About Aengie Scevity:
I'm an author based in Melbourne Australia with a PhD from the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences of my alma mater.
I write the stories I like to read and what I like to read is ambitious novels that push expectations. Sometimes it's literary fiction with a focus on the big questions of the day, and sometimes it's exploring tropes in a new light.
That's the basis of my debut "The Owlbear and the Omens", I wanted to play the reverse harem trope for political intrigue rather than erotica.
What inspires you to write?
Like many, I'm inspired partly by the media I consume and partly by my life experiences. I've been inspired by watching my parents age, by "A Game of Thrones", by "Avatar: the Last Airbender"; the list goes on. I'm inspired by dynamics and how they might play out when put in opposition to one another.
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
My favourite author of all time is Diana Wynne Jones; readers might be familiar with the Ghibli movie "Howl's Moving Castle", which is based on one of her books. It was from Jones that I pilfered the idea of a character unable to lie.
Growing up I read every Tamora Pierce book a thousand times over. I just adored them.
As an adult I love Jennifer Fallon and have read the "Demon Child" and "Wolfblade" trilogies until they were falling apart. "The Owlbear and the Omens" carries a lot of references and takes a lot of inspiration from Fallon, in particular from her fictional land of Fardonyha.
Tell us about your writing process.
Typically, I start with an idea and for "the Owlbear and the Omens" I wanted my main character to be unable to lie.
At the time I was playing a lot of the video game "Dauntless" and fell in love with the design of the "Shrike" behemoth, which was essentially an Owlbear. That formed the starting point of the legendary beast which had blessed/cursed my main character. At the time of the idea, I was also binge-watching all of "A Game of Thrones" for the first time, and so I wanted to write a low fantasy political intrigue for the setting.
I struggle with naming characters; names are step one of writing for me. Then I write my characters into the situation which forms the basis of the plot. After that I can only take it one step at a time. Though I always know what the eventual end-point will be, getting there is a surprise and I can't jump around. I have to write everything in the order in which it will be written.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I do not. I think about them constantly and how they might get through the problems they are facing but I do not talk to them. Instead, I will imagine them in a setting relevant to their circumstances. For "The Owlbear and the Omens", my main character is surrounded by a selection of distinct confidantes, so I will imagine how they would advise her. For another book in which the main character is all alone, I imagine how they would get through a problem based on their own strengths. I will sometimes dream of my books though, which is always a startling experience!
What advice would you give other writers?
The writing is the easy part. No, really. I have four (almost five!) complete novels that I love just as much as the work of my favourite authors, but without hard work they will go nowhere. For the publishing industry, hard work means reaching out to literary agents and publishers, planning advertising campaigns and advance reviews and sales periods months in advance. It's really, really tough and uncertain and unfortunately the only way to learn is through experience. I wouldn't even call myself experiences, I'm still just bumbling around trying out different ways to get eyes on my work and seeing what works for me personally.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
As mentioned, I have four (almost five!) complete manuscripts and all of them have been through rigorous months-long periods of pitching them to agents and publishers but those people are only human and they are swamped. It's incredibly slow and filled with rejection because there are just that many wonderful writers querying those agents. It's been near-impossible to get even a request for more materials and though I had the confidence-boosting experience of being shortlisted for a major award, so far traditional publication hasn't led anywhere.
Finally, I gave in and decided to try self-publishing and the choice of which manuscript to self-publish was obvious. I'd been told over and over again by agents that they would not consider a manuscript over 110,000 words, and at 180,000 words, the chances of "The Owlbear and the Omens" ever seeing the light of day in traditional publishing were practically zero. So it became my learning grounds for self-publication. No regrets, so far, but there's been a massive learning curve and a lot to do better next time.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think a lot of about AI and what it means for the creative industries. I actually engage with Large Language Models very frequently because I genuinely enjoy the conversation with them and trying to understand what influences the way they form their responses. That being said I've also studied their creative output and found their attempts at narratives to be formulaic and lacking distinct personalities in characters. I believe that, yes, there will be a period of time in which the market becomes beyond saturated with on-demand novels written by AI, but like in the same way that we have learned to distinguish AI images from real, we will learn to distinguish AI novels from real. There's a nuance of humanity missing that, at least for now, cannot be replicated. Publishers will likely implement strict guidelines on how a manuscript was created and refuse to publish anything not by a human author, resulting in an ever-more elite status for traditional publishing.
What genres do you write?: "The Owlbear and the Omens" is fantasy. Low-fantasy, political-intrigue, but fantasy all the same.
What formats are your books in?: eBook, Print
Website(s)
Link To Aengie Scevity Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
