Interview with C.L. Wilson Author of The Sea King
Give a warm welcome to C.L. Clark, author of The Sea King, book two of the Weather Mages of Mystral
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cauldron, a Bat Wing Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out about C.L. Wilson and The Sea King.
Tell us what inspired this particular story?
I actually had no idea I was going to write THE SEA KING until I got to the end of THE WINTER KING (the first Weathermages of Mystral book) and met Dilys Merimydion. He just showed up and leapt off the pages, demanding his own story. Then he worked out an agreement with Khamsin, helping her defeat the Ice King in exchange for her welcoming him and his men to Wintercraig to court potential wives.
When I was first sitting down to write his book, I thought Autumn was going to be his bride, but as I started brainstorming the plot and the characters, I realized I was wrong. Summer, who I thought was a sweet, gentle little doormat, took one look at Dilys and said, “um, no. He’s mine.”
Do you see yourself in your characters?
Actually, I don’t. My characters are their own people. What I do do is work hard to understand them, to understand how they feel and how/why they react to certain people and situations. (If I don’t understand it, I can’t write it.) While I’m writing a character’s story, I’m taking the same journey they are, being just as surprised as they are, feeling just as emotional as they do. I cannot plot what obstacles they are going to encounter, and I can’t determine how they’re emotionally going to react to something until it’s upon them, and even then, how they react is based on everything that’s come before, so I can’t do too much writing out of sequence without a ton of revisions.
Basically, my characters let me step outside of myself and be someone else for a while. I imagine it’s pretty similar to how method actors feel when they’re deep in a role.
Where do your story ideas come from? If they come to you in the middle of the night, do you get up and write them all down?
My ideas come from all over the place. I was driving down the road a couple of weeks ago, listening to Hell on Heels, and got a story idea. Sometimes I dream about stories (but that’s usually only about something I’m currently writing). In that case, yes, I have to get up and write it down else I might forget it. Sometimes I’ll read a book, and the feeling a particular scene or character gives me makes me sit up and take notice. Then I play around with that feeling in my head, looking for ways to explore that feeling in my own way.
Most of the time, I’ll have some half-baked kernel of an idea, then I call up my brainstorming buddies, the Starfish Club, and they help me turn my half-baked ideas into something more viable. Lord love ‘em.
Why do you write what you write? Contemporary, paranormal, suspense, etc.
I write epic fantasy romance. Well, that’s primarily what I publish. I have WIPs and unpublished/unfinished manuscripts in contemporary, historical, and fantasy/paranormal/futuristic romance. I usually write romance of some kind, and I generally prefer to write stories that have some sort of magic or supernatural element in them. The romance is because I love the emotional connection and all the excitement, passion, and drama of finding and falling in love. The fantasy/paranormal is because I love world-building, love figuring out “if people could do this (insert magical/preternatural ability) how would they use it? How would that ability change who they are/what they’re like/how they behave?” Hey, if I’m going to play make-believe and tell a story, why not go all out and just have fun with all manner of imagination?
Lanier and Lake Allatoona. When she wasn’t waterskiing and camping on family vacations, you could usually find her with a book in one hand and a sketch pad in the other—either reading, writing stories, or drawing.
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged C.L. Wilson, Paranormal, Romance, The Sea King, Weather Mages of Mystral by Tena Stetler with 1 comment.
