Their digital site has published a piece on me and the writing of Chaos Calling: Book I of The Xenthian Cycle. It’s part of a campaign I’m running to celebrate the novel’s wider release.

You can read the full article, “E. M. Williams Invests in Herself to Write First Book,” on their site.

As the writer notes, I am a marketer. And I have been in marketing for a long time.

I’ve pitched hundreds of profiles like this one for employers and clients. I’ve arranged the interviews, done the follow-up work, and captured the coverage.

It remains surreal now that it’s my work that’s in focus.

What does the Kirkus profile talk about?

If you’re a long-time follower of my books and writing, the points that got mentioned won’t surprise you:

• That believing my creative dream of writing a book had died was a terrible experience.
• My Tedx talk on Women, Superheroes and Power, which contributed to my series.
• I wrote a diverse story. Toronto is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. I embraced the process to get Anna’s, Jason’s and Dave’s characters right, which meant a lot of additional testing and feedback from my beta readers and editorial team, including sensitivity readers.
• My long-standing admiration for Guy Gavriel Kay. Reading The Fionavar Tapestry and seeing that it’s possible to write fantasy with Toronto-centric characters had a huge impact on my creative life.
• I wrote the first three drafts of Books I and II of The Xenthian Cycle on my phone using Wattpad, but didn’t publish as I went.

What’s most surprising about it?

Half the fun to doing an interview is remembering to stay on message. You also have to go with the flow and have a good conversation.

Here’s what I forgot I said:

• I wrote My Little Pony fanfiction as a kid. Writing on a desktop in the 1980s meant I never shared that work. I don’t even have a copy of it today.
• Anne McCaffrey provided my introduction to fantasy (specifically, Dragonsong). There’s even an homage to her dragon work in Chapter 21 of Chaos Calling.
• I write with an acute sense of my mortality and always have. It’s one of the things I admire about Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.

Hope you enjoy it!

The post Kirkus profile on Canadian fantasy author E. M. Williams appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

The first signal from the Velvet Ditch is subtle.

As usual, I misread it.

Gradually, I notice my morning writing is bogged down in tedium. I’m not progressing at my usual pace. Checklist items remain unchecked. The growing list fills me with dread instead of excitement.

After a few weeks, opening my current file each morning requires an immense act of willpower—and I’ve structured my life to create that gift of time.

So, why am I squandering it?

To be clear, the pattern I’m describing isn’t depression or physical exhaustion. I’ve experienced both and would seek clinical attention should they recur.

How can I be sure?

For starters, my depression usually comes with a walloping dose of persistent pessimism where any positive feelings flatline. That isn’t happening. Work with clients is proceeding. I’m meeting my deadlines on that front.

Physically, I’m fortunate to also feel fine: I have no body pain, fatigue, or atypical reluctance to get out of bed. I sleep well. My commitments at home, with my family, and with friends are being met. When I fulfill these obligations, I feel joy.

But there’s a definite spark missing.

Concurrent signals:

• Reading way less than I normally do and watching minimal movies or television.
• Developing a sudden, voracious appetite for immersive video games.
• Wanting to be outside, preferably in water (I love to swim).

“What is happening?” becomes the undercurrent in conversations with peers and mentors.

Gradually, I realize that my creativity has stalled out. And, thanks to my friend Jeff, I even have a name for this recurring pattern.

I’m back in the Velvet Ditch.

What is the Velvet Ditch?

Jeff Wetherhold is a fellow consultant in a different field; we met through Growclass.

We first talked about the Velvet Ditch during a call in February 2023. The holiday festivities were firmly in the rear-view by that point, but we hadn’t caught up in a while.

“How’ve you been?” I ask. “How were your holidays?”

“January was slow,” he tells me. “I didn’t climb out of the Velvet Ditch until the end of the month.”

“Climb out of what?” I ask, instantly fascinated. “Can you tell me more?”

“You know,” he says. “When you’re crawling toward the holidays and you can’t take on another single thing. And then you get there, and you do all the extra work of celebration. And after that, there’s this period where you watch movies or TV or read and relax. It’s like lying in a ditch, but you’re also wrapped in this velvet blanket of creature comforts.”

“I know that feeling,” I tell him, thinking of every December in my adult life and especially my last holiday break. Getting there had been the darkest of crawls. “You mean the unstructured week between Christmas and New Year when time seems to stop.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Only, sometimes, I stay in the ditch way past the holiday. When that happens, I don’t ask very much of myself. I do what’s needed and no more. I let myself recharge. And at some point, I know it’s time to throw off the blanket and stand up.”

I hung up the call filled with the clarity and gratitude that only a talk with a wise friend gives me.

Sadly, awareness isn’t inoculation.

Am I in the Velvet Ditch?

The Urban English Dictionary describes the Velvet Ditch as, “A place that is easy to fall into and hard to crawl out of.”

NO KIDDING.  

Talking with Jeff added his work-specific context—that the Velvet Ditch is both collapse and escape, comfort and holding pattern. That it’s a place of gentleness with your working self, something of an inevitability in the cultural landscape of late-capitalist societies, and not at all limited to the Western holiday periods.

And ditch seasons may also look different, depending on your industry:

• If you’re in accounting, I bet you fall in the ditch right after you finish filing every tax report in existence each spring.
• If you teach, the first month of summer break is probably a big-time Velvet Ditch experience.
• If you’re a work-from-home parent with school-age children, having them come home for THEIR summer break may also be enough to send you tumbling into the ditch.

Depending on your profession, you can probably think of one or two high probability fields in your calendar when the Velvet Ditch looms large.

How I fell in this time

Looking back at last June, I see some obvious ‘straw/camel’s back’ risk factors:

• I lost a dear friend and colleague in 2022. While I had processed a lot of my rawest grief by the time I fell in the ditch, I was not at my most emotionally resilient. (I’m still not.)
• I signed up for a three-week virtual course that month, right after running my first in-person author event on top of the annual end-of-school madness. Until the course started, I’d been deep in a 30,000-word writing sprint on Book II of The Xenthian Cycle and enjoying great momentum. I expected the course to interrupt my streak. I didn’t expect it would derail my writing afterward.
• As a working parent with a home office, I’m on deck when my kids are on summer break. They’re much more autonomous now, but their presences (and camp-related calendars) still shift my working rhythms. A lot, as it happens.
• My consulting practice undergoes a sea change roughly every two years, usually in summer. With hindsight, guess what else often happens during that period?

While my Velvet Ditch stay eventually became obvious, figuring it out took me a good five weeks. After, I felt silly that it took me so long, especially when Jeff had given me the framing concept earlier in the year.

Had a ditch stay in 2023? You weren’t alone

Here’s the kicker.

This fall—as I talked to colleagues, went to conferences, and read other people who are insightful about working life—I realized I wasn’t the only creative wrapped in some version of the Velvet Ditch.

And I don’t think all the factors are personal.

Here’s a short list of energetic drains you may have experienced this year:

• Smelling smoke in your city for days on end or even evacuating from your community while record-breaking forest fires raged through North America.
• Watching your leadership team try to stuff the remote-work genie back into the ‘5 days in-office’ bottle.
• Understanding that we live in a patriarchal society systemically built on white supremacy and colonization, which requires variable energy to manage depending on how this framework interacts with your life, liberty, and goals.
• Continued attacks on the rights of LGBTQ2S people across North America.
• Enduring Covid-19’s long-tail impact on your work, social, and creative life. Many acute disruptions have ended, but we all experienced a mountain of change in four years.
• Caring for an elder or vulnerable relative in an increasingly broken long-term healthcare system.

I’m sure you can list a dozen more factors without breaking a sweat.

So, what’s to be done?

Getting out of the Velvet Ditch: A working guide

I don’t have all the answers for how to escape the Velvet Ditch, and I won’t pretend that I do.

Here are some patterns I’ve noticed:

1. As with grief, there is no timeline. It takes as long as it takes.
2. The lack of timeline likely pisses you off. And the Velvet Ditch does not care. Trying to force your way out may wrap that blanket around you even tighter.
3. Listen to Jeff and let yourself rest. Answer the diversions tugging at your hand. If you suddenly feel like learning the piano, give that a try. Personally, I played a lot of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. (Damn, that’s a great game.)
4. Give yourself permission to stop creating for a while. Your drive will come back. I honestly believe that.
5. If you can, take a social media break. Clearing that bandwidth can help a lot, particularly for extremely online people (my brethren, hello).
6. Spend time outdoors with loved ones, pets, and/or small children, depending on how your life is structured. They can be a balm for your soul during a Velvet Ditch stay.

I’m not entirely out of the ditch, even now. I still have days that are less creatively productive.

And yeah, they bother me.

When that happens, I have a little talk with myself about being a human being. I try to gift myself some of the kindness I would give to another.

And I trust that when it’s time to fully stand back up and run again, I’ll know.

EMW Note: Finding yourself in the Velvet Ditch is itself a marker of privilege. I want to acknowledge that.

I wrote this essay weeks before the Hamas attack that left innocent Israeli civilians dead and saw hostages taken. The attack in turn prompted the State of Israel to place over two million people living in Gaza under direct threat of starvation, dehydration, and physical harm as it cut water, electricity and bombed this heavily populated area at an astounding rate.

I am thinking of the Palestinian and Israeli people who have lost or fear for their family, friends, and homes. I’ve written to my representatives asking for an immediate ceasefire and for humanitarian aid to be sent.

If you are grieving for people you care about or in fear for their safety, please know I’m thinking of you with love.

The post Back in the Velvet Ditch appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Since this show involves both work me and writing me, the interview is attributed to my full name. We will pretend it’s E. M. Williams as usual. My pseudonym is more about being intentional regarding which part of my life I’m speaking to than an attempt to conceal my gender or create iron-clad anonymity, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The episode originally aired on August 14 and runs for about 40 minutes. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

On Learning with Lerner, Lindsey interviews unconventional leaders who have blazed trails in a variety of ways. Her goal is to challenge norms, explore unique journeys, and ignite personal growth for the show’s audience.

Lindsey and I connected on email after I heard Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale on her podcast earlier in the year. I enjoyed Lindsey’s interviewing style so much that pitching my own story was the next logical step.

We ended up having a great conversation about leadership, mentorship, learning how to do hard things by doing them before you feel ready, crowdfunding, launching a consultancy, cracking my own creative productivity code to write Chaos Calling, and why I don’t think you have to suffer to make art.

Who is this conversation for?

Anyone pursuing an unconventional path who wants to hear more from people with similar ambitions in adjacent fields.

Topics we covered on the Learning with Lerner Podcast

• 1:55 — Living in Toronto and a bit about my family history, along with my childhood desire to write
• 3:00 — Integrating creativity without bankrupting your existence; the myth of artistic suffering; Big Magic
• 9:50 — How I cracked the secret to figuring out my creative productivity process; the ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ story; Chaos Calling’s origins in movement and Wattpad
• 16:40 — Being a woman in a field dominated by men; working in tech and academia; how those experiences informed Dave Montcalm’s and Jason Lin’s storylines; using commuting and consulting to make art
• 24:00 — What my typical day looks like now
• 25:20 — Changes in technology and research across my working life
• 26:50 — Mentorship’s role in my career and why I believe in giving back; working with Growclass
• 28:00 — How crowdfunding helped me develop the skills to launch a self-published book
• 32:00 — I pitch Chaos Calling to Lindsey’s listeners
• 33:35 — My career advice on how to go rogue and work for yourself
• 35:45 — Telling people what you do when you have multiple career pursuits; being comfortable with self promotion
• 37:00 — Best and worst career advice I ever got; inspiration is super weird

For more, you can follow Lindsey and the Learning with Lerner podcast:

• Instagram: @lindseylerner
• LinkedIn: Lindsey Lerner

The post I’m on Learning with Lerner! appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

The new site layout is cleaner and more airy. I loved the original look and feel, but this one should be more sustainable. It’s got better search features and (I hope) a more engaging home page.

If you’re new, here’s what you’ll find on this site: 

• News about my books, in-progress work, and events. 
• Updates on The Xenthian Cycle.
• Resources I continue to use in my book research.
• Links to my social media profiles. I’m most active on TikTok, GoodReads, and Instagram. I’ve mothballed my Twitter and Facebook accounts for the most part. My presences remain there to prevent squatting.
• Book recommendations for other authors whose work I’ve read and loved. 

The best way to stay in touch is to subscribe to my mailing list. I respect your time and inbox: I only reach out when I’ve got news to share. 

This site also complies with Canada’s anti-spam legislation. If you subscribe, your email address will not be shared with anyone.  

While I wish pen names were ironclad, the reality is doing anything image-based in 2022 means my writing life and my professional life must inevitably sit side-by-side. So, if you’re looking for me in my work-life/start-up context, you can find me here. 

I’m proud to have redesigned emwilliams.ca. Web overhauls are a lot of work, and I’m grateful to the designers who worked with me.

It’s fantastic to welcome you back after so many months of preparation. Thanks for visiting!

The post I’ve redesigned emwilliams.ca appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Editor’s note about “Don’t Stop Believing”: I originally published this essay on Medium. But their analytics are getting increasingly weird, so I’m giving it a permanent home here.

* * *

It was raining that night. The kind of chilly, damp rain you get in North Toronto in late November or early March.

Transition weather.

I was coming home from the gym. Rain was pounding on the car roof as I pulled into the driveway. The radio was on. Steve Perry was belting out the chorus to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” as I turned off the engine.

I sat and watched the rain fall on the windshield. And in that moment, I realized that I had stopped believing I was capable of writing and publishing a book.

I realized that the story I’d been telling myself about what my life would be was a complete and utter lie.

And I burst into tears.

From childhood, I always wanted to write

Writing is the only dream I’ve ever had, and it caught me young.

I used to sit at an old-fashioned desk (the kind with a steel beam connecting the wooden chair to the table) in my Scarborough bedroom and copy out stories I was reading in little notebooks. I was five at the time. Maybe six.

I was eight when my dad brought a desktop computer home in the mid ’80s. I used it to write a short story about Megan and Sundance from My Little Pony. I remember liking the yellow letters on the black screen.

At 12, I caught another flash of inspiration during a bus ride to school. It prompted me to write a science fiction novella for my Grade 8 independent study project, this time using the world’s heaviest laptop that my dad no longer needed for work.

The story kept growing. I kept writing. When I was 18 and in OAC (Ontario’s former Grade 13) I finally finished a full, novel-length draft for my English class. Mr. Whelan encouraged me to “do something with it.”

I didn’t. An alternate historical fantasy series had already put its claws into me as I was finishing that draft. It didn’t let go until I was in my early 30s.

Life didn’t wait for me

I sought more feedback on my work. I took a writing class with the great Nalo Hopkinson via the University of Toronto’s School for Continuing Studies. I met a wonderful writing group through that class and made a couple of lifelong friends.

Our kids were born. My career became busier than it had ever been. And as Elizabeth Gilbert notes in Big Magic, sometimes if you wait too long to see a creative idea through, that fiery nugget of inspiration dies on you.

That’s what was happening in the car.

My novel had died, and I had finally noticed.

Don’t Stop Believing: What happens if you do?

When I say that I cried, I don’t mean I shed a few artful tears. I was devastated. I turned off the radio, put my head in my hands, and sobbed like my heart was breaking. Because it was.

After 15 minutes or so, I dried my face, took the key out of the ignition and went on with my life.

I told myself that it would be okay — I had changed careers, if not disciplines. I was still a writer.

Our children were at that joyful age between tantrums and curiosity. I was working for a non-profit in Toronto’s startup space. The work was interesting. My colleagues were fascinating. I made more lifelong friends. And I regularly wrote web copy and other collateral.

But it wasn’t the same. And I knew it.

As I’ve written before:

“Thinking about writing during that time was like touching an empty tooth socket with my tongue. I knew what was supposed to be there but was surprised and disappointed and sad when it wasn’t.”

The longing never let go.

Inspiration is a funny fish

In March 2014, we sold our townhouse in North York. At the time, my husband and I were both working downtown. The long commutes were brutal. We wanted to be closer to work. We got lucky with a house listing, and things fell into place.

Complications with the sale meant that, from April to early June, we moved in with my parents. They still live in the house where I was a teenager in Greater Toronto. While we stayed with them, my commuting time doubled from two hours each day to four.

During those long hours in the car, something strange happened to me.

I’d seen Edge of Tomorrow and Captain America: Winter Soldier that spring. Parts of both stories kept echoing in my head while simultaneously mixing with other bits and pieces to ricochet off in an entirely new direction.

I couldn’t leave it alone. While driving, I found myself acting out bits of dialogue. Sometimes I made myself laugh. Sometimes I cried, blinking furiously to keep clear eyes on the road.

Honestly, the whole thing was embarrassing. I’ve always had a rich interior life, but I hadn’t daydreamed this intensely since I was a teenager. I told no one, but I thought about my secret world constantly.

The move came. We settled the children into our new house. That fall, Caitlin Moran gave a talk at the Toronto Public Library that I attended. And she said something that made me sit upright in my seat.

I’m paraphrasing, but it was essentially:

“Whatever you feel most taboo about, whatever feels too strange or bizarre to share with anyone else, that’s the universe’s special content gift to you.”

What if what was happening during those commutes wasn’t just a diversion to keep me from losing my mind out of sheer boredom?

What if it was another book?

How do you recognize inspiration?

The next night, I had a dinner date with my friend K-Town. She’s a writer, too, and had generously been one of my beta readers for that dead-in-its tracks fantasy epic.

Giddy with the question of whether I’d latched onto a viable idea, I told her this new story as though vomiting up my very guts. It took a long time. My cheeks grew hot and my voice grew thin, the way it gets when I’m trying to talk but I’m too excited to do it properly.

When I’d finished, K-Town looked at me for a long minute. Then she said, “That’s the most commercial thing you’ve ever come up with. GO. WRITE IT.”

So I did.

Without endless evenings and weekends to spend at a desktop computer, I had to get crafty. Eventually, I realized that I could use Wattpad to write during my subway commute. By standing in the doors that never opened until I reached my stop, I could put my headphones in, pull out my phone, and get in 25 to 40 minutes of writing each way.

Getting out of my own way

Using this method, I wrote a first draft of 135,000 words in 15 months.

In the beginning, I thought the story was a standalone book. As it turns out, that draft was the highlight reel for a five-book contemporary fantasy action series.

I wrote five more drafts between 2014 and 2022, refining my world-building, characters, and villains, while interlacing the plot as I went. I got feedback from 26 beta readers, a structural/line editor who works for a major publishing house, two sensitivity readers, a copyeditor, and a proofreader.

It’s been a labour of love, but Chaos Calling: Book 1 of The Xenthian Cycle is now available for pre-order as an ebook.

Don’t Stop Believing: What I wish I’d known

Why tell you this story?

In part to share my book’s origin story and perhaps inspire you to read it, sure.

But there’s something deeper at play.

When I got out of that car carrying a dead dream, I was between 33 and 35 years old. I thought I’d missed my shot. I thought I was a failure. I thought I’d lied to my family and myself about what my life would be.

I’ve never been so wrong.

And the kicker?

I built Chaos Calling in the wreckage of that earlier novel. Wrestling with my slow-paced, ridiculously flawed fantasy epic taught me more about craft and persistence than any class ever could. I just needed time, both to finish becoming the adult I needed to be, and for this new idea to emerge.

And so, as I think about that distraught young parent sobbing out her heart in that car, I want to ask you one small question:

What might you be wrong about?

* * *

Chaos Calling: Book 1 of The Xenthian Cycle is available as an ebook and paperback. It’s about three childhood friends who don’t know they’re on standby for the end of the world. Slowly, they realize that their unusual adolescence was training for what to do should an ancient enemy appear in their lifetime.

The post “Don’t Stop Believing” appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Here’s what you’ll find on this site: 

• News about my books, in-progress work, and events. 
• Updates on The Xenthian Cycle: Here’s what I can tell you about Book 2.
• Resources I used and continue to use in my book research.
• Links to my social media profiles. I’m most active on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. 
• Book recommendations for other authors whose work I’ve read and loved. 

The best way to stay in touch is to subscribe to my mailing list. I respect your time and inbox: I only reach out when I’ve got news to share. 

This site also complies with Canada’s anti-spam legislation. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.  

If you’re a self-published author looking to level-up your book marketing, let me be the first to tell you about GrowClass. I love this amazing community for the inclusion and support offered in the class Slack channel, which you will join for life. The problem solving, feedback and troubleshooting is literally THE BEST. Sarah Stockdale and her team also offer payment plans for both Canada and U.S. residents. 

While I wish pen names were ironclad, the reality is doing anything image-based in 2022 means my writing life and my professional life must inevitably sit side-by-side. So, if you’re looking for me in my work-life/start-up context, you can find me here. 

Again, it’s fantastic to welcome you to emwilliams.ca after so many months of preparation. Thank you so much for visiting!

We’ll talk soon,

emw

The post Welcome to emwilliams.ca. It’s Great To See You! appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.