An avid book reader as a kid, I always loved writing stories in my journals. It wasn't until 2017 that I decided to try to write a novel. That was the year that I did NaNoWriMo for the first time. Sadly, I didn't write 50,000 words that year or the three years afterwards, but NaNoWriMo 2020 taught me that I found a story that I really wanted to publish. Rebel (as in She Rebels) is the first book of a seven-part series. Each of the seven books has an inspirational message in it, while also representing the colors of the rainbow. In this series, I wanted to include something to raise awareness for Autism, because sometimes we forget that not everyone has the same reactions to situations. As someone who is very high on the spectrum, I might not know exactly what someone that is very low on the spectrum goes through, but I understand some of the coping mechanisms that are used to calm someone down. Rocking in place, or listening to music with your eyes closed, using touch to stay calm, having a favorite smell around, humming, or listening to someone's heartbeat are just some of the ways I cope with stress.
You can find her books on amazon https://www.amazon.com/Katrina-Smith/e/B08R147Z3G/ref=aufs_dp_mata_dsk
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Interview
So we are here interviewing Katrina Smith. Katrina, your first NaNoWriMo was in 2017?
That's correct.
You have four books out in your rainbow series. That's a seven part series.
Yes.
And you wanted to raise awareness for autism?
My first question is about the titles? I see the R OYG. is So you're going with the rainbow colors. And that's the first letter. Okay. So I did get that right?
Okay. I was like, That's kind of cute. I like that.
So what else about the titles of these books? The seven part series? Um, other than the first letter is the color the same as the color? What is it about those titles?
Well, the titles represent something that happens in the books. Like Rebel, she rebels against tradition until tradition takes her heart in order that she has to find order in herself and in her people to fight the bad guy. Use Oh, it's about children. Growth is growing the land.
Very cool. And these are coming of age fantasy. Correct?
Correct.
Okay, so what kind of fantasy is it? epic fantasy? is an urban fantasy. Is there like a sub other than coming of age?
No, just young adults coming of age fantasy.
So what are you currently working on?
Am current Working on book five, which is called Bravery.
And what stage is that work at currently?
Oh, I'm a little over halfway through the book. Going to be about a 50,000 word novel.
The reason why I wanted to bring up awareness of autism is because I know what it's like to grow up with autism. I wasn't, I was diagnosed when I was eight. I wasn't told until I was older.
It's lovely to see books raising awareness about this and how have you gone about that? I mean, have you just been trying to portray autism that's not stereotypical. Or is it the fact that your main character has autism? How have you been going about raising that awareness?
One of my characters, not the main character, has autism and she's senior so she can see the future and she doesn't really talk much. In the later books she will have more of an impact.
What would you like to see in novels where writers are portraying characters with autism? Being someone on the spectrum What would you like to read?
I would like to read more books that are acceptable. Write about it and not portray the “oh you need to be fixed” troupe. It's not about changing our behaviors. It's about helping us survive a world that looks down on us.
Yeah, it's accepting you for who you are no matter what.
Yes. Yeah.
That's lovely. I'm so glad to see more books with autistic characters in them so what's your opinion about fantasy? Why did you pick fantasy as your genre?
I grew up reading all these fantasy books. Inheritance series, The Dragons Riders of Pern, and more. And I wanted to put myself into the stories that encouraged my creativity, and it drew me into this world of exploring everything around me in a different way.
I know coming of age is a hard sub genre to do. How are you handling that? Is your book gonna go from coming of age as a young adult into adulthood? Or are you sort of sticking them in this in, the coming of age or young adult for the whole seven book series?
Well, technically my main character is aged up into, like a 20 something year old person. But the books stay with young adults.
Is that a majority of what you prefer as a reader or just where you went when it comes to writing?
That's the majority of what I like to read.
Yeah, there's so many good young adult novel series out there. There are some that are not so great, in my opinion, but then there's others that are really fascinatingly good. And I hate that people associate YA with only young adult readers when they're just as good for adults in any respect it’s literature, no matter what.
Right? It's good to see.
So what's the best fan mail you've ever received?
I haven't.
You haven't. Do you have access so people can write you fan mail?
Now right now?
Oh, we had fixed that. So you can get fan mail?
I'm curious what you're going to do after you finish the series. Are you going to stick with the same genre and same type of characters?
Okay, so I already have ideas for the next series in my repertoire, whatever you want to call it. Gonna start out at a mid level where these kids are like 10, 11, 12 And that's the first series The second series is when they're in high school. So kind of young adult and then the third series is going to be when they're in college
Well, that's very cool. It's very time consuming but sounds awesome.
And it's like a mystery set in the countryside of a small town.
Is it going to be a fantasy place?
Yeah, it's a fantasy place. I’m basing it off of the small town where I grew up, and the countryside where my grandfather lived. I just wanted something that was kind of girl detective
mystery but also you grew up with these characters it's so cool.
Did you ever consider going traditional publishing over indie?
I did it once. At one point but I didn't want to wait in between releases. Not you know like a year or two years between releases. So I decided to go indie and rapid release for the first three books. And I think I'll just stay that way.
I don't blame you there I like the control of indie publishing
Transcribed by the use of https://otter.ai
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