Frequently Asked Questions About Me and My Writing
Name: Karin Cox
Nicknames: Kaz, Kazzy, Skippy, Kazmanaut, Kazmafarian, and several others that are too personal to mention.
Star sign: Sizzling Scorpio
Relationship status: Married to a wonderful yet very unlikely man who is almost my polar opposite.
How old are you? Old enough to know better!
Do you have any children? Yes, I have two — the great loves of my life.
What is your favorite quality about yourself?
I am determined. When I set my mind to something, I will do it. It might take time (especially once you add procrastination to the mix), but I will do it ... eventually. Sometimes I have to remember that it is okay to lower the bar. Reach for the stars, but don’t be disappointed if you only swing from the moon.
What is your least favorite quality about yourself? I procrastinate. Terribly. I always ha––
(Actually, I might just complete the rest of this question tomorrow).
What’s your favorite place in the entire world?
My bed. Good stuff happens there ... like sleep, and dreams, and ... stuff. It smells and feels like home.
Why did you choose to be a writer? I’ve been a writer as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of writing is winning a poetry contest when I was in about grade four. With my (enormous) earnings, I bought a kite and I thought, Now this is a gig I could get used to. I still make about the same amount of money per annum. :-)
Writing has always been a natural state for me. I’m one of those people who jolts awake in the wee hours to scribble ideas in a notepad by my bed. It’s cathartic, a necessary process of working through my own thoughts and emotions.
Strangely, I often feel like I hate writing while I am doing it. I’m like Dorothy Parker—“I hate writing; I love having written.” But writing is such a healing experience in many ways. I am one of those weird creatures who finds editing much easier than writing (it comes with my day job as a freelance editor), so grinding out the first draft can be a real chore because I obsess over details and nitpick.
Often, I even convince myself to quit. I’ve recently found an excellent program called Write or Die, which has forced me to just let go and write, rather than be constantly in “edit mode.” I set it to a function called Kamikaze, which means it starts eating my words if I pause for too long. I know this would tip some writers over the edge, but for me, it stops me over-thinking things. I then tidy scenes up afterwards when I edit, and I enjoy that part of the process a lot more.
What are the challenges you face as a writer in your genre? I think the biggest challenges I face are the same issues all writers face: fear, and visibility. The fear is self-made. It is the little devil on your shoulder that whispers: this is not good enough, not original enough, not ... enough. Quit now. I struggle with it every day. In many ways, for me, it represents as a fear of failure. While the book is still on my hard drive, I can love it; I can’t guarantee that it will be loved once it is published, although I hope it will be. Visibility is the struggle to get any book before the eyes of readers. It is nearly a full-time job just promoting. That’s where things like this are great. I think secretly most authors write with the hope that their book will be universally loved and widely read. In reality, perhaps if we aim to touch the lives of a few key readers who really connect with our words and our message that might be enough.
Why so many genres? I write what I like to read, and I read voraciously across many genres. I fell into non-fiction writing for my day job, but I do really love writing Australian social and natural history. Writing for children is also a real blast; I love seeing the way kids' faces light up when they see a storybook brought out. Fiction and poetry are my true loves, and I don't believe in denying myself the pleasure of writing across many genres. I have a contemporary romance, some young adult, a dystopian science fiction novel, and a thriller also in the works.
Where did the inspiration for Cruxim come from? About eight years ago now, I invested in a writing workshop at the Byron Bay Writer’s festival in Australia. It was run by Stephen Lang, author of An Accidental Terrorist, and in it he showed us all a photograph of a gothic tower and asked us to describe it using all of the senses. I wrote the first few paragraphs of Cruxim, which sat there for several years until I found it scribbled in a notebook and considered expanding on it.
I had the idea of making the person in the tower a mythological creature, but I wanted to make him and his love interest something a little unusual. I knew I need to make him conflicted about his past and his role in the world. As I was searching through mythological creatures, I read about Kresniks, which are creatures from Croatian mythology and are sometimes called Cruxim. They dine on vampires, but are basically angels. I decided to explore making my hero that: an angelic being whose mission was to kill vampires, because how can you be considered holy and yet spend your life killing others? And then I wondered, what if someone dear to him became a vampire? How would he handle that when his mission is to kill them all? And the rest of the story sort of just fell into place. I'm fascinated by the role of the Sphinx in classical Greek and Egyptian mythology, so choosing Sabine's "species" of mythological beast was a no-brainer for me.
So what’s next for Karin Cox? Next is Sabine's ongoing story from the Dark Guardians series, which I know many of my early readers are eagerly anticipating. I'm also working on a military romance titled Under Moons & Crosses and a few other projects.
Nicknames: Kaz, Kazzy, Skippy, Kazmanaut, Kazmafarian, and several others that are too personal to mention.
Star sign: Sizzling Scorpio
Relationship status: Married to a wonderful yet very unlikely man who is almost my polar opposite.
How old are you? Old enough to know better!
Do you have any children? Yes, I have two — the great loves of my life.
What is your favorite quality about yourself?
I am determined. When I set my mind to something, I will do it. It might take time (especially once you add procrastination to the mix), but I will do it ... eventually. Sometimes I have to remember that it is okay to lower the bar. Reach for the stars, but don’t be disappointed if you only swing from the moon.
What is your least favorite quality about yourself? I procrastinate. Terribly. I always ha––
(Actually, I might just complete the rest of this question tomorrow).
What’s your favorite place in the entire world?
My bed. Good stuff happens there ... like sleep, and dreams, and ... stuff. It smells and feels like home.
Why did you choose to be a writer? I’ve been a writer as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of writing is winning a poetry contest when I was in about grade four. With my (enormous) earnings, I bought a kite and I thought, Now this is a gig I could get used to. I still make about the same amount of money per annum. :-)
Writing has always been a natural state for me. I’m one of those people who jolts awake in the wee hours to scribble ideas in a notepad by my bed. It’s cathartic, a necessary process of working through my own thoughts and emotions.
Strangely, I often feel like I hate writing while I am doing it. I’m like Dorothy Parker—“I hate writing; I love having written.” But writing is such a healing experience in many ways. I am one of those weird creatures who finds editing much easier than writing (it comes with my day job as a freelance editor), so grinding out the first draft can be a real chore because I obsess over details and nitpick.
Often, I even convince myself to quit. I’ve recently found an excellent program called Write or Die, which has forced me to just let go and write, rather than be constantly in “edit mode.” I set it to a function called Kamikaze, which means it starts eating my words if I pause for too long. I know this would tip some writers over the edge, but for me, it stops me over-thinking things. I then tidy scenes up afterwards when I edit, and I enjoy that part of the process a lot more.
What are the challenges you face as a writer in your genre? I think the biggest challenges I face are the same issues all writers face: fear, and visibility. The fear is self-made. It is the little devil on your shoulder that whispers: this is not good enough, not original enough, not ... enough. Quit now. I struggle with it every day. In many ways, for me, it represents as a fear of failure. While the book is still on my hard drive, I can love it; I can’t guarantee that it will be loved once it is published, although I hope it will be. Visibility is the struggle to get any book before the eyes of readers. It is nearly a full-time job just promoting. That’s where things like this are great. I think secretly most authors write with the hope that their book will be universally loved and widely read. In reality, perhaps if we aim to touch the lives of a few key readers who really connect with our words and our message that might be enough.
Why so many genres? I write what I like to read, and I read voraciously across many genres. I fell into non-fiction writing for my day job, but I do really love writing Australian social and natural history. Writing for children is also a real blast; I love seeing the way kids' faces light up when they see a storybook brought out. Fiction and poetry are my true loves, and I don't believe in denying myself the pleasure of writing across many genres. I have a contemporary romance, some young adult, a dystopian science fiction novel, and a thriller also in the works.
Where did the inspiration for Cruxim come from? About eight years ago now, I invested in a writing workshop at the Byron Bay Writer’s festival in Australia. It was run by Stephen Lang, author of An Accidental Terrorist, and in it he showed us all a photograph of a gothic tower and asked us to describe it using all of the senses. I wrote the first few paragraphs of Cruxim, which sat there for several years until I found it scribbled in a notebook and considered expanding on it.
I had the idea of making the person in the tower a mythological creature, but I wanted to make him and his love interest something a little unusual. I knew I need to make him conflicted about his past and his role in the world. As I was searching through mythological creatures, I read about Kresniks, which are creatures from Croatian mythology and are sometimes called Cruxim. They dine on vampires, but are basically angels. I decided to explore making my hero that: an angelic being whose mission was to kill vampires, because how can you be considered holy and yet spend your life killing others? And then I wondered, what if someone dear to him became a vampire? How would he handle that when his mission is to kill them all? And the rest of the story sort of just fell into place. I'm fascinated by the role of the Sphinx in classical Greek and Egyptian mythology, so choosing Sabine's "species" of mythological beast was a no-brainer for me.
So what’s next for Karin Cox? Next is Sabine's ongoing story from the Dark Guardians series, which I know many of my early readers are eagerly anticipating. I'm also working on a military romance titled Under Moons & Crosses and a few other projects.
