1.- Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
I’ve been writing and publishing science fiction and fantasy novels for over thirty-five years. Which is remarkable, now that I stop to think about it. I’m best known for writing long, complicated series with multiple plot threads, detailed world-building, and a cast of thousands. I like to joke that my “natural writing length” is the trilogy, and that a 100,000 word novel is (for me) a novella.
I love to write immersive worlds with interesting and complex characters because that’s what I love to read (fictionally). In non fiction I read a lot of history and fill in around the gaps with various layman’s science books and more history.

2.- When did you start writing for publishing?
I’ve been writing since I was ten. My first story was about a pirate dragon, as one does. In college I wrote a novel that I tried to get published. To be honest, it wasn’t good enough for publication although I didn’t understand that at the time. Figuring that out is part of the process.
I wrote three other novels before I finally sold a novel (my fifth, not counting the unfinished novel I wrote in high school). I’ve been writing and publishing ever since. The lesson I learned from all this is that writing takes persistence, and that the crucial factor is that we humans are hardwired to learn.

3.- How did the original idea for The Witch Roads appear?
A few years ago I wrote about 8000 words of a story about a woman who was a surveyor in a world with some kind of poisonous barrier that had to be tracked as it cropped up. The angle that story took ultimately didn’t suit me, so I set it aside. I have multiple starts in my files like this. Some need more time to rise; some just don’t ever work; and with some I’ll take the aspects I like best and rework them into a new form.
The Witch Roads represents my comprehensive reworking of that original idea. It takes the idea of someone who travels a lot in the back country and the idea of a ravenous fungal ghost plague that has to be avoided or destroyed and then sews them together with court intrigue as observed by an outsider to the palace conflict.

4.- How would you pitch this novel to a reader that hasn’t heard about it?
A humble (and determinedly cheerful) deputy courier has to guide an arrogant prince and his companions through backwoods hill country on a mysterious errand the prince won’t reveal. Along the way, the prince enters a haunted tower that he’d have been better to avoid, and when he emerges, it isn’t clear he is the same as he was before.
I also like to jokingly call it “grimsweet” — grim world, positive relationships (mostly, although part of the story is about upper class people learning to trust and respect a lower class person).

5.- Which part of writing The Witch Roads would you say was the most challenging?
Weirdly for me, none of the actual writing. The first draft dropped into my head like an anvil out of the sky, and I knew what I needed to do for revisions so those went smoothly as well.
Most of my novels aren’t like this one, so it is an outlier.

6.- Could you tell us about the inspirations behind The Witch Roads world?
I wanted to write a story told from the point of view of a character who in most science fiction and fantasy novels would be a mere spear-carrier, a tertiary character who got at best a few lines and might even be cannon fodder to showcase the importance of a highborn hero/ine or some other stereotypical main character.
The world is inspired partly by the many Chinese historical dramas I’ve seen in the sense that the imperial court is the center of power and that power ripples outward through a strong bureaucratic structure.
Finally, for reasons I cannot explain, I wanted a creepy mist that kills people.

7.- You’ve been for a long time in the publishing industry, would you say your process has changed much along the way?
Yes and no.
I am substantially the same writer in the sense that I conceive of an idea mostly through an image of a person or people within a landscape, and then I start to explore outward from that image to get a sense of who the people and the setting are, and what plot arises from their situation. To this day I remain what I’ll call a “discovery” writer: I can’t start writing a novel until I know, basically, where it is headed (that is, where it ends up), but I am not an outliner either. Part of how I figure out the book, characters, and setting is by writing the first draft.
However, the biggest change in my writing process is that, in my early years, I most enjoyed first drafting and very much disliked revising, largely because I didn’t really know how to revise so the process was difficult and often frustrating. Now that I have a lot more experience revising, I strongly prefer revising to first drafting. When drafting, I am all too aware of all the problems and mistakes and infelicities as I go along, so I have to continually remind myself that once I have a complete first draft then I will go back and make it all work together. Revising is now both fun and genuinely satisfying because of all the experience and learning I bring to my work.
This is why I cannot recommend people use ChatGPT and other “AI” style programs to write for them. You cannot learn and improve; you’ll never get better. So much of art is the journey, of finally getting skilled enough to be able to tackle that complex idea you had years ago. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment.

8.- In 2026, we can also expect for the third installment of your Sun Chronicles series, how do you feel about this book?
I look forward to completing the Sun Chronicles. It’s a huge epic space opera that retells the story of Alexander the Great in space, with Alexander as Sun, a young woman. In many ways I have followed Alexander the Great’s story fairly closely, although it may not always seem that way because of the far future setting and needing to adapt and/or combine some historical people for narrative simplicity.
Book three is about half written, with a cast of thousands and an elaborately plot sporting multiple threads and points of view. As craft, it’s incredibly challenging to bring it all off without wandering into tangents or getting bogged down in details (as I like to do). It’s also intimidating because I think I did a good job with the first two books so of course I want the final volume to live up to them and be just as satisfying.

9.- With such a large bibliography, which books do you recommend to somebody new to your novels?
I recommend people read my blog post “Where Should I Start With Your Novels” in which I describe each of my series as if they were members of a boy band.
Link: https://imakeupworlds.com/index.php/2015/02/where-should-i-start-with-your-novels/

10.- How have you managed to achieve such a long career?
Sheer stubbornness, mostly. The key to a long career is to keep working, to absorb and push past the setbacks and occasional falls into the Abyss of Despair, and to remember at all times that art is a gift and that I love to write. The other reason is that at this point in my life I have no other marketable skill, so I have to keep writing.

11.- What can we expect from Kate Elliott in the future?
The third book of the Sun Chronicles (Lady Chaos). More novels in The Witch Roads universe. Two new series I have been simmering and stirring on the back burner that I hope I will have time and chance to write. And, I hope, if I can figure out how to publish them, books two and three of the Black Wolves trilogy as well as some kind of completion to the long-on-pause Jaran series. And perhaps something I haven’t thought up yet. My mind is continually churning out new story ideas.