Rachanee Lumayno Spellbinds with Kingdom Legacy: Building a Seven-Book Fantasy World

What happens when a pandemic kills your D&D campaign? If you’re Rachanee Lumayno, you don’t sulk or bake bread—you construct an entire fantasy universe instead.

In the 38th episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Rachanee, the indie author behind the Kingdom Legacy series. She describes how she turned an abandoned gaming character into a seven-book saga spanning interconnected kingdoms, shifting protagonists, and themes of identity, power, and found family. Her approach flips the usual fantasy model on its head: no bloated continuity, no homework for the reader—just modular storytelling that lets you jump in anywhere and still get hooked.

Together, Rachanee and Mookie conduct a working session on what actually gets books written—and sold. They dig into: 

• Why most writers stall out—and how Lumayno cranks out full novels in months
• The plotter vs. pantser divide, and why she didn’t even fully world-build until book three
• Using tarot cards as a storytelling engine, and why it sometimes works better than outlining
• The indie author reality of choosing the best covers, editors, cons, and why human connection beats online ads
• YA fiction that isn’t soft, and how darker themes can hit younger audiences without dumbing anything down
• Why reading your work out loud might be the single best editing tool you’re ignoring

They also go beyond the books and into creative discipline, the grind of self-publishing, and the uncomfortable truth that thinking too much is often the enemy of writing anything at all.

If you’re trying to write, publish, or just stop screwing around and finish something, this one lands. And if you’re a reader you’ll walk away with a new fantasy world to explore, and a sense of wonder and appreciation for Rachanee's enthusiasm and creative process. 

The Guest

Rachanee Lumayno is an actress, voiceover artist, screenwriter, avid gamer and amateur dodgeball player. She grew up in Michigan, where she spent way too much of her free time reading fantasy novels. So when she decided to try her hand at writing a book, it made sense that it would be in her favorite genre. The Kingdom Legacy series marks her debut as an author. She is also a staff writer for two comics and an upcoming video game.

Her first novel, Heir of Amber and Fire, was named a Best Book Winner for Young Adult - Fantasy / Sci-Fi in the 2024 Spring PenCraft Seasonal Book Awards.

Her Books & Resources

https://www.rachanee.net/

https://www.rachanee.net/newsletter

https://www.rachanee.net/books

https://www.instagram.com/rachaneelumayno

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the science fiction and fantasy factory. I'm thrilled to have Rashini Luma, the author of the Kingdom Legacy and Other Series. And I ran into you at WonderCon just last week.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

And I'm thrilled to actually have you on the pod where we can dive into your work.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

It's my total pleasure. Let's start with the big series, because you are you are complete. Seven books. And from what I see, they're for young adult audience. And they're they're modular in the sense that you focus on one character in the saga as the protagonist. It's almost like you could read each book individually and get into it because you bring in characters from the other books and they're interwoven. And it's it's built to be a fun, entertaining read for YA. And it's good for adults too. I like digging in there as well. Would you would you like to give us a little background, tell us about your main series?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

I'm I'm impressed because you really paid attention to when I was talking at Wonder Con. I was like, that's basically the entire pitch right there. Good job. Yeah, so it's funny. Um, the first book in the series, Air of Amber and Fire, she's based off a character I was supposed to play in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. And I was I was really excited because I've heard about Dungeons and Dragons for years, but it felt like Fight Club, you know, where people would be like, oh, I have this group, and I'd be like, Can I play? They're like, No, we're full. And I'm like, oh. And then someone else was like, Your name's great, I'm gonna use it for my character. I'm like, Can I play? They're like, no. So it just felt like I could never get in. And then finally I have my chance to play. And then the pandemic shut it down. And so I did not get to play Janica, and it was very, very sad. So, but we were shut up, right? Like we were all shut in our homes for a while, and I was like, I don't want to clean my house and I don't want to bake bread, so I started writing instead.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

And 2020-ish, right? This is right about what I'm thinking because you published your first book in 2021. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Right. Yeah, yeah. 17 drafts later, I'm my poor editor.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Good for you.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Good for him, putting up with all of that. Yeah, it was it was so much fun, and I just kept going with it. And the reason I made them standalones in a connected world is because as much as I love to read, like we're adults, we don't always have the time to like jump into a huge series. Like, there's a reason I personally have stopped reading some really great series because I ran out of time, you know. I see something that's like 17 books long and I just go, I'm not starting that. So I did I designed it on purpose. So if you're like, oh, this one sounds more interesting than that one, I like that cover better than that one. Go right ahead. You're not gonna miss that much. You know, it's it's it enriches you to read the whole thing, but if you decide to start at book five, you know, you're not gonna be like, what did I miss?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

So that's modular and scalable, as they say. And we are overwhelmed with content, and it's hard to keep track of these mega stories. I've got a friend, Ken, and he loves the big serialized stories, and he's got it all up in his head, and he's geeky that way. But he's relatively rare. I know authors who write big series, and they have trouble keeping track of their own characters and scenes, and and some of them even use AI to like help them remind them of what their own characters have done. So the the point you make is interesting, which is we're putting a lot on the reader to remember all these details of a multi-book saga with all the intricacies and drama, and your approach is really refreshing, which is pick it up anywhere you like. You're gonna be introduced and reintroduced to old friends and new ones, and you focus on a protagonist and you get a different point of view with different needs and expectations. And from what I can tell, too, you explore different themes, whether it's love, whether it's power, whether it's identity. Who am I? Why am I here? How do I fit into the bigger picture?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

I feel like that's in all of my books, honestly. Like Found Family is one of my favorite tropes for sure. But yeah, it's just um, you know, it's funny. I think part of it too is, you know, for me, when I'm reading, like, say trad pubbed books uh that are series, sometimes you're waiting years for the next one to come out. And then you're like, I forgot what happened because I read, you know, three books five years ago. Or sometimes the publishing deal falls apart. This happened in one of my favorite series. There were supposed to be five books. She ended up only publishing three, and it was very unsatisfactory. So that's part of it too, because I mean it takes a while to write a book. I don't want my readers to be like, okay, two years ago, what happened, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

So you've you've gone the indie route, then you're you're you're self-published, and that hold holds its own challenges, but also opportunities because you rule the roost and you get to do it your way. And you were at WonderCon with your booth, and uh you had your outfit, you you looked fabulous, and you had a great setup and you had a really nice display, and it's a great way and a great touch point to get your books out there. You actually meet people like me who wander by and say, Hey, pitch me this idea. And uh and it's intriguing and it's a human a human contact, which is which is terrific and not usually thought about in publishing.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I think with I mean, I've never I've I pitched a few of my newer books to um publishers. I'm also impatient to get them out. So I'm kind of like, if I don't hear back from a publisher within three months, forget it. I'm just gonna publish it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Totally. And you're at their will too. It's like you've written you wrote this thing, you love it, and what am I waiting for? I I feel I feel the same way too. I just bloviate and I let it out there, and you know, the clock is ticking. We never know, you know, what's gonna happen. Let's let it out. If not now, then when, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

And it's it's interesting that you mentioned the um the cons and the in-person thing. I did try a lot of online marketing in the beginning. I mean, what else could I do? You know, we were locked down. I did do a few um online book tours and stuff like that. And I started noticing just diminishing returns once the world reopened because people wanted to get out, see things, see their friends again, experience the world. And there's something about not that if you looked at my books online, you'd be like, oh, whatever. You may or may not pass, you know, pass on them. I don't know. But if I'm able to talk to you and make a connection with you, I love that so much more. You know, like right now I have a Discord that's slowly growing and a YouTube channel that's slowly growing about books and about my works in particular. And it's just fun to connect with like the readers that I've met at cons and just talk about like today we were talking about Lord of the Rings and being really geeky, you know what I mean? So I feel like those connections go deeper, longer than just like, oh, I'm you know, here's an online ad, maybe a line. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

I'm relatively new at this, and I'm I'm blessed to have some friends who are more established. Ingrid Moon is a friend of mine, we go way back, and she's been doing the cons for a while. And she's plugged me and several other writers into this group that we do. So at LA, LA Comic-Con and at the Pasadena Comic-Con, we had set up a little island of science fiction writers.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

And we're going to the LA Festival of Books too, and and and doing this this kind of uh group setup. So you got this writer, that writer, this book, that book, and we're kind of a collective of writers. But uh, but that opportunity, just like you mentioned, of actually pitching your book to someone, getting them excited, pitching each other's books. Sometimes we tag team is a whole different experience than placing an ad or posting, well, hey, look at this. And while they're doom scrolling, they see your thing fly by for about a nanosecond.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

For sure. I mean, you're talking about getting involved in the author community. Like on my end with fantasy, it's the same thing. I've been doing cons now for about a year and a half. I've met some really amazing people. Now we're talking about collaborating, you know. Uh I might even be spearheading an event on my own. Like it's exciting to have those connections. And I just I love that we're not competitive, but we're collaborative and supportive, you know. It's it's just it's fun. And I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Greg Sorber is the author of the Mech Haven series. It's Terminator Meets Braveheart. That's how he pitches it. He's got five books in a series that are completed, and he's got a great quote, which is uh, you know, not only does the rising tide raise all boats, but there's way more readers than writers. So we get deluded into thinking that everyone's saturated by content, which is what they are, and there's almost limitless supply. But there's tons of readers out there hungry for good stuff. And just because they buy your book doesn't mean they're not gonna buy my book. And if we all rally around each other and support each other, then we build critical mass for just connecting with readers in a really holistic and fun way. So I think that that's a recipe for not only success, but for networking and creating friends and and kindred souls who are crazy enough to sit down for hours and hours and try to craft a story in this world where everyone is just running all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Seriously. I mean, I don't know how you guys do it on the sci-fi side because that's so much research. Like, at least I can go, but magic and kind of explain it away.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

You guys have to actually be like accurate with your you bring up a great point, which is which is fantasy is fantasy. You're not you're not held accountable to physics, yeah. And frankly, a lot of science fiction writers aren't held accountable to physics either. They kind of pull it out of their butt and they just they just go for it. I did tons of research for my book, and I'm kind of a dork that way. And and the AI helped a little bit too in terms of just the research, aggregating the data and plowing through all that stuff, but it is it is hard, it's a lot of work and it's a labor of love. So you're you're you're kind of held accountable. Your fans will call BS, like you can't do that. And I think in fantasy, it just has to be credible in terms of being imaginative, surprising, and fun.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

I think so. I mean, I'll be honest, I because I wasn't planning on writing a series, it just sort of happened, and I'm also a pantser versus a plotter. I didn't really start world building until book three, like really thinking about the magic system or like where every country was, or like stuff like that. And then I went, Oh, I'm writing a series. I better really think about all those little backstory details. Even if I don't give it to the reader, I need to know what's going on so it makes sense eventually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

You could plot your world, you could take a sheet of paper and outline this happens and this happens and this happens, and conscientiously build where it's happening. Be really that kind of planner or plotter. And then you the other one is kind of prancing and and and and dodging back and forth, running for a cup of tea, running back, and just kind of living it in the moment and being more character-focused and emotional and impulsive about your writing. Yeah, and there tends to be these two camps. Most writers are a mix of both, and the really good writers kind of balance off world building in terms of of description and immersion with that hero who's out there to conquer, do what they need to do, get get their goals accomplished or not, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah, I will say too, I think if I had focused my series on one or two characters as a through line, I would have had to plot. But because it's a different character every time, I didn't have to think that hard about like the through line, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

And at the same time, you might not be burdened by it, which is the difference that makes no difference is no difference. Like, are people reading it so they really understand a world, or are they reading it for relatability and emotional release and connections? Yeah, a little bit, a little bit of both. Yeah, but um, you seem to have landed in a nice kind of balance between the two.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

I hope so. I guess tell us about the books.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Listeners are like, you know, Mookie, can you shut up and let her talk about her books?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Sure, sure. So the the first series um is seven books set in uh the same world called the Gifted Lands, and they're seven kingdoms, each known for like a unique ability or thing. So it follows a character from each one of those kingdoms, and they do uh appear in each other's books, but for the most part, as you mentioned before, it follows a certain individual. And um the first one, like I said, was supposed to be a Dungeons and Dragons character I was supposed to play, and this was actually her backstory that she is on the run from an arranged marriage, and her mom didn't tell her the truth about her heritage, and she finds out along the way. Um, the second book, which is uh Air of Memory and Shadow, I actually wrote that using tarot, which is another fun story.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Um randomly you shuffle the tarot deck, and then based on the reading, that's how the story unfolded. Yeah, I actually that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, I did a reading for the character, so I was like, I knew I knew already I wanted it to be a guy, but I'm like, okay, what is he like? What's he dealing with? What happens a little bit, you know? I mean, obviously it wasn't super plotted, and I I came up with okay, well, he's a seeker who is really good at finding lost loves. Ouch, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, just a tangent. I had another guest, CSC CUNY, on on the on the factory floor. She wrote Death's Daughter, and she's a she's a big fantasy writer, and she has her own card deck that her and her husband have put out that they're actually going to the cons to sell, and it does exactly that, which is it helps storytelling. They've got cards with images, and it's a similar kind of approach that you've taken for the tarot.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

That's really cool. I mean, when you look at the tarot, like really study it, it's actually just the hero's journey, the major arcana, you know. I mean, this could be a whole another discussion, basically, but it is just the hero's journey.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Starts with the fool, the magician.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Yeah. So, and then if you have the little, like the minor tarot, it's just kind of like the day-to-day junk that happens in their life. So it's actually it's not a bad tool. And hey, if it's apparently Stephen King used it for his novel, if he can do it, if it's good enough for him, I think I can use it too.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

I I think that's great. It adds a certain random component. And if you believe in some of that spirituality, then the universe is guiding your writing and your creation. And uh, it's got built-in storytelling. Good tarot readers are excellent storytellers, so each card archetypally represents a mood, a feeling, a situation. And then when you have them in composite, it's like storyboarding a situation for sure, like the sit the setting, the problem, the solution, and then the outcome, usually, and then you can just play it out like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Oh, yeah. It's actually ironically the only book I've used the tarot on. I should probably try it again in the future, but for some reason it's the only one I've done with that one.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

So spoiler alert, you don't want to give too much, but um but give us your pitch for that for the story and the characters.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

So moving on into book three, uh, that's in the military kingdom of Rothschan. And uh the main character for that one, Adeline. Uh, one of the things about Roth's Chan is they hate magic, they don't want to acknowledge its existence. And of course, she finds out she has magic. The challenge for that one was making because I feel like poor poor Roth Chan, I made them like a villain from the get-go. They're kind of like the bad kingdom if all of if if you had to have the villain kingdom. And I was trying to make it likable, even though I didn't like them. So that's a challenge as a writer. Like, I don't actually like your kingdom, but you have to have something redeeming, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

So yeah, and conversely a bad guy or some kind of oppositional force, right? For sure. You need to mix it up for sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

So so that's uh book three, and then books four and five actually, I always tell people I have a trilogy within the series because the characters of books one, four, and five are all best friends, they all meet in book one, and so book four is uh Reese hits his story, and um, a baby is kidnapped and taken back to his home kingdom, which is like rogues and thieves. And so he has to go back and retrieve the baby and also kind of confront the demons of his past because uh he ran away when he was younger, so now he gets to face that. And uh this is kind of also where I start delving more heavily into romanticy, I'd say still clean, very clean.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

That's ever popular too. Romanticy is off the charts right now, cozy, cozy romanticy. And if you can throw in some ghosts, you're you're you're on target.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I need to put in ghosts in my next book, yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, no, it's it's amazing. It's how it's like when you're surrounded by it too, because side note, I'm also an audiobook narrator, so I tend to see what's current when I'm narrating because it's all current books I'm getting. So I think you get influenced also by what you're seeing out there as a writer. So I can tell what I was narrating at the time when I was writing because I can tell what influenced me. So the next book after that follows Farah, who's uh uh Farah and Reese are like a mercenary duo, basically. And they're also sort of comic relief sometimes. And so it follows her story as she plans a wedding and she goes into Fairy to find her estranged father to get his blessing, and she gets caught up in a murder mystery down there before she's allowed to leave. And then book six is heir of illusions and others, and that one is set in the shapeshifting kingdom of Anlyn, and Andre is the um adopted son of Pazo and Denon, who are mentor characters in the first book. And everyone can transform into an animal but him, and he's wondering like what's wrong with him. Or then black magic comes along and basically traps all the citizens in their animal forms, and he's the only one who can help them. And then the last book is Odessa's story, which is heir of um immortals and empires, and in that one, she's called up to be the guardian of the vault that houses the gods that created this entire world. And she's a bit of a party girl, she doesn't want to take you know any responsibility on things, and of course she has to because the gods get loose on her watch.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Sounds super fun.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

And and how did you ideate tarot cards notwithstanding? There's a lot of creativity, there's a lot of characters. Do you pull from the people you know, your family, your own trials and tribulations? How how personal is some of this saga? And and where do you get some of the ideas?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah, that's that's a good question. I feel like if I had to identify with anyone the most, it would probably be Farah and um Jenica, who are the heroines of books one and five. Um, just a little bit of the no-nonsense approach that Farah has. Um and some of that fish out of water, I think that Jenica has in book one. Um they weren't really based off of anybody in particular, as far as like the story ideas. I I have a running Excel sheet of just like one sentence ideas of like what I want the next book to be. So it sounds weird for not having you know written a story Bible or anything for this this series. I it was actually really easy to write because I just kept coming up with ideas of what I'd want a situation to be in each kingdom, if that makes sense. Um, I'm currently working on a new series of dark gothic fairy tale retellings, and so I'm lucky because I have a blueprint, you know, like, oh, the first one was based off of Little Red Riding Hood. I'm like, okay, we all know what that story is. The next one is Beauty and the Beast, which we know what that one is. But the next, the next one that I'm working on, and I'm I'm in first draft for it, is based off of The Little Match Girl, which is my particular favorite fairy tale. And it's actually really hard because there's not much to the story. So I'm like having to really think through what her world would be like.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Fill in the blanks, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Where where does that creative energy come from? Do you have writers, artists in the family? Writing a book is hard. And and one pattern I'm finding from most guests is almost from their earliest memories, they've been writing, they've been storytelling. It's not like they woke up one morning and they're like, I'm gonna write a book, and then they just do it, and then they're on the podcast. Most folks have this kind of built in pedigree almost. Like this sense of destiny of seeing themselves as a writer from a very early age. Do you see yourself that way? Have you had the itch that you've been trying to scratch and you've finally done it?

SPEAKER_01 22:14

I'd say maybe because I've always loved creating. I just didn't really know what path I would take to get where I am, if that makes sense. So I've I've always liked writing. I've been a very good writer. Like that's been my number one subject in school. My English teachers were like, this is really good. Math, science, not so much.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

So you have the DNA there already.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

The DNA is certainly there. But I mean, my mom's a doctor, so like I didn't go in the right direction, you know. But I mean, I came out of screenwriting, and when I was screenwriting, I always had an eye to budget, so everything was very practical, you know, not a lot of sets, it's set in the real world, you know. Because if you write a fantasy, of course, that balloons your budget. So you know, but as far as fantasy goes, I've always loved reading it. And I think um if I look back at what was going on at that time period when I was writing, first of all, like I said, we had the pandemic and I was locked in the house. What else was I gonna do? And I was also working on other people's IP at the time. So I was um working as a comic book writer and then eventually a game writer.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Okay, so you have this professional pedigree already.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I guess.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

I guess this is in this is interesting and adds a lot of dimensionality. So you mentioned screenwriting and comic book writing. So professionally, you've been doing that for a while now.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

That gives interesting context. But I mean, I was writing for other people and sure, but still, you know, not everyone wakes up in the morning and they're like, oh, I'm I write comic books or I'm a screenwriter. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I think when you're it's it sounds weird because so that particular job I was in for about three years, and then um unfortunately the company folded last fall, and so we all got let go. And I've told people this it's funny, I feel like I was more disciplined to because they're like, How did you write so many books in so many years? I was more disciplined when I was working on someone else's IP than now when I have more free time. I think because when you're just exercising that muscle all the time, it just comes out a lot easier. I know it sounds weird because I was working on two different things, and yet for some reason I'm just it's a slog right now to write for myself because that's all I can focus on. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

I think that's pretty common, right? Like uh, you know, the devil will find work for idle hands to do, and the and conversely, the the less time you have, the more you make of it, and that sense of urgency puts fuel under your butt to just get things done. And I think our minds get in the way often of our creativity, which is like thinking is the enemy of flow, and great writing and great creativity comes from just doing it, so and the more you think about it and belabor it, the more you shoot yourself in the foot. And when you're really busy and oh man, I gotta, I gotta get this done, and there's that sense of urgency, then it's like really coming out because you can't mess around. And then when you can tweak this and tweak that and have another cup of tea and go walk the dog or or or change the cat box, whatever, then it's like it's it it it kind of clouds the whole enterprise.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

No, it's it's true. It's funny, um, kind of unrelated, but also sort of related. Uh one of my earliest creative fields was I was a singer-songwriter, and I did a few albums out of Nashville. And I remember working with my uh producer, and we were listening to mixes of of my songs, and we could have just tweaked that thing forever till the cows came home. And I was like, no, you know, after a while, I was like, this is it. This is a definitive. We are done. Because we could have just kept adding stuff and subtracting stuff. And now when I write, I'm down to like a four or five draft system, and I'm like, it is done. I'm not adding anymore, I'm not taking anything out, you know, done.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Analysis paralysis, the science fiction icon Isaac Asimov, he used to write with a typewriter, a manual typewriter, and he had it was carbon. They load the carbon paper in back in the day, and he'd manually type it, and it would go through the typewriter only two times.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

So the first one was kind of his draft, and the second one was it. He peeled that paper off. You know, you pull it from the roller and you put it on a stack next to you on your desk. No digital, no word processing, and that stack went to his editor publisher. That's how he how he wrote. And it's that same kind of sensibility that you can't mess around too much, you just have to get it done. And I think young writers are often played by overthinking things.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

For sure, for sure. I think I forget where I saw it, so please don't credit this to me, but there was something like it's better to write, you know, five 80,000-word novels than one 160,000-word novel. You know, you learn more by doing it and just completing it than just tinkering with the same project, you know, for 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Crank it out, get it, get it done. And oftentimes there's the idea of the agile sprint, which everyone used to talk about, they talk about it less, but I think it makes sense, which is super concentrated, immersive effort where you're fully dedicated and kicking butt, and then you're done, rather than just kind of tinkering and dabbling and changing and writing and rewriting, because it it sucks the energy out of what you're doing, and that way you can just get it out. And the reader feels that energy, yeah. Like, were you were you gunning it and excited and pouring your energy into it, or were you just kind of dabbling and and doubting yourself every step of the way?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

For sure. I and I don't know if you feel this way, but like I like that feeling of completion because otherwise it feels like an albatross on my back. I don't like having uncompleted things. I just I don't even care if it's not perfect, just I need it to be out of my brain, you know.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

I have this weird compulsion that I need to share. And oftentimes I don't even care if like one person looks at it or a thousand. I'm not into the metrics, I'm into just posting. So creating and posting, whether it's an essay, it's a novel, it's a short story, it's a play. I just have to keep cranking, and it's so fulfilling for me just to get it done, create it. I'm on TikTok too, and I do these rants every day. And I post my videos, I post my writing, I post publish the books, and I just keep keep cranking. And it's just intrinsically fulfilling, exactly like you mentioned, to get it, get it in off my shoulders and out there, and then just keep going forward, just keep keep moving is very, very creatively satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

So so doing that, you're creative. You're you're you're kind of demure, you're uh a singer, it sounds like you're a voiceover talent, then now you're a novelist, and that's very creative.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

You're saying you're you're you're you're you're what was it, your mom is a doctor?

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Did you say yes, she was?

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Okay, so you have of this analytical side, but you are very, very creative. Where do you think that creativity comes from? How how does your mom feel about that? Are you are you the prodigal daughter doing all this weird stuff? Or are they like, wow, she wrote the next Game of Thrones for kids?

SPEAKER_01 30:04

I hope my mom never watches Game of Thrones. I love her, but I think it would shock her.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Some of it freaked me out.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Oh my god. My stuff is way tamer than Game of Thrones, so I could give it to her. She's she's adorable. She's my biggest fan, honestly. She's always like, Oh, I need the next book so I can share it with my friends and stuff like that. Yeah, it's not fantasy, it's not even her thing, you know. She never was a huge reader when I was growing up, but you know, unless it was like a medical journal or what have you. But um, yeah, it's it's funny because I think the uh both of my parents were very analytical. I think for me, the analytical comes in. Speaking of deadline, I was a journalism major.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Of course you were. I think if we keep talking, there's like nothing that you didn't do at some point.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

So I think that's why I like being on deadline and having it done because I'm used to that, you know, urgency, as you mentioned before. And then once it's out there, the paper's gone to bed, we're not changing, you know, the copy anymore. Um, but yeah, I mean, as far as like, you know, doing voiceover or being on camera or writing or whatever, to me, creating is creating, and I love it. So like it all kind of flows together and it all works together too. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Writing per se is is as we were alluding earlier, is tough. It's very, very difficult. Everyone has writing on their bucket list. I'm gonna write my book and do that. And even if you're stuck in in the pandemic doldrums, a lot of people like I had a friend picked up guitar playing, like she learned how to play guitar and all these creative outlets were triggered. And then the second everything opened up again, you know, the guitar is in the corner. But but you stuck with it and you've you've cranked out an entire entire series that takes dedication. What's your process like? We've we've got viewers and listeners who are up and coming indie authors or thinking about it and are fascinated to see what's under the hood. Can you tell us a little bit about the process, getting all those ideas onto the page, getting it into a story, then publishing, and getting it out into the world?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

What what'd you do?

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Um sometimes I wonder. I'm just kidding. I do like I said, I do.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Sometimes you cried.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Sometimes I cried, yeah. I do keep a running list of ideas. Um my my rule of thumb is I must finish one book before I move on to the next, because I think there's that temptation to be like, oh, it's not working, I'll just move on to something. No, no, no. Finish the book, Rajni, and then you know. Um as far as the process, I get the first draft out. I kind of ascribe to, and this is from my songwriter days, some of my best songs came out in 20 minutes. If I'm sitting there, you know, agonizing over it for like hours to days, it's probably not meant to be a song. I kind of view the same way with my writing, especially because I do not plot, I have to plow through it because if I let too much time lapse, I forget where I was going in the story. So that first draft, I just have to plow through it in a like a couple weeks, a couple months, get it done, then I'll go through it again and really clean it up. Um, I'll address my own, like, you know, there's a plot hole, here's a logical issue, or whatever. Then I'll give it to my editor. He'll come back with his own questions. And then I will rework it. And this is like now towards my f final polished draft, because I also narrate my own audiobooks, I use that as like my final to look everything over and make sure everything makes sense um grammatically, plot-wise. I did with this last one have to go back again on the manuscript and and make some more polished final polished stuff, but I usually use that audiobook draft as like pretty close to being the end.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Do you say it out loud? Do your own audio books? So do you actually record the audiobook in parallel to releasing the book?

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Um if I can. Um there's logistical issues that have nothing to do with me. It's more just how the audiobook stuff works when you release your actual book. Um, but I do try to release them at the same time, if possible.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

See, that's cool. I've I've read my novel. I have a debut science fiction novel. I'm about halfway through audiobooking it, and it was just kind of a rough draft. And I posted the clips as podcast episodes, and then on Medium as articles with synopsis.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

So it was kind of like wrapping my own head around my own book and also getting it out there in all these different forms, and people were into it. I was building a fan club based on these serialized little clips. That's nice, and then so I need to finish, but it but it's but it's a lot of fun, and you really the reason I bring it up is you really get to know your own writing, your own characters when you literally just read your own content out loud, for sure, it really makes a difference, and I think also to your point, you might even notice some stuff you might have missed, and and you might notice some holes in the character, and dialogue might come across as a little stilted, yep, or a little bit unnatural when it's read out loud, for sure, and it it helps with your own editing, and it helps even sometimes propel you down new rabbit holes because when you hear it and you have the lived experience, in a sense, of what your characters are going through, then ideas start popping up again. So it's it's really cool, it adds a dimension to the creative process itself when you read your own stuff.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

I mean, and this is a bit of a side tangent, like not every author can or will want to narrate their own books, at the very minimum, just read it to yourself out loud just so you can hear it. You don't have to record it, you don't have to do it yourself, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

But walk around with it, you know, print the damn thing out, or if it's on your phone or even on your tablet, just walk around and read your own prose. Yeah, that's akin to a musician recording their own stuff and hearing it back.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

That's really the only way to get that sense of objectivity, otherwise you're you're stuck in here and you got your own biases. So that's really, really useful.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

And definitely put it down for a few weeks, you know. If like after you air it out, yeah. Walk away for a little bit and then come back and be like, Do I even enjoy this? Am I following this? You know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

And what's your relationship like with your editor? So, did you find a professional editor, or is it a friend, or how collaborative are you? You obviously need to trust them, they need to understand what you're doing, they need to be affordable, and uh, and you have a uh this this this rapport. How did that come to be? Because a lot of people ask me about that. Like, do I need a professional editor? Do I need a professional cover? What what do I need to go through to actually get it out the door?

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Professional cover, I would say, oh yes. Yes. I hired someone, I always get rave reviews about her covers when I um take my books to live events. She knows the market. Like, I'm like, Fiona, do your magic, please. You know, she's amazing. I and I'm cannot do art to save my life. I can do a really good stick figure, but I don't think people want that.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

For your kind.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Maybe not, maybe not. Yeah. For my editor, um, he's actually a really good, longtime friend of mine. We used to run a uh writing group here in Los Angeles together before he moved. We did a writing podcast for several years. Um, he's more of a plot guy. I'm a character person, so it actually is a really good balance.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

That's a great compliment. So you get you get not only you know corrections of punctuation and syntax, but you're getting some semantic insights too.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Like, oh well, you're maybe you might want to dial this up a little bit here.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Yeah, yeah. And it's it, I don't know, the I think the jury would be out. He's not a fantasy person. I think for him, he's more like realistic action. That was the stuff he would write, you know, um, when he was here. So I don't know if it helps or hurts that he's not immersed in the fantasy world. I mean, I love his edit. So, I mean, but like like I said, he's also a good friend of mine. Um, but I think there might be, you know, advantages to having someone who is familiar with your genre if you're hiring, because obviously they can tell you the trends, they can tell you the tropes, they can, you know, just be like this is this would never happen in a fantasy novel. But at the same time, maybe it's good to have someone outside the genre.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

I my girlfriend took a look at my manuscript just by chance. I had printed it out and there was a big stack on the living room table. And she's like, What's that? I go, remember I told you I'm working on a novel, and she started looking at it and reading, and she goes, Look, you missed a comma here. And I was like, Okay, she's a tutor. Oh, she's a doctorate-level educator in um in like bioscience.

SPEAKER_03 39:22

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

But she hates science fiction, so that's why I bring this up for you. So she never she didn't like science fiction, she felt that it was too much world building and not enough character, but she got into my book, good, and and she helped. I think um she built confidence because I have some female characters, and as you can tell, I'm a dude, and I felt I didn't have credibility. There's a relationship between two women that's very important in my science fiction novel, and I was kind of I I didn't feel credible to dive in as much as I might have. Yeah, and she said, no, no, no, I'm I'm buying the relationship, it's sensitive, and do more of it. So she encouraged me to dive deeper into some of the characters and situations. And the fact that she wasn't into science fiction, I think really helped.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Because uh otherwise, she wasn't just blown away by all my bullshit, she was like reading it like she would read some of her favorite novelists, and she gave me some great feedback and actually built up my confidence that that I wasn't just delusional and just interesting myself. That's awesome. Well, I think that that that contrast is probably helpful from an editor and even an informal editor like she was for me. I think it's very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

And I'm guessing, too, because of her background, I don't know what kind of science is in your science fiction, but because she has that background, she could probably pick out the actual science errors if there were any as well as 100%.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

She picked out ambiguity. So there's a scene where there's a scientist and she's attending a science conference. And I go through a list of the top issues and tensions in physics and cosmology.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Because she's she's a critical character, she's very cynical. And she was reading it and she goes, This is a little bit ambiguous to me. I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, knowing enough science to know that I needed to add a little bit more detail and description. So that's exactly right. She was very, very helpful with some of that, and it kind of came out of nowhere. But to your point, if you, ladies and gentlemen, if you're writing your book and you find an editor and that editor isn't into your genre, that actually might be uh an advantage.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

For sure. I mean, and I don't even know if you need an editor. I know, wait, shh, don't say that. I shouldn't say that a lot, but if you have a strong beta reader team, I was just gonna bring that up.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

You're lead you're leading me. Uh you're you're the podcast host here, which is uh beta readers. Yeah, if you and I don't have beta readers, but did you share it with your writing group, your novels as things?

SPEAKER_01 42:03

Well, it's funny, like so. My writing group is actually dissolved since then. Um they they dissolved yeah, well during the pandemic, basically, because we all moved and all that stuff. But I mean, I think here's the thing. So every editor is different, right? Some are really good, like sometimes you need someone to proofread. That's different than a developmental editor who will look at it for the content. So it really kind of depends on who you have in your stable of people who's good at what, you know. Like I said, my editor's really great at plot, but I can tell when he's going fast because I will correct, I will correct and find grammatical errors. So I'm not asking him for that, though. I'm asking him to look at the plot, you know. Whereas, like if I've seen um other some of my other author friends, their beta readers are very meticulous and like, oh, you forgot this comma, you forgot this period. So I mean, it just depends on what you what you need them for. So definitely play to their strengths, you know, if you have more than one reader on your team, like you look at it for plot. Hey, can you do a line by line, you know, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

My friend Ingrid, with whom I was at LA Comic-Con, and we're gonna at Pasadena and we're gonna go to the LA Festival of Books, she's actually the den mother of uh of this gaggle of writers. And uh she is very good with beta readers, so she she'll throw it out there. She's got a mailing list and she puts out uh an APB, like an all points bullet, and like I'm looking for beta readers. If you want to like heads up, she has fans too. She's got a whole fan fan group, and they're like, if you want first dibs on my next novel, be a beta reader, and I'll send you a copy and you could read it. And I want your feedback. And then she would get feedback too. You know, from chapter 18 to chapter 19, I was a little confused. And then she listens and then she goes back to her manager. Manuscript and tweaks it.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

To to get it right. I think that's cool. I didn't do any of that. So my my book was for me, at least in terms of the chance to read the book I always wanted to write or to write the book I always wanted to read. I'm not quite sure which is which. But there's all these different ways to do it, right? And uh and it can't hurt to get a test audience and test readers, because then uh, you know, you're ahead of the game.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Definitely, yeah. I'm impressed. I have tried so hard to get like a beta reader team going, and I don't know what it is. I put it out there several times, and now I'm just like, whatever, I give up.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

What's your presence like on the social channels? You mentioned your your YouTube where you have writers topics and and you do that. I'm assuming you you spend time with the self-promotion of the series and earn media. Do you buy ads at all? Do you do you have any kind of campaigns that you launch out there to help sell aside from you know going to the cons and doing all that?

SPEAKER_01 45:08

So I do have a newsletter. Um, and if if you want, we can put it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

It's just Roshny.net slash we're gonna have a whole uh list of all your links.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Yeah, so um, I do have a newsletter that's probably my primary way of keeping in touch with people, and they're usually the first line to know, um, you know, like when I did the Kickstarter or, you know, just anything. And I don't I do it like once a month. So I social media drives me bonkers sometimes and I can't keep track of where everything is. So I I love to front load it and just automate it for the month so I don't have to think about it. Right. Um, so in that respect, even though I am on most of the major like platforms like uh Twitterx, I don't know what we call it now, Instagram. Um, I ended my TikTok account, so I'm no longer there. Instagram's probably my my biggest, like where I spend the most time and actually focus on because I just and then YouTube, I was parking the first chapters of all my audiobooks on there, and then I just decided to kind of vlog for funsies, honestly, because I'm like, why not? I'll just talk about writing stuff, talk about my books, talk about whatever I feel like. Um, and I do have a Discord which is slowly um gaining more traction, and I'm on Discord a lot, so it's been an easy way for me to connect with you, just go to the other group, exactly. Yeah, so I think it's like go to where you like to be instead of trying to do all like I like I try the TikTok videos, I just don't feel like setting up a bazillion short videos. It's just you know what I mean? I can handle it.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

I totally get it. I I just shoot I do like two, three, four of them a day. And when an idea pops into my mind, either based on news and it multiple topics, technology, politics, I just have an idea. And as a storyteller, I I find it a challenge to take that idea based on the news or what I'm hearing, or even just whatever, and translate that into a one to two max three-minute video. Wow, and I just hold the camera and I just unload. And at first it was a little challenging to be coherent and compelling, or at least compelling in a way that I would think so. And I got into the rhythm. So now I'm like 80, 90% of the time, I'm a one-take guy. I have an idea, I run into my kitchen. Oftentimes I'm in a t-shirt and shorts, so I'll at least put on a polo shirt to look respectable. And I've got different color polo shirts. So when you look at it, it's like my same bald head in my kitchen with the different colors. Uh-huh. And then I'll just unload the idea and then sometimes caption it, sometimes not, and usually have a little headline. And the entire process, the recording takes the two, three minutes because it's usually one take. Captioning might take five to ten minutes, and then I'll blast TikTok and I do this manually. I could use like HubSpot or something, but yeah, I do TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and it and Substack as a note, and sometimes I'll throw it on Patreon, even though it's not really doing much, and it's all done in like 20 minutes, like to do that, and it just feels fun. It's like a great release. I am I am impressed because I've tried you would think short form is because you've got the singing and the performance and the screenwriting, you you'd be a natural at it.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

But what's funny is you'd think short form would be easier than long form, but I cannot think of that many ideas to do short form. And the fact that you even change your shirt, like when I was doing long form, I got to a point where I'm like, I don't even care if people realize I batch recorded this. I'm wearing the same shirt for five videos. I don't care. You're way more polished.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

People don't realize it's harder than it looks, and sometimes the easier it comes across is the tougher it is to do, like stand-up comics. It's like it it's it seems like some guy or gal just grabbed a microphone and had a couple beers and goes up there. And no, you you try that. It's it's way more difficult than it seems. And this kind of video recording is challenging too. So I get a lot of detractors, you know, get tons of hate on all these, and they're complaining about this. I go, You try it, buddy, go in your kitchen. Yeah, but but the point of all that though is you know, take advantage of social media in the way that you like, and then get into this rhythm of of creating content kind of spontaneously and and storytelling, like encapsulate ideas because a big book, it could be 60,000 words or to your point the 180,000 monster. It's made up of scenes, it's made up of individual vignettes. And if you can master the scene, you have mastered storytelling, and it's one other layer to get the whole arc of the story, which you need to do. And sometimes getting that feedback, the beta reader, the editor will help you kind of glue it together a little bit better. But if you can nail that scene, then you're already on your way, I think. And your stuff is great that way, which is which is based on the vignettes of the characters, right? What they're what they're doing, where they're at, what they're trying to get to, their goal, their obstacles.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

Yeah, it's I mean, I think the the number one thing for any writer is get out there and read. Get out there and observe, you know, like if you want to be a great uh filmmaker, watch films, right? You know, because the more you're around it, the more you realize what works and what doesn't and how to put a story together. Like, I don't I don't think about deep themes or how to write when I write, I just write what I would want to read, like what you were talking about with yourself, and then hopefully you strung it together correctly in the end, you know.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

You get your fans to you know appreciate you, if not worship you. Tell us, tell us a little bit about your target audience. Like it's young adult, you're in the YA category. So, so what's what's your vision of of your target audience? And have you spoken directly with some of the YAs who come by the cons and interact? How how does that work for you in terms of um your readership?

SPEAKER_01 51:30

Oh wow, that's that's a good question. I guess so. Your typical YA would be like what, 13 plus, but obviously I'm not talking to 13-year-olds at my table unless they come along with their parents, right? So usually when I'm talking to people at the conventions, it's honestly it's people like me that we can nerd out about fantasy movies or our favorite books, or like, oh my gosh, you collect pins and put them on your bag like I do, you know. You kind of like start feeling that same similar vibe with people. And, you know, you would think looking at like I've had, for example, men come up to my table and they're like, it's romanticy, I wouldn't read it. And then they go, Oh, you have a DD campaign. I'm like, Yeah, it was DD inspired. They're like, Oh my gosh, sign me up, you know. So it's amazing how like at the end of the day, like it's all a same language that we speak. We just kind of are coming at it with different dialects, you know, and you just have to figure out the right way to talk that language. I don't know. That was a weird analogy, but I think you get what I'm saying. Um yeah, so it's like if we can sit and like play board games and vibe about geeky things, you'll probably like my book.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

That's what I was kind of getting at, which is it's technically YA, and you got that designation on Amazon too, but I dig it. Anyone would dig it with imagination and like the genre, it's not delimiting in terms of age, it's like this is this is too useful for me. It's fun and and it and it's engaging. One of my earlier books is called Super Santa, and it started as a screenplay, and I I collaborated with an illustrator, a very talented illustrator, and it's basically bad Santa. So so the elves are naughty, they're you know, they're on meth and running around and they're stealing toys, and and there's uh a biracial suburban family, and they're having this tumultuous interaction on Christmas Eve. So it's an adult book, but it's called Super Santa, and it's got whimsical illustrations in it. So I bring it to LA Comic-Con, and I've got Super Santa, and I've got the big board of Santa Claus in a superhero outfit. And the premise is that the kids today are bored with Santa Claus. The old myth of St. Nicholas is tired, and all the kids today want superheroes and video games. And Santa finds out and gets bummed out and quits Christmas. So as Elf convinces them, you know, Santa, if you can't beat them, join them. Here, let's dial you up in a cape, and then you can become Super Santa. You do miracles anyway, and then you could be like a superhero, you could be Super Santa, and then all hell breaks loose and they ruin the holiday, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:20

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

So that's kind of the premise of it. So, anyway, just like you're mentioning, families come up, and then the kids see Super Santa. And part of me, I want to sell the book, but I'm like, this is so age inappropriate.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

But you don't have that problem though.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

You know, it's funny though that you speak about age appropriateness because even though it's for the most part it's a very lighthearted series, I tell people it's a bit like Harry Potter where it gets darker as things go on. And I realize, like with my new series, like even though the writing style is geared towards YA, like with simpler sentence structure and stuff like that, the content is pretty dark, you know. And I don't think we should not say like, you know, we should sell eight, you know, eight-year-old children on meth elves or something. We also should have dumb it down for children. Like, I don't know about you, but I grew up on things like Never Ending Story and The Secret of Nim and Um The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Labyrinth, the last unicorn. Like these are dark. And I was watching creepy stuff is going on.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

That's the stuff of nightmares and nightmare before Christmas, which is that's awesome, but it's scary stuff.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

Yeah. So I I mean, this is again a whole other discussion. I think I don't want to traumatize children, but we also shouldn't shelter them from realities. Like I don't know, but if um, if you look at all the Newberry Award winners from like the 80s and stuff, you know, uh Tuck Everlasting and um what's that one about the rabbit? Watership down, you know, they were dark. Uh they had really dark themes in there, and dark stuff happened. It's just it's a chip kid protagonist, not an adult, you know. But it's and they were Newberry Award winners, you know what I'm saying? So you can't um, you know, another one.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

My favorite story, and I remember it like yesterday, one of the first books I read, and it made me cry was Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, which is another Newberry story. Yeah, and and it's a very brief book, it's short. And basically, Sylvester's a donkey and lives with his mommy and daddy, and they're all happy together. And Sylvester finds a pebble that Grants wishes, and then he sees a lion over across the hill, and he gets scared. And instead of wishing for the lion to vanish, he wishes, I wish I were a rock, and then the lion will go and he becomes a rock. And then his mommy and daddy are looking all over the village for Sylvester, like, where'd he go? And I remember crying as a kid in the in the library of the elementary school, reading it because it was like such a sense of loss, yeah, and a family torn apart. And of course, they have a picnic and they set up the picnic on the rock, and the dad finds the pebble, and he says, I wish our little Sylvester would come back and poof, there's the donkey, they're reunited. That happens in two pages, but it's it's freaky, it's jarring, it's a sense of losing one's family and being lost in the world and isolated, and that's a powerful story, even for a little kid.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

For sure, and it teaches you be careful what you wish for, which is a good thing for a child.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Which is a good lesson to learn, be careful. So, this idea of shielding our kids and censorship, cancel culture, and then where we draw boundaries between what's age appropriate and isn't is tricky.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Yeah, and as a fantasy writer, you've got a lot of license to indulge and uh and then go for it. I think the YA designation gives you flexibility.

SPEAKER_01 58:08

A little bit, you know. I mean, I have had parents ask me, like, what's the age range? And I'm like, because and I'm also kind of thinking in terms of like from my own experiences, I'm like, I'd say 10 up, you know, especially like in first for later books in the series, maybe a mature 10, you know, talk with talk it out with your kid kind of thing. Because I don't think we should shelter them, but at the same time, I don't want to you don't want to upset people, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:32

It's it's your your franchise that's driving for the Netflix mini-series, right? You don't want to alienate any parents along the way.

SPEAKER_02 58:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

And uh and have you gotten any pushback or anyone saying, hey, this is inappropriate, or or it's been pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

For the most part, I think. I mean, it's funny because uh if I've gotten any notes uh like in reviews where people are like, oh, this feels really young, I can tell an adult read it versus like a kid. Um, because I don't think kids are on you know Amazon reviewing books.

SPEAKER_00 59:03

But uh adults aren't either.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

There's that true, yeah, but they have more access, I think, than kids. Um, but I mean, I just like the idea of even just kids just reading, honestly. Like, I'm like, hey, you know, if it gets you to read, that's great. Like, kids need to read more. Please use your brain and imagination and think of all these wondrous things, you know, get outside. Like, I think that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

And speaking of more, what about your other series? You're you're not resting on your laurels and you have other stuff cooking, you have the kingdom legacy, and what else? What else is in your ooze that you could share?

SPEAKER_01 59:40

The new series is called Retold, which is the Dark Gothic fairy tale retellings. Um, they have a little bit of some more than others, a little bit of Filipino uh folklore spin. Um, I was thinking particularly Midnight Rose, which is the second book in the series, which will come out later this year, definitely has Filipino horror elements. I was very excited to put them in there, and I also asked my editor, do I need to put a trigger warning on this book? You know, it's it's one of those things because, like I said, writing style-wise, it is YA. Content-wise, you better be a mature 10 plus year old, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:14

Can you tell us a little bit about Filipino horror? And the reason I bring that up is I had another guest on the factory floor here, Don Aguilio. And he is a master graphic artist, and now he's doing the new Superman and Aquaman.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:30

Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

And he's like, he's legit. He's uh he's he's awesome. So I was at LA Comic-Con, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm gonna pretend that I have a limitless budget and I want a graphic novel of my new science fiction novel. And then I went looking at everyone's art, and Don's art popped immediately. This this is it, this would be perfect in style. So I introduced myself and we chatted and I talked about that idea, and we exchanged cards. I sent him the PDF of the book. He asked me to sign an NDA, he's a very professional guy, he's in the business, and we we we struck up a friendship and I got him on the podcast. And the reason I'm going into Don is because this year he's obsessed with horror. Oh and he's got a Filipino heritage too, and that's his angle of attack. So I wonder if there's some cultural, cultural energy that's going on here. Is there folklore or is it part of tradition?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:38

That's a good question. I feel like I feel like Filipino uh media or Filipino culture is kind of um experiencing a, I don't want to say renaissance because I don't think it was ever really in the Western um, what's the word? Like, you know, knowledge, but it's kind of becoming more visible in Western media. Like I think Netflix had like a series that featured it and stuff like that. Um and for me, the reason why I went into it is because okay, I don't want to spoil too much about um Beauty and the Beast coming out.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

Spoiler alert, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

Spoiler alert, yeah. The books aren't even out yet. I don't want to spoil it. But um when I was starting to write the retold series, like for example, in Seeing Red, I just use Filipino words to reference the days of the week. It's not super heavy on the Filipino side, but for uh Midnight Rose or uh the Beauty and the Beast retelling, I went off the premise, well, what if Beauty was the beast? And so it hinges on that knowledge. And as I delved into Filipino horror folk folklore, it's just amazing, first of all, how extensive it is and how unforgiving it is. Like I had to really struggle to find ways to redeem things because I think with the stuff that we've grown up traditionally, like uh werewolves and vampires, and I'm trying to think of what else is really popular in Western media, um zombies or something, there's always a way to sort of redeem them. And I could not find any ways to redeem a Filipino horror entity.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:21

I I got that same vibe where Don was like, I'm diving in and this shit's serious. It's like it's very gritty, it's very intense, and he he sees it, I believe, not to speak for him, he was on the pod talking about it, but like a catharsis. Like he needs to to get in there and to explore it and let it out. There's so much energy and tradition in that. And he's he's very much anchored in his culture and tradition and family, and he just needs to dive in and go kind of nuts with it that way. I think that's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

Yeah. And and I think it's interesting too because like I'm first generation Filipino American, so there's a lot of things that my mom did not bring over with her because she couldn't physically, and they were trying very hard to Americanize us, so I didn't even learn about all this cultural stuff until as an adult, you know. And um, it's funny because my husband's Irish and they have a ton of ghost stories, you know, and I think those ghosts came with them to the Americas, you know. But like it just felt like there was nothing culturally that came over, and yet there's it's amazing how many stories of like every culture has like a vampire type character, or they have like a wailing woman type character. It's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:42

Jungian kind of in its archetypes where human beings instinctively we might be programmed in ways, whether it's social Darwinian or who knows, that these stories aren't just random. You have two groups of people separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years, and they're telling the same stories over and over again, and yeah, that's powerful, it really makes it resonate.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:10

And science fiction and fantasy in particular lets that come out in ways that fictional realism doesn't because it's more constraining. Yeah, if you look at like the top 100 grossing movies, I think 80, 90 percent of them are science fiction, fantasy, horror.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:30

Well, right now it's what Hail Mary is the big one. Hail Mary is huge.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

That's like everyone's woo that's definitely sci-fi. Yeah, yeah, everyone's waiting for that big science fiction blockbuster, but there's this almost spiritual religious feeling that you get with a movie that triggers that sense of wonder.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

And uh, and I think that's what our genre does for science fiction and fantasy in ways no other ones can. So if you're good at the storytelling and do the homework, I think it could be really. A resonant experience for not only the reader, but for the writer.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

I often think with fantasy, just also I came from a comedy background, comedy like fantasy, you can hold up a lot of truths about people and about the world we live in, and it's palatable because you have a bit of a distance. Whereas if it's drama or like realistic literary fiction, you're like, oh, I don't want to confront that. You know what I mean? But when you put a science uh fiction or a fantasy veneer on it or a comedy veneer, you're like, okay, okay. And so your readers and your viewers are absorbing those, those viewpoints, but it's more palatable for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Yeah, totally. And that that's one of the strengths of science fiction, going all the way back to the Star Trek boldly go. It was a projection of our aspirations in a way that that wouldn't upset the archibunkers of the world, right? Because they can marvel at the technology. And as society has evolved, hopefully in a way that's more humanistic and fair and better, science fiction has ramped it up too, where things that used to be just hidden and kind of symbols are now out in the open.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:08

And then aspirationally, our biggest challenges can be expressed and delved into, to your point, without freaking anyone out or forcing them to make a decision or vote on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

And it tends to be bipartisan. We live in such politically charged times. And science fiction is one of the few genres, too, and fantasy in particular, where you let that go.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

It doesn't matter who you vote for or which aisle you sit your ass on. It's uh it's a great story and it hits us with that sense of wonder.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

For sure. I think we'd all be a lot happier if we just rode around on dragons all day, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:48

Exactly. You just get it over with. As long as the dragons don't, you know, don't look up and breathe at us. Awesome. Well, it's great, great having you. I I wish you the best with the series, and you've got a lot going on. And can you give us any teasers in terms of what you're thinking of evolving your work? So I've got a lot of writers and they're they're thinking of graphic novel forms. Everyone wants that Netflix or Hulu mini-series, but uh aspirationally, what what would be exciting for you? What would you love to dive into?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

Oh wow. Um, I do want to finish this series. I've been focusing on making special editions for them, which is its own base in itself because I have to hire artists and Kickstarter is its own thing. And whoo, you know, I've been learning a lot doing that. Um, I actually was working, I kind of put it to the side because it was a bigger scope than I realized, but I was working on a video game related to my first book series. I'm now actually working on a video game that's much, much smaller scope to see if I can actually do it. And if I can, then I would like to go back to that original game.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

Well, very, very cool. So we'll put links below to find you and buy your books. And I want to sincerely thank you for spending time in the factory talking about your series, talking about how you write. And I'd love to follow up with you when timing is right and you get more stuff out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:17

Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:19

Thank you so much, Rashine, folks. Follow her, like, comment, share, and uh and subscribe.