📚 A Bookish Chat with 'The Shards of Lafayette: Book One: Drops of Glass' Kenneth A. Baldwin | Author Interview | #AuthorInterview
Kenneth A. Baldwin writes stories that blur the lines between history, magic, dreams, and reality. He loves finding oddities in history books with unbelievable tales or unexplained phenomena. His first series, The Luella Winthrop Trilogy, takes place during just such a time when late 19th-century Victorians struggled to balance a surge of occultism and never-before-seen scientific advancements.
Before he started writing novels, Kenny paid his way through law school by writing, performing, and teaching humor. You can still catch him on stage or in corners of the Internet that feature sketch and improv comedy. Now, he lives nestled under the Wasatch Mountains with his wonderful wife, sons, and Golden Retriever.
Website & Social Media:
Website ➜ www.kennethabaldwin.com
X ➜ http://www.x.com/kennethabaldwin
Facebook ➜ www.facebook.com/kennethabaldwin
Goodreads ➜ www.goodreads.com/kennethabaldwin
Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. How did you come up with the idea to write your book?
I love murky historical intersections where cultural paradigms flip on their heads due to some type of innovation. I did a series during the late 19th century for this reason, when spiritualism surged in response to rapid technological developments.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised at all that WWI combat aviation appealed to me. The combat pilots in that war lived in a weird microcosm that reached backward toward an age of more “civilized” warfare while catapulting ahead in terms of technology. I marvel at the sheer bravery, and maybe insanity, that these pilots must have had. To me, that’s a sign that the environment is perfect for magic.
The idea for Drops of Glass came from that intersection of ideas. I wanted to create a magic system that tied into the paradox of weaponized early flight and the strength of character it asked of its participants.
Can you give us a short excerpt?
This is a quick scene from one of the air battles in the book.
““Marcus!” I shouted. “We’re empty! There’s no more ammunition. Bullets gone!”
He must have understood something, because his strategy changed. He banked again, but this time, he pulled us into a deep turn, attempting to face the enemy Camel.
His sudden offensive took the rogue pilot by surprise, and he slipped on his turn, his nose facing one direction, while the plane skid through the air in another. I felt our own plane crank, experienced a peculiar sensation of plummeting in one direction while seeing forward, and saw our movement change. We skid right across the Camel’s path. Vickers guns screamed. I ducked into my bay.
“Come on! Fire!” Marcus’s voice came over the wind like a howling ghost.
Whose guns were they? If Marcus wanted a close shot, that would have given him ample opportunity. I peered over the gun well and noted, in terror, the splintering of one of our wing struts. Big holes had been blown into our fuselage right behind me. But we were still flying.
Marcus corrected our direction, the Camel did the same, and the awful dance went on.
My dread only increased. As I looked closer at our aircraft, I found other holes, bits of shrapnel, flapping tears of canvas. It was a miracle that none of the shots had connected with Marcus or me already.
I noticed the change in our maneuverability almost instantly. Marcus went back to his sweeping evasive attempts, but without the Lewis guns to ward off our attacker and with our reduced flight capacity, the Sopwith took sweeping passes across our plane, riddling us all the more with rounds. A section of our rudder burst. Another woodpecker trail appeared as if by magic along our right wing.
The rogue pilot easily outflew us now, settling directly at our rear. I recognized now the risk Marcus took in his offensive maneuver. He sacrificed positioning to take one good shot at the enemy. Now, the Sopwith was on our tail, facing me, its unfeeling blade sawing through the air. Its guns lit up, and rounds streaked past us.
Marcus tried to climb, to dive what little he could, to evade, to roll over, but in his desperate attempts to survive, he had cut off any tactical room he might have used in a moment like this. His strategy had been to avoid this very scenario. He had needed me not to be so foolhardy with the limited ammunition.
I ducked low in the gunner’s bay and prayed. Bullets sprayed overhead. A round burst through one of the struts behind me, poked holes right beside me. I grasped through my flight coat and took hold of my glass marble. A protection charm, fashioned by my Aunt Luella by using a lock of Marcus’s hair. It was a charm she warned me may not work, but she had fashioned it because I wrote my mother about Marcus, about how he reminded me of home, about how afraid I felt every time he took to the sky. My mother had taken it to her friend.
My mother. Aunt Luella. My father. Marcus. A vision of their memories circulated around the marble in the dark of the gunner’s bay.
And then a wild idea struck me. And if we were to die, I would die fresh out of those ideas.
I yanked the marble off its chain and thrust my hand upward, poking my head out of my seat as bravely as thoughts of my family allowed…”
What part of the book was the most fun to write?
The story revolves around two protagonists: Marcus, a combat pilot, and Jane, a mechanic who has garnered a reputation for her witch-like fixes to airplanes. Jane gets put into a situation that no woman ever had to endure in WWI. She’s assigned to be Marcus’s gunner in a two-seater airplane. In a way, I imprinted onto Jane because we were both fish out of water in this community that had such firm social hierarchies and rules. So I loved writing all the scenes with Jane facing the realities of air combat or when she got to offer an outside perspective on the combat pilot culture that existed in WWI.
What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?
The two protagonists and the plot of my book are fictional, but they’re surrounded by real historical figures. What’s more, the timeline tracks pretty closely with real battles and deployments of the war. One figure, who inspired me more than any of the other pilots I studied, I took particular attention to get right. His attitude, mannerisms, plane of choice, and the events that transpire around him are all true and sourced on primary accounts by those who worked with him. I have a brief call out to him at the end of the book as well.
What other books are you working on and when will they be published?
At the moment, I’m finishing up the sequel to Drops of Glass. Strands of Fire will continue and Jane and Marcus’s adventures. It will be coming out February of 2025. I’ve just sent a draft to my beta readers, so I’m really excited about this one. It dives more deeply into less studied historical aspects of the period, but more importantly, the magic dial gets turned way up.
Finally, is there a message you’re trying to get across with your book?
With all of my books, I hope that people will be inspired to recognize the very real magic around them. All of my magic systems are based on phenomena that persist with the human experience. Even in 2024, magic is everywhere, but it’s easy to discount it and take it for granted. If I can inspire an appreciation for the inexplicable, beautiful aspects of the human race in readers, I’ll die happy.
1918. France. Reports of unexplained rogue attacks have come in from both sides of the Western Front.
When Marcus Dewar is tasked with investigating the aerial bombardments, it’s not because of his aviation record. To make a name for himself, he will have to escort his best friend, a woman named Jane Turner known for her witchlike repairs on damaged aircraft, through some of the war’s most dangerous battle zones.
But when they learn the rogue pilots seek out arcane devices filled with magic powerful enough to alter the war, it will take more than some hedgewitch tactics and smart flying to return with their lives.
And in a conflict that values human life so little, that’s the least they have to lose.
The Shards of Lafayette: Drops of Glass Book 1 is available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Drops-Glass-Magic-Shards-Lafayette-ebook/dp/B0C42B144X .
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