Interview with Katie Hagen

Author of Dreams for the Divine and Drowning

Where are you from originally and where do you reside now?

I was raised on the south end of Whidbey Island, WA. I’ve lived all over the country but a couple years ago we decided that we wanted to come back to the island to be close to family and for the artist community there. Currently, we are living on the North end of Whidbey about an hour from where I grew up.

If you currently reside somewhere besides where you were born, what’s the story that lead from there to here?

Whoops. See above. Basically, my marriage was going through a lot while I was pregnant with my second daughter. To save it, we packed up what little we had and moved away from Washington to Montana where a childhood friend of mine was living. Besides her, we knew no one. Finding work was hard for my husband and paid little when he found it and for most of our time there we lived off of WIC (a program to aid children and pregnant mothers) which provided us cheese, milk, etc. My friend’s sister gave us meat from their hunt that year and we learned how to cook venison so it was palatable. Montana was a struggle, but it gave us the opportunity to focus on us without any distractions and we learned how to get through something together. It saved our marriage. When we were ready, we came back by way of Spokane which was a miserably failed plan, and then finally back to Whidbey Island. I don’t know if I’ll live here forever, but for now, it’s home.

What made you decide to write and publish your first book?

‘Dreams’ began as a way for me to dip my toes into the waters that are self-publishing. I had written poetry before, as a way to express complicated emotions but I definitely didn’t consider myself a poet. It wasn’t until I went back to college that I realized how much I loved it and that I had some talent for it. I took every poetry class offered to me and began posting poetry to Instagram. The online community really boosted my confidence and showed me a ton of support. At the same time, I realized that everything I wrote seemed to deal with some issues regarding my past and current relationships, my mental state then and before, and the deeper I looked, the more I found. I began writing a poem a day, sometimes more, usually in the early hours of the morning. It was like therapy for me. I challenged myself to look at my marriage, what we went through, and then to look back at who I was before. What I found was that some of those relationships still held a lot of power. I saw what I survived, what I hid, and what I turned a blind eye too. I felt my shame, my anger, my inability to trust, and what was blatantly obvious was how little I had allowed myself to accept, forgive, and heal. As much as I thought I had been “being strong” and moving forward with my life, I had actually just been forgetting without forgiveness. Writing the poetry in ‘Dreams for the Divine and Drowning’ forced and allowed me to confront all those emotions and now, because of what I learned in college, I had the tools to do just that.

How would you describe your books to first time readers?

Reading ‘Dreams’ is like sitting in on a hypnotherapy session where the patient speaks only in poetic form. This book sets out on a path of vulnerability through my personal healing process and tackles themes that a lot of people can relate to such as love, heartbreak, anger, pain, regret, and forgiveness. Most of the poems from this book are in free form style with a few micro poems that have become so popular on social media. Sharing ‘Dreams’ with the world was terrifying, but I felt like speaking out about my own struggles and being truly transparent about them was the final step in my journey toward healing. I didn’t allow myself to hide anymore. I hope that those who read it might be able to connect with something I went through and it might not only entertain but might ask the reader to examine their own experiences and hopefully come out on the other side as this book allowed me to do. I will never come out with explanations about individual pieces. In my free form poetry I use a lot of metaphor and symbolism because I believe that while writing poetry is for the writer, reading is for the reader. I want readers to examine each poem through their own personal lens and experiences and to take from it something unique and personal to them.

Who do you feel is most likely to connect with the topics you write about?

Anyone who has experienced, doubt, love, heartbreak, abuse; anyone who has looked back over their life and wondered ‘what if?’ Anyone who struggles with forgiveness and healing. I think that there is a good chance that anyone who picks up this book would find things that resonate with them because we have all suffered and we have all search for love in our own ways.

What unexpected or surprising thing did you learn during the process of writing and publishing?

This book is self-published and when I decided to set it free into the world I assumed that no one would see it, that it would disappear into the void simply because I could not afford to advertise it and I didn’t have a big publishing house to back me up. I spoke with a poet from the pacific northwest that self-published and what her journey was. She said that at first, no one saw it. But little by little she began to see that people found her book and eventually she was contacted by a publishing house that wanted to re-work her book and re-release it. That gave me hope that those that were searching for something like ‘Dreams’ would find it no matter how little I was able to advertise. ‘Dreams’ has been out for a year now and I am seeing some growth from it. It was never about how many copies I sold, I just wanted to know that someone who needed it, found it. This book also gave me the confidence I needed to continue on self-publishing. I found out that I can be successful at making my own covers, creating content, editing, formatting and releasing my own books. Since releasing ‘Dreams’ I have published a collection of short literary fiction, a collection of rhymes and fairy tales, two sweet romance novellas, and in December I will publish my first full-length novel which is a holiday cozy mystery.

If you could, what advice would you give to your past self before embarking on this journey?

To not rush it. When I decide I want to do something, I begin to feel a lot of pressure. As though by the time my book comes out, everyone will be done reading poetry and I will have missed some great opportunity. If I had taken it a little slower, I may have been able to catch some things that I missed, like a typo in the first poem on the first printing which took me months to notice. Luckily no one mentioned it so I’m not sure anyone else noticed either!

How many people would you ideally like to reach with your books?

Everyone who needs it. I learned so much in poetry classes in school by examining the work of well-known poets. Someday, it would be an absolute dream come true to have my work used as examples for teaching. I think that it would be validation that I was heard and appreciated. It would be amazing to know that I set this book out into the void and it didn’t just disappear but instead made an impact.

What has been the biggest challenge and frustration during the process to date?

Honestly, it is feeling that I need to be locked down to a writing style and genre. Since graduating college this year (an accomplishment that took me nearly twenty years) I have been experimenting with genres. From my understanding, to be successful you need to have a clear voice, an author platform that expresses your genre, theme, and style, and multiple books in that genre. I’m just not there yet. I write what I’m interested in and I want to give every genre a chance. I’ve put out books of poetry, fantasy, romance, and mystery and I have a suspense manuscript and a middle-grade fantasy that are waiting for some attention. I also found that I have some talent in literary fiction based on the notes from my classmates and professors and I have some book ideas for that genre as well. Locking down the genre that I love and that best exhibits my abilities will be the deciding factor in my success.

What’s your biggest strengths when it comes to book a) writing, b) publishing and c) marketing?

My biggest strength when it comes to writing is my ability to understand the dynamics and rules of different genres. I think that a lot of writers have difficulty changing their personal style but I feel like I can be a bit of a chameleon. When I set out to write my first cozy mystery I read about 10 books in the genre to get a feel for the style and format and then I went to work. Publishing and marketing I’m still working out. I think that I am pretty confident with publishing, creating book covers, formatting, etc and I learn more with each book. Marketing is harder simply because I can’t validate spending money on it until I am making a significant amount from it. What I have found are ways to market for free through social media and popular sites such as Goodreads. I’m pretty good at creating my own ads and I have fun doing it. I am hovering at about a thousand Instagram followers which I’m proud of as an unknown writer. The support of social media followers has been incredibly helpful this year.

What’s your biggest weakness when it comes to book a) writing, b) publishing and c) marketing?

Focus. Until this recent cozy mystery, I have had a series of fails when it came to completing a full-length book. I would get about halfway to three quarters through and get distracted with another idea or simply lose interest. I have loads of half-done manuscripts to show for it. However, I try to look at those failures as signs that the genre I was writing in might not have been for me. Writing is about following a passion and sometimes you just have to let a story go that has lost that passion it started out with.
As for publishing, I think that I am always improving. It’s a learning process. Each book I release looks a little more professional and I learn something new each time such as including links to other books and social media in ebooks. I had no idea how or even that I should do that at first but now I think I’ve got it down. Marketing is not nearly as important to me as it should be. My ultimate dream is to just be that reclusive writer that sends manuscripts off to an editor and washes their hands of the whole thing. Writing is the dream, everything else is just a necessary evil.

When do you think you will write your next book?

I am releasing my holiday cozy, ‘Jingle Bells, Mussel Shells, Murder all the Way in December of 2019. Next, I am plotting out another cozy mystery series and I have a coming of age/women’s fiction that has been begging me to write it. I’ll just have to see which story wins out in the end. Most likely, I won’t get started writing for a few weeks. I might even wait until after the holidays. I have three blogs I’m working with as well to keep me busy while I decide what to write next.

Are you self published or did you use a hybrid publisher, or a traditional publisher?

I am self-published though I am planning to send out my next cozy mystery to some traditional publishers. Editing and marketing take up a lot of time that I’d rather spend writing and I would love to have a team to help out with that part of the industry! Poetry I will probably always self-publish because I want the entire creative control there. I am grateful that we live in a time when so much is available to us as writers and especially as a female writer! I think back on times when women writers were forced to publish with male pen names or with the help of their husbands or other men in order to be taken seriously and I’m so thankful that they paved the way for me.