INTERVIEW: Scott Lambridis Says Stories Need Momentum

Welcome to the Tuesday Author Interview with Christina Boyd for the Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

CHRISTINA: I met author Scott Lambridis after Bellingham Mini-Con at Village Books while standing in line to buy David Beaumier's debut, The Mourning Fields. And as writers do, we started talking about current writing projects. When Scott said he had a book coming out in July 2026 via Regal House Publishing, I invited him to this interview.

When did you first think you had a book to write?

SCOTT: I was on a BART train in San Francisco, on the way home from San Francisco State and working on an exercise: create a scene of unbearably awkward power dynamics. It became the scene of Mirs and Jo meeting for the first time in a corporate office. I packed in every kind of tension I could: bureaucracy, hierarchy, paradoxical language, sexual tension, social tension, physical tension. It felt like the worst possible circumstances in which two people could be introduced to each other.

And there was also this whole weird world it was alluding to through the Central Medical Compendium. I needed to write more, to play it out. At first, I saw it as a novella, maybe 100–120 pages. 

CHRISTINA: I love that the novel began as an exercise in discomfort—it explains why that first encounter feels so charged and unsettling from the start.

What comes first: plot or characters?

St. Ulphia's Dead by Scott Lambridis. Publication: July 7, 2026.

SCOTT: Voice. If I don’t have it, I can’t write the story, no matter how good the premise is.

With St. Ulphia’s Dead, I was lucky enough to find that almost immediately. It really clicked in another early scene, a sort of sexually charged hide-and-seek moment where I wanted to stay very close to each of them—not in a detached omniscient way, but almost at the same time, through two equally dominant third-person perspectives. I wrote the passage in a fit of elliptical, repetitive, Saramago-esque sentences, changing perspectives within the sentences. You’d be following his anxiety, and then in the middle of the thought you were suddenly following hers, the two POVs looping around each other like snakes fighting, and somehow you never got lost. The two together became the real protagonist. 

That scene also uncovered the core question of the book: what possible circumstances could lead two people who could never be in love to believe they were in love? The plot came from tightening the conditions around that question and letting it play out.

CHRISTINA: I love the idea of voice arriving before plot—it makes the whole novel seem discovered rather than constructed. And that central question is such a haunting, emotionally loaded premise.

Do you put people you know in your book?

SCOTT: Yes, but never in a neat one-to-one way. In St. Ulphia’s Dead, the emotional core of Mirs and Jo’s disconnection was certainly influenced by tensions in my marriage arising from being first-time parents—that collaboration between two very different people with different sensibilities for what constitutes safety, how to voice or not voice needs, misreading each other while loving each other. Rereading the book years later, I was shocked by how much the book already seemed to understand. It felt as if the future me had written into the book what I couldn’t yet see.

A strange experience when my wife was invited as a personal chef to a German family’s property translated pretty directly into one of the villagers’ stories.

So yes, life is everywhere in my stories, but broken down, reassembled, heightened, and used to give a sense of truth to the unreality of the world. 

CHRISTINA: That idea of fiction understanding something before the writer fully does is really powerful. I also love the way you describe real life being broken apart and transformed to create emotional truth inside an unreal world.

What makes a good story?

SCOTT: If I’m not surprised, I don’t care. If there’s no surprise, there’s no momentum, and stories need momentum.

I don’t mean plot twists. I mean surprising shifts of tone, unexpected emotions, a specific detail that changes the feeling of a scene, dialogue that swerves away from the expected response. Mostly, I don’t want to guess how the sentence will finish, the scene, or the chapter. 

And the best stories, to me, are the ones where surprise and inevitability somehow coexist. You didn’t see it coming exactly, but once it arrives, it feels like the only thing that could have happened.

CHRISTINA: That balance between surprise and inevitability really does feel like the magic trick great fiction pulls off. I also appreciate your focus on sentence-level unpredictability rather than just big plot mechanics.

What’s more difficult to write? A love scene or a love letter or something else?

SCOTT: Not exactly either of those, but something analogous. The hardest thing for me in St. Ulphia’s Dead was a scene in which Jo is led accidentally to the village’s public bath and witnesses things that challenge her conception of acceptability and taboo. It involves sex (not a subject I write often), but the visual details weren’t the hardest part. The hard part was depicting what she saw in a way that rode the razor-thin edge of interpretation: grotesque and inappropriate versus enlightening and possibly even good.

It’s a very complicated and triggering scene for Jo, and we have to believe both her conflict and her secrecy. 

There’s a particular scene in St. Ulphia’s Dead I can’t talk about without giving too much away, but let’s just say it involves the triggering moments—one for Mirs and one for Jo—that cause their relationship to each other and the village to shift completely. It’s the turn the book has been moving toward all along, and it’s essential that it’s completely believable, no matter how strange. I actually wrote a separate, independent short story as a test. When the story worked, I knew it would work in the book. 

CHRISTINA: That razor-thin balance between revulsion and revelation. The whole novel thrives on that tension.

What is your current project or latest release?

SCOTT: My latest release is St. Ulphia’s Dead, which is releasing on July 7. I’m thinking a lot about how to help it travel in a way that feels human and true to the book—less about visibility for its own sake than about connection, one reader at a time if possible.

That’s part of why I’m reviving Action Fiction, the performance series I used to run. The format is local actors performing original short fiction by the best local writers. I like events that feel less like promotion and more like actual exchange—something memorable and odd and alive for readers, writers, and performers alike. 

From slambridis' Instagram: "captures similar themes as the forthcoming novel: sweet, paradoxical, and full of vague menace."

I’m also continuing to work on a comic series around this little moon-headed fellow named SANA. After years of working with artists to illustrate my stories and driven by admiration for writers who did both—Silverstein, Gorey, Jansson, Vonnegut, Kafka—I wanted to try it myself. I created over 100, and his voice is still very alive for me. 

I’m also at work on another novel, centered on a character pulled from Camus’s The Plague: a minor character named Cottard, who’s the only one relieved rather than devastated by a city under lockdown. The working title is The Beautiful People’s Club, though titles have a way of changing on me.

CHRISTINA: I really admire the emphasis on connection over visibility—it feels deeply in tune with the kind of work you’re describing. I’ve already read St. Ulphia’s Dead and will share my review Thursday, June 4. I found it strange, immersive, and emotionally unsettling in a really compelling way.

It sounds like you’re building creative spaces—through books, performances, and comics—that invite people into a genuine experience rather than just an audience relationship. Thank you for your time. Best wishes for the book launch.

Scott Lambridid, author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Lambridis is a Bellingham, Washington-based writer and neurobiology lover whose fiction explores the strange edges of perception, time, and consciousness. His work has appeared in Slice, Fence, and The Café Irreal, and he earned his MFA from San Francisco State University. He once ran an indie press, toured with a progressive rock band, tended an olive farm, read a book from every country of the world, and wrote his debut novel during his daughter’s naps in France.

St. Ulphia’s Dead is launching July 7. Pre-order now through Village Books (to stay local) or Regal House Publishing (to support the press) or learn more at scottlambridis.com. In Bellingham? Come join Scott at one or more local launch events for St. Ulphia’s Dead! 

June 26-27 — Chuckanut Writers Conference

Join Scott as he hosts a craft talk on absurdity’s role in dark fiction called, and an Action Fiction! performance. 

July 7 — New Prospect Theatre, Bellingham

Action Fiction! Stories Performed 

Let's admit it: great writers are not always great performers. Many readings feel quiet and static, but fiction can be dramatic, funny, strange, and alive. Action Fiction! is a live performance series where local actors perform original short fiction by the best local writers. By pairing original voices with great performers, we turn short stories into live literary theater. Lineup coming soon, visit scottlambridis.com for details. 

July 25 — Village Books

The Serious Business of Being Silly: How Absurdity Makes the Unbearable Readable

A lively, craft-minded panel discussion about how humor and absurdity illuminate our darkest themes. To celebrate the launch of his debut novel, Scott Lambridis joins fellow Bellingham writers David Beaumier, Brittany Micka-Foos, and others from HamLit, in conversation. Together they’ll explore why laughter and lightness belong beside grief and gravity, share brief readings, and invite audience questions. Part craft talk, part celebration of local storytelling, this event promises an evening that’s both thought-provoking and entertaining. 

Reserve your tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/scott-lambridis-st-ulphias-dead-tickets-1980517303569