Our SPFBOX interviews continue with S. K. Kelley, author of Sidetracked.
SPFBO (the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off) is a free online contest run by author Mark Lawrence. 300 authors compete across ten judging teams to see who will be the winner! You can read more about the contest [HERE]].
INTERVIEW WITH S. K. KELLEY
Tell us a little about yourself and let our readers know which blog you’ve been assigned to for SPFBOX!
Can you tell us a little bit about your writing or editing process? What’s most exciting to you about writing or editing?
My writing process is a bit all over the place. I haven’t really started a *new* project yet, but I’m sure it’d be far more streamlined than the endless write, edit, rewrite, edit, rewrite cycle that Sidetracked went through (being as old as it is). I’m a plotter now, but I was 100% pantser when I first started out, just writing whatever came to mind (usually this means all the cool scenes are written first). Now, I like a lot more structure. I even make calendars & charts to go with my outlines.
I tend to find drafting tedious, but my favorite part of writing are those moments when I get super inspired and write out a whole scene in my phone notes app in a single sitting. It doesn’t happen often these days, but it’s a great feeling. Past that, edits and rewrites are my favorite part of the writing process. I love rereading my work and seeing it all come together at the end. And, of course, I love hearing from people who read my work!
“The series has extremely tense (and even life or death) moments, but I focus a lot on the characters just living their lives in the midst of that. It’s not about the shifters; it’s *about* the characters and their relationships.”
Who or what have been your major literary influences?
What makes your SPFBOX book unique?
Do you have a favourite character from your SPFBOX entry? Tell us about them!
This is always a difficult question for me because my favorite character is also the character I would most like to push off a cliff. Since I first created him (as a wee 13-year-old), I’ve had a bit of a fixation on Ice Monroe. My taste in fictional characters has changed a lot since then, but my brain simply cannot get over him. Anyway, Ice Monroe is Jayde’s situationship partner. He wears a leather jacket even when it’s 100°F outside. It’s not normal, and it bothers Jayde every time she sees him wearing it.
My favorite character (ignoring my Ice Monroe complex), is James Reid. He’s a stressed depressed lemon zest ADHD cinnamon roll type of guy. James and Ice do not get along. But he is the character I feel I put the most of myself into. Painfully relatable.
“I intentionally subvert some common 2000s-2010s YA paranormal romance tropes in the first book specifically.”
How does your work fit into (or challenge) its genre?
I have a hard time categorizing Sidetracked, which is why I call it a new adult contemporary fantasy psychological slice of life drama.
I intentionally subvert some common 2000s-2010s YA paranormal romance tropes in the first book specifically. There’s a heavy focus on romance in the plot, but not until book two, so I avoid calling it a romance at all (even though the series’ happy end technically means that I could call it a romance if I wanted).
What are you currently working on?
Sidetracked
Jayde Palmer considers herself a typical college student, but life is messy.
The day before her 19th birthday, a chance meeting with a beautiful young man named Ice Monroe disrupts Jayde’s plans for a quiet, relaxing summer. She assumes he’s too good to be true—until he calls. Jayde takes the bait, and things go well at first, but the relationship takes a bizarre turn when Ice drops a bombshell secret:
He is a magical human-feline shapeshifter, known as an immortal!
As Jayde comes to terms with the existence of immortals and struggles to work out Ice’s true intentions in dating her, a series of unexpected and uncomfortable encounters with a figure from his past leave Jayde increasingly unsure who she can trust or what she should do next.
Even so, it’s clear that something is wrong, and she may have no choice but to act on instinct.
