Megan E O’Keefe Interview

Today we interview Megan E. O’Keefe, a new and promising genre author. Her newly published book, Steal the Sky, is available through Angry Robot Books and was recently reviewed (favorably) by Rob Bedford.

Megan E. O’Keefe lives in the Bay Area of California and makes soap for a living. (It’s only a little like Fight Club.) She has worked in arts management and graphic design, and spends her free time tinkering with anything she can get her hands on.
Megan is a first place winner in the Writers of the Future competition, vol. 30. Steal the Sky is her first novel.

Welcome to SFFWorld.com, Megan. You have an airship on the cover of your book! Tell me about Steal the Sky.

Thank you for the warm welcome! Steal the Sky is about a conman and his best bud attempting to steal the airship that’s featured on the cover. Of course, things don’t go as planned, and they stick their feet right smack in the middle of a political upheaval. And there’s a face-changing assassin on the loose, because that’s just Detan and Tibs’s luck.

Your main character Detan Honding sounds like a lovable rogue. What made you decide to write about a “bad boy with a secret” character?

I love characters that walk precarious moral lines, who do bad things for good reasons – even if those reasons aren’t always obvious on the surface.

There seems to be a lot of thievery and political intrigue, and air ships, but is there any magic in Steal the Sky?

Oh absolutely, magic and unique worlds are what drew me into fantasy in the first place, after all. Magic in the world of the Scorched comes in the form of “sensitives” having telepathic control over a lighter-than-air gas called selium. The gas is opalescent, and is used to float and power the airships that fuel commerce. Sensitives can all move and shape the gas, but the degree of their control varies widely. They’re looked after by the empire due to their value, but are also forced into service as miners of selium and, more rarely, as airship pilots. Deviations in talent from what the empire needs to keep running are heavily regulated, most being outlawed all together.

I noticed your book has a subtitle, A Scorched Continent novel. Is Steal the Sky part of a series?

It is! Angry Robot has purchased three books from me in the series, and there is a prequel novella currently with my agent. Book Two is well underway, and I have a substantial outline and a few scenes written up for Book Three, which I’m itching to dive into soon.

This is your first published book, but is it the first book you’ve written?

Steal the Sky is actually the second novel I’ve written. My first book, The Mark of Onir, is near and dear to my heart but needs quite a bit of work to get it up to publishable standards. It features an isolated mountain city and an acrobat who joins the city’s magical artifact police. I hope to return to it and spruce it up someday soon.

How did your book end up with Angry Robot Books?

In July of 2014, I sent the manuscript out to both my future agent, Sam Morgan at JABberwocky, and to Mike Underwood over at Angry Robot. Then… I waited. Publishing, especially the traditional variety, is a slow moving beast. A few months later I was lucky enough to receive an email from Sam and Mike within 24 hours of each other, asking to talk about the book when I’d see them both in person at World Fantasy in November. JABberwocky sent me an offer of representation Saturday night of the con, and by January we’d signed the contract with AR. Then I had to wait again to share the news!

What is your favorite and least favorite part of the writing process?

Hands down my favorite part of writing is the initial drafting stage. I love putting down heaps of words, inventing on the fly, and seeing where the story takes me. Even though I tend to use outlines, I’ll often wander off my set path while drafting and experiment in a couple of different directions.

As for my least favorite, well, that’s a very specific aspect of the revision process. See, I’m impatient when it comes to my creative energies. I love to charge ahead and fix All The Things, which is why drafting is so fun for me. But there’s always a point in revision wherein I hit a problem that I have to think on for a while to straighten out, and that flips all my impatient switches.

What’s on your to-be-read pile right now? Any favorite authors?

I was given a collection of perfect gifts for Christmas; a warm blanket, a pack of tea, and a copy of Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars. I’m looking forward to making use of all these glorious gifts at the same time!

I’ve also heard a rumor that Patricia A McKillip, one of my favorite authors, is coming out with two new books in 2016. Two! I can’t wait.

What do you do when not writing?

Hah – now there’s a question! I collect hobbies like some people collect coins. Right now, when I’m not working on my soap business or writing, I’ve been playing with creating 3D art via Blender and incorporating those creations into games I’m developing in Unity. I’ve also indulged in the Steam winter game sale and am catching up on some of the games I missed in 2015.

What are you writing now or what are you working on?

Right now I’m charging ahead with revisions for Book Two, and noodling around with worldbuilding for a separate project that I’ll be drafting this year. My short story, Of Blood and Brine, which first appeared in Shimmer, has also been recently produced in audio over at Podcastle.

I look forward to reading and listening to your stories, Megan. Thanks for joining us.

You can find Megan online at meganokeefe.com and @MeganofBlushie on Twitter.