1 what inspired you to write?

Lots of things! I've been writing stories since I was a kid, so I don't really remember exactly what triggered it the first time. I used to read a lot and had an overactive imagination, so it was sort of a natural progression to start making stories up myself. When I was around 12 or so, I first encountered fan fiction, and that's when I decided to try my hand at posting my writing online. I've had many pen names over the years since then and have written for several fandoms.

These days, I mostly write original stuff, though.

2 what's one Wattpad goal?

Mmm, don't really have specific goals with Wattpad yet. I'm more curious about the platform, since I'm fairly new to it. Just exploring for now.

3 who is your favorite author?

This changes from time to time and it's hard to pick one. To be honest, a lot my favorite authors are fan fiction writers in specific niches, though. For more classic literature, I like the great dystopian writers like Aldous Huxley, Yyevgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, etc. I also like mystics like Hermann Hesse and Paulo Coelho.

4 if you could hang out with your favorite celeb for a day, who would you choose and what would you do?

Who counts as a celebrity? Do they have to be human?

Actually, you know, I think I'd rather just hang out with my friends, but if I had to pick someone I didn't know, maybe I'd pick Kanzi the bonobo. We would just make a bon fire in the woods and hang out.

5 what's the best way to handle a bully?

Punch them.

No, just kidding. Personally, I handle them by not handling them. If someone is going to be a dick, I just don't offer any energy to that. Like most people, I have a couple of hard boundaries, and if someone crosses them, then the interaction ends right there. Easier said than done in certain situations, but I believe in walking away.

Unfortunately, if you're younger, you may not have the freedom to do that and you might be forced to be in the same room as your bully day after day. In that case, there are no easy answers. It depends on the situation. Most bullies are bullies not because of something you did, but rather because of some trauma they are dealing with inside, so you don't have a lot of control over that (and neither do they in some respects).

6 what's your schedule regarding your writing?

I actually write for a living (freelance stuff), so I do it almost every day in some capacity. Usually, I write first thing in the morning before I've done almost anything else (after morning tea).

7 what's your dream vacation?

A silent retreat in the woods.

8 what is a good piece of advice for a newcomer?

To stop listening to advice. :P

Seriously, though, listen to the "voice" inside you. When it comes to the technical sides of the craft (such as grammar, etc), you can just Google for advice and that's fine. When it comes to more abstract issues, though, such as whether your plot "should" include XYZ element or whether you "should" write a character in such-and-such way, that's too subjective to rely on the opinions and judgments of others.

If you ask people (especially on Internet forums or social media) about how you should write your story, what will often happen is that you'll be inundated with thousands of conflicting subjective opinions. You'll just waste your time listening to bickering back and forth about this or that theory, or about the "right" way to do whatever it is you asked about. Most advice about that sort of thing is useless because it depends so much on the context of your specific situation that there is no universal rule anyone could tell you.

Instead, spend your time writing and figuring out what works well/sounds good to you and your audience. Try different things. If it sucks, try something else; if it works, expand on it. Maybe you'll even find a new way of doing things that no one has tried before.

You are the only one who knows how your story should be written. In this day and age, books aren't written in stone anyway, so you can always change it later.

All right, sorry, I'll stop ranting now. If you can't tell, I'm passionate about this subject. XD

9 how would you celebrate a publishing deal?

I'm not really interested in that sort of thing (traditional publishing), so I don't know how to answer this.

10 what's your favorite book?

There are so many, but maybe Demian by Hermann Hesse.

11 what's your favorite movie?

Hmmm, hard to pick just one. Adolescence of Utena is near the top of the list.

Request time

Right now I'm writing a novel called Goda's Slave, a queer world-building fantasy dystopia with a lesbian main character.

Plot wise, it's about a young woman named Kanna Rava who is torn away from her cushy life by an unstable political situation and ends up in the hands of a huge, scary woman (Goda, the title character) who is tasked with transporting Kanna deep into a foreign country to serve out a criminal sentence. The story centers largely around their push-pull relationship, Goda's mysterious past, and Kanna's discomfort with her own shifting identity.

It has a lot of different themes, but the biggest one is about how difficult it is to surrender our identity, even when it no longer reflects who we are, since our identity is often what grounds us in this world. Kanna is left with nothing to ground her, in a totally unfamiliar environment, with a woman who seems entirely comfortable in the chaos and whose intentions Kanna has trouble understanding.

You can find the story on my profile! It's(currently) the only one I have up