A Warrior Woman & What's Worth Fighting For in Akmaral by Judith Lindbergh

In this episode, I'm chatting with Judith Lindbergh, author of Akmaral listed in the Other category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gGdvLEpGrZw

• The genesis of Akmaral from two points of reference in Judith's personal life: her obsession with archeology and her young son's obsession with pretending to be a knight in shining armor
• How Akmaral explores one woman's journey as a warrior, spiritual leader and priestess and her drive to protect her people and her family
• Setting of Akamaral in 500 BC on the Russian steppes
• History of the Amazons from Herodotus and their relationship to the characters and culture in Akmaral
• Fascinating exploration of a culture where, seemingly, a woman was permitted to both warrior and mother
• Use of weaponry and craftsmanship in Akmaral
• The study of artifacts as a way into the lives of ancient peoples
• Animals and their importance to the nomadic culture portrayed in Akmaral
• How Judith is a little famous in Kazakhstan!
• Shamanism in Akmaral and parallels to the practices of nomadic cultures today
• How long it took to write and then publish Akmaral
• Judith's lush, poetic writing in Akmaral
• Reading from Akmaral
• How Judith's background in the arts led to her becoming a novelist
• The founding of the Writers Circle in New Jersey with courses now available worldwide online
• One thing Judith learned from writing this novel that she didn't know before
• What Judith is working on now

Press Play now & be sure to check out Akmaral on Art In Fiction: https://www.artinfiction.com/novels/akmaral

Judith Lindbergh's website: https://judithlindbergh.com/

Music Credit
Paganology, performed by The Paul Plimley Trio; composed by Gregg Simpson

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Transcript

Carol Cram

Hello and welcome. I'm Carol Cram, host of The Art in Fiction Podcast. This episode features Judith Lindbergh, author of Akmaral, a novel about a nomad woman warrior on the ancient Central Asian steppes, listed in the Other category on Art in Fiction.

Judith's debut novel, The Thrall's Tale, about three women in the first Viking Age settlement in Greenland, was an Indie Bound pick, a Borders Original Voices selection, and praised by Pulitzer Prize winners Geraldine Brooks and Robert Olin Butler. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Newsweek, Writer's Digest, Literary Mama, Archaeology Magazine, Other Voices, and Up Here, the North at the Center of the World, published by University of Washington Press.

She has spoken at and published with the Smithsonian Institution and provided expert commentary in two documentary series for the History Channel. Judith received a 2024 Fellowship From the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and is the founder director of the Writers Circle, a creative writing center based in New Jersey.

Welcome to The Art In Fiction Podcast, Judith. 

Judith Lindbergh

I'm very, very happy to be here, and I'm really excited to talk to you today about my work. 

Carol Cram

Me too. I mean, Akmaral is a tour de force of a novel. It's so lush and exotic, and yet familiar in some ways. We can really identify with Akmaral, even though her way of life is so foreign.

So, tell us about the genesis of the novel. 

Judith Lindbergh

So Akmaral has its two sort of points of reference in my personal life. One is I'm obsessed with archaeology, and I have been for many, many years. My first novel is heavily relating to archaeology that I studied, and this novel even more so because Akmaral takes place 2,500 years ago in 500 BC, and there is no written record of the people that my characters are based on.

So, I had all this fascinating archaeology to dig up almost literally. I kind of wish I had actually dug up some of the archaeology. But I also had a very personal place that this story came from.

So, Akmaral is a woman warrior on the Central Asian steppes. And I am the least violent human being you could ever meet. I literally rescue insects when they get stuck in my house. I don't squish them. I don't take them outside again. But at the time that I began this novel, I was raising two very rambunctious little boys. And one of them, my youngest, for about three years thought he was a knight in shining armor. 

Which was adorable, and I loved it, except he was out in the backyard, like, playing with nerf swords with his brother and jousting and pretending he was killing things all the time, and it was this wonderful fantasy play, and I was panicked because I wanted my little boys to be gentle and peaceful and do yoga with me and be vegetarians.

I lost on all fronts, except that they're lovely young men now. Which is great. But the emotional challenges of adapting to the reality of these kids was to turn the question inward and ask myself, well, I'm not violent. What would force me to be violent and to pick up a weapon and defend myself or kill?

And obviously anyone who's been a parent will tell you that you just have to look at those little kids and you know that you will do anything to keep them safe and to protect them. So, the emotions of that, combined with this fascinating archaeology, there were several different burials that I discovered and conflated to create Akmaral and other characters in the book.

She's a warrior, but she's also a spiritual leader and a priestess, at least she becomes so over the course of the novel. And her violence is rooted in a necessity to protect her clan. And at the beginning of the book, it's just six or seven little families traveling in the empty open steppes and in the high mountains of Central Asia with their sheep and horses and camels.

And they're so vulnerable and anything can endanger them. It can be wild animals. There is a significant character in the snow leopard that is a wild beast that is endemic to the area. It can be weather, storms, things that they cannot control, and of course it can be other people, other tribes, that come and want the grassland that they need to survive with.

So, I turned my motherly, self defense and my motherly care and fierceness about my children and made a character who had that same impulse. Not a bloodthirsty warrior that wants to take over the world, but just simply a character who wants to take care of her family and keep them safe. 

Carol Cram

Well, I think that's why the novel is so relatable, as I mentioned. You know, because as a mother, you understand why she would do that. But then there's this whole level of the fact that she was trained to be a warrior right from a little girl, which I presume was a characteristic of that particular culture in that particular time, because not every culture in that period did that when girls were often, separated from boys. But they weren't in this culture.

Which was true, you found. 

Judith Lindbergh 

Yeah, absolutely. So, along with all the archaeology, is the connection to ancient Greece and the Amazon warriors of Homer and Herodotus. And, if anyone has read the histories by Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, you will remember in Book Four that they talk about the Amazons and how they could not marry until they had killed in battle.

And these are the same Amazons who fought in the Trojan War and battled Heracles and Achilles and Theseus and these great heroic women who almost always were either killed or seduced, or sometimes both. 

So, according to Herodotus, the Amazons after the Trojan War were shipped off across the Black Sea, back home to the Steppes where my story takes place.

And they hijacked the ship and threw all the men overboard because, you know, they're Amazons. They don't like being taken anywhere. But they didn't know how to sail. So, they floated for a while until they landed on the cliffs of Lake Maeotis, which is the Crimean Peninsula in modern geography.

They went off across the Steppes and captured a bunch of wild horses, and they ran into a group of Scythians. And the Scythians wanted to fight these intruders until they figured out that they were women.

And as is so often the case in these ancient Greek tales, battle turned to courtship, and pretty soon they were living together rather happily. But the Amazons didn't want to go back where the Scythians came from because women did not have the freedom to battle and fight and lead themselves and go where they wanted at will.

So, the Scythians and the Amazons decided to go far to the east to the Altai Mountains, and that's where the archaeology proves that these tales of these warrior women are real. And not only is it the archaeology, but the DNA testing proves that they are directly related to the Caucasian people of Europe.

Carol Cram

Wow. It's totally fascinating. 

I think what's really struck me is that with Akmaral, she combines being super strong warrior, but also she loves, she's a mother, she's a wife, and that, you know, we can have it all kind of thing is almost what I was thinking as I'm reading it, not that we want nowadays want to be warriors like that, but our version of warriors is, you know, careers or whatever.

But that culture had actually developed a way where women could kind of do both which is pretty remarkable. 

Judith Lindbergh: 

It is. It's an interesting, I mean, again, there's no written record. So, I was conjuring a lot of this from my own instincts and my own struggles. And like you said, we women can have it all.

But it's really hard to have it all. 

And for Akmaral, it's very hard to have it all. Because in her world, the transition from warrior to mother is a fairly precise one. And once she does have a child, she struggles because she loves her child deeply, but she misses being a warrior. And I think anyone who's had a kid and taken off from work for a few months, years, whatever, you start to go a little stir crazy because the person you are can no longer kind of coexist with this new role.

So, you're kind of lost between your commitment to your child and your commitment to the person you always thought you would be. 

And so, I have Akmaral wrestling with that. She also, her partner, and I'm going to call it husband because it's not quite as formal as all that but her partner with whom she has this child is a Scythian and he is an invader who has been captured, and they eventually get involved.

But he brings this very male dominated perspective to Akmaral’s role. So not only is she taking on the proper role that her culture has expected when you become a mother, but he's sort of like, well, you know, You can't. What are you doing? You can't. You're not a warrior. You don't have those skills.

And even her son starts to look at her like, yeah, well, you're just a girl. 

Carol Cram

I know. I love that part. 

Judith Lindbergh

So, again, even though this is ancient history, a lot of the challenges are very familiar. 

Carol Cram

It's a novel really about the complexities of being a woman and balancing so many roles. Not to say that men don't have roles too, but we do have that extra thing of that we give birth, and we have children and it's different.

It’s just different. And, Yeah, so I just love that. And putting it in the context of, 2,500 years ago was absolutely fascinating. 

And when I was trying to figure out where to put Akmaral in Art In Fiction, because it isn't particularly artsy per se, but I put it in the Other category. But as I'm reading it, I thought there's a lot about, the incredible beauty of the weapons.

There's a lot of weaponry in there. You know, the bows and the daggers and just, you have an awful lot about how they were made. So that's fine. That totally fits into Art In Fiction. But, I mean, how did you learn all that? Where did you find all that information? 

Judith Lindbergh

There's so much. I must say, one of the hardest things is most of the artifacts themselves are in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, places that are either really hard to get to or kind of unwise in the current global climate. 

So, I did an awful lot of research online and to this day have the Gallery of the Hermitage on my other browser that I occasionally just go and look at the artifacts because they're stunning. And they are in fact not only artifacts, but the craftsmanship of all material culture is extraordinary. 

One of the artifacts that is featured in the novel, although I don't call it what we call it today is the first pile carpet that is the oldest pile carpet that has ever been discovered.

It's called the Pazyryk Carpet and it's an incredibly well preserved because like my characters that I was basing the archaeology on, it was buried in permafrost and so the fabric survived, and you can see the intricacy of detail in every piece of this extraordinary carpet. Also, some of the artifacts that were included are felt works.

They had these gorgeous applique felts. And then tons and tons of beautiful gold plaques. And if you look for Scythian style art, you're going to find all these stunning gold plaques where there are all these twisted animals like leopards and tigers and griffins that are attacking horses and camels and they're all beautifully, beautifully made.

And you think they're made 2500 years ago. They're from this period and they're laid to rest. These people are laid to rest with these as part of their grave goods. 

So even beyond the weaponry, there's this stunning artistic tradition that is very specific to this time and place. And, weirdly, because my first novel is about the Viking Age, there is a connection between the style of art in the Viking period and the style of art in the Scythian period.

It's a long, complicated connection, but it is there. 

Carol Cram

Well, I was just in Greece. And so, I saw a lot of artifacts from way back, you know, back to the Mycenaeans, which are like 5, 000 years ago, whenever, and just the exquisiteness of it.

But as you're talking, and also when I was reading your novel, I thought, yeah, that's a great sort of springboard for the imagination of a novelist, are artifacts, are these ancient artifacts? I mean, I know when I was looking at them, I saw a boar's tusk helmet in Nafplio. I was like, wow. And I just love how you actually took all that and you made a novel about it.

I haven't done that yet. My novels don't take place in that time, but it's just interesting as a novelist to look at artifacts of whatever period. 

You really brought that out. Did you get to go to the places where the novel is set?

Judith Lindbergh

I have not had the chance and it's killing me because I did go to Greenland when I studied.

I went to Iceland in Greenland for the first book, but the kids were little. My husband was like, no, you can't leave. It's kind of a scary place to go. And since then, I've been, weirdly, since the novel has. I've gotten a lot of attention from the Kazakhstan media, which is super fun. 

I'm kind of famous, a little teeny famous in Kazakhstan.

Carol Cram

Wow, who knew? 

Judith Lindbergh

Yeah, I'll take it. And I keep hoping that they'll invite me to go. There has been some discussion, although no official invitation. And I also have an acquaintance, a friend who works in Mongolia, studying some of the artifacts that are also mentioned in the books. There's these tall stone stelae.

They are stone pillars with the flying deer image, which is very prominent in the book. It's also on the cover of the novel. And it's a tattoo that was on one of the burials, a mummy. And so, this flying deer image is very important culturally. And so, I was lucky enough to have this friend who's working in Mongolia. He verified some of my theories and was very helpful. So maybe someday I'll go and dig with him in Mongolia. 

Carol Cram

I was reading in your author's notes, how some of the rituals and all various parts of the novel are still practiced to this day. So how did you even know that?

Judith Lindbergh

So, the challenge of working with archaeology. Is that there, there's no one you can talk to, and there's no living, breathing culture. Certainly, there are descendants, but they're so far removed as to be an irrelevancy. But what's interesting is in Central Asia, we still have people who live the nomadic lifestyle.

They still live in yurts. They still travel with their herds and horses. They also go into town in the winter because it's cold, you know, so they're not fully the way that they were maybe even a hundred years ago. 

But because that tradition is carried on even to this day, I could deconstruct it and bring some, living, breathing, daily life and the seasonal round of migrations were very much based on the nomadic traditions of the people who live in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tuva, which is a region in southern Siberia.

It's all related, and this also goes back all the way to the reindeer herding cultures who still live in Siberia, but there's a connection on the opposite side. Greece is on one side and, Siberia and the far east are on the other.

There's a connection from the reindeer herding cultures and the shamanism that they practice with my characters in their novel. 

Carol Cram

And I think reading the novel, it's almost on a visceral level you can get it because all of our ancestors were nomadic, no matter where you come from. The lifestyle that these people had is familiar almost in our DNA because you go back far enough, that's what we were all doing, you know, to survive. 

Judith Lindbergh

Exactly, we had to move with the resources, because we didn't have a way to create the resources ourselves in a single place, so we moved where they were, and now we have learned how to bring them to us, which is advantageous, but also challenging in its own way.

Carol Cram

Yes. We’ve so lost touch with nature. 

Another thing that struck me in the novel is the major role that animals play. I mean, they're practically on every page. So, talk about the importance of animals in, nomadic cultures then as now. 

Judith Lindbergh

Absolutely. So, going back to those plaques, they were always of animals, fierce, wild beasts, usually attacking more domesticated creatures. And the role of animals in these people's lives were as visceral as living and breathing.

They took everything from their animals, whether it was food or clothing or what they needed for transportation. They all rode horses. Even today, the nomadic peoples in the Central Asian region teach their children to ride horses before they can walk.

So, they couldn't live without their animals, and they were as devoted to caring for their herds and horses as they were respectful of the wild beasts that pretty much owned the landscape. 

And even if you go back into prehistoric times beyond my characters, there are petroglyph stone carvings on walls that show that the same hunting and gathering and rituals were still practiced thousands of years ago. So, animals were a visceral part of daily life, but they also were symbolic of spiritual qualities.

Each of the sections of the book is related to an animal, and the animal is part of the, the journey that Akmaral has to take. And it's also symbolic of her relationship with the man she falls in love with, and with her own destiny. 

So going back to that flying deer which is the tattoo that eventually lands on her shoulder, just like the mummy that I studied.

 That is a spiritual animal, as well as a beast you might see on the Steppes. And it is deeply connected to destiny and the ancestors, and whatever the afterlife may be for these characters. And it's all rooted in animals. 

Carol Cram

Yes, and also the pantheon that you have, the religious practices of these people, was a major part of the novel. So, I read that a lot of the rituals and other elements are still practiced today. So, where did you kind of get the inspiration, for their sort of religious beliefs? 

Judith Lindbergh

So, shamanism is definitely the religious practice of the characters. And again, modern day shamanism has its own kind of nuanced, approaches and different cultures that practice shamanism do it differently, but within that is a deep respect for the land, nature, the spirits, and the ancestors.

And one of the rituals that is practiced frequently in the book is this scattering of mare's milk. So, like I said, they survive with their animals. They literally drink the horse's milk. And when they are on going off to battle or someone has to be blessed or there's something that's threatening that needs to be addressed to the spirits, the shamanists.

And there's two shamanists, but the official shamanist is the Ak Kam, the white shamanist. And she tosses mare’s milk in the four cardinal directions. And I have, videos of people doing this. And men and women are both shamans in modern day. But there are quite a few female shamanists in the region today.

And the other shamanist in my book is called the Kara Kam, which means the black shamanist, and she is the unsanctioned, sort of scary.

Carol Cram

I liked her. 

Judith Lindbergh

I liked her, too. I love her very much. Scary priestess that, the official priestess, the Ak Kam, who does all the blessings and, you know, everyone has a celebration, she's there.

 She sort of represents the safe realm of the tribe. But in truth, to truly become, what Akmaral has to become, she has to go into the darkness. And she goes there.

There are several points, but one particular dark night of the soul, because everything collapses on her. And she spends weeks, perhaps months, I never tell you exactly how long, in a cave. 

And the spirit of the Kara Kam is part of that transformation. And I won't say exactly how it happens or what happens because I intentionally leave several things ambiguous because I want you to figure it out your own way.

But the spirit of the rituals with there's seeds that are burned, and in the archaeology, there has been hemp found in the burials, so we know that's what's going on for real. So, there is sacrifices of horses. Again, horses. I always like to say if you think of a horse as a Tesla, you get what a huge sacrifice it is to sacrifice the horse for these people.

 So, they would sacrifice the horses, and they have to each have a piece of the meat because they're all sharing the body that holds them together and all of these are taken from cultural roots of tribes and peoples who live in the region. 

I kind of took from a bunch of different places to conflate them and create something unique to itself, but it is actually rooted in true anthropology.

Carol Cram 

Well, this is the glory of writing a novel, isn't it? You can take disparate elements and put them together. 

So, I was struck with just the density of this novel. How long did it take you to write it? And research, I guess. 

Judith Lindbergh: 

Oh, goodness gracious. Well, the story of how long it took is not only a question of how long it took to write it, but how long it took to publish it.

Carol Cram: 

Oh, well, that too, yeah. 

Judith Lindbergh 

So, my first novel was published in 2006, which is a sad and depressing long time ago. And I had a good solid draft of Akmaral in 2009, but that was the middle of the Great Recession, and publishing was not particularly looking kindly on a novel about a people in a place that nobody had ever heard of.

And so, I continued working on it. I switched agents. I tried a thousand things. I wrote another book. I went back to it. And, eventually, I guess it was two, two and a half years ago, my dear friend, and I hope listeners of your podcast know the wonderful author, Stephanie Cowell. She and I have known each other for years, and she said that she had found a home for one of her most recent books at Regal House Publishing.

And she introduced me and thank goodness they liked it. And they said yes, because it had been a very, very long road. But within that incredibly long period of time, I wasn't only working on that, thank goodness, but I also was returning to it again and again and again. 

And over time the research also evolved, so I was adding new understandings of the culture and the artifacts and things as time passed. And the one thing that's fascinating to me is after the book was in final edits, a new piece of research came out about one of the burials that in fact the person had died of cancer. And they didn't know this until like two years ago maybe. And I was like, oh no, I have to rewrite the entire book, but I decided that that would be a different book. 

Carol Cram

Well, to keep yourself motivated that long with this project is really admirable because I find that difficult. I was saying, Oh, if it's taking too long, there's something wrong with me. But no, your story tells me it just takes what it takes.

Judith Lindbergh

There are books I've got on the burner that I'm like, is it because it's not working? Or is it just that it's not ready yet? And I can't always tell in the process. 

And so, I keep going until I get really frustrated or someone reads it and says, yeah, this isn't working. It's not working. Which I hope I don't hear. 

Carol Cram: 

Yes, exactly.

I want to talk a little bit about your writing because it is so poetic and so dense in a good way. I mean, I could really see myself on the Steppes. I could smell it. I mean, it was, it's as visceral is the word we've used a few times already. It really is like that. 

So how do you do that? How do you write so sensually? 

Judith Lindbergh

I love rich, beautiful language. I read for character and language more than anything else. I love a good story, but I'm not necessarily reading just to kind of turn pages, I really want to sink in.

My background along with many different things is in acting. So, I spent a number of years working on Shakespeare and Chekhov and Shaw and not only just reading it, being it. And I always am understanding language as these unique ways of expressing a worldview and a poetry.

And I also am deeply involved and engaged with nature. I mean, not as much as I would like to be, but I hike almost every day, and I know the woods really well and I know a lot about wildlife and for me that is sort of a spiritual experience. So, when I bring my language to that, it feels, I don't want to say religious, but it feels very powerful beyond me.

And so, when I write about these places that are so magnificent and breathtaking, literally. You go to a place like this and you're like, how can we express that power on the page? And if I just said, you know, it was green and grassy, which it is green and grassy, it wouldn't move me to feel what I feel when I'm in a place like that.

I want to feel that, that awe in my language and I work really, really. I mean, another reason it takes me, it does take me a long time to write a book is because I'm always crafting the words and trying to find rhythms and trying to find the authenticity of the rhythms of that unique language, character and world. So, if you read, you know, my first novel and then you read Akmaral, there is a richness to both of them, but the language is completely different.  

Carol Cram 

I can tell that you love language for sure. 

Judith Lindbergh

Yeah. 

Carol Cram

But yeah, and it makes for a great experience for the reader. So, on that note, would you like to read us a little bit from Akmaral?

Judith Lindbergh

I would be very happy to. All right. So, this is the very opening. And it really sets the stage for, I think, where the story goes. 

A black stork drifts onto an isle in the middle of a great shallow lake that stretches for miles—a shimmering mirage. The water in some places rises only to the great bird's ankles. It nips at the fishes, swallowing them by lifting up its beak and choking them back whole. 

Some say I am like that, stately yet savage, as easy to call for blood as for silence, as longing for the warmth of a lover's chest as to shove it off at the call to arms. But I do not like battle. Only know that a show of strength is required to keep the peace. Blood is strength which often forms still pools on the battlefield, like this lake, or others that are formed by sudden rains. When the sun rises, it dries into the soil and cannot be seen. Blood, passing into memory. 

I, too, am passing into memory. I am dying and will lie soon within the earth and be forgotten. For most of us, it does not last long—this life. A warrior's death always comes early. Yet mine has lasted long enough, longer than I would have thought. I should be proud of what I've done, of defending my people, of guiding them such a great distance from where we had begun. 

They call us Sauromatae—the Greeks do and the Scythians also— “lizard beasts” for our glittering armor scales. But I remember a time when our people had no name, when we were a disparate multitude of wandering herders—a thousand, thousand isolated clans clustered into petty camps, our wind-rattled yurts scattered like dung clots across the undulating steppes. Half our horses then were wild, raising dust into dry showers; our sheep, goats, and camels tirelessly gnawing at the tall, sharp grass, turning the hapless earth from emerald, to amber, to ashen.

Out of this I made a nation, though it was nothing I ever sought, never my intent, nothing I would have chosen. This throng that surrounds me now they call a confederacy, and of its greatness they name me leader—this, my legacy that will linger long beyond my death, exalting all the mighty strife that I abhor.

For most of my life, I have served the war god Targitai. In his duty, I have worn the pelts of wolves and leopards and hung the horns of wild boars upon my belt. Many other beasts I have hunted roaming across our grasslands. And I have led my people into battle, and I have regretted it. 

What I did was as anyone would do to protect her people, her family, her children.

I have tried to make amends for the damage I have done. If they call me queen, it is little honor for my sorrows. My people gather around me, singing chants and ringing small bronze bells. Hewana, they call me—mother of our tribe—but I have been a mother only once, and not for very long. Most of them do not recall.

This has been my journey, and I will leave it—now, or very soon. Though these last breaths before death are anything but sweet. Perhaps no one is proud on the day of their death. All are filled with question and doubt. As am I. As I have been, almost from the beginning. 

Carol Cram

Oh! Thank you. That is so wonderful. That's a really great example of the power of your writing. You are a very good writer. 

Judith Lindbergh 

Thank you. I really appreciate it. 

Carol Cram

As I said, I'm in awe as a writer myself. And I was looking at your background. And so, the arts have played a really big role in your life. You were a dancer; you were in theatre. So, what led you to become a novelist?

Judith Lindbergh

I always used to say that I had to dance when I was young and that I would write when I was old. Old in the dance world came at around 27 when I retired, and I was bored to death at temp jobs in New York City offices because I had to figure out how to make a living. 

And you had to kind of look busy, so, you know, I was writing, and I was like, okay, I'll write a letter to a friend, and this was in the mail kind of day.

And then I'd write another one, and I finished writing all my friends, and I was like, okay, now what do I do? So, I started writing little stories. And one story just kept getting longer and longer and longer. And I was like, Oh no, I'm writing a novel. And I didn't know what I was doing. And I kept going on that book for about three years.

And I finished it. And I tried to get it published. And I'm so glad it didn't get published because it was bad. Oh, it was so bad. But I learned how to write from that experience. And then I finally started working on something new. And that something new, still writing at the various offices, became my first novel, The Thrall's Tale.

I mean, that one took eight years to finish too, so it was a long time. But I fell in love with the world and the characters and the language, and I just, I also act my characters out a lot of the time. I speak the words, which I highly recommend to anyone working on a book and trying to get the rhythms right.

we read on the page, we read on the computer, but we have to hear the words. And that happens when I work. 

Carol Cram

That's very good advice. your background reminds me a little bit of my own because I did a lot of temp work in my twenties and did a lot of writing in those days. But, you know, same as you, it's probably just as well that stuff from that period didn't get published.

Because then I had another career for many decades and then finally got to do it. But it takes a long time to learn how to be a writer, doesn't it? 

Judith Lindbergh

It does, and I think we're always learning. I think we should stretch ourselves. In new directions. I, I've got a piece right now that I'm working on that's weirdly experimental and nothing like anything I've written in my life, and I can't decide if it's good or bad, but I'm fascinated by it, so I keep working on it.

Carol Cram

Well, it's all about the process, isn't it? I mean, that's the reward, is we get to do it. 

Judith Lindbergh

Yeah, exactly, exactly. 

Carol Cram

So, you started something called the Writer's Circle. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Judith Lindbergh

So, yes, the Writer's Circle is my creative writing community. It is in real life, and it's also virtual so we have all kinds of classes, online and in person. In New Jersey, I'm based in New Jersey. It started basically when my advance was running out from The Thrall's Tale. And I had to figure out how to make a living and I didn't want to go back to working in corporate in New York City. 

So I said, well, I can teach some classes, and I started really teaching kids, because I was seeing my children and other kids in the neighborhood who used to love writing, and their parents would complain that the minute they got to school, they were so stifled by the rigors of having to stay in the three-paragraph essay, that they got paralyzed on the page, and I said, well, I can fix that.

And at the beginning I had kids on the floor pretending they were animals and writing in first person about their experience. And we would draw superheroes and write about our superhero lives and all these cuckoo things. And this is all my acting background, really. 

And, eventually, I had someone I didn't really know at the time very well, who became my business partner, another novelist named Michelle Cameron, who you may have some familiarity with her work because she also writes historical fiction, and she came along and wanted to get involved.

And together, kind of quite organically, the Writer's Circle became a think. We’ve got, I think, 30 people on staff, all published authors, teaching different classes, from memoir to poetry to experimental fiction to novels and everything in between. And we have students all around the country and even around the world, which happened during the pandemic because people found us.

And, and it's been a very rewarding experience to share my love of writing and to share it in a place where I can kind of take off the barriers and the anxieties of publication and just say, just write. Just write. You said before it's process. It's all about the process. And of course, those of us who are trying to get our work into the world are worried about the product.

But for me, the purity of allowing the youngest kids to the oldest seniors to share their stories, to experiment on the page, and to just gently guide them to making their work better is really, really inspiring, and I love what I do.

Carol Cram

It's very rewarding. Yeah, I sometimes do seminars, especially with older people, and it really is great. Getting away from always worrying about publication and things. It's actually not good in some ways. I mean, yes, we want a career, but 

Judith Lindbergh 

It's hard to have a career as an author, but the great thing that I can say about writing that is not true about all the other creative professions I've had, is no one has to pay you to do it.

You just sit down, and you start writing, and you can do it as much as you want, and for as long as you want, and it's all good. And then when we start trying to submit and publish and all that nonsense, it gets very fraught. But the creative process is yours. You own it. You don't have to get hired for a show or be employed by a dance company. You just get to do it all the time. 

Carol Cram

I know. And it's so wonderful when you get in that zone and you're writing, there's nothing like that. 

Judith Lindbergh

Exactly. Exactly. 

Carol Cram

So, one of my goals with The Art In Fiction Podcast is to inspire other authors. I think we've been inspiring other authors all along in this conversation, but what's one thing you've learned from writing your novels that you didn't know before?

Judith Lindbergh

I think I've learned who I am and how I have grown over time through the work that I've written. My first novel was about a slave. She's a Viking slave in Greenland. And at the time, I felt quite enslaved by various aspects of my life that weren't going where I wanted them to go. And over time, and because of the writing of that book and Akmaral, I have become a warrior.

And I wasn't conscious of the metaphors that I was personally infusing my work with, especially not in the beginning. Now I'm much more aware of why I'm doing what I'm doing because I have to explain it to people all the time. But I think I worked out through my creative process the things that were in my way because my characters had to go through things that I could not.

And I allowed myself to grow through the process of writing. So, whether you are aiming to publish or just aiming to explore your own creativity or somewhere in between, the work of the writing process is going to help you evolve. 

Carol Cram

Yes, good point. Of course, the arts are our savior with everything, I think. When you're being creative, you can't hurt people, right? 

Judith Lindbergh

Only on the page. You can do all kinds of things on the page. 

Carol Cram

We need everybody to be involved in the arts. That's like my mission in life. I agree. So, just one last question. Can you share with us what you're working on now, if you'd like to?

Judith Lindbergh

Oh my, well I have this crazy experimental thing that is not historical fiction, but it is about art. It's about, it has a heavy theme in environmental collapse, which is one of my obsessive things that is almost always in the underpinnings of my books. But it also is about a performance art troupe that is putting together an in-situ performance in the middle of climate change.

Carol Cram

Fantastic! So where are you with that? 

Judith Lindbergh

I am trying to figure out if all the crazy mosaic bits and pieces make sense, and I think I'm about two thirds of the way through a solid, viable draft. And then I'm not sure what it is, so I don't know quite what I'm going to do with it, but I love it because it's challenging me to think differently and to find yet another new voice in my work, which, you know, I don't know. Either it's brilliant or it's horrible, but I'm okay with that. 

Carol Cram

That's okay. Well, yeah, and we have to keep growing and changing as authors. You don't want to just keep doing the same kind of novel over and over again. Well, at least I don't. Which sometimes gets you in trouble with publishing because they kind of want you to do the same kind of novel over and over, but I don't want to.

Fortunately, now we have choices. 

Judith Lindbergh

Yes, we have all kinds of ways to get our work into the world. And I just want to. Grow and discover the new thing about myself and my understanding of life and its purpose through the work that I'm doing. 

Carol Cram

Exactly. Well, I look forward to hearing about that novel because that sounds like a definite art and fiction novel. Art in fiction isn't just historical, it's any period. The only thing that brings everything together is something to do with the arts, inspired by one of the arts in like ten categories. 

Judith Lindbergh

I will definitely look forward to talking to you again then. 

Carol Cram

Yeah, well I'll see you at the Historical Novel Society conference in June.

Judith Lindbergh

Yeah, it's going to be wonderful. I can't wait to meet so many people I've only known virtually. 

Carol Cram

I know, it's really fun to connect with. They're your people. 

Judith Lindbergh

 Exactly. 

Carol Cram

So, thank you so much, Judith, for talking with me. This has been just delightful. 

Judith Lindbergh

It's a pleasure, Carol, and I look forward to giving you a hug when we see each other in Vegas. 

Carol Cram: I've been speaking with Judith Lindbergh, author Akmaral, listed in the Other category on Art In Fiction at www.artinfiction. com. 

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