1. Which are your biggest influences (when it comes to writing and fiction) and why?
JK Rowling for how she was able to mix humour and darkness, and I’ll be grateful forever to her for paving the way for more young adult focused works to soar. Ken Follett for his ability to handle huge casts and make you hate an antagonist like you’ve never hated one before. Stieg Larsson for pure genius and holding tension in every chapter. Anne Rice for character development. Stephen King for…well…let’s just say that some writers are masters of plot, others masters of character, and yet others masters of prose – Mr. King is a master of all three. Their work and mine do not bear much resemblance, but they are all influencers for me. If you’re looking for writers whose work might share similarities with mine look to Kelley Armstrong, Cassandra Clare, Becca Fitzpatrick, or (I’m told) Tamora Pierce.
“Empathy is a vital but endangered quality of the human being––arguably the MOST important quality anyone can have. Social and mass media destroys it, reading books rebuilds it.”
A.L. Knorr
2. Do you believe in inspiration? Does inspiration take a big role in your writing process?
Absolutely. When an idea strikes like lightening and captures your imagination, not just for that moment, but for a lingering while and begs to be developed, that to me is inspiration. I travel constantly and visit museums, natural wonders, talk with people who are very different from myself, and put myself into interesting situations in order to find inspiration. When you look for it, it finds you.
3. Could you give us some background about yourself?
I’m a Canadian farm girl who grew up in rural Ontario with an idyllic childhood. I have two wonderful brothers and amazing supportive parents. Women tell me that I write men that they fall in love with, and I credit the men in my life for being wonderful for this. I wanted to be an animator (preferably for Disney) for all of my youth, until I discovered dance, and then I wanted to be a dancer. My mother is a visual artist, and though my father is a carpenter, he too has a poetic soul. So I grew up with a love for the arts. I did study dance in college but after graduating, fell into a sales job in Calgary in my early twenties, in which I learned a lot about people––and also that I love them in all their various forms. The sales job led to a role at a sports magazine, and then a marketing role in Canmore for an amazing company called Rocky Mountain Soap. Three years ago, I left that job and began to travel and write.
4. You worked in marketing for years, right? This background helped you with your books/your writing career somehow?
Yes, my marketing career is a massive credit to my current business. I learned during the 8 years doing this job how to build a brand, how to ask the right questions, how to develop strategies, set objectives and execute the necessary tactics to achieve those objectives. I learned to think analytically, and of course how to copy-write and market in a digital ecosystem.
5. Can you describe the working process (from idea to writing to publication) of your first novel, Born of Water?
The first novel is usually a mess, and my experience with Born of Water was no different. Your first several novels are just trying to nail down your process and there can be a lot of going down the wrong path and having to undo and try again. Born of Water started as a vignette, a simple daydream about a mermaid who blows the algae off the figurehead of a mermaid on a shipwreck she’s exploring, only to discover the figurehead has a replica of her own face. In answering the questions that surrounded this vignette, a story emerged: who is the mermaid? why does the shipwreck’s figurehead have her face? Answering these led to more questions like: if mermaids really existed, what would they be like? How would they procreate? What would their habits and life-cycle be like? Who do they love? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What is their biology and biological imperatives? And many more. I find the best advice to those who are stuck or experiencing some kind of block is simply to ask and answer more questions. Once I answered the questions, I had enough to build a story. I outlined it roughly and began to write it. I learned that the last act is the most difficult part of writing (for me) and I had to tear my original final act and climactic scenes apart and rewrite them in order for the ending to be satisfying. Once I had a first draft, I sent it to a developmental editor for feedback. She pointed out plot holes and areas that needed work. I set to work rewriting where it was needed before sending it back for a final copy edit. From there, I hit publish and hoped for the best.
6. Can you describe your writing habits?
I try to write 2000 words a day on my current WIP, unless I’m on a tighter deadline, in which case I aim for 3000 (which is not sustainable for me long term given some issues with my arms and shoulders). Once I publish, I take a break and focus on marketing and cleaning up my online presence, making sure my website and author pages are up to date, while plotting out the next story. This break can last from 1-4 weeks depending on what’s happening in my life and how complex the plot is. I try to write in the morning when my brain is freshest, because writing takes a lot of mental energy. I use the afternoons for marketing.
7. Do you read books about the writing craft? Which of them would you recommend?
Not recently, but yes, in the past I have read a lot of books and taken many courses, though the best courses I have taken on storytelling have actually been screenwriting classes. I would recommend Stephen King’s On Writing, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, and KM Weiland’s book on plot (sorry can’t recall the title off the top of my head). For courses I recommend David Freeman’s Beyond Structure, Roy Williams’ Magical Worlds Communication Workshop, and Robert McKee’s screenwriting workshop. I also find Chris Fox’s Youtube channel to be helpful.
8. How did you come up with the idea for The Elemental Origins Series?
I had actually written Born of Water before the series concept came to me. I was writing a screenplay called Godmother, which was my interpretation of the life story of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. Having my mind immersed in fairy-lore brought another story to life that I realized would work well as Born of Earth. Once I had that, then I knew I had to write stories for the other elements and make the girls friends with one another. I liked the idea of creating a non-linear series that readers could enter anywhere, rather than having to read them in order, so I made the novels first-person POV all taking place over a single summer in which they text one another while they’re having their adventures. This way, the reader gets a glimpse of what’s going on in the other girl’s summer holidays, enough to make the curious to read their story. The last book brings all the girls together to share their experiences and fight a single powerful antagonist. Each girl goes to a different country for their summer holiday, and I liked the idea of utilizing different cultural experiences layered on top of the supernatural evolution each girl goes through.
9. Did you always want to be a writer? Becoming a writer was like a child’s dream or it was something that emerged later in your life?
Yes, I have been able to read since I was 3 and always loved storytelling in all its forms. I always thought that being a storyteller would be the perfect job for me but was so daunted by how difficult it was to get published and how little the majority of traditionally published authors make financially that it didn’t seem like a viable option, so I never even tried to get traditionally published. When I stumbled across indie publishing, I knew I had found my lifelong pursuit.
10. Your new book, Salt & Stone, the first one of your new series The Siren’s Curse, is coming out this year, right? Can you talk about it and your creative and writing process on this one?
Yes, it will be out in December, 2018. Salt & Stone, The Siren’s Curse, Book 1 is my 15th title, and by now my process is much smoother and faster. I wanted to continue by picking up the loose threads left over after Born of Water. Now that I know that readers love these characters, I feel confident investing my time into exploring what happens next for them. Using the story from Born of Water as a launchpad, and knowing roughly where I was going with this trilogy (meaning how I wanted it to end), I sketched out the major plot points of the story using sticky notes and a big empty space of wall. Once I had the major beats, I went about filing in the detail in between until I had every chapter outlined. I had my outline looked over by my structural editor (Nicola Aquino of Spit & Polish Editing, who is a genius for inconsistency and plot holes). She gave me the feedback I needed to make it better. I tweaked the outline until I was happy with it, then I made a guess at how many words the finished manuscript would be, set my finish date, did a little division to uncover my daily word count. Then I started writing every day until the first draft was finished. As I answer these questions, I’m going into the second draft edits.
11. In your opinion, what is the future of writing and fiction?
Self-publishing has interrupted the industry hugely in the last ten years by allowing entrepreneurial minded writers to take control of their careers. We’ve seen a huge influx of authors and books into the market, and this will continue as more authors join the fray. Authors are now writing faster, publishing more often, and readers can access this work for cheaper than ever before. Artificial Intelligence is being developed to tell stories, and I don’t think it will be very many more years before AI is being used to write fiction. Whether this fiction will be as good as human authors remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to watch how it unfolds. Publishing has become a very fast-paced, quickly-evolving industry in which those who are able to pivot and adapt are rewarded. Books are competing with movies, TV, social media, and video games, attention spans are shortening and keeping a readers attention is becoming more difficult. All that said, there has never been a better time for authors than now and though I believe the future will be fraught with challenges, I also believe that those authors who genuinely love the art of storytelling, who are committed to producing works of high quality, and who are able to develop entrepreneurial skills (even for traditionally published authors) alongside their writing craft will succeed.
12. Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Read a lot. Become an omnivore reader. Read outside your genre. Talk to strangers, ask questions, be genuinely curious about their character and life experience, you’ll learn so much this way. Go to the theatre, museums, do castle tours, visit different landscapes and countries, everything going into your mind will serve you as you craft your stories. If you do not read and do not go out and live a life full of diverse experiences, your creative well will run dry. I believe writer’s block comes from not consuming enough experiences and not asking enough questions. More important that this even, is to develop empathy.
Empathy is a vital but endangered quality of the human being––arguably the MOST important quality anyone can have. Social media and mass media destroys it, books should rebuild it. Your role as a storyteller should be to develop empathy both within yourself as you put your mind and heart into the shoes of your characters, and also to foster it within your reader. Help them to feel what your characters are feeling. Through reading, we can live a thousand more lives than just the one we were given. Learn how to tell a story well, and that is what you are doing––giving your readers another life to live…make it a good one.
Thanks to Tiago from Writerflix for permission to share the interview here.
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