Please introduce yourself and your book(s)!
Melinda Kucsera writes fantastic short stories, novels, and books when not being kidnapped by dragons or chased by armies of fictional creatures. (We do, on occasion, rescue her.) She leaves the running of her newsletter to a cast of lovable characters who hog her inbox. Enough about her, it’s us you’re really interested in, her cast of characters. Join us every week for a new story by visiting www.mkucsera.com/welcomecharacters
When Melinda is left alone, she writes mostly about a young man and his adorable son who might be one of the characters responding to this interview. They adventure together through a fantastic world full of enchanted people and things and take on all kinds of monsters and mayhem. It’s all in a day’s work when you live steps away from an enchanted forest. Oh, and, we have a portal in our cave that connects to your world and gives us exclusive access to our scribe whenever we feel an adventure coming on. You can grab the first four books of the Curse Breaker series here: https://www.books2read.com/b/bP516z
Join us on an adventure now.
What is/are the story(ies) behind your book(s)?
Umm, I hate to break it to you, but I (the fictional character bravely giving this interview in my shy scribe’s stead) is a real person. I might live in a fantastical world full of magic and mayhem, knights and swordfights, angels, demons and other types of insanity, but I assure you, I’m not fictional. My world really does exist somewhere beyond dreams. Somehow, our scribe, Melinda Kucsera, can see what goes on in our world and chronicle it. Isn’t that the coolest thing ever? The cast of her books certainly thinks so, but we might be a tad biased. There’s a book coming out soon that illustrates just how Melinda can see our world and how characters like me can cross over to your world. It’ll be called Curse Breaker’s Companion: Catch the Scribe (because that’s what we’ll be doing in that book).
One last thing before I move off this topic. I might have borrowed Melinda’s computer to type up this interview. Don’t tell her about that, okay? She gets upset if we drop in when she’s not home.
What inspires/inspired your creativity?
Well, since I and my fellow cast members are real people living in a real, though, fantastic world, we are her inspiration. We do stuff, and she writes that stuff down. Through some alchemical process, books are created from our running amock in fantasy land. You’d have to ask our scribe, Melinda, about the actual process.
How do you deal with creative block?
We don’t because it’s never happened. When we want page time, we just walk through a handy portal and ask our scribe, Melinda, to accompany us on another adventure. Melinda never says no even though we’re in and out of her apartment around the clock with requests. We’re not sure how she manages to sleep at all when she’s so flooded with requests.
What are the biggest mistakes you can make in a book?
You can try to make a character do something he or she doesn’t want to. Since our scribe never does that, I can only speculate about what effect that would have on the cast and story.
Do you have tips on choosing titles and covers?
You should probably not let a group of well-meaning fictional characters title or design your book covers because they have no idea what the market trends are for your chosen genre. You should probably also not let your fictional characters into your inbox either unless you closely monitor what they do in there. Otherwise, they might conduct interviews and get into all kinds of trouble.
How do bad reviews and negative feedback affect you and how do you deal with them?
I’m not sure. You see, we have this digital dragon, and she might eat trolls and other nefarious cyber creatures for dinner. She might also have barbecued a few reviews. We’re not sure because reviews seem to appear and disappear from a certain store. It might be her doing. We’re not brave enough to ask her. Our scribe doesn’t know about this, so could we keep this just between us? Why doesn’t Melinda know? Um, well, getting more page time is every character’s top priority. We keep her busy chronicling our adventures, so more of them can make it into stores.
How has your creation process improved over time?
Melinda, our scribe, has gotten really skilled at creating portals to our world. So much so, she’s even created a few, accidentally of course, that connect to a spot right outside her cubicle at her day gig. We can now bother her at work too! There’s a funny story coming soon about our exploits in the business world. We might have caused some magical mayhem there. How were we, the citizens of an enchanted forest that has no tech, supposed to know that magic can fry servers and other important technologies? Your world has way too many wires.
What were the best, worst and most surprising things you encountered during the entire process of completing your book(s)?
Well, our scribe had to learn how to negotiate. Adventures tend to lead to other adventures, which is great for real life but not so great in a book because a book has a beginning, a middle and an end. But adventures in real life don’t have ends. So it took our scribe, Melinda, some time and trials to learn how to stop us from haring off on another adventure long enough to end the book. Of course, we’ve been learning from her too. Just because a book has an end doesn’t mean it’s the end. You can always sneak in new scenes and get more page time during the editing rounds. The cast might be sharpening this skill as we speak. Just don’t tell Melinda. She hasn’t caught on yet.
Do you tend towards personal satisfaction or aim to serve your readers? Do you balance the two and how?
We try to cram as much magical mayhem into every book as we can physically fit in it. That way, we satisfy everyone.
What are your plans for future books?
Well, we as mentioned earlier in the interview, our scribe is working on a series of tales, (collectively called Curse Breaker’s Companion), that show what goes on in between books in greater detail than we’re able to show each week in our newsletter. (You can sign up for our newsletter here: www.mkucsera.com/welcomecharacters — it’s run by the same characters who are doing this interview.) You can find more information about the first book in the Curse Breaker’s Companion series here: https://melindakucsera.com/coming-soon/ and information about our published books here: https://melindakucsera.com/the-curse-breaker-saga/
On May 7th, we’re releasing Relic Hunters. Relic Hunter features badass heroines with brains, blades, and humor with plenty of side-switching, double-crossing and magical mayhem in this fantasy adventure. Get Relic Hunter now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QMJVTV3
Our scribe is also working on Curse Breaker: Hidden. You can’t hide what’s burning inside. In the sixth book of the Curse Breaker series, Sarn faces his toughest challenge yet—a tentacular creature sitting on a cache of magic-eating rocks. To destroy it, Sarn needs to regain the use of his magic and somehow protect his son while he’s doing that. But unlocking his powers won’t be easy since an evil entity holds the key. Coming this fall to ebook. (We hope. So you have plenty of time to catch up on the rest of the series. Grab books 1-4 in the Curse Breaker series in this convenient boxed set: https://www.books2read.com/b/bP516z. It’s the best deal around. Then grab book 5 here: https://www.books2read.com/u/3yDkqZ You won’t want to miss a thing.)
Bye bye for now. Don’t forget to sign up for the only character-run newsletter of its kind: http://mlp.mkucsera.com/welcomecharacters You won’t regret it.