I

have always wanted to be an author.

I mean, from a very, very young age, it was the first job I ever really wanted to have.

I spent my childhood growing up in libraries and bookstores.

I've been a book lover my entire life.

And it's what I went to college for.

It's what all my degrees are in.

And does it change kind of how you have to market your books as well?

Which of your characters do you think toes the line of vanity and morality the most? And I think most importantly, are they aware that that's what they're doing?

That's a great question.

You know, it kind of depends on, I guess, how you see vanity, right? Because different characters struggle with it in different ways.

Luther is in a very literal way where, you know, he has been taught from a very young age that like any kind of physical visible flaw is also... a sign of weakness and it's you're imperfect and you can't be a good leader if we don't see you as perfect.

You know, the scar on his skin becomes a marker of his self-worth and his competence, you know, and whether or not people will want to follow him as a leader.

And that has just been drilled into him for however long he's been alive.

And I think he internalized some of that, you know, as much as he said, I don't care.

What's the thing that you want people to be like, hey,

Well, for listeners that are tuning in that maybe haven't had a chance to pick up the Kindred's Curse Saga yet, and this is their first time, would you introduce them to the series?

Sure, so The Kindred's Curse Saga is a romantasy series, four book series.

Um, it follows the story of Diem Bellator, who is a healer in a very poor mortal village, in a world, it's really a two caste system, where the mortals are at the bottom.

They're very oppressed, and they have very little rights.

They are, you know, fighting to reclaim a homeland that was colonized, um, and taken from them.

Um, and then, of course, the race at the top is what we call the descended, because they descend from the gods that colonized this world.

They have magic.

Yeah

How has that experience been, you know, from kind of like a this is my baby to like, oh, we're sharing this baby? Yeah,

it's been a transition for sure.

So I'm not fully traditionally published.

I'm a hybrid author.

So I still own my e-books.

And my print books go through Atria in the U.S., which is an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

So I kind of have a foot in both worlds because I'm still technically self-published, but I'm also traditionally published.

Like, last year, maybe? Okay, so now the truth comes out.

go for it oh my gosh that's amazing

sorry you asked about a book yeah there is definitely one that was really really really foundational for me and it's a book called cushy you'll start by jacqueline carey it's so good yeah and it it's very old i think it's 25 years old now so it really it was romantic before we called it romantic you know yeah and it was back in the day when fantasy was super male dominated and bookstore shelves were just men with swords and dragons that's it as far as the eye could see and that female characters were either just kind of the mindless maiden who needed saving or yeah the evil witch villain and they you didn't see a lot of female characters who were going on the journey and saving the world with the men yep And I remember reading that book and not only was it written by a woman, led by a female main character, but there were female friendships and like other women in the book that had really important stories.

And there was this romance at the heart of it.

And it was still this epic, incredible fantasy that I was loving from, you know, things like Order of the Rings and whatever.

Yeah.

But there was also the most beautiful love story in it.

And I said, where is this? Why don't we have more books like this on the shelves? And now we're very, very spoiled for choice and we have so many.

And what do you think is the biggest misconception people have about being a fantasy and romantic author?

books that I read growing up.

And I always found that really interesting in the way that power dynamics exist within families in particular, very big, powerful families.

I always found those plot lines to be really interesting when I saw them.

And so that I wanted to carry them into the book.

I also, I feel really strongly about making side characters as nuanced as I can, which is why my books end up being a million pages long.

I don't like to have side characters that exist only to like further the plot for the, you know, FMC or MMC.

I want them to have their own problem, their own journey and like the critical moment where they have to make a decision that sort of takes them one way or the other.

you want people to be like, hey?

I,

so for me, because for me, he's like my son as opposed to like a love interest.

And so I think I see him a lot differently than other people do because I've been talking about this in my guided reread.

Some of the things he says in GLOW and certainly a lot of the things he does and says in HEAT other people are like swooning and I'm like hurting for him because I know that some of these like declarations of like, I'll do anything.

I'll lay down my life for you.

It comes from a place of him believing he, his life is worthless and that there's nothing in him that matters and that he is a vessel for serving DM and nothing else about him has any value.

And, And so like that seeing some of these kind of breaks my heart a little bit.

i want that girl to the hardest to defend may her pillow always be warm um but what was your inspiration behind having because scars continue to be a concept as dm meets other characters who still have scars or markings on their body what was your inspiration behind having that as part of the characters I, so scars, both visible and unseen are

Outside of moving from couch to office, yes.

Oh my gosh.

Every book has been such a different experience.

I think Spark just flew out of me.

I wrote it in, I think, a month.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, really fast.

What do you want readers to better understand about him and his character and his motivations?

What was your process like trying to capture all of that? I know you mentioned like putting all the pieces together to make the world, but like, as you went throughout it, how did you move throughout in consideration of all those aspects? It's

for sure the hardest part of writing the books.

And it's been the part that has like kept me up at night the most, certainly because one thing we see a lot of that I didn't want to write is like colonization is good actually.

Or like the, the colonizer romance where, you know, you have a bad guy come in and actually she falls in love with him and you know, whatever.

I didn't want to write this book where we end up romanticizing the a system or a group of people that are inherently flawed and have done something wrong, you know? But at the same time, I did want to show that this system of injustice, like, good people, people who have good hearts and good intentions can end up perpetuating a really unjust and oppressive system if they're not conscious about the role that they play in it.

And so, like, for me, one of the most important scenes in the entire series is in glow when Diem takes Taryn and Alix through mortal city and she sort of shows them her life and this is where I was raised and this is what happened.

And she remarks that she's like watching them, their eyes kind of open to the life that she lived and how lucky she is to have even made it to adulthood because of how bad conditions are and how terrible her life would be if she hadn't have become queen.

when the you know people resort to horrible things after horrible things are done to them and i think especially with the world right now we can absolutely use that to like take a new lens on situations before we like speak on them yeah or like jump to conclusions about who we like what we think is going on i don't being very vague there but i think it can apply to a lot of different situations I

So as we get excited for this deep dive, and going into the world of Imari and Diem's story, all the societal themes that you so deliciously go into, can you give us a little bit of insight into what inspired the Kindred's Curse Saga?

There were a few different inspirations.

I was very inspired...

Well, the first sort of, quote-unquote, spark that came to mind was what happens at the very end of Spark, actually.

So the big kind of twist that happens in that last little line.

That was, I sort of had this vision of what does a world look like where this thing could happen, and how does that impact, you know, the society? And how does that impact how people treat each other, and how people view power and authority, and, you know, how the, the two caste systems in this world, how they interact with each other, and what happens when they're kind of blown up a little bit or inverted? And so I, I was very interested in the sociological aspect of the kind of consequences of something like this happening.

I also was just very...

So as we are talking about Henry, what do you hope we, both Nicole and I, as well as all of our listeners, hope to keep top of mind with his character?

Mm

... represents the struggle that they go on, and not just them, but, like, every oppressed group of people that have just been beaten down and beaten down and beaten down, and they have been told to, you know, "Well, don't complain," or, "You're, you're dealing with it the wrong way," or, "Just ask nicely," or you know what I mean? They've been told so many ways that they should deal with their oppression, and they've tried all of those things, and nothing gets them anywhere, and then they finally get pushed to their limit and they snap, and they say, "You only listen to me, you know, when I yell, or when I'm violent, or when I break the law or whatever.

That's the only time you pay attention, and so that's what I'm gonna do." [laughs] And then they get judged for that, right? For, like, going too far.

And so I think for me, he represents a lot of, um, people in the world that have just been pushed to their limit, and they snap, and they're angry, and they want vengeance.

They want justice.

You know, they want people to listen to them who haven't been listening to them.

They want power that they've been denied their whole life.

Yeah.