Since I’m giving away copies of my novella, Wolfhearted, this weekend (September 25-28, 2026) to celebrate my birthday, it seems only right to share a little more about the book. As I reviewed this article from 2021 article, I noticed it reveals a lot about my writing process, which might be useful, encouraging, or appalling to other writers out there.
This blog first appeared at The Storytelling Blog on February 25, 2021.
[An editorial note: I’m not a fan of revisionist history, so I’m leaving this article as is, apart from some formatting corrections. I mention a person several times, a person who has produced good work and handed out useful writing advise in the past. I apologize in advance for reminding you of any traumatic feelings you might have around this author. I’m making myself sad, too.)
Visit Amazon for your free download of the ebook. I also have free download codes for the Wolfhearted audio book, which is wonderful, but you will have to email me or reach out through the website contact form, as they are one-use only codes.
In the past I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing several authors (Michael Nye, Brad R. Cook, Paul Jameson) for the blog. Since I have a new book, I thought, “Why not interview myself?” People interested in the nuts-and-bolts of the writing process might find Wolfhearted’s meandering journey a cautionary tale. Learn from my mistakes.
Wolfhearted Composition Timeline
Kathy: How long did it take to write the novella, Wolfhearted?
Kathy: I’ve worked with this material, on and off, for nine or ten years. But before the kernel of story formed, a series of loses, culminating with my father’s death in January of 2013, had piled up. The story idea came to me on a snowy Valentine’s Day during a morning meditation. I think the Valentine’s Day in question was 2012, but it could have been 2011.
I don’t think I worked on the idea immediately, but I shared a draft with my writing group on our yearly retreat in May of 2012. They had a lot of issues with that draft.
The story pretty much fell into a black hole of self-doubt, although I tried to revise it later that summer and poked at it occasionally in intervening years.
In September 2019 I put “Paolo?” back on my main goal list, and it soon became my primary project. So, ten years from start to finish but really just over two years in earnest.
Keep your first drafts to yourself.
Is Wolfhearted a Faerie Tale?
Kathy: How did your love of faerie tales play out in Wolfhearted?
Kathy: One of the themes plucked from my compost heap of ideas was to create a story using faerie tale tropes. I’ve always loved faerie tales, myths, and legends. I wanted to build a dark, magic-rich secondary world and have the hero face a series of challenges in a wizard’s tower—very Dungeons & Dragons, actually. I dealt out a series of Tarot cards to inspire various magical obstacles. I explored a sort of reverse faerie tale “rescuer-rescuee” scenario in early versions.
Kathy: Tell us more about the “idea compost heap.”
Kathy: “Compost heap” is Neil Gaiman’s term for the random idea/image/theme repository. I think all writers have one, whether they kept it in writing, photos, internet links, sketches, or just as memories. We are magpies that way. Another bit of flotsam snagged from the heap were powerful wolf-shifter characters.
Wolfhearted Setting
Kathy: How important is the setting for Wolfhearted?
Kathy: When Wolfhearted came to me in on that snowy Valentine’s Day, 2011, it was as a setting detail. I sat in my “invisible chair” (as my family used to call my meditation place), and I saw a heart. A bloody, dripping anatomically correct heart, hanging from a tree in a dark winter wood. I reasoned out from there. Why is the heart there? What sort of place is this? Who would be in this place?
That horror element remained through all the versions of this story, of which there were many, from faerie tale to romance to steampunk fantasy.
Kathy: Let’s talk about the steampunk aspect, or “steampunk-ish love story,” as you sometimes say. How is this book different from classic steampunk set in Victorian times?
Kathy: I hesitated to use “steampunk” to describe this book’s genre because many readers have a very specific idea of what steampunk refers to—fantasy-steam technology, sure, but also all the Victoriana trappings. Wolfhearted is set among clashes in technological development among different cultures. The antagonist has access to steam and electrical energy, which he melds with his magical higher-mathematical workings. The serial numbers are filed off, of course, but it is as if Edwardian Britain were attacking Napoleonic-era Italy and Viking-age Norway.
Magic is science we don’t understand.
Writing Process
Kathy: What was your writing process for Wolfhearted?
Kathy: I learned so much about the “macro-process” of writing, I guess we can call it. That is, not actual composition mechanics or time management, but rather the deep-background emotional and creative steps that lead to story.
Early Drafts
In retrospect, I see this work came from a pretty depressing place, a time in my life littered with traumatic death, elders’ cognitive decline, and career upheaval. I was hanging on by my spiritual practice and fingernails. That flawed first draft was the story I needed to tell myself at that time.
But a funny thing about first drafts: They most likely consist of ingrained patterns and tropes from every narrative we’ve taken in throughout our lives. The familiar feels right. Thus, my faerie tale started with a male prince questing for adventure. His opposite number was an ogre, evil incarnate with no particular goal beyond havoc. The inciting incident? Conflict over a woman, of course.
Even with such clichés, I had enough insight to write the prince as young, inexperienced, and awkward and the woman-with-a-problem older, wiser, and maybe maneuvering him. Still, the early versions just didn’t work: With even small, surface changes to the faerie tale standards, motivations fell apart: What is the prince doing in the heart woods? Why does the woman need the prince’s help at all? What’s up with this ogre kidnapping wolf-folk?
This is the point where many writers abandon a story. They can’t make it work, and they don’t know why. Their friends and family may have quick fixes, but those opinions are most likely wrong.
Revision Key
Kathy: How did you get this compelling mess back on track?
Kathy: My breakthrough was finally asking myself, “Whose story is it?” I’m fairly sure this question stemmed from activities in the Neil Gaiman Masterclass to identify the story problem and the protagonist’s problem (which generally need to be the same thing). In every version of my story, Runa (as I eventually named the woman-with-a-problem) has a beef with Andries (as I eventually names the bad guy, morphed from ogre to urbane sorcerer). Yet early on, she wasn’t the agent of change. Writing Runa as the protagonist and the prince as her co-adventurer got my story on a track for completion.
Publishing Process
Kathy: Has working as an editor had an impact on your process?
Kathy: I’m a perfectionist, and my past experience as an editor makes me even harder on myself. I really want the book to look good, in addition to telling a fun, immersive story. I’ve included art and maps and created a rune poem as embellishments. That has all made the book production more complex!
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Wolfhearted is also available as an Audible audiobook, here.
Last year, St. Louis Writers Guild published Weird STL, an anthology celebrating the strange, spooky, and just plain wonderful stories of our hometown. This volume of short stories, poems, a play, and essays includes a Sean Joye universe short story, “Big Magick.” Joseph Arwald, one of the baddies from The Big Cinch, tells us what really happened to the Ferris Wheel from the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair.
Reviews, even a line or two, put the books you enjoyed in a more prominent position on Amazon and are vital for independent and small-press books to find their audience. Remember your most recent read? Leave a review for it on Audible, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads.
The direct links to post Amazon reviews are: Wolfhearted, here, The Resurrectionist, here, and Water of Life, here. The Big Cinch, here. The Talking Cure, here. Thanks in advance.