Author Interview, S. Kaeth
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 notleave 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.
Contact information: You can find me at skaeth.com and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kaeth_s
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 notleave 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.
Contact information: You can find me at skaeth.com and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kaeth_s
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