# Please introduce yourself and your book(s)!
Hi, I’m Acacia Daniels, author of She’s Waiting in the Corridor, book 1 of the Terribilis series in which a remote mining planet is overrun by 8ft venomous spiders.
# What is/are the real-life story(ies) behind your book(s)?
It was a boring rainy December day back in 2025 and I was avoiding using my bathroom because there were large house spiders in it. The entire series is basically me venting about my arachnophobia, haha.
# What inspires/inspired your creativity?
My creativity has its own free will. I just found out an old interview of mine went live in which I likened creativity to ‘snot coming out of one’s nose’. That was a little embarrassing, but I stand by it. It’s not voluntary.
# How do you deal with creative block?
I accept that my brain has its own plans and go do something else.
# What are the biggest mistakes you can make in a book?
Not enough editing. I did so many editing passes and still found typos. You really have to be so thorough.
# Do you have tips on choosing titles and covers?
Not really, I think you know yourself best and should listen to your gut re: what art you want on the cover. I wouldn’t say there was a skill or a unifying principle with me, I just chose phrases from the books that I liked.
# How do bad reviews and negative feedback affect you and how do you deal with them?
I’m not terribly bothered. I don’t want to live in a world with censorship. I would rather people have freedom of speech even if it means someone goes online and says my book is an absolute pile of dog poop.
# How has your creation process improved over time?
The biggest thing is I stopped writing from a place of stress or pressure. I don’t even set goals of any kind any more. No word counts.
# What were the best, worst and most surprising things you encountered during the entire process of completing your book(s)?
How much my protagonist Captain Kane Ulyanov was his own person that had nothing to do with me. My whole reason for writing a male protagonist was that I needed one I couldn’t self insert with. I needed that bit of distance during the close quarter combat scenes. As I said above I’m terribly arachnophobic.
# Do you tend towards personal satisfaction or aim to serve your readers? Do you balance the two and how?
I never write to market any more than I would sneeze to market or urinate to market. Perhaps for some people it works that way, but not for me. It’s a base part of being human, not a skill I exercise at will. I can’t choose to do it at will.
# What role do emotions play in creativity?
This is a bit like asking what role water has in being wet. Nobody writes because they did some sort of cold logical analysis. As far as I know.
# Do you have any creativity tricks?
No. My brain doesn’t work that way. A big part of my writing journey was treating my brain with respect and not trying to force creativity when not in the mood.
# What are your plans for future books?
I have quite a few in the pipeline. There’s the main trilogy and also some short novelettes and an anthology.
# Tell us some quirky facts about yourself
For some odd reason despite being terrified of most spider species I do love the cobalt tarantula and more broadly the bright blue species. I guess my brain likes blue enough to override the eight limbs factor.