Award‑Winning Author Lexy Shaw Delorme on Writing, Travel & Identity

Some stories don't begin with a single moment. They begin with a life lived in chapters. A life that moves through countries, careers, identities, collecting pieces along the way.Today's guest has lived more lives than most novels contain. A rock musician, a science graduate, an attorney, a world traveler, and now an award winning author.This is a story about reinvention, about truth, about what we show and what we hide. I'm your host, Michael Hirst. Welcome to One more Thing before youe Go.Today I'm honored to welcome Lexi Shaw delorme, the award winning author behind the Limeret series. Lexi, welcome to the show.

Hello. Hello. You made me sound so cool. Thank you.

Well, you are cool. I mean, you are cool. You live the life.I mean, we're gonna get into that, but like, holy smokes, you, you have an amazing journey getting to where you're at today.

But I do, I'm used to people just saying weird, but you know. Yeah, I like this. That's great.

We kind of have that in common, too. I like to start at the beginning. Like all good stories start. Right, right. Where'd you grow up?

So I grew up kind of all over the place. So my, my father was a pastor in the Navy, and so that created some very interesting dynamics for me.I was like the, the pastor's kid, which means I'm supposed to be terrible, but actually wasn't.So I was born in San Diego and then we moved to Texas and then we moved to Boston, and then we moved to Rhode island, then Hawaii, then New Orleans, and then we ended up in North Carolina, which is where my father had his crisis of faith.And because I was about 11 or 12 when he had that, I got introduced with him to a whole bunch of world religions and a whole bunch of different spiritual practices and stuff to study. And so that gives an 11 and 12 year old a really interesting kind of background in philosophy.And spent time, graduated from high school in North Carolina and then lived there. Went to University of North Carolina for undergraduate and lots of other. My, my job stuff. But that was kind of the pathway.And then since then, I've lived across countries and continents.

I mean, like, wow, all of that, Wow. I mean, being a Navy kid, that, and obviously a lot of that had to do with being a military family and having to move wherever the military sent you.

Yep.

I understand that perspective. It's brilliant that you've lived on three continents, across four countries, nine states, 21 cities.How did all that movement shape your sense of home and your sense of story? Because you're Such a brilliant author.

Thank you. Thank you. So it really shapes who you are, both in positive and negative ways. And now I'm a mother and we are.My husband does international business and so we're doing the same thing that I did. Right. And I actually feel more comfortable with that than I would have been if someone said, you're gonna live in the Same City for 20 years.Because the weird thing that happens is you find yourself when you move from place to place to place, you create these patterns of how long relationships last and how long life lasts.And so after you're moving every two years, you're like, anything I do only has a two year lasting point, you know, so I can run away from it if I want to. So, like, they're not as much consequences.There's a lot of positives and there's a lot of ways you have to be strong and resilient and all those things. And my kids are doing that right now as well. But it also creates a kind of a different way that you view time.And I'm fascinated by the concept of time that comes out in a lot of my work too. So that shaped me as this kind of always an outsider. And in writing, that means I tend to be very fast. Fascinated by the outsider's perspective.I have a sense of it because that was kind of my growing up face.

I think that would be helpful, especially within creating characters and the dynamics of that. In particular, the characters, the stories, the genres, everything. I think that would have a thing.Was there a moment in particular, a single moment when you realized that you were a storyteller? Because I think it's unique when we. My father. I grew up with a. My father was a journalist.

Oh, nice.

He. He also was like every other journalist was writing his own novel and, you know, he did a bunch of short stories and things like that.So I. I grew up in a newsroom. I grew up with back in the day when everybody had typewriter.So you'd walk in to give that telegraph and, you know, there's like all you hear is, you know, a hundred typewriters. Just.

That's so right.

Everybody doing their own thing. So. So I appreciate from that perspective how stories are created. So that was a long way to get around that question.

So interesting for me. So I'd always written, right. So I wrote music. I wrote bad stories. I mentioned that to you before. Horrible high school stories. Yeah.And even when I did music, I was better at lyrics than anything else. When we started moving abroad after I'd done Law and science and stuff. And we.My husband got this job, and they said, okay, you're going to have to move every two years. I was like, I'm not taking the bar everywhere I go. I'm not about to play that game. Because by the time I get the. Get, take it.And I'm licensed to work, we're moving, so I have to find something else to do with myself.So I did travel writing, and I wrote about travel with kids, and I did that while we lived in Paris the first time and while we were in Hong Kong, and then when we moved to London. I have vivid memory. I was thinking, you know, I've had all these characters in my head for a long time.Like, I've had characters that have lived in my head for, like, 25 years. And I was like, you know, maybe I'll do something with them. And I was talking to my husband over dinner at an Argus steakhouse, I remember.And I said, you know, I think I'm gonna write a novel. And my husband went, oh, you're not going to do that. You won't take the time to do that. And I went, excuse me. And eight books later, take that.Exactly.

That's a.

And he told me, I did that to motivate you. And I'm like, yeah, you say that now.

Well, that's the correct answer.

Exactly.

37 Years going on, 38 years married. I understand the correct answer.

Yeah, we're 20 this year, so congratulations.

Well, you know, that, that. That basically your life is kind of a book. You've had more chapters than most novels. Musician, scientist, attorney, expat, author.Which version of yourself surprised you the most by becoming the most useful in your writing? Do you think of all of that because you thought, I'm going to write a novel? Did you call on all of that to create your first novel?

I did. Interesting thing. That's a really good question. And interestingly, I think the thing that I called on most were my questions about life.Because they say you write to answer the questions that you have. Right. And all my life, I've been really fascinated by the concept of consciousness, right. And the relationship between, say, consciousness and time.And my first three books, you don't get as much into this. My first three books have half supernatural, and they have some romance, and they. One has legal thriller, one has.In addition to that, one has historical in addition to that, and one has YA coming of age in addition to that. But all. All of those are the beginning of this.And you can read them in any order all of those are in the beginning of something that is then an eight book series that is answering my questions about consciousness. Because that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to say what do I think this means?What do I think is the relationship between consciousness and time and reality? And so there's a lot of that in it. And it's not all about that. It's not, it doesn't feel heavy in the beginning.But this is just, just to say there's a character that is personification of time in, you know, later chapters.

So does your. Do you. If I can ask this, forgive me how obviously you have the, the number of books that you have.The short period of time that I was able to prepare, I wasn't able to go across all of them. Do you have in your series are your characters thematic throughout all of the series or just through each novel in particular?Or do they, do they have crossover? How does that work?

They absolutely do. So one of the things that I really wanted in writing was to love, have the audience love these characters that I've had in my head for a long time.So the first book has a point of view of a character named Sarah who is a paralegal with a kind of failed life. And she meets Sarah, someone who stopped aging in 1905. And it's, it's actually a legal thriller as well. And the second book has got.The point of view is of a 17 year old girl who is. Has really had a traumatic past. The minute she sort of became a teenager, people became attracted to her uncontrollably like people.She was in danger of being attacked most of the time. And then the third book, the major character is a poor white woman in the rural south in the US in World War II.But all of these characters start coming together in the later books. So all of the point of view characters exist through the whole series and they come in and out of each other's books.So Kyo, which is in the first book, is also in Fanning Fireflies, the third book. And Kara and Dante, who you see in Bright Midnights, also show up in Fanning Fireflies. So they all kind of move in and out of each other's stories.I, I spent five years creating the world before I put anything to paper in terms of writing. Yeah. And then, and then when I did, just for full transparency, right. I wasn't super brilliant. I wrote a hundred. A million word book.The first effort.

A hundred million or a million.

A million. A million word book.

A million million word book. Holy smokes.

Yeah. And then I went, nobody's reading this. So that's why I thought, I can do this in one book. No, no, you can't.

It'd be hard to mail to a publisher.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like, here's the one. Wait a minute, we got about 20 more boxes out. We'll bring them in.

Exactly.

Wow. That's amazing though. I think that. Forgive me, I'm sorry.I think that in doing that, it allowed you the opportunity to kind of, kind of feel things out and kind of kind of fine tune stuff. Right.

Well, it was the first time I'd done a long form writing. I've written my whole life in legal and in science and in, you know, music. But it was the first time I tried to do a long form novel.And I hadn't created my own kind of pattern for it, my own work thing.And I realized, coming from the attorney background, like you said, what happens in your, your background, your particular background, you have certain habits you have that you can use to help you. And one of them for me is like outlining.I'm an outliner, you know, I have train stations, I call them train stations that I write, and then from each station to each station, but I will end up at those stations. And so I wrote all the books before I started publishing any of them.

Instead of doing it sequentially, you went ahead and wrote each one of them before we published, but you fine tuned them, I'm assuming, prior to the next one going out and the next one going out. That's brilliant. Actually. That's an amazing way to approach that.

So that came from an experience that I had in music, which, you know, it's like life teaches you the hard lessons. So we were, we were in a band and I said, we had a video on MTV in the middle of the night one night, and they chose a song.The company chose a song to put on the out there that I didn't like. I wrote it, but I didn't really like it. The bridge is awful. Right. And so now I'm stuck with this thing because I didn't have control.And I realized after that that I needed to have that control, which is one of the reasons why I chose to. We have our own imprint called Limerick Publishing. Right.And I chose to do this because we have the assets and the way to do it, and I still am able to have that control.If I have all the books written, then it's not like I'm going to have to get to a point where I Have to go, oh, that one in book two, I'm going to have to change that. Or that doesn't make sense. Or I have to change the story. So it gave me the ability to have.The ability to have 4,000 spreadsheets with things tracked.

Wow. That's a lot of organization. Yeah, that's a lot.

But. But fun. Really, Actually really fun.

Well, I can imagine. I mean, like you said earlier, I like how you said building a world.You built this world prior to kind of releasing it to the world, which is, again, a brilliant way of approaching. I've talked to a lot of other authors that do a series and they wrote a book and then they kind of went, I think I should write a second one.Should I connect it to the first one? You know, you know, those kind of things. But I think that you want to. That's unique. That's very. Your first. Your first novel was Limerent, correct?

The first novel is Kaio, actually, I have it.

This one, it almost looks like Ciao a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyo. So did that explore appearance versus reality?

It does. So in that book, the woman who is the main POV character.Actually, the book starts out with a boy in a Hole in 1905 in Brazil in the latex harvesting area, who's been thrown into hole to die. He's like, in his teens. He doesn't know exactly how old he is because it was in a tribe in Brazil in 1905.And he gets infected with a virus that actually mutates. And you don't learn this in exactly the moment, but it makes it that he can't age.And so the next chapter is a woman living in Brooklyn in current time. And she has a horrible life. An abusive boyfriend. She's a paralegal. She'd been married to another lawyer.He died and left her not in a great situation. And she's treated badly in her law firm.And it's about a parallel thing of her meeting this kid who is not a kid and who she kind of recognizes is not a kid really fast and something that's going on in her law firm where there is a case with an abuse situation going on. And I will say that the legal stuff on this I drew from actual experience that I had in law, and it's the reason that I left family law.

I was going to ask you that. Whether or not when you look at your character, do you see pieces of yourself in them or. Or cases that you've dealt with? Because I have that.You know, when you're involved in this from any perspective, and especially from, like, the legal perspective, whether you're a lawyer, an attorney, or whether or not you're a cop or a firefighter, an emt, a doctor. All of those little tidbits of life, whether they're at their worst or, like, the best people at their worst or whatever, they always stick with you.

Exactly, Exactly. Exactly. That was another. I'm glad you said that. That's another reason why I write, because I had this moment.I remember I was working in South Africa, and so I worked and did international law, and I was in London, but I went to South Africa a lot.And I was going down the highway with these people and that I worked with, and there was this flock of green butterflies that came and descended across the highway, managed to miss all the cars, no splat, Right. And went across the highway. And I looked at that and I thought that was so magical and so weird.But that memory, when I die, dies with me, unless I put it somewhere.

That's cool.

And so I thought that these experiences that I've had, these things that I've been given this incredible honor to see. Right. I should put somewhere so they continue to live. Right.

Well. And I mean, obviously some of these things are. Are positive. I mean, from what I've.

Some are not.

You say some are not, but that's life. Yeah, life. We have good things, we have bad things, and sometimes they overlap. Sometimes, you know, one is more worse than the other.

And I think what I aim to do with my books is to, like, I don't tend to see things really as good and bad. I tend to see them as a spectrum. Right. Or people as having a spectrum. So you have narrow spectrum people and broad spectrum people.And I write broad spectrum characters. So a broad spectrum character on one side can be like an angel, but they have the capacity on the other side to be an absolute monster.And it's the fact that they have that swing is what makes them sort of what they are. And, you know, you see that in real life. You see, like, if you read about Mother Teresa, she just did all this wonderful thing.She was considered a saint. And yet you hear about some of the other things she actually did in life. And it's like, okay, you see the other swing, right?There's a lot of people who don't have that kind of level of swing. And so it's a question of, is that a good or bad thing to have such breadth of swing? But.But for characters that I have in my books, the ones that have to step out into being more. More means more of both,.

Which I think is a unique way of approaching things, especially from a writer's perspective. You have an insight to many things that other people don't normally, on an average, daily basis, have insight to.In regard to that, you see the larger spectrum of everything. Cops. We see. We see. We see people. We see people at their. At their best.We see the best people at their worst, you know, and everything in between kind of a situation. And. And, you know, you see. You kind of go. You have to stop and think, well, I don't think they would. Like Mother Teresa.That's an interesting way that you brought that up, is that you would look at somebody and you would see some of the accomplishments, and you kind of go, they would never do that. But then the reality is that part just stays hidden until it comes out, which is, you know, kind of interesting.

And we're actually seeing a lot of that kind of stuff now, so.

Yes, we are.

Yeah. And. Yeah, that stuff, that hidden stuff eventually comes out.And I have people who've had trouble reading my books because, as people will tell me, I don't pull punches and I don't. I'm.

That's honesty in writing. And I think that honesty in writing is a good thing. I think that honesty in writing is a good thing.I believe that it gives you more of an authentic approach to the story, number one. It gives more credence as you read it and pulls together, and we can all go. I recognize that. And I think that's something that we should embrace.Yeah, I think it's your second novel, and forgive me if I didn't get it right. But. But the second level deals with necessary and unnecessary violence. How do you approach that emotionally, as a writer putting that?

Yeah, so that's actually the one that's written. It's the third one. It's called Fanning Fireflies.And it's actually written from the perspective of a poor white woman living in North Carolina in 1944, and she is working at the draft office, and she meets and falls in love with an African American soldier. There's no real romance because it can't happen. Right. But there's a connection.And that was a time where we saw a lot of necessary and unnecessary violence. Right. There was World War II, which was out there. You know, everyone was fighting to try and help people, to try and save people.And yet at the same time, at home in the US There was a lot of violence being directed at very vulnerable people. So it Was, you know, how do you balance that? And where is violence acceptable?Where is it something that has to happen versus where is it somebody abusing their power?

I agree with that. I mean, we're seeing that come back, unfortunately, yes.From the perspective and dealing as my previous profession, understanding violence, it's always a difficult topic, no matter what how you approach it, but we always have a responsibility in portraying it. And I think that from what I've been able to read about yours, you have portrayed it with responsibility, which I think is a good thing.

I try. I try. I mean, I think that my theory is that if. To what you said earlier, if we pretend something isn't there, it becomes more dangerous.If you as a person look inside yourself and you see your shadow side and you recognize it and you bring it over for coffee, you're less likely to do something awful because you have your. You're working within it. I know I'm not an ideal person. I am deeply flawed as a human, but I own that.And I try my best to be helpful to other people. And I, you know, all those things. I'm far from perfect.And I think that it's important when you're creating characters not to show, not to have them as. As perfect, not to have the world that they're in as too idealized. I mean, I know people want to read fantasy and there's a place for.For, you know, roses and all that, but for me, I felt it. I really want to make commentary on what is important to me, which is going back to what is consciousness? What is our place in the universe?What are we here for? What part of us lives on or moves on? Why? You know, all those kind of questions, and all that is part of it.

So many questions, so little time.

Exactly.

That's a lot of questions. Yeah, I think. But we all go through that. We're human beings. I mean, we all want to be able to do the right thing.And I think for the most part, we feel that we should all be able to do the right thing.And I think presenting it in such a way, especially from a written perspective and doing it in a character perspective, uh, that's a brilliant way of approaching that without getting, you know, some. Give people opportunity to kind of think about it and go, yeah, well, I can't. I recognize that.Or, yeah, I think that, yeah, maybe I need to think about myself or think about Uncle Joe or kind of a thing.

Well, see, that's. That's thing like. Like characters give people a safe place to observe.

Yeah.

Without Being judged without having someone else come into it. It's just them. And I remembered, like for the fanning fireplace, I. For a while I worked in a cigarette factory in the summers in North Carolina.It's the way we made money. And a cigarette factory is in this. This is once again how I use my, my experiences.But I remember there was a guy who was there and he was a Harley biker guy. Sweetest. He could be as a person, incredibly racist and. But in this way where he had two really good friends who were African American.And I was asking him, he would say something horrible about African American people. And I was like, why are you saying that? And he was like, because it's true. And I was like, well, why do you think it's true?And he was like, well, because it just is, you know, like, it just is true. And at some point I said, what do you think of James and Ed? And he was like, well, they're great. And I said, uh huh.I said, so they're African American? He was like, yeah, but they're not like the other ones. And I said, how do you know? How many do you know? And he was like, well, I don't have to.I said, no, no. If we had an entire factory filled with people like James and Ed, would you like that? And he was like, well, yeah.And I said, I'm just saying, think, right? And later on he came back and was talking to me, he goes, I've been thinking about that. I don't know what I think, but I've been thinking about it.And I thought, you're thinking step one, right?

Take the first step. Thank you very much.

Yeah,.

I think approaching life that way is a good, positive thing. And that's an amazing way to present it to that individual. I've dealt with a lot of bikers in my life and some are. It won't change.I actually had one that, believe it or not, my wife and I went to a restaurant. I was a cop in Colorado, went to a restaurant here in Arizona. And.And we were sitting there and we were sitting at the bar eating, and the server come up. She was a friend of ours, the server, and she says, he knows you. And I look down and here's this old gruff biker, long beard, hair, everything.And I'm kind of going, okay, considering my previous profession. Yeah, I said, okay. And I said, you know, I walked up and I had motioned to him and she said, but he's deaf.And I think, I don't remember ever dealing with a deaf biker before. So My wife and I moved over next to him and started talking. And he goes, you're a cop? And I, of course, got a little. Not defensive, but. And I said.I said, yeah, I was a cop. And he said, you're Sergeant Hurst? And I said, yes. And I said, how do you know me? And he brought it up. And I had helped him.I had helped him when he got his bike. He. Bike went off the road and, you know, I helped him and treated him like a person kind of a thing.He gave me a big hug and he says, glad to see you. He. He wrote it and he says, you know, glad to see you. And I said, how'd you go deaf? And he told me the whole story and what happened.And he was working on a motorcycle, the gas tank blew up, and blah, blah, blah, blah.But it's interesting because I bring that up as in, you know, his lifestyle back then, when I knew him was all about the brotherhood and riding with the gang that he was with at that time. That was everything that was his focus. Whatever they believed in, he believed in. He separated himself from that.When he realized that and he moved down here, he says, you know, my life has changed this much. And it just took a moment get away from that to kind of reflect back on. And it was. Plus, it was really weird that he remembered me from that long.

I think. I think, like. I think, like, what you did there and like, in. Just in the act of going and then sitting with him. Right.That's opening a door for people to say, I'm listening. Right. I'm willing to listen.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's. I think what we. We have difficulty with. Right. Is just listening and. And sometimes, you know, admittedly so. Right. Like, someone was. I used.They used to always at work, put these things and said, do you treat others with respect? From HR would give you the, you know, the little survey. And I always write. It depends. I never wrote yes or no. Right. You know, like. Like if. If.If, James. If, you know, Manson were in front of me, would I treat him with respect if he's behind bars? No.If he wasn't behind bars, I would have been like, okay, I'm getting away from you. But, you know, like, it depends, but for the most part, yes, for the most part, I want to know somebody's story. I want to know what. What.What they think, why they think the way they think. Because I'm not perfect, and I don't have all the answers, and you don't know where you're going.To get those little nuggets of things that are amazing. Right. It could come from anywhere. And. And you don't know when you're giving someone one of those little nuggets. So it could be.

Yeah, even. I'm sorry, we have just a little delay. It's interesting because even in that perspective, the thing that he remembered, I'd arrested him before.What he remembered was when I helped him. And he remembered it 20, more than 20 years later when he saw me sitting at the bar with my wife eating something.And that was in itself, it was like, wow, that's humanity. That just shows what you bring about in your books, that we're all connected.

Yeah. And that's like. I like taking people, taking characters where judge them from the outside.The first book is actually the first book I got judgment about the book, the Kaya book, because this is actually. This is a fun story that explains another reason why we decided we were going to make our own imprint of publishing. So this book.So in Kayo, Sarah, the main character, the. The POV character is in her late 40s and she's a paralegal. She's very beaten down. She's very beaten down.And the first time she sees Kayo is on a basketball court. And he does everything he can to get her attention. And she. She is absolutely taken. Like, she's shocked.Not because of his youth, not because of what he looks like. We're just going. But because he sees her, he actually pays attention to her. And no one in her life does. She is kind of abusive. Find out pretty soon.I mean, I tell people in the back of the book so they don't freak out. But you find out over time because she learns over time time and interacting with them, she ends up like, helping. He asks her to help him study.She finds out that he does not act like somebody who is supposedly in his late teens. He acts like he knows things you could never know. And at the same time, what's happening in her law firms.You have all these people who are, you know, upstanding citizens, you know, running the. The town that they're currently in and yet doing really, really horrible things. They're abusing power, they're abusing what they have.And so these characters, you have to look at them. I really take people from Sarah through her thought process of how she's interacting with this. And on top of all this, she has voices in her head.And it's her finding out the voices in her head are not a mistake, which is where the supernatural stuff Starts coming in and seeing that what happens in her law firm, it kind of has a supernatural aspect too. And she starts, she realizes at some point Caio's actual story, which is that he's been bouncing around the world since 1905, right?Trying to live when he looks like he's 17 in a world where he can't justify his age. So it's this whole what you see versus what really is. And her world is very narrow.So the first time we took this, Karina Press said, oh, we'd love to publish it, but you're going to have to change his age. And I was like, from 135? And they were like, no, no, you're going to have to change his, like he's going to need to look older.And I was like, you know, have him go into the hole at 19. I said, I don't even know how old he is because they don't measure time.And this character is in the entire series and him being the way he is is very important. And so we went, ah, code, no, we will part ways.And then had almost exactly the same thing happen at another publisher where the chairman of the publishing agent literally sent me this long impassioned email about this is like a beautiful relationship and have his age look different, looking so young, it's like eating a three course meal in a toilet. And I went, what?

That's not a very nice way to put that.

Okay. And so I was like, all right, fine. So we tried one more time and this was the real one.So we talked to a guy who was in a very big publishing house and he was in New Jersey.And he goes, you know, the appearance of age difference doesn't make a difference to me because you know, Twilight, you know, he's like hundreds of years old, she's actually 17. You know, it, it, that doesn't bother you? He goes, but what bothers me is. Oh, I don't know how I would phrase it.It's, it's like it's unbecoming for a woman in her 40s to still have sexual feelings.

No kidding.

He said this? I said, you just said that out loud. You just said the quiet part out loud.And he was like, well, I think a lot of people in the heartland would agree with me. And I was like, how? I said, how old are you? And he was like 48. And I said, uh huh. Do you have a partner?He was like, yeah, not even seeing where I'm going with this. Just like. And I, I, I kind of got away from that. And I was like, you know, I'm a lawyer. My husband's a marketer. We have the background.We can hire marketing people and PR people, and. And you actually make more money. More money doing it yourself. And. Yeah, so we just created our own publishing house.But that was because I want to tell real stories the way I want to tell them.

Well, I think also. I think, well, you're doing something right because your books have won awards from International Book Awards, Publishers Weekly, Editor's Choice.I mean, I think that, you know, the antiquated perception of life in some people's current state of being is sometimes skewed to how they believe within themselves and don't understand that there are, what, 600 million people out there that may feel somewhat differently.

Yeah, well, I kind of took some of that, what she went through and how people. How she felt people reacted. Because my husband is 10 years younger than me, and you would have thought I robbed a cradle.

You know, it. Yeah, I get that. I get my wife's. The certain times, like the.We're 10 years apart, and the rest of the time, we're like nine and a half years apart because of our birthdays.

Yep.

We first got together, she was doing modeling. Just a side note, we were.She was doing some modeling gigs and got on kktv, which is a local store station there in Colorado Springs, and I went with her, and I was sitting there waiting, and she. It was something to do with makeup and hair and everything. So she went in with no makeup, no hair, no hair done, you know, kind of a thing. Not.Not no hair. She had hair. She's like, cameraman looked at me, and he's getting everything ready, and they're getting ready to do the.The makeup and everything else. He looks at me and he goes, well, how's the. How does the. How does. How. How's the father feel about his daughter going to be on tv?And I went, excuse me.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm. I. I was bigger than I am now. Right. I stood up, he sees my badges hooked on my belt, you know, this kind of a thing, and he goes, oh.I said, that's my wife, not my daughter. Thank you.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

But it's. It's just this kind of like this weird. Weird assumptions people make.And I think also how you perceive people is influenced by what your philosophical and your kind of spiritual, holistic beliefs are. Yeah, I agree. And so I've never been a person that focused on what someone's age was. Weirdly. Weirdly personal story.When I was young, I actually did some modeling as well. And I got anorexic, badly anorexic. So I was down to, at some point, I think, £89.

Wow.

And I'm five. I'm five seven. And my dad, who was a counselor, tried to help me, but he was like, weigh yourself every day.Which is absolutely the worst thing to do for someone who has anorexia. And at some point I said, you know my problem? I was lying in my dorm room looking up at this chart that I had made that said 100 pounds, you're fat.99 Pounds better, but still not good. And just like this whole thing. And I realized I am associating myself with this number that has no meaning with what I'm connecting it to. Right.It doesn't say how healthy I am. It doesn't say how attractive I am. It doesn't say anything. It's just this number. So I stopped associating myself with numbers.I stopped looking at sizes of things. When I went to get clothes, I didn't want to know people's ages. I just stopped putting that for people. And it really helped.And I think you're always kind of a recovering anorexic when you have that because you have a level of body dysmorphia. But that helped me in ways that like, counselors and stuff could not. Because it was just readjusting the filter, right?

Well, and I think life in itself needs to readjust their filters because obviously life is what it is, and their perceptions, the truth people have, whether it be from whatever background that they grew up with, you know, we are a human being species that's supposed to evolve. And that evolvement includes on having a better understanding of how we evolve as human beings. So.

Yep, yep.

Yeah, we could. We could talk for. We could talk for a while on that.

We're about going down the genetics thing, which we could talk about for a really long time.

Exactly, exactly. So, as a writer, from a writer's perspective, how do you hope readers feel after they finish one of your books?

I hope they have questions. I hope that they think. I have a lot of people who read the end of my books and go, wait, now what happens? Which is what I want them to do.I want them to say, in writing a book, one of the most difficult things is to say, where are you going to start the journey? And where are you going to end the journey for this one book, Right. It's where are you Going to stop telling the story because their lives go on.Right. And so I took like little segments of these characters lives and all of them, all of them are dealing with some very difficult stuff.And what I want people to come away with is a connection to the characters, a sense of empathy for the characters, particularly when things happen to them that maybe haven't happened to a lot of people. I want them to think, what would I do if I were in that circumstance? I want them to think, what would that mean in my world? And is this right?I want people to think I'm happy if someone, I'm happier to get a one star review than a three star review. If somebody flips out about something, at least I made them feel something. I made them think.I'm not one of those people who writes to be that I don't want, I'm not writing to make, you know, to be shocking. I'm, I'm writing to write something that I feel is real. I'm very big on wanting to be authentic.I write short sentences purposely because I don't want my writing style to get in someone's way of understanding the story,.

Which is a good thing, I think, approaching it from that perspective.Again, growing up with a writer and growing up with somebody in a newsroom, you know, I understand the logistics of being able to keep somebody in but without overwhelming them at the same time and giving them something to walk away with.

And so I tend, I tend to put humor in my books. Actually I should do this. Hold on. This book Fanning Fireflies. So it won Book Life. Book Life's for the month of April last year.I think it was, it was the best first line in a novel award for the month. And the first line of this novel is the headless chicken charging towards Veronica Crane was clinging to life against all odds.

Wow. Like that, that, that one Snoopy would have loved.

Right? It's just I, I, I tend to write, I'll use fairly large words, but then put it in a more colloquial kind of vibe.And I want pieces of real life like my, the main character in that book, Fanny Fireflies. I roughly based around my mother. And she was definitely on the autism spectrum before it was a known thing.Really logical, really like, you know, all the, all the aspects of autism that I think are very, you know, admirable and honorable. She didn't understand the lying stuff.She, you know, she was like, you know, and she, they had to, she had to kill her own chickens, you know, and she grew up in rural North Carolina. And they had. She was. They were very poor. And so that I wanted to kind of bring that and show people that.And also that book is a little bit of me sent telling how I'm coming more and more to believe. There aren't multiple social classes. There are two. One social class makes money by working, the other social class makes money by their own money.

That's a unique approach to that. I like that. Yeah, I can't wait to tell my wife that.

And I think that those who make money using their money what everybody else to fight to be at odds with each other because it benefits. Right. You know, they don't care if the. The teachers are pissed off at the cops or the. You know, they're. That's good.They're not questioning the fact that the wealth is so disparate at this point. So I. That's kind of what I've come to in my own head of what I think is kind of happening.

I agree with you. I think that's again, that's brilliant because it's an. I think. Think that the perspective that nobody really embraces. I mean it.And it's not a me versus them type thing. It is. It's almost Hunger Games type. I mean, that's the mentality in Hunger Games. Yeah, it does that kind of.And yeah, and I think we're kind of getting in more and more unfortunately walking down that path.But at least from your perspective as a writer, what you are creating and putting into these books, as you said earlier, the benefit is that you're giving them something to think about.And giving them something to think about should allow them to get an expanded vision of something more that they can either look at, consider, or work.

And the thing is, I don't pretend I have the answers. I just want people to have the questions. Right.

Yeah, I think we all should question. I mean, you've lived in Paris, Hong Kong, London, traveled across almost every continent. How's that.The worldview that you have right there, I think was unique. But how has traveling all the rest of the world, how's that shaped your writing?Is the same perception across Hong Kong and in Paris and London and these dream places that everybody wants to go to visit.

So I love that question because I had a moment with that when I was working in a bank and I was living in London and I was doing international startup for different startups for that bank. I was going to Shanghai. It was the first time I'd gone to China.I was going by myself and I went three Days after we accidentally bombed their embassy, Germany. And I'm like, I'm gonna die, right? So I get there, and I get there in. In Shanghai, and I go to the airport.You've got all these people in the communist outfits, right? And I'm like, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die, right? So.But I get out and I get on the street, and the first thing that happens to me is this little girl comes up to me, and an older woman is behind, and she looks at me and she goes, excuse me. I don't want to bother you, but my grandmother wants me to speak to you in English for a while. While. Will you speak to me in English?And I sat down and I talked to her for about 15 minutes. And I realized at the end, all we want is for our families to be happy, for the people we love to do well, you know?And that's where we're all the same. Like, that's what we want. You have those weird, freaky people who are really into power, but those are the people who shouldn't have it.

Exactly.

But most of us, most people around the world, and you learn that as being a parent, that's the way that I think parenting is like a universal language. You can talk about your kids with anyone else who has kids, right? And they get it.So it's this thing that bonds you, and it doesn't matter if you're talking to someone in South Africa or if you're talking in someone in France or, you know, everyone's got this connection with having children. So that. That, I think is something that was really important to me to realize.And there's a lot of differences in culture, and I learned a lot in different cultures about that, that, you know, you never. I think you never really see your own country until you leave it. So I know a lot about the pros and cons of the US and.And I know a lot about the pros and cons of other countries, because I can go in it and view it now as an outsider.Like, for example, one of the most kind of charming things of the American character is this idea, and I hope we don't lose it, this idea that we can do anything. If we really kind of put our minds to it, we can do this.It's this kind of really charming optimism and hopefulness that has really launched so much research and so much. And my fear is that the people who achieve or who have achieved are pushing that down for the others coming up.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with you in that regard. I think that we have always. I grew up that way myself. You know, I look at parents that were the other problems. I come from other parents.My father died at a very young age of cancer. But before he died, he did kind of make sure that I understood that people are people and human beings are. We all want the same thing.We want a happy life. We want to eat, we want a roof over our head, we want to wear shoes on our feet. And that we all want to be good parents.We all want to be good son, a good daughter, a good husband, a good wife. It, I think, is inherent within us.Those individuals, like you said earlier, that have agreed for power skew it in such a way that it creates and complicates life for the rest of us.

And also they hold it up as. This is okay, right? This is the normal. Or normalize. They normalize it. Exactly.

And no, it. It. I. I think that it. Those of us that have. I grew up. I grew up very poor. My. Because my father dying at an early age.I grew up with a single mother in the 60s and 70s who. Which I. I know, you know, this.That, you know, she wasn't even able to have a checking account of her own or buy property or buy a car or rent an apartment, you know, until like 1974 on her own. Because. Because of that. And it's difficult when you have three kids to try to, you know, go out.And your limitations on that glass ceiling were secretary or a server or, you know, there were. There were limited options on what you could do with life. So coming on, coming up from. With that environment and watching my mother struggle, watch.Watching us struggle as kids because of that and how it kind of rolled downhill. It allowed.That's why I became a police officer, actually, because I felt that there was others out there that I could protect and serve in regard to the same things that I was experiencing when I grew up.But yes, I think that we as human beings need to have more compassion, humanity and understanding for what people are wanting or needing within our lives. And that we are all the same. We all breathe, we all bleed, we all cry, we all fear.It doesn't matter what color you are, what age you are, what religion you are. It doesn't matter because you all do the same thing and that we should be there for each other.

It's really strange because I kind of think there is like a collective unconsciousness idea, right?Because I think we plug into things like the fact that I wrote these books Before a lot of this stuff started happening again, and that just happened. And this, like, kind of weird things like that happened to me a lot.Like when I was writing Fanning Fireflies, the character that I wrote, his name is Laszlo Fox. That's the African American soldier. And I wrote the story.I'm not going to give too much spoilers, but he ends up being deployed to France, goes to a bunch of cities. What I do when I write is I put. I write it, and then I go back and check the details meticulously at the end.Because once again, recovering lawyer, you know, if there's a menu item that says that she had a sandwich, I need to know actually what that sandwich cost in 1944. So I'm that person. But I started looking at the character of Laszlo was.He's somebody who had wanted to be part of the Buffalo Soldiers unit because that tracks back to the Revolutionary War. It was the black soldiers who fought against the Indian. And he, you know, he had the sense of pride about that. And he. His parents were.His mother was native, his father was black, and so he has these beliefs. So I did all this.And then at the end when I'm checking this stuff and I had the way all the stuff that happened to him, I won't say, but turns out there was actually a soldier whose last name was Fox who was with the Buffalo Soldiers, who. That unit and who had almost those same things happen.

Wow.

Not the first name. Right. I'd never seen this, but it's like you feel like there's somebody over your shoulder whispering in your ear, this is what I.This is what's going on. We. I wrote this book, Kyle. And like, I think like a year after I wrote it, my kids comes bouncing into my.My room and goes, hey, mom, there's a kid named Kayo in my music class. And I was like, really? He was like, yeah. And sure enough, he was Brazilian.And long story with this person, but we got involved in his life in a really positive way. And so he. He. He's not basically a member of the family. So this stuff kind of art and life kind of does this. Right? You know, it's.They influence each other, and they feed off each other if you let them. Right. You can turn away from stuff you can not notice, but if you notice, life gets so much more interesting.

Absolutely. It's just. We got to open our eyes, open our ears, and pay attention. I mean, that. It's kind of that simple, really.It's a simple, simple, simple answer that's Pretty cool the way that all that kind of fell together like that. Especially both of those incidences within the same realm of the books that you're creating.Not just that they took place, but within that same kind of arena, which I think is pretty cool.

Exactly. And one of the things I find fascinating, and I'm exploring in this books as well, is this notion of biocentrism. Right.That consciousness does not create us. We create consciousness, we create reality. It doesn't create us. And I'm fascinated by that concept. Concept from both. We could talk for hours about.I could talk to you about, like, the whole double slit experiment and how, you know, philosophical that is. And. But there's so much to the world behind the things that we see. If we're just going about our everyday and not looking right.

Deeper. And it's not the Matrix. Yeah.

Yep, yep. Please let it not be that it's.

Where are you? Ring calls. It's a different kind of matrix, we'll put it that way. It's a different kind of connection.The universal connection of spirit throughout the world. I guess our energy from. Yeah, that's another conversation we just have to grab.Amazing thing that you've learned about people from traveling around the world because you obviously are picking everything for your writing. You're putting life into your books.

So I didn't miss the. I missed the first part of the question because it blurbed what is the most.

See if I can remember it now. What's the most interesting thing that you've learned from people across the world that you may have brought to your books or to your writing?

I think just that thing that we're all very much the same, but also probably that people are always a lot more interesting than you think they are. I tend to be somebody who's interested in other people and interested in other people's stories.And people realize that when I'm talking to them and so they tend to tell me their stories. And so if I sit on the Eurostar with somebody when I'm going to London from Paris, I'll know that person's life by the time I get off the Eurostar.And. And it's always interesting. It's never boring. You know, people don't live boring, ordinary lives. No one leads a boring, ordinary life. Right. It's.There's always these kind of amazing moments, even if it's only moments, but usually, like, amazing things about the people. Amazing connections that you can make in your head to their life versus other things that you know, versus this creation of how you see life.I think one of the best gifts that my mother particularly gave me was a sense of curiosity. I'm endlessly curious, which is a good thing, particularly if you're writing.

Yeah, we have that in common. I think that we should always be curious in life and always be asking a question and always seeking answers.It makes life interesting and you can learn so much more.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I could do this for a whole nother hour, Lexi, I really could. But our time is coming to a close.

Oh, no.

Where can someone find your books and more about you?

So I have a website. It is. I write under the name LS DeLorme, so it's www.lsdelorum.com.I'm also all over Instagram, so it's lsdalorum at Instagram, at Twitter, it's Lexishaw DeLorme at TikTok. So I'm very easy to find. I'm. I'm usually if you put Lexi Delorme, I'm the first one that comes up on Google, so I'm pretty easy to find.And I'm also very active on, particularly on Instagram. If you ask me a question, I'll.

Answer and I'll make sure all that's in the show notes and it'll be on the web page that's built for our episode in particular. So they can just click the button. It'll take them right to you, which will make it convenient for them. Excellent.This, this has been like a fantastic. But this is one more thing before you go.So before we go, do you have any words of wisdom for any new writer out there or someone struggling to become one?

Yes, actually, I do. If you are a writer, particularly if you are writing yourself, you haven't been picked up by a publisher or something.The best thing I can tell you is that you need to think of yourself as a startup, because that's what you are. You're a startup business. And so your first book is not going to make you millions.You're not going to see a profit on anything you do for five years. This is the rule of startups. And luckily I've done startups and after that five year period, you start seeing it.So don't put the pressure on yourself. Yourself when you're first doing it, you don't think you're going anywhere. It takes time.

Brilliant words of wisdom. I think we should take heed to that. Lexi, thank you very much for sharing your journey.

Thank you for having me.

Your wisdom, your experience. Please keep writing, keep inspiring.Thank you keep us motivated, keep us, you know, I think you allow us to step into other worlds through your words and your imagination. So thank you.

Thank you so much. That's very generous of you.

Absolutely. And I'll make sure they have everything in the show. Notes. Like I said, somebody can just click and can get it right to you.So thank you for being part of the show.

Thank you.

When you listen to a life like Lexie's, you're reminded that identity isn't a straight line. It's a mosaic built from every place we've lived, every chapter we've survived, every version of. Of ourselves we've dared to become.Reinvention isn't a risk. It's a rhythm. That's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you found this inspiration, motivation and a few new perspectives to take with you.If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to, like, subscribe and follow us. Stay connected. You can find us on Apple, Spotify or your favorite listening platform, YouTube, and catch the full video version. I'm Michael Hurst.Have a great day. Have a great, great week and thank you for being part of our community.

Thanks for listening to this episode of One More Thing.Before you go, check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com you can find us as well as subscribe to the program and rate us on your favorite podcast listening platform.