Episode 77: K. M. Rice

An hour-long conversation with K.M. Rice, national award-winning screenwriter and independent author whose four-part Afterworld series launched with Ophelia and continues with book two, Priestess.

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The Introduction

K.M. Rice, or Kellie, is a national award-winning screenwriter and independent author. Her four-part Afterworld series launched with the first book, Ophelia, and continues with book two, Priestess.

Her first novel, Darkling, is a young adult dark fantasy that now has a companion novel titled The WatcherHer novella The Wild Frontier is an ode to the American spirit of adventure and seeks to awaken the wildish nature in all of us. Black Irish, a dark comedy, highlights contemporary political drama in the emerald isle.

Over the years, her love of storytelling has led to producing and geeking out in various webshows and short films, including her author vlog and a webseries called Happy Hobbit, along with working for both Magic Leap and Weta Workshop. She provided additional writing and research for Middle-earth From Script to Screen: Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. 

When not writing or filming, she can be found hiking in the woods, baking, running, and enjoying the company of the many animals on her family ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Kellie, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you so much for having me.

Now, I laughed a little bit there because I might as well explain that this is our second take on this interview. We’ve had quite a challenge making this happen.

Something in the universe was kind of conspiring that, like, for some reason, it was meant to not happen until now.

Exactly. The first time we tried, I had a windstorm, a huge windstorm up here in Regina, Saskatchewan–the whole province, it wasn’t just the city–that took out power for hours and hours and hours. And then we rescheduled for the following week, at which point you had a windstorm that took out power. And then, when we finally made it happen the first time, the Internet just would drop us periodically throughout the hour. And during that time, I managed to lose chunks of the interview. So here we are again. And this time, it’s going to be perfect.

Well, my clan’s motto is “fortitude.”

Seems appropriate! So, we’ll just pretend we haven’t talked to each other before. So, we’ll start by going back into the mists of time, as I like to say, and talk about where you grew up and how you got interested in fantasy and science fiction and all that stuff and how you got interested in writing. How did that all come about for you?

I was one of those kids who was really lucky that I had parents who regularly read to me. Our bedtime routine was, I don’t know, like, three books or something like that, like, me and my older brother could go pick three books and have our parents read them to us. It was either my mom or my dad, and then two more siblings came along, and we would join in being read to with them, too. And also, it was just a normal day in school and stuff. I remember being read to all the time, and that just, it was so magical to me, the magic of books. And I was an eighties kid, so I remember Reading Rainbow and everything. Everything in our culture at the time was just kind of telling me, like, this is the magical thing to do, is to read stories and maybe one day write one.

So, I was actually in kindergarten when I wrote my first story. And I think it coincided that way because that was the very first time I ever learned how to write, and as soon as I could, I just I wrote, ironically, a story about a haunted house on Halloween, which . . . I say ironically because there’s a haunted house in Darkling as well, which was my debut novel. And yeah, I wrote and illustrated my very first book, the spelling’s very phonetic, but I can still read it to this day and figure out what it’s supposed to be. And I brought it into class for show and tell, and I just wanted to read it to everyone. I think I did it, then my teacher at the time told me, you know, “I’d like you to take this to the principal.” And I had no context. And I just thought that going to the principal means you’ve done something wrong.

Sent to the principal’s office.

Yeah. And I’d gotten in trouble before for, like, making fart jokes and stuff like that. And I genuinely had no understanding of why that was inappropriate. But I knew the teacher wanted me to say I did, like, “Oh yes, sorry, I shouldn’t do that,” but I’m like, “Why?” So I was like, “Oh great. I probably messed up something again.” And I just remember the long walk to the principal’s office, and she sat me down, and she smiled at me, and she said, “Well, I hear you’ve written a story. Can you read it to me?” And I read her the story, and afterwards, she said, “You know, this is a fantastic story. Can I give you a sticker?” And she wrote me this note in her beautiful cursive handwriting that I still have, because I still have that copy, about what an excellent story it was. And she put a sticker on it. And I was like, what? You can go to the principal for good things, too. This is amazing.

I remember going to the principal’s office once. I don’t remember what it was for. And I remember that same sensation of, “I have to go to the principal’s office,” and I remember sitting in a hard chair outside his office, and that’s all I remember. So, whatever it was that they were trying to ingrain in me for the future, all that they ingrained in me was that it was scary to go to the principal’s office. I don’t know what it was for at all. I don’t think it was for writing a story, though. So, that’s a very early start to writing. Did you then carry on in that vein as you grew up through elementary school and junior high and high school?

I did. Fortunately, my spelling improved. I remember in fourth grade there were, Gosh, I guess it was just a general assignment. Every two weeks, we had a story writing contest, and I would routinely win them all. I don’t mind bragging that I got cookies as a reward. My teacher would give us, like, a vanilla-sandwich cookie if you won. So then, all the other kids wanted to be my, quote, writing partner. And I was like, “I work alone, people, “ but I did, some of my friends, I let them do the story with me, but I was very disappointed that it always turned out to be, “So what are we . . . what’s the story about, Kelly?” And then I would be like, “OK, and what do you think?” “I don’t know. Just keep going. You just tell me.” And I’m like, “Other people can’t do this. Like, come on, just try to.” Because I was so lucky, too, to have been raised in a rural area where, like, my first real word other than mom and dad or mama and dada, was outside. And when you’re in that kind of environment, when you want to play a game, you’re in your head, you’re growing your imagination all the time. I had siblings that I could play with when my older brother was nice to me and wanted to play with me. I did have a couple of years alone while my younger siblings were still too small to do much of anything. And I had my friends, but even with my friends, I found that I was usually the one coming up with all the stories.

So, I think, you know, maybe it’s something innate, but also the environment I grew up in was just really conducive to learning how to push the boundaries of your own mind and expand your imagination, so that by the time I did get into junior high, high school, etc., it was already a relatively rich and fertile area of my life. And I had no problem whatsoever coming up with ideas and coming up with stories and just loved doing anything creative. That transferred then into video making or filmmaking when I was twelve, and I was given our old camera because my family got an upgrade. I wasn’t given it. I was just told I could use it. So, that was, that opened up a whole ’nother world. I’ve got hours and hours of videos of me coaching my younger siblings into being police detectives and Indiana Jones, like, for our little movies.

I, unfortunately, go back to the days before video cameras. And it was, if you’re going to have anything, it was, like, eight-millimeter film cameras, and very few of those. So, yeah, it was unusual for any of my friends to be doing anything in the film area.

I’m so jealous of kids these days who have video cameras in their pockets.

Yeah, I know. 4K video cameras.

Yeah, it’s a different era, for sure.

So, through all of that, you were writing, but were you gravitating towards the fantastical side of things, or were you more eclectic at the time? And when did you start to really kind of focus on the fantasy side of writing things?

I actually haven’t given that much thought before, but you’re right, I think I did start off in that vein. I started off writing about a haunted house, and then the stories I was writing in elementary school were about pig assassins or unicorns and. . . kind of like the bio that you just read about me, there’s a touch of whimsy, there’s a touch of the otherworldly in most everything that I write. The only time that I don’t bring that into play, like, for example, in Black Irish, is because there’s comedy there. But I do find that I entertain myself better as I’m writing if I have something to . . .a lens to look at the world through that . . . usually it’s just more interesting to me, it’s more engaging to my imagination, if it’s something that goes beyond just the here and now. And if it’s not something fantastical, then it will be . . . for example, The Wild Frontier, my challenge there was to have more lyrical prose and have the magic kind of come from the words and the way the words sound, how they feel on your tongue rather than any sort of external, fantastical presence.

But I do remember loving The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was a little young for Lord of the Rings when I first started reading that stuff, but I eventually got round to it after having a lot of people recommend it to me. And also, Harry Potter. Like, I was not a child child . . .well, actually, I was a child when the Harry Potter books first came out, but by the time they got really popular, I think I was in high school, and I had a lot of fun reading those, so . . . I think I was always gravitating toward the escapism and the way that fantasy provides us a safe space to look at real-life drama and trauma because it’s not set in the real world, I don’t have to necessarily . . .I can imagine . . . when you read that type of book, you can imagine what you want to imagine and you can block out stuff that you . . . that maybe is too dark for you. But I do think that even as adults, fantasy gives us a safe place to look at. If that makes sense. 

Mm-hmm.

So, I think I was even gravitating to that as a kid.

So, as you go along and then . . . you mentioned you were introduced to video, you kind of went more in the video direction to begin with, didn’t you? When you got to . . . like, did you study writing or did you study filmmaking, or what did you study as you decided to go forward into your life?

When I was a college freshman, I entered into university thinking I was going to be a film director. And that fell apart pretty quickly because I realized that as a director, you are still working with someone else’s vision unless you’ve also written the material

And you have to work with actors, too.

Yes! You have to be a big people person, which is . . . not that I’m not a people person, but I was like, “That sounds like a lot of stress, and there’s a lot of bureaucracy that goes along with it.” And it jus, t it kind of lost its gossamer appeal to me. And I realized, the storyteller, that’s what was speaking to me all along. So I did start . . . well, actually, I went through the normal college, the “now what do I do?” experience, and I was fortunate to have a professor who was actually teaching me a kind of an archaeology hybrid class when I was a freshman about deciphering whether The Trojan War ever actually really took place. So, it was kind of exploring the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age while teaching us research skills and stuff like that. It was one of those introductory courses. And she took the time . . . one day . . . she had bad arthritis and sometimes students would help carry her stuff to her office. And so, I was always happy to do that because I enjoyed talking with her. And I remember one time I was carrying her books and stuff back to her office with her, and she said, “You know, you’re a really good writer. Do you know that?” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I love it.” She goes,” I wonder if you should be an English major.”

And at the time, I was like, “That is so boring and mundane. I want to be doing something amazing.” But I do remember going home and looking in the course catalog and reading up on the courses that you were, the core classes that you needed to take on, and I’m like, “All of those actually sound really interesting and fun. So maybe I should do this,” because it’s a degree that’s broad enough you could then build on it and go on to . . . a lot of people just assume you’re going to teach, but there’s a lot more you could do with it as well. And a strong foundation in writing, especially in today’s world where so much is digital and so much communication is via email. I think it’s an important skill to have. So, I was really thankful for that conversation and that she pushed me in that direction because before that, writing was just something that was a part of me that was fun, like, writing was kind of confined to the realm of fan fiction and not really something that I was taking super seriously as a craft.

So, when you switched to become an English major, there must have been some actual writing classes. I always ask this because I’ve talked to writers, especially in the science fiction/fantasy field, who say, “Well, I took some form of creative writing, but it didn’t help me very much because they were so against the kind of writing that I wanted to do on the fantastical side. What was your experience?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, I really don’t like essay writing or anything like that, but of course, I had to learn to do it, suck it up and do it as an English major. But we didn’t have a creative writing major at my university at the time. They do now. So, I was doing a creative writing minor, and I took an intro to creative writing course that was actually . . . I found it a nurturing place. It was taught by a student teacher, and maybe that made a difference, but I felt like I was stretching my wings a little bit. And then I took one more fiction course, and that professor, I thought of him as Professor Snape from Harry Potter because he was very crotchety. He could be vicious, like, he could be really mean. I remember him reading a sentence from someone’s story and going, “That’s dumb. That’s just a dumb sentence. Why would you write something so stupid?” I’m like, “How is this helpful? Like, we’re all beginning writers?”

So, I was so nervous to have my first short story read by him. And instead, he read a sentence from my short story and said, “Look, this story has its flaws, but someone who can write a sentence like that is a good writer.” So that gave me a lot of encouragement. And so, I did then apply to be part of the graduate creative writing program to get my master’s in fine arts, which I was told was highly competitive. But I got in for fiction and screenwriting. In fact, I think fiction was my main emphasis, and screenwriting was my secondary because I was also learning screenwriting at the time as an undergrad. And I found that it came extraordinarily easy and natural to me. So, I was kind of growing in the two areas at the same time. And by the time I was in graduate studies, that’s when I was starting to get bored writing anything that was ostensibly literature because I was kind of writing in the here and now, and that’s fine, I don’t have anything against that. But I was finding that my imagination was just yearning to tell these other types of stories, and to world build, and to create some fantastical elements and set rules and limitations to them and then explore our humanity within those bounds.

So, I started writing those stories, and then, yeah, the same thing happened. In fact, as a matter of fact, the first story I wrote, it’s called “The Walkers in Darkness,” which is available online for free for anyone to read if they want to. That was actually written out of my love of the Anglo-Saxon language, Old English, which I also studied when I was translating Beowulf, and there is a fantastical element to it because there’s a creature in the woods that attacks this family, this Scandinavian family, and you don’t quite know what it is, in my mind, it was like a Sasquatch or something, but it’s kind of like this Grendellesque creature. And other than that, there is no magic, nothing. It’s all just written in the world that you see through the lens of the Beowulf author, and I even went to the length of trying to exclude words with Latin roots to try to really build that old English vibe.

That would be a challenge. 

It was a welcome one, though. And I was just shocked that most of the feedback I got from my classmates was, “I don’t read sword and sorcery, so I can’t really review this for you.” And I’m like, “OK, they have swords. What’s . . . what are they talking about?” And I was really let down until my professor, bless him, wrote an expletive on the back story for his review. “Bleep, yeah!”  And I remember he said, “There’s no postmodern pussyfooting around here. This is just pure story.” And I think to him it had been such a relief to read something different because everyone was so desperate to write what they called the next great American novel, which I still to this day have no idea what that supposed to mean. But I’m like, “If I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, I’m not going to try to write it. I’m just going to write what I enjoy.” And at the time, there was this whole like . . .  you know, people talk about J.K. Rowling in a negative way now for a completely different reason, but they were pooh-poohing her and Harry Potter just because it was wildly successful and it was, quote, genre. And I’m like, “Hi, I like money and I would like for my stuff to be read. Is this bad?? Am I not supposed to be like, ‘Yes, I want to write to tell stories and because I have this innate drive to do so and I’d be doing it anyway. But also, like, if I made money from it, that would be amazing, too. Like, is it wrong to have that as a whole?”

It’s even better than cookies

Yeah, exactly.

You were professional very early, what with the cookie thing going on, but that is even better. So how did you start writing for money?

In fact, it goes back to that Professor Snape I had. I, around that era, I had written a short story written kind of in the Edgar Allan Poe-esque genre. And it’s called “The Woe of William.” And I submitted it to a contest at our university, and I won, like, five hundred dollars or something, because my story won, and I later found out that not only did I win, but I was . . . at the time they were not separating undergrad from graduate students, so I was competing against other people in the creative writing program that I wasn’t yet a part of. So, that really put some wind in my sails, especially getting the money. I’m like, whoa, you know, at the time I was like, “Five hundred dollars. This is . . . I’m rich.” And that was a story I wrote one night in my hammock as it was getting dark out, and I wrote until my hand was so numb I couldn’t write anymore. So I came in the house and I knelt on my bed and I finished scribbling it out and it had very little editing because it was just this burst of inspiration. And I’m like, “If that fun thing I’m doing can get me somewhere, that’s really cool.”

So, that gave me the encouragement I really needed and then I had a lot . . . I had more success with my short stories in competitions such as that, but most of my financial success was coming with my screenwriting, because I was winning national screenwriting competitions with my screenplays. And I do always highly recommend that fiction writers and even probably nonfiction writers do study some screenwriting or playwriting because it really helps you hone your storytelling skills, since you’re only allowed to use actions and dialogue.

That was actually the next question, was how screenwriting has fed into your fiction and vice versa, I guess.

Yeah, I think it’s a wonderful back and forth. You’re forced to focus on the spine of the story. And without that, it’s really easy to get lost. because there was a lot of people who I was in grad school with who I would read their work and be like, “Mman, this person can really paint a scene. They are really . . .  I can fully imagine this, but I just read 30 pages and I could tell you what happened in two sentences.” So, I’m like, nothing’s really happening yet in this story. And a lot should have happened by 30 pages in. So, that’s the kind of situation, one, like, that type of person or type of writer would really benefit from trying their hand at some screenwriting and forcing themselves to get down to the bare bones of storytelling.

Yeah, I recently read something where I literally got to the end of what was supposed to be the end of the book . . . it was in manuscript format, I was evaluating it . . . and I literally went up to my office to look for the rest of the book because I couldn’t believe that that was the end because nothing had happened yet.

Oh, my gosh. And I’m not really entertained by those types of stories. I know that there’s a place and time for it. I remember one of my professors pointing out to someone who was writing a historical fiction piece, he said, “I really appreciate that you’re not in a rush to tell this story that we know we’re in your hands and we’re going to go about this at a slow pace.” And I’m like, “Well, I hadn’t seen that as a plus,” but he made it, he helped me relook at it as a plus. So, it just, it’s all so subjective. It’s just, why are you reading? That’s why it is really important to figure out your target audience because if you are writing to a certain type of reader, it informs almost every decision you make when you’re telling the story.

Another thing I wanted to ask about screenwriting, I find . . . I’m more familiar on the playwriting side. I’ve written and directed plays, and I’m an actor as well, a stage actor. And I have often felt that the writing for the stage and being a director as well specifically helps with keeping a clear image in my head of what’s going on in a scene, where people are in relationship to each other, what the surroundings are, how that impacts. Because, of course, when you’re directing a play, you have very three-dimensional people who, you know, can run into each other and stuff like that. You have to know where they are, and you have to build those screen pictures, those stage pictures on them. And I feel that has helped me writing action scenes, or any scenes where there are a number of people in the space. Do you think that screenwriting gives you some of that same sort of visual component to your prose writing?

Yeah, yeah, because if you don’t have an imagination that naturally is going to envision it as a film, screenwriting is obviously going to help you get to that place where you can see it play, Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the RingsKing Kong, and a bunch of other films, one of the things he says is, “Make sure you can watch the movie in your head from beginning to end, because if you can’t, how can you expect anyone else to?“ So, I think that’s good advice. And I also got really good advice in my Intro to Creative Writing Class a million years ago, the one that I said actually felt quite nurturing, where he advised us to, “If you’re writing about a physical space, always draw the space, because you will find your imagination is putting in rabbit holes that are not physically possible.” And I remember thinking, “That’s stupid advice, I know exactly what the house I’m writing about looks like. And I drew it, and I was like, “Oh. Oh, the staircase has two different landings that it’s impossible for it to have. OK, this is good advice.”

Yeah, especially if, you know, like, I was writing something, and it was set in an inn, which I had just sort of imagined in my head. And then, when I started drawing it, I realized that it just didn’t work, what I had been writing about, as a physical space. Yeah, I’ve encountered exactly that thing. Well, let’s move on to talk about your most current series, the Afterworld series, as a focus on how you go about creating your stories. So, we’ll begin at the very beginning. It’s a cliche, but it’s still a legitimate question . . . actually, et’s begin even a little bit before the beginning and have you give a synopsis, whatever you’d like to say about these books, before we start talking about them.

I will . . . I am, like, my own worst enemy. I’m, like, bad at the elevator pitch, which is something I really need to work on. But, so, I will read to you my little summary from my website. So, the series is called Afterworld, the first book is called Ophelia, and it’s available in ebook format for free right now, if you’re interested at all.

“The four-book Afterworld series tells the tale of a love so strong that it cannot be constrained by death… or time. Compared by readers to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels, this unique epic combines ancient Irish mythology and history with the modern world.”

So, I will read you the summary of Ophelia as well. And my boyfriend’s Irish, so he’ll tear me apart for this, but I’m going to attempt an Irish accent for a moment here.

If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have attempted one earlier.

“‘What if it wasn’t random?” he whispered, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose one by one with tickling tugs. “What if sometimes people are meant to meet each other?” 

“Ophelia Brighton hasn’t had a vision from the past since she was a small child. Now a grad student, both her thesis and her life are interrupted when a troubled young Irishman knocks on her door in Santa Cruz, California. Her visions return with his arrival, and Ophelia must struggle to keep her balance amidst her growing confusion over her place in the world . . .and time. 

“When Ophelia’s visions of a Victorian mystery reveal a secret that will change her future, she also discovers a love that was stronger than death. But is it too late to right the wrongs of the past?”

So that’s the description of book one.

I just . . . this is completely off topic in a way, but just thinking of Irish accents, I mentioned that I’m an actor, and years ago, I was in a professional production of a play, Who Has Seen the Wind, which is based on a famous Canadian novel set on the prairies, and the character I was playing . . . well, I was playing two characters. But one of the characters was Uncle Sean, who was Irish. So, I was doing my best Irish accent. But the director was very, very Hungarian.

Oh my gosh.

Thick Hungarian accent. He was no help at all on the accent. So, he just let me do whatever I wanted. And my one thing was what I got, you know, after I’d done it. And somebody that knew said I sounded Irish. I just didn’t sound like I came from the part of Ireland the character said he came from. And I figured as long as I hit the island, I was doing OK.

I know, right? At some point, you’ve just got to pick your battles. Yeah, I love it when my boyfriend does an American accent, and he’s suddenly, like, this Southerner, I’m like, “That’s what we sound like to you?”

Funny thing is, I went to the UK when I was in college, and I went to college in the States. We were on a chorus tour, and I had all these Southerners around me, and in England, people thought they were Irish. So maybe there is a connection there.

Oh, funny. You know, like, the American accent has, especially in different regions, been formed by the Irish vowel pronunciation because obviously, they were a massive, in Canada as well, they were a massive immigrant group. So linguistically, I definitely think they influenced our accents.

Undoubtedly. That was just an aside. And so, we’re using this as an example, where do your ideas come from? The seeds from which your stories grow, and specifically this one?

Well, let me think now. So, this was actually the . . . I want to say fourth novel that I wrote, even though it wasn’t the fourth that I published, because the first book that I wrote is unpublished, and I wrote two of those. I’m waiting until I finish the series before release that. And that was inspired by a dream. So, it had what was the end of a story as a dream, and I wrote to discover how the characters got to that place. And then the second one, Darkling, was also inspired by dreams that most people would call nightmares. And just the emotions of the dream clung to me like carrion on a skeleton, which I feel is an appropriate metaphor for that book. And I just really wanted to explore that. So, both those novels I wrote very quickly because I don’t outline, I write to entertain myself, so that’s why I write in kind of these manic bursts. And I have since tested that and been relieved to find out that I can also write as a more sane individual, you know, in chunks of time when I have them. And from the feedback I’ve received so far, my work hasn’t suffered for it. So that was a great relief to me because, like I said, the first several novels that I wrote, including Ophelia, I wrote in this kind of just-lock-myself-in-my-room and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

But, so, Ophelia did not come from a dream. In fact, it came from a very roundabout place that . . . this description, explanation, is going to have nothing to do with what you just heard of the summary of the book. But I always had this fascination with the First World War and with Irish history in general, the Irish struggle for freedom, especially as an American, that really captures the imagination. So, I love this blend of history and the fantastical, especially if it’s almost magical realism, if it’s like, well, just one there’s one twist, play with that one twist. For example, in Outlander, it’s time travel. So, how does that change things? How does that change your view of the world? And obviously, there’s some playing with time in my novels as well. And this idea of someone could have been a young man in Ireland and enlisted to go fight for the Crown–at the time, they were being told by a lot of politicians that serving the British in the First World War would be a great way to get home rule–because they were still considered a colony of the UK–it would be a great way to get home rule because it will show we’re willing to play by the rules, we’re willing to be your allies. So, a lot of young men enlisted under that belief, and the tide completely changed culturally at home over the course of those four or five years. They had the 1916 Easter rising, which was a strike at freedom and a strike that the organizers knew was pretty much doomed to fail. But they hoped that through their failure, the Irish people would be galvanized.

And that is what happened. The British sailed warships up the River Liffey and decimated a lot of Dublin in retaliation and trying to quell the rebellion. And a lot of civilians died. So, people at first were very upset at these rabble-rousers being like, “Why did you do this to us? Why did you incur their wrath? We’re just trying to go about our daily lives.” But then once word got out about how the uprisers were being treated in prison, and once they started being executed, two weeks later, which was apparently enough time for these emotions to come down . . . you know, they could hear the gunshots. Dublin isn’t that huge of a city, at least the old part of Dublin. And people just turned very much against the British occupation in terms of popular opinion. So, at the time when these veterans returned home, they were seen as people who’d betrayed the Irish because they went to serve the Crown, even though a lot of them, their motivation was the opposite. And so, that was tough. But then, on top of that, they returned home to a lot of political unrest where, as I mentioned, the cultural tide was wanting to push for freedom. So, they were in a really unique position to be young men with a lot of military training. And that’s largely how the Irish were able to organize and conduct their guerrilla tactics and win their independence from the United Kingdom in 1921, I believe it was, when the treaty was signed. Of course, Northern Ireland wasn’t part of that treaty, but the Republic of Ireland was essentially birthed then. Well, I guess that was one hundred years ago now.

Yeah.

So, I was fascinated that one person’s lifetime could go through all that, and that’s actually just, Like, a decade. How I came up with this really roundabout way to tell that story, that baffles even me. But I don’t question it so much because especially this series of books, I almost feel like . . . you know, the ancient Greeks talk about their muses whispering in their ears. I feel like someone’s been whispering this story in my ear and that these people are real people, and I’m just their conduit. So, by the time I got to the fourth book, I was nervous because I was like, “How do I close out a four-book series that’s on this epic scale?” And the book’s not released yet. But I do feel like personally I did the story and the characters justice, and that essentially wrote itself at that point. So that, to me, was a very magical experience, to be kind of channeling, whether it’s my subconscious or . . . I don’t know if there really are muses or whatever it is, I was able to put it to paper.

So, my next question is always about planning and outlining. It sounds to me like perhaps you’re not a huge planner or outliner?

No, not at all. I found that when I do that, which I needed to do for some of my screenplays and stuff, I then would really fight against the actual writing because part of me felt like I’d already satiated that need to tell the story and that the story was already told. So that was I realized that was kind of a passion killer for me. But I do take notes as I write, especially something as complicated as Ophelia or any of the Afterworld books, I have to keep notes to be like, “OK, remember that this was said. Remember that this is that date.” So, I have a notebook that I keep next to me. But other than that, I do . . .  also enjoy editing as I go. So, if I wake up the next morning and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, wait a minute, what you just wrote yesterday, that’s going to contradict something in chapter two,” I’m more comfortable going in my Word document and editing that and changing it before I continue going forward. So, it’s all kind of always in flux.

Well, one of the interesting things about this podcast, of course, is that every writer does it differently.

Yeah.

So on the outlining front, I have the people who, you know, just start writing. And then there’s . . . I always mention Peter V. Brett, who writes 150-page outlines before he starts writing.

That’s just so impressive to me.

And I said, “Well, you know, doesn’t that kind of take some of the fun out of it?”, I guess, or words to that effect, and he basically said, “Well, it doesn’t have to be fun. It’s a job.” I mean, I’m . . . I kind of do a few pages of sketches, and then I rarely look at it when I write the book.

So, I mean, there’s strength to both styles. I think that that’s what I love about it. And that’s what I try. . .  like, when I was doing my author’s vlog, which I don’t do writing advice so much anymore, but there’s like fifty or more episodes out there giving free writing advice, answering people’s questions, and one of the things I was always trying to emphasize is like, I’m telling you what works for me, by no means should you apply that to your life or compare yourself to that. The fact that I wrote a 90,000-word novel in two and a half weeks does not mean that I’m better or . . . it could be a crap book. And that doesn’t mean that you should be holding yourself to that. I’m just saying that this has been my experience, and almost every creative has a different way of going about it, different circumstances, different ways that their mind works. And it’s just about experimenting and finding out what works for you and encouraging that, leaning into that.

So, I always tell people, be very cautious when you’re reading these writing advice blogs or books, and they’re telling you this is what you should do. Think, “Well, no, that’s what they do and what works for them.” And you can try it and see if it works for you. But if it doesn’t, don’t be afraid to try something else.

You mentioned your writing process earlier, where you had done it in these intense bursts, and then you did it a little more sanely.

Yes.

So, we kind of talked about that. And then you also talked a little bit about you do some revision as you go. But what does your revision process look like when you have a draft?

I usually have to let it sit for at least a month. I have to have that emotional and intellectual distance from it before I can go back to it. And then I’ll go back to it, and I’ll reread it. Now, I hope my answer right now is truthful, I might . . . I’m not so self-aware when I’m going through this process. I know that once I finish it, I probably don’t completely leave it and walk away. I probably first go through and read it again because what I tend to do because I write quickly is I do the broad strokes of scenes. So, I have a lot of, what do you call them, like, not filler moments but placeholders, sometimes dialogue, placeholder descriptions of the characters, facial expressions, reactions, and stuff, and because when I’m first writing the scene, especially a charged scene, it is a lot of acting and I’m feeling those emotions, and I’m just trying to get those out. And then, I need to come through and add some of the finer details to the painting or the story. And that’s when I really start getting into the nitty-gritty. And then, inevitably, I have to start challenging myself. I found there’s a couple of pieces of software out there now that I’ve found really helpful in my writing that will flag overuse of words or expressions or passive voice. And that’s been really helpful to me because I do . . .we get brain blind to our own mistakes and our own patterns. So, it’s really nice to have that pointed out to me.

Would you like to introduce those software items?

The one I’m using right now is called ProWritingAid. And I think there’s a free version you can use where you upload, or you copy and paste onto their website, but I paid for it to be incorporated into my Microsoft Word. It does bog down the process a lot because it’s it makes it freeze every once in a while, which has been . . .

I use one called PerfectIt. The longer the manuscript gets, the more painful the process is so slow. So, probably the key there is to do it in short chunks at a time instead of trying to do the whole manuscript at once.

Exactly. And then also remind yourself that this is AI, and you don’t need to be writing to get a completely 100 percent score. But that always bothers me as I watch the . . . it gives you, like, a percentage of, like, how strong it thinks your writing is. And at some point, I was getting competitive with myself and, like, I intentionally have passive voice in the sentence. It’s OK.

Sentence fragments can be used.

Yeah, this is creative writing.

So, once you’ve got a revision, the revised draft, do you use beta readers of any sort?

I do.

What’s the next step, editing and all of that kind of thing? Since you’re independently published, do you hire an editor, or how does that work for you?

Most of my edits have been done by volunteers who are in the wide swath of my beta-reader group. I am lucky that I have a few friends who are also writers and really good editors. In fact, one of my friends isn’t a writer, but she’s a voracious reader, and so she will catch stuff.

That’s more useful than another writer, sometimes, I think. Somebody who’s a really experienced reader looks at it in a different way than another writer does.

And it’s amazing. Her wealth of knowledge amazes me because I know she’s just absorbed it all from reading so much. You know, it’s like, she’s memorized stylistic traits and rules and stuff just through absorption. And like, that is one of the reasons why you hear a lot of other writers saying if you want to improve your writing, read and read and reread.

I always start there, telling people if they want to be a writer, they have to read.

Yeah.

So, where do you find your beta readers?

I have a Facebook group I had called my Wildling Warriors because Wildlings is kind of the nickname I came up with for my supporters because my goal is for my creative work to awaken the wild, wildish nature in everyone. Awaken your passion, awaken your zest for life, for creativity, for nature, that’s kind of what I feel like drives me. So, through my films and through the written word and my photography, that’s usually where I’m coming from, and I’ve been lucky to have a lot of support from people. Some of that came from having a successful YouTube series, The Happy Hobbit, which you mentioned, which is bringing Middle Earth into your daily life, which I do with, I co-produced with my sister. And it’s so much fun. But a lot of people found out who I was through there, then were like, “Oh, she also has a book!” and then made the hop over to my author self under my initials, and have just been incredibly supportive. I also have a group of friends who have been really supportive too. And the friends, it’s harder, because I can’t necessarily rely on them to give me brutal feedback, if brutal feedback is to be had. But it’s been good so far to get the opinions of at least ten different people on a novel, and I’ve been happy that thus far, no major plot holes or anything like that have been found because I do, before I even send it to them, I’m trying to send them as finished a book as possible so that there’s minimal work to go into it afterward.

And at some point, you have to decide that it’s ready to go. How do you decide that it’s ready to go?

You kind of have to get to the phase of good enough. Like, I still want to go back through Ophelia and look for more tweaks. That because you’re always growing as a writer, and you’re always learning more. And so, yeah, with it being an ebook, it’s very dangerous because you can . . .

You can always change it, yeah.

Yeah. You can change a lot and then just re-upload the document. I forgot to mention another part of the process, which I think is important. And a lot of people don’t do it because they either don’t have someone or they feel crazy doing it. But my little sister is my biggest fan. She loves all of my books, and she will always be my first listener. I won’t say reader because I’m reading it aloud to her. And the process of reading it aloud is really, really helpful to me, not only for the way . . . like, I will read dialogue, but I’m like, “How did I think that sounded OK?” Or I realize, “Oh, there’s no conjunction in that sentence.” But when I was reading it quickly on my own, my brain filled that in. So, I think that reading it aloud is a very powerful editing tool. And then I’m just extra lucky to have a loving little sister who, when I was writing the Afterworld series, for example, would just, “That’s it? That’s all you have written? I’m leaving. You go back in there, and you write more. I want more by tonight.” So that was a great motivator to know that there was someone out there who wanted this, even if it was just my sister. Like, not just, she’s not just, but even if it was just one person reading, reading out loud.

You know, you don’t have to have somebody to listen either. It’s the actual act of reading aloud. I tend to read it with, you know, moving my lips, basically, but still saying it out loud. Even if I’m working in a coffee shop or something, I’ll read it out loud, sort of under my breath sometimes when I’m in the editing process, because, yeah, if you don’t, it’s one of the best ways to find . . . and if you don’t find it then, you’ll find it when you’re doing a public reading and you see what you’re about to read and you think, “Oh, I wish I . . . and sometimes I have changed things in public . . .

And you go beet-red, and you’re like, “It’s OK, nobody else can see what you’re seeing . . . .”

Yeah, nobody else is reading along with you in the book, so it’s OK. Well, we’re getting close to the end here, so . . . we’ve got touched on some of this earlier on, but I do have the three “big philosophical questions.” I’m going to put reverb on that someday. They are simply, why do you write? Why do you think anybody writes, you know, the sort of the big picture, why do humans write stories, and why stories with fantastical elements specifically? So there are your three big philosophical questions.

I was . . . I’m one of those personalities who, you know, the background I’ve given you in this episode shows that it just came innately to me. It was something that I was absorbing my whole childhood and couldn’t wait to do. So, I know that . . . I am writing without an audience. I have a journal full of poetry and starts of stories and, in fact, chunks of books that have still never even been read by anyone else or seen. And I’m going to keep doing that. So, I’m not writing for the sake of . . . I’m writing to express myself, I guess, and to put these things out into the world and to explore my own psyche and imagination, and then, if I can craft a powerful story that people are going to want to read and, even better, if people are willing to pay four dollars for, then, oh, you know,  all the better. But other than that, it is just this kind of innate drive I have to tell stories either through the written word or through filmmaking or photography, and I think that speaks to the nature of why we tell stories to begin with., I think that that separates us . . . I view human beings as animals just as much as any other creature on the planet, and I think that that’s one of the great things that separates us, though, is art. 

And I kind of reject the idea that our creativity and our artistic expression is just an over-firing of the creativity we’ve developed to problem solve, to survive as a species. I think there’s something more soulful to it than that. Whatever your spirituality is, I think that powerful art, powerful stories, connect to us on a level, a cathartic level where we feel like we’ve just vicariously experienced something. And it really broadens the scope of your way of thinking when you have had that escape from yourself and your world, and you’ve gone into another one, and you’ve experienced life from someone else’s point of view or an alternate version of what life could be. That’s my favorite part of reading, is looking at the world in a completely different way. So, I do think that there’s this very innate part of who we are as human beings that wants to create and express ourselves.

But then why the fantastical elements? You know, you can tell stories that are set and in the real world, so why do we feel drawn to pull in these imaginary, fantastical, supernatural elements?

I think, like, what I touched on earlier, I think that the level of escapism gives us permission to examine these things more so than we would give ourselves permission to if it were in the real world. The real world is full of really horrendous, harrowing things. I don’t personally like to read stories that are set in the here and now and involve that, because to me that’s just too unlike . . . hat’s what my friend’s going through, that’s what my family members are going through, that’s what I might be going through. Why would I want to have that compounded in me even more? But if it’s in the safe space of, “Oh no, this is told through symbolism. Like, what does the ring symbolize in Tolkien? Is it power? Is it control? Is it addiction? How do the characters all respond to it differently? Sometimes it’s more palatable in that format, and you feel more comfortable exploring these ideas than you would if it was about a more real-world example, but it is funny because when I first started to write Ophelia . . . it reads kind of cozy at the start, which I don’t do cozy, but I was really trying to do cozy because I thought that’s what people want. And it progressively . . . and I found this when I did my first draft. So, of course, I went through and totally made sure that it was a gradual increase, but my imagination completely rebelled. And it was like, “You’re trying to write something cozy and cutesy? Oh, wait till you see what I have in store for you.” So, through the fantastical twists, it brought in a lot of heavy, you know, some people would say dark stuff that I don’t know if I would have felt comfortable writing if it wasn’t through a fantastical twist.

So, maybe I’m just speaking from my own personal experience. Maybe other people can’t relate to that. But I just find that fantasy is using archetype, and it’s our modern mythology that gives us this place to explore these ideas and to ask the hard questions of where do we come from? Where are we going? What values do we hold dear? And sometimes it might be a little bit simplified, but I’m a lover of mythology, and I don’t see any harm in that because most of us have lives that are already complicated enough as it is. So, if you’re going to be edifying yourself through your escapism, all the better.

And what are you working on now?

Right now, I am slowly going through my edit of book three of the Afterworld series to release at an undisclosed date this year. I’ve been plodding along because I was laptop-less for, I think, what, two years? Over two years. And I finally have one again, so I’ve been excited to get back into that world with the characters, and it’s given me the benefit of having a year, I guess, away from the book series. So, I’m coming at it with fresh eyes for the editing process, which is fun because when I forget parts of my own stories, which I often do, it’s really fun to be reading it. And I’ll be like, “I hope this happens next. Oh wow. It does. Imagine that.”

Yeah, I’m currently reading out loud to my wife one of my novels that she’s never heard from ten years ago now. And that’s long enough now that I’m reading it, I’m thinking, you know, “I don’t  remember writing these sentences at all. But that was a pretty good sentence. That was a good scene.”

Isn’t that hilarious?

And, you know, I have vague memories of it, but there’s nothing . . . the specifics are long gone through my head. So, it’s like reading something somebody else wrote almost.

Yeah. And then when you have that level of detachment, you can actually appreciate your own writing without, like, trying to chisel it to death.

Yeah, it’s kind of a nice thing to go back. Of course, you can also go back to an old book and wish you could completely rewrite it, but that’s not my experience in this one, anyway. 

Good!

So that’s kind of the end of the time. So, where can people find you online?

I am on social media under my pen name, so that’s my initials, K then M then Rice, RICE, and author. So, I’m on Facebook, Instagram—Instagram’s where I spend most of my time—YouTube, TikTok. I do technically have a Tumblr blog, but it’s not very exciting. It’s just where I push all the content from my other stuff. So, I’m relatively easy to find online if you want to follow my creativity.

OK. Well, I’m sure people will after we finally got this podcast done.

I know, it’s been a feat! I’m afraid to celebrate it yet.

Yes, I have . . . you know, I haven’t checked the recording, but it says it’s recording, so everything is fine. So anyway, thanks for being on The Worldshapers twice, in a way, but thanks for being a guest and a great chat. Hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you so much for having me. It was lovely talking with you, and thank you to everyone listening for giving us an hour of your time. Time is precious.

OK, well, bye for now.

Bye-bye. Thank you.

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