If you have a moment, put your feet up, grab a cuppa and a biscuit and settle down as I have another guest on this blog. Today, on this slightly overcast English morn’, I am joined by E. Kaiser Writes, author of Jeweler’s Apprentice and the new Thaw series.
Tell me a little about your writing journey.
As a homeschooled child I was given the gift of being an early reader, so I was into the abridged version of Little Women at nine years old. When Jo March tried writing stories and books I had an epiphany; I had no idea books were written by people. Suddenly I knew that was what I wanted to do when I grew up!
I asked Mom how I should go about that, and she advised reading a lot; (pretty good advice from someone who was guessing!) So I did, to the detriment of my chores, sometimes!
In my teens I started trying to wrangle my thoughts on paper and that was very difficult. I went through a tumultuous period all through there where I’d get discouraged that I’d “never be published, so why spend so much time on a dead-end?” as my brother put it. But I couldn’t endure not writing, and so I’d be back at it.
I rarely finished anything, sometimes only brushing out a scene with no story; but it was all great practice.
I wrote my first complete novel draft as a gift for my youngest sister in ’07, and she liked it so much she encouraged me to make a sequel. The first ms of Jeweler’s Apprentice took four years of improvements and tweaking, then we put it out as an e-book in 2011. Met several great fans through that, and they also encouraged a sequel, so I wrote Traitor’s Knife and we released that in July 2013.
What inspired you to write the Thaw series?
I’d wanted to write a Winter Queen piece for some time, but was galvanized into action by all the things Frozen did wrong. It was just wrenching to see how many themes and deep meanings were just SKIPPED by Disney. There was soo much that could have, SHOULD have been done… and once I get mad at someone doing a story wrong, it can be like rocket fuel to my own version ; ). I include summaries of the source tales at the beginnings of the Thaw: books, educating readers on the original tales to prime them for my versions. : )
We do borrow from the Disney version, (it is a universal truth that as soon as Disney does something that becomes Am
erica’s version of the tale!) Some of the ideas were too cute to toss, one of them being the family with 13 princes. Having recently met a family with 8 kids under the age of ten, and hearing of the derogatory remarks their mother receives, that opportunity to contrast Noran’s two-daughter family with Demargen’s 13-son one was too good to pass up.
And the spin-offs are irresistible! : )
And Anderson seems a little stuck on roses… they populate his tales quite a lot! In fact a quick search of “Roses Hans Christian Anderson” produces interesting results! So, those definitely needed to feature prominently, and it was actually a little fun to stick rose cameos all over the place. : )
Do you have a favourite character in the series? If so, who is it and why?
Ilise would probably be my favorite because she is so like me… her faults are my own flaws, her triumph what I hope to be someday! Magnifying each for dramatic affect was actually fun, after I pushed past the tough decision to just write deeply honestly. (When writing her argument with her mother as a teen, I could just hear the echoes of my own daughter/mother outbursts!)
But they are all very real and near and dear to my heart.
Can you sum up each book with a single word?
Oh, no!!! That is just too cruel of a question to ask. There’s a REASON I wrote two 100k novels + a novella when I tried to get this story out of my head!! I couldn’t do it any shorter! But, just to humor you, I’ll give it a go:
Thaw: Winter’s Child – Disappointment
Thaw: Winter Queen – Emergence
Thaw: Prince of Demargen – Victory
Thaw: Reindeer King – Culmination
Thaw: Princess of Noran – Wrap-up
Coffee or Tea?
Definitely not a tea drinker, I only love it if it is nice and sweet, and too much sweet makes my teeth hurt. (True story! My teeth get sensitive to hot of cold, I cut back on sugary stuff, and my teeth get fine again.)
I do like a bit of coffee in my milk and honey : )
Paper or Computer?
My stories come to me snippet by snippet, and Word programs are the greatest thing! I can type loads faster than hand write, as well as rearranging sentences and words a ton quicker! My writing time is often limited, so I have a keen sense of urgency when I sit down to my keyboard.
I am total non-chronological writer, so I sit down the get the scenes out from my head, and let the story grow like that. It can be incredibly frustrating because it’s so obviously out of my control. But if I don’t panic, relax and trust the process: it’s fantastic! I love the stories that come, and I love being a part of writing them.
And I’m super grateful to the Master Writer for letting me join in on the process
Thank you very much for joining me today, Elizabeth, and all the best for your series launch : )
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E. Kaiser Writes credits her nearly nomadic childhood for the vast reach of her fictional worlds; she has lived (and gotten to known the locals) in the Rocky Mtns, the Smoky Mtns, the plains, the deep forest, the searing Texas summer and frozen Minnesota north.
She wears many hats: writer and editor of ad copy, web copy, office correspondence & fiction; a cowgirl, animal trainer, seamstress, jeweler, artist and… authoress!
You can find her on her website, Twitter, Pinterest, and her books at Amazon and Goodreads.
of words & books 