Inside the Mind of T M Kirk: Taking a Book from Idea to Reality
What does it take to bring a story from an idea to a published book? T M Kirk joins us today to share her experience about writing, her processes, and her advice for aspiring indie authors. Would you like to hear her story?
Let’s dive in!
1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m supposed to do stuff other than write? Crap, I better get some hobbies. Unless you count kickboxing, riding my motorcycle, perfecting my macaron recipe, binge-watching GBBO, playing far too many video games, cosplaying, and travelling to as many countries as I can. In that case, I guess I do have a few hobbies. I also like getting outdoors. Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu was a blast!
In between there somewhere, I write. The Diamond Palace was my debut. The latest release is Don’t Bite the Director.
2. Okayy, pitch your book in one or two sentences.
The Diamond Palace is about a Jersey girl who gets kidnapped to a different realm where she’s actually a princess because her mom hid her in the human world as a baby. This new world though is… not nice. Everybody either pretty much loves her or wants to kill her. You know, business as usual for a twenty-five-year-old.
Don’t Bite the Director is about a director who doesn’t want to get bitten. Oh, you want more? Um… She’s dying from Huntington’s and has accepted her fate so long as she gets to make her movie first. Leave a legacy and all that. But of course, a hot vampire shows up claiming to be her mate and needs to convince her to become undead so they can spend an eternity together in loooove. Again, I’m assuming every twenty-five has to deal with this at some point. I was just out of the country when my vampire came calling I guess. Le sigh.
3. Hahaha, what kind of readers would love The Diamond Palace?
Diamond Palace is for romance readers who love snarky banter, twists and turns you don’t see coming, and a little heartbreak. People keep telling me that they’re “unwell” after finishing my book and I think that’s a good thing since it usually comes with five stars…? So you might need to be a little masochistic to enjoy this series.
4. Ahem… Now, let’s get a little personal. What’s the story behind your story?
Ah yes, the point in the interview where I’m supposed to be poignant and talk about how some tragedy in my life spurned my story ideas and jump-started my writing career. I hate to disappoint you (you’d think after decades of disappointing my parents I’d be used to it) but I just have a really weird brain that is always filled to the brim with story ideas.
Basically, I despise the real world and my brain is constantly offering alternatives that sadly don’t exist so I make them exist. If I never added a new story idea to my list, I would still have enough ideas to publish 4-5 books a year for another 30 years.
5. That’s interesting! What are some bizarre ideas that you're excited to start working on?
I don't know about bizarre, but I have a sapphic YA rom-com releasing in October about the devil's teenage daughter. In the book, she falls in love with a human girl after deciding to abandon Hell and move in with her human mom in the mortal realm. And of course, she has to hide her identity as a demon while dealing with her classmates' sudden disappearances. Yeah, okay now that I'm putting it in words, I guess it does count as bizarre!
I have the first book written in a sapphic paranormal rom-com series about witches. It's the ‘magic gone wrong’ series and each book follows a different member of the coven in this Oregon seaside town finding love but screwing it up by messing up a spell, ritual, or potion.
So that's four series I have in progress and I have two other series that I'm dying to start but am forcing myself to hold off on. I should probably finish one of these other four first, right?
6. Right, as an indie author, how has the ride been for you so far?
HAHAHAHAHA Do you have ten hours? Indie publishing is like walking through an old field filled with landmines that might explode at any moment. And just because you make it through once, doesn’t mean that’s the safest path to get through the second time.
But yeah, let’s see…. My formatting software deleted my entire manuscript weeks before release. My cover artist for Don’t Bite promised they would have the design done in three weeks only to tell me days before release that they had no clue when it would be ready so I had to design my own cover in Canva.
Oh, and the first editor I hired did such a bad job that she actually added mistakes to the book. So I had to do fifteen passes of self-edits to catch everything. And of course, Diamond Palace ended up on like ten pirate book sites within 24 hours of release so that was fun.
Buuuuuut…. Every time someone messages me that they loved my book, all of that stress seems suddenly so meaningless by comparison.
7. You definitely had a fun ride! OK, every book has that one scene or character that sticks with the author. What’s yours?
Okay, I’m going to put a pause on my snark for this question. I know, I know, it feels weird to me too. But the character that resonates the most with me is Rain from Diamond Palace because I put a lot of my own mental health issues into her. Not all of them because let’s not torment the poor girl too much, but quite a bit. From the moment I first released the book, I was terrified that people wouldn’t like her because she is so flawed and struggles a lot with the negative voices in her own head.
When people started messaging me that they loved Rain, I literally started crying. To see that level of acceptance and support for a character that was based quite a bit on my own struggles was beyond amazing. As someone who has battled mental health issues my whole life, having that kind of representation in books and seeing people resonate with it gives me hope for the future.
8. And what about the writing struggles? What part of this book gave you the hardest time?
The combat scenes are always the most difficult for me. As someone with a lifetime of martial arts training, I want to get into the nitty gritty sometimes. I want to choreograph every roundhouse kick or uppercut. And when you throw magic in there, I really love all the possibilities it opens up.
But at the end of the day, my book is also a romance and I don’t want to bog people down too much with all the combat and lose the emotional impact that comes with fighting for someone you love. So I often tend to leave those scenes for last. I put in the beginning, any pertinent plot points, and how I want it to end and then get a feel later for how much room I have to expand without losing my audience.
9. Ahh compromises. What’s one weird or unexpected thing you Googled while writing this book?
HAHAHA I’m probably on a few internet watch lists at this point. Honestly, my most recent book that I just finished, A Fragile Spell, wins the award for weirdest Google search history but I don’t want to traumatize anyone just yet.
For The Diamond Palace, the weirdest thing was probably “what is the latin word for prostitute?” I used Latin words as a base for much of the Rivellan language since all the worlds are connected to some degree, so it would make sense that the Rivellan language influenced one of the human languages thousands and thousands of years ago.
I liked the concept of using Latin as a base but modifying it all slightly as that often happens when language is transported from one region to another. Or one world to another!
10. So, in The Diamond Palace, everyone speaks Rivellan?
In the book, a handful of people speak English because they were given the knowledge in order to search for Rain. There's an explanation for how they learned it, I promise. I never like to say ‘they just do’ in a book. I always want to have a logical reason for the things that happen in my very illogical fantasy book.
But yes, everyone else speaks Rivellan, and there are a handful of words or sentences that are written in my fictional language. I tried not to put too much of that in because I didn’t want things to skew so far to the fantasy side that I would lose my romance fans. And she does eventually learn Rivellan toward the end of the book, so the whole “she doesn't speak the language” trope doesn't continue past book one. That would probably get boring after a while.
11. Definitely intriguing. Now, for all the aspiring indie authors. What’s one piece of advice you wish someone had given you?
Write badly. That’s it.
Okay, I can see the raised eyebrows, so let me explain. Writing badly is the first thing I tell anyone who wants to write a book. Make your first draft awful. Too many writers try to make their first draft as close to their final draft as possible and that will be your downfall. Books go through so many revisions and honestly, you’ll get halfway through the book and realize you want to go off in a different direction.
The first draft is just plot bones. It’s a chalk outline. The more detail you give it, the more you have to go back and change when you realize something isn’t working or you discover something else you want to put in. Get the bones out first, make sure you’re happy with the plot and characters and then start adding flesh and fur. Okay, that’s a little morbid and I swear I’m not into taxidermy but you get the idea.
The Diamond Palace went through eight different versions plus a few rounds of additional grammar editing. I barely recognize my first draft. And that’s what allows me to write so fast. I just toss a hunk of clay on the page and once that’s done, I can start carving out my beautiful sculpture. If you let yourself get too focused on the sculpture being perfect from the beginning, then you get upset every time you mess up. So… want to write a book? Write a Greek tragedy of a first draft that no one will see and then polish from there.
12. Ohkayzz, and where can readers find you and your book?
I’m on pretty much every social as “tmkwriter.” Yes, I prefer the term author but I started out as a screenwriter many many moons ago and kept the moniker.
I actually just joined TikTok and I’m still trying to figure it out because I’m a tragic millennial who misses Myspace. (Come on, dropping someone from your top 8 was a sick burn). I’m pretty active on Instagram and Threads, though.
Stalk away!! I love hearing from my readers!
The Diamond Place can be found on:
Don’t Bite the Director has just been released, so it’s only on Amazon for now. But will be expanding soon.
If the books sound like your kind of read, be sure to check them out! Support indie authors by grabbing a copy and leaving a review!
PS… What’s your go-to writing snack or ritual?
I don’t think I’ve ever written a single word while dressed like a ‘normal’ human being. I write in pajama pants. I fully embrace my cave troll lifestyle. I’ve heard tales about a world beyond my front door but those stories are less appealing than the ones in my head so I live in fuzzy pants and write about more exciting worlds. I prefer literal vampires to metaphorical ones.
And that’s a wrap.
Want to see more indie author stories? Stay tuned for more interviews…
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