Tides of Deception: My Journey Through Writing An Epic Fantasy by Caley Robison

Hello again, all of you beautiful people! For those of you who don't know, I am Caley Robison, the author of the Tides of Fate Series!

What Made You Want To Write Your Books?

I started writing these books for fun to get myself out of a depression at a time when I didn't have a creative outlet. I wrote both book 1, Tides of Deception, and book 2, Tides of War, within two months on my phone (excluding editing, of course, haha). It really came down to needing an escape and needing to fill a void within myself. I am a firm believer that if you don't like your life, then start making changes. So, in order to do this, I started writing on my commute to and from work every day (Don't do this, haha, not safe.) However, I was really enjoying it, and it cheered me up and it gave me the mental boost that I really needed.

What is your creative process?

I've been asked what my creative process is on multiple occasions, so I am going to go ahead and break it down here for you all. However, first, I think it prudent to introduce this idea to you and then expand on myself from there so you have some idea of how crazy I am.

There are three main types of authors, and I found this out long after I finished my first two books, and it made me laugh.

Type 1: Planners:

Pretty self-explanatory, right? They have a (generally) fully formed idea, and they plan it out from the beginning, middle, and end, usually before they put pen to paper. I've noticed they usually have pages of notes and a great grasp of their world and the dynamics of it. The magic systems are all thought out, and everything is pretty cut and dry. That doesn't mean there's no room for creativity, but their process is more straightforward and easier to follow.

Type 2: Pantsers:

What the hell is that? Yeah, that was my first thought, too. These are the authors who take off their pants and write in their underwear. No, I am totally joking, but that's where my brain went first. I guess that goes to show you something about my mental state haha.

Pantsers are the embodiment of chaos. - No, not joking. If it isn't apparent to you yet, I identify strongly with this one. There is little to no planning involved, and they - by my definition of the word - write by the seat of their pants.

They just start writing whatever comes to mind and go where their characters and whims take them. This makes for a very volatile and often scary experience for the writer- in my experience- and I can see how many authors could start a project along these lines and not finish it.

Structure is a necessary thing, as much as I hate to admit it. Though it can be confining and sometimes suffocating, in the right doses, I believe it to be an incredibly useful thing, which brings me to the 3rd and final type of author that, truth be told, I might have made up.

Type 3: Plantsers:

You guessed it! This is a combination of both type 1 and type 2. I think many authors fall in somewhere on this scale though they may lean more towards one side than the other. I am on the cusp of being a complete pantser, however, out of the now three books I have finished, I noticed a pattern in my creative process.

I usually free-write until about a third of the way through a book, sometimes almost halfway, and then an idea will hit me, and I'll know exactly how I want the book to end. Then, I will go write that last chapter and shoot for it. That gives my writing some structure while allowing my brain to go off the rails and have fun in my own little imaginary world I have built around myself. It allows my characters a lot more freedom to be who they are, and in doing so, I have gotten the very best parts of my story. Bar NONE.

I say pantsing can be scary, and this, too, isn't a joke. Not in the "run for your life" kind of sense, but in the "holy hell, what just happened?" Kind of sense. For instance, in my second book, I was wracking my brain with just how I was going to get the ending that I had written, to the point I was getting worried I'd have to scrap the last ten chapters I had just written because my characters were taking me in a direction that I saw no coming back from. Then, something incredible happened that rocked the very foundation of my world. A plot twist. But no, not just any plot twist. A plot twist to rival that of Severus Snape in Harry Potter, and believe me, I do not use this reference lightly.

The worst part? It sucker punched me in the face so hard I saw stars. I didn't see it coming. ME! THE AUTHOR! I tore through the book, searching through every part to make sure it fit. That it made sense because there was NO WAY it could make sense! But lo and behold, it fit bloody perfectly, and it also led directly to the ending that I had written two weeks prior. I sat there staring at my screen for a good half hour, trying to figure out what just happened and how I didn't see it coming. I still have no answer, but now my faith in my characters is concrete, and I will never doubt them again. For better or worse...

With all of the chaos involved in being a plantser, there is an insane amount of fun involved because even I don't know what's going to happen next. I have no idea who is going to get the girl. I might have some ideas, but nothing is final. I have some directions that I want to take things, and I have overall stages planned out in my head - yes, my head- but it's all subject to change, and I find that thrilling and invigorating. It gives me an external source of motivation to keep writing, and it keeps me from getting burned out too easily.

That being said, now that I have moved on to writing the third book in a multi-book series, I have -finally- started to write down some notes just to keep everything straight and to ensure that I don't forget anything, and also to avoid plot holes. Does this mean I have transitioned from the dark side and become a Jedi? Absolutely not! But it is a means to maintain some level of structure where a great story might otherwise collapse.

Downsides

With all the fun of being a plantser, it does come with some downsides. The primary one is editing. I experienced this mostly with book one, Tides of Deception because it was the foundation with which I was building my series. My excellent editor, Kate Black, read through my first draft and said, this is a phenomenal start, but...you need to work on your world-building, among other things. She was 1,000,000,000% right. In my head, I knew where we were; I knew the landscape and the people, but I forgot that my readers weren't privy to the deep, dark inner workings of my consciousness. So I had to backtrack a bit, clean everything up, and add in some worldbuilding earlier on so that people knew where the heck they were and where they were going. Thankfully, I seemed to have learned that lesson because when it came to book two, Tides of War, there was little to no editing needed in that regard.

Conclusion

After it was published, I asked everyone I could who read my book what their favorite parts were, and I found that the parts that they liked the most were the ones that I had the most fun with - or rather, my characters had the most fun with haha- So using that as a diving board (no pun intended) I have come to the conclusion that if you're having fun writing, your audience will have fun reading. So I truly hope you have fun reading my books, but if you don't that's ok, because at least I had the fun of writing them.

Stay Tuned!

I have many irons in the fire right now; I am currently working on book three, Tides of Gods and Men; The audiobook for Book 1, Tides of Deception, is in production, and Book 2, Tides of War will follow suit shortly after!

Additionally, I have a short story that will be exclusive to Audio Mazes that is in production called, Of Fire & Ashes!

Until next time, May what gods you believe in watch over you!