Sarah K L Wilson - A Wildly Romantic Fantasy Adventure

Sarah K L Wilson is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes timeless stories. Not the stories you think you want but the stories you don't know you desperately need. She believes in happy endings and that it should take a lot of struggle to get to them. She believes that sometimes violence is the answer, that sometimes no one is coming to save you, and that self-sacrifice is always worth it. She believes in big twists and beginnings that start in the end. She believes in heroic acts of bravery, that chaos sometimes trumps order, that there's humor in dark things, and that risks are what you make of them. She believes in the someday that will make all things new. And she believes in stories - sweeping, epic, glorious stories that renew our hearts and our hopes and refresh our minds like woodland streams. As our Author of the Day, Sarah tells us all about her book, Fly With the Arrow.

Please give us a short introduction to what Fly With the Arrow is about.

Fly With the Arrow is a darkly romantic fairytale retelling based on the ancient story of Bluebeard.

What inspired you to write this story? Was there anything in particular that made you want to tackle this?

My sister wrote a serious article about what we can learn from the legend of Bluebeard in psychology and I thought to myself, "You know this would make a great enemies-to-lovers romance," and then I had to write it.

Tell us more about Izolda. What makes her tick?

Izolda is a very sensible girl thrown into a world of chaos and madness like a grown-up Alice in Wonderland who falls in love with the Cheshire Cat.

The book includes a lot of humor. Why did you take this approach?

I think everything is better - especially the really dark stuff - if it's also funny. I'm still learning to do this well.

What, would you say, is it about the idea of a stolen bride that makes it so intriguing?

I wish I knew. I mean, none of us really wants to be stolen away to marry someone, right? And yet it's impossible not to read those kinds of stories. I think part of the fun is the adventure and the question of "How could these two possibly fall in love?"

Besides writing, what other secret skills do you have?

I'm a half-decent cook. My family appreciates that. ;) I can also smell snow before it comes and sometimes I see glimpses of the future.

Interesting cover - please tell us more about how that came about.

I'm a huge fan of KDP Letters who made this cover for me. She's a fellow Canadian and just enormously talented and I feel like she captures some of the tangled other-worldliness of the story in her text representation.

Why did you add riddles to the story?

I generally try to write the kinds of books I want to read and when I thought about this book I knew I'd want it to be full of riddles if I was the one reading it.

Readers say the book hooked them from the start. How did you pull this off?

This is my twenty-fifth novel and I've also written forty-six novellas. I think I'm finally starting to get a hang of that beginning hook.

This is part one of a series. Can it be read as a standalone? How do the other books in the series tie in with this one?

This is book one of four and no, you certainly can't read it as a stand-alone. This is a very intense story that can't be told all in one volume. I actually was thinking about running a "cliffhanger" challenge inviting fans to tell me where the story could be broken up without cliffhangers. I don't think it can be done, but you're welcome to send me emails with your opinions. Some stories just have an enormous force of momentum behind them.

When starting on a new book, what is the first thing you do?

I start a file in the notes app on my phone a few months before I start and when I get an idea I put a note in there. When I'm about to start writing, I read through those notes.

Do you have any interesting writing habits? What is an average writing day like for you?

I wake up at five am every morning to start writing before my family wakes up. I usually get about 3 hours of writing in during the day which is about 3,000 words and then I spend the rest of my time working on other writing-related business. I have to squeeze my work around raising a family, so I write wherever and whenever I can. I write on a light laptop so that I can move around the house and yard with it as needed.

What are you working on right now?

I'm currently working on a last read-through of Heart of Shadow (which releases November 24, 2021) to clean up any last typos. It's a very fast-paced monster-hunter romantic fantasy book.

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

Please view my work and contact me at www.sarahklwilson.com. I love to hear from readers!