The collaborative anthology Ceaseless Way is now live on Amazon in paperback (sale price $9.99!) and in ebook on multiple platforms (with more to come). I previously interviewed contributors Ada Milenkovic Brown and Allegra Gulino. This week it’s Katherine Traylor. Kat, to use a phrase from an old toyline ad, is “the brains behind this explosive outfit” — she came up with the idea for this project and invited us, and others, to participate.
What are your stories in Ceaseless Way about?
We Go Hiking is a contemporary story about four friends who go on a long hike together and meet with strange adventures in the forest. I would call it surreal with elements of spookiness, but some readers found it quite dark. Jenny and the Fairy Queen is very different: it’s a faux-medieval fantasy story with a quest, a princess, and a strong dash of courtly romance.
What inspired them?
I have no idea what directly inspired We Go Hiking. I wrote it years ago, while I was still living in Korea, and as far as I remember I just sat down on a bench outside a subway station on a sunny day and started writing in a notebook. Indirectly, I’m sure it’s inspired by the woods and mountains of North Carolina (where I mostly grew up) and how the trees seem to go on endlessly in all directions. I think I’d already heard the tragic story of Geraldine Largay, who died less than half a mile from the Appalachian Trail after getting lost in the woods for 26 days, and that nightmarish scenario definitely informs a lot of the story.
“Jenny” was the piece I wrote specifically for this anthology. I’d been working for weeks on a different piece, which was meant to be very stately and somber and artistic, and I just wasn’t having a good time with it. Boring writing is boring reading, so I decided to scrap it and just do something fun and self-indulgent. Fantasy novels were the backbone of my adolescence (I used to scour the library looking for curly metallic fonts), and as a tribute to those books, I decided to write a quest story. A tavern on the road, a plucky young hero, a dark lord in the north, and off we went. I don’t like writing fight scenes, though, so Jenny accomplishes her goals more circumspectly.
(There is no symbolism to my choice of Wisp attacking her bird toy as an illustration)
How did you like working in a collaborative anthology?
It was my idea, so I’d better like it! It was a real privilege working so closely with so many talented writers. It took us a long time to get things together, as we were really feeling our way for most of the time, but we’re really proud of the book we came up with and looking forward to seeing how people respond to it. (We’re definitely hoping to produce another volume, by the way, though we’ll take a little break before we get started. Now that we’ve figured out a workable process, we’re hoping production of the next volume will be more streamlined.
Why should someone pick up a copy of Ceaseless Way?
Unlike most anthologies, which in large part are products of the editors’ personal taste, this book is more of a showcase: each writer has included the stories they personally want to share, which I think tells you a bit more about who we are. Reading two stories from each writer will give you a really solid introduction to our work, and hopefully every reader who picks up this book will find at least one new writer they want to follow.
All of us are serious in our craft, but none of us are what you’d call famous, so you’ll definitely be seeing writers here whom you might not encounter otherwise. And, of course, the stories are fantastic (if we do say so ourselves), and range from soft medieval fantasy to bleak futuristic horror, so there should be something here for everyone.
What does “pilgrimage” mean to you?
For me, a pilgrimage is a long, purposeful journey to a place so significant you expect to be a changed person when you come home. I wouldn’t say either of my stories adheres very well to that theme, but it’s a powerful base to build a story around.
How did you become a writer?
I just always wanted to be one. Since I learned the word “author,” that was what I wanted to be. I learned to read when I was four, and I can’t consciously remember a moment of my life when books weren’t important to me. My mom used to read to us every night after dinner, which probably was a part of it. We had books in every room of our house, and we attended the library more regularly than church. If I had something unappealing to do, I’d spend the whole time mentally composing melodramatic stories about my favorite characters. And when I was unhappy, I’d hole up in my room or a corner of the school library and lose myself in a fantasy novel.
My thoughts tend to be very associative, meaning it’s extremely easy for me to come up with ideas. Unless I get them out somehow, they build and bubble at the back of my brain until I’m perpetually distracted. So I start a lot of stories. Unfortunately, the perpetual distraction means I don’t finish nearly as many as I’d like, but slowly and steadily I’m getting there.
(No symbolism here, either, just cats)
Tell us about your past stories?
Okay, so. You know how Anne of Green Gables says, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes”? My life is a perfect graveyard of unfinished projects. So some of the biggest and most important ones I’ve worked on—including the mostly-finished novel my Durham Writers’ Group friends might know me from—are still languishing in development hell.
There’s the abovementioned novel, THE WOODS AND THE CASTLE, a contemporary YA fantasy story about a lonely girl and her evil imaginary friend. There’s SNOWBERRY, my 2010 NaNoWriMo project, a YA portal fantasy that was likely inspired by the Miss Switch books. There’s STAR PEOPLE, a surreal postapocalyptic story that’s part picaresque and part spy novel. There’s DEVILMADE, a planned-but-barely-drafted YA novel about an oppressive cult and a demon’s daughter. There are two half-developed novels, DWELLERS BELOW and RIVERMAID, that I’ve revisited multiple times and dreamed about finishing for years. One is about a human emissary to the underworld who’s simultaneously cut off from the surface world and embroiled in a murder mystery. The other is a planned urban fantasy series about a carnivorous undead mermaid. And these are just the ones that come to mind immediately. Throughout my life there have been many, many others.
I’m starting to get a handle on things, and my current project—THE VOID AND THE RAVEN—is going well. It’s a multi-book series (one book finished, the second nearly so) about an overpowered teenage sorceress from two politically powerful families. I started it twenty years ago and have revisited it several times since then, but this is the version that’s really taken; it’s been actively in progress for five years and is still going strong. It was loosely inspired by family drama in the beginning, but now it’s more than broken free. It deals a lot with Spider-Man’s idea that “with great power comes great responsibility.” (And there’s a love story, of course. There’s always a love story. But it’s a very slow burn.
If you wanted to know what stories I’ve actually had published, though, I’m proud to say that there are a growing number of them. You can check out the full list here: https://katherinetraylor.com/published-work/ . Two of them (Come Away Sweetly and The Feast of the Changes) are available to read or listen to online, and I’ve posted a number of others in the ‘Free Fiction’ section of my website. My latest publication, a contemporary fantasy piece set in and inspired by Prague, is included in the upcoming anthology Winter in the City by Ruadán Books, available for sale in just a couple of weeks.
What’s your life away from the keyboard?
I live in Prague (the original one, in the Czech Republic) with my lovely wife and three eccentric pets. I’m a freelance English tutor, which I absolutely love, so a lot of my time is spent going from house to house, oppressing children with The Cat in the Hat and engaging adults in linguistically productive conversation. My wife and I have hobbitlike habits; we eat a lot, take walks with the dog, drink coffee, watch movies, and play chess. It’s just the way I like it.
Before Prague, I lived in Seoul, South Korea for a total of ten years, which was a fantastic experience and shaped my life in a lot of ways. I still miss that city a lot, but the rhythm of life in Prague is much more relaxed, which I appreciate. My family lives in North Carolina, and of course I miss them a lot, but at least it’s a little easier to visit from here than from Korea. My wife is from Sicily, so we’re fortunately able to see her family even more often.
What’s been the best part of working on Ceaseless Way?
I think the most exciting part was watching everyone’s submissions come in during the first round of editing. Everyone in the group is so different that though our stories were on the same theme, they reflected it in completely different ways. It was cool to see how the idea of a pilgrimage resonated so differently with different people, and very exciting to see the early draft of the book begin to take shape.
What’s been the biggest challenge?
Definitely keeping everyone’s energy up, especially when boring stuff (i.e. legal agreements) needed to be discussed. I kid you not when I say that the question of what type of contract to use stalled the project for at least a year. In the end, we found that our main mistake had been trying to do everything over Discord, which in a small group can be an endless game of phone tag. When we started having monthly video chats, things came together much faster.
Anything you’d like to add that I haven’t asked?
Only that I really hope you’ll pick up this anthology, and that either way I hope you’ll have a wonderful holiday season!
Cover by GetCovers, based on concepts by Arden Brooks.
