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Meet Kayti Nika Raet!
Hello!
As part of our Dystopia month, we have the wonderful Kayti Nika Raet down for a visit. Kayti is the author of The Outsider Chronicles (five book series. Three out so far) a YA dystopia featuring a badass girl with a baseball bat. Set in a world where the rain burns like acid and flesh-eating monsters roam…
Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Kayti Nika Raet moved down South when she was 11, where she was bitten by the writing bug, as well as other, less friendly insects.Â
She is the author of the Outsider Chronicles, a five book series starting with NIKO and set in a world where the rain burns like acid and flesh eating monsters roam.
She’s also a reviewer for Readers’ Favorite and has her own Youtube Channel: Kayti Edition.
When she is not hard at work on her fourth book she has fun reading, listening to K-pop, and photography.
Kayti lives in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Now for some questions…
So, when did you know that you wanted to be a writer? Was there a single moment of clarity or did the knowledge just creep up on you?
I was always writing, and telling stories, but it wasn’t until I was fourteen that becoming a writer became an active goal of mine. And it wasn’t until I was twenty-two that I finally succeeded!
Tell us about your writing schedule. Do you write everyday? At the weekends? Or, like us, whenever you get the chance?
I try to write a thousand words a day and take a couple of days off every two weeks, but lately, that hasn’t been happening and now I write whenever I have the chance. Â
What is it about the Dystopian genre that inspires you?
I think it’s the fact that Dystopia at its heart, is a failed Utopia. It’s a world where an attempt at stability and structure in the face of epic disaster moved to the extreme of repression, “other-ing”, and control. And while most dystopias focus on the future, it’s actually quite easy to find dystopian elements in history: Rome, the Antebellum American South, World War II Germany, Post War Eastern Europe, etc. They provide good templates to write by, and I’ve always found the distortion of theories and ideals fascinating.
If you could step into any Dystopian future what would it be and why?
All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin. Even though water is strictly rationed, the mafia runs everything, and things like chocolate and coffee are illegal, there are no zombies, or death matches, so my chances of survival are quite high!
Zombies are busting down your door, what four objects do you grab? Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
These are slow zombies, right? If not, I’m totally dead…
Duct tape, sturdy pair of boots, hatchet, water bottle.
I’d probably get bit anyway because I have no endurance whatsoever, but hopefully I can take out a few before that happens!
How do your storylines evolve? Do you already have it planned where you want to go, or do you let the story take you along with it?
I usually know what’s going to happen in the first few chapters, and I’ll have a vague idea about the climax, but most of the time I let the story and characters take the lead.
If you could choose any Dystopian book in the world to have written which one would it be and why?
Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. It’s more post-apocalyptic than full blown dystopian, but the trilogy was very engaging.The writing style is very sparse, and the pacing is much slower than I would normally write, but I love how she set up a society forced to live around zombies. Not to mention the creative ways they make use of them in the cities.
If you could be any character from a book who would it be and why?
I answered this question in a previous interview and the answer remains the same. Anya from All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin. She’s the daughter of a black market chocolate dealer, things in her world have seriously gone to pot but despite everything she’s really cool, and smart, and resilient.
What advice would you give to other writers of Dystopian fiction out there who are thinking of self-publishing their work?
Edit, edit, edit.
Oh, and find a community of writers, be engaging, not spammy on social media, and realize that writing your book is the easy part.
Who is, or are, your favourite author(s)?
Dia Reeves, Justine Larbalestier, Brandon Sanderson, Sarah Rees Brennan, Scott Westerfeld… I can go on…
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Okay, some quick fire questions! Don’t think too hard. Just answer…
Super Villain or Super Hero?
Super Villain. Way more fun!
Ice-cream or chocolate?
Chocolate.
Beach or the skiing holiday?
Beach. I like the water.
Keep the One Ring or throw it in Mount Doom?
That’s a Lord of the Rings reference. Haven’t read, or watched it, so I can’t say.
Audio or book?
Book. My brain goes on tangents with audio and I miss a lot.
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Zombie Apocalypse weapon of choice: Axe or Shotgun?
Axe. It’s simple, multi-purpose, effective. Also I don’t have to spend time hunting for shotgun shells… not to mention making sure I’ve got the right kind.
You can find Kayti…
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NEW NOVEL!
HI!
We’re back in the self-publishing realm after some months of pondering and things! We’ve got some projects we’ll be publishing traditionally, but we also want to keep our feet in the waters of indie publishing 😀
So our new novel is now available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle. It’s called Aurora – a Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Romance – releasing on 27th February 2015. Woo Hoo! Links below! 🙂
Three hundred years ago humanity almost eradicated itself…almost, but not quite. As is the persistence of human kind, we hung on; we survived, but the world as we knew it was changed forever. The exact details of what happened have been lost in time. All we know is that this is our world now and we have no choice but to live in it.
Oz and his sister True have been travelling for as long as they can remember. Ma feels that staying on the move is safe, that it prevents them getting lazy and complacent. It’s a better way to avoid bandits and raiders, a more effective way to stay alive. But the thing, the person that protects them is Oz – a lethal fighter who will go to any lengths to defend his family.
Oz makes money from cage fights while dreaming of a better life for them all – a home where they can be truly safe. True dreams of freedom, love and hope and just when she thinks she’s found it their world is turned upside down and they are forced to embark on a journey that rips them apart. For when True is taken by an unknown enemy Oz must enlist the help of a man from the shadows to save her.
A Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian Romance, filled with action, adventure and fantasy.
AMAZON UK
AMAZON US
Announcement – Goodbye, Indie Author Land…
Hi, everyone 🙂
Okay, so we have an announcement to make. We have removed all our work from publication. It is time, we feel, to keep pestering literary agents with our manuscripts, go down the traditional path and all that jazz. We’re rebooting, so to speak. But we’ll still be around. This blog will still be active and we’ll continue to promote and discuss all things indie author – we know how much hard work it is.
We have loved the ride and enjoyed self-publishing so much, but we want to go down this path now. We are working on another novel – a fantasy – which we are very excited about! And we have work out there doing the rounds with literary agents.
Massive thanks for all the love and support. Keep watching the skies for our books to come in the future.
Big love and hugs to all of you xxx
Amos and CassidyÂ
NEW RELEASE!
TAINTED SNOW
The second volume in the Tales from Beyond the Veil Series…
AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON AND AMAZON UK
Princess Snow is adored by her people, her gentle and delicate nature means that she is spoken of with love and respect throughout the Kingdom of Crystal. Even her voracious sexual appetites do little to besmirch her name; all they do is make her human, relatable. Her life would be perfect if she wasn’t living in the magnificent shadow of her step-mother the Queen.
The Queen’s distaste for Snow is also a well-known fact, and the tortures she puts Snow through are many and varied. Her her distaste morphs into something more dangerous when Prince Zale – the Prince of Seas – chooses Snow over her. The Queen’s resulting actions set the course for a destruction that will leave little standing in its wake.
Will Snow find happiness, or will the curse placed upon her destroy her completely?
NEW RELEASE!
HELLO! 🙂
Check out our brand new novella ‘The Emporium’ 🙂
Available now on Amazon Kindle from AMAZON US and AMAZON UK.
Finally free of her abusive ex, Kara is enjoying a Greek vacation when she stumbles across The Emporium. It is a place full of visual delights, a place that is more than it seems, and a place where Kara will experience pleasures she had thought impossible. For when the mysterious Kincaid gets his hands on her supple flesh, her heart will never be the same.
The respite is over too soon and Kara returns home to England, to normality, until The Emporium appears in her home town and Kincaid is determined to finish what he started.Â
It seems that Kara has brought The Emporium with her. Little does she realise that she has brought something else also, a haunted being that only she can free from its eternal torment.
Kara’s life just went from mundane to magical…
*A novella of approximately 18K words*
The Future of the Crimson Series
Hello 🙂
After much soul-searching, we have decided that, as it stands, the proposed plot for Crimson Frost (#4) does not justify a novel right now. It just will not work. We’re sorry, please forgive us 😦 We love you all! It would just mean that we’d have to introduce a brand new arc, more novels in the series, which we cannot do right now. As a standalone, it would just fail as it would all be crammed in one, with no room to breathe.
There are lots of other stories queued up in our heads, waiting to be told, and with stuff happening in our personal lives – Amos with his uni degree and Cassidy with babies and her busy life – more Crimson just isn’t going to happen right now with other novels waiting not so patiently to be written, the characters yelling at us! We don’t want to just bang something out. It has to be EPIC! For now, we have come to a climax of sorts when it comes to Crimson. Yet the door is left wide open and it doesn’t mean we won’t continue the series in the future.
Thank you so much for reading the series! 🙂 We really appreciate it 🙂 And thank you for putting up with our procrastination.
Love and hugs,
Amos Cassidy
amoscassidy 