Author Focus – Livia J Elliot

I’m really pleased to welcome Livia J Elliot to Author Focus. She’s the author of Records of the Orders, her dark philosophical fantasy series, and the lead writer of Unearthed Stories: a free app for Android and iPhone where you can read text-based interactive speculative fiction. When she’s not busy writing Livia also hosts her own podcast, Books Undone, and is now embarking on her first Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

Tim – Hi Livia. It’s great to have you here on Author Focus, especially as you’re clearly a very busy person! Before we dive into some of your current projects can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and what drew you to becoming an author?

Livia – Hi Tim! Thank you so much for inviting me, I’m super excited about the interview!

Nice meeting you all, I’m Livia J. Elliot a speculative fiction author based in Australia. I’m also a podcaster, writer of interactive fiction, and lifetime gamer.

Truth be told, I've been writing my whole life. I was taught to read very early, and by my 10th birthday I was already grabbing any book; back then I read a lot of supernatural mysteries, but soon after I found a copy of Dune (a Spanish translation, though) and that was my formal introduction to science fiction. From then on, I began worldbuilding and writing non-stop, and during my late teens I had a blog where I published serialised original fiction. What I wrote was always fantasy or sci-fi, because those have always been the genres I liked.

However, life tends to just happen, and for more than a decade, the stories lived only in my mind as I drifted away from the keyboard.

By 2020 I was not in a good spot, so when I told my partner, "I want to write again," he nodded and offered to help. I tried to go through trad-publishing simply because I knew nothing of what self-publishing meant… but fast-forward a few years, especially after writing non-stop for Unearthed Stories, and I began self-publishing my series Records of the Orders.

In terms of what I write, I like to classify it as psychological or philosophical fantasy. It is highly thematic because I see storytelling as the perfect medium to approach topics that would otherwise not be feasible, or be too difficult to present. Again, because of Unearthed Stories, I ended up writing in a lot of genres, from hard sci-fi (like Static Signal, Living Legacy), to cosy fantasy (i.e., Herald: A Flawless Spy), political grimdark (such as Mien or The Genesis of Change), dungeon crawlers, and psychological coming-of-age (i.e., Reflections and Dance With Me).

But it doesn’t matter the genre, theme-work is fundamental to my writing, and I generally converge towards similar concepts—like the dichotomy of control, bias, self-perception, life goals, identity and attitude. I love Stoicism, and I have approached it in more than one book!

I was really interested in the concept of Unearthed Stories. In the 1980s I was a huge fan of various ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books like Fighting Fantasy, Tunnels & Trolls, Dungeons & Dragons and the slightly more obscure Cretan Chronicles to name but some. They helped engage the teenage me in reading and I looked forward to taking a different one out of the school library each week. As such, I felt right at home exploring the stories you have on your App! What were your own inspirations and motivations for creating Unearthed Stories?

Oh, there is a whole story behind Unearthed Stories!

I mentioned before that I resumed writing in 2020… but it didn’t go well. When I tried to query a few agents, I got varied responses including a few telling me that I (not my books) was not marketable. I won’t lie—it broke my heart. By 2022 I was purposefully battling against my need to write and keeping away from the keyboard.

Cue in my life partner, who is also a game developer and an avid fantasy reader. He approached me with sparks in his eyes and a mischievous smile, and told me, "Let's make a game together; a bookshelf of interactive stories. You can write whatever you want." That’s how Unearthed Stories (acronym US, and purely intended) came to be.

We started brainstorming what we wanted for this app, and decided that: it had to be speculative fiction only (fantasy, sci-fi, horror), for adult readers, featuring thematic work, and—this is my favourite—trying to leverage the full potential of interactivity as the fundamental game mechanic.

Allow me to elaborate on that.

In games, mechanics are "the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions," namely, what the player does to actually play. They indicate how a player interacts with the game's world—and in narrative-driven games, the mechanics have to accompany the story; for example, if the story is tense, your mechanics cannot bore the player. That conflict is known as the ludo-narrative dichotomy.

So, we posited: what if we can leverage the mechanics—in this case, choices—to do more than just branching? What if we can make them part of the story? What if it’s not just one dialogue but a way to elicit emotions? What if choices could help me dive into the themes?

That’s how my approach came to be: choices are narrative elements, and I use them as such to "show not tell" (in a completely different way), enhance the experience, or even bias the reader to feel an emotion. Let me give you three examples:

●        In Dance with Me (the original, interactive version) the protagonist (Lyra) is heavily depressed. Thus, many times she'll offer a choice (often the most sensible for a non-depressed, non-traumatised person) and as soon as the reader picks it, Lyra strikes-through the text and does something else. I did that entirely on purpose. It's frustrating, awfully so, just like it is frustrating to survive emotional abuse and cope with the resulting denial.

●        In Means of Egress there are two narrators: one playable, the other not-playable… but the problem is that the not-playable narrator may sometimes spoil what may happen. Does that mean that you (the reader) make the choice based on what the character actually knows, or did you unconsciously break the fourth wall by choosing based on your privileged knowledge? It’s a twisted idea, but that book-with-choices breaks the fourth wall.

●        In Restorers, the robot protagonist, XB-12, is bound by a Code and so, some decisions are aliases (in the programming sense) of the same single option. XB-12 complains loudly, and depending how much new information the reader decides to get (by obeying or disobeying orders), you may end up with more or even fewer options… to the point that choices may be removed altogether. The theme of this interactive novelette is that knowledge enables choice.

What are you able to do with your storytelling through interactive fiction that you can’t do with a short story, novella or novel?

A lot of things! And some of them, I do not think I could novelise them at all!

For example, Reflections is a short novelette about the importance of emotional language. The gist of this story is that once you finish it, the story actually remembers that you completed it and changes! Yes, the text changes, there are new bits of information—and it ties to the theme. Emotional language is important because it allows us to (a) understand what’s happening to us, and (b) communicate to receive help; the lack of it just enhances the suffering. Therefore, the first “run” (or read) teaches the protagonist; in the second “run” (or re-read) everything becomes clearer because he already knows how to explain it.

Means of Egress is, perhaps, the most complex one I wrote! It’s a philosophical dungeon crawler featuring 182 different ways of crossing the dungeon… and it has a Dungeon Lord who’s quite keen on literally kicking you out of the game. It breaks the fourth wall because the central theme is life’s purpose: do you keep trying to find your purpose? Or do you give up?

From the new ones, Static Signal Living Legacy is a hard first-contact sci-fi actually set in Australia. This is a multi-pov story with multiple (over 10) interweaving playable characters—you cannot choose who to play, though, since their chapters alternate. However, they are all small people: a radio amateur, a news anchor, a hacker, a tenure-track researcher, a PhD student. They do not have power to change things and so all the choices are small… you choose how they feel, how they interpret something, the ideas they have—and that builds up, more and more and more, until all the smaller choices can yield to different endings.

Lastly, Mien (which is also part of my series Records of the Orders) is mostly about control and bias… and so you have two ‘modes’ to play it: green choices (mostly impostor syndrome, quiet choices), or purple (fiery, angry, revengeful). Those choices alter the story but also the character’s personality—and with it, their biases. Because they’re biased they lack information… and so if you want to learn the “whole” story you need to play both paths. Otherwise, you’re biased just like Mien is.

As you can see, to me, interactive fiction is a medium on its own, and I experiment wildly with it to push boundaries. No two stories are the same, and the mechanics (with choices at the core) change from one to another. I have learnt a lot while writing for Unearthed Stories, and I really love what I can do there.

You’ve started having guest writers joining you to write fiction for Unearthed Stories. What’s it like working with other authors and how did you approach the technical side of helping them to structure these tales?

Yes, we are inviting people! This was actually a goal that my partner and I always had when we planned Unearthed Stories. There are a few things about this, but the gist is that we acquire the stories—we do pay a sensible per-word rate, but there is no open call for submissions. We call them invited writers because, well, we invite them.

While I personally code my own stories (I’m a software engineer by trade, so it’s not a big deal to me), invited writers use a simplified template that has a very specific structure. This is meant to put guardrails about the complexity, making it more approachable; for example, we limit the number of nested choices, loops, branching placements, number of endings, and more. Likewise, we are only acquiring short stories because complexity grows exponentially with the length of the story. You need to track choices, make them carry on, make your character (and their multiple variants) consistent, and deal with interactivity-induced plot-holes.

Thus, once the writer is onboard, we offer written instructions and a template to get started. I often also do a call with them to give them some hints, and then work closely with them since I’m also the developmental editor—but beyond acting as traditional developmental editor, I also help them with the mechanics. Thinking in terms of choices, branches, and their impact requires a different mindset, and it’s very easy to stumble into common pitfalls.

Last year you published the novella The Genesis of Change, which is part of the Records of the Order series. What are your plans for the full series and how is that project going?

Yes! The Genesis of Change came out in July 2024, but the series actually started in 2022, with Mien—one of the free-to-read interactive books available in Unearthed Stories. Chronologically, Mien happens five years after The Genesis of Change, but both are great entry points: the former follows a more human-like character, the novella follows eldritch alchemists that have little in common with humans.

In terms of plans, I have so many. This is not a series but a whole universe, and I am planning to write quite a bit on it. I’m working towards releasing the first full book later in 2025, and another novella in early 2026. That said, I have at least four more books planned and two more interactive stories in the same universe. The idea is that the interactive entries are standalone and optional.

I’m super excited about this, to be honest, and can’t wait to share more details!

Your Kickstarter campaign is to fund the paperback and hardback version of your novella Dance With Me, which was originally one of your interactive fiction pieces for Unearthed Stories. Why did you want to expand this particular tale?

That’s correct, and there are a few reasons.

First, May 2025 is the second anniversary of Unearthed Stories, so we wanted to celebrate. Dance with Me was one of the first stories that we released when the app first became available… and it’s also quite a personal story.

I mentioned before that my work is generally thematic and allegorical, and Dance With Me is no exception. This is a standalone coming-of-age fairy tale fantasy where you follow a ceramic ballerina enchanted to dance—and it is themed around surviving emotional trauma, discovering one's self-worth, overcoming depression and the toxicity of self-imposed perfectionism.

It is, by far, one of the most personal books I’ve written. The main allegory of a ceramic ballerina brought to life for a sole purpose and shattered by her owner’s abuse, is derived from the imagery I used to explain my darkest moments to others. Likewise, the many positive things the secondary characters say to the protagonist are there because I needed to hear those things.

I chose this book because writing helped me cope, and I hope that reading it would help others.

Can you give us an overview of your Kickstarter? What are your stretch goals and what rewards are on offer if people back you?

We have plenty of rewards: Dance With Me in three formats (paperback, hardback, audiobook), plus another interactive standalone in the same universe, titled Our Own Rhythm. The novelised version has seven graphite illustrations (five in the paperback), and there are pledges for different combinations of items, including the chance to make your pet the main character of a cosy fantasy interactive story.

In terms of stretch goals, there are bookmarks, prints, upgrades… but there is also something wild.

If we reach 100 backers, all hardcovers for Dance With Me will become deluxe editions! It will have gold foil in the dust jacket and in the naked cover, gold foil in the edges, endpapers, and other upgrades. Best bit? If we reach this, every hardcover pledge will be upgraded! But yes, while some stretch goals depend on the amount raised, converting the hardcover to deluxe depends on the number of backers—so fingers crossed!

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions and I wish you every success with your Kickstarter campaign. If you want to support Livia you’ll find the links to her campaign and further reward details below.

Thank you so much for inviting me, Tim!

All my books (including Unearthed Stories) are listed in my website: https://liviajelliot.com/

My podcast Books Undone is here: https://podfollow.com/books-undone

And you can install Unearthed Stories for free:

●        In Android, at: https://bit.ly/unearthedstories

●        In iPhone/iOS, at: https://apple.co/48IcnYm

In terms of socials, I’m in X/Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram as @liviajelliot

Kickstarter Link & Details

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/liviajelliot/dance-with-me

Pledging opens: May 6th 2025 10:00am EST / 3:00pm London / 7:30pm India

The campaign will offer:

●        An illustrated paperback designed by me (Livia, I do everything)

○        It includes five of the original illustrations that are available in the app

○        Cover design and internal design by Livia J. Elliot

●        A very special illustrated hardcover:

○        The dust jacket and internal design is by Livia J. Elliot

○        The naked hardcover will feature the original cover by Jose Arturo Bustamante – the one he made for the interactive version, available in Unearthed Stories

○        Two additional illustrations! All by Jose Arturo Bustamante and made in graphite

○        A Foreword by author Joshua Walker

●        An audiobook (it’s already recorded) by Alison Phoenix

●        A new standalone interactive novel!

○        Titled Our Own Rhythm

○        Illustrated by mixed-media artist A. A. Chernyshov

○        It will be a digital reward distributed through Unearthed Stories

○        It is a standalone in the same universe of Dance With Me (namely, Tales of the Bookshelves) but with a different cast of characters. Also highly thematic, centred in bullying, depression, anxiety, and the journey afterwards

○        It is ~70,200 words, so a short novel

●        Some pledges will let you get custom interactive stories 👀

●        There are Very Quirky stretch goals!