In anticipation of the book launch event on October 15th, Booksweet sat down with author K.R. Fryatt to chat about what inspired her to write her first book, her writing process, and the self-discovery involved in this series.
Find out more and RSVP to the event through Eventbrite.
Pre-order your signed copy of Of Moths and Stone by K.R. Fryatt here! Each pre-order comes with exclusive vellum overlays, art prints, stickers, a bookmark, and digital goodies!
Booksweet: Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?
K.R. Fryatt: Sure! Hi, I’m K, K.R. Fryatt. I used to be an opera singer, that’s what I went to school for, but it definitely was not my first passion. I stopped doing it for a while, got married, had kids, all that fun stuff. I had a few surgeries actually and ended up in bed for a really long time. I’ve always been such a prolific reader and I was reading a book – I will never tell anyone what it was – but it was not great. I got actually so mad at myself, and I was like, “what am I doing?” I always wanted to write books. That’s what I wanted to do when I was younger. So that day I chucked that book – well, it was my Kindle technically – but I chucked it and I was like, I’m doing it. And Of Moths and Stone was born that day, really.
I often hear stories about books inspiring people to write their own stories, but I sort of love writing in part out of spite.
Oh, 100 % spite, rage, whatever you want to call it. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I was just mad at myself for letting me be discouraged. I did toss [writing] aside even though that’s what I wanted to do from a really young age. I decided to really make it official and here we are.
This book is in the romantasy genre. What drew you to that genre?
I guess it sort of started with accidental fan fiction. I had this one summer, I was very burnt out and very anxious. I didn’t want to do anything except hide. We had quite a few bookshelves in our house and I was like, I’m gonna read all of these. And I did. I made myself a bed and I just sat there in front of the bookshelves and I was just reading and reading and reading and basically went through, I mean, honestly, it must’ve been a hundred books. And then I remembered my mom’s secret bookshelf in her bedroom. That’s where all the romance was. So I would steal one, read it real quick overnight and put it back before she noticed. At some point I was like, here are all these fantasy books, but there’s not really love in them. Why is this book about a Scottish Highland Lord and his sword? Where’s the magic in that? And so that was the first time I was like, okay, I’m taking this world and I’m taking this guy and I’m definitely self inserting myself as the heroine, and I wrote mashup fan fiction, basically – that was really bad. I know that there were romantasy books already, but we didn’t have them really. I’ve always loved fantasy and I’ve always loved love. So I put it together.
What is your writing process like?
It’s like utter chaos. I don’t even know if I have a process, I just kind of go with it. At first I would have definitely called myself a straight-up pantser. Just sit down and like this is happening.
My first draft of the book was actually so much less serious. It was closer to a paranormal romance. Like Kresley Cole, one of my favorites. I set out to do something lighthearted, chaotic, and funny. But it actually turned into a huge self-discovery journey, which I was not really expecting. It just got bigger and deeper and more epic. I also love books like Lord of the Rings and things like that, so I was like, okay, I guess we’re going to do this for real. So my process changed a bit when I decided to essentially write a different book. When you’re dealing with things like foreshadowing and Easter eggs and nameless characters, because knowing who they are would be problematic at first, I couldn’t keep track anymore. So my process got slightly more organized. But I’m sitting here looking at at least a dozen sticky notes, quite literally just strewn across my desk.
I wake up early, I make myself an iced coffee and I kind of plop down here in front of my computer to hope for the best. That’s as solid as it gets. And beyond that, it’s whatever my brain decides to allow.
Of Moths and Stone is the first in a series, how far ahead in the series do you have planned?
I know how everything goes. I mean, the prologue in OMAS is an oracle coming to give a prophecy, and loosely speaking, I essentially tell everyone exactly the ending, if you can figure it out. But I made the oracle so chaotic, there’s no way to really decipher her. Then once you do decipher her, you’re like wow, it was right there.
So, I know how everything happens, and technically speaking, it’s already been told to you as the reader and foreshadowed in different ways. One of my biggest goals was if I was ever lucky enough that somebody wanted to reread, I’d hope they’d be able to go back and be like, “oh my god, holy crap, it was right there.” I figured the only way to do that, I have to know how everything happens. There are still discoverable details. I know major plot points. I know exactly how it ends and where we’re going. But, do I know every conversation everyone’s gonna have? No. Honestly, characters kind of tell you what to do. And it’s best to just listen.
I cannot imagine all the details you have to know to write a series.
It’s funny, I don’t think I could one-and-done it. I love series so much. I also love cliffhangers. The idea of start to finish this is happy and we’re done, I couldn’t do it.
The original plan was for book one to be a sort of happy-for-now ending, but the overarching plot is still plotting. But I couldn’t work it all out to fit. And then I was like, I’ll just mix this resolution with the next couple’s book and have some tandem stuff going on. My editor was like, “no, you can’t do that.” So we added a book and the first two books became a duology within the series. That was like one of the most panicked moments of my life because I had had the whole plot. I had it all planned out. And she was basically like, no, you need an entire book’s worth of plot that you’re inserting into this already plotted plot. That was hard. You know the meme of that one guy, I think it’s from Always Sunny, and he’s in front of his cork board with all of his yarn? That was literally me and my husband. We rolled out these huge rolls of paper and taped them to our door wall. He’s not even a reader, but he was a sounding board while I unleashed my madness and mind on this piece of paper that was taller than me.
That seems like a huge compliment, too. There’s a whole other book here!
Yeah! And actually, that’s not even the only book she has talked me into adding. It was originally a five book series. It’s now a seven book series. All because of her being like, no, that’s a whole book, actually. And I’m just like, okay!
Other than two entire added books, how much has changed with the series since you first started working on it?
My very first draft, I got about 40% into it. and then hit this wall. I actually didn’t write anything for probably about three months. Then my husband and I went on vacation to Hawaii, which is quite a different time zone. We were waking up at three in the morning and there I am and all I can think about is the book. I’m just staring at the ceiling and I was like “hey, babe, can I talk about my book?” So for a whole week, for like six hours every morning, he just listened to me work it out out loud. What I realized was that I was a bit afraid of myself, a bit afraid of addressing certain things about myself that I was trying to pour onto the page. Nobody was flawed enough. Nobody was ruined enough, struggling enough. And I was like, oh, this is actually my mask. This story is currently the masked version of me, and I’ve always been uncomfortable as her, and that’s probably why this isn’t working. I had to really confront a lot about myself. And then I was like, I think I want this to be way deeper than it is, and I think I’d like to free myself. That actually became a huge plot point, that idea of radical self acceptance, that who you are and how you are is actually okay.
So I started over and I was like, you get my anxiety disorder and you get my chronic pain disorder and you get my autistic traits. I just dispersed myself amongst all of the characters. I think I knocked out the new book almost entirely in two and a half months. Like, 210,000 words in about two and a half months. Suddenly it just all came out and it was just so different from what it had been. Once it all came together, it really came together.
I was worried about word count for a long time and I was trying to stay within the acceptable bounds of word count for a debut. One day I was reading about the disparity between men and women authors and the fact that men get away with kind of whatever they want. When I saw a particular fantasy author’s debut was just over 200,000 words and nobody batted an eyelash, I was like, okay, I’m doing whatever I want. My editor kept encouraging me. She didn’t want me to cut any scenes, she wanted me to add and expand. I was like, this is getting so long. She was like, so what? And I was like, you’re right. Why am I limiting myself? Because I’m a woman and I need to fit in the little box. Ew! So I just kept adding. It became kind of a monster, and I did cut it back a little bit. All of that put together and suddenly, I have a book that’s coming out.
It’s really interesting to think about the spots where you get stuck and how you push through and how that changes a book.
In that gap of time where I was talked out of [writing] and I didn’t do it, I had convinced myself I couldn’t. This would be too hard. That really wasn’t my voice in my head, that was other people’s voices in my head. I snapped that day sitting there. I was stuck in bed for like four months, bedridden after a knee surgery. I think I was about two months in when I snapped that and I was like, okay, if this person can write a book and have four and half stars, I can definitely write a book and do at least halfway decent. I gotta try. I’m doing myself a disservice if I do not at least try.
It was way harder than I thought in some aspects, and then other aspects have been like, this is what I was always meant to do.
Are there any things you’ve learned throughout this process that have surprised you?
The sheer cost of self publishing is mind melting. Especially as somebody who writes real thick books, and things are charged on word count. You’re like, okay, that’ll be however many thousands for this one edit. Like, I couldn’t have gone for something with typically shorter word count?
But really, I think the most surprising thing, and this is part of my healing as a person, has been the sheer amount of excitement and support. from strangers on the internet. I just never expected that. How did I get here? I’m definitely introverted and shy, so being able to connect with people through my writing, and then finding out that they’re enjoying my writing, it’s wild.
Do you have any significant memories related to an indie bookstore or library?
As a person, if I never ever had to leave my house, I would be fine. But my kids, one day our oldest came up and they were like, can I go to the library? I have three kids and for the longest time, none of them were into reading. They wanted to be outside. My oldest is also dyslexic. So when they were like, can we go to the library? I was like, yeah. Now they all have library cards. Our youngest will be like, okay, I finished all my library books, and we go switch them out. It actually means so much to me that somehow, out of nowhere, one of them was like, can we go to the library? It changed how they are about stuff, and what they enjoy. I love that the library is now thought of as something fun that they can do. Some kids might want to go to the mall or go to the movies or whatever, and our kids are like, can we go to the library? And I love that it feels safe. Our kids are a bit older now, our oldest is literally driving, but it feels like a safe space to have some independence and grow a bit and be able to make choices.
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Keep up with K.R. Fryatt via her website, krfryatt.com and on Instagram, Threads, TikTok and all social media as @author_k.r.fryatt.
RSVP to the Of Moths and Stone launch party at Booksweet through Eventbrite.
Pre-order your signed copy of Of Moths and Stone by K.R. Fryatt here! Each pre-order comes with exclusive vellum overlays, art prints, stickers, a bookmark, and digital goodies!
You can also catch her at the Fans of Fiction Fest in Grand Rapids on October 18th from 12-5pm. She’ll also be at Mon Coeur Books in Canton on August 24th from 5-7pm for an Of Moths and Stone release event.
Then she’ll be, in her own words “turning into a literal vegetable” for the foreseeable future. Thank you so much K.R. Fryatt for taking time to chat with us, and congratulations on the book launch!