Interview with Kendare Blake!

Interview with Kendare Blake, author of Three Dark Crowns

Hi Cassidy!

I'm back from book tour now, so finally, here are the answers to your fabulous interview questions! Apologies for the delay!

What made you want to become an author? 

Reading, definitely. I LOVE to read. Have since I was a kid. I was one of those kids who dragged my mom to the library every weekend in the summer to check out the same eight unicorn books. And I never stopped reading (except for a brief hiatus during college term time when textbooks sucked out my soul). All of those stories, all of those worlds, really made me want to tap into my own.

What inspired you to write How old were you when you realized you wanted to write?

I've been writing creatively as a hobby since I was about twelve. In seventh grade, I wanted to see if I could write something "book length". And I could, and it was terrible, as one would expect, though perhaps not too terrible for a twelve-year-old's first attempt. No, I take that back, it was just pretty terrible. 

What inspired kathrine, Arisnoe, mirabella? 

THREE DARK CROWNS was inspired by a swarm of bees. I was at a book event outdoors, and there was a big ball of bees right next to the hot dog truck. Like, half a basketball of bees, just stuck in the fork of a tree. But I really, really wanted a Seattle dog, and as luck would have it, a beekeeper was there who told us not to worry, that the bees were swarming around their queen in the middle. I found this queen in the middle of a ball fascinating, and over the course of the day learned a lot about bees, including that before a queen leaves her hive, she'll lay four or five queen eggs, which will then hatch out and kill each other. The last queen standing inherits the hive. And that's where the idea for THREE DARK CROWNS came from. 

Why do you like to write? 

Because it's fun. Because I have to or I get cranky and restless. Because the characters and stories in my head give me no peace otherwise. But most of all, living out a story, telling it as it goes, like it's being happening somewhere else and my fingers are just trying to type fast enough to keep up with it, feels like magic.

Will there be a sequel to Three Dark Crowns? 

Yes. Out next year! 

Did you ever imagine your book to become what they are now?  

Never. I mean, of course I dreamed, but it was just a silly daydream. I'm not one of those people who thought, well hell yeah people will love this and it will be a huge success. Do those kind of people even exist?

What was the process behind Three Dark Crowns?

Write, then write it over again. Then realize it still wasn't right, and start over a third time. Then finish the whole thing, let it rest for months, reread it, figure out it STILL wasn't right, and do the whole thing over, for the fourth time, from top to tails. Then, line-edit and nitpick like normal. This was a very uncommon process for me. I've never had to redo something so many times to be satisfied with it.

  Did you ever have any doubts when writing? What is your best and worst genre of writing?

The doubts go away when I'm actually writing, and come back after I'm done. Did I do everything I could? Will people respond this way or that way? Did I tell it how I wanted to tell it? Is it utter crap? Those thoughts don't go away, not after the first book, nor after the last. As for best and worst genres, I can't judge. I only write genres that I love to write in.

How long will you write for?

Forever. Professionally, however long they'll let me. 

Will you ever write in contemporary?

I have. It's a novel called Sleepwalk Society about going home after your first year of college and how your friendships from high school change and everything is changing and wow it's scary and stupid and messed up but you find your way through.

What's your next book?What's the future of your writing?  

Next up is the sequel to THREE DARK CROWNS, out next fall. And then there will be two more books that haven't been announced yet. And then...who knows. I've got ideas. Hopes. I wouldn't call them plans yet, but there's something there.

Thanks for having me by the blog, Cassidy!

-Kendare