In this edition of Lattes with Ladies, I interview Kim Fedyk, author and freelance writer, about self-publishing, motherhood, and her new novel Birthright. You can buy Birthright: The Crystal Throne on Amazon. You can also follow Kim on Instagram at @fedykkim and find updates about her forthcoming works on Medium and Goodreads.
HPL: What have you been reading lately?
KF: That is an interesting question because I haven’t actually finished reading a book in a long time. In January, I started reading Mary Trump’s book about Donald Trump just because I was interested in all the hype and to see what it was about. I got to like page 50 and I was actually really interested in it but then my friend who is my graphic artist came back with my cover for my novel and she came back with my maps and then I just got way too excited and I haven’t picked it back up since.
HPL: Fair enough! Being a writer is a lot of work.
KF: Well, I use all my free time to write because I don’t get much of it. But I did like the book when I was reading it so, at some point, I’ll pick it back up again and see what happens.
HPL: How has the pandemic specifically impacted your choices in what you’re reading or not?
KF: Well, I haven’t really read anything that much in a long time. Not because of the pandemic but mostly because of having my child. I just don’t have that much time. I mean, obviously, the last book I was saying I started reading was Mary Trump’s which is a more serious book but in general I read stuff that is more lighthearted anyway so [my reading habit] wouldn’t really be impacted by world events. I read as an escape, not really to learn things for the most part.
HPL: Have you found that when you’re reading other novels some of that style starts to trickle into what you’re writing?
KF: I’m not sure if it necessarily trickles in but I’m definitely influenced by certain ideas and things that I’ve read about. Like in The Wheel of Time series, there are different mentions of portals and things like that which definitely influenced the way I wrote my book and included portals. It’s a completely different kind of situation but I thought that was really cool, the way they had the portals and characters would just pop in and out of places so that influenced that. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a style of writing that’s influencing me or word choice or things like that. Just certain ideas where I think, “That’s really cool, I wonder if I could incorporate that in my own way into something I’m writing as well.” There are definitely things like that.
HPL: What gave you the idea for your novel series? You have your first book out and it’s going to be a trilogy in the end, correct?
KF: It’s gonna be a trilogy. I’m debating doing essentially a prologue but as an epilogue told by my main evil character and his backstory. I’m debating it. It depends on how much I end up giving away in the trilogy. I definitely have enough information that I could do a book on it. How I started, it’s kind of strange. I wrote a short story when I was in elementary school and it was about a fire at an orphanage and that basically was all the story was. I was very young. When I was in university, I had a final psychology paper, and my professor said, “Whatever you do in your life, make sure you go into writing because you have a gift for it.” So, I took that and I said, “You know what, I don’t have a job right now. I just finished university, let’s see if I can start writing something.” I happened to just look through all of my old stories that I’d written in school and it sparked an interest in me. Obviously, my book is not about an orphanage burning and that’s the whole thing but it kind of started an idea in my mind and the first chapter of my novel spurred from that thought and then it just progressed from there.
HPL: Wow, so you’ve been working on this a long time.
KF: I started writing it in 2010 and then I published it in 2021, but I had long periods of time where I didn’t write. Like years where I didn’t write. So, I’m much more diligent with book two.
HPL: Are you starting from scratch with book two or do you already have some foundation set up from these past years of writing?
KF: Book one leads into book two. It’s one continuous story. Currently, I’m on chapter six of book two. I have book two completely planned out all in point form. The entire book’s planned out and then book three is 60 to 70% planned out. I know how it’s going to end… I know the main themes that are going to happen in book three as well, so, it’s just a matter of sitting down and writing it into something that sounds good. Not just point form notes.
When I started writing my first book it was originally just supposed to be one [book] but then as I was writing it I realized it was just way too long to make it into one book. My first book is like 340 pages and I realized that book two is probably going to be longer. I mean, authors do write 1,000 page books but I didn’t want that. I’d rather split it up into different books just to make it easier for everyone. I’ve added a lot more things obviously as I’ve gotten going, but I’ve had the general idea and the ending planned pretty much from the beginning.
HPL: What made you choose self-publishing? Did you ever try submitting your manuscript to any publishing houses?
KF: When I was first writing it, I was just writing for fun. I didn’t really have publishing in mind but then as I was going along I thought, “Oh, it would be fun to publish” but I knew nothing. I was really young, in my early 20s, and didn’t know anything about how to do it at all. And then, actually, at work, I worked with a man named S. J. Madill and he started the self-publishing journey on Amazon and he was very successful with it. He actually quit his job six months after publishing his first book and now he’s a full-time writer. He told me all about the process and everything so at that point I was just like, ‘I’m going to do that when I publish my book.’ Because it’s really great. You keep all of your rights to your book and you get to make all the decisions when it comes to the cover and everything you want to do. Obviously, you don’t gain the marketing tools that you get if you publish through a real publisher but I never tried publishing it through a publisher. Ever since that I was always just going to self-publish it through Amazon.
HPL: What sort of stories or authors inspired you to write fantasy?
KF: I feel like I first started getting interested in fantasy from Harry Potter which is like everybody. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, but what really kind of spurred, I don’t want to say my writing style, but my interest in the more complex fantasies would be Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind with series I really loved. And then also the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and then David Farland as well inspired what I am working on now.
HPL: Those are all pretty long, significant series, especially the Wheel of Time.
KF: Yeah, and in answer to your question from earlier, in some of Terry Brooks’ series there are lots of points where there are four or five different storylines with different characters and each chapter is a different character and they go through their own story then all connect at different points. I had that general idea in mind for the book two I’m writing now because it’s very similar where everyone splits up into different storylines and then they come back together. I kind of have that idea of how well it worked for him in my mind as I’m writing my book two.
HPL: How are you connecting with the sci-fi and fantasy writing and self-publishing industry? What would you recommend to people who are also considering self-publishing?
KF: I’ve basically been just looking on social media to find different things. There is actually a very robust community on Twitter under the hashtag #writingcommunity. Not all of them are self-published writers but a lot of them seem to be. It seems to be heavily self-publishing. And they get questions all the time. People answer questions. That seems to be very motivating and a very good resource. Also, if you self-publish on Amazon specifically, the actual KDP website has tons and tons of information. I think that social media [resources] in general because Instagram has a bunch of different things. Whenever I post #selfpublishing or #indieauthor or whatever so many self-published authors always comment on my stuff and then I end up following them and we connect. It’s a very robust community and it’s pretty easy to find if you just put in some hashtags when you make a post. Everyone’s been very supportive that I can see so far.
HPL: Without giving anything away, what was your favourite part of your book?
KF: There are two things for two different reasons. I think one of my favourite parts is near the very beginning and it’s just the dynamic between two different characters, Bella and Kieran, and I think they’re just two hilarious characters together and I love the way they interact. It was a lot of fun writing it. I basically just threw all the ridiculousness that I could think of at these two characters. I’ve gotten a lot of really positive feedback on this too, so I know it worked well. The second favourite part of my book, which I’m going to describe really vaguely, it’s like a stronghold kind of place that they live in, some of my characters. As I was reading it over and editing again, I was just kind of proud of how I developed it and the things that I thought of to make it all come together. That part I had written many, many years ago and when I picked it back up again and I read it, I was like, “Oh. Wow, that is actually pretty good.” Those two parts I think would be my favourite of the book.
HPL: Any thoughts about what you’re going to do next? Imagining a future where all three books are out, what happens then?
KF: Actually, I have a plan. When I first started writing these novels, so ten years ago, I also started writing these creepy, little short stories. Just kind of odd ball creepy things. I recently read them again and I quite like them, so since I have two and half of them written and younger me has also drafted out—which I also forgot about—four or five other stories as well, I’m going to go into that. I’m going to try and publish a short story creepy anthology. I’m also kind of contemplating a parenting book because when I was on mat leave I started writing all the ridiculous things that happened to my son and I in our first year together. Luckily for me, he ended up being a very, very good child so I didn’t have enough to make a book which I thought I would have. I’ve been reaching out to different moms that I know in the mom community to see if they have any stories they want to add, and I’ve been getting pretty good feedback. So, at some point in time, I’m going to write a parenting novel. Just all the ridiculous and funny things that happen in the first year of life that first-time parents may not even realize about and may even feel like they’re alone but they’re not because everyone goes through it. Then after that I want to get back into writing fantasy again so I’m thinking to write another trilogy potentially in the same universe as this one but maybe a hundred years later, a hundred years earlier, different characters, or something like that.
HPL: And would you keep self-publishing all your future works as well?
KF: Yeah, I think so! I quite liked the process. I like the idea of being able to see my sales come in because I like micromanaging it [laughs]. Obviously, with a publisher they do all of that for you so you see monthly periods, quarterly periods what you sold but I like seeing it everyday. It just gives me a little boost of, “Oh, I sold one today!” I don’t want to spend time trying to query publishers or agents. I want to spend that time actually writing. For me, that is more fulfilling. I know for a lot of people it’s a different idea but that’s what I would prefer to do.
HPL: Is there anything on your to-be-read list that you’re excited about getting to?
KF: Yes! When I last read the Wheel of Time series it was when they first came out which was many, many, many years ago. They’re all sitting on my shelf and I have up to book 11 or something. When I first joined Goodreads, I was looking at books that I had read and I was like there are a whole lot of other books in the Wheel of Time series. At some point, I would like to start probably from back to the beginning since I don’t really remember them and read the whole series and get the new books. Also, there’s some Terry Brooks series that I also haven’t read in an equally long amount of time that I also noticed on Goodreads that there are whole new series that I didn’t know about. I don’t know why I didn’t think they would have kept going because obviously they would have kept going. They didn’t stop writing just when I stopped reading them, but I was surprised when I saw them and very happy.