Doing something a little different in today’s blog post! Last week I asked my social media followers/readers what burning questions they had for me about my writing, books, etc! I’m answering all their questions in today’s blog post! 🙂
Q: When did you know you wanted to be a writer? How old were you?
A: I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was ten years old. ❤ I’d written little stories to share with my siblings and friends since I was younger than that, and I specfically reember a time where I handwrote and illustrated several “children’s books” to sell for like $1 each in our neighborhood when I was like 6, ha! 🙂 But the age of 10 was when it really cemented for me. I had just written “The End” on a 100+ page hand-written novel heavily inspired by the Johnathan Park audio adventure series and several Barbie sagas my younger siblings or best friend and I would play out. (*cringe* lol lol XD) And I remember sitting in the car having just written those final two words, looking out the window, and going: “this is it. This is what I want to do.” There were a couple times I questioned that decision and considered changing my career path in my middle-teen years, but ultimately, writing was my calling and it’s what I stuck with in the end. And I’m so, so glad I did! ❤
Q: Do you have a favorite character, ship, and/or book you’ve written and why?
A: This is such a hard question because there’s so many things I love about all the books I’ve written, gah! Because the next question can sort of tie into this one, I’m going to focus on the “favorite character or ship” part. 🙂 One of my favorite characters that I’ve ever written is Marion from my Tales of Nottingham series. I’ve gone into this in other blog posts or a little bit in social media posts, but I wrote Thief (book one in the series) when I was going through one of my lowest mental health periods. Things were so bad that I was scared to leave the house and would have panic attacks before doing so, it was hard for me to eat or sleep, there were things happening in my personal life that added to the depression and anxiety and made me constantly terrified that I wasn’t good enough and I was going to lose everyone I loved, my OCD was completely unmanagable, etc. And then I wrote Marion and while a lot of her plotline is tied to working for the Sheriff of Nottingham to stop Robin Hood, then realizing that she’s on the wrong side, there are also a lot of internal things she ends up wrestling with that paralleled my life at the time. She struggles with fear, with wondering if she’s doing the right thing, with losing people she loves, with making hard decisions, with making the wrong decisions, with not having grace for herself, with trying to conform herself to be what everyone else wants her to be instead of who she is, etc. And while I was trapped in my head and fighting my own mental health battles, it was so therapuetic for me to write a character who struggled with a lot of the same…and then overcame. That is why Marion will always be so, so special to me, because she gave me the courage to keep fighting and to get better. ❤ As far as a favorite ship goes, I’m incredibly partial to Deric and Miriam in Smoke and Mirrors or Isabella and Rin from my soon-to-be-announced Cinderella Retelling. 🙂
Q: What book are you most proud of?
A: Oh my goodness, another difficult question! Can I give you two? 🙂 The first isn’t actually written under this name, but under my pen name, Savanna Raine. Project Summer is a State of Mind is a contemporary novel I’ve been working on for over six years, and I finished the rough draft finally, finally this year. I won’t talk about it too much on here because Savanna Roberts’ books are dystopian + fairy tale retellings, and I know my audiences are mostly different, but wow, am I proud of that book. And I can’t wait to share it with those of you who are interested in it! 🙂 I’m also incredibly proud of my soon-to-be-announced Cinderella Retelling novella. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written to date in the Tales of Nottingham universe, and I really hope all of you like it. ❤ Be on the lookout for more info coming soon!
Q: What’s a weird thing about your writing process that most people never consider?
A: I do a ton of food research, especially for my Tales of Nottingham books/books set in that story world. 🙂 So much food research that I use the Super Cook website to plan what kinds of meals each of the fairytale realms would make based on what ingredients they have. It’s one of my favorite parts of my writing process, although it can definitely be a procrastination technique, ha! 🙂
Q: Why did you take some books out of publication?
A: The Quelmirian Duology was a fantasy duology I wrote back in 2019. I’d seen an influx of racist social media posts and was still reeling from all the bigotry in my homeschool co-op from the previous few years, and I wanted to write a book series to raise awareness. However, I grossly overestimated my knowlege of these topics. I didn’t do my due diligence in terms of research and the do’s and don’t’s of diversity in books, and in my ignorance, I wound up writing the reverse racism trope in that duology.
It wasn’t until 2020 when everything happened with the murder of George Floyd that I was truly educated on many things regarding Black Lives Matter, how the fight against racism was ongoing and how I had been kept from learning about it in my upbringing, why the reverse racism trope is harmful in books, etc. As soon as I learned about these things, I unpublished the duology. I never wanted to cause further harm, and I’m so, so sorry that I thought I knew enough about the topics I was writing about at the time to publish the duology. I wish I had learned these things earlier, as I never would have published the books given what I know now.
I feel incredibly blessed and grateful to be given a second chance to learn from my mistakes, and I’ve used that opportunity to listen to authority figures in the POC/BIPOC communities, read books about racism and how to be a better ally, etc. I’ve also learned about the privileges in the publishing world and how vital it is that we champion and advocate for POC/BIPOC authors and their books since oftentimes they’re not given the same chances, opportunities, or monetary investments many white authors are.
This is why the Quelmirian Duology is out of print and why I won’t be returning to the series. ❤
Q: What’s an unpopular opinion you have about your own writing?
A: This is such a unique question! I’ve had some people tell me that they don’t like repetition in books, but I think well-placed repetition can be used as emphasis to get a point across or to really hit home on a particular emotion a character is feeling. I use repetition (for short phrases and to convey anxiety or fear) quite a bit in the Tales of Nottingham series, and I personally really like that I use it. *shrugs* Would I argue that I may have used it a little too much in the earlier Tales of Nottingham books versus the latter, as I grew as a writer? Probably, lol! XD But at the end of the day, I just really enjoy employing repetition in a manuscript and I feel like I’m getting pretty good at it, even if other writers/readers consider it a “no-no” of the craft. 🙂
Q: If you were to start all over again with your business, what would you tell yourself?
A: Oof. I would probably tell myself to slow down. I was so excited about starting my author career and equally terrified about my sales falling off a cliff if I didn’t produce books quickly enough, and both these things led to me overextending myself, not spending as much time editing or researching when I should have, and ultimately burning myself out on writing. I hated everything I wrote for a long time while simultaneously feeling guilty for not putting out more books when so many other authors I knew were putting out a minimum of one book a year; oftentimes they were putting out far, far more than that. I started playing the comparison game, which sent me even further into a slump. Never mind the multitude of moves and other emotional things going on in my life over the early years of my career. It wasn’t until after I had my first daughter that I learned to slow down and that my books would get written and edited whenever they could be, and that I wouldn’t rush or cut corners because that was doing a disservice to both my books and my readers. It’s been a long road coming back from that severe burnout, and sometimes I still push myself a little too close to the sun and have to take an extended break from my projects. But I think I’m getting better at figuring out what works for me and also then going with the flow when my now two toddlers upheave all my plans, ha! 🙂 So yeah, I definitely think the main thing I’d tell myself is that I need to take things slower and not get so caught up in the comparison game that I lose my joy for writing!
Thank you so much for such wonderful questions! I hope you guys enjoy the answers to everything. 🙂 If you have any other questions for me, feel free to drop them in the comments section below!
Dystopian & Fairy Tales 
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