Meet The Authors Showcase Edition #1 (1 of 3)

A showcase with @CeeMTaylor, author of wicked waters/ Oceana book one

1 what inspired the idea of your story?

My main "what-if" was "what if Gods were real and the Revelation happened, but the second coming was the return of something evil instead of something holy?" The nautical setting came second-nature because I work in the maritime industry and wanted to write something set shipboard. 

There were a lot of other what-ifs and inspirations, but that's the external driving plot of the series. I love writing Romance, so I knew I wanted an epic love story to drive the internal plot. One of my favorite tropes is the teammates/partners-to-lovers – I will never get tired of it – so that trope was in there from day one! When I first started crafting the external plot, I already had the idea for Valory (the prince / soldier who commissions a ship to investigate growing violence in the isles), but I struggled to find a love interest who matched him. He was very picky!

I think I sat on the idea for a year or so until I watched a rerun of the Lord of the Rings on tv. Faramir's identity as a scholar and reluctant warrior helped inspire the seed of Arden's character. At the time I thought Valory was my MC, but Arden ended up stealing the show and becoming the main protagonist instead.

2 what is something you struggled constructing with your story?

Oh man, what didn't I struggle with? 

When I started Wicked Waters I had been writing for a long time, but never did much work on the craft of writing fiction novels. Wicked Waters was my crash course in learning how! 

The drafting process went incredibly well – I think I wrote about 220k in three months. Editing it, though? Hooboy was that another story. I'm only now beating it into a shape I'm happy with, and I wrote that first draft in 2013.

For a more concrete idea of my struggles: plot holes, believable internal and external character reactions to major events, letting characters struggle/suffer instead of fixing things for them or letting them get off too easily, letting conflict rise up between my MCs, PACING (holy cow, pacing), overuse of adverbs and weak words, talking heads dialogue, HEADHOPPING (in the first draft, at least, I didn't know how to use POV yet, sigh).

There's a lot more, but those were some of the biggies.

3 what did you enjoy writing most of your story?

Interactions between characters! Arden and Valory have the slowest of slow burn romances going on, and their strangers-teammates-friends-lovers arc was so, so much fun to write. In general, though, I love digging out the psychology behind why characters are the way they are and how they interact with the world around them. I have a very, very large cast, so that's a big playground for me.

 In recent drafts, I've also begun to enjoy writing action and battle scenes. That was something I hated doing at first (I was terrible!), but enough practice has helped me improve my fast-paced scenes a lot.

Through revising Wicked Waters, I've come to realize that I love writing snarky, stubborn, ornery characters as well. They have such strong voices, and really seem to come alive on the page!

Banter is very fun to write and I insert jokes and teasing between characters often to ease tension, and these sorts of characters really lend themselves to comic relief that blends well with a dark fantasy vibe.

4 what's the overall response of your story from your readers?

Oh, people have been absolutely wonderful to me. Wicked Waters is going to hit 100k reads within the next week or two and I'm over the moon about it – I never dreamed about this kind of reception when I first started posting. I've had so many commenters joking with me in the inlines and reacting to each scene! In addition to making me feel good (I'm writing something that people enjoy!), their feedback has also helped immeasurably. I'm certainly a better writer than I was!