Interview: Leslie Claire Walker on Time Out of Mind
Leslie Claire Walker has wanted to be Princess Leia since she was seven—wise and brave and never afraid of a fight, no matter the odds—and that spirit runs straight through her fiction. Best known for her urban fantasy series The Faery Chronicles and Soul Forge, she writes stories crowded with found family, angels, assassins, faeries, and demons, all of it shot through with a stubborn streak of hope.
Time Out of Mind gathers her time-travel stories, and it opens in a place where no one can see you: and it opens on a storm-battered shore with a ghost no one can see, fighting with everything she has just to be noticed. A ghost on a mission. A little sister lost in time. A woman fighting to remember who she is. These are tales that don’t skip over the dark—as Kris Rusch put it, there is hope at the heart of every one of them, stories about building alliances and making something new out of the ruins of the old.
The Interview
You’ve wanted to be Princess Leia since you were seven—wise and brave, ready for any fight no matter the odds. Do you find that wish surfacing in the characters you write?
That’s a great question! I find that wish surfacing in every character I write. Each of them wants to be braver than they feel they are, or lay down their lives to save the people they love. Every choice they make is another chance to remember or recognize their power and grow into the person they want and need to be.
Your stories go into dark places, yet hope always sits at the heart of them. When a story carries you somewhere genuinely difficult, do you write toward that hope from the start, or do you have to find your way back to it?
I often start stories from a dark place with only a spark of hope in my characters’ hearts. By the time they enter a dark night of the soul, they have some experience with nurturing that spark into a flame. Hope becomes a strength and a practice. Not perfect, but something to strive for.
The opening of Time Out of Mind belongs to a ghost—we feel dead jellyfish pop underfoot and a boom box thudding through the walls before we understand that she’s the one no one can see. What does telling the story from the ghost’s side let you reach that you couldn’t from among the living?
Living human beings are preoccupied a lot of the time with our own thoughts, desires, and regrets. There’s so much we miss in not being aware of our physicality, the sensations we feel, how pure joy or fear feels in the body.
The ghost in the opening of Time Out of Mind misses what she didn’t have the privilege and the bandwidth to feel while she lived. “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” is a cliché for a reason—because it’s true.
You’ve said the most important thing about the characters in your collection is that they see and hear one another—yet your opening starts with a ghost no one can see, who has to use all her strength just to be noticed. Why begin with the absence of that, before showing what it looks like to find it?
This story was sparked by the idea one of the greatest gifts in life is to be truly seen, known, and loved for who we are. But most of us are too busy paying for a roof over our heads, putting food on the table, raising children, and/or taking care of beloved elders to give that gift to ourselves.
Who are we at our core, at our center, in our essence after everything else has been stripped away?
You live in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest among cats, harps, and pieces of art that might just be doorways to other realms. How much of that world—the rain, the music, the maybe-doorways—finds its way into your writing?
Almost all of it. Every song, piece of art, and raindrop is a portal to another world if you want it to be. It probably helps that I see the world as both a physical place full of life and as a place of continuously evolving creation and mythmaking.
No matter how far I travel or how many doorways I pass through, the cats always make sure I come home—dinner is the most important thing!
About the Author
Since the age of seven, Leslie Claire Walker has wanted to be Princess Leia—wise and brave and never afraid of a fight, no matter the odds.
Leslie lives in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest with a cast of spectacular characters, including cats, harps, fantastic pieces of art that may or may not be doorways to other realms, and too many fantasy novels to count.
She is the author of The Faery Chronicles and Soul Forge, two complete series of urban fantasy novels, novellas, and stories filled with found family, angels, assassins, faeries, and demons.
Find Leslie
Time Out of Mind is available now in the Escape from 2026 StoryBundle, curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. 15 exclusive books of alternate history and time travel—pay what you want, starting at $5. Customers can choose to direct a portion of their payment to World Central Kitchen. The bundle runs through June 25, 2026.