by Sunny Solaris
Featured on our second young authors interview, we have Y.I Turner who was interviewed by Sunny Solaris. You can check him out on Instagram as @author_yiturner. If you want to read his books before they’re published, they’ll be on Wattpad under the username @flamesword01.
Sunny: First up! Can you please introduce yourself and your book?
Y.I Turner: Alright, I'm Y. I. Turner, an author of character-centric stories across a variety of genres. I've written a lot in action, adventure, and fantasy, but lately have been getting into the thriller genre. My forthcoming novel The Black Rose Insurgency is a thriller, and it centers on a soldier forced to go AWOL for reasons of morality, who proceeds to join a six-piece of insurgents intent on bringing down an oppressive regime. While filled with adrenaline and action worthy of the genre, the book also takes time to explore themes of honor, duty, and unity. A key takeaway from the book is that good will never triumph over evil, if evil governments/organizations/ etc. show themselves to have more unity than those working for the greater good.
What was the inspiration for this book?
I'm a discovery writer, so what kick-started me down this path was the idea of a deserting soldier. The complicated morality of war has to weigh heavily on those sent out to fight them, and I wanted to explore that in my work. The rest of the story more or less flowed from there; since my protagonist abandoned the army out of principle instead of cowardice, I had to give him a new fight to throw himself into, and hence the plot for the rest of the book.
Who are your favourite authors and did they influence your writing, more specifically your book?
To be honest, I haven't read as much published fiction as I'd like, and most of my inspiration comes from movies and television instead. Star Wars is a heavy influence for me, as well as several of the Marvel movies, both in and out of the MCU. I'd say for the Black Rose Insurgency in particular, the introduction for the stormtrooper/deserter Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens intrigued me, and I wanted to do my own version of that. Many of the ideas from later in the book are more or less my own beliefs and convictions. Given I wrote the first draft in 2020, during a period of racial tensions in the United States where I live, some of those elements in the story are a sort of reaction to what I felt at the time.
How many drafts did you write until you got to this stage?
I know it's a no-no in the writing community to edit as you write, but I'm a perfectionist and a completionist, so I polish every chapter as I'm writing it. That makes my first drafts a lot cleaner than they have any right to be, but so be it. Currently, the book is in its third draft. Of course, the first was more spontaneous, creating the story from scratch and discovering things along the way. The second was a fairly deep edit after taking two years away from the book. I applied what I learned about writing in that time to the story and cleaned up many instances of awkward wording and such. While far less involved, I did make another pass to create a third draft, catching some small issues and cleaning up mistakes from the edit. When I get my professional edit done, that will be a fourth and (presumably) final draft that will be ready for publishing!
They say it disrupts the creative process--ruins the spontaneity. I think it just depends on the writer, because for me, leaving errors or clunky phrases behind weighs on my mind and messes up my flow.
Nice! You're self publishing right? What's the process like?
Yes! After getting a professional edit done and having a cover made, I have my sights on publishing through Amazon's KDP program. This is my first time with any of this, so I will be groping blindly and hoping I'm doing at least half of it right, but my hope and prayer is I can recreate any of my wins again in the future, while avoiding making any mistakes twice.
How much does publishing cost?
Going through Amazon's KDP program is free, so technically, publishing through that route doesn't cost anything. (Amazon does take royalties, which if memory serves, is something like 30%.) That said, part of publishing is producing a quality manuscript, which includes editing (I'm paying $175 for mine, which I believe is on the lower end price-wise) and a cover. I haven't had a cover made yet, so I can't speak on that. But again, the publishing itself is free through Amazon KDP.
Oh it is?? I used to think that if you self-publish in general that it would be really expensive
I understand that used to be the case more or less, but opportunities are opening up for indie authors, which I'm glad to see. One of the big costs is marketing, which I'm still researching. While in traditional publishing, you typically have a company do a lot of the heavy lifting for you as far as getting eyes on the book and then getting it in folks' hands, indie authors handle that themselves, which can get costly.
How do you write a good book blurb that can catch readers attention as an unknown author?
I won't claim to be an expert on that myself, but I typically search for examples of successful books in the same category/genre as my book, study their blurbs, and then try to put one together that describes mine well and takes the best elements from those. Then I take it to a variety of readers and writers I have in my circle, get their feedback, and implement any changes needed. A lot of it is instinct at first, and then adapting to how the blurb is received by my test audience.
How did you fight writer's block?
Writer's block...every writer's worst nightmare. Most of the time when I hit writer's block, I find it's because I've written the past few paragraphs, scenes, or even chapters poorly, or at least went astray in some respect. The words I have before me don't feel right, and so my brain won't let me move on. As much as it hurts, my quickest cure for writer's block is tear away the last chapter or two, rewrite them from scratch, and usually, that ends out fixing whatever problem I had. I will say that my episodes of writers block are fewer and shorter than many of my peers', so I'm certainly grateful for that.
Is your book going to be a stand-alone or a series?
The funny thing is when I first wrote it, I had absolutely no intentions on making it a series. Back in 2020, it was a standalone novel, and I had every intention of leaving it that way. But when I started polishing it up and sending it to beta readers in preparation to publish, the positive feedback inspired me to rethink those plans, and as a matter of fact, I am slowly but surely writing a loose sequel! Not to say too much, but the sequel follows its predecessor in a rather thoughtful and introspective way, slower pacing and more intricate storyline. Been enjoyable to write so far (and only one case of writer's block, which I fixed by--you guessed it--rewriting the previous chapter from scratch).
Funny how things turn out, huh. Well… I think that’s all I’ll do. Thank you so much for letting me interview you.
No problem! Thank you for having me; I'm honored, and it was a lot of fun! I'll keep you posted as I continue this journey of self-publishing.
To learn more about the author, check out @sunnywithasideup on instagram.
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