Kate Schumacher is a teacher and author who has just released the second book of a duology. With more novels planned, Kate spoke to Sara Browne about writing fantasy and living in reality.

I grew up in a small town west of Tenterfield. My mother was a teacher and my father a farmer, so a lot of my childhood was spent on the farm.

I have two younger siblings – one lives in Townsville and the other in New Zealand. I came here for a two year university course in 1998 and never left! I changed uni courses a few times and ultimately settled on a Bachelor of Arts, then did my Honours degree and my Graduate Diploma in Education and met my partner somewhere along the way, so I’m still here. I’m not really a city person, and opportunities in rural areas are limited, so Lismore suits me. It’s not too big and not too small.

I always wanted to be a writer, but had no idea what that would look like. I wanted to be all sorts of things – a vet, but I’m terrible at maths and science; a lawyer; a journalist, photographer. It took a while to work out my path to be honest because, besides writing, I was never settled on just one thing.

I spent a long time at uni. I loved uni, the whole environment, being able to study things I was really interested in.

I started an Associate Degree in Law, switched to a Bachelor of Legal and Justice Studies with the intention of moving into a Law degree, then, got bored along the way, so transferred to a Bachelor of Arts where I majored in creative writing and journalism. Then, what does one do with a BA? So I did my Honours degree in screenwriting and film, and eventually, I turned to a Graduate Diploma in Education and became a secondary English teacher. I’ve been a teacher for getting close to twenty years.

I’ve lived in Lismore and my home town. I’ve been to New Zealand, a very brief 36 hours for my brother’s wedding. I’d love to travel but I just haven’t had the chance yet.

I have always been a massive reader – as a kid I read everything I could get my hands on: every novel and short story, the classics, the encyclopaedia, the dictionary … I love stories and words, and how words hold meaning and you can create meaning, different layers of meaning, with how you use words.

I remember being in Year 3 at school and writing little stories in free class time. They were always ghost stories and my friends were the characters. I’d ‘publish’ them with a stapler and illustrate them as well. I had a teacher in Year 6 who really encouraged my writing, and again, my high school English teachers were always very encouraging.

I put writing aside for a while when studying Law, but got to the point where I had to write. It’s my outlet, it’s how I explore the world and explore people and society. Doing my BA really brought back that passion for writing. I started writing the novel I ended up publishing twenty years ago, while I was between uni courses and working in a pub. I’d reward myself every week with a trip to the bookshop where I’d buy a book, and at that stage, I was reading a lot of fantasy – Kate Forysth, Isobelle Carmody, a few others I can’t remember. So, I was influenced to write my novel. Then, I put it aside because for some reason, I decided fantasy was for kids and I was a grown-up now and started reading, and therefore writing, contemporary fiction.

I wrote another novel over ten years – had kids and started teaching, so I was rather busy. I ended up getting the manuscript assessed through an assessment service which was actually amazing and taught me a lot about the writing process. It was at this time I decided I wanted to take writing more seriously, so I queried my manuscript, submitted to publishing houses and agents and no one picked it up, so I shared it with some friends and set it aside.

Then, I found myself on Instagram, and in the Bookstagram community, and the author community and started reading fantasy again. There was a whole pile of books I’d neglected over the years, and reading those stories again reignited my love for fantasy, so I dusted off my old manuscript (I never throw anything away), set about rewriting it, and then, decided I would publish it myself because I couldn’t be bothered querying and going through that time consuming process, so I spoke to some author friends who were self-published, did my research, found an editor and went from there. There’s a lot of things to cover, a lot of boxes to tick, and it’s a very steep learning curve, but the online community was amazing.

Because I’d already written my first novel and just had to rewrite it, it took about 6 weeks to get a draft that I was happy with. Then, the editing process took a lot longer.

Shadow of Fire is the first book in The Fires of Aileryan duology, and I’ve just released the second book, Heart of Flame. Why fantasy? I love world building and being able to create my own world. I think being a history and geography teacher as well as English really helps – even though it’s a made-up world where I can do what I like, I want my world to have a history, I want to be able to know all about the geopolitics, the geography, the daily life of people, the different cultures I’ve created.

I end up doing a lot of research – for instance, to create one of the cultures and peoples in Shadow of Fire, I ended up down the rabbit hole of Ancient Icelandic government systems, as well as the Vikings and the Goths and then googling things like how to use a medieval German longsword. Accuracy is important to me – I think the history teacher in me wouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t put my world together in detail.

All fiction is a reflection of the world – it’s a chance for an author to hold up a mirror to the world and ask it to look at itself. Writing fantasy is no different – you still deal with real-world issues like power and corruption, but you just do it in an otherworldly setting and get to have cool things like magic. But the characters and the things they go through – there is a realness to that.

The hardest thing about being a writer is finding the time. I still teach and have two kids and just general life things to deal with, so it’s time really. I’m never short on ideas and have multiple conversations going on in my head between my characters all the time, but it’s the being able to sit down and actually write that is most challenging.

While I was querying my contemporary fiction novel, I had publisher and agent rejections, and sometimes didn’t hear anything back at all, which is kind of worse. I like feedback! How did I deal with it? I just shrugged and moved on to the next person. I don’t think there is any other way to deal with it because if you let every rejection get to you, you’re never going to publish or get anywhere. It’s a tough industry.

I think my biggest influences have actually been Australian epic fantasy authors, and all women. Isobelle Carmody (who I met while in high school and meeting her was actually the moment where I decided I would write a book one day), Kate Forysth and Cecila Dart-Thornton.

At the moment, I’ve been trying to read more indie authors in my genre, to support them more than anything and because I’ve found a lot of indie work to be much more engaging. I love a good gothic fantasy – at the moment I’m reading One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig, and I love Alix E Harrow, Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire. Anne Rice, Holly Black … I’m a bit all over the place with my reading. Mary Shelly, Shakespeare, Jane Austen – I always return to those authors and their work.

I play piano, read … not much else really. I’m pretty boring.

I love this area. I’m comfortable here. I’m not a big people person and busy places stress me out so Lismore is the perfect size really. My children go to school here and their friends are here.

The flood. We always knew we’d get flooded living in South but we just never expected to get flooded quite so dramatically!

Like many others, we were home at the time and ended up on our roof waiting to be rescued. We had to put our cats in the roof cavity- thankfully three little faces were peering down at me when we finally got back to the house and then an amazing local family took them in for six weeks while we worked out what to do next.

My children went to live with my parents until we found somewhere to live. The flood hasn’t really impacted future plans – if anything, it’s solidified them. Experiencing an event like that, having to deal with the aftermath, seeing the impact on the community, it kind of helps put things in perspective. I have this memory of sitting on my roof in the pouring rain with the kids and my partner and thinking, I’m still publishing my book (I had always had May set as publication month).

Thankfully, everything was in the Cloud so I didn’t lose any of my work! That might have changed things. And it hasn’t stopped me writing. I've published two books this year and am working on another series, which looks like it will have four books. One is written, the second half written and the other two partially written. I don’t write in order – I write ideas and scenes as they come – but I do plan plots and then have to put it all together like a puzzle at the end. But this whole year has been a bit of a puzzle that we’re all still trying to put together.