Q. Kaia...what made you become a writer?
A. From a young age, I was a writer - I didn't decide
to be one, I was just driven to write. I
started in primary school and never stopped. When I was a kid, back in the early days of personal
computing, we had a Sinclair QL that I used to hijack to write, much to my
brother's disgust. He thought playing
games and programming was a lot more interesting, and I loved those too, but
writing was another thing altogether.
It was utterly addictive. I think
I won the high school creative writing competition four or five years running
and I had the odd poem or short story published to a newsletter or an online
ezine and that fueled me. Just those tiny tastes of success. I'd sit in class writing my "novels" in notebooks,
creating illustrations. My teachers
weren't impressed; I think they'd be quite surprised by where I am today, given
my lack of attention in class.
My first "novel" was just...comical. It was called The Demons of Red Rose Black and was about a bunch of young musicians who form a rock band called the
Auckland Secret Society (ASS for short), who are discovered by Queen guitarist
Brian May and taken across to England
to fight demons. Yeah, I'm shaking my head too. That's why I failed 5th form chemistry.
As I got older, I wrote a lot of short stories and
poetry, got into screenwriting and wrote a few screenplays, even worked on some
teleplays for a couple of series concepts.
I wrote constantly. If I wasn't
working or writing, I was composing music. When I'm creating, I don't sleep much and my 20s were
spent rather sleep-deprived. I wrote my
first full-length, non note-book novel, The Blue Rose at the age of
twenty. It was a 114,000 word novel that may one day see publication, and it was my first real solid work of
fiction. I followed that with an even
longer book, the sequel to my first novel, and that one is a 250,000 behemoth that
was written in three months.
I wrote five complete novels over a seven year period,
with Just Drink (first draft: 85,000 words) being completed over a 16 day
holiday period. So I knew I could produce the work. Problem was, the work I produced wasn't well
written. The ideas were there, the
dedication to producing the work was definitely there, but I had a lot to learn
about style, and my writing was plagued by cliche. I knew I had to get better, so I applied for and was
granted a mentorship through the New Zealand Society of Authors. [I worked with Phyllis Johnston], who was fantastically helpful, and we worked together on Just Drink,
looking at how to get that polished enough to put in front of a publisher. Life interrupted, as it often does, in the middle of
that process and writing got shelved as other things took precedence.
Then about a year ago, I decided that with
self-publishing now becoming a popular way of getting your work out there, it
couldn't hurt to see if all the work I'd put into my craft might pay off. Twelve months of hard labor later, I finally
have a book out there, which feels great.
Q.
What is your typical writing day like?
A. I don't have writing "days" per se. I work a very
intense full-time job and then I write at night. When I was editing Just Drink, that meant finishing work at five or six or seven at
night, then writing until 2:00 every morning. Weekends were the only
times I got a really clear run at it. I worked fourteen hour days for about 12 months and probably
put in over two-thousand hours in total polishing Just Drink from its early iteration to its final form. The first draft was written in sixteen days
back in 2000, so it's been a very long journey for this book. In terms
of technology and pop culture references, it required a lot of updating. I also wanted to make sure
I wasn't repeating anything that'd since been done to death in the intervening
fifteen years. Now that's a
challenge!
Q.
Do you outline? If so, how extensive are
your outlines?
A. I don't outline unless I feel I have to. Generally, I just write and follow the
story. As the characters develop, my
one-line hook (generally the only outline I start with) will be shaped into a
full novel by the character development.
If I feel I'm going to get lost or the plot's getting complex, or there
are likely to be timeline issues, then I'll do more work around the
outline. For Just Drink, because it'd
been re-written so many times over fifteen years, I ended up creating a thirty
page distillation of information I could refer to. It included:
*
Timelines (Using Aeon Timeline) to track when events happened, how old
characters were at critical points in time and to ensure historical events
lined up properly with the narrative.
*
Backgrounds on all the characters: where they come from, who they are, their
quirks, their behaviors, their motivation.
*
Events and dynamics planning: I don't really plan these, but I'm always
conscious of the rise and fall of emotion and the pacing of events. I'd like to plot out a graph of highs and
lows as a kind of heart-beat diagram; I think that'd be an interesting
experiment. Something to do in the
future. As with a best-selling song, I'm
sure there's an optimal pulse for a book that involves a lot of action, to stop
readers getting fatigued.
* A
map of where everything was taking place, mostly to plot out the distances and
travel times between places (time is very important in this book, so the
timelines were crucial to continuity).
*
Separate work around character motivation for the bad guys. Rather than just serve the story, I wanted to
have a believable (within the context of the fictitious premise) motivation for
the individuals that act against the main cast.
The over-arching motivations of their organizations are easier to
understand than why an individual would commit evil acts, so I spent some time
making sure I at least understood why they would do what they do.
With all my characters, I like to draw people who fall
on different parts of the spectrum of morality, and explore how that's driven
by their individual circumstances and belief systems. Even when we think we're doing the right
thing, sometimes we find ourselves hurting others, which is something this book
explores in depth. What appears in the
book is only a light touch on the character's back stories, but those will
develop as the series goes on. But all of this was done post-writing. My preference is to let the characters
develop naturally, then go back and tweak them if needed. Without the long gaps between first draft and
release, I don't think I'm going to need to do a thirty-page background again. That said, it was fun and enlightening and has given me a really strong feel
for the characters as I move them into the next book.
Q.
How many revisions do you typically do on a novel?
A. Because all my novels were written some ten to
fifteen years ago, to date there have been too many. At least three full re-writes. I don't mean just light edits, I mean pretty
much re-writing every word. Just Drink began as a first-person
literary novel then evolved into third-person, with far more emphasis on action
and character than on the language itself.
It was the right thing to do, but it did mean several complete
overhauls.
I want to streamline my process so that I don't have
to spend a year editing till 2 a.m. I'd like to see a novel written within 6
months (balanced around my day job), with beta readers' feedback, followed by a
full revision, followed by minor editing tweaks, followed by publication. I'd like to see that happen over 6-8 months
at most. In order to facilitate that, I
move every piece of writing I do to a Kobo e-reader and read back over the
material each night after I finish writing.
This means I pick up the small errors, the places where the dialogue's weak
or inconsistent, and it also gives me a feel for whether or not the pacing is
right. I've found that this re-reading
is the most valuable part of the process, as I pick up things on my e-reader
that I just don't see in Word.
Q.
What is your best tip for editing a manuscript?
A. I'm not sure that anyone should take advice from
the way I edit, but a few things I've learned are:
* It
may be lyrically beautiful, but it might still need to be cut. Put it in a file called "cut scenes" and use
it elsewhere if you really love it. But if it slows things down, remove it.
*
Listen to what your beta readers tell you. If they don't understand what's
going on, or they don't understand a character's motivation, you need to make
it clearer.
*
Don't edit at 2 a.m....you'll miss too much detail.
*
Read back your work on an e-reader. If it bores you, or you find yourself
skimming parts, those are warning signs. I have to enjoy every part of my book before I'll release it.
* You have to publish some time.
And chances are your manuscript will still contain tiny errors that no
matter how many times you read your work, you and your beta readers won't pick
up. I think you just have to go ahead
and publish, or you'll never do it.
After publishing, I still read back my book from time to time, just
opening it at a random page, which I find helps me "see" mistakes more easily.
*There is some GREAT software out there for helping you edit. I trialled a programmed called Style Writer,
which I loved. It's a bit pricey
currently with the NZ dollar conversion rate, but it highlights important
things such as over-writing, sentence length, jargon...all the things that you
need to be conscious of. Not every
suggestion it makes needs to be actioned, but it's a great tool for gaining
awareness of what you're doing, and ensuring that you're doing things for the
right reasons.
Q.
Which writing habits and/or tricks of the trade have made you a better writer?
A. Cutting things out of my writing; generally floral
prose (a weakness of mine). I want to
give my readers a fully immersive experience, but there's a time and a
place. Sometimes a handful of words will
evoke everything I want to communicate, rather than writing a full paragraph
describing how things smell, sound and feel. I am very aware I'm still on a journey to becoming the
best writer I can be. Some time between
finishing a book and reading it back is valuable if you can deal with taking a
break. I try and detach from my work
when I'm reading it, to see if it's really worth reading; if it's not, if
it's not enjoyable, I don't want to put it out there, no matter how much effort
I've put into it.
Q.
Do you ever suffer through writer's block?
If so, how do you fight it?
A. Yes, absolutely.
Sometimes because I'm exhausted, other times it's a warning that where
I'm going isn't compelling enough. When
I get writer's block I do one of three things: 1) I
start working on another project (I'm usually working on at least two or three
concurrently); 2) I
re-read it until I had a good feeling of where it should go next -- which might mean re-reading the same 5000 words
for six days in a row; or 3) I'll actually sit down and do a rough outline of events and just start writing
my way through those. If they're wrong, if
they're not fun, I can scrap them later and start again. But after a few false
starts, the right path will usually open up and I can move forward.
There are books that I've written that have halted
halfway through because that next step just isn't coming to me. Sometimes getting a novel moving again is
like trying to push a car by yourself; other times, an entire first draft just
flows. I find the more emotionally
connected I am to something, the more easily it flows. Also, when I do a lot of research, that
helps. And I do a lot of research. I do my
best to make the information in my books as accurate as possible, especially
where technology is involved.
Where a book exists in a vacuum, where events are
entirely fictitious, that's when I find it harder to keep things moving; or
when I'm looking for the next clear step between event A and event B and I'm
trying to avoid things that have been done before. That's hard.
In the age of the Internet, it's very clear that having an original idea
is an extreme rarity. With so many
minds collectively being influenced by similar things, I would almost say it's just not possible. So I do my best to craft my ideas in an original way, avoid
clichés where I can, and try and write something that's enjoyable, even if it's
not entirely original.
Q.
What drew you to write your preferred genre(s)?
A. When X-Files
and Buffy wound up (two of my favorite
shows of all time), I couldn't get my fix from watching TV, so I started
to write the stories I want to read.
Back when I wrote most of my novels, there wasn't the wealth of material [available] that there is now. Subjects
that fascinate me are technology and hacking, the influence media has on
society (and our perception of reality), relationships and bonds formed outside
of blood ties, and the duality of human veneer versus our primal selves.
In those early days, I loved vampires as an analogy
for addiction. Just Drink very much
approaches vamparism as an unwanted biological burden (which I think it would
be, for most moral creatures), along with exploring the seductive side of
having power over others. And I was
fascinated by werewolves; the idea of having a second, more powerful self, more
closely connected with instinct and to the earth. Often alien life would come up in the mix. I have a fascination with the universe and
subjective perception. I think the
world is an utterly fascinating place and I'm often frustrated that I don't
have enough lifetimes to learn and explore all the subjects that interest
me.
Q.
Do you utilize beta readers.
A. Yes, absolutely, they're critical to the
process. I do sometimes feel cruel
asking friends and family to be engaged in beta reading, because when you read
a book, you really want to lose yourself in the story, not be looking for holes
or spelling mistakes or continuity problems.
So anyone in my immediate circle who's willing to do that for me is a
very precious resource. I wouldn't feel
comfortable releasing something that only I'd read.
Q.
In your most recently published novel, what's one scene you really enjoyed
writing - and why?
A. I love the fights -- not the physical fights, but
the sniping and the slanging matches -- and the reason I enjoy those is that my characters reveal most about themselves when they drop the veneer and show
who they really are and what their true motivations are. Striking a nerve and getting a truly unguarded
response reveals a part of one character to another that helps to build their
interactions and their relationships with one another. It also helps them learn about
themselves. I like to write characters who lose control.
Q.
What makes the main character(s) of your most recent novel so special?
A. I've always said this book is about family. The family you choose. I chose this book to publish first because of the
character dynamics. You have a young
girl, Shaiyan, who's released from a psychiatric hospital at seventeen into a
world she hasn't experienced since childhood, which as you can imagine is
something of a shock. She's "rescued" by a guy, Dylan, who's a bit older,
far more world-weary, who's desperate to be with someone who understands
him. Because she's the only person in
the world who shares his particular burden, he believes he can find some kind
of peace with her. Unfortunately, for various reasons, she can't stand
beside him in his loneliness. This isolation, and his very skewed black and white morality, makes him an interesting guy to
write. He's a hero who can't do anything
right, who feels he can make good on his past actions by making this girl's
life easier than his has been, at great cost to himself.
Then you have the girl, Shaiyan, who has all this
untapped potential, who's never had the chance to find out who she is. If she's too closely protected, that
potential can't grow; only through Dylan stepping back and letting her take
risks can she develop into a mature woman and that's terrifying for him,
because he's so terrified of losing her.
All the characters are doing the best with their own
personal resources, throwing the dice to decide what they should do and coming
up with different numbers. And at the
heart of it are the big questions: Who should our loyalties be to? [Should our loyalties be to] ourselves,
our friends, our family, or the world at large?
What's really important?
Q.
What is your best advice for author self-promotion?
A. Self promotion, to me, is the hard part. I would say, read everything you can; there
are a huge number of resources out there for self-publishers in terms of
building up a presence and getting noticed.
I'm still in the infancy of that journey, so perhaps I'll have better
tips later on!
Q.
How do you deal with negative reviews?
A. It's not
something I've had to face yet as I've only just published, but as a perfectionist,
I know I'm going to have to deal with it [eventually]. I'm very critical of my own creations and I
do expect there will be negative reviews at some point, because nothing is
perfect; and while I love this book and I think it's enjoyable and relevant, I
also know it won't appeal to everyone. I've been told by other author friends that they've
had negative reviews from people who freely admit they haven't even read the
book. I think you need to ignore that
kind of negativity. The Internet is a
playground for some fairly unpleasant people and there will always be someone
who wants to tear you down. Likewise, I imagine there may be some useful advice in
negative feedback. But if you want to
keep writing, you just have to keep doing it; keep going, get better, take on
board constructive feedback and hope you can find the audience that will love
your work...because someone will. It's a big world out there.
Q.
What is your favorite aspect of being an indie author?
A. Writing without worrying about financial
return. I have no interest in writing a
book that plays to the "in" thing, or where all the creative decisions are made
to appeal to a certain audience. While
one day being popular enough to write as a career would be brilliant, I want to
be proud of what I've produced and I want to like it myself. It's too easy to write to a formula. I want to break away from that. [I want to respect] the rules of storytelling, ensuring I craft something that works, but without
cynical pandering to trying to be popular by writing about a certain thing. If I write it, it's because I love reading it
myself.
Q.
What is your least favorite aspect of being an indie author?
A. Finding my
audience. It's just so damn hard when you
don't have the publishing house machine behind you. The challenges of self-publishing and the meager
returns aren't much fun. I think there's
a perception out there that if you self-publish, you get all the cash on your
book sales and it's really easy to sell your work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I worked out that if I sold 100 copies of my
novel on Kobo over a 12 month period (and as any self-published author knows,
gaining that momentum is tricky), at the current market rate for first-time
published authors, I'd earn a return of [5 cents] per hour of time invested. I joke that kids in sneaker factories get
paid more.
Given how much work goes into creating a work of
fiction, this makes it very hard to really dedicate yourself to your craft. The bills have to be paid somehow -- at least
until that movie deal comes through. There's also a general (and probably well-founded)
suspicion towards self-published authors, because anyone can put up anything
they've written and sell it, regardless of quality. If you work through a publisher, potential
readers have more confidence that your book at least reaches a certain
standard. Those of us who care about reaching that standard
might invest thousands of dollars in professional editors, cover design and
software, meaning just to recoup our costs, we'd have to sell many thousands of
books. And while I love my craft, and
would do it regardless, I do believe artists should make some kind of profit.
Otherwise, it's very hard for them to dedicate themselves to what they
do and get better at it, which is how you get high quality content.
Getting found is another challenge; a true writer
wants to write, not spend their lives marketing themselves, but it's an
essential part of self-publishing. We might
all dream of being the next hot author who has their book made into a movie or a TV series (or, my personal dream,
an anime series), and being able to charge $24.95 for an e-book, but the
reality is, no matter how good our work is, we have to get people reading our work
before it can become a success.
Q.
What is your current writing project?
A. I'm working on three novels right now. One is the follow up to Just Drink, another
is a werewolf/vampire novel with the working title "First Blood" and the other
is a high concept sci-fi novel about a guy fleeing a multi-planetary extinction
event. I move between the three as
inspiration takes me on one project. I
very rarely stall on all three!
Q.
What are three of your favorite novels?
A. 1). Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, which is a
brilliant look at morality. If you've only seen the movie, do
read the book; 2). Only Forward, by Michael Marshall Smith. [It's] a
book I've re-read dozens of times. [It] has some fantastic imagery in it that
has stuck with me throughout my life, as well as a great sense of humor; 3). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. by Douglas Adams. [He's] such a fantastic writer with such a sense of humor. I also own every one of Terry Prachett's books, and I'm a huge Neil Gaiman and Robert Rankin fan.
Q.
If you could have lunch with any novelist, living or dead, who would it
be? What would you talk to them about?
A. I think
probably Douglas Adams. I grew up with the Hitchhiker's Guide series and I
think my writing was infected with that dry sense of humor at a young
age. I would have liked to have talked
to him about his passion for technology and his ideas for how he saw the future
of humanity playing out.
Q.
What is your best piece of advice for budding authors?
A. Write. Don't just talk about writing. One thing that really frustrates me is the
number of people I meet who tell me they have a great idea for a novel. This phrase "I'm an ideas guy; I have some
great ideas, I just need someone to do the actual writing." We all have ideas. It's only through hard
work and perseverance that you can turn ideas into a novel. I think all novelists could confidently say
they're "ideas" people, but your idea is this glossy, beautiful thing right up
until you write it all down, subject it to continuity checks, do the research
and then craft the words [and] ideas into a story that compels people to
read it. Writing
is hard. It's the greatest,
most enjoyable work I can think of, but it's still work. I respect people who, no matter what the
final product is, put in the hours, do the research and produce a result.
Q.
What is your favorite inspirational quote?
A. It changes
from year to year, but right now, a quote from Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken.
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
I didn't take the road less traveled by; I studied
performing arts for three years and then decided in my twenties that my
creative endeavors would never pay my way, no matter how good I was. No matter how hard you work, making a career
in the arts is tough.
Financial freedom is great, don't get me wrong. But I don't recommend a life of working 45-50
hours a week and then trying to create around that. Balance is tricky, especially when you have a
partner -- something I currently don't have time for.
Don't let the pursuit of money strip your passions
from your life. Don't let fear stop you
from pursuing the things you love. Above
all, don't let anything stop you from becoming the person you want to be. Life is far shorter than you think.
#
No witches, warlocks or vampires...
just a sexy tale about trying to live the Hollywood dream...
