Why I Write (and Keep Pushing for More) ⚙️💖📚
Plus, upcoming bookish events!
Hello!
If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you may have noticed I’ve switched homes for my weekly newsletter. (And if you’re new here, hi! I'm an author of strange steampunk and reinvented fairy tales.) The regular newsletter day will be Wednesdays from here on out, except for special events. This week I needed a little more time to learn how Substack works. I’m excited for the change in format!
I have several bookish events for the next few months:
Read Local Author Fair at Johnston Public Library on Feb 24th from 2-4 pm
Book signing at Barnes and Noble (West Des Moines) on March 9th from 1-3 pm
Chicago Steampunk Expo from April 12th-14th
For more details on my upcoming events, check out this page on my website.
Since this is my first newsletter on Substack, I thought I’d talk about something I get asked a lot at conventions: why do I write?
My Origin Story aka Tired of Waiting for “Some Day”
I didn't grow up wanting to be an author, but I've always been a storyteller and a reader. When I was growing up, I got into trouble for two things in school: 1.) Leaning back in my chair and 2.) reading when I wasn't supposed to. I only (sorta) outgrew one of those things. 😂
I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula when I was nine years old. I immediately fell for the gothic and all things monstrous. It wasn’t until I was 11 and read The Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce that I could see myself in a fantasy character. Alanna remains one of my favorite characters to this day! My first introduction to steampunk didn’t come until I was a teen. I read Soulless by Gail Carriger and I quickly fell in love with the world-building possibilities of mashing genres together.
My sister and I spent a good chunk of our childhood playing pretend and making up stories together. When we were in high school, we both joined the writer's club, but when it came to dream jobs, I was always all over the place.
In middle school, my grand plan was to move to Japan to be a manga artist (I watched A LOT of Sailor Moon/Toonami) before deciding I wouldn't be suited for that. Then I wanted to be a forensic scientist, until a couple traumatizing incidents in biology class that ended that dream but would years later help me write a scene in The Resurrection Experiment. I briefly thought about being either an architect or an aerospace engineer.
Splitting my time in high school between Art Club, band, jazz band, Writer’s Ink, and Robotics didn’t really help me narrow it down until I was named head of the Electrical Division in Robotics (and later made Team Captain.) For the longest time, I thought I was going to be an electrical engineer and I even worked in field for a bit during college.
It wasn't until after my oldest was born and my mom bought me a copy of The Artist's Way that I started thinking about what I really wanted. I did my morning pages whenever I could and my need to write became clear. I studied craft and publishing between my baby’s feedings. I still thought publishing was going to be a far off dream, as my free time was fractured, but it felt good to be writing again after taking so many years off.
When my oldest child was a toddler, I began researching my options for publishing, but I didn't do anything with it. I always thought I was going to have to wait for "some day" when I'd have more uninterrupted time to write and my kids where older. I told myself I was content to write on my own and finishing NaNoWriMo yearly was enough. (This was a lie.)
During the shutdowns of 2020, I got tired of waiting for "some day" to come. My young children were sent home from preschool. I kept them busy by reading to them, making art, and doing science experiments, including building catapults out of popsicle sticks. (To this day, my boys think I’m a barely reformed mad scientist after all the experiments. 😂) While I loved helping my boys learn, I needed an outlet just for me.
There was a call for a short story writing contest and I had an idea ready to go in one of my notebooks that was perfect for the prompt. Not winning the contest was the best outcomes that could have happened to me because I got to keep the rights to my work! I decided to publish the story, Something Happened on the Way to the World’s Fair, as a series of related stories (Strange Happenings) and dove into indie publishing. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but it also went so much better than I thought possible. From this series, I ended up with my first print book, Monsters and Machines.
Every time I hit publish I felt like Rapunzel in that scene in Tangled after she leaves the tower, alternating between elation and the dreadful feeling of "What have I done?" When nothing terrible happened, it got a little easier each time.
I hit a slump reworking a full-length novel during the 2020-2021 school year. My oldest was enrolled in kindergarten virtually, leaving me with little focus at the end of the day. It was impossible to work while making sure he was learning and keeping my 3-year-old occupied. I still wrote, but didn't publish anything.
That spring, I heard about a new platform for publishing serials. I decided to see if publishing episodically would get me out of my slump. Though I'm very much a planner when it comes to writing, the opening episode of Forsaken Beauty and the Etherbeast came to me while I was free-writing. I drafted the first 10K words or so before deciding that I had something and that I needed to plot the rest of the story.
From there, I planned the rest of the serial and launched the first few episodes as soon as the platform went live. I could not have imagined how much this serial would do for me! While I’m happy to be writing novels now, I'll always be grateful for the opportunities serial publishing gave me, including meeting some truly wonderful people, contributing to anthologies, and helping me become a full member of SFWA.
Since publishing Forsaken Beauty and the Etherbeast as a full-length standalone novel, I’ve had all kinds of adventures from speaking and reading at conventions to seeing my book on physical bookstore shelves. I'm really excited to see what comes next! 💖
Happy reading!
Kelsey