I’m a twenty-five-year-old self-published novelist. Born in October, I’m a Libra and proud! I live in Kansas with my husband, an aspiring video game designer, and together we thrive in a household built on love and creativity. I have two series going at the moment: The Lost Angelsseries, and the Titanomachy series.
What genre do you write and why?
I tend to hippity-hop between them. One minute I’ll be working on a horror story and then a Young Adult plot will get into my head. Often, though, I tend to write a lot of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. I have a bad habit of combining them, so I tend to get an unholy mixture of this and that a lot of the time.
Tell us about your book
The Gilded Cage is a steampunk/post-apocalyptic novel that centers around Shiloh and Rilei Beaumont (from the perspective of Shiloh herself), two sisters who spent their entire lives locked away from the outside world—until they’re taken out of their little sanctuary.
Their quest to return home will take them through the darkest parts of a ruined world teeming with human corpses mutated into nightmarish monsters, slavers hungry to make a profit off the helpless, androids forgotten by the passage of time, and surgeons perverting the line between right and wrong. But no matter what the world throws at them, Shiloh will do anything to make sure her sister gets home safe.
But what if home isn’t safe?
What was your inspiration for this book?
Before this story was even born I kept thinking about wanting to write something that focuses on two girls in a tower. I knew from the get-go that it would be post-apocalyptic, I just couldn’t figure out why they would be stuck in the tower and what would get them out—and what getting out would mean for them. I had a base idea but no way to idea of how to execute it.
From there it was a matter of brainstorming the details, which I find comes to me best in the throes of writing. Over the time it took for me to write, the world within the novel came together just the way I wanted it to and The Gilded Cage was born.
Do you have a favorite character and why that one?
Honestly, it’s a tie between Shiloh and Garth as my favorite characters.
Shiloh because I adore her and the journey she goes on. That’s what the Titanomachy series is mostly about, after all. The internal journey a person goes through when in the midst of difficult times. Shiloh has to step up and take care of her sister at all costs. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have a clue what’s going on either, or that she’s scared too. She’s there for Rilei 110% even at the expense of her own sense of well-being.
Garth for much the same reason, though a lot of his journey isn’t shown in The Gilded Cage. Garth is unhappy with who he is. It’s probably fair to say he hates himself and the situation he’s in but he doesn’t really know what to do about it. The kind of world he grew up in doesn’t allow for alternative options. You do what you have to do to survive even if you’re not proud of what you did. He’s a man without a real purpose. He’s alive, but he’s not living. When he meets Shiloh and Rilei he finds a purpose in protecting them. In doing this Garth takes his first steps away from the hard life he’s always known and towards something better.
But, if I had to choose just one, I would probably pick Garth. His character is much more heart wrenching to me than any of the others and it’s him that I’m most excited to see develop as the series goes on.
Did you find anything particularly difficult in writing this book?
A lot of it was pretty difficult, actually. I would easily call it one of the hardest books I tried to write at the time, and it was all because I was going through a time when I didn’t believe in myself or my own work. I kept thinking everything was wrong, that I kept somehow missing the mark, and I had to have started over five or six times before my husband and best friend both told me I wasn’t allowed to start over anymore and what I had was what I had. As it turns out that’s exactly what I needed.
What project(s) are you currently working on?
Quite a few, actually. I’m writing a science fiction/romance novel, I just finished the second book in both the Titanomachy series and the Lost Angels series, and I’ve been playing around with some Young Adult stuff that will probably end up staying on my hard drive for a while.
Do you have any interesting writing quirks you want to tell us about?
For some reason I have to have the TV on, but muted, while I’m working. Even if its directly behind me and could for all intents and purposes be turned off, I have to have it on. For a while after my husband and I moved we didn’t have a TV in the office and I thought it would help me be more productive—but as it turns out that was a period during which I got the least amount of work done.
Do you have any advice for writers out there?
Stick with it. Even when you think you suck (you probably don’t), even when you don’t think it’ll ever amount to anything (you can’t know that for sure), even when the rest of the world has got you down—write anyway. Write like your life depends on it because, if you’re at all like me, it does.
I was reading #GirlBoss by Sophia Amoruso earlier and she said to treat everything in life like an experiment, that way you won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out. Even though it probably doesn’t sound like it, I personally find that to be an encouraging thought. I’m one of those people who frets over everything, who overthinks myself to death, who agonizes over every little detail to the point where I often find myself at a standstill. It’s only when I have projects that I’m just playing with that I feel like I’m at my most free and when I do my best work. So if any other writers out there reading this are like me, all I have to say is this: Relax. Have fun. You’re not doing yourself any favors freaking out.
Where can we find you?
Facebook: @makaylaloveauthor
Twitter: @AGirl_Unwritten
Instagram: @littlephantomgirl
And of course we have to know, where can we find your book?
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