Welcome back, my fellow creatives! I’m thrilled to continue sharing some lovely indie authors I’ve met in our community–it’s so great to connect with folks again. This month, please welcome fantasy author Bethany P. Siu!

Let’s begin with a fun writing community boost. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? 

Let me give a shout out to just a few of my author friends who keep me going!  Matt Mikalatos @mattmikalatos, Rebecca Bourne @becbecwrites, Dana Brentson @dcbrentsonauthor, Alex Huntsman @alex_the_hunstman, and Stephen Mizell @smizellwrites. Last but not least I’ve got to mention my writer bestie and cover artist Moriah Huang @mo.collum with whom I write multiple times a week. She’s so amazing and my books would not be the same without her. 

At this point I really know a lot of other writers and authors and I cannot overemphasize their positive influence from encouragement to inspiration to critical feedback and more. Offering mutual support, I think might be the most valuable thing for me, just having people who cheer me on and keep me from getting discouraged. It is also so helpful to have folks with a critical eye who can beta-read for me and spot the strengths and weaknesses in a story that I might not be able to see. Thank you all!!!

Yes! Having that kind of support makes all the difference in the world, especially when we’re trying to build stories that connect with others. It’s also cool when we find connections through stories that struck emotional chords with us as kids. What is the first book that made you cry? 

Probably the Legend of Luke by Brian Jaques. I loved the entire Redwall series when I was a kid and something about the Legend of Luke was very poignant to me.  

I hope your kids enjoy that book, too! It is NOT always easy to balance family life and writing life. Have you developed a routine that helps you thrive in both lives?

I’d love to hear your tips! Haha, I want to laugh at that question because it feels like as soon as I have a routine something happens to disrupt it! Now that my kids are both in school though I do have a few days when I can usually reliably write. The most important thing for me I think is to put it on the calendar and view it as a high priority. Of course, there will always be days when a kid is throwing up or grown-up admin tasks must be done, but for the most part I try to keep my little chunks of writing time very protected. This works well for my family too because if I get dedicated creative time I can focus more on them the rest of the day!

I wish I had tips to share, lol! It feels like just when I get a groove worked out, life throws job stuff or family stuff my way and wrents it all asunder. Since teaching full time, I’ve learned that all the energy academic drains from me comes back when I get a chance to write, even if it’s only a few hundred words. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Both. Writing can take a lot of creative and mental energy out of me, but often that is what I need. I have so much rolling around in my mind that getting some of it out can help me be more focused and energized in the rest of my life.

You mention digging Dungeons and Dragons—there is SOOOOOO much lore and character work and worldbuilding involved with that game! I’ve seen my daughter Blondie enjoy drawing and exploring her own characters with influences from favorite games. Would you say gaming has influenced your storytelling, and if so how? 

Oh yes. Playing D&D I think has helped me develop better rhythms of storytelling, including downtime for characters, action encounters, and time for both battle and emotional role play. Getting into character and playing a character in real time role play is also great practice for getting to know book characters and writing them in a flexible and realistic way. I think D&D has also helped me a lot with action scenes, being able to conceptualize terrain, where characters are on a map, and how a battle might progress. Also, as a result of playing D&D I started writing fanfiction. I would not have expected writing fanfiction to improve my more serious writing, but it definitely did. Fanfiction (at least mine) is all about the juicy moments and tends to be very streamlined. This helped me to not overwrite as much and to leave out things a story didn’t need to focus on what was important.

That’s a really good point about what’s relevant vs. what’s fun, BUT irrelevant. Trimming things out is a really tough process for me, but I get its importance. I also get so caught up in worldbuilding that my word count can take a nosedive while digging into details that, really, I should just be saving for major edits. What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? 

For me the most challenging parts of writing a book are the large-scale plotting and the villain motivations. I (like you maybe!) am definitely a details person. I love getting into the conversations, the intricacies, the emotions. Planning epic level things or considering what is going on in the world at large are much harder for me. And don’t get me started on villains. It’s pretty difficult for me to grasp why villains do what they do, so when I want to have a villain in a story… that tends to be a challenge for me to write.

Let’s talk about your book! What first planted the seed of Out of the Gemmic Sea in you? 

Well, I moved from the Midwest to Southern California and it freaked me out haha. It was sunny every day! It was like I was stuck in a time loop. And the ocean just looked like this vast expanse of flat emptiness which I found unsettling. To help myself adjust I wrote two characters, Reef and Kaeda, who love the sun and the sea. Writing the story helped me to see the beauty around me through their eyes. I have also always loved medical drama, so writing a character who was basically doctor was very fun for me.  

You have characters of different species in your unique world, such as Reef the Khirian, but you also work with animals we’re familiar with and humanize them, like Gamalielle the cat. What resources do you use to help you build such unique characters? 

I have always loved animals and have loved to watch the ways different animals express themselves and interact with each other and with humans. This observation and my own experience play into say, how I imagine Gamalielle. Reef and the Khirians are something else altogether, almost a fusion of alligator, wolf, and sharks or something. I can’t tell you how many research rabbit trails the Khirians have led me on, researching alligator body temperatures and nesting habits, shark elecroreception, the way whales dive and communicate underwater, and tons of other tiny details. Huge thanks to all the scientists who study these things!

These are such unique names, too! How do you select the names of your characters? 

Thanks! Oh, it’s really all over the place. I usually pick names that fit a character’s culture and that won’t (hopefully) be too difficult for a reader to pronounce. Sometimes the names also have meaning to them. In my upcoming sequel for example some of the new characters names are influenced by Mandarin, such as 奋骁恩 (Fèn-Xiāo- Ēn) which has meanings of effort, courage, and compassion. He’s a person who fights not for glory, but for love and justice. So sometimes my names are very carefully crafted, but sometimes they just come from random inspiration. For example, Gamalielle is named after Gamaliel, a first century Jewish rabbi who is mentioned in the Bible. … I doubt he would appreciate that I named a druggie Cat after him! Sorry Gamaliel! I just thought it was a really cool name.

I know just what you mean! One of my characters from my Fallen Princeborn series was named Disraeli because I loved how that name sounded. But then I changed it to fit the worldbuilding. Someday I’ll get that name back into a story, lol.

I saw your Instagram post about your second book’s edits—congrats on finishing them! Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? 

Thank you! I am writing (hopefully) a cohesive trilogy with the books chronologically following the story of my three most main characters, Reef, Kaeda, and Archavie.

There is a LOT of fantasy fiction out there right now; recently I did a blogpost about trends, and it blew my mind seeing just how many mainstreamed titles were published in fantasy over the past few years. Would you say the trends influence your storytelling, or do you try more to be original and share what you want no matter the trends? 

I would say in this particular trilogy I don’t see myself following any particular trends. The first book is pretty genre-bending and the second book popped into my mind so quickly and easily that I don’t feel like it was really inspired by any particular trend. However, I do have other stories in the back of my mind that would fit into some of the trends I’ve been seeing, such as the popularity of regency stories, fae fantasy, things like that. I’m not very good about keeping up with current books and current trends in general though, so I don’t even really know what’s popular most of the time! I mostly read books my friends recommend, which may be old or new or anywhere in between.

I know just what you mean. Keeping up with trends requires a LOT of time and effort; plus, being ready to churn out a story like a machine that fits the trend in the moment. And you and I both know that machine-like writing is not worth creating.

Thanks so much for chatting with me! Let’s wrap up with some resource sharing. What are your favorite resources to help you build your fantasy world? 

I’m never sure where inspiration will come from, so I would say, start by paying attention to the world around you. Google that weird bug you find, try that new food and research the culture behind it. There is so much buried in every little piece of life around us. If you can learn more about what’s around you, then you can build those details into the world of your characters. Personally… I google stuff all day long, and then when I find something I want to know more about, I get books from the library. I don’t really use any book writing platforms or data organizing platforms or anything like that… just lots of google, Wikipedia, and public library. 

Folks, you can catch Bethany on Instagram and on her site. Coming up, I’ve got a Story Empire adventure, a podcast, and I think I’ve picked our last camping adventure. Stay tuned!

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!