Katie Powlish
asked
A.K. Caggiano:
What were some of the biggest challenges with writing your novella, Faeted to Fall, compared to your longer works? What are you most proud of accomplishing with writing Faeted to Fall?
A.K. Caggiano
Hi Katie! One of my biggest challenges in general is being concise (which you'll know if you've read any sentence I've ever written haha), so writing something that felt complete in less than 35k words was daunting. (Especially since I think I sneaked in an extra thousand or so words.)
I wanted Roan and Maewyn to feel like real people who the reader could connect with, and I wanted their love to feel earned and organic, and the way I usually do that is to make my characters suffer one another's company for chapter after chapter of quests and gut-spilling and domestic life until they learn who the other person truly is and decide that they want all of that other person for their own. That's a lot harder in just fifteen chapters!
So I cheated a little with the tether and the fated mates stuff :) But that proved its own challenge because I didn't want it to be too easy either! I also left a lot of world building to sort of be shimmery ideas on the perimeter of the story instead of well explored on the page. I know how most of the magic in that universe works, but I hoped the reader would be all right just getting glimpses and quick explanations while I focused on feeding them more about the characters and their relationship. Faeted to Fall definitely subsists on vibes over a hard magic system!
But weirdly, I might be most proud of the *vibes* of the story. Not just the autumn aesthetic, but the voice and the fairytale-esque nature of the world. I like that it feels a little like reading through a veil, that it's sort of charming and unnerving, and that Maewyn and Roan's love is simple, in the end.
I wanted Roan and Maewyn to feel like real people who the reader could connect with, and I wanted their love to feel earned and organic, and the way I usually do that is to make my characters suffer one another's company for chapter after chapter of quests and gut-spilling and domestic life until they learn who the other person truly is and decide that they want all of that other person for their own. That's a lot harder in just fifteen chapters!
So I cheated a little with the tether and the fated mates stuff :) But that proved its own challenge because I didn't want it to be too easy either! I also left a lot of world building to sort of be shimmery ideas on the perimeter of the story instead of well explored on the page. I know how most of the magic in that universe works, but I hoped the reader would be all right just getting glimpses and quick explanations while I focused on feeding them more about the characters and their relationship. Faeted to Fall definitely subsists on vibes over a hard magic system!
But weirdly, I might be most proud of the *vibes* of the story. Not just the autumn aesthetic, but the voice and the fairytale-esque nature of the world. I like that it feels a little like reading through a veil, that it's sort of charming and unnerving, and that Maewyn and Roan's love is simple, in the end.
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