Live Author Interview w/ Highly Caffeinated Art

August 19, 2024

Live Author Interview w/ Highly Caffeinated Art

Written Interview Q&A

Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do outside of writing? What is a day in your life like for you?

I’m an Illustrator, so I enjoy drawing and painting with watercolor. I do everything from character design to book covers to concept art, children’s illustration art, and commissions. I love fantasy, so that’s my jam. I’m also a single Dad to a wonderful 12-year-old boy who terrifies me every time I think he’s going to be a teenager next year.

I love playing story-building games and usually am the game master, like D&D and Pathfinder. When I’m not working part-time as a barista or at an art event, I’m generally writing or spending time with my son and our dog and cat.

2. What inspired your first novel? What was the thing that got you into writing in the first place?

I’ll start with the first question because it’s shorter and more straightforward. Writing to me has always been something I enjoyed. It’s always helped me when I needed it, like processing emotions like grief or navigating my own mental health. I just love story-telling and the idea that maybe somewhere, at some point, someone will pick up something I’ve written, and it will help them in some way they didn’t know they needed it. I don’t care if it’s just one person: if something I share can do that, I consider it a win. Now, as far as what inspired ‘Suneater’ or rather the whole ‘Desert Rose’ series I’m working on:

Ironically, sixteen years ago, when I was about sixteen, I had an idea. It was a very rough one, mind you, but an idea. I started where I usually do: vivid daydreaming. I had a premise I wanted to build a world around, and I started doing so with general ideas tossed into a Word doc because my handwriting is atrocious. About two months into my idea dump, I started trying to figure out characters by freewriting them. I did that a lot. I started a series of manuscripts and tossed all seven over the past 16 years.

Nothing felt right, and I couldn’t pinpoint where I wanted to start telling my story. All I knew was that I had this wide expansive world fully fleshed out, with characters fleshed out. I played D&D with friends from high school back then, and I always was the GM, so I asked why not just make it into a homebrew setting. So, I did. It stayed that way for a long time until I got extremely sick earlier this year. I’m a pretty high-anxiety person with some pretty significant health issues, and I deal with bouts of depression in certain parts of the year.

I got COVID at the start of this year for the first time, and I was hospitalized for a few days because of it. It made my other health issues exasperated, and I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t really able to do anything, and as it does, it set off a massive depression spiral.

Usually, when I nosedive, I tend to isolate and hyper-fixate on something; this time, it just happened to be my book—the one I’ve wanted to write for years. I suddenly knew what to do with it, where I wanted to start it, and how I wanted to tell the story. So, I set off on an adventure, just like Andreas in my novel, and here we are.

How do you come up with characters? Are they spontaneous or meticulously planned?

They’re both. The idea of them is spontaneous bouts of ‘this would be really cool’ or ‘I really want to make this into a character.’ Then, I start planning them out and usually start with their personality, always helping by making playlists. Then, I go on to flesh out their design by doodling them nonstop for a few weeks.

4. What are some of your favorite genres to read? Are there any books you’d recommend to first-time readers or people looking for something new?

Fantasy. I love seeing the branches of pure imagination, and it’s just been a part of my life. I read voraciously in my youth, all of them fantasy novels, where I could deep-dive into another world and forget about this one. I think it’s a feeling anyone from a messed up home or who was bullied can relate to. We all want a safe place to exist, and fantasy was that for me. I will forever live and die on the hill of Tolkien. I love his writing, mainly because it is immersive.

I will forever suggest that someone read ‘The Hobbit’ at least once in their life, and if you really enjoy it, please follow it with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ series. Those books have all changed my life so much as a writer. Two books I’ve been reading currently are: ‘Forged in Flames’ by Jaz Pate and ‘Fated Mates and When to Keep Them’ by AJ Sherwood. Both are extremely talented authors and if you’re looking for something a little queer, they are wonderful indie books to pick up.

5. What’s the most difficult thing about being a writer?

Editing. I’m a pretty fast reader, so when I’m reading over my manuscript for preliminary edits, I have to force myself to read slower. Sometimes, it ends up being an 8-9-hour affair when I could have finished what I was reading naturally in about 3-4 hours.

6. What is your process for completing a novel from outline to final product?

Hyperfixation. I usually focus on writing, then going back and preliminary editing chapter by chapter before going on to the next chapter to write. I miss a lot less and find where I want to change things a lot easier when doing that versus going through just mass editing at the end. Then I usually roll into my illustration habit and start doing book cover mocks till I find one I love and expand on it. Then more editing. Probably some half-chapter re-writes, and then I roll back over and work on any doodles or maps, etc, I want to include with my writing. I swing between those three for about 6-7 rounds before sending out a few ARCs or grabbing some beta readers. Then I go back in and fine-tune, searching for misplaced commas and typos and clarifying areas that are hard to follow as much as possible.

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve written in your novel? Don’t worry; we don’t judge here.

I love little silly ‘Dad humor,’ as folks call it. Simon, one of my protagonists, can pop out some Dad humor sometimes. The best one was written when I was bleary-eyed on too much coffee at about 3 AM in one of the later chapters. Andreas, my other protagonist, says a pretty cringe-worthy line, and Simon pops back with something silly. It had me personally giggly for a while after writing it because it was such a silly scene, but felt really natural for the characters.

8. What’s one thing about being a writer that absolutely drives you up the wall?

Perfection. I’m terrible at being a perfectionist, and I tend to let it break me down sometimes. I have to mentally cut my brain off because I will (and have before) pick apart something I’ve written to the point that I end up just stopping or tossing the whole thing. Sometimes being my own worst critic is what I need, but for others, it’s very bad
for me.

9. What does being a successful writer look like for you? What type of life do you want to live as a writer?

Honestly? I just want to share my stories, and if I end up being able to help someone because I’ve written something they can relate to or find representation in, that’s all I want at the end of the day. I just want someone to feel the love I put into what I do and for the story I want to tell to impact them somehow, even if it’s just giggling at silly
humor.

10. Describe your writing journey. If you had to write a story centered around it, do you think you could pull it off?

Oh, that would be very sad, and the screenplay south would be worse. I don’t think I’ll ever write or ask someone else to write my biography. I simply am. I say that because writing has been just a part of my life, and me, for a very long time. There’s not really a way to separate the two. Storytelling is a part of me, and I would never ask anyone to sit
through the story of my life and how I started writing to deal with it.