Kate Heartfield, Author

Kate Heartfield, Author

[00:00:00] Halfling: Thanks for tuning into the Halfling nd the Spaceman: Journeys In Active Fandom. We're having a great conversation with people that have turned their love of fandom into something creative. We're fans talking to fans, and joining us today is Kate Heartfield, a Canadian author of fantasy science fiction and horror, and she's also a non-fiction writer and editor.

[00:00:30] Halfling: Welcome to the show, Kate.

[00:00:32] Kate Heartfield: Very happy to be here.

[00:00:34] Halfling: Well, we appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. I've had a chance to sort of look at some of the things that you've published, and it's kind of interesting. You cover sort of a wide breadth of things. So, we'll get into that. But, let's start with you talking a little bit about yourself and your background..

[00:00:53] Kate Heartfield: Yeah. I am Kate Hartfield. I am a writer who lives just outside of Ottawa, Canada. So, there's still snow on the ground, where I am and I've been writing my whole life. I'm a former newspaper journalist and these days I have several novels published in mostly historical fantasy in long form.

[00:01:15] Kate Heartfield: A couple of time travel Novelas that came out from tor.com and I've also written short fiction in several genres and I also do some game writing. So yeah, as you said, I tend to wear a lot of hats.

[00:01:27] Halfling: Which is great. Because you can switch gears. Do you follow trends or do you just write whatever comes to you? What's your inspiration for what you write?

[00:01:41] Kate Heartfield: Yeah. I try not to think too much about things like trends when it comes to a sort of market perspective. You know, um, like what we'll sell because there's a temptation to do that. Um, especially when you're writing books because you're sinking so much time into it and you wanna make sure it's gonna be a success.

[00:01:59] Kate Heartfield: And to a certain degree, I think all of us do think about. what kinds of books are selling and what kinds of books are not selling and that kind of thing. But I try not to overthink it because, by the time you finish the book and sell it, the market may have moved on anyway. And, if you're not really deeply in love with what you're writing, then I think the reader can tell.

[00:02:18] Kate Heartfield: You know, I think, there's no point in doing this if you're not in love with it. So, I mostly just follow my heart. In long form, I tend to be drawn to historical settings. Most of the big ideas, come to me, in historical settings and usually with some sort of speculative twist, usually a little bit of magic or something strange going

[00:02:35] Halfling: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . I unfortunately haven't had an opportunity to read any of your books. It's on my to-do list, you know, there's just not enough time. There's just so many good works out there,

[00:02:48] Spaceman: the ever-growing to-do list.

[00:02:51] Halfling: Yeah,

[00:02:52] Kate Heartfield: Uhhuh

[00:02:53] Halfling: Um, you know, so I definitely, I've been intrigued just reading descriptions because I think it's a really neat concept, I sort of put it in a category of historical fiction.

[00:03:04] Halfling: And like you said, with the Twist, so I'm very interested in getting into some of that. But tell me, what does the word fandom mean to you and what does it mean to be a fan of something?

[00:03:18] Kate Heartfield: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It's a really interesting question, because, I was thinking about this recently that, when I was a kid, I was definitely a fan of, J.R.R. Tolkien, for example, as a big reader of Tolkien, I was a fan of science fiction and fantasy generally. So, you know, I would in the sense that when I went to the library, that's what I would seek out.

[00:03:42] Kate Heartfield: And historical fiction as well. And Susan Cooper or Rosemary Sutcliff, those were some of my favorite writers when I was a kid. And so I guess I was a fan of them, but I didn't necessarily think of myself that way because I didn't have a community to bounce that identity off of in a sense. You know, like I just knew that I really liked this stuff and I didn't really have many people to talk to about it.

[00:04:03] Kate Heartfield: And then it wasn't until 2009 when I was, gosh, I must have been almost 30. Uh, actually I was already 30 in 2009. Um, and, I went to Montreal WorldCon and, that was my first big convention and it was there that I started to understand fandom as a community activity and understand, that, talking to other people about things and getting enthusiastic based on what they're enthusiastic about, like how much of a big part that is of fandom as well.

[00:04:34] Kate Heartfield: So I would say that there was sort of a second phase to my fandom when I discovered community and discovered conventions, and both as an author and as a reader, that made a big difference to me.

[00:04:44] Halfling: We call it finding your tribe,

[00:04:46] Kate Heartfield: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:47] Halfling: I mean, really, honestly, there's, and I see you smiling and you're very enthusiastic about this idea of you get with a group of people that are like-minded and enjoy the same things you do. And it's almost like you come home. We went to the first convention that we have been able to go to since the pandemic started.

[00:05:08] Halfling: And even though people were in masks, when we went to this convention, which we have done this convention a few times, it was just, I mean, the, just walking in and seeing the people, it was, to me, it was just like coming home. It was just these are my people. This is my tribe. This is where I belong.

[00:05:26] Halfling: And if I could be around these people all the time, that would be wonderful. We can't do conventions every day but there is that sense, you know, you're not alone and you're not weird. And people enjoy the same things you do.

[00:05:40] Halfling: So I'm glad to hear that you found a tribe . Uh uh, so, I mean, you didn't go to conventions earlier than that, or?

[00:05:53] Kate Heartfield: no, it's funny. There was a world con in Winnipeg where I grew up in 1994 and I just didn't know about it. And I had actually just graduated high school and I left home. I went and I spent a year in Central America and, you know back-packed around as one does after high school, and so I had just left the country when Worldcon happened and I had no idea it was even happening.

[00:06:17] Kate Heartfield: And it was right there in my hometown, which happens so seldom with world cons. So I look back now and I think, geez, you know, but at the time the internet was so much less developed. . So, you know, there I didn't have, uh, I didn't have any online community and so the only people I knew who were readers, if I just happened to meet them in school or in my part-time job or something like that, those were the only other readers that I talked to.

[00:06:43] Kate Heartfield: And if they didn't happen to know that World Con was a thing or that any, science fiction and fantasy conventions were a thing, then I wouldn't find out about it. You know? So it just took a while I think to finally understand that that was something that I'd be interested in and to find people here in Ottawa as well.

[00:06:58] Kate Heartfield: Ottawa has a really excellent science fiction and fantasy community, and we have a great convention called CanCon that I go to every year. And finding that community as well was such a huge support to me, both as a fan and as an author.

[00:07:11] Halfling: Well, I can't imagine, like I said, for us going to convention, whether it was the one that I'm talking about, RavenCon or some of these others, it's the same sense as, I'm around the like-minded people. I'm around people who get it, who understand my weirdness . 

[00:07:27] Halfling: What sparked your early interest in these types of genres that you have gotten into were there any specific things in your childhood that led you to this, or was it just like in high school you picked up a book and started reading and said, oh my gosh, this was wonderful. How did that start?

[00:07:46] Kate Heartfield: I think it did start. As a kid, quite young because I was a voracious reader and a lot of what I read was science fiction and fantasy. You know, Robin McKinley's books, are a great example. Susan Cooper, CS Lewis, all kinds of fantasy and science fiction. I was a big early reader of Dune.

[00:08:05] Kate Heartfield: So reading those books, they were some of my first loves. But I didn't. I think of myself as a writer of that genre until quite late. So I knew that I, I always knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I had this idea, I suppose, that I had to write the great Canadian literary novel, right?

[00:08:23] Kate Heartfield: And so, uh, my first manuscript was not speculative at all. It was, uh, coming age of age story on the prairies. And it was a terrible novel. The sort of first apprenticeship novel. And, uh, and then I wrote another one that was historical fiction with no speculative twist. And, the genre wasn't the reason that those novels were not publishable.

[00:08:41] Kate Heartfield: It was mostly just that I was learning how to write a novel. And, you know, it may be that I could have stuck with a realistic genre or a mainstream genre and, everything would've worked out but I think part of me learning how to write in my own voice was learning that yes, I actually did wanna write the stuff that I had always loved reading as a kid.

[00:09:00] Kate Heartfield: That that was still where my heart was and that it was okay, you know, that it was just as valid and had as much literary merit to write, about dragons and magic, as anything else. And so I think that was sort of a coming home for me and it took until my late twenties to realize that I was a genre writer, that I was a science fiction and fantasy writer.

[00:09:20] Halfling: So trying to get from that early start to the successful career that you have now, what, sort of steps did you take? Did you join writer's groups? Did you take classes? How did you end up perfecting your craft, so to speak.

[00:09:38] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it was a long journey. You know, I am not one of the, as you can tell from what I was already saying with my early novels. You know, it took me a while and I think there are two big changes that I made that, made me the kind of writer who would be published and that I would be happy with the work that I had published and led to where I am now.

[00:09:58] Kate Heartfield: So the two big change. Were finding community, finding writers groups, and finding other authors that I could talk to, especially authors who were kind of in my same, situation in terms of their career, where they were starting to sell things and working on their craft, and just sort of starting out.

[00:10:13] Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:14] Kate Heartfield: So that was really helpful. And the other thing was working on craft as a writer and being very deliberate about learning how to write, which I hadn't done early on. Early on. I sort of just thought, well, you know, it's just talent. It's just the muse. It'll come to me or it won't, you know?

[00:10:29] Kate Heartfield: And so, I just waited for it to pour out of my fingertips. And, after a while I started to understand that no, you can have talent and you can have inspiration and that's great, but there is such a thing as writing craft and you can learn deliberately from other people. And so I started to just read some craft books about how to write. And I took a writing by correspondence course and started to write short fiction as a way to understand storytelling, to look at different sizes of story, to see what the shapes of stories were, uh, and be more deliberate about it that way.

[00:11:01] Kate Heartfield: So, That was sort of between about 2007 and 2013 was that period of me finding my people and learning more about the business and the industry and learning how to write. And by then I was a working newspaper journalist. I had a busy job and I had a kid in 2010 and so there was a lot going on at the same time.

[00:11:20] Kate Heartfield: Um, but that is, I can look back now and say, okay, that's when things started to.

[00:11:24] Halfling: Mm-hmm. . Well, you know, we have heard time and time again from writers that say, if writing is the thing that you really want to do, most of all, Then you pretty much have to just make it your life. Set aside that time every day. Make sure everybody around you knows, I'm a writer, I need to take this time.

[00:11:52] Halfling: And there's so much dedication that goes into actually becoming successful writer. So this is something that we've heard that, you know, you just have to constantly write. You just have to constantly be at it and not get distracted by different things. One of our guests actually said, if you find yourself saying, I'd rather be out in the garden rather than writing the next chapter of my book than writing's not for you.

[00:12:25] Halfling: If gardening is the thing, then garden. There's nothing wrong with that, you know? So, I guess you must have kind of reached a point with that.

[00:12:36] Kate Heartfield: Mm-hmm. . Yeah, definitely. And you know, sometimes we come away from it and come back to it. You know, it, we have fallow periods where you do just want a garden for a year or two, and, and that's fine. And it doesn't mean you'll never write again, you know? But definitely it has to be something that you love.

[00:12:50] Kate Heartfield: It's such a difficult career that there's no real point in doing it if it's not making you happy, I think. So, but I did, I always wanted to do it and, I would take time just really late in the evening and that kind of thing whenever I could find a few moments and try to have the discipline to get some words on the page.

[00:13:05] Kate Heartfield: And I do have a kind of a lifelong habit of doing that. So that's served me well. And then, you know, eventually in 2013, um actually 2014, I signed with my agent, my literary agent, on a novel. And, so that made a big difference to my career from there. So that was when we started to actually have some, uh the beginning of starting to sell novels.

[00:13:29] Halfling: And that's when you started having to work with deadlines,

[00:13:33] Kate Heartfield: Mm-hmm. Yeah. for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I was already somewhat used to that from working in newspapers, although of course, The difference is that newspaper deadlines are four o'clock today,

[00:13:44] Halfling: Right

[00:13:45] Kate Heartfield: and 500 words rather than, you know, 80,000 words six months from now or whatever. 

[00:13:49] Kate Heartfield: But, um, yeah, so the deadline part of it always felt very comfortable to me coming from that journalism world.

[00:13:56] Kate Heartfield: Um, but yeah, it is quite different because your first and second novel sometimes you have a lot of time to work on. And then as you start to sell more, You'll have, more regular deadlines for books and fewer fallow periods in between to kind of rest and get your thoughts together.

[00:14:11] Halfling: Well, I wanna switch gears a little bit because this is something that seems to me just reading different descriptions of your works. You've got all these types of things, and then you've got Assassin's Creed, folks. Where did that come from? How did you make that shift and tell me about that.

[00:14:34] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it's funny. It's not something I ever imagined, doing necessarily. So, you know, for those who don't know, if there's anybody who doesn't know, Assassin's Creed is this big video game franchise. There are many Assassin's Creed video games, very successful and popular games going back, 15 years now.

[00:14:49] Kate Heartfield: And, they tend to be set in historical periods, different historical periods because the overarching idea is that there are these factions that have been fighting all throughout human history, and so each game is set in a different period. And I was familiar with them. I had played a little bit and my family members played and I have been a gamer going all the way back to when I was a kid. So I was already familiar with the game, and then when my agent, just sent out a little email saying, I happen to know a publisher that's working on, she couldn't say what it was, but it was, you know a UbiSoft property in a historical setting or something like that. And I, thought I have an idea what that might be, and

[00:15:25] Kate Heartfield: So, I pitched for it and, I put together a couple of, ideas as a pitch, and then they like those. So, the publisher, Aconyte Books asked me to develop some outlines, and then it was a few months of going back and forth on the outlines. And then eventually they got the green light, from Ubisoft, the video game company to go ahead.

[00:15:45] Kate Heartfield: So Aconyte books as the publisher, and they published all kinds of tie-in novels. Not only Assassins Creed, but other things like Marvel as well. And, they've been wonderful to work with. I've written, we published one. Assassin Creed novel last year called the Megas Conspiracy. And, the second one in that series is done and it's coming out in July, 2023.

[00:16:07] Kate Heartfield: And, we don't have a contract for any others yet, but there is a sort of a plan. The plan, overall plan is to do at least one more. So, I've really enjoyed working on these books.

[00:16:16] Halfling: Okay. That's interesting because like I said, it seemed like sort of a departure from what you published previously. But I guess I can see a connection because of the historical settings and that aspect of it. So I guess that, that kind of makes sense and I'm sure it probably gave you a chance to sort of explore a little bit different. I don't know, not methodology, but just a different way of thinking. Because the setting is different from really anything that you did previously and so I can just imagine that it was probably a really, really good time for you to experiment a little bit and think kind of outside the box.

[00:17:00] Halfling: I don't know, maybe I'm just.

[00:17:02] Kate Heartfield: No, that's, that's exactly, that's exactly how I feel about it. You know, it is a little bit of a departure because everything I had written before was my own work and I do tend to also straddle a kind of, The literary genre divide, literary commercial divide in a sense. You know, my books tend to be, you know, they're science fiction and fantasy.

[00:17:20] Kate Heartfield: But they are not. Maybe as plot driven, as adventurous, as, some science fiction and fantasy books are. So there's a little bit of a difference there. But actually when it came down to writing them, I found it was basically just, tell a good story and write a good book and have characters people care about.

[00:17:36] Kate Heartfield: And in the end it was the same process as writing any other novel. So the main differences were just, you know, making sure that I had an outline for the story. Would be acceptable to my editors, make sure that I wasn't breaking cannon or anything like that. And meeting that deadline because the deadlines do tend to be quite tight in tie-in writing.

[00:17:55] Kate Heartfield: So those were the only differences really. And when it came down to it, it was about, immersing the reader in a historical setting, which, as you can tell, I love to do in all the books. So it wasn't all that.

[00:18:04] Halfling: Right. Yeah. Uh, well, like I said, I could see that connection there. So that's good. It's nice to be able to explore something different and you kind of easily fit into it. So one of the things that we really do on this show is, we talk about guest journeys into becoming a creative force in fandom.

[00:18:26] Halfling: What would you say was your starting point with your writing career? Where was your starting point?

[00:18:34] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it's an interesting question. The, actually, the opening line of my next novel is like all stories. I have more than one beginning. And I think , that applies to me too as a writer, you know? So I think it's, you know, you can definitely take the beginning, I think. From around 2014, which is when, as I signed with my agent, and a year before that in 2013, I had sold my first speculative short stories for professional rates.

[00:19:02] Kate Heartfield: So I had a few, I had a few sales going way back and short fiction where, just really occasionally I would manage to sell something, or have something published for no money, you know, I had a few things here and there, but 2013 is when I really started to regularly sell to good markets, in short fiction.

[00:19:20] Kate Heartfield: And as I say, then I had an agent and we started to go out on submission and that kind of thing. So I think that's really the starting point from when I switched from being, a writer with hopes of being published to being a writer who was regularly being published.

[00:19:33] Halfling: Okay. Well, do you prefer writing novels or novelas versus short stories? Which is your preference or do you enjoy both?

[00:19:44] Kate Heartfield: Definitely novels are where my heart is. I think that's always been the form that I love the best. And, I like to always have a novel on the go because it gives my brain something to be working on all the time. Just my subconscious is working on that story and I feel a little bit untowards or something when I don't have a novel that I'm working on.

[00:20:03] Kate Heartfield: You know, it's just something that, to return to all the time and work things through. So definitely novels are central. I think to me as a writer, I do enjoy writing short fiction. I like it as a form, but I find that I can go without writing short fiction, and it doesn't bother me.

[00:20:19] Kate Heartfield: Whereas with novels, I feel like I just, I need to be writing a novel all.

[00:20:23] Halfling: Mm-hmm. . Okay. Well, do you find one or the other more challenging to write? do you feel it's more challenging to write a short story or the novel?

[00:20:37] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, I think the novels are more challenging, because you have so many more moving parts in the plot, and there's so much more to keep in your head and so many ways it can go wrong. So it is more challenging that way. It's hard to write a good short story, but I find just the mere fact of writing it, you know, easier that you know, you can, sometimes I've sat down and I've written a short story in a single session, you know? So it, it doesn't consume your life in the same way. Obviously writing a brilliant short story is a skill and a talent. And it's not, I don't wanna say that it's easy. But novels definitely are challenging in the sense that, they're full of puzzles to figure out and full of false starts. And, different drafts I have to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.

[00:21:20] Kate Heartfield: But I think that's probably the reason I love them so much is because they are so consuming and, it takes a while to get right. So it's very satisfying when you can finally say, okay, this is a solid draft. I can send in..

[00:21:31] Halfling: Yeah, I can see that. I just thought maybe, you know, it might be more challenging. To write short stories because, you're telling a story in a much shorter amount of time. And so I would imagine that the writing has to be tighter and you have to be able to get points across more quickly than you would if you had time in a novel as opposed to a time in a novel where you can sort of lead into things and give a little more. You know what I mean?

[00:22:02] Kate Heartfield: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Both of them are a challenge for sure. I find writing short, I think different writers come at it from different perspective. It was too. I think some people find it really difficult to write short but that comes pretty naturally to me. Again, probably journalist training.

[00:22:18] Kate Heartfield: I got used to just stripping everything out that wasn't necessary, and I've written a lot of flash fiction, a lot of very, very short fiction. And I found that quite challenging to begin with, but now it doesn't, phase me that much to, to write a really short story.

[00:22:30] Kate Heartfield: You know, it can be challenging to get it to work the way that you want it to work. But generally speaking, it's, you know, a few days or a week at most where you're working on, something like that, and you can kind of have a satisfying conclusion to the project pretty, pretty quickly.

[00:22:44] Halfling: I was gonna ask you if you had ever tried your hand at Flash fiction . So you answered the question there. I, at one of the conventions that we went to, I got roped into doing a class on flash fiction because the person who was supposed to lead that class, I forget exactly what happened.

[00:23:07] Halfling: But anyway, they needed somebody at the last minute. And of course the spaceman said emailed back because they had put out a, can anybody do this? They have put out a, you know, a call for somebody to do this. And so he is like, can you do that? And I'm like, uh, I dunno.

[00:23:31] Spaceman: And we had prizes. Remember the panel description said that everybody would get a prize? Yeah. And so, you know, we had t-shirts and books. So , we gave out t-shirts and books. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:44] Halfling: But I am not a writer, but I got behind the idea of flash fiction because, there's just something different about it.

[00:23:52] Halfling: I go back to Hemingway's, you know, six word story. So what we actually did was we had one, photograph and we handed it out, or I handed it out to everybody and I said, okay, your challenge is to write a piece of flash fiction based on this photograph, and we're going to read, you know, everybody's gonna read their stories and they all came up with some very interesting takes on it.

[00:24:21] Halfling: I would've never imagined, because again, I'm not a writer, but I would've never imagined some of the things that they came up with. So that was really cool. It's. It was just interesting to me the whole concept of flash fiction and having to tell a story in such a short amount of words. You know, talk about tight

[00:24:45] Kate Heartfield: Yeah. Yeah. I did something similar at CanCon here a few years ago where we had a ready, steady flash, contest and there were four of us on the panel and we had to write,, immediately to a prompt and then read them out loud and the audience would vote for the best and I actually won the competition.

[00:25:01] Kate Heartfield: So , I was proud of that.

[00:25:04] Halfling: Of course you did Very good. Uh,

[00:25:09] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, that was tons of fun.

[00:25:10] Halfling: yeah. This wasn't a contest, there was really no way to judge because they all, like I said, they all were good, but they all had very interesting takes on that one photograph . So it was a really cool experience. Uh, okay.

[00:25:26] Halfling: I wanna switch gears again because, you've talked about working in newspaper, but you've also been a teacher or maybe you're teaching now. Tell me a little bit about that..

[00:25:39] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, so, I left. The job at the newspaper in 2015, I was an opinion editor and I wrote columns and editorials and took good submissions and all of that and I did that for more than a decade. So that was a big part of my life. But for various reasons, I wanted to leave, in 2015 and I went freelance at that point.

[00:25:58] Kate Heartfield: And so, I wanted to spend more time writing fiction, but I knew that wouldn't be enough to make a living. So, I had a few other things that I thought I could, add together to make enough to get by every year. So one of those things was teaching and I had run some workshops before and for a long time I've been a volunteer, mentor editor for something called the op-ed project, which helps people learn how to write opinion pieces.

[00:26:24] Kate Heartfield: So I had some experience with teaching people writing and working with writers. So, I felt pretty comfortable with that. So there are a few things that I've been doing for a number of years now as a teacher. Every year I teach one university level class in the journalism department at a university here in Ottawa.

[00:26:42] Kate Heartfield: It's actually where I went to school for journalism. So I teach, fourth year undergrads and master students, arts and culture reporting, which is neat because it kind of marries my two halves where it's journalism, but it's talking about arts and culture. And so we talk a lot about fiction and storytelling and that kind of thing.

[00:27:00] Kate Heartfield: And so I'm actually teaching that class right now and I also teach a number of workshops, especially online where I'll teach, you know, either a two hour live zoom workshop or just something asynchronous. There's a place called the Loft Literary Center, where I teach quite frequently, online courses.

[00:27:17] Kate Heartfield: The Rambo Academy, I've taught there, several times as well and there's also a lifelong learning program here in Ottawa attached to the university which I teach, elements of like basic fiction writing elements of fiction to those people, people of all ages, but often retired people who want to learn how to write fiction.

[00:27:36] Kate Heartfield: And I love teaching that course because people wanna be there so badly and are so enthusiastic. And it's one of my favorite things to.

[00:27:44] Halfling: It makes a difference when it's something that you really want to learn, versus, okay, I have to take this English class in order to graduate . There's a big difference because you do get that enthusiasm. I think we've all been there with classes that we had to take and really didn't have that much interest in it.

[00:28:03] Halfling: Uh, but, uh, you know, they offer those classes because we're supposed be well rounded individuals when we leave college . So,

[00:28:14] Kate Heartfield: Yeah.

[00:28:15] Halfling: So yeah, I can imagine that, you know, the classes you're describing are fun because again, like you said, they wanna be there they're enthusiastic about it.

[00:28:24] Halfling: So, that's great. But let's talk about different challenges that you may have faced along the way, because I know that writers. Really do face a lot of challenges in trying to make a successful career. So talk about whatever challenges you have faced and what you've done to overcome them.

[00:28:46] Kate Heartfield: Yeah. So probably the biggest challenge I've faced is just being able to get published at all. So, going through the rejection grinder, you know, which we all go through. But for me , it took a long time. So as I say, I wrote my first novel in the mid nineties. Soon after I graduated high school, I had a novel that I wrote when I was 19, and I didn't sign with my agent until 2014, so 20 years later, basically.

[00:29:13] Kate Heartfield: and I was writing novels, not constantly, but I wrote four novels that I just couldn't get published in those years and I would take some time off between them sometimes and say, you know, I'm a working journalist. I have lots of stuff going on. So it wasn't a constant, fight to get published, but I was doing it fairly steadily and I did reach a point where I had to say to myself, okay, well maybe this is just not going to happen for me. Maybe, I'm never going to get a novel published. And I had to ask myself, would I keep writing if I knew that would be the case? And I said, well, actually I will because I just, I love writing, I love working on novels and even if I'll never get published, this is what I wanna do with my life.

[00:29:51] Kate Heartfield: And so I kept on but I did send out queries and to agents and, you know, so, for those listening who don't know, The path to getting an agent is you send these query letters out saying, I have a novel. Would you like to read it? Basically, and here's what it's about. Uh, and I had done that over and over again.

[00:30:07] Kate Heartfield: And finally, I just met with success. I finally queried the right agent who was interested in what I was writing, and liked what I wrote. And, even then, it took us several years to get a novel sold and it was to a small press and that was great. But I would say that was the other big challenge that I had is then that small press, ran into some difficulty and, it's a sort of a long story, but we ended up canceling the contract and my first novel went outta print.

[00:30:35] Kate Heartfield: So that was a bit of a blow because I'd had this wonderful novel and they were, the publisher was great to me, but they had some other problems and, you know, weren't paying people and that sort of, And so, uh, you know, the novel had come out in 2018. It was wonderful. It was a dream come true.

[00:30:51] Kate Heartfield: And even though it was a small press, we had a wonderful cover and everything else, it was great. And it won the Aurora Award in Canada and it was shortlisted for some other awards. So it was doing pretty well in small press terms. And then, this happened, it went outta print.

[00:31:04] Kate Heartfield: So I think that was a moment where, it definitely, I started to realize that, You know, the publishing when you're working so hard to try to get published, it sort of seems like an end, you know, like, okay, well finally I will get there. I'll get to the top of the mountain and then that'll be it. I will have arrived.

[00:31:21] Kate Heartfield: And from then on everything will be plain sailing, you know? And of course it's not, it's not plain sailing. There, there will be times when your books will go to print, or there'll be times when books don't sell or you get a terrible review or whatever it is. So it's never going to be just, you know, now I've arrived. 

[00:31:36] Kate Heartfield: and so I think that was another. . And that's an ongoing challenge, you know, even though, I've had successes since, and I have a big publisher now, and that book is actually coming out this summer in a new revised edition from my new publisher. It's called The Shadowlane. So that's come full circle and I really have nothing to complain about looking back.

[00:31:54] Kate Heartfield: But, the other challenge I think that I've faced is just understanding that publishing is a difficult, slow grind and you've gotta keep it separate from the artistic stuff and the writing that you're doing.

[00:32:07] Spaceman: I'd like to interject a question here. A lot of the authors we've had on the show have talked about the grind, how they have to do a significant amount of self-promotion. Have you seen that and how have you approached that?

[00:32:21] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, definitely. I think. Increasingly, it seems to me over the last several decades, it seems, that authors have had to be their own promoters. I don't know whether that's true because, maybe there's a bit of nostalgia playing into that, so I'm not sure whether it was ever much better, but certainly these days, It's true that, some writers, may sort of hit it big and they'll get a huge advance and their publisher will be invested in sending them out on tour and printing, advanced reading copies and marketing to bookstores and doing the whole thing.

[00:32:51] Kate Heartfield: But for most of us, we're not gonna get that from our publishers. We might get some of it, we might get a small, you know, to a degree we might get some publishing support in terms of marketing and promotion. But it's never guaranteed. And it can be quite surprising, I think for authors.

[00:33:06] Kate Heartfield: What does and doesn't happen that you can have authors who their publisher never sends the book out to get, endorsement blurbs, or they never send the book out to reviews, get reviews, or they just don't appear in bookstores. Sometimes they're not even on shelves. So there's a wide range of outcomes that can happen when you get a publishing deal in terms of marketing and promotion. And that is definitely part of that grind I think that we all talk about. So for me, I've had a mixed bag. I'd say I've had a little bit of that where I thought a publisher was gonna do things and then they didn't do what I expected they would or things like that.

[00:33:39] Kate Heartfield: But I've also had the other side of it where. , you know, Harper Voyager UK has published my books and they've done wonderful. They've arranged special additions and they've sent out advanced reading copies and, you know, so they've, I've seen kind of both sides of it. I've had a little bit of both. But overall I'd say that I definitely feel that it is part of my job to be having conversations like this and trying to reach readers and you know write blog posts and do interviews and go to conventions and all of that. And I happen to like a lot of that work, I like talking about writing, I like, meeting readers and things like that. So that part of it is not a hardship, but it does take a lot of energy and it does take a lot of time, for sure.

[00:34:19] Kate Heartfield: And it eats into the writing time.

[00:34:21] Halfling: Yeah, I think that's one of the things that up and coming. Writers need to know is that it's, not just a matter of writing the book and getting a publisher that takes all the time that it takes and all of the pushing and getting through the rejections, et cetera. But like you said, once you get to the top of the mountain, that's not the end of it.

[00:34:44] Halfling: You know, there's a lot of, lot of up and coming writers don't understand the business side of it. Don't understand the hustle that they're gonna have to go through themselves. And I don't think it was just nostalgia when you were talking about the idea that publishers did more for you, back in the day, so to speak.

[00:35:05] Halfling: I think they truly did. But now, yeah, you pretty much gotta toot your own horn. You gotta get yourself out there.

[00:35:13] Spaceman: Yeah, back in the day, I used to get a significant number of bound galley copies before they even hit the press with the final production run. Now you're lucky if you get a final copy.

[00:35:23] Spaceman: Of course I'm really wondering if some of that isn't because of the fact that, people will, break a book down and scan it and upload it to the internet the same day.

[00:35:33] Spaceman: So, you can't blame publishers for being a little leery of that, but it also makes having timely reviews much more difficult.

[00:35:42] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, I've heard that a lot and I've, of course I've seen it from the author side too. Uh, you know, like my, Book last year did have, advanced reading copies, sort of similar to bound galleys that went out and the one this year hasn't had that, they've been sending out some copies of the finished book a little bit in advance.

[00:35:59] Kate Heartfield: So, you know, not to complain about that, but it does seem to be a little bit of a hit or miss thing these days. And I know, I've talked to people at Locus Magazine who say it's hard to get physical copies of books in to review in a timely manner, these days. So I don't know how much of it is concern about pirating. I think printing costs are really high. Warehousing and shipping costs are really high. All of that is just, it's a choice they have to make for each author and say, are we gonna invest in this part of the process? And how much payback are we gonna get for it if we do?

[00:36:30] Kate Heartfield: So yeah, that is it. It is the kind of thing that authors need to know going in, you know, and, it's so helpful to have other writers that you can talk to and say, okay, well what was your experience? You know, what did you get when you had your first book published? And all of that. And, it's unfortunate sometimes that information requires sort of background channels sometimes to hear.

[00:36:47] Kate Heartfield: So, uh, the more people talk about it, I think in public forums the better.

[00:36:53] Halfling: Yeah, I think making it public and making people more aware of it, I think is definitely, gonna help. Like I said, they, a lot of the up and coming writers don't realize the battles that they're gonna face and all of the time it's gonna take to, not just to climb that mountain but do the rest of it once you get there. So, I wanna switch gears just a little bit. Is there one person that you would say has inspired you? Think about one person that has inspired you the most, whether it's your writing career or just in your personal life.

[00:37:32] Kate Heartfield: It's hard question to answer, I think. I'll choose a writer. You know, there are many, many different people who've inspired me, but one writer who has been my touchstone artistically, I think is Susanna Clarke, who wrote, Jonathan Strange, and Mr. Norell and Piranesi and the Ladies of Grace Adieu and she's a historical fantasy writer.

[00:37:53] Kate Heartfield: And, just on an aesthetic level, she writes the kind of books that I would like to write. I mean, not in a sort of one-to-one, I wanna write exactly like this, but in a sense of how they look at history and how they use speculative elements, to ask questions about history and just the sort of intellectual projects that they are.

[00:38:15] Kate Heartfield: And. just the glory of the words and the prose. I mean, she writes so beautifully. So just as a writer, she's been very inspiring to me and she's also inspiring on a career level because, she battles, a chronic illness and, it's been some time between her different books.

[00:38:32] Kate Heartfield: You know, she hasn't been able to produce a book a year the way that, the received wisdom says you have to, and, you know, so she just is doing her own thing to the best of her ability and, producing these brilliant books. And, so whenever I feel. A little bit, bogged down in all of the industry stuff and worrying about, you know, Amazon ratings or something like that.

[00:38:54] Kate Heartfield: Then I think, you know what, it's not about that. It's about writing books that are, beautiful in the way that her books are beautiful, and just writing them only the way that you can and having the career that you can as a writer, and that's different for everybody.

[00:39:07] Halfling: Yeah, and especially like you said with her, battling an illness and still being able to accomplish what she's been able to accomplish. I definitely get how inspiring that is. I mean, just on a personal level, you can look around and see people that have their struggles, but they're still going about their day doing their thing and accomplishing their thing.

[00:39:34] Halfling: It's not just limited to writers, but every day you see people that are struggling and persevering, I guess that's really the word, persevering. 

[00:39:44] Kate Heartfield: Exactly.

[00:39:45] Halfling: yeah. So I think that's a wonderful thing. I appreciate you bringing her up. Okay. We're kind of starting to wind down a little bit.

[00:39:53] Halfling: So one of the questions that we ask is, what's coming up? Tell us about any up and coming projects you've got.

[00:40:02] Kate Heartfield: Sure, yeah, it's actually a busy year for publications. There's a lot happening, and it's all in book form, so I don't have any short fiction coming out this year. So I do have my next novel is called the Valkyrie, and that's coming out from Harper Voyager UK. It's out at the end of March in the UK in all formats, but in North America we'll have to wait a few months for the print editions.

[00:40:25] Kate Heartfield: So, the ebook is available everywhere, but it won't be until the end of the summer that the print book will be on shelves in North America. So that one is a retelling of Norse and Germanic legends and I'm really proud of it. It's been lots of fun to write. And the other thing coming out, at the end of March and then later in North America, , same pattern is, the paperback edition of the embroidered book, which was my novel last year, which is a historical fantasy about Marie Antoinette and her sister.

[00:40:54] Kate Heartfield: And, that one is about twice the length. It's a big one,

[00:40:57] Halfling: Hmm

[00:40:58] Kate Heartfield: Uh, and so that's coming out, from the same publisher, Harper Pointer. And they're also bringing out, as I said, they're re-releasing my debut novel, the one that was with a small press before. So that one's called the Shadowlane, and it's coming out in the summer, in a paperback and in ebook and audio.

[00:41:17] Kate Heartfield: And that's a kind of a weird dark medieval fantasy. It's about a hell mouth and some sort of very medieval creatures, wandering around. And the fourth one I said it's a busy year for books . 

[00:41:28] Halfling: Yeah, which (great by the way)

[00:41:30] Kate Heartfield: the other one I have .Yeah. The other one I have coming out this year is, I mentioned the second Assassin's Creed book is coming out in July.

[00:41:38] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, so, if you like novel length work by me, there's a lot this year.

[00:41:42] Halfling: Yeah. Well that's awesome. Spaceman,

[00:41:45] Spaceman: There is a question I like to ask authors is if somebody wanted to get to know Kate Hartfield by her work, what work would you say is the window into your soul?

[00:42:02] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it's, it's funny because , we're probably all biased to select the latest thing, right? . Cause it's probably the closest to our heart. But I will say that the one book I think represents me at the top of my writing game and in terms of what I am interested in, is the Valkyrie, which is the one that's coming out, this year.

[00:42:21] Kate Heartfield: So, Yeah, I think, and also because it's a nice length. It's about 95,000 words, 330 pages. So it's not a huge investment. Like the border book is a much thicker book. But it's also not a novella, it's a full novel. So it's kind of just a nice length to get to know my writing and, it does have a historical setting and some interesting sort of feminist themes and queer relationships and kinds of things that I tend to write a book quite a lot in my books. So that's the one I would pick.

[00:42:51] Halfling: Okay, well, of all your works, we're a big audio book people. We tend to listen to books when we're in the car, going back and forth or whatever. I do read, I have a Kindle and I like to read. I also have the physical books, but what books? You mentioned one of your books, but what other books do you have or do you have any others on audio?

[00:43:15] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, I do. I have several. I've been really lucky that way that, my publishers have made audiobooks of everything I have in book length is actually in audio, or will be in audio this year. So I have two Novelas time Travel Novelas that came out from tour.com in 2018 and 2019. And, they exist in audiobook form as well, narrated by Jenny Ran Walker, who did a great job and the embroidered book, has an audiobook version as well. The Assassin's Creed books have audiobooks versions, so they're from different audiobook places, but I think they're all available through Audible, but also Libro and has some of them and, recorded books, has some of them as well.

[00:43:56] Kate Heartfield: So sort of different publishers in different places. But, they are all available or will.

[00:44:01] Halfling: Awesome. That's great. Like I said, we tend to do the audiobooks more than reading, you know, just time wise is like I said at the beginning, there's so many good books out there and so little time . So,

[00:44:16] Kate Heartfield: for sure, yeah. 

[00:44:18] Halfling: And audio books have been a blessing for us, really because, we've gotten some really, really good stories.

[00:44:25] Halfling: And we love having, Writers on the show because then we're like, oh, okay, well we're gonna listen to one of these. And, you know, so it's great cuz we find ourselves getting into these books. So, we appreciate that and we will make sure, that people know about that.

[00:44:43] Halfling: But where can people find you and where are your books available? Other than audio.

[00:44:49] Kate Heartfield: Yeah, so the easiest place to find information about me is my website, which is just katehartfield.com. So it's Kate with a k. And Hartfield is spelt just like the two English words, heart, like the organ and field. kateheartfield.com. And I'm also Kate Hartfield on Twitter and Instagram and I have a Mastodon account now, which is Kate Hartfield at In Wandering Shop, for those who use Mastodon.

[00:45:17] Kate Heartfield: So I'm all over the place and, my website has all my books and I keep a blog there and that kind of thing. And I'm always happy to talk to people on social media if you wanna say hi.

[00:45:26] Halfling: Okay, great. We'll make sure to get that in the show notes, because, we wanna make sure that people know about you, and the works that you put out. And we wish you all the continued success, but we appreciate you talking with us today. We thank you for taking that time and we have had a wonderful time talking with you.

[00:45:47] Halfling: You know, Spaceman's voice is a little lacking today, so I've done most of the talking and hopefully people aren't too bored

[00:45:54] Spaceman: That's what happens when your, oxygen pack runs out and you have to breathe the co2. 

[00:45:59] Spaceman: Yeah, not pleasant. You get into the airlock as soon as possible.

[00:46:02] Halfling: Yeah.

[00:46:03] Halfling: Yeah. So we had to give his voice a rest today. But again, we really appreciate you coming on the show and we're happy to have heard about your journey and to fandom and, that you are active in fandom. And we wanna thank our listeners for tuning in today. We hope that everyone has enjoyed and perhaps been a little inspired by Kate Heartfield.

[00:46:30] Halfling: We wanna give Kate a huge thank you again for joining us today. 

[00:46:36] Kate Heartfield: Thank you so much. I love the podcast. I was really happy to do this.

[00:46:39] Halfling: Well, thank you. We appreciate that. We try to just make it like, we're making new friends. So, we appreciate your participation today and so this is the Halfling signing off and as the Spaceman says, over and out!