a hidden corporate agenda—as well as knowledge that powerful forces have tried to erase.
Blending mystery, transformation, and resistance, Everclear explores identity, cultural survival, and what it means to reclaim the truth about yourself and the world around you.
Author: Jennifer DeLeskie
Publisher: Flame Arrow Publishing
ISBN: 9781990368639
Language: English
Genres: Young adult, climate fiction, science fiction, and dystopian fiction
About Jennifer DeLeskie
Jennifer DeLeskie is a writer, lawyer, and editor whose work explores responsibility, memory, and the courage required to speak the truth. Rooted in place and resistance, her stories ask what we owe one another when systems fail and silence becomes a means of survival.
Everclear is her debut YA novel.
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