Author S.M. McCoy likes to write stories with enough mystery to keep readers turning pages, which is a good thing since those are the books we love to read! She dropped in today to talk with us about being a writer and drones, brain implants and, well, take a look for yourself!
1. In addition to being a writer (and from the apex of another universe), you are a voice actor for audible books. How did you get involved with that? What is the narration preparation process like? Do you have a favorite genre to narrate?
I keep my narration to fantasy and romance, as it’s better to work on projects that I enjoy reading the most! I got into it because as an indie author you have to wear as many hats as possible and after hiring a narrator for my first series, I realized that if I wanted to continue to be part of the audiobook market I was going to have to learn how to do it myself. Funny enough, I narrated a few books for another indie author first before narrating for my own books, and I simply fell in love with the process of being consumed by stories regardless of if I was writing, reading, or narrating them.
2. Vampires. What’s your favorite characteristic of the vampire narrative? Favorite bit of vampire lore?
My favorite thing about vampires is that the lore behind them is flexible and you can make up your own version of how bloodsuckers came to be. It’s such a versatile playground for adventure and romance. Even though Kingdom of Acatalec is a sci-fi fantasy, and is very much about aliens and a cyberpunk future that gets sucked into the chaos of a parallel magical world… I couldn’t help but put in a spin on vampires into the alien culture. One of the regions of Acatalec has people that are very much similar in nature to vampires, but I don’t want to give too much away about the lore and plot twists. You’ll just have to read the book to find out!
3. What’s the best advice you have to share for time management?
Time management is my worst attribute, mostly because there is so much that you have to do as an indie author that actually writing once you’ve finished a book becomes more and more difficult to manage when you’re also a full-time marketer that must also spend quite a bit of time working on getting the book into the hands of new readers. I’ll admit there are plenty of days that the time gets away from me. I mean, even having this interview with you takes time to think about my thoughts and seem like less of a basketcase. I guess my best advice for that is never give up, and find something that motivates you to keep coming back to your project. Sometimes it can be as simple as writing one sentence in your email, send it to yourself to add to your book later. Or you don’t get your first cup of coffee until you’ve written a paragraph then drink your tasty beverage.
4. Could you talk about your writing process and how you know you’ve come to the end of a story?
As for when you know the story is done, that’s when you lose interest in knowing more. What I mean by that is you’ve satisfied the main goals and questions and what remains isn’t enough to keep writing. Perhaps you might wrap up that tiny bit of curiosity in a fun epilogue, but really the story is done when your curiosity falls. You don’t want to end it when the curiosity is gone, just when the desired expectations are satiated. This is why I like to write in series, because though the initial action ebbs to a close for book one, doesn’t mean that there aren’t curiosities that can be explored and ramped up for another book. You fall in love with a character and getting more time with them is fun. I ended book one of Kingdom of Acatalec when she solved her first problem, but she hardly peeled back the layers of why she had the problem to begin with so there is so much more world building to explore as well as her budding relationships.
Readers who like deadly drone races, hidden realms, parallel alien worlds, strong females lead, an MC who rocks a wheelchair, sci-fi fantasy cyberpunk melding, magic, brain implants, futuristic world, enigmatic love interest, dark and brooding billionaire boss, and an unfolding magical mystery as Tyler saves her best friend from indentured servitude, will enjoy devouring Kingdom of Acatalec, and can start reading the prequel for freesies when they join my sci-fi fantasy adventure newsletter!
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Kingdom of Acatalec 
