Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I started writing fiction for fun for the Writer’s of the Future contest. I joined Wattpad in 2017 and got involved with a book club called #NBR. The club was extremely involving and very helpful to me, giving me feedback on chapters. I wrote every weekend until I finished the entire story. I loved writing and I couldn’t stop.
I’m a graphic designer and web developer, and one of my clients was an editor. She helped me edit the book and plan the next three. I created my cover and launched the book. That’s how I became an author.
What is something unique/quirky about you?
I have a genuine bat phobia. I can’t even look at photos of bats, I start crying and shaking. There’s no reason for it, but yeah. Phobias are no fun.
Tell us something really interesting that's happened to you!
I played an augmented reality game on my mobile phone called Ingress. It’s a capture the flag game, the precursor to Pokemon Go. The game never stops. The game was run by Google, before Alphabet spun it off. I organized and worked with 85 countries to take over the world for the Resistance in an operation called Unight16. The biggest thing was working with the Saudi team and coordinating their movements with the Israelis because both teams could have been punished for what they were doing. The Saudi team actually had gone to jail for the game. It was tense. After that, I visited Google Venice and met the engineers who worked on the game. That was fairly exciting for me.
What inspired you to write this book?
I got the title first. When my daughter and I were dealing with some relationship issues, I was really angry with her and was praying about it. I thought, “She’s just selfish.”
Immediately, I heard an answer in my heart. No. She’s sorrowfish.
I had the image in my mind of a little girl in pain, crying out for help. Of course my attitude changed toward her. I kept the idea of selfish/sorrowfish and used it a few years later when I started writing.
I wanted very much to explore the idea that the artist’s journey and hero’s journey are the same. I also had an idea about God, that he uses our inner music, our ear worms, to speak to us. Mix all of that together and you get Sorrowfish.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I have at least three more novels yet to write in this series, The Call of the Lorica. I have an idea for a book about gamers, similar to Ready Player One. I’m also ghost writing a memoir right now.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Sorrowfish?
There’s a bard, a wizard and a college student from Kentucky. The bard is named Trystan and he’s actually a prince from a northern country called Pelegor. He’s studying at the Bindery, trying to earn a master’s ring. Bards are not simply musicians, they’re also politicians and confessors and story tellers. They shape opinion. He’s a younger son, but can have some influence and a good life as a Bindery Master.
The wizard is in hiding and his name is Dane. Wizards in my fantasy world are called dewin. Magic is called the Song. Five hundred years ago, there was a war and the Song was broken. The dewin went violently mad. Now they are captured and their minds are wiped out if they are found. But Dane is a dewin luthier and he is preserving magic, preserving the Song, by creating special instruments which connect to and play the true Song, the Song as it was before the war.
Trystan finds out about the instruments Dane is making and orders one. Chaos ensues.
Sara is our hero and she is from Louisville, Kentucky. She visits Canard when she dreams and is eventually drawn in.
There are gryphons and dwarves and gnomes as well.
Who designed your book covers?
I did. I’ve been a graphic designer for 19 years. I wasn’t about to let anyone else do my cover. I designed the cover and my book’s website, sorrowfish.com
What are your top 10 favorite books/authors?
The Lord of the Rings(Tolkien), The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis), The Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan) and The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper, I also love A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle and The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. I think that’s more than ten books. Oops.
How long have you been writing?
My whole life. I have always kept a journal and I’ve written a lot during my professional life. I just hadn’t done fiction. When I started writing fiction it was like someone turned on a hose.
Do you see writing as a career?
I see it as a calling. I am physically incapable of stopping.
Pen or type writer or computer?
Computer, but by hand if I don’t have my laptop where i can get to it.
What is your writing process?
I try to get on paper everything I know about the story. That’s my first draft. My outline for this series is actually a poem and I don’t know what everything means yet. Then I figure out the where the blanks are and ask myself questions and fill them in. Most of the time I fill them in by discovery writing.
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