I am super excited to share a short interview and excerpt from author Catherine Labadie. She’s an awesome writer and person and she’s also shared about sticking to a writing schedule on her guest blog post. To find her books, you can look on her website or search Amazon. She just released the second book of her Fate’s Fall series, Long Wanes the Night!
Can you share about your writing journey? How did you get where you are today?
This is always a hard one to answer! I know I sound fake when I say that I truly have never really considered another career. I always knew I’d be writing, even when I was seven and hiding perfume samples in a notebook because that’s what I wanted my characters to smell like.
Your books have a lot of magic and fantasy elements in them. What are some of the difficulties of writing those elements? What are some of the fun parts?
Writing fantasy is easy in some ways, but as always it’s difficult to make sure everything aligns enough with how reality works. Magic needs a system, otherwise characters are overpowered super people who get boring really quickly. There’s also the science side to consider, in some aspects. I just take each story as it comes to me and research as needed.
You have a series, a set of connected books (Fox and Hound books), and a standalone. What are some of the challenges or benefits of writing each type of story?
((Vixen is basically retired; my main series is my Fate’s Fall Duet with Long Grows the Dark and Slow Wanes the Night. 🙂 ))
I love standalones. A Turn of the Wheel was incredible to write, and it’s nice that that story is contained in just one book. Sequels are difficult because there’s so many connecting ties from the first book to think about. It was overwhelming enough for me to put Slow Wanes the Night on hold for several months. But at the end of the sequel, when you’ve tied things up or had the opportunity to read through everything you put your characters and story through…it’s a good feeling. More work, more benefits.
Your covers are gorgeous! Can you share your experience as far as finding and hiring a cover artist and what that was like?
Basically you troll Instagram or Twitter book art tags and look for artists that are accepting commissions. Go from there. (NOTE: I get requests from people I don’t know all the time demanding for me to tell them where I got my cover. Don’t do this. It’s rude as hell.)
The world you set your books in are very unique and interesting. How do you get inspired to create a world for your books?
World-building is the easy part for me. A lot of the time it’s simply looking at aspects of our world and wondering what those might be like if magic were added, or what they’d be like in a different climate. Other than that it’s random flashes of inspiration I’m super grateful to receive. :’)
You share your writing and publishing schedule with your readers and fans pretty openly, how do you stay on that schedule? Do you ever have to adjust?
Staying on a schedule can be soul-crushing, but most of the time it’s like any other job. You show up, do your work, and look over what you’ve done at the end of the day. Most of the time that positive feeling of seeing how much I’ve accomplished in my writing time gets me through. I adjust my schedule as needed whenever I get sick, but I made my schedule with rest days in mind so I rarely have to move things around.
Now that you are working on five books, what advice would you give your unpublished self of the past?
To my past unpublished self? I mean, there’s the usual “ignore the haters” thing that’s really important for someone like me who struggles with confidence. But also, I’d tell my past self that it is possible to write the stories I want to. Certain plots or plot elements or amazing characters are totally within reach if I do the work to unearth them.
Do you have any unique writing quirks or habits?
I’m pretty boring in this respect! If I find a song I like I listen to it on repeat 300 times sometimes..oh, and my Great Dane will sometimes punch me in the face with her paw or her toy if I’m not paying enough attention to her.
A preview of Long Grows the Dark (Fate’s Fall #1)
Before
Glenna, court sorceress in service to Princess Jael, struggles to hide her feelings for her best friend’s betrothed. Yet even as the land approaches its golden age, an unforeseen enemy rises to corrupt the princess and take power for himself. Fate may lead them all down a path too painful to contemplate, but are Glenna’s choices enough to dispel the inevitable darkness set to veil their future?
Now
Gwendoline Hallewell, a Starford University student in a land where magic is commonplace, has always been unusual. When her casting book summons a man from the past to intervene with her dangerous new present, she has no choice but to trust him. As she and her friends Colt and Everleigh reconcile what happened before with what must happen in the present, Gwendoline must decide what it means to make her own choices, suffer her own consequences, and if free will is really within her grasp.
Leslie Arambula 