Nikky Lee's Blog, page 9
April 27, 2022
10 Questions with Heather Kindt


Heather Kindt is the author of Not Quite Dorothy: A Modern Day Wizard of Oz Romantic Comedy and the New Adult Paranormal Romance, The Weaver Trilogy published through Parliament House Press, the YA Fantasy series, The Eternal Artifacts, and the Vradian Academy.
Heather lives in the mountains of Colorado with her husband and two children. She enjoys hiking, skiing, teaching, reading and cheering for the best team on earth: the Denver Broncos. Traveling to new places with her husband is on her bu...
April 21, 2022
10 Questions with Nicole Willson


Nicole Willson writes horror and dark fantasy. Her debut novel Tidepool (Parliament House Press) came out in August 2021 and is a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in publications by Cemetery Gates Media and hinged.press on Medium. She has attended the Borderlands Press Writers Boot Camp, the Futurescapes Writers’ Workshop, and the Fearscapes Writers’ Workshop. She lives with her husband and a rotating cast of cats in Nor...
April 18, 2022
The Rarkyn's Familiar is out in the wild!

I'm thrilled to share that The Rarkyn's Familiar is officially out in the world! Wow, what a journey it's been. Too often we tend to skim over the acknowledgements at the end of a book. We're eager to get on to the next read or to close our blood shot eyes from lying awake into the early hours finish the story (at least, such is often the case with me). But now that it's my own work and The Rarkyn's Familiar has beeen released into the wild, a couple of pages fo thank yous at the end feels inade...
April 13, 2022
Inspiration sparked: the stories that inspired THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR

No artist works in isolation (or at least none I know of). When I started creating the world and characters of The Rarkyn’s Familiar, I had certain ideas in mind of what I wanted—elements I’d admired in other author’s works or fascinating ideas I’d seen that I wanted to explore myself.
I’ve talked about some of these already in my other blogs, but here’s a more detailed list of the most influential works that inspired my story, its world and its magic systems.
The Immortals by Tamora Pierce
I’v...
April 11, 2022
Designing magic: the story behind THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR

When it came to building the magic system of The Rarkyn’s Familiar, the term “everything including the kitchen sink” comes to mind. I didn’t set out to write it that way, rather it came about from my desire to create a world as rich as I could possibly make it.
Inspired by the two magic systems in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy where one form of magic is revered and the other is criminalised, I decided I wanted two magic systems that opposed one another. One would be heavily structured and syste...
April 6, 2022
Where Lyss came from: the story behind THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR

Lyss, Lyss, Lyss, where to begin? You’d think I’d know my protagonist the best out of all my characters, but Lyss was the hardest character to pin down. She is both a hero and antihero and possesses almost as many flaws as virtues, and because of this, she was difficult to wrap my head around. From the first draft to the final printed version, Lyss’s character underwent the most change—including several name changes until I finally found one that felt right.
I always knew that I wanted a femal...
April 4, 2022
Anxiety and magic: the story behind THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR

Anxiety and PTSD has a part to play in The Rarkyn’s Familiar as protagonist Lyss battles to stay in control of her own demons. Anxiety, in particular, is something quite close to me. Over the last 10 years, I’ve had periodic bouts of sleepless nights, panic attacks and lingering worries that gnaw on the edge of my mind for months at a time.
It started with a small, seemingly insignificant incident at work towards the end of 2010. I was working part-time in a retail point of sales (AKA as a che...
March 28, 2022
A crumbling empire: the story behind THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR

When the first true chapters* of The Rarkyn’s Familiar made their way onto paper in 2009 as part of a university assignment, little did I know how much time I would be spending in the world of the Illredian Empire.
*When I say “true” here, I mean something semi recognisable to the book’s final story. I’d been playing around with the core idea for a good while longer.
In the years leading up to those chapters, I’d undergone a slow realisation of just how ugly the world could be. The US invasion...
March 21, 2022
Creating the rarkyn: the story behind THE RARKYN'S FAMILIAR

When I started writing The Rarkyn’s Familiar, I knew I wanted to write a world with its own monsters, fantastic beings and fantasy races. Not the traditional elves, dwarfs, drow and the like—I didn’t want to copy or borrow—I wanted something fresh that was my own. Afterall, Tolkien created hobbits, why couldn’t I do something similar?
I’ve always loved the talking animal and animal companion tropes in fantasy. They are what made me fall in love with Narnia as a child and why I read and re-read...
March 8, 2022
10 Questions with Nicholas J. Evans


Nicholas J. Evans is an author from New York who now resides in Maine with his wife and four children. Evans was a guitarist and founding member of the Post-Hardcore group, NoraStone, with whom he recorded and toured from 2011 to 2017. He left shortly after the birth of his first daughter, and moved to working on short stories. In 2018 he won the Blue Rose Award in the Horror category for his short story, Body & Spirit, and following this he won the Kaiju Island short fiction contest with Minya'...