Category Archives: Writing

I Get Imaginative and Explosive With Author Ciara Knight

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I’m fairly certain that Ciara Knight and I are the same person. Well, we have different chromosomes, she’s female, I try to be male, she has three sons, I have two daughters (but it feels like three sons). She lives in the American South, I live in the American West. Okay, we might not be physically the same person, though I do have bouts of amnesia and wake up with Star Wars figures in my pocket and fried okra in my hair. But regardless, Ciara and I both are reformed pantsers, we both have huge imaginations that drive us crazy, and we both have books published by Crescent Moon Press. And we both love to write.

Ciara Knight always had a passion for storytelling. Over the past few years she has penned five novels and joined several professional writing organizations to better her craft. Ciara is happily married and enjoys family time. She has learned to embrace chaos, which is a requirement when raising three boys, and utilizes the insanity to create stories not of this world including, Fantasy, Paranormal, Sci-Fi, and Young Adult Dystopian.
For more on Ciara, check out her awesome website.

And her book? The Curse of Gremdon? Holy cow. Be careful. It will draw you in. Ciara Knight is the real deal.

She agreed to chat with me and we chatted and it made my Thursday night spectacular. Because Ciara is a spectacularly positive person. I try to be. Lord, do I try.
So, the interview. Hit me.

Aaron: We talked and you said you started writing after your kids were born and you left the corporate world. What prompted you to take up the pen and heartbreak of the writer’s life?

Ciara: The day I told my middle son he could do anything and my husband turned to me and said, “You’re a hypocrite.” Ah, my husband is so sweet and honest. 🙂 He knew I had a dream to write but was too scared to go for it. My husband knows me best and when the glove was thrown down in challenge, I had to accept.

Aaron: Like I said in the intro, we both have felt cursed by huge imaginations. With me, I still need to sleep with the lights on at times. And I get teased for being afraid of ghosts. For you, what are the drawbacks of having a relentless imagination? What are the benefits?

Ciara: Focus. I NEED to focus! My friends sometime wave their hands in front of my face and say, “You’re in Ciaraland again, aren’t you?” There are way too many characters battling for their spot on paper and it gets a little crowded in my little brain sometimes. What is great about it? I’m never bored. I can be sitting anywhere and be completely entertained.

Aaron: You gotta answer this next question because on the phone, what you said blew me away. I asked if you wrote at night or in the morning. You answered. My mind exploded, man. Totally. When and where do you write?

Ciara: I write at TKD practice, the football field, during violin lessons, and/or in carpool line. I’m a fifteen-minute writer. Give me fifteen minutes and I can give you several pages. 🙂

Aaron:As a reformed pantser, what made you change to flirt with plotting? As for me, I’ve relapsed. I just wrote a 140K rough draft for a novel I have to go back and plot. I go to meetings. It helps. Tell us about your writing style. Pantser, Plotter, or a killer mutant hybrid?

Artwork by Sarah Hartwell

Ciara: I’m definitely a killer mutant hybrid. 🙂 I start off with a detailed outline that includes POV, goals, motivation, conflict, and disaster. Then, I throw it all out the window and write the book. Yep, sometimes the characters take over and tell me I got the outline wrong. What spurred the outline in the first place? A complete rewrite in one of my books. NOT doing that again. LOL

Aaron: The Curse of Gremdon started out as a short story. How did you turn it into a novel? Was it hard? Did you plot that baby out?

Ciara: It did start off as a short story and I received a nice rejection telling me to convert it to a novel, so I did. I tackled it during Nano with no outline. [NaNoWriMo, national novel-writing month.] The book practically wrote itself. If anyone has met Tardon, the hero in The Curse of Gremdon, you know how pushy he is.

 

Aaron: The Curse of Gremdon has a distinctive world with rigid rules that have ignited an emotional fire-storm in some people. Which emotional reactions surprised you the most?

Ciara: I was shocked when I received messages about the fact Arianna wasn’t treated fairly. They didn’t like the male-dominated world. I found Arianna to be so brave for facing that world. Some disagreed and thought that women should be equal. I never expected readers to feel that passionate about the world I had created.

Aaron: How much of The Curse of Gremdon is romance? How much is high fantasy? If it were a mocha latte, how much is chocolate, how much is coffee? I don’t know what the milk could be. So we’ll ignore the milk part.

Ciara: I think it is half romance and half high fantasy. There is a big story full of twists and turns, but Tardon and Arianna’s relationship is a huge part of that. The story wouldn’t work without their love and they wouldn’t have that kind of epic love without the challenges they had to face.

Aaron: Reviews can be tough on writers, but how have you dealt with the drama? For me, I plan on never reading my reviews and making them all up in my head. Something like, “The voice of a new generation, Aaron Michael Ritchey writes with a fury that will leave readers breathless.” Yeah, my own happy little world. But how do you deal with reviews?

Ciara: I analyze them. Someone thought I was insane when I told them that, but it’s true. I feel like I will never stop learning my craft and the only way I’m going to give my readers what they want is to listen to what they have to say. I do encourage readers to write a review even if they hated the book. I can learn from that.

Aaron: What trap have you seen new writers fall into? What message of hope can you leave us with? Because we need hope. Writers need hope like addicts need dope. Even more so.

Ciara: Don’t take everything so seriously or you will go crazy. It’s a tough business full of up’s and down’s. Surround yourself with fellow writers that understand what you are going through. Let yourself cry over a bad review or call on your friends, but you are only allowed twenty minutes. After that, time’s up and you need to move on. If you dwell too long you could miss a fantastic opportunity.

Aaron: Thanks so much, Ciara. I found our conversation so empowering and I even became an optimist for about twenty minutes. A new record. Then I fell back into doubt, despair, and general angst. But only for twenty minutes, like you said. Onward! Onward! To battle!

Ciara’s blog
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The 12 Steps to Writing Success Part 3: People Love Artists Like They Love Astronauts

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I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
— Ernest Hemingway

 

 

 

People love to tell artists that they’re jealous of them. Wow, you write, that’s great. I wish I had something like that in my life. Generally, I grab them, slap them a few times, dunk them in a nearby lake, hook them up to a motorcycle battery, and then torture them until they take it back.

It’s like when people say, “You’re so lucky you got recovery early.” Uh huh, so lucky I was suicidal at nineteen, a monk at 20 (celibacy vows intact), and I celebrated my 21st birthday watching a bad movie with people who didn’t really give a crap that it was my 21st birthday. Yeah, so lucky.

I think the reason why people are fascinated by artists is that everyone is an artist, deep down, but doubt, fear, general angst, drive them away from it. So it’s like when you say you’re an artist, it’s like saying you’ve just come from visiting a distant planet. Everybody likes an astronaut because they’re tough, skilled, blessed. Artists, writers, same thing.

These series of blog posts are for those who want to be astronauts of the spirit, who want to overcome whatever madness drove them away from creating. The 12 steps have helped millions of people overcome life-crushing, heart-wounding addictions, and they can help those who want to create art but find themselves caged by their own deluded, self-centered fear. The genius behind the 12 steps is that they give us a choice on what we want to do, rather than having us running away whenever some compulsion hits.

And it’s 12 steps. Just 12. Simple. But not necessarily easy. And for those not suffering from a crippling addiction, they can pretend they are. What are you doing tonight, Ed? Working the 12 steps. For your gummy bear addiction? No, I’m a writer. I have a writing addiction I want to nurture. How cool is that?

In 1955, Bill Wilson wrote a series of essays on the 12 steps and 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous that was published in a book, in AA circles called the 12 by 12, and of course, there are a bunch of fascists who are always there to correct people. It’s 12 and 12, not 12×12, ya drunk yodeling idiot. This series of blog posts is going to have a similar format. Next week we’ll have a brief biography, which of course, won’t be hard for me. It’s the old, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.” I know, last week I promised a biography, but well, um, the internet breeds disappointment. I’m just doing my job.

Again, I want to be clear, I’m going to keep whatever fellowship I belong to anonymous because the point of this is not to promote any one 12-step program, but to show how people can use the 12 steps to improve their creative lives. And my story is just an example, a kind of, “If this yutz can do it, you can too.” And the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are in the public domain, though I plan to change them, just a bit, because we’re not dealing with alcoholism, or narcotic addiction, or gambling, or sex, or overeating. Ha, reads like a list of ‘these are a few of my favorite things.’ We’re dealing with the generic problem of artistic angst and how to overcome it.

I’ll be using stories from my own life as well as other writers I’ve met, because at the heart of things, 12-step programs are about storytelling. “We heal through our mouths,” or so the saying goes.

And this isn’t going to be a blog series of advice, tips, blah, blah, blah. It’s going to be instructive. Do this. Do this. Do this. In 12-step talk, we take the actions and our thinking changes. You can’t fix a broken mind with a broken mind. It takes action. Bring the body and the mind will follow.

I’m goin’ biblical, Faith without works is dead. Bill W. loved that little piece of quotation magic.

Next week, I promise, the biography of me, or “Why I should be the one to blog about this stuff!”

Mondays Are Hell: The Demons of Novels Past Pt. 1

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Okay, I’ve been writing for 20 years. Yes. Well, actually, I’ve been writing all of my life. But twenty years ago, I wrote my first novel. The Dream of the Archer. If you can call it a novel. Actually, it was an experience. Like climbing Everest. Like drinking Starbucks until you can’t feel your teeth. Like watching Firefly.

An experience. Are you experienced? The Dream of the Archer was David Lynch meets Lord of the Rings meets Pulp Fiction. It was postmodern Shakespeare, part novel, part play, first person, third person, in verse, shattering the third wall. And it had a demon in it. Jezerel Stone. My villain, Eljer Wetnight, summoned him. Eljer, as in the toilet. I used to name all my villains after toilets. Eljer Wetnight. Feral Sloan. St. John Regal. Toilets.

 

(My friend would go into a bathroom and laugh because as he did his business, he would see the name of the toilet and think of my villains. Ha.)

Anyway, Jezerel Stone has a quote in The Dream of the Archer, and of course, this is wordy, and won’t make sense, and is in the guts of a book that will never be published. Oh, how my writing has improved. However, it is one of my most favorite passages, and as any writer can tell you, throw nothing away. And it captures what I want to say about demons today.

A little set up. Jezerel Stone has possessed a boy whose parents were slaughtered and who is in pain. And the boy is about to watch soldiers from this horrific army do terrible things to our hero and his princess. And this is what Jezerel Stone says to this poor boy:

Look boy, look at what they will do, and watch carefully. This is not my doing, this is not the work of the devil, this is done by your own kind, and really, these men are good people, though you won’t remember such things when you see them cutting off the fingers of the man and raping the woman. You will forget that, but I shall not, because that makes it all the more enjoyable, all the more ironic. These same men have given food to the poor, have helped old people with their houses, have been caring and kind to their family, and now they will do these evil things and hate themselves for it. Watch, boy, and learn, and remember too, the men who did the evil things to your family, were good people as well.

I’ve said it before in my other demon post that demons are a nice idea. We can put the evil on fictional characters of pure darkness.

But in this world, the truth is far more mundane. The most terrible crimes imaginable have been committed by simple human beings. Not demons. Human beings who were good, gave into evil, and were most likely good after that. Hitler probably liked to pet puppies.

Ah, how confusing, this hard, old world. How tragic. And yet, how grand. Because 98% of the people you will meet are just trying to get through and aren’t evil at all. The other 2%?

My father was a policeman for over thirty years and most of the time, he saw police work as being a lot like working those mean streets of Mayberry. When asked which show captured police work, my dad wouldn’t say The Wire, or Hillstreet Blues, or NYPD Blue. Nope. He would say The Andy Griffith Show.

However, my dad did help arrest true evil. I won’t go into this man’s crimes. I don’t want to haunt you, but they were horrible. He did demonic things to old women. You can connect the dots.

True evil is out there. Soulless. Destroyed. But human. And perhaps that is more disturbing than any demon we can come up with.

I’ll leave you with a passage from The Dream of the Archer, from that same scene.

The Americans would find the archer and the princess and they would do things to them, things that Jezerel Stone knew all about. The demon understood the great secret, the secret that even Eljer Wetnight and his magic would never discover. That even though demons and other things were expert torturers and killers, the blackest things on the Stair had learned their arts from people; that without humans, in the end, none of the demons and their kind would have known what to do. Wetnight and his people would do terrifically horrible things to the archer and the princess, and Stone would watch and learn and perhaps centuries later he would imitate them. For now, he would watch and enjoy the revulsion the boy would feel as he looked at them. Not the pain the boy would feel, remembering what the American soldiers had done to his own family, not that sick pain which would send Stone scurrying on top of the boy, out of the suffering, but the revulsion as the boy understood that this is what people could do to one another.