Meet The Author: Kay M. Weston

With my debut book, Spellbound: A Fantasy Short Story Collection now out in the world, I thought it might be fun to introduce myself and share a few tidbits about me and my writing. 

​I was thinking of doing an Ask Me Anything over on Instagram but just in case no one asks any questions, I figured this could be a fun alternative.

(And there's the first thing to know about me: self-doubt is my constant companion.) 

I've enjoyed writing for as long as I can remember. I used to play around on my grandparents' typewriter, creating new stories and rewriting stories I'd read that I wished had ended differently. 

The first story I remember writing was about a young girl who discovered a magical portal inside a lighthouse. When she stepped through the portal she was transported to an underwater world where she could speak to the fish and other creatures (I watched A LOT of Bedknobs and Broomsticks as a child.) ​

I've always loved magic, which you'll notice if you read my stories. When I was a child, I desperately wanted to be a witch. I made my own spellbook, complete with tea-stained pages, and wrote my own spells. I created "potions" in the bathroom sink using all manner of things I could find. A particularly vivid memory is trying to wash away the evidence of a talcum powder/glitter/fairy liquid concoction I'd created before my parents discovered the mess I'd made. 

My entire life feels like it was dictated by my love of magic and fantasy. I devoured them through books, movies, TV, video games, and music (and still do). Our shared love of The Lord of the Rings is actually how my partner and I got to know each other during our stint in an amateur dramatics performance of Dracula when we were around 16 years old.

I also run Dungeons and Dragons games now for friends and family.

Books have always been a big part of my life. I remember watching The Pagemaster (the movie with Christopher Lloyd and Macaulay Culkin, which came out when I was 3 - yes, I just Googled it and I now feel really, really old...even older than admitting I used to write on a typewriter) and then begged my grandad to take me to the library.

I LOVED it there. It became the place we went to every week, along with the video store, and I was in heaven. I used to play librarian when I got back home, using a box of books found in my grandparents' attic (while none were magical in the expected sense of books found in the attic, they were magical to me and transported me to many distant far-off lands). 

As I grew up, I read everything I could get my hands on, much preferring to stay in and read than go out with others, which made me a very unpopular teenager. 

Now, you'd think at this point, with all the reading and writing, that I'd have realised that writing and literature should have some basis in what I wanted to do for a career. Well, you'd be wrong. Your girl here, who had the worst stage fright and zero self-confidence, decided she wanted to be an actress. (I still don't know why!) 

To say those dreams were quickly squashed would be an understatement, but instead of picking up the literary thread, I pivoted to filmmaking instead. (At least I was in the same vein of creating stories, I guess.) 

Suffice it to say, that didn't work out either and I spent a very long time feeling lost and confused, and not really knowing who I was or what I was supposed to be doing with my life. 

Fast forward through years of job hopping, raising a wonderful child, realising I wasn't as straight as I'd always pretended to be (thanks for the insight Love, Simon!), and finally, FINALLY rediscovering my love of the written word.

I think I wrote or at least started 10-20 stories and books in the mid-2010s, all of which I hated or just fizzled out, until in 2016, I wrote almost an entire novel in just 1 month. I just couldn't stop writing and that's how Sparks Fly was born. 

Sadly, it took me another 5 years to figure out what to do with those 100 thousand or so words, at which point I discovered indie publishing and realised that was the way forward for me. 

And now, here we are, a few years later, after many battles against the self-doubt monster (who's still ever-present), with my debut short story collection out in the world, and Sparks Fly soon to follow. 

If you stuck with me through that long and winding road, well, now you know me a little bit better than you did before. 

My love of all things magic persists, and if you'd like to know more, maybe consider reading Spellbound to see how all of that love of fantasy and magic influences my writing.