Whisking readers away in a fantastical fictional world is what every author hopes to achieve. To build a world their readers can lose themselves in, with characters they can relate to and give their readers something they themselves would pick off the shelf sight unseen.
Building a career doing that takes a lot of trial and error, but one self-published author, who has recently moved to the Pontiac, has come a long way to build her dream job that allowed her to create a cult following and make a living doing it.
Kim McDougall first came across fantasy when she read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle when she was 12 and was captivated by the world of fantasy.
“It was like a wow moment for me. That was the first time I realized that books could be so fantastical and so meaningful and it just really blew me away. I still remember that moment thinking ‘wow I’ve never read anything like this before,’” she said
From a very young age she was enamored by books, when kids were playing with their barbies she was checking out books from the library. It was how she cultivated a love for writing and after trying her hand at writing romance novels and kids books she knew the only books she wanted to write were urban fantasy.
A pivitol moment in her career was . . .
how well one of her book series did in 2020. That was when she knew she could make a living out of this, she explained.
McDougall, who is originally from Montreal, lived in a few other places before deciding to settle in Clarendon. Over the years her and her husband have lived in the Eastern Townships, Long Island, Pennsylvania and Toronto. Their choice to move to Shawville and buy a small house with a huge plot of land was always a dream of theirs.
“I guess the pandemic sort of made us realize, now’s the time to do it. Our reaction was kind of do what we want to do now because you never know. And, he’s learning to hunt, I’m learning to forage and if the zombie apocalypse ever comes we’ll be set,” laughed McDougall.
They looked everywhere but when they found the 30 plus acre property in Clarendon, McDougall and her husband liked that it was private, close enough to Shawville and had a hospital nearby. They bought the property in December of last year and she moved permanently in April 2022 while her husband travels back and forth from their home in Toronto.
Moving to the country side made for the perfect writing environment for McDougall, a quiet place with no distractions. Here they are able to create a little paradise, she mentioned.
Her adult urban fantasy series titled Valkyrie Bestiary series sold over 100,000 copies. But it didn’t happen overnight. It started as a rough draft and at the time she didn’t quite know how to fix it. So she began to go to conventions and workshops to hone her skills. Through the process of learning how to edit her work she had gathered a lot of information which ended up going into a book titled Revise to Write. It was then that she went back to the rough drafts and after writing the first book in the series in 2020, “This first one people just took to it and it just took off and that’s like winning the lottery in the publishing industry to be honest,” she said.
In this mystical world that she has created the overarching theme is found family, and although there is a bit of romance in it, it does not overpower the entire story. What she finds unique with her stories is the critters that she has created, they are loved by her readers, there are of course the tropes that people expect like the kick-ass heroine and the sparkly sword, she explained but she definitely has her own twist with the creatures she has imagined.
“I think to be true to yourself, you really need to write the book you want to read,” said McDougall.
She added that’s why her books are more character driven rather than plot driven. Although she packs a lot of action in them she builds deep character arches in her books, which she believes is what makes readers fall in love with the story and create a strong bond with the characters.
She didnt start off self publishing. It was after a bad experience with a big publisher, that she decided to do it on her own and hasn’t looked back since.
“I started self publishing and I will never go back. It’s just you have so much more control. The royalties are triple what you make,” she said.
“The publishing industry right now is in the middle of a big flux. It’s changing drastically. And a lot of authors who are actually published traditionally are taking their rights back and self publishing because the publishers do very little for authors.”
During her undergraduate studies she took English literature and did a few creative writing courses.
She has been writing and publishing books for almost 20 years. She published her first book, a romance novel, in 1999 but realized that’s not the genre she wanted to write. So since 2015 she has focused on urban fantasy.
Some of her favorite authors include Neil Gaiman, Ilona Andrews, and Terry Pratchett.
Her favorite part about being a writer is coming up with fantasy worlds, and being able to deliver that to her audience.
She grew up with so many favorite authors and until it happened to her she never thought she could be that for someone else. “I have favorite authors that I will buy their books sight unseen, and it’s just so gratifying for me to know that I’m that author for somebody else. It makes me really happy. And I mean, more so than making money or anything like that, just to know that somebody is really enjoying the stories,” she said.
She owes her success of her latest series to a culmination of luck, good timing and a good fan base that helped her sales on Amazon. “You get those first few sales, those first good reviews and then it’s timing too because Amazon doesn’t give you a year to get those sales, you got weeks to get those sales at the beginning. And if you do, then they start showing and then I published the second one fairly quickly afterwards. So it has momentum now. So Amazon gave me what we call Amazon love,” she said.
Along with writing she did some coaching, but McDougall’s goal was to always make writing her full time job and believes she has achieved that. Along with all the marketing she does, it takes up all her time.
She is currently working on books seven, eight and nine of the Valkyrie Bestiary Series. After that she hopes to jump into a whole new series for her readers and bring light to a new story she has been anxious to start working on.
“I’m just going to continue to write. I personally believe your best marketing is your next book. Every time you put out a new book, Amazon gives you that love again,” she said.
Her books are sold on Amazon, and for more information visit her website kimmcdougall.com.
