AMoRaR Interview – Kai Zeal

A Month of Rain and Reads Interviews4 months ago13 min readAdd comment

Welcome to A Month of Rain and Reads, a celebration of self-published and indie SFF throughout the entire month of November. To find out how you can take part and view the whole list of content, visit our introduction post.

Today, we share an interview with Kai Zeal, author of the Riyati series.

Our theme for November is A Month of Rain & Reads. Do you subscribe to the idea of curling up with a good book while the rain pours down outside? What book would you read? Would you bring tea and a blanket? What would make the moment perfect?

Especially if it’s cooler out, burrito’ing in with a book and blanket sounds wonderful! I’d have either earl grey or spiced chai tea and an electric blanket, and very likely, a cat on my feet once they found out about said electric blanket. A nice fireplace in a dark or dim room would really complete the atmosphere. As for a book, I’d be happy to read near anything that isn’t academic articles at this point (yay for grad student life), but I’m especially a fan of creative nonfiction like memoirs and autobiographies. I love the strong voices these works tend to have and how close to the author I feel.

What else do you want our readers to know about you?

I’m a real life smol (under 150cm/4’11”), with three demanding overlords. Buying my books contributes to their catnip addictions, so purchase responsibly.

More seriously, I’m a PhD candidate in my fourth year now (almost to my dissertation stage!), and have been writing most of my life. My specific research is in critical disability studies, often through a queer or feminist lens, and I’ve been writing most of my life now. Individual voice – whether in prose or in research – is something very important to me, as is exploring social injustices in our current world. My writing often tackles these subjects, some of them from my own experiences or those that I’ve known throughout my life, others from the stories I’ve learned throughout my academic career.

Why did you decide to self-publish, and what has been your biggest success so far?

One of the recurring themes I’ve heard from traditional publishing is marketability and risk analysis. This makes perfect sense for a traditional publisher that must make back what they invest, but it comes at the cost of more experimental storytelling. Riyati is a series I’ve been working on for over twenty years now, and I have a very set vision of what I want from certain aspects of it – some of which would definitely hinder its marketability to a traditional publisher. Maintaining a true vision to what I’d like to represent was my biggest priority and what led me to pursue self publishing over querying a traditional publisher.

As for my biggest success, in some ways I think it’s getting the series out there at all! As I mentioned, I first started working on this series in my pre-teen years (though it’s very different now than what I had in mind then), and it’s gradually developed and changed over time. I needed to take around a decade hiatus in my twenties due to some life events, and I decided to reboot the series once I was ready to engage with it once more. What’s now Riyati Rebirth actually was written from page one about five times, completely separate drafts with different visions, and it’s been both humbling and amazing seeing others enjoy the series I’ve wanted to share with others for so long now.

What is your favourite thing about being an indie author?

This is definitely a question where my answer changes depending on the day. Two major things come to mind, however: the first is the control. I love that I get to directly interact with readers and present my vision of my story without any executive influence. The second is the variety. While it was very overwhelming at first (and can still be sometimes even now), the numerous roles of indie self pubbing keeps me on my toes and makes sure no day is dull or repetitive. I get to interact with readers, do the more traditional author things of writing and editing, learn and practice marketing, and work with vendors directly, and I’ve come to view it all as a very fun challenge.

Your book Riyati Rebirth describes itself as contemporary low dark fantasy. How different is that from more conventional mainstream Urban Fantasy? How dark does it get, and what can readers expect from your books?

One of the first differences with urban fantasy is that the city most of Riyati Rebirth, Riyati Rivals, and Riyati Ripple take place in isn’t technically “big” enough for the “urban” label! It’s a small college town, so there’s a mixture of small town elements that definitely doesn’t fit in the “urban” genre. While Riyati does have some urban fantasy elements, it also doesn’t utilize many of the common urban fantasy tropes, which is why I err towards contemporary low fantasy as a descriptor instead: the series takes place in the modern era and definitely approaches magic in the “low fantasy” angle, but isn’t quite urban fantasy.

For the second part, quite dark! I definitely recommend checking each book (or the series as a whole)’s content warnings before reading. That said, the series isn’t grimdark either. There are a lot of bad things going on, but there are elements of hope and empowerment through the corruption, discrimination, and abuse that occur. As an author, I also do my best to portray any dark subjects with sincerity and respect; many things that occur in Riyati happen in real life – magically or mundane – and I see them as subjects deserving genuine discourse and hope to provide a voice to those individuals.

What themes are important to you, and how are they reflected in your writing?

Series-wide, legacies, trauma, and found family definitely stand out. Everyone “comes” from somewhere, and the path they walk is often influenced not just by what they experience but from a line of experiences tracing up generations. In Riyati, that’s taken to a magical extreme due to reincarnations and those skeletons still haunting the present, even thousands of years later, but there’s also instances of parents influencing children and how that affects those children – with classist views towards others, with how someone views themselves and the world and their ability to influence it. Of course, many of the characters at the start of the series are still in high school, and they’re still growing up and learning who they want to be, what paths they want to walk or even view as accessible to them. Magic complicates those concepts for the protagonists, but at its core, their struggles are everyday ones: the family legacies – wealth and disparities, empowerment and trauma – they were born into and how they want to shape their own legacy as they come of age. And as they begin to walk their paths, they come to find that their closest allies and who they rely on might not be those they share blood with but those that they’ve chosen as their family for one reason or another.

What is the best book to start with in the Riyati series for a new reader?

There’s two really great entry points! Both Riyati Rebirth and Riyati Origins work for new readers; Riyati Rebirth is the first book in the series, but Riyati Origins is a prequel novella that readers can get for free by signing up for my monthly newsletter. I’ve also had readers start with Riyati Rivals (book II) and say they kept up without too much issue, and starting in Riyati Ripple, I have a previous books’ summary to help jog the memory of previous readers and catch up new readers. So any book technically can be a starting point, but if you’re looking to get into the series, I definitely recommend Riyati Origins or Riyati Rebirth as the easiest books to jump into.

What are you working on next? Can you tease us?

My next immediate projects, likely to no one’s surprise, are books four and five for Riyati. However… after that, I have something special lined up that I can’t wait to share! It’s within the Riyati universe, and something I hope to really help tie together everything in the series thus far.

The Fluffy Overlords. From top to bottom: Krishna, Shyama, Hari

And a few quick questions. What’s your favourite…

…book, in recent times?

So it’s a nonfiction book, but How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis was groundbreaking for me. As someone disabled and in grad school, the balancing act of life is hard sometimes, and I think we can all use more compassion toward ourselves in trying to make it day to day right now, which is something I definitely got from this book.

…game, in recent times?

This is a super hard one for me, both because what are we calling recent (what do you mean PS2 games are old enough to drink alcohol in the US on average now???) and because there are a lot of contenders. I would say either Ai: The Somnium Files or Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The former is a very dark detective visual novel (VN), but has some of the best foreshadowing and overall plot execution I’ve ever seen. It is a rather graphic game that has some very adult humor though, as a heads up! For Xenoblade Chronicles 2, this game is much more flawed in almost all respects compared to the above, but the cast and overall plot focusing on trauma, healing, and hope really sticks with me. In general, I’m a very big Xeno fan, and am happy to (finally) be able to say I’ve played them all now (including Gears and Saga) that Xenoblade Chronicles X DE came out!

…writing advice?

I think the best writing advice I’ve heard is “There are no rules, only guidelines. Every rule has been successfully broken at least once.” It’s easy to embrace prescriptive, generic writing advice, but with the right direction, every rule (even basic grammar!) can be broken. That’s not to say that the guidelines aren’t there for a reason – they absolutely are – but if an author has a reason for breaking a rule and intentionally does so, that’s absolutely a great thing to embrace and part of the wonder of the creative process.

…advice for someone who wants to publish their own book?

Be honest with yourself and your expectations. Publishing is a lot of work, and there will likely be disappointment, setbacks, and obstacles. I find that being honest with myself on what I’m wanting from the publication process (is it to share the work I love? To make as much money as possible from the book? To figure out the publishing process a bit better?) helps both set intentions and expectations.

…source of inspiration?

Music and other media in general, for sure. I love studying craft and structure in other media so I better understand how elements are executed on a technical level, and also, to help me figure out why I love the things I love. I’m able to think about characters and plot from different angles by observing how others do both similar and different things as myself, even if it’s in a different medium (such as visual instead of prose).

…way to clear your mind when everything gets a bit much?

Outside of playing/petting my cats or talking to people in my support network, I’m a big fan of resting in a pitch black, silent room for a few minutes or half an hour. Often, I get overwhelmed or overstimulated, and just the lack of stimulus can be very helpful in metaphorically releasing a big breath to recenter myself.

Do you have any last words? Any shoutouts to authors who have supported you or whose books have inspired you?

I am, alas, legally mandated to first and foremost shoutout my fluffy co-writers, as they both know when and where I sleep, and also, how to prevent me from doing so at 2am. (They rule the house, we just pay rent and expenses.) Outside of the fluffy overlords, there have been so many authors that have supported me so far – one of the things I’ve appreciated most about the indie author community is how collaborative and supportive everyone is, working to build each other up. In particular, I’d like to shout out Liz Sauco and Dax Murray, who both have taught me so much in regards to the publishing aspect – I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started out, and now I only mostly don’t know what I’m doing, which is a huge improvement in large part thanks to them both!

Kai Zeal

Kai Zeal (she/her) got her start writing fanfiction as a child, creating an awareness of tropes, characterization, and the importance of retellings. From there, she refined her analytical skills both in academia and through fandom with critical analysis of media to gain a better understanding of how the parts of a work come together to form its whole.

She has degrees in psychology, writing, higher education administration, and is pursuing a PhD with a research focus on critical disability studies through a queer, feminist lens. In her free time, she’s a lifelong gamer, particularly of JRPGs, many of which have shaped her storytelling strategies and love of media.