Featured Interview With Y K Willemse
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m a fantasy fiction author, coffee addict, and music teacher. I was raised all over the place. I was born in Christchurch, NZ, but have lived in many places throughout New Zealand and have also lived in Australia. I am an Australian citizen, and my husband and I are heading back to Oz next year. We’re planning to live in Queensland. I do currently have a beautiful Yorkshire Terrier dog, who is absolutely tiny. But I don’t want to put her through the stress of moving, so I am leaving her behind in New Zealand with a friend. I may get another pet in Australia. I know I will certainly get back into bird watching in Australia, as the parrots over there are amazing. And I still want to meet one of my lifetime goals, which is to see a wedge-tailed eagle.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve always loved words, but I probably didn’t start reading with any kind of dedication until I was ten. And that was when I started writing my own books as well. I began my very first book (which is published today and called Rafen) at age ten years old.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I like Mark Lawrence as an author, and I also love Thomas Hardy. I’ve greatly enjoyed many Dickens books over the years. I love books that are real emotionally. They could be in any genre, but they have to be honest about the reality of what it means to be human and how various events might effect a real person. For this reason, I found The Gulag Archipelago, I Am David, and Bridge to Terabithia very moving – even though all of these are vastly different books.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Okay – I have a book that will be coming out soon, but I’ll tell you about my fourth book in The Fledgling Account series, which is the one that has been most recently released. It’s called The Fourth Runi, and I wrote most of it when I was about fourteen, but it turned out really horrible, so I rewrote it a number of times until it read well. It also nearly killed me to edit it when the first edition released, because we were running so late with the deadline that I was rushing through the revisions with only two weeks until the release day.
Anyway, The Fourth Runi is again all about the ex-slave boy Rafen who is quickly rising to a prominent position in the kingdom of Siana. Rafen falls in love with the Princess Etana (which is about as awkward as it sounds) at almost the same moment her betrothed Richard Patrick returns to Siana to rule. While Richard Patrick makes rather odious overtures to Etana, Rafen discovers to his amazement and fear what the phoenix feather he has possessed for so long means. It sets him apart as the only one who can destroy the sorcerer the Lashki Mirah and the demonic force from which he draws his powers: Nazt. Instead of immediately seeing this as an impetus to begin working responsibly towards carrying out these actions, Rafen first uses this information as leverage to marry Etana. Despite their mutual affection for one another, he quickly discovers this rash act was a mistake, as it throws him and Etana into a whole lot of trouble. And while he’s distracted with all of that, the Lashki Mirah himself appears and decides to try feeding Rafen to Nazt.
Much of this book takes place in the mountains in which the Lashki created a new body for himself. This is why there are evil looking mountains on the front cover the second edition.
You can find the book (and its prequels) here: https://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=y+k+willemse
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