Today we visit with S. Kaeth, and discuss Windward.
Tell
us a little about yourself: I’m drawn to creating things as a way to
sort of push back the darkness, so my house is littered with various creative
endeavors: journals of conlangs and worldbuilding sketches, strings and beads
and jewelry making supplies, paints and books and various musical instruments
that I can nominally play if your expectations are low. I train animals and
adore reptiles, and I enjoy hiking and playing Capoeira when I’m not writing.
Ever since I was little I’ve been a storyteller, telling awful
passive-aggressive bedtime stories to my older sister, writing a historical
fiction serial in the high school newspaper, writing terrible fan fiction, etc.
I’ve been serious about my writing for about seven years now, and my
writing has grown by leaps and bounds as I’ve averaged a bit over 100k in
stories through those seven years while learning to embrace my own style and to
succeed at self-editing and editing from critiques and other feedbacks. I’m
part of several writing groups, and am also a Writer In Motion.
What
authors do you draw inspiration from and why: Andre Norton, Orson Scott
Card, and Ursula K LeGuin have inspired me since I was little and devoured
their stories. I love stories of interactions between people of one
planet/race/island/whatnot and those of another. More recently, I get
inspiration from Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, and NK Jemisin for their
worldbuilding and the way they weave together their stories. I like to read
stories that might be a little more leisurely paced in the beginning, while all
the strands are being played and slowly woven together until the reader finally
sees what’s emerging, and that has definitely affected my own work.
Tell
us about your book: Windward is my debut novel, and at its
heart, it’s a classic fantasy adventure. Palon’s bond with her partner Windward
is something she cherishes, but when she is given responsibility for a newly
bonded teen who tricked her dragon and was in turn tricked during the bonding
process, she finds herself starting to think of those times when bonding can go
wrong. Tebah, the newly bonded’s, rebelliousness causes friction among the
dragons who are already upset, and the telepathic stresses reach a breaking
point when Palon is framed for stealing from a dragon. It’s a story of
strengths being turned to weaknesses and the power and fear of trust, as well
as the friendship and bond between Palon and Windward.
How
long did it take you to write it? What were some of the challenges: I
started Windward as a break from working on my epic, and tried Camp
Nano in April of 2018 with it, but didn’t get very far (28k or so) before I was
distracted by other things to work on. So I made a commitment to it in November
and re-wrote it from scratch for Nanowrimo. I worked on it hard, editing the
two drafts together and smoothing things out, sending to beta readers and
editing again, for most of this year, and then released it September 27th of
this year.
One
of the main issues with Windward was Palon. I wanted her to feel
alien, as she is very dragon in her thinking and extremely emotive. Her values
are not values a lot of people would identify with, and it causes a lot of
clashes with Tebah and Palon’s mate Aturadin. I wanted to somehow balance that
alien, other feeling while still making her relatable, and sometimes went a bit
too far one way or the other during edits. Balancing Palon’s trust in the bond
with Tebah’s rebellious anger at it was also tricky, but I wanted to show that
a person can love something and still find flaws in it.
Since Windward is my debut, I of course had a
lot to learn about self-publishing, and I certainly could not be here without
the help and advice so freely and graciously given to me. I was unaware of how
long the cover would take, though I’m super happy we didn’t rush it, and had to
push back the release date a couple times because my expectations were frankly
unrealistic.
What
is a unique or interesting bit of lore or background detail about your world: Well
I mention that I wanted Palon to feel alien, and part of that is because she,
and all the bonded, are aliens. There are precisely zero humans in Windward.
The bonded are volunteers from a race of humanoids called Rinaryns, and my
epic, which I’m working on, centers around those Rinaryns who do not
leave behind the culture they’re born in to go live with dragons.
What
do you enjoy developing the most – characters, plot, or your world – and why: I
don’t really know how to answer this. I love them all, and I’m not sure I love
any more than any other. I am definitely a gardener, though and once I find the
character’s voice, I just let them speak and I take notes. I derive a ton of
worldbuilding from what the character fears and wants and hates, etc, and it’s
fun to tease out the differences in motivations and values from one character
to another, even in a single POV novel like Windward. The plot just sort
of flows naturally from what’s happening and what the character is doing and
how they’re reacting. My world’s been set up for several years, and it was a
lot of fun to think through that with various renditions of other stories, but
since I tend to write in the one world/multi-verse, I don’t have an enormous
amount of work to do on the worldbuilding with new works. For Windward the
worldbuilding was largely limited to dragon culture and to what changes to the
basic Rinaryn culture happen to create dragonbonded culture. What fallout is
there from a telepathic connection that sends emotions, values, hopes, dreams,
and fears back and forth through the bond between mammal and reptile, along
with thoughts? This was a ton of fun to explore.
Book
price and where it can be found: Windward is available on Amazon, with paperbacks for $12.99, ebooks for $2.99, and
it’s free on Kindle Unlimited.
What’s
your next project: I’m back to my epic, finishing drafting out Book Four of
the five book series, and I’m on track to draft Book Five for Nano. Then I just
need to finish putting the final polishes on the first book and release it into
the world.
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