Featured Interview With Aengie Scevity
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, Australia. Most people will have only heard of Darwin through the famous front-page spreads of its newspaper ‘The NT News’, where, more often than not, crocodiles are the star of the day. I live in Melbourne now and though I miss the tropical wildlife of Darwin, I don’t miss the tropical heat. I have two ‘dirty little street cats’ as they’ve been called, a mother/daughter pair of strays I found, fed, tamed, and adopted; they are simultaneously the brightest spark of my day and my biggest worries. Though I am very experienced in cat-ownership, the mother cat is FIV+, which is a first for me and I’ve turned into a bit of a helicopter parent. They are strictly indoor-only cats as, even though crocodiles are no longer a worry for me, the dangers don’t stop there.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Reading has always been in my nature: if my parents took the family out to dinner, I always brought a book; I would read under my desk during class; and, growing up, my friendship with one of my best friends consisted of us just sitting silently reading separate books. At some point in the early 2000s, I found myself unable to stop reading and read every single book in the house. With parents who were both readers, that was not an insignificant number of books. However, I always resisted the pull of being a writer. All I ever heard was how impossible the journey was, and so I refused to entertain the idea. Then, it happened anyway. My education and my interests led me down a path of studying reading and writing and language and it became inexplicably entangled with who I am. I wrote an Honours thesis on my favourite author, then a Doctoral thesis on ideas which fascinated me. Part of my Doctoral thesis was a creative contribution to the field of my studies, which became my first full-length manuscript.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favourite author of all time, without question, is Diana Wynne Jones. Those unfamiliar with her will almost certainly have heard of the Studio Ghibli movie ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, which was based on her novel of the same name. Jones exists, in some degree, in every single novel I write, be it in the names of characters or allusions to her work or ideas pilfered and transformed.
Growing up I was very much a fantasy reader. Then I discovered Margaret Atwood and fell in love with dystopia. I loved science fiction but never thought I was smart enough to write it (I have since proved myself wrong). In recent years I’ve been getting into thrillers; I love a good twisty story tightly woven and shrouded in half-truths and unreliable narrators. I also have a secret love of (some) horror stories however I can’t watch horror movies or play horror video games or I lose all my pretend coolness and aloofness (it’s just social anxiety).
Tell us a little about your latest book?
During my studies I remember reading Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. In that book he says that he sits down every morning and writes one thousand words. They might be good words, they might be rubbish, it might take him no time at all, or it might take him all day to drag words out, but he does it. Every day, one thousand words. He said by following that practice, anyone could have a ninety-thousand word manuscript in three months.
So I said, alright, I’ll give it a go.
At the time I made this decision I had just finished my Doctoral thesis and was suffering a bit of brain-melt from the effort. The last season of ‘Game of Thrones’ was coming out and I finally relented to the wishes of a friend and watched the whole series, just in time to watch the final season. I remember thinking, ‘dang, I love this low-magic fantasy setting of people scrabbling for a throne through whatever means necessary’ and here we are.
I wrote ‘The Owlbear and the Omens’ over a year, which astute readers might notice is ever-so-slightly more than the three months King predicted it would take to write a novel. However, in my defence the novel isn’t ninety-thousand words, but one-hundred-and-eighty-thousand words (oops). Still, I think I’ve got the hang of it now.
In any case, wanted to write a character who was physically incapable of lying (readers of Jones will know where that idea came from), and that became my main character. At the time I was also playing a video game called Dauntless, in which one of the monsters (the Shrike) is clearly an Owlbear. I fell in love with the way it looked and, bada bing, bada boom, it became a part of the novel.
I’m also a massive anime fan and wanted to see the harem/reverse harem trope used purely for political machinations, instead of erotica and after that the story began to fall into place. I also wanted to write a new form of divination and ended up researching the Victorian Language of Flowers, which became my titular Omens.
Add in a royal tournament (my favourite!) with seven different realms of a country, the return of a Lost Prince, and a pinch of murder here and there, my intention to write a novel spiralled into an epic tale. Now I’m looking down the barrel of the two intended sequels and wondering just how long each might take to write.
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