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Genderflipping Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde – Living In An Electric Empire At C2E2 With Viola Carr

img_20170422_133716522Greg Baldino writes,

Let's get real for a second: we all secretly think Jekyll and Hyde are/is more interesting than Dracula. Someone's good and bad sides pushed to extremes turns up in everything from the Incredible Hulk to Hannibal, whereas unless you're dealing with some form of immigrant aristocrat in a xenophobic imperial culture, it's not really Dracula. The latest spin on the classic protagonist-antagonist fusion is Viola Carr's Electric Empire series.

Greg: Viola, what can you tell us about your new book?

Viola: The new book is called The Dastardly Miss Lizzie, it's the third and final book in the series. It's a steampunk murder mystery series involving a gender-flipped Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The main character is Dr. Elizabeth Jekyll and her dark side is Lizzie Hyde, and they get up to all sorts of shenanigans, hunting killers and solving crimes. There's a bit of horror and a bit of romance and a bit of all sorts of things.

Greg: The Jekyll and Hyde story is one that's been adapted into many forms, much like Dracula and Sherlock Holmes. How did you get into it? Was it through the original book or the films, or…?

Viola: I guess it's like you said it's one of those things that sort of has pervaded popular culture. You say "Jekyll and Hyde" and everybody knows what you mean even if they haven't read the original book or seen the films. They understand the concept of the personalities. And I do love all those old classics, I read Dracula and Frankenstein and all those things.

Greg: How did you arrive at the style for this? Because it's very… I want to say almost lurid, but like pop lurid.

Viola: Well, I don't think it's… I didn't want to mimic the style of that original story, because people don't write like that anymore, and I think that readers don't like that style anymore. It's slow, it's very wordy, and people don't like that.  So I guess I wanted to modernize it, but not make it too modern so that the historical aspects of it weren't believable. It's kind of a modern version of old style characters.

Greg: You're from Australia and lived in England for a while, and you're now here visiting the States. Between these three cultures, what's the best pub/bar food?

Viola: Ah! Well I think if you're going to a pub you've gotta stick to the classics. You've gotta have the fried chips or the greasy hamburgers, things like that. In England they've got these things called gastropubs which is like a kind of gourmet restaurant that's at a pub because British people spend a lot of time in pubs. But I think you've gotta stick with the classics. Or a steak, a steak is good too!

The Dastardly Miss Lizzie is available now for $15.99 from Harper Voyager

Greg Baldino has written three books and over 200 articles and if you ask him the best bar food is hot wings and lots of them!


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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