Author Interviews

About the author Tell us your story? What made you start writing? I’m not sure. I just got it into my head when I was 18 that I wanted to write stories and I’ve been doing it ever since. The very first stories I wrote were terrible and it took me a long time to write anything that could be considered good, let alone great. Now, almost 20 years later, I’m finally writing the stories I wanted to write when I was 18. It’s been a long road to get to this point and I’ll be the first to admit I have no natural talent as a writer. Any skills I now have are the product of hard work and a great deal of tenacity. Aside from necessities, what one thing could you not go a day without? Daydreaming. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re after, but I’m a chronic daydreamer. I have daydreams that are part of a saga that has lasted years, with the people in the daydreams ageing as the daydream progresses. It’s not that my life is bad, it’s actually pretty great, but I do need my daydreams to survive. If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to? I’d love to see how the universe was created, so about 13.7 billion years ago. Though I’m not sure exactly how I would exist in a universe during its early state. I suspect I’d need to be a ghost of some kind… Read More »V.S. Nelson

About the author Tell us your story ? What made you start writing ? I read a lot as a child. I would go to the library and borrow as many books as possible and read them all during the week. Writing came naturally from my avid reading. I started inventing small stories and then I moved to more ambitious ideas. They were definitely too ambitious! I would start writing a novel with no planning, already seeing myself with a 500 pages book. Usually my enthusiasm for the story would fizzle out and I would move on to my next idea after only writing a dozen pages. Then as a teen I decided I really wanted to actually finish a story. So I started writing short stories. I wrote three before moving on to a novel. This time I outlined the book and found a contest to apply to. This deadline helped me actually finish the first draft of the novel. But the editing process seemed too daunting so I kept the novel as a Word document. Same for my second novel that I wrote during NaNo Wrimo. I managed to do the 50k words and was super proud of myself but I dreaded the editing process so much and I felt like finding a publisher would be an impossible task. And then, Corona hit and I found myself talking with one of my best friends, Jenni about writing our very own book. I would have never been able to… Read More »Alice Karpiel

About the author Tell us your story? What made you start writing?* I’ve pretty much always been an avid reader but I didn’t start writing regularly until a few years ago, actually. When I was in school, I would write a bit for myself every now and then, but nothing was ever finished. I had this thought in my head that writing a book would be crazy and I could never pull it off. Then during my studies (I was a film student), I got into writing scripts which was the first time I saw myself as a writer. Then Corona happened and like everyone else, life changed. I was living in the UK when it started as I had just finished my master’s degree there. When the first lockdown was announced I flew home very last minute, thinking I’d be back. The lockdown was a very weird time. Suddenly, I was home again, all my closest friends were either still in the UK or scattered around the world and no one could travel to anyone, and I was looking for a job in a time when people weren’t really hiring. One day, I was talking to one of my best friends, Alice, and we kind of jokingly decided to come up with an idea for a book and write something for fun. The idea of publishing wasn’t even on the table at first. It was all just for fun and maybe that’s why I wasn’t afraid to try. It quickly… Read More »Jennifer Becker

About the author Tell us your story? What made you start writing? Telling stories has always been something I wanted to do.  I remember when I was around eight years old, I walked around for a couple of days with a clipboard, interviewing my family and neighbors about what type of story they’d want to read. I don’t think I ever wrote it, but that’s my first memory of wanting to write. I dabbled a little more in my teenage years, attempting to write a fantasy epic, but it never really got off the ground. I still have all the digital files, though! Perhaps one day it will become reality. Then I went to college, got a job, and dropped all attempts at writing while trying to be one of those responsible adults. In the spring of 2018, during a difficult period of my life, I woke up one morning from a really vivid and tragic dream I still remember. It inspired the first full novel I managed to write, which took eight months. It was pretty bad! Luckily, I learned a lot from it and the writer friends I’ve accumulated. Darkness Within was my fourth novel, and the first one which got published. I’ve never stopped thinking about characters since that dream. They drive every single scrap of an idea I have typed out. Wanting to understand what makes people tick and what happens when I smash two very different personalities together. Also, kissing. I like to write kissing.… Read More »Cyprus Hart