Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Even dragons have hard days! Sarah’s children’s book, Henry the Sneezing Dragon, shows the importance of loving and accepting everyone. Sarah, can you tell us more about your writing and your stories?

Sarah: Absolutely! I write children’s books. My first book, Henry the Sneezing Dragon, was published in June 2023.The blurb reads: Life as a dragon should be amazing. You have the ability to soar across the sky and breathe fire. However, when you are a young, clumsy dragon who sneezes fire at all the worst moments, it makes life a little challenging. Desperate to make a friend and to finally feel accepted, Henry takes off across the savanna, but trouble seems to follow him at every turn.

I have another book, To the Moon: A Jacob and Trevor Adventure, coming out this spring. My boys are especially excited for this book because they are in it. It’s based on a make-believe game we play in our backyard about going to the moon. Here is the summary: Jacob and Trevor are brothers and the best of friends. They have avid imaginations and love to play make-believe. Whether they are pretending to be pirates or running from imaginary dinosaurs, they know how to have fun. Their favorite thing to do is play on their saucer swing and pretend to fly to the moon. One day, after Jacob loses a tooth, the tooth fairy leaves something very special for the boys. Jacob and Trevor’s adventures are about to change in a way neither of them could ever have imagined.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write Henry the Sneezing Dragon?

Sarah: My son Jacob inspired me to come up with the story Henry the Sneezing Dragon. It was a story I created for him when he was only two years old. He was always asking me to tell him a story. Often, he would give me a topic (such as dragons or dinosaurs) and I had to craft a story from whatever details he gave me. When my second son, Trevor, was born I decided it was time to start putting my stories into print.

Sabitha: Someone who crafts stories like that must be a lover of books! What books do you read and recommend?

Sarah: I love SOOOO many books. If I’m talking to someone who enjoys romance—I love Perfect by Judith McNaught, Montana Sky by Nora Roberts, Loving Scoundrel by Johanna Lindsey, The Outsider by Penelope Williamson, and The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh – to name a few.  I’m also in a huge Emily Henry phase right now. 

I also love books like The Host by Stephanie Meyer, Dear Child by Romy Hausmann, and The Whisper Man by Alex North. I really enjoyed the Dr. Charlotte Stone series by Karen Robards, and of course, The Hunger Games and the Divergent series are a must. I’ve also just finished Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and am dying to get my hands on the second book, Iron Flame.

Sabitha: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it? And who ended up reading it?

Sarah: Honestly, my kids are my audience. I create stories that they enjoy. However, once I started to write my stories down on paper—I would imagine parents cuddling up and reading with their little ones. As a mom and a language arts teacher, I think it is so important to read to children when they are young and help engage them in stories. Plus, nothing beats quality time spent with your kids.

Sabitha: What’s your next writing project?

Sarah: I currently have a book, To the Moon: a Jacob and Trevor Adventure, in the works. It is currently in the hands of my publisher and I’m hoping it will be available in print this spring.

I also have a story titled The Water Bear Astronaut that has been written. I just need to decide if I am going to move forward with publishing.

A story I’m currently writing is The Stow Away Bear. My kids and I visit Mackinac Island every year – and this is a story about a bear that manages to make his way to the island in search of fudge. It is still a work in progress.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Sarah: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
People can find Henry the Sneezing Dragon at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and they can learn more about it from Goodreads. They can find me on Facebook. 

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Poetry and nature come together in Su Zi’s poetry collection, Chirp. Su, can you say a bit about your work?

Su: The book linked is Chirp, a book of poems from Hysterical Books that was released just as Covid hit. However, the book was written some years before by the following  process: every morning, regardless of weather, I go outside to care for my live-outside family (they are not humans, but they are my family). During the year I wrote the book, I would come back inside and write a poem that recorded the moments just before, with an especial emphasis on birds. I think the presence or absence of birds tells us everything about the health of an ecosystem; people who don’t notice bird populations tend to not notice the world beyond humans. Thus, the poems are naturalist notes of a year’s duration. 

I did reference the Cornell site for certain aids in species identification to correctly name who I had seen. Originally, I wrote each poem daily onto a social media platform that had limitations on characters for posts, so I used haiku. I liked that the platform had a bird logo and I was posting bird-naturalism poems. The title is thus a pun.

Sabitha: What’s your next writing project?

Su: There’s a part two manuscript to the work, which is not yet published, but which continued this anachronistic idea of observing the local world and the other life forms with which we exist. I continued to post these daily—where they continued to be as observed as clouds. However, the platform I was using allowed for more character usage, so I used tanka. I hope to see this book fly into physical existence.

The incidence of “naturalism” is in all the work i do—written, visual, or physical; it is a life-long commitment. In truth, I am a second-generation eco-feminist. It informs every aspect of my life.

Since I also review literary works of any genre, I have seen trends in the writing community which tend toward urban violence. Given our times now, this doesn’t strike me as a good direction for the writing community, although it is a bit popular or common. There’s also the perennial reminder of craft—something well-crafted in any art form takes flight in us.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Su: Chirp can be found on the publisher’s website, and it might be available still through Amazon or book fetch sites.  I can be found on instagram (xsuzi00) on Etsy (xsuzi00) and on Bluesky (suzi00).

 Copies of the artist-book, poetry chapbook series Red Mare are only available through Etsy—contact me for international shipping. Submission guidelines are pinned to the Facebook page Pink House.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: It’s always a good time for a space opera! We have James Milne here to tell us about his science fiction story—and as a bonus, it’s free on Royal Road! James, can you tell us a bit about The Tumultuous Tours of Ivy Green?

James: We start off with the action. An alien maid, finding herself falling through the skies above the Earth, without anything to catch her. She is… unlucky. She was an architect, but took a job on a cruiseliner to experience other cultures, because space travel is only for the rich and famous. The story has her bouncing off a few other figures. A gigantic red-skinned woman whose culture might just be the inspiration for demons. A soft-spoken, but easy-laughing woman whose past is a little secret. A professor who could somehow afford the flight as a guest. And a guest who… has bad taste.

Sabitha: That sounds like so much fun. What inspired you to write this story?

James: I started work on The Tumultuous Tours of Ivy Green as part of Camp NanoWriMo, back in March. It took me a few months longer to finish it, but that’s writing. Sometimes you just can’t hold the thread.

That’s the key to being a better writer, really. Everything in writing comes and goes. It is as much an art, as it is anything else, and that does mean that you can lose what you had. It also means that with the right amount of time and focus, you can continue to paint worlds. Sometimes it just needs a break.

Part of the break, was helping to solve the problem of a certain character’s death. It had to happen, it had to feel like something… whilst also feeling somewhat pointless. That it shouldn’t have happened. That was the key to making you feel for them, and the pain of it happening. Vague, I know. But death’s tend to be a turning point in literature. Don’t want to give away everything.

Sabitha: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?

James: I’m really not sure. It’s science fiction, but soft. It’s a little light-hearted, like Doctor Who, but it is more romance oriented than that. But it isn’t a romance novel. If it was anime, I’d stick it right in “Slice of Life”, but it doesn’t quite fit there either. The danger stakes are real. It is certainly an experience.

Sabitha: Do you have a plan for your next writing project?

James: Of course, there’s always more in the machinery. I’ve got about four novels at various stages, and two more short pieces that will hopefully appear before the end of the year. We’ll see how the words flow. But keep an eye out for Official Choices.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

James: They can find The Tumultuous Tours of Ivy Green for free on Royal Road. They can find my stories on Amazon, and find me through my website.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Nothing better than a good fantasy, and we’ve got a great one today. M.C. Burnell, can you introduce us to your novel, Zimanges? 

M.C.: Jendaiar Phos is busy blowing up his life with the help of his estranged younger brother and fellow wizard Hecanthes. When they witness a mysterious magical event that draws the hostile eyes of the local authorities onto them, their fates are thrown together. The good news: the mother he hasn’t seen since he was ten just left Jen a house. The bad news: it’s in Zimanges, the city in the clouds. A crossroads kingdom founded by a bandit.

The house turns out to be huge: they can’t afford to keep it, heat it, and still eat. Not without roommates. Their new friends include a troubled elven seer, a shaman who changes their face as the mood takes them, and a pile of leaves that has a mission for them. A demon has found its way into their world, but not even the pile of leaves knows what a demon is other than Very Bad and Can’t Be Allowed to Hang About. It doesn’t help that the bandit king takes an interest in them while a wave of kidnappings sweeps the city.

This would be so much easier if they were living in a house with furniture.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book? It feels very millenial/zillenial.

M.C.: There’s a long and rather involved backstory with this book, but basically, I wanted to write a fantasy that didn’t gloss past the fact that heroes are still people who need to eat and sleep and support themselves. They have chores. They worry about bills. My cast of seven roommates is brought together in the first place by economic forces. If that sounds grim and introspective, it’s absolutely not; this story is pretty camp. My heroes aren’t, and that means lots of pitstops to get scared, crack jokes, have no idea what to do, and party in their living room.

Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read?

M.C.: Yikes, just one? The City and the City by China Mieville. Beautiful, strange, and bends your brain. What’s not to love?

Sabitha: Excellent choice. Have you ever killed off a character your readers loved?

M.C.: In my epic fantasy We, I killed everyone’s favorite character. It’s a 5-book series and this person dies in the climax, so readers have a lot of time to get invested. Honestly, I was dreading the text from my mother. Happy ending: she didn’t disown me. 

In general, though, I’m not a big character-killer. I feel like we hit a point in fantasy where that got overdone. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a valid choice! Whether more for shock value or just realism. But I personally can’t stay invested in a story unless I’m connected through the people, so I delete judiciously.

Sabitha: A 5-book series, and now Zimages. Sounds like you write a lot! What’s your next writing project?

M.C.: I always have a couple things percolating. One project that got a lot of attention this summer was an epic called The Tipping World, which I’ve been rewriting intermittently for the last 20 years. It was the first thing I ever wrote, and it would be neat to one day share it with the world.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

M.C.: Find me online. You can find Zimanges here.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha:  Pavithra Ramesh joins us again to talk about another fascinating novel.  Pavithra, can you tell us about this coming-of-age story?

Pavithra: Life of a young adult is filled with joy and mystery. No Time to Pause is the story of a typical college student who decides to move miles away from her family to get a high-value education. She faces a host of challenges, encounters varied adventures and meets people who leave a tremendous impact on her life. With the college term ending, she leaves the institution not only as an academic achiever, but also a strong woman ready to face the rough world out there. She realises that life keeps moving on and there is no time to look back or regret.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Pavithra: My personal life as I moved to another country for education away from my family was the biggest inspiration for this book. I met some amazing people and with my love for writing, I knew I had a story to tell the world.

Sabitha: If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Pavithra: Well, I would meet the protagonist Aditi and tell her how proud I am of how beautifully she moulded her life, healing from the past hurt and moving on to make lives beautiful.

Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read?

Pavithra: The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is the best book I have ever come across in the self-help genre.

Sabitha: Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become better writers?

Pavithra: I would just say follow your passion no matter what. Nobody can motivate you better than yourself. Work hard towards what you want to achieve and the feeling is magical.

Sabitha: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?

Pavithra: My target was for young adults, and I received appreciation from them. They loved the book, especially the diversions in between the plots that would keep them longing to know what happened next!

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Pavithra: They can find No Time to Pause on Amazon, and they can find me on LinkedIn.

In the mood for something romantic? The always delightful Rachel Corsini is doing a giveaway of 5 print copies of her romantic comedy Sushi and Sea Lions. Want to curl up with an ex-ballerina finding a new direction—and love along the way? Enter here.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: We love fantasy, and Miya Chisolm has what we’re looking for. Miya, can you tell us about your short story in the anthology Reality’s Lens?

Miya: In Becoming Vengeance, a Goddess turned Mortal finds more than anyone conceived possible when she finds a home among the humans who should worship her. Is the price too high? Becoming Vengeance is a short story in Reality’s Lens, an anthology of short fantasy stories.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Miya: This story was originally written for a contest with FIYAH and Levar Burton. When it wasn’t selected, I decided to hold on to it for a while. Reality’s Lens ended up being the perfect home for it.

Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read?

Miya: The Nightmare-verse trilogy by L. L. McKinney!

Sabitha: Have you ever killed off a character your readers loved?

Miya: More times than I’d like to admit!

Sabitha: What’s your next writing project?

Miya: I’ve got a few different projects I’m juggling! The main focus is a full-length novel inspired by Stardew Valley, but I’m also working on a Bonanza-inspired western.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Miya: See all the places to pick up Reality’s Lens here. Find me on Instagram and Twitter at @miyawritesbooks.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: If you like your science fiction deep, clever, and thematic, but still enjoy a good time while you read, you can’t go wrong with Sarena Ulibarri. Today she’s bringing us Steel Tree, a science fiction retelling of The Nutcracker. Sarena, can you tell us a bit about this wonderful book? 

Sarena: In the agricultural bread basket for humanity’s new colony, there wasn’t supposed to be any native animal life, but farmers have been going missing and rumors abound of something lurking in the shadows. At Klara Silber’s winter harvest party, the introduction of a new android nutcracker should have been the big news—but that’s before one of the guests transforms into a giant rat and goes on the attack.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Sarena: One of my husband’s favorite Christmas traditions is to watch a production of The Nutcracker ballet. One year, I was particularly struck by the scene in which Drosselmeyer gifts two automatons to the Stahlbaum children. I wondered if anyone had reimagined The Nutcracker in a futuristic setting, with the “toys” being robots. When I couldn’t find anything even close to that, I knew I needed to write it.

Sabitha: I’m glad you did! Now that you’ve written it, if you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Sarena: What can an author ever say to their characters except, “I’m sorry I put you through that”?

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Sarena: Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet is based on a novella by Alexandre Dumas, which is itself a reimagining of a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann called “The Nutcracker and Mouse King”. I picked up a book that contained both versions, plus a lengthy intro with historical context, and read the whole thing twice. Like anything written by Hoffmann, it’s weird. 

I borrowed as much from the original as from the ballet, and I also researched a lot about the history of the ballet itself. Every name in the book is a reference—for example, the Pirlipat nut is named after Princess Pirlipat, who is cursed by the Mouse Queen to transform into an ugly doll, and Petipa Colony is named after Marius Petipa, the choreographer who first took this strange story and adapted it into a ballet.

Sabitha: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?

Sarena: I’ve always hoped this could be a book that people would gift to each other for the holidays—and it turned out to be a perfect stocking stuffer size. I wrote it for a general adult audience, but the Publishers Weekly review says, “the prose skews slightly toward younger readers,” which I suppose is true enough. If you’ve seen The Nutcracker a dozen times (whether because of love or obligation) and want to see it with fresh eyes, I hope you’ll enjoy Steel Tree.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Sarena: These days I’m mostly on Mastodon or Bluesky, though I also have an Instagram account @sarenaulibarriauthor. You can find Steel Tree on Amazon or direct from Android Press.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: We love the wild, the playful and the offbeat, and so we jumped at the chance to interview Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec about her poetry collection, Raw. Jennifer, can you tell us about your work?  

Jennifer: My creative work is a collection of poems called Raw, published in August 2023 at Le Lys Bleu Editions in Paris. It weaves together a number of different threads, including a historical vision of the present (with climate anxiety), the value of the arts, teaching before-during-and-after covid, and a quotation from the original Star Trek series.

Sabitha: I love everything you’ve just said about this project. But moving beyond the written word—is there a playlist for your book Raw?

Jennifer: Since it appeared I have discovered the unlikely coincidence of the ZZ Top Album Raw that was released in 2022. There is an eclectic playlist for my poetry, but it does not include hard rock (if my brother Tim is reading, he’s laughing at this point).

The playlist is classical (Bach, Berlioz, Haendel, Debussy, Dutilleux…), includes jazz (Ella Fitzgerald, the Dorseys, Brubeck, Haynes, Shorter…), and rock songs (1960s-1990s). The beat of the book alternates between rhythms of Motown, French popular hits by Reggiani and Montand, and rap by women.

Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read?

Jennifer: I’ve been recommending the poetry of Geoffrey Hill for a couple of decades …

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Jennifer: Interesting question. For a novel, it would be two or three years of research. For poetry there was certainly just as much— if not more —, but it is much harder to quantify since so much of it happened before knew I would write a poem about one subject or another…

Sabitha: Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become better writers?

Jennifer:

• Writers write (several hours a day and/or binge-writing through whole weekends or vacations).
• Listen to your muse. When inspiration strikes, record it immediately.
• Keep essential reference works handy: it is impossible to write without dictionary and thesaurus.
• Devote as much time to reading as to writing.
• Indulge in pastiche and parody.
• Read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notebooks.
• Learn a foreign language (said T.S. Eliot).
• Read literature from other countries (in translation as needed).
• Cultivate as many areas of knowledge as you can in a broad general sweep (read several good newspapers from different regions/countries regularly).
• Read Literary reviews like the TLS or the NYRB.
• Read little-known and well-known poetry magazines and the magnificent websites of the Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets.

Sabitha: What is your next writing project?

Jennifer: I have finished translating Charles Péguy’s L’Argent (1913) and am looking for a publisher. Péguy sounds like he is speaking to our present time, where the only value seems to be about making a profit.

After that appears, who knows, maybe another collection of poems… ?

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Jennifer: I teach at the University of Caen in Normandy and can also be found here. Many of my articles are on the internet, or see “Poems Alive” on Substack. Raw can be purchased directly from Lys Bleu.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: We have Vivianne Knebel here, a woman whose lived an extraordinary life and produced a remarkable memoir, From Rubble To Champagne. Vivianne, can you introduce us to your book and your life?  

Vivianne: My memoir, From Rubble To Champagne, is a story of survival, struggle, and success starting in the ashes of Nazi Germany. The book was turned into a documentary, An Unimportant Girl. 

Sabitha: You describe the importance of your family . How did your mother show her love for you and your sister? How did this love impact you?

Vivianne: My mother was a single mom who kept us alive from falling bombs and Soviet attacks. She worked in the black market to be able to feed us. In her loving arms she made us feel secure, always encouraging us to never let go of a dream that things will get better. A couple wanted to adopt me . Even though it would have made life easier for her to have one less mouth to feed, she would not hear of it. Motherhood was her true calling. She instilled good values in us. This impacted us greatly. To this day my sister and I always looked out for each other. She taught us the importance of love a sense of responsibility and empathy.

Sabitha: You‘ve been an immigrant in more than one country, and even as a child where you were born, you faced struggles to fit in. What does home mean to you and where did you find it?

Vivianne: My values are squarely centered around security, stability, and the value of freedom, which I found in America where so many immigrant dreams are built. This country welcomed me with open arms and it is home to me.

Sabitha: I’m so glad you were welcomed to a happier life. What parallels do you see in your story and other refugees, from Ukraine to Syria and beyond?

Vivianne: Often they arrive in a new country without being in command of the language. Not knowing anyone and no one to fall back on is difficult. Seeing the potential in this country and the hope to build a new life.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Vivianne: You can find me on my website, or on Instagram. You can buy my books on Amazon.