Mel: Welcome to another episode of writer on the road today. We're staying here in my beautiful town of Brisbane. Welcome Aiki Flintheart.

Aiki: Hey, thanks, Mel. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Mel: We have the beautiful Deb Kelly to thank for this one. And we are going to Fantasyland. Aiki has nine or 10 books published, middle grade and adult fantasy novels.

Aiki: I have been training in martial arts for about 18 years or so. It's good for writing it gives you lots of good fight scenes.

Mel: I had a look at some of the covers on your books and there is this woman and she's holding a knife. I love her expression. She's a kickass female. I like her. And we're going to talk about that today about how to write fight scenes because that's what Aiki specializes in.

Aiki: I've actually been writing my whole life but early on they were really dreadful romances that will never see the light of day. And then my son is dyslexic and he was really struggling with the big fat books like the Harry Potter and things you wanted to read something actually but he just couldn't get through them. So I wrote a series of five books for middle graders portal fantasy as kids get sucked back into a computer game set in 1880 and my sneaky goal was to to hide some real history in there so the kids have to go through five levels in five different countries all said in 88. And while they learn things about India and China and Egypt along the way and it's the fight scenes. But you know after I publish those they were really quite successful. There's been about 400000 downloads but. I then realized I really didn't know what I was doing. I went away and learnt a lot of things and wrote some more books and now the ones that are coming out you know are stronger read better written but the older ones keep selling really well so there's something about them.

Mel: 400000 downloads of middle grade novels is amazing. We're talking digital. Aiki Is an indie publisher. And when I went on your website other than Amazon and your own website where else can we buy your books.

Aiki: They're on all the major retailers so I books and Kobo and Barnes and Noble and a couple of others here are all the major retailers and you can actually print on demand as well if you walk into a bookshop and say I want this book they'll order it for you here.

Mel: On your website there are bonus materials and background research and I was off to China myths and legends. You really have to know an awful lot to be able to write these fantasy novels to build two worlds.

Aiki: The research involved is incredible. The latest one that's coming out I own is actually a science fiction fantasy set on a future colony world but my background as a geologist so I decided to do an alternate world a different world. You've got a really science the heck out of those things you have and do your hard science research and for historical ones you have to do your historical research because someone out there will pick you up on every mistake I guarantee. And I was trying to teach kids something so I wanted it to be as accurate as it could be. So yeah it's fun.

Mel: We were talking about me before the episode or before the podcast today I interviewed Sherilyn Kenyon which is why I reached out everyone for fantasy and science fiction because our listeners want that.

Mel: But what happened when I read Sherilyn. I was really hooked on these stories. These stories are fast paced action. You learn something along the way about a whole new world. Crushing it to make up other languages and words that I'm not even going to pronounce here on the podcast you are right up there.

Aiki: The 80AD series it's actually kind of amazing I get fan mail every day from all over the world like the Caribbean and Poland and India and always it it's adults who say I downloaded these for my son but I absolutely love them I've read them three times but just had a lady in America who read them about five years ago and now has a little boy that she's named after the main character which is so cool.

Mel: You're 15 years martial arts trained and knife throwing and archery.

Aiki: Unless you'reJ.K. Rowling there's a huge disparity between the big selling authors and the rest of the world. So most of us have to unfortunately have full time or part time jobs and I run a full time business and luckily my son has grown up so in the evenings I have time to write and my husband is very supportive.

Mel: You're an indie publisher. You've had 400000 downloads so they download a few dollars each. And even with that amount of downloads you're still not making a full time living.

Aiki: No unfortunately because very early on I had them up for free for a little while and then put money on them after that. I do get money but it's clear it's not as much as anybody thinks because those royalties but Amazon takes a percentage and all the other retailers take a percentage and when you're only selling Abebooks for a very small amount there's not a lot leftover.

Mel: This is where the indie publishers or indie authors have the advantage.The Shadow trilogy three books. Yeah. So you've got them there. They finished and you're starting on your next series with the book coming out, Iron, and it's the first of the Palomar trilogy. The more books you have and every little bit adds up. This is where being Indie has come into their own.

Aiki: It is because the modern trend in Indie authorship is to put out a lot of books as fast as you can. To be honest I'm not sure that's going to work for fantasy because fantasy novels tend to be longer. The Shadows series are 80000 each. Iron is 140000 the two sequels that are already written and their 120 130000 so that's a lot of words and it's quite hard to put that volume out quickly. But that's kind of how the authorship works you just keep putting books out. To be honest I'd rather do a few fewer that are really good quality. And not as much because I'm not dependent on it for a living. I love writing. I don't care.

Mel: Your blog called Warrior Woman: so it's good to have a little slice of life as as she built up I think your writing confidence. And it's interesting because the very first thing that I read was and I've written it down here as a quote and it's something about the middle where you need to find the middle ground between paralyzing lack of self belief and ignorant overconfidence as as a writer.

Aiki: And I thought how very true that is it is it is because when you first start writing you think you know what you're doing and you just pour out the words and then you know if you get negative feedback or you get other writers who go. But what about you start realising what you don't know and you don't know what you don't know. And if you suddenly go oh my god I can't write anymore. I don't know enough and you could get trapped in this cycle of having to be perfect because so many writers tend to be introvert perfectionists. So you kind of have to find that ground where you're still writing and still learning and just be comfortable with the fact that it's never going to be perfect and let it go.

Mel: The advantage of indie publishing is you do make it the best you can and done is better than perfect and later on you can go back and fix it.

Aiki: [00:10:20] Oh yes definitely. And you have to treat that as a good thing because no matter how many times you get it edited because obviously a better book is better if you do get it edited. So I have to say look I highly recommend that you get books edited and any feedback that you get that's positive and useful as opposed to just nasty and negative because everybody gets those and you just have to ignore them. But feedback that actually tells you something like Oh you've made a spelling mistake that's worthwhile take it on board accept it. I actually start my books now where they have a warning to all my American fans because I get a lot of American. I start saying no this is written with Australian spellings. Get over it. Because I got tired of them telling me I was spelling things wrong.

Mel: [00:11:10] I was reading I read all your book blurbs because I was hooked. And one of them at the bottom said if you're expecting shape and shape shifters you're going to be disappointed.

Aiki: [00:11:20] Yes because paranormal at the moment in an especially romances paranormal romance is a big Aperol shapeshifters and vampires and you know there's still some zombies hanging around but I just yeah I didn't go that way. So I just thought I should warn people because no shapeshifters.

Mel: [00:11:40] I got the impression from what I've read yours are a pure fantasy or science fiction that will stand the test of time.

Aiki: [00:11:51] Well I'm hoping so. You know you have to try to do that. You have to kind of minimize the amount of current pop culture references which isn't easy when the shadows is an urban fantasy. There are some in there. But yeah I tried to make the heroine's tough. I've one of the things my husband loves about them is that the relationships in them are equal for women and men are equal. There's no there's no love triangles there's no you know one person being dominant over the other. He he really loves that as a male and this Meteora as a good example of how women can be strong and men can be strong and neither of them has to take away from the other. And that's one of the things I'm really passionate about is writing women as equal and strong without being wimpy walked over and this is cool because you you you have a young audience as well as adults.

Mel: [00:12:52] It's great that the kids are getting these messages I think and the adults amongst us as well. And let's let's kick in now to the workshops that you run because I've got to tell you I am absolutely fascinating. Where do we go if we don't do your workshops I know this story running Mitchell did she get to people.

Aiki: [00:13:11] I'd love to. I want to do one of those as a master class but the liability issues are horrendous. You know look at the moment the workshops do have some demonstrations I have a couple of demos of small techniques that I can use on people that won't hurt them.

Aiki: [00:13:28] And it teaches people things like gun disarms or reactions to techniques that people apply and it's it's hilarious to watch but a lot of it is to do with the physiology the psychology the body chemistry the mental reactions the whole lead up to a fight scene and the differences within how women and men react to violence and handle violence. And it's actually a really fascinating subject. I'm thinking I should do a masters on it or something.

Mel: [00:13:58] I actually think you should write a book on it for the rest of us writers. I was I was enamored I was hooked. Everybody. The workshop is the it's a well I call it a kickass writing scene writing fight scenes for women I want to have go but it's the physiological and psychological differences between men and women fights trained or untrained in martial arts.

Aiki: [00:14:22] Now I take for granted I guess what I know but if I was going to write a fight scene or even an argument scene or even a disagreement scene it is more deeply and give it more credibility and to make it more authentic.

Aiki: [00:14:41] I've had people in the workshops who write straight out romances and there's no action or fights at all but because the psychology and the physiology of leading up to a really full on argument is very similar to the physiology and psychology of leading up to an actual fight scene. It's all applicable.

Mel: [00:15:00] Yeah. Now this didn't come about by accident. Everybody remember we've got to hear clearly she doesn't sleep clearly she's 150 because of all the things that she's done and how she's lived. You had eight years of running workshops for corporates on characterisation.

Aiki: [00:15:17] I was working with businesses teaching them how to understand personality differences in the workplace so that they could hire people to create teams and I suddenly realized that you could apply equally to writing if you're writing an ensemble cast in a book. If you write balanced personalities so that you've got representation like say five different five to eight different personality types or four or eight depending on your team you're appealing to all of the readers then you've got everybody covered. Somebody is going to like one of your characters and it also leads to brilliant conflict about options because you know a leader who's really strong willed is always going to conflict with the really laid back easy going person is going Yeah I don't want to go there go and have your own quest. I go off so many opportunities for conflict and personality profiling it's fabulous.

Mel: [00:16:13] I'm sure I'm not the only one sitting here going where can we buy the book. Can we buy the cheat sheet. No. There's a lot of stuff on your website. Bonus Material for the actual books and the physical research of China and all those places and myths and pyramids and teams and hieroglyphics and we need to go on. But there's nothing on there as yet for writers to be able to go to your website and buy the book because I'm guaranteeing I'm not the only one.

Aiki: [00:16:48] I'm actually at the moment because I've given this Saint's workshop a few times and I've given the personality profiling workshop a few times I'm now at the point where it's refined enough that I know how it should go. So I've actually pitched it to Worldcon in New Zealand in 2020 as well and I'm really hoping that if they take it up I can have a book ready to go with it for 2019 2020 and then that will be available to you know obviously I can't give workshops all over the world as much as I'd love to. Feel free to invite me if anybody's listening. But you know fallling Yeah it means that other writers can hopefully benefit and take away the useful stuff but their fight scenes and their personalities as well.

Mel: [00:17:30] It's screaming out for online courses everybody is screaming you have for webinars if you follow the tradition traditional indie publishing route think Joanne opin think all those guys. If you were that way inclined over time you're going to have an amazing business and your books some of your books are set here in downtown Brissie or I'll be interviewing you in the future.

Aiki: [00:18:06] I've gotten very very very famous.

Mel: [00:18:09] Let's let's talk a little bit more about your expertise in writing because you haven't got this far this quickly without having that expertise as much as you say you started from scratch and you were just arrogant. And we went for it. You have an editing service and you offer some amazing. I guess I'm not an you but you take us through what needs to be done before books published. I'm talking structural with its line. It is just a simple menu script assessment. So what do you really look at your website and what do I need to have all that stuff done.

Aiki: [00:18:51] It's obviously everybody's choice but I don't think you can these days get away with out at least a structural analysis on your book. I know that when I when I first started writing I didn't actually know what story structure was and but because I had read so much as a child and a young adult when I went back and looked at what I'd written in the series I realised I'd actually nailed the structure unconsciously but I was really lucky because I don't think I could have rewritten them all. But when I read it when I looked at shadows wake the first one and applied a structural analysis to it I realised that I missed it and missed a key point that I had to completely rewrite and shift scenes around to make it work. And sometimes you need that external eye to go okay yes you feel like your story is not working here and this is why your scene is too long or you're seen as not paced correctly or you're one of the characters doesn't have a strong enough arc so you do need an external eye and if you can get a lot of it from good beta readers that's a great place to start. But sometimes beta readers love you too much and they don't want to tell you the things wrong because they don't want to hurt your feelings. But as a writer you've just kind of got to suck it up and go yeah I need some help with this. It's not perfect it's never going to be perfect but I'm sure it can be better. And that's where you need the help of somebody who maybe has a few more years of experience. That's really all it is just a few more years.

Mel: [00:20:23] You've got your own coming out as we speak it's going to be a series as well. Have you had the book professionally edited and given your own experience.

Aiki: [00:20:32] Definitely. Because you just can't seem to read it so many times you cannot see the mistakes and I learned a lot from when that one got edited. That was really useful. And the same year you can then take away what's been applied to one book and immediately take it to your next book and apply all those new skills the land to that next book and it's better again. So you require a bit less editing on that book because you now know a bit more about what you're doing. So hopefully the process of getting edited means your next series of books your next set of books you know is tighter and stronger right from the get go and that's it that's the experience of all authors whether they're in the or traditionally published. The more you write the more you get edited the less editing you gradually need because you kind of know what you're doing.

Aiki: [00:21:25] Remember this is a lady who started out not having a clue what she was doing and just wrote rows and...