I'd probably start by using Racket (Racket is a scheme is a lisp) which has a whole toolkit for language building. Arc is written this way, for instance. Often these are lispy languages but there is no reason they have to be. A starting point: http://beautifulracket.com/stacker/ or https://www.hashcollision.org/brainfudge/

That will get you started rediculously quickly and give you things like GC and JIT for free. You can always implement it outside of racket once it starts to take further shape