Podscast Interview: Two Gay Geeks

TG Geeks Webcast interview with KD Edwards
0-2:55 = Intro and music

Keith Host: And we welcome back to our show, Mr. KD Edwards and he has some interesting news

Ben: (Interrupting) And for anybody who doesn’t know who KD Edwards is

Keith: (keeps talking) Yeah we’re gonna talk to him, he’s the author of ‘The Tarot Sequence’ and welcome to the show, Keith.

KD: Thanks for having me back guys.

Keith: Sure! So author of my favorite book of all time up to this point I should say

Ben: Yes The Last Sun

Keith: No! The Hanged Man

Ben: Oh The Hanged Man

Keith: It was The Last Sun and then I read The Hanged Man and then it’s gonna be book 3 and I don’t know maybe it will, but I have gone on record that up to this point, The Hanged Man is the best book I have read in my entire life. So..

KD: This is why I come back. I schedule visiting you guys whenever I need an ego boost.

Keith & Ben: (Laughter)

KD: I clearly time it when I need an injection of confidence.

Keith: Ahhh so we’re your therapy then?

KD:(laughing)

Ben: We’re your spirit gays

Keith: We need to start charging you for consultation hours.(chuckles) So for those listeners that don’t know who you are, give us a short explanation and then how you got into writing, what you have done so far and then we’ll talk about some other things.

KD: Okay, well I have two books out in the urban fantasy series called The Tarot Sequence. It more or less imagines or re-imagines a modern-day Atlantis existing in the real world. Side by side magic and technology and the um the new island of Atlantis, the city of New Atlantis is a re-settlement of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts and they’re a bit isolated from the world, so the story is centred in that location and the main protagonist is Rune Saint John, the prince of a fallen court and more or less the entire series is his story arc and one of the main themes of the series is found family and also very heavily represent lesbian and gay issues and of the entire community.

Keith: cool, fantastic. And you kinda got into writing, you have always written but you did some other things that kinda spurred you on to write these novels, correct?

KD: Yeah, well I think since I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. It’s one of the first things I ever remember wanting to be. I read, started reading at an early age, I watched a ton of TV, had Star Wars action figures and I would create these elaborate storylines and um and all of that led to a desire that someday this is what I wanted to do with my life, but then life took over for um (laughs) several decades and the experiences I had living in different places across the country. I think I’ve lived in, I don’t know maybe six or seven states. And then finally wandered into a career that I was really good at as well and I have a job right now that I just adore and I’m stable enough in my normal life that I’ve got the spare time and this was the commitment I made to myself, that when I finally felt I was ready, I would really dive into writing and take it seriously and try to get published. So the last um three or four years seeing that happen has been a dream, literally a dream come true. It’s hard to describe it any other way.

Keith: Yeah and I think it was serendipity that brought us together um prior to The Last Sun release

Ben: Wasn’t it through Dwayne Smokey?

Keith: yes. I can’t remember exactly how that happened, but he introduced us to you and I found….

KD: Well you guys have been, yeah you’ve been there since the beginning. You were the first podcast I ever did

Keith: yeah, so that, that is really cool and so you have The Last Sun was the first book and the second book is The Hanged Man which Ben was just saying

Ben: I gushed over

Keith: haha yeah

Ben: I think its due for a reread

Keith: And so what is it that you’re working on now?

KD: I am thrilled to finally be able to announce um it’s been a process to get to this point, but at the... I have officially signed the contracts for both book 3 and book 4 (Keith and Ben woo) with PYR is my publishing house and there will be audible versions as well.

Keith: Cool! Can you, can you tell us anything about the Tarot 3?

KD: I can! Um not only and um this is just recently got permission to be able to talk about this but I can tell you the title. I’m a little bit nervous I haven’t told anyone yet so (Keith and Ben are going oooooh) and it’s actually, not only is cuz if you know anything about books you don’t get to necessarily to pick the title as an author. You can suggest something, but ultimately they’re gonna pick what they think is best from an editorial point of view and a marketing point of view so I’m really lucky this time that in my head I’ve always called this book what I think they’re gonna call it and its the third book of the first trilogy. I have 9 books planned total so this is a really important book. Its the climax of the first major storyline and it is called The Hourglass Throne.

Keith: (Shocked noises) Okay I’m squeeing in a big way

Ben: Wow (laughs at Keith)

KD: I’m really, I’m really excited because I’ve been laying hints for two novels (Ben shouts yes) something, something was building so readers who’ve been following me along will, they’ll get right away what I mean by The Hourglass Throne

Keith: Exactly

Ben: Oh I get it, I get it. Oh man, I’m so excited now! Where are you at on the writing process? I mean I know that you for anybody that doesn’t follow you and shame on you because you know people should follow you because you are so active on twitter

Keith: Are you shoulding on them?

Ben: Yes I am, I’m shoulding. Uh you’re so very active on twitter and because you’ve written some I don’t want to call them independent but you’ve written some short stories or novellas if you want to call them that. You know one that took place between Hanged Man and or between Last Sun and The Hanged Man and then you just wrote another one that’s you know it was to help you kinda deal with the whole COVID-19 quarantine thing (KD: mmhhmm) you know um and literally written it on twitter. You literally wrote the whole thing all on twitter so you got the stuff that you’ve been writing I mean how has that been affecting your production time?

KD: Well I gotta admit I did take a break from writing Tarot 3 for quite a while, but part of that’s because I am I love outlining. I just plan incredibly deep outlines before I write so it’s not a lie to say I’ve been working on the outline for Tarot 3 for years now. I mean years probably 7 or 8 years. Brainstorming notes have gone into this file and developed over time and to uh a skeleton of an outline and then finally into a scene by scene analysis and so about the time I spend on the outline is my safety net so when I sit down in front of the computer I’m usually influenced by one thing which is the deadline cause it usually sneaks up on me (Ben and Keith chuckle) I look at the calendar and I’m wow I’ve got three months to write a novel (KD chuckles) and the and this time it was two months. I basically gave myself two months where it just works out really well. I’m gonna take a little bit of time off in September especially but all the years I’ve spent working on the outline is gonna be condensed into a two month writing spree and then there will be several months of copy editing and proofreading and things like that but it’s actually going really well I think maybe because for the first time instead of getting scared by that and feeling, feeling like I waited till the last second, I’m just leaning into it and having fun with it. (Ben: Is it) just having an absolute blast.

Ben: Is it uh the success of how well received the first two books have been that uh you it’s changing your personal outlook on your energy and your excitement towards working on the third book?

KD: Yeah I can’t deny that the confidence I get from readers on a daily basis, like a daily basis I uh, what sort of other career do people have where every day someone starts by saying that they love you. Every day someone says a compliment or they say they thank you for writing a story they tell you how much it meant to me. I mean every day I’m interacting with these readers and hearing these amazing stories and um hopefully that I think that’s why I work so hard to share free content back with the readers. Like the mini-stories I did to help myself deal with coronavirus it’s because I mean with what they’re giving me, I gotta give them something else in return. Uh the I never, every author you’ll talk to there are a lot of um especially from Gay and Lesbian authors live David R. Sladin and Gregory Ashe I talked with them both recently and I think they’ll say the same thing that one thing they didn’t expect when they entered writing was the interaction with the readers. You have in your head like what it must be like between authors and readers and the reality is something just wholly different especially when you write something that really hits a chord with people and you can kinda develop a little bit of a following and it’s just I just don’t have I had no expectations for how wonderful it was going to be, how amazing, what a supportive community my readers are, how kind they are to each other, how they form friendships with each other based on my writing. (Ben and Keith agreeing. Making mmhmm noises throughout) How people will reach out and say they that they’re an artist and they’ve been in a dry spell for a year and my story made them pick up a pen and create a sketch. I, it, it just blows my mind. Its, I’m blessed.

Keith: I’m, I’m terribly envious in how they’ve created a meme out of a typo

Ben: oh shoot?

KD: I, I just, I just found that out okay, (Ben and Keith chuckle) Apparently for weeks now ever since I since I published or months since I published the free novella The Sunken Mall, I had this really weird typo and it was attached to a character that swears a lot, so they had all these underground suspicions that it was a new inventive swear that Brand had somehow made up (Ben and Keith laughing) and they, they didn’t just make mem, mem, memes and joke about it, they literally made emojis. They made an emoji with the spelling mistake and I just found out about like last week about that.

Keith: Oh my god.

Ben: Yeah, I read about it too and I was scratching my head because I, cause I understood, you know because, because this was a free distribution it didn’t go through regular copy-editing process like your books have so, any editorial errors that I saw I just kinda blew past and totally forgot all about because I understood that’s what they were. So when people were talking about them, I thought “whaaat?”

Keith: Yeah, there was that one there was a really, it, it was a real egregious typo (breaks off in laughter).

KD: I, I, I uh literally could not even tell you what happened. My guess is I just put my hand down on the keyboard and never went back to that (Keith chuckles) um but it’s, I can’t even be upset about it because I’m just taking so much pleasure into the conspiracy theories and I’m (Ben interrupts: Exactly) going to have to do a novel down the road too. (KD laughs a little)

Keith: Well and it shows you that people are engaged with your work and engaged with the other people that are engaged with your work.

Ben: I mean you’ve literally (Keith adds “yeah”) you have built this community, um and I uh I know, I know that wasn’t your intention when you started this, you just wanted to tell a story. You know but now because of social media, you have the pleasure of actually being able to see this community as they respond and you know I admit to a certain amount of jealousy because podcasters live in the completely opposite side of that scale. We live in very isolated bubbles, so we have no idea you know what everybody says about us.

Keith: Yeah people don’t talk about us

Ben: No, no one talks about us (Keith laughs) so we have no idea so I’m really jealous that you get to have that kind of interaction with uh with your readers like that. Cause I’ve seen the artwork (Keith chimes in: Oh my god) that these and you know I admit to being highly envious of like I wish I could be that kind of creative because I have seen some brilliant, absolutely brilliant artwork there that not only accurately descripts or you know describes the Rune and his relationship with Brand and his relationship with Addam but I’ve seen people do things in their artwork and you respond saying “wow you have no idea how well you are foreshadowing this” you know so (KD adds: oh yeah) so it’s just amazing to see that you have built. There is a Tarot Sequence fandom that you have created here

KD: Well, I think they create themselves personally and there are, everyone you’ll hear people talk about twitter, how it can be a dark place and uh you know a rabbit hole for negative opinions and I’m really careful with who I follow and I also like following people who share my interests and reading and promoting other works of art and talking with each other and they tend to be just so kind and so supportive and genuine that I, its been a great experience for me. I mean twitter’s actually a refuge for me, it’s not necessarily like um a bad thing.

Ben: mmhmm

Keith: right, so um getting back to something that Ben said earlier, where are you in the process on Tarot 3? Are you

KD: October 1st, I’m going to be handing in the first manuscript (Keith interrupts: cooool) so that’s my goal yep and it’s going I’ve been I mean when I say that I’m, it’s like a two-month window where I’m writing heavily. You have no idea I am not a morning person and I’ve been getting up between 630 and 7 every morning um so I can go out and write for a couple hours before work, then right after work and every day that I’m not writing I’m also plotting the scene notes for the following day. This is more or less and all hands on deck period. (Keith interrupts: You have….) but I’m trying to have fun with it this time I’m trying to really enjoy it because there are some really moments that I’ve been waiting to write for years now and that take place in The Hourglass Throne and um I’m almost there I’m almost, for instance, going to get to write the two chapter arc at Lady Death’s compound! I’ve been waiting to write that for years (Keith: oh wow!) so it’s just so exciting to finally be in this! If anything the thing that really frustrates me most is that the lag time between when I’m finally done writing and when I’ll get to share the book with everyone. I just want people to see it now.

Ben: Oh I, I, I fully understand because I mean as excited as I was for The Hanged Man after reading that book now I find that I’m just literally going out of my head wanting to dive back into that world and to read something new and I know that when there was just this horrible delay but you know it was also it was also because there was some really weird things going on with publishers that kind of pushed The Hanged Man back but you know it was still an amazing read so I understand that you know the desire for wanting the fans to read it especially given the fans that you’ve got. I mean they, I’ve, they’re eating your stuff up. They’re devouring everything that comes out of you. You know me included, you know my husband included, so yeah (Keith: I mean I tell everybody about it) yeah any chance we get we tell people you want to read something really great, check these books out. You know so yeah you can deflate your ego just a little bit now.

KD: Eh it’s, I mean it’s definitely been, I mean I have a fantastic publishing house and I love my editor um Rainy Singers is amazing, Jared Weisfeltd who owns Start Publishing which includes my imprint.They, they’re amazing people and they’ve guided my series off the ground, but I also give a lot of credit to readers. The grassroots, like word of mouth recommendation has been amazing. It’s been very gratifying. I’m very humbled to see um usually after a year or two of a book being out you don’t see many new reviews and every day I go into goodreads and I see a new review um including written reviews and its humbling. I mean it’s you know my series is growing, this is what I always wanted, but it’s also pressure especially with the third book because I really want to end this first trilogy on a strong foot. I’m, I’m really happy with the outline and excited to share it but I am more nervous than i was with my second book. (Ben and Keith chuckle) sophomore pains were nothing compared to i don’t even know what you call third book pains. (KD laughs)

Ben: Right? Well that’s, that’s understandable which this now kinda begs the question now uh obviously there’s a contract now for books 3 & 4 so that implies that the publisher is very happy but do you get any sense of how successful, I mean has the publisher gotten back to you or has your agent gotten back to you, to you know express you know the degree of success that the first two books of The Tarot Sequence have been?

KD: I think it’s done well, I mean I know I’m past my first printing on the first book. I know that because (Ben interrupts: Really?) I’ve seen the second printing. I know that the audible in particular has been really strong. It took like 5x the expectations we had going into it (Keith?: Far out) at the end of the day I’m a debut author so like I’m a really, I’m a small little cog in this great gear of um machinery but it’s, we’ve exceeded the expectations that we had, that’s what I know. Past that it’s really difficult because you never get real time sales.By the time you get your royalty statements its easily you know 4 to 6 months beyond when the sales actually happened, but the only thing I, I mean I must be doing well otherwise for them to approach me with the two book contract was, it was, I’m very, yeah I’m still surprised. We were planning on eventually, I was going to finish the third book and then i would turn it into them and then we would talk about a book deal. For them to approach me to lock in 3 & 4 were definitely, that was a sign of trust. It, that was, that was a humbling moment, that was a moment I’m very proud of personally (Keith: well thats cool) that that happened.

Keith: Yeah cause that, that doesn’t happen a lot.

Ben: No, not like that and as far as your audiobooks go, well it also it helps that whoever picked that guy to read those first two books um (KD: Josh Hurley) Josh Hurley um I mean that was a stroke of genius because he really, I mean I could hear the characters in my head as I read the first two books uh cause I read them before I listened to the audios and especially with The Hanged Man. When it came time to hearing Josh’s take on The Hanged Man, I was like holy smokes he, he, he is saying what I was hearing in my head, so they really got a great guy to do that.

Keith: I uh

KD: Well I, when we went into the audible contract to, we first had the publishing contract and then we approached audible and that was literally the, I didn’t even talk money, the first thing i said was we some sort of control over the narrator because we want to get Josh back. I can’t even imagine doing it without him.

Ben: And I think he’d want to do it to because my personal private conversations with him have expressed how much he’s really enjoyed this stories and he likes to see where they’re going, so you’ve got a fan in Josh as well.

KD: Yeah, he’s great, he’s a, he’s just a, it always surprises me when you had mentioned on one occasion that there’s a type of reader who will buy the book, but they’ll also buy the digital version and the hard version and then they’ll buy the audible (Ben: That’s us) and I’m simply amazed that I have a lot of readers who do that because once they read the story they like hearing it again and um spoken audibly say when they’re driving places that just blows my mind.

Ben: Yeah, I love to listen to audiobooks when I’m working so and I’m at this point now where it’s okay I don’t have anymore audiobooks to listen to, so I was like okay I think it’s time to do another, another pass through the first two books of The Tarot Sequence.

KD: Yeah but that says a lot about Josh. I mean you wouldn’t want to play a voice or a narration that grates on you and he just did such a masterclass job (Ben: he did) on that.

Keith: I have never really listened to audiobooks but I would like to that one specific swear from Brand (KD laughs) you know which one I’m talking about?

Ben: Yeah the one that made us laugh out loud when we both read it

KD: It’s, it’s coming back again I’ll tell you that but it’s not going to be Brand who says it.

Keith laughs

Ben: Interesting! I will say Josh did a really good job when he got to that part of the book. It makes me smile every time I hear it.

Keith: It makes me smile when I think about it.

Ben: That too. It’s probably one of the most inventive swears I’ve ever read and uh which you know it comes back to the big question and and I sense that I’m asking, this will be the third time that I’m asking this of you because I sense that there’s an evolution that’s taking place here and that is how much are these characters directing? Now obviously as you said earlier, you’re doing a lot of outlining a lot of plotting as to where you want this story to go, but um the more you work with these characters especially having done The Sunken Mall and the Quarantine Sequence, how much are they really talking to you now?

KD: Oh all the time. I mean part of it is cause each of them represent a facet of my personality. You know Brand is my in your face, gruff, if he’s upset about something he’ll put it into very clear words what he’s upset about whereas Rune tends to be much more of the formal um speaker, though probably processing I think things a little bit sarcastically behind his eyes as he’s speaking formally. The uh, it gets to the point when I write cause the outline contains a lot of the details, it contains a lot of the plot points that happen in the scenes and then you gotta stitch it together with dialogue. And by far that, I can, I do not have fun with anything more than I have fun with dialogue. That is like the biggest treat, like when I have a morning that is mostly a dialogue scene because they just speak, i basically sit there with my hands on the keyboard and their voices are already in my head.

Ben: So you’re taking dictation?

KD: It does, um you’ve heard that story before? About was it Michael J. Strasinsky?

Ben: Joe Michael Sasinsky, yeah how he would that yeah. He would take dictation and listen to the characters of Londo and Jakar bicker with each other.

KD: Yeah and it doesn’t happen overnight, but there does reach a point where it just clicks and they’re no longer characters that you’re writing, they’re characters that are inside of your head and they’re ready to speak.

Ben: Yes, yeah that’s so, oh man there’s so many more questions I want to ask, but we’re up against the red line and it’s killing me so unfortunately we’re out of time, but um if people want to find your stuff, where can they find it?

KD: I definitely spend a lot of time on twitter. I think that’s the heart of my social media presence and that is @kdedwards_nc Basically where to find KD’s books and they all say goodbye to each other.