My main "what-if" was "what if Gods were real and the Revelation happened, but the second coming was the return of something evil instead of something holy?" The nautical setting came second-nature because I work in the maritime industry and wanted to write something set shipboard.

There were a lot of other what-ifs and inspirations, but that's the external driving plot of the series. I love writing Romance, so I knew I wanted an epic love story to drive the internal plot. One of my favorite tropes is the teammates/partners-to-lovers – I will never get tired of it – so that trope was in there from day one! When I first started crafting the external plot, I already had the idea for Valory (the prince / soldier who commissions a ship to investigate growing violence in the isles), but I struggled to find a love interest who matched him. He was very picky!

I think I sat on the idea for a year or so until I watched a rerun of the Lord of the Rings on tv. Faramir's identity as a scholar and reluctant warrior helped inspire the seed of Arden's character. At the time I thought Valory was my MC, but Arden ended up stealing the show and becoming the main protagonist instead.

2

Oh man, what didn't I struggle with?

When I started Wicked Waters I had been writing for a long time, but never did much work on the craft of writing fiction novels. Wicked Waters was my crash course in learning how!

The drafting process went incredibly well – I think I wrote about 220k in three months. Editing it, though? Hooboy was that another story. I'm only now beating it into a shape I'm happy with, and I wrote that first draft in 2013.

For a more concrete idea of my struggles: plot holes, believable internal and external character reactions to major events, letting characters struggle/suffer instead of fixing things for them or letting them get off too easily, letting conflict rise up between my MCs, PACING (holy cow, pacing), overuse of adverbs and weak words, talking heads dialogue, HEADHOPPING (in the first draft, at least, I didn't know how to use POV yet, sigh).

There's a lot more, but those were some of the biggies.

Interactions between characters! Arden and Valory have the slowest of slow burn romances going on, and their strangers-teammates-friends-lovers arc was so, so much fun to write. In general, though, I love digging out the psychology behind why characters are the way they are and how they interact with the world around them. I have a very, very large cast, so that's a big playground for me.

In recent drafts, I've also begun to enjoy writing action and battle scenes. That was something I hated doing at first (I was terrible!), but enough practice has helped me improve my fast-paced scenes a lot.

Through revising Wicked Waters, I've come to realize that I love writing snarky, stubborn, ornery characters as well. They have such strong voices, and really seem to come alive on the page!

Banter is very fun to write and I insert jokes and teasing between characters often to ease tension, and these sorts of characters really lend themselves to comic relief that blends well with a dark fantasy vibe.

Oh, people have been absolutely wonderful to me. Wicked Waters is going to hit 100k reads within the next week or two and I'm over the moon about it – I never dreamed about this kind of reception when I first started posting. I've had so many commenters joking with me in the inlines and reacting to each scene! In addition to making me feel good (I'm writing something that people enjoy!), their feedback has also helped immeasurably. I'm certainly a better writer than I was!

I've also made some incredible critiquing relationships with other writers since I started posting. I wouldn't trade those for the world! There's nothing like having a writer I really admire tell me they're a fan.

My absolute favorite comments though, are the ones like "I stayed up all night reading your book" or "this story really got me through a hard time" or "this story inspired me to start writing original fiction again, and I just joined the Open Novella Contest!" – all comments I've received in the past few weeks. I started writing Wicked Waters as a passion project, so the thought that it has grown into something that has a positive impact on others' lives is mind-blowing and so, so gratifying.

5

Part of a four-book series called The Oceana Series.

?

Enjoyment, for one thing. For another: that people are more similar than they are different, that blind fanaticism is always problematic no matter the cause, that history will repeat itself unless we're willing to do the hard work to stop it, and that love really is the thing that holds us all together.

There's a Stephen King quote that says you need to put a million words down on paper before you write something publishable. Malcolm Gladwell also wrote a book called 10,000 Hours regarding how much practice time it takes to become an expert. I find those messages inherently hopeful: they tell me that while talent might help some people find a short cut, for the rest of us it's just about hard work, practice, and study. They also give me permission to be imperfect, to admit I don't know things, and to focus on learning more. And to not put too much pressure on myself to reach external benchmarks for success!

For anyone just starting out, my advice is to Just Keep Writing. Practice is the single most important thing – and while craft theory is great, nothing can beat what you learn by actually completing a novel.

Once that first draft of novel is #1 finished, that's when I'd start looking into craft books. Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody is a staple, and I reread the first few chapters on structure every time I get ready to plot a new story. I'd also recommend looking at author YouTube (Brandon Sanderson does a great one) or writer's blogs. A published author in your genre is definitely blogging about craft somewhere! They're interesting reads and give you great food for thought when you're revising and editing your work.

I have something in common with all of my characters, but yes, Arden and I certainly have some overlap. Surface-level ... we're both queer sailors who also happen to be massive nerds. Beneath the surface, I think the biggest thing we have in common is our willingness to constantly test our beliefs against evidence. He's a true scientist that way, and will adjust his opinions accordingly when someone uses proper evidence to prove him wrong. In other ways, though, we're very dissimilar. Shorthand version: Arden is a Ravenclaw, I'm a Slytherin.

The shorthand answer: sea-monsters, magic, forbidden slow burn romance, a global apocalypse, high-seas battles, found family, and epic quests.

The longer answer: I write in a niche -- Dark Fantasy + Romance, with the Romance usually happening between LGBT protags. In the past, published books have been shoved into either the Fantasy genre or the Romance genre, and their subgenre ends up less developed. If you're looking for epic worldbuilding and sweeping external conflict, you'll find it in Fantasy... but any secondary love story is often half-baked and unsatisfying (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings). Conversely, in FantasyRomance, the Romantic plot takes central focus and the fantasy setting feels secondary or less important – the book could be rewritten as Historical Fiction, basically, and it would change very little about the external plot.

Wicked Waters is part of a strain of Fantasy looking to change that by focusing equally on internal arcs (ie: character development and Romance) alongside epic external conflict (global apocalypse!). If readers are looking for Hard Fantasy that doesn't skimp on character relationships, Wicked Waters is it.

(It's also written by a queer writer who wants to see her queer characters worrying less about their sexuality and more about kicking butt and taking names.)

10

As a matter of fact...

Yes, I'm currently working concurrently on revising and posting Ruthless Rivers (the sequel to Wicked Waters) while drafting Potionmaster, a new project. Potionmaster is my entry for this year's Wattpad Open Novella Contest, though I'm considering expanding it into a full-length novel over the summer. It's about Royal Chef Neveshir Sevelin, who must use his forbidden talent for blood-magic in order to save his kingdom (and the man he loves!) from a terrible plague. It has forbidden romance, lgbt+ protags, magic, necromancers, found family, and snarky chefs setting things on fire.

That's not even getting into my backburner ideas. Fear not – I have enough to keep me busy for years to come!