I’m a late bloomer to this whole writing thing, so thank you. I’m still in shock that my book baby has grabbed a semi-finalist spot in this year’s SPFBO! It actually took me three years to see myself as a writer. I’m in my 40’s and have 20+ years of graphic design experience, with a heavy emphasis in marketing. I’m also an artist and love to paint, draw, and dabble in digital art. Earlier this year, I made the terrifying decision to quit my corporate job as an Art Director to build on all of these skills and attempt to be my own boss, but it’s slow going so far. I’m thankful to have an amazingly supportive husband and daughter who are constantly encouraging me and keeping me grounded.

I definitely stumbled into the fun more than knew I’d become a writer. This has been a hobby of mine since high school when I became an avid reader of Fantasy. It took me a lot of years to build up the confidence to share my writing with anyone (and I do mean anyone), but once I did it’s almost like I’ve become addicted. I truly enjoy the process of writing and self publishing and I’m always looking for things I can try from marketing and writing craft development standpoints.

David Eddings will always have my heart as the first fantasy author I binged. His characters were so real to me in my impressionable teenage years. R. A. Salvator’s Forgotten Realms books introduced me to my first book boyfriend (Drizzt Do'urden, obviously) and some amazing fight sequences. I think Rebecca Ross is finally getting the limelight she deserves for her wonderful characters and lush worlds. But honestly, Kate Schumacher (an indie author from Australia) is hands down the most influential author for me as a writer. She’s been an amazing mentor and friend, answering my millions of random questions on self publishing. I was still trying to figure out how to turn The House of Starling into a “real” book when she scooped me up to beta read her first novel. Her characters are so 3-dimensional, the intricacies of her politics and worldbuilding are everything I’d been craving as a reader for years.

For me, The House of Starling is a love story; a Romeo and Juliet retelling of sorts with The Witcher vibes. You meet my bada$$ warrior, Rae, as she's struggling with guilt and questioning her own morality. In a world where elves live well over a thousand years, she’s still in her thirties. There’s a lot of history she hasn’t been alive for. It’s this unknown that leaves her with a ton of doubt and more questions as she meets her enemies face to face rather than sword to sword. This is definitely an adult fantasy. I didn’t hold back on the bloody action and dark themes.

I am, if nothing else, a chronic romantic and horrible at plotting, so this story definitely evolved over time and it was most certainly intended as a romance of some form or another. I know this sounds cliche, but one day, it was just there in my head. Or rather, they were there. I had Rae and I had Gastel, and they needed to see through their differences of race and culture and come together to restore balance. While earlier drafts had a much more insta-love feel to emulate Romeo and Juliet a little more, I toned this back as I worked through the rest of the story.

When I started writing this though, I had zero clue what a romantic fantasy was. My only intention was to tell a love story wrapped in a fantasy world. In fact, I wrote my first draft without having a clue how many books this series would be or how I would finally end it. I didn’t know anything about a three act story structure, or showing vs telling. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, I was just writing about these two characters and the things they’d need to overcome to be together.

I, personally, LOVE multi-POV books. I don’t think I could tell this story the same from only one POV. The addition of Belkin and Roulin’s POVs happened organically as I needed to show different pieces of the story to the reader that Rae and Gastel weren’t necessarily privy to.

I think my absolute favorite POV to write has been Belkin. He’s complicated, and hard to hate, but equally hard to love. He keeps me on my toes and may have a spinoff novel of his own tucked away for when this series is finished. I don’t think I have a least favorite to be honest. Each character has a spot in my heart, but the hardest for me to get into has been Roulin. He is very evil and basically the opposite of how I’ve always tried to live my own life.

I have a close platonic guy friend, who’s essentially a brother to me, and that relationship definitely inspired Rae and Freck’s friendship. As far as favorite to write, it would have to be my royal brothers. I’m the middle child of three, so the dynamics between siblings is something I’m intimately familiar with. The way personality traits overlap while each sibling maintains their own uniqueness was something I really enjoyed bringing out in Belkin, Roulin, and Gastel. The concepts of nature vs nurture and how past events change how they would each react in situations has been so fun. Plus the backstories have been endlessly entertaining to craft.

I knew from the start that this story had a strong enemy factions component that definitely evolved over multiple drafts. I basically looked at the main characteristics of each culture and balanced them against one another. The magic system had a huge influence over this as well. I didn’t want a straight elemental system, but rather something that complimented each race while maintaining balance. I took the world and split it into three general pieces, the forest, the moors, the underground, then built physical attributes around these, but it was definitely all about balance.

I realised really quickly that humans had no place in the world of Rhend. I needed a common starting point with similar life spans, speed, strength, and magic wielding. Where one race is rigid and disciplined another is relaxed and easy going. Where one is tall, another is tiny, and the other naturally muscular. Where one can heal, the other can destroy, and another can resurrect. As far as which race I think I’d be the most like? Definitely 100% the Shay.

It took me getting through rough drafting book 2 to see the path, but it is definitely clear. Unless things get completely out of hand, this will be a trilogy. The third book will likely be pretty chonky, though. I’ll have the second book published by the end of this year or early next year. It will actually be going to beta readers this month and is titled after Gastel’s mother and uncle’s House: The House of Amfithere. I refuse to spoil things, but suffice to say, I think you’ll be excited to see a lot of your favorite characters and some new ones that I hope you grow to love as much as I have! I’m going to destroy you emotionally, give you a little hope and then rip it away again, but I promise it all comes back together.

It’s been a crazy three year adventure actually! As I already said above, writing has been a hobby. This is 100% my escape from the real world. After completing my first draft of The House of Starling, I had no idea what to do with it. I had never let anyone read my writing before and was terrified. I finally shared copies with my husband, dad, a couple other close friends just to see what they thought. While I know they were biassed, they all said the exact same thing. “You need to publish this.” So I did what a lot of people do nowadays and I dove into social media to find a starting point, and a community.

From there I researched the publishing industry and quickly determined that I didn’t think this story would be marketable enough for an agent to be interested in. Mostly because it’s not YA, but also because I couldn’t determine any clear comps. I saved myself the brutality of being rejected and instead decided I’d learn how to self-publish. I watched a lot of youtube videos about how to self-publish and tips and tricks on what to do at each level. I read more blogs than I’ve ever read before in my life. It’s definitely been challenging and humbling but so much fun at the same time.

This is another reason I wanted to self publish. The cover art and design (as well as my map, internal illustration, and formatting in the paperback) was done by yours truly. Art is my first passion, and after learning that traditionally published authors don’t always have the same control over the appearance of their books, I knew I wanted to do it ALL myself.

I think anyone who’s read The House of Starling knows, Rae needed to be on the cover. While my sweet Gastel is so important, this first book is Rae’s story. I personally am drawn more to a character driven cover than the more symbolic cover styles that are popular on Romantasy and Romantic Fantasy right now, but I also wanted to incorporate a darker vibe through the color scheme and blood on the sword to set the tone. For me, the art has definitely been an extension of the storytelling.

Here’s where I get on my soapbox. It’s the community! I’m very active on Instagram and try to keep up with Threads and TikTok, but it’s the social media writing community that really got me into this. I saw multiple authors joining in last year and actually put a reminder on my calendar so I wouldn’t miss it this year! I can’t say enough about how kind everyone is and how encouraging the entire experience has been for me as a writer. I came into this assuming I would be eliminated in the first round, but after seeing all the hype last summer I just knew I wanted to see what it was all about. I was a bit bummed that the cover contest didn’t happen though. That was almost my real motivation.

A question I’ve gotten previously is how I came up with names for characters, places and magic. Some of them are as simple as the Middlelend Forest being through the middle of Rhend. Rhend as in to rend things apart. Things don’t always have to have complicated names. This is a fantasy world however, and while some of my characters do have recognizable names like, Freya, Solena, and Geri, I tried, for the most part, to keep other names to two syllables and spelled phonetically.

A fun fact about me is that I struggled with a reading disability and went to remedial phonics classes in grade school until about the fourth grade. I still struggle with spelling and can’t spell out loud without seeing the letters written out. Words do not appear as letters in my head. They appear as the sounds that are spoken or the thing that they represent. So spelling bees have always been my archnemesis.

Thank YOU for everything! For the great review, for these awesome interview questions, and for being so friendly and welcoming! This has truly been a wonderful experience and I can’t recommend SPFBO and Fantasy Book Critic Blog enough to writers and readers alike.

Final thoughts, if you have a story in your head, write it! Find your community. Don’t do it alone. It’s twice as hard, trust me. Be ready to roll with the punches though, because this is not for the faint of heart and you WILL tumble. Get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. The reward may not be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it’s still worth every step of the journey.