1.- Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
Hello! I’m Cate Baumer, an SFF writer living in Appalachia. Aside from writing, I ride horses (well, one horse, my 5 year old ex-racehorse), love visiting art galleries and museums, and enjoy the company of my 18 year old cat. I write books that are character-driven, bittersweet, and strange. I also lived in Japan for 15 years and have the bilingual struggle of sometimes not being able to do either language.

2.- What impulsed you to start writing?
I started in middle school writing anime fanfiction (I might be dating myself, but I wrote a lot of Sailor Moon, Hikaru no Go, and Gundam Wing fic!), but it didn’t occur to me to try original stories until college when I found NaNoWriMo. My first novel was… still basically anime fanfiction with the names changed, but I promise I’ve grown as an author since then!

3.- Why did you decide to self-publish your first novella, As Born to Rule the Storm?
Novellas are such a hard sell, and there aren’t many traditional publishers for them. But it’s the book I’m most proud of from my work so far because it’s the closest to where my execution matched my original vision. For good or bad, I got exactly what I wanted on the page, and I wanted readers to have a chance to read this story. I’m grateful to be writing in a time where going indie is so accessible!

4.- What would you say inspired the original idea of As Born to Rule the Storm?
Ironically, it still goes back to me being a nerd- I was playing a ton of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and there’s a game mechanic where you can rewind time to change something if needed, for example, if a character dies. I started thinking about how awful it would be if you had that power but could still remember all the tragedies that forced you to use it…and the idea grew from there.

5.- Your next published book was The Faithful Dark, a queer gothic fantasy. How was the process of writing it?
It has been a journey! I wrote it in 2018, then queried it unsuccessfully. I was going to give up on it, but then it got into Pitch Wars, so I rewrote it again. Then I queried for almost a year, gave up on it again, and then got an agent and rewrote it again. Then it died on sub and I left my agent, so I worked on it yet again and self-published. And THEN another agent read the self published version and had some new strategy ideas so I polished it YET AGAIN to send back on sub. And maybe an editor will pick it up and then I will have to revise it again! At this point it is my endless book haha

6.- How did The Faithful Dark change from its inception to the publication moment?
As you can imagine from that backstory, it changed a lot. I think the biggest shock to current readers would be that in the first draft Ilan didn’t have his own POV! 

7.- There’s a good amount of LGTBQ+ representation in your books. Why would you say this is important in literature nowadays?
I feel like we are just starting to get caught up to where it should be, and even then only for some identities. In particular, as a writer on the aroace spectrum, I remember reading books growing up and being frustrated that saving the world was getting pushed aside for romance (and always the same kinds of straight romance, part of what drew me to Japanese media instead!). What ace rep there was almost always assigned to inhuman characters, like aliens or robots. I wrote The Faithful Dark and its ace heroine in part for the reader I was then, because I would have loved to see a character who feels and loves very deeply and is very human, while still being uninterested in sex. 

8.- Which pieces of media would you say influenced your writing career?
I think I’ve covered many of them, but I also want to give a shout out to my favorite anime: Revolutionary Girl Utena. One day I will write something weird enough to be worthy of comping it. In terms of authors, the work of Naomi Novik, Katherine Arden, and R.F. Kuang continuously inspires me. 

9.- What can we expect from Cate Baumer in the future?
First up is another novella! The Butcher’s Lot, a sapphic vampire story inspired by The Scarlet Letter, is out and on KU from August 6. And I’m currently hard at work revising The Ruthless Light, the sequel to The Faithful Dark. I don’t have a release date yet, but please follow me on social media if you’d like to know!

To close this interview, I would like to let all readers know that you can order Cate Baumer's books using this link