Today’s Blog World Tour: Fantasy Edition interviewee is Krisna Starr, a fellow lover of dragons! I admire her ability to juggle family obligations and writing and am excited to be interviewing her today. Welcome to my blog, Krisna!
First, would you mind telling us a little about your current work-in-progress?
My current WIP, Dragons of Atlantea (working title), is set in the magical land of Atlantea full of fantastic creatures like angels, dragons, dwarves, and giants. It’s about a dragon prince trying desperately not to give in to the darkness within him, a crippled nephilim girl’s struggle for respect and their role in the salvation of the world.
Wow, that sounds intense! I look forward to reading it when it’s done. I know you write fantasy, but how much research do you do for your novels?
The good thing about fantasy stories is that we don’t need to do extensive research like, say, historical fiction or contemporary novels. Of course I need to do research stuff like battle strategies, commonly known fantasy creatures and magic systems. But once the basics are in hand, everything can be adapted to the rules of my fantasy world.
For example: The magic in Dragons of Atlantea, falls under the category of Elemental magic. But how the magic works, what is the cost of doing too much magic, how people learn and wield elemental magic is all from my imagination.
A strange quirk in my character is that I feel stifled by too many constraints, rules, and boundaries established by others. So for my stories, I create my own.
That’s awesome! The great thing about fantasy is you can create whatever you want in terms of rules or un-rules. It’s what draws me to the genre, too. Now, I know it’s a WIP, but once you’ve finished the draft, how are you planning to publish this and your future stories?
I’m leaning more towards becoming an Indie author, because of the character quirk I mentioned.
Traditional publishing has a LOT of rules that I need to strictly follow. And the control for many areas will be with the editor and publishing house. I think I’d end up being frustrated with the whole thing, which is not why I write. I write because I love the stories and the world that lives in my imagination. And I want to preserve this love and joy that I get in penning them down.
Of course, being an Indie author also means that I’m responsible for my own marketing and for ensuring the quality of the published books. So I’m planning to workshop Dragons of Atlantea multiple times in critique communities, get feedback from beta-readers and also run it through a professional editor before I publish it.
I also chose a non-traditional route for publishing in order to have more control. It’s great that you already have a solid plan for preparing your book for publishing as well. Now, regarding published books, when you read, which do you prefer: ebooks or traditional paperbacks/hardcovers?
Hm, a difficult question. I absolutely love traditional paperbacks. They give a sense of comfort and I love the feel of paper on my hands as I turn the pages. But nowadays, paperbacks are much costlier than ebooks and less accessible too. So it was a battle between my love of traditional books and the volume of books I’d like to read.
In the end, my greed to read more stories and immerse myself in worlds filled with magic and fantastic creatures won. So I now devour more and more novels in e-book format.
But if they bring down the price of traditional books, I’d ditch ebooks in a second and go back to the way I love to read.
I have to agree that’s the major reason I buy more ebooks now, too. And because I travel a lot, so an ereader’s a lot easier to cart around than a duffel bag of books. But I second you on traditional books being much nicer! *glances at clock* All right, we have time for one more question… *shuffles questions* Ah! A favorite of mine. If you could meet any famous person (living or dead), who would it be, and why?
I’d love to meet Mother Teresa. I’ve always admired her compassion and dedication to the poor helpless children of the world. I feel that many of us are content living our own personal lives and families without doing much about the pain and suffering of the rest of the world. If every one of us puts an effort to help others (not beyond our capacity, but just as much as possible), then a wave of change will sweep over this world and it’ll become a much better place in a few years.
That’s a lovely choice! She was an amazing person. Thank you so much for being here today, Krisna! It’s time to wrap things up now. I’ll finish by wishing you and your current and future WIPs success.
Krisna is an avid reader and a lover of dragons, unicorns and all things magical. Dreams and stories are her personal haven from the hum-drum of daily life.
Her current WIP, Dragons of Atlantea (working title), is set in the magical world of Atlantea where magic rules, dragons roar, and angels soar the skies.
Besides books, she enjoys spending time with her children, mediation/ yoga, music and watching animes on the net.
You can connect with Krisna through her various social media sites:
Her blog
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Thanks for having me, Heather 🙂
Thank you for letting me interview you! 🙂