Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing.
Hi and thanks for having me. I’m an indie author from Australia, and I’ve been writing my whole life. I’ve just published my third novel, the first in a new fantasy series. My three published books are all fantasy/epic fantasy and while I’ve written contemporary fiction as well, there is something about the fantasy genre that speaks to me – perhaps it’s the freedom to create a world and everything in it, and to use that world and the characters to explore real-world issues like power, and the corrupting influence of power.
Who would you say your biggest literary influences are?
There are a few that make it onto this list, but once I sat down to think about it, not as many as I thought. I’ll start with the women, because as a female author, I’m greatly influenced by women who write within the same genre. One of the first fantasy series I ever read as a teenager was the Obernewtyn Chronicles by Australia author Isobelle Carmody. I had the absolute privilege of meeting Isobelle when I was fourteen, and even though it was during a school workshop, listening to her talk about her author journey and about writing really made little me think, yeah, I can do this. The next are two other Australian authors, Kate Forsyth and Cecilia Dart-Thornton, who both write beautiful poetic prose, grand sweeping sagas filled with faeries from Celtic myth. I still return to their books when I’m stuck – when I need a little writing inspiration, because the way both of these authors use language really resonates with me. I tend to write poetically, and I think it’s due to their influence and also my own love of playing with language, of being able to twist and manipulate it into what I want the reader to see. Beyond fantasy, Mary Shelley and the Bronte sisters are an inspiration, again for their skill with language. Tolkien has, of course, been a huge influence, not so much for the writing style but for the mastery of world building. I mean, who else has done what he did on such a scale? It's difficult not to be impressed and not to be influenced by that.
How has the history of the middle ages impacted/influenced your work?
How long do we have? I love history but I will try and be brief. I’m a History, English and Geography teacher and when I’m conceptualising a new world for a new story, I start with history. But onto the Middle Ages. There’s ten centuries of history to play with there, and it was such an interesting period. When you break it up into the Early, High and Late medieval periods, there is such a wealth of events and their impacts to draw on, from the fall of the Roman Empire in 476AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which moved then into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The chain of events and the impacts from those events is huge. If we look at the Early period probably the biggest thing was the collapse of a central authority when Rome left England so we had a period of ‘darkness’ combined with invasions, migration of the Germanic peoples, the lingering power and presence of the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world, and a pattern of conquest and colonisation, from the Vikings to the Magyars and the Saracens. Then the High Middle Ages period, from 1000AD, we have increased population, agricultural and technological advancements, manorialism and feudalism, knights, royalty, courtly intrigue and drama, power and the spread of Christianity and the idea of nation states. Move into the relatively short Late Middle Ages we have the plague, feminine, war, population decline, heresy, peasant revolts and rebellion and a slow shift in power. What’s not to be influenced and inspired by? I think a lot of fantasy tends to have that Middle Ages vibe because it was still a period of what if? What if Rome was never sacked by the Vandals, for instance? But I think we are still mostly intrigued by the world of knights and princesses, of castle and royalty and a world that doesn’t exist anymore except for in literature, film and TV and, of course, fairy tales. I also believe that this period in time is an easier one for us to suspend our disbelief and imagine that magic and dragons and faeries are real. For instance, I’m not a fan or Urban fantasy for that reason – for me, the inclusion of modern tech alongside magic just doesn’t work. But that is me personally. So, to answer the original question, I will often ask myself the What If? of the Middle Ages and let my imagination go and see where we end up.
Do you feel like your writing has been impacted/influenced by Tolkien? If so, in what way(s)?
The biggest influence Tolkien has had on my writing is within the world building aspect. When I first read his work, I was completely blown away by the level of detail included. His was a world with its own history, and not just recent history, but thousands of years of history. It has its own creation myths! The depth of Middle Earth is just staggering and I remember sitting there, putting the book aside, and it was a mind-blown moment. It still amazes me, that this world, so rich and vibrant and there, came from a man’s mind. Yes we can say he was influenced by certain things and certain folkloric elements but the way it all comes together is uniquely his I think. And that’s inspiring. Possibly too much! I’m onto my second series now and a second world, and with this one and the first, I never set out to make them as broad and complex as they are, but honestly, real life and the real world is complex and fiction is a reflection of reality. My worlds are political. I have folklore and mythology, drawn from Celtic myths and legends. As I was creating these worlds, I needed them to have a rich history, and then came the geographic elements, because people and cultures and societies are heavily influenced by geography. I draw maps of my worlds (so I don’t get lost as well as the reader) but it was important to me that everything just worked, and that is a Tolkien influence, because love or hate it, Middle Earth works. It’s immersive and amazing.
What do you think the current innovations in your genre(s) are?
I am really liking the shift towards female characters as lead characters. Women who don’t need a man to save them, who are powerful in their own right, however that might look. As a kid, most fantasy stories that I encountered, whether it be books or film and TV, focused on male characters and the hero’s journey archetype, and I think that was primarily due to the setting and the influence of medieval history and social structure on the fantasy genre. Women’s roles were very restricted. We see that in classic fairy tales, which is not a criticism, but an acknowledgment of social constructs and norms on storytelling in that time period. In the modern world, and in modern storytelling, we are moving away from that – female characters have changed as society has changed, particularly in the Young Adult category, which is fabulous, because like I mentioned, most of the stories I had access to as a child were male-centric ones. We are also seeing a shift in representation – there are so many novels now that feature diversity representation within the main character/s. Queer characters, characters of colour, characters with a disability, characters who are battling mental health issues – and this is fabulous, because if we have more hero’s with anxiety, or more queer hero’s, it’s a step towards normalising and another way readers can see something of themselves and make those deeper connections with their literary hero’s.
What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see more of?
This is a difficult one because reading as a process is completely subjective. What I might want will not be what others want, but I can tell you why I put a book down. World building, or lack thereof. I want to know everything. I want to know the history, the political structure, the geographic regions, how society works, government, who holds power, who takes power, the influence of that and how difference cultures interact and come into contact with one another because these are the things that will underpin a character’s motivations. If we start a book with a war, I need to know things about this war and who is in control. I’ve put a lot of books aside recently because I haven’t felt that connection with the worlds, and therefore, the characters. A Tolkien hangover? Maybe!
What is something in your genre(s) you'd like to see less of?
Where online can our readers find you and your work?
You can find me on social media, Instagram and TikTok @kateschumacherwriter and my website at www.kateschumacherauthor.com. I have an author facebook page as well. You can find my books on Goodreads, Bookbub and Storygraph. As far as where to buy my books – ebooks are Amazon only, plus they are in Kindle Unlimited. Paperbacks are pretty much anywhere in online book stores, places like Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, World of Books. If in Australia I stock them at some small indie bookstores so please check out the linktree on my social media if you wanted to support these wonderful people.
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