The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

From: meepalicious at LJ.

How did you get started?

Before I made the decision to crowdfund I was posting the odd story for a bingo challenge on LiveJournal. None of those stories are canon now, because things changed so much. I set up a separate journal on LJ to post those stories and it was that I decided to use as a place to start crowdfunding. First I posted some fiction that, back then, wasn’t for anything that I actually planned to write, but they were stories that I needed to write. Anyone who is a writer probably knows that feeling.

Then I had a prompt session. I had no idea what I was doing, but it seemed like a good way of starting my crowdfunding career, and it was great fun, although I still occasionally have trouble writing stories for prompts. Sometimes it is because the prompt is difficult and at other times it’s because I can’t write the story the way it needs to be written. Often I’ll have several attempts at a prompt, so I can write the right story, but for that first session the plan was to post them all on the day I got the prompt. I think I even managed to do it. Originally my plan for the sessions was to have them paid by time period rather than word count, which is something I may still experiment with, and I’ve never earnt much from a session, even though I have managed to write some wonderful stories thanks to the prompts I’ve received.

Once that happened I needed to sort out a system for keeping my fiction in order. I have to admit that’s still a work in progress even after two years, but I’m getting there, slowly. When I started I had no idea I’d be writing so much and for so many different collections, because the plan originally was to write for the Donor House (although it was a different place then); the Fae School (which has grown more than I believed possible); the Brotherhood; Thear (because it’s a world I’ve been writing about since I was 15) and write the occasional piece for the others; but then the World Walkers happened, some of the fiction I wrote for the others was found to be interesting, and now I’m writing for 12 different collections that all seemed to be liked by someone.

From then on I wanted to experiment with everything and early on I set up a number of things I’d never seen before but thought would be interesting, including the adoptions and rentals. I also borrowed the idea of people being able to earn something if they commented or linked by putting in place the credit system. That’s something I would love to have more people involved with.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

From: ysabetwordsmith at DW.

What are some of your favorite themes in writing?

Magical doors. I love to throw a character through a door that leads to another world and see what happens. Although, with the way I write, normally the character has already gone through the door and is urging me to write their story. The World Walkers has the most magical doors now, but originally there were more on Kalinia, as that was where the fae lived and they’re the race with the ability to create them. I doubt, once all the fae who could create doors have moved on to their next lives, anyone will be able to do the same thing again, but it might happen.

Creature races. You’ll be seeing more of these as I write more stories for the World Walkers and Fae World collections. So far I have the Nox Gadael, the Alati Felis, the Terra Lepus, and the Griffins that I’ve actually written about from their perspective. Elizabeth Barrette created the races of Quiar, which I’m really happy about, because they’re something different to write about and there are some races I really want to start writing stories for when I have a chance.

Magic that affects people in different ways. This is something I try to explore in all of my fantasy collections. Magic is something that I give rules and limitations too, because I don’t want it to be something that is there to fix every problem that exists, and it always creates problems itself. In Aurora’s World magic is illegal, because I wanted to see how that would affect people, it can kill you, and there are people who might want to steal it from you, which could also kill you. In Heliopath’s World the more magic you use the worse it affects you – Heliopath calls them withdrawal symptoms, but that isn’t truly what they are, because they don’t know as much about their abilties or how they work as they should. In the Brotherhood magic is something that manifests as a young age and from then the children who have them have to learn how to deal with it, as well as the different people who want to use them for different things.

People who change. I have to admit this is mostly going to be a male thing, but there are going to be women who go through the same thing. What I’m trying to write is the redemable bastard, who eventually learns from their mistakes, although with some of them it is just a face they’re showing because they’ve dealt with a load of crap throughout their lives and it’s the only way they can deal with things. Eventually they will come to realise that they can move on from whatever it was and change. Of course at the moment this is just in my head and I still have to get it down on paper, so there’s every chance some of them might turn out to be unredemable.

Living with adversity. This is something I have experience with personally, so it’s something I like to write about, although sometimes the adversity isn’t something that we could experience, like being turned into a vampire. Showing how people change and grow is my aim with this. One of the things I’ve always been fascinated by is how vampires deal with the world changing around them in ways they probably never would have expected when they were living in their own time. Another thing I want to write about in the future is domestic violence as I think it will help with some of the demons I’m still dealing with from when I was younger.

Relationships and sexuality. In my writing I want to explore different ways relationships work – from monogamous to polyamorous – and different sexualities. I want to have gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, and any other sexual you can think of characters. Reading a story about a character who’s like you can help with coming to terms with who you are, so that’s something that’s important to me.

Being different. I’m not NT. It’s something James and I are learning to deal with, but it’s not easy, in part because it’s not easy to explain the way my brain works to someone who’s more NT than I am (although James isn’t exactly NT either). So I want to write about what it’s like to be dealing with these things, so that people know they aren’t alone.

These are also some of my favourite things to read about, because sometimes I’m in the position where I feel alone, especially when it comes to being different. I don’t have diagnoses to say that I am this or that, but that doesn’t changes who I am or what I’m dealing with. Getting to read fiction with a character who’s dealing with the same or similar problems does help.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

From: ysabetwordsmith at DW.

You mentioned using a local-to-you hotel as inspiration for the Donor House. What other influences does your environment have on your writing?

With pretty much all of my Earth based collections I try to set them in places I know, because that way I can describe the location better than I would if I was trying to set them in America or France or even Scotland. It is, of course, possible to research these places, but no amount of research can give you first hand knowledge of a real life setting. That’s why the second donor house will be located in the town I grew up in and it’s likely that the third one will be located somewhere in Devon. I know both of those places well enough to be able to write in detail about them.

The park the fae take over when they arrive on Earth in the Fae World collection in the park opposite where I live. The college that Anna goes to in the Pagan collection is the college I went to. The majority of the Kim’s World collection will be set locally, although it will be further in the future, so it will be slightly different to how it is now.

Personally I find it much easier to write if I know where I’m setting the story, although some do come to me purely with characters to begin with. There are still some stories that I need to work out where they’re set, like with Claire’s inherited hotel, but I know it’s local to me, as that’s closest to where one of the main doors was.

My environment can have an effect on my magical worlds too, as I’ve lived in the UK my whole life and know more about the weather here than I do anywhere else. However I’ve found it much easier to understand how it differs in other places than I have trying to understand a city by walking the streets on Google maps, which gives me more freedom to change the way things work. Aerith, for example, is a world that has only one season, because the collection is based on a dream I had where I walked through a magical doorway from Autumn into Winter. Originally the World Walkers collection was going to be a series of worlds with only one season each and I’m still planning on working that in somewhere.

The kingdom Aurora lives in has a very UK based weather system. Like me they deal with four seasons, although they are more seasonal than the ones we have, where you know what’s going to happen from one to the other, rather than wondering if they’re actually going to have a summer. Heliopath’s World is one I know a lot less about, although I know there are deserts, because it was always going to be set in the city.

With each of my fantasy collections I’ve tried to use a mix of what I know and what I can learn, along with a little magic, to make each of them different from the other and different from worlds that have already been created.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.