Worlds apart
Like most people, Kelly St Clare enjoys losing herself in a good story.
What makes her different from most of us is that she’s writing the stories, not reading them.
In August she released The Retreat, the first book in her new series, The After Trilogy, and part two will come out in the middle of 2017.
Her debut novel, Fantasy of Frost, was followed by three more books - Fantasy of Flight, Fantasy of Fire and Fantasy of Freedom – that now make up her tetralogy The Tainted Accords.
“I get quite manic during the first draft,” the Warragul sci-fi/fantasy author says. “I can lose 12-14 hours then come out the other side very sore.”
St Clare, a New Zealander who arrived in Warragul four years ago with her husband, says she was always a keen reader of science fiction and fantasy, but writing came more gradually.
Creating a world is the best bit of the job, but she says sci fi/fantasy writers also tread a fine line: they mustn’t let the creative process be overwhelmed by too much information.
Her first manuscript took about eight months of struggle before she realised she just wasn’t that interested in it.
“Then one day I started work on The Tainted Accords and it just clicked.
“I look back on it now and wish I could write like that again.”
After several years of writing part-time around her physiotherapy job, she took the plunge in May, chucked in the job and is now writing full time.
“It’s different,” she says. “I’ve always worked in physical jobs so I’m trying to make sure I’m still active.”
Writing the first draft is the most enjoyable part of the process.
“That’s when I write the story for myself. I don’t worry about other eyes.”
“The second draft you start seeing it through other eyes and identify what needs to be done, where the plot holes are and what things don’t work.”
Her least favourite part is the final edits and proof-reading, going over and over the story until she’s sick of it.
Once that would have been the end of the process, but in these days of ebooks and selfpublishing, writing is only part of the author’s job.
“An author can’t just be a writer any more. You’ve also got to be marketer, publicist, cover designer.”
For a self-publisher, the hard part is garnering enough positive reviews to create interest in their book.
In Australia and New Zealand, she says, most readers still prefer to hold a book in their hands, but in the UK, US and Canada (her main market), most readers buy her novels as ebooks.
Readers can sample the novels at Amazon. She also sends out literally thousands of free review copies.
“Getting reviews as a debut author is quite hard. There are so many new books out there. You have to distribute your book on a massive scale.
“It does get easier as you get a fan base. With Fantasy of Frost it took four or five months to get 100 reviews but I’ve already got 50 for my latest after a month.”
She has just sold the French rights to The Tainted Accords to a publishing house and an audio publisher has bought the rights to one of her books.
At the moment she’s taking a bit of a break from her new series to work on a novella based on the minor characters from her first series. The characters were nominated by her readers.
Interaction with readers is a big part of the modern genre writer’s job.
St Clare has a fan group on Facebook and they read books together.
“They’ll tweet and tell me what they liked and what they didn’t.”
Kelly St Clare’s books are available at Need2Read in Warragul.