Third-year theatre student Meadow L. Marie publishes their debut novel, King in the Clouds
Fulcrum (F): So firstly, how are you doing? How’s the book launch coming along?
Meadow Marie (MM): It’s good. So my book [King in the Clouds] has been out for two weeks now, and last night was like my big official event for it. I had it at Haven Cafe in the Glebe. I had an interview with a fellow performer and entertainer; they interviewed me and I had some questions from the audience. Then I read the first chapter of the book in front of everybody, and I signed a bunch of books last night as well.
F: I wonder first, if you could introduce yourself to the student community. Are you currently a student at the U of O?
MM: Yes, I’m in my third year of the theatre program.
F: What classes have you taken that have helped you in your creative journey?
MM: [My classes include] writing for theatre, [which] allows me to visualize my work a lot more. So [writing a novel] has been a very interesting process for me. But also, I’m writing now for theatre and so I’m finding it to be interesting to go between prose and writing scripts. It kind of helps me both ways, developing my writing skills.
F: Between novels and theatre, there’s a lot of parallels but surely a lot of differences. Could you tell me a little bit about your book like where did you get the idea? What is it about?
MM: I started writing [King in the Clouds] five years ago for a little bit of perspective. I had come up with this idea at one point; I think it must have been even years before I started because I kind of already had the idea but didn’t have the time to write it. And so I started writing just before [the COVID-19 lockdowns] for the first time in 2020, [which] gave me a lot of free time to write.
My story is about a prince named Alexander, he’s about to be crowned king in his kingdom. But it’s not a title that he wants, or he thinks that he deserves, but he’s forced into the title anyways. On the day of his coronation, his younger brother falls dead, so he kind of takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of his death. It’s very much a story about grief and how different people deal with it, but also about the relationships between different siblings. And so it’s kind of how each of them have grown up in different ways and they grow apart, they grow together. So it’s kind of really focusing on those sibling relationships.
F: I wonder if, for you, it’s a personal inspiration or what other stories do you draw inspiration from?
MM: For my theme with siblings, it was definitely a personal thing because I have one younger, full sibling. I have two older half-siblings and two younger step-sisters. And so it’s kind of all over the place. I have different relationships with each of them. And so I really wanted to focus on that because I think it’s very fascinating. Yeah, that was definitely a major inspiration.
F: Nice. And in terms of the setting and the main characters being royals, is that something you can escape or does it come from other stories you love?
MM: I love fantasy books so much. It’s definitely what I consume the most, any fantasy story. So it’s definitely something that I can escape to. But it also draws parallels to real life as well, because a lot of what Alexander deals with in his story, his journey is that he feels like he’s trapped [in his role], even though he has a very privileged life but he still feels like he is physically trapped in his duty and his castle.
F: I’m also curious, what’s your favorite fantasy series or author? When people are interested in reading, but they want to get into fantasy, what do you recommend?
MM: Oh, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. That duology will forever be one of my favorites. I’ve just reread it in January and it is still fantastic. That one for sure.
F: I love that story so much. And I think one of the things that Leigh Bardugo does so well is character building. How has that influenced how you write your characters, theatre?
MM: I’d say in some cases. Now that I’m thinking about it, I think one of my characters is a little bit like Jesper in a way. I think dialogue doesn’t always come easy, but I think the ‘bantery’ dialogue comes a little bit easier because that’s what I like to consume. It’s more of the dramatic dialogue that I think takes a couple of rewrites before I think “Okay, this sounds genuine and natural”.
F: Okay, so we talked a little bit about your creative development. In terms of finding time as a student and a busy person, what’s your advice to students who might be trying to do the same thing?
MM: Put writing time right into your calendar. I find I’ve especially been doing it this term where I just have chunks of writing time in my calendar. It doesn’t always work out that way because work comes up and homework comes up, but I think putting at least a visual thing in your calendar is helpful, even if it’s just fifteen minutes or half an hour. Whatever you can do that day, you’re still writing. If you write three sentences, it’s still writing — everything, everything counts. I haven’t written in about a week and that’s okay. I think as long as you put the effort into sitting down and writing and doing your project, you’re working towards your goal.
I find talking out loud really helps. When I was plotting out the end of Book Two, I was home alone for a couple hours and I paced my entire floor. I was just talking out loud to figure out how to get to the end. You might seem like you’re crazy, but you’re not. Just let it happen.
I’ve also done the unfortunate thing where I’ve split up my ideas in separate notebooks and have to go searching in different places for all these things. So try to keep things in one document.
F: In terms of publishing, I wonder if you could speak a little bit about your experience. Let’s say you finish your first draft. What goes on from there?
MM: A couple more drafts at least. First drafts, you get the bare bones of the story and then edit it through. I will never let my first drafts see the light of day —no one’s allowed to see them but me. I tried to do traditional publishing originally, when my book was a two-parter book, [but] it was too big and the story wasn’t quite there yet.
If you are going to go to traditional publishing, finding a literary agent is probably your best bet. But it’s not going to happen right away. Unfortunately it’s a very, very tricky business to get into —you could be querying for months or years before you find an agent to represent you. But that’s the way you want to go if you want traditional publishing. Agents get you in contact with publishing houses and editors, and then they kind of take forward from there.
I decided that I wanted to do self-publishing because this is my first book, and my first book is my baby, and I decided that I wanted control of it. I decided eventually to do the self-publishing route, so I published this book through Kindle Direct Publishing. I’m going to be going a different route for my next books, because I don’t love giving Amazon part of my money. But for this first book, this was the easiest and the cheapest option for me right now. But it means if you’re self-publishing, you’re doing everything yourself and you’re paying for everything yourself. I had to pay for my own editor, I paid for my cover artist. I’m doing all my marketing on my own and so it’s a lot of work, but it means that you get more control of everything as well. So there are pros and cons to both.
F: Are there any milestones recently that you’re proud of that have marked the growth of your project?
MM: I mean, just getting it out there two weeks ago was crazy. It’s something that I definitely wanted to do. For my book launch event, I had three sponsors. I just wrote out a bunch of emails (I had way more than three emails) but three people reached back and said, “Hey, I’d love to sponsor your event”. And so that was something cool to see at the bottom of my little poster that I have three people right here in the community that wanted to support me, so that was definitely a big one.
But even something a little bit smaller than that is I’ve been building up my Instagram a bit for this. I have people from all over the world who are interested in reading my book, which is crazy, so it’s always little things. Like I had someone from Slovakia who can’t really get access to my book — because I’m publishing through Amazon and so it’s not available everywhere — but they messaged me and asked “I really want to read it. How can you help me solve this?”
You can purchase Meadow L. Marie’s debut novel King in the Clouds on Amazon.
