Author Spotlight: A. A. Warne

• The Madame of Darkness; Speculative writer; Human. 

Readers! Let’s give a good, hearty welcome to A. A. Warne!

A. A. Warne writes elaborate, strange, dark and twisted stories. In other words, speculative fiction.

Located at the bottom of the Blue Mountains in Sydney, Australia; Amanda was born an artist and grew up a painter before deciding to study pottery.

But it wasn’t until she found the art of the written word that her universe expanded.

A graduate of Western Sydney University in arts, Amanda now spends her time wrestling three kids and writing full time.

A.A. Warne, thanks for agreeing to be here today. While most interviews start off with bios and such, and while I’ll get to that as always, let’s start with the important stuff!

If you could have any pet (real/fantasy/no-allergies/no worries about feeding it) what would it be?

I recently watch Lilo and Stitch for the first time (I know, I’m a bit behind the times) and OMG it was awesome. I would love that pet *cough* dog! Ha! Imagine having a pet dog that’s associated with the Galactica and has off-planet visitors. Um, yes please! Imagine what I’d learn. Then my books might look like fiction but comes with a heap of non-fiction and factual stuff. 

Keeping up with that pet ‘dog’ sounds like a lot of good… exercise. 😉

What do you write? And how did you get started?

I’m a speculative fiction writer that leans heavy into the fantasy, but not the fantasy that Tolkin or a Lovecraft writer, rather I’m all about Stargate, Star Wars, bit StarTrekky, I’m all about discovering the stars. Except for one major thing. I don’t want to know about the political systems, or saving the planet. I want to know about the grass-roots people – who is on the ground, their everyday simple lives and what happens when it’s thrown into chaos, how do they cope? How do they care for one another?

These questions have been swirling around my head for over a decade and I started putting pen to paper back in 2010. Since then I’ve been exploring my worlds, pushing my characters and diving deeper into my books.

I loved the zoomed in stories, the day-to-day realities of the fantastic space tales, where people are the focus, not systems. I’ve just started trying to explore the fantastic — in space, so hopefully I can follow in your footsteps.

What do you like to read?

I go on and off fiction to read. If a book captures me, it’ll consume my days until I’ve devoured the entire series and then I need a rest and space. But I’m always reading something non-fiction, learning about the world, or metaphysical stuff and learning about possibilities. 

Ah, the joy of being a speculative fiction lover — they always come in series form!

Name one commonly accepted piece of writing advice that doesn’t work for you.

You must know grammar.

Ha! I know grammar in a natural way – I know when a sentence or paragraph or chapter doesn’t work. I feel through the changes and work it, re-work it until it’s a polished diamond. But put a typical fourth-grade grammar quiz in front of me and I’m throwing it out the window. That stuff breaks my brain. I can tell you what works and what doesn’t work but get me to pick out how through grammar terminology and I fail big time. 

Especially when working in your native language, it can be easy for people who are good at pattern recognition to know what something is off… without knowing why.

Luckily, for the anti-grammar-inclined, grammar is something you can pay someone to fix for you. Voice and plotting and characterization? At some point, are you even still writing the tale?

Name one commonly accepted piece of writing advice that they can pry out of your cold, dead hands.

Learn the rules.

Okay, I have to explain that one. So you know how they all say learn the rules, know the rules, and sometimes break the rules. Well, I wrote my own rules. Each time I read something by a writer, I liked what they were saying, threw out what I didn’t like, but what I kept, I ended up twisting it and shaping it to what I wanted out of it. That became my own rule book for my own books. It wouldn’t work for most people and that’s okay but it’s got me through several books so far. Rules are hard especially if they don’t apply to you. So make your own. Redefine the world so that you stand on top and claim your Kingdom.

Yep! The best rules of writing is to do what works for you — for this story. The process exists to help you achieve your story, if it’s not working, then find a new process!

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Shameless Self-Promotion time!

A.A. Warne’s latest short story was just released in:

The Magic In Fire –
Twelve stories – Thirteen authors. One theme – The Magic in Fire.

• A. A. Warne – The Masters of Fire
  The Masters of Fire were once a powerful brotherhood, but now only two of their brothers remain in the free world. Will they be strong enough to liberate their kin from the clutches of the Mad King? Or will an uncomfortable truth unravel their master plan?

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