Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Conversation about relearning the kinship worldview with author, horse-drawn woodwright, and renowned storyteller, D. Firth Griffith. Unshod is a podcast and community that believes to rebel, we must pause, that we live with Earth as Earthlings, that we must approach creativity, curiosity, and compassion in conversation.… but we must approach this ground UNSHOD. This has nothing to do with "saving the world." It has everything to do with leaving the right kind of tracts in the mud.
Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
From Big Oil to Epic Fantasy with Author Angie Kelly
This conversation is a multi-layered yarn with my friend Angie Kelly, who reveals her transformative journey from a biologist working in Canada's oil fields to an author of Epic and rage-worthy Fantasy. She explores the delicate relationship between nature, grief, and storytelling while introducing her captivating novel, "The Source of Storms."
Angie's Website HERE or Substack HERE or Instagram HERE.
Pre-Order my latest NOVEL HERE.
Hello, hi, welcome to the podcast. This episode is a conversation with my new and wonderful friend, angie Kelly. She was born and raised in a remote coastal Alaskan village where she grew to love nature and the subsistence and communal lifestyle. It inspired her to earn a bachelor's and then a following master's degree in biology and she worked for about a decade in the fisheries and wildlife conservation and monitoring consultancy space and, like all interesting people, she went from studying the microfauna of the big oil fields in northern Canada to writing epic fantasy, because that's a transition that makes sense. We talk all about this transition. We talk about her love for wildlife and owls and seals and her time as a biological consultant on some pretty epic oil fields and pretty sad places and we get into the grief, the glitter of being in wild places before they're destroyed and so much more. We talk about her transition to becoming a writer full time and then we spend the rest of the episode talking about her forthcoming book, which comes out later this month I believe February 22nd called the Source of Storms, and so if any aspect of this conversation is interesting, I encourage you go check that book out. Her website it's in the show notes. There's information there she writes on Substack it's called the Selkie also a link in the show notes and then grab a copy of her book.
D. Firth Griffith:I got to read the first three chapters that she sent over and, as we discussed in the podcast, it was intriguing, it was engrossing. It's a really interesting story, epic fantasy with a pretty hard hint of romance. It's a pretty captivating subject. She handles this ancient rage, this deep grief in the feminine spirit very well and I greatly enjoyed it. So I'm rambling, I'm staring at the wall. As you know, I don't like to do all alone here in my little writing shed. I've got some horses to go train and some cows to move.
Angie Kelly:So I'm going to terminate this intro and say go grab a copy of her book and check out this episode I don't know, that area for some reason feels so cool and interesting to me and I think it's like so much of the american mythology that we have I mean, I guess like the, the colonial American mythology, not the real American mythology it so much of it started out there and I feel like it has such a a history and tradition of storytelling from the East. Um, but it was interesting that you said that the land is why you're there and not the people, cause I feel like those two are so intertwined and that the land really does make the people. But at the same time, I know exactly what you mean.
D. Firth Griffith:yeah, it's an interesting thing to be able to say that like that the people are so distanced from the land and the operations you know of her, of her beat and rhythm and seasons and such, yeah, that that could be true, be true. Like, what a statement that even could be true. Like that man can be separated from its environment and evolve differently, but like, to some degree that's like domestication in the truest sense. Right, that we've prohibited the animal's epigenetic reality or expression from actually like phenotypically being like plastic in the landscape not plastic as a created substance, but like plastic as moldable maybe is a better way of looking at it, and so we've kind of placed our foot there and I think it's true, I think people out here are very good at placing their foot down in that, in that spot, like we're agricultural and we believe in this like american mythology, but like it's there's some problems.
Angie Kelly:I don't know. It's easy to I get caught in this a lot of just thinking that like, oh, this is, this is an unnatural order, like the things that we're doing, especially like agriculture, for example, like you said, like we're, we're putting this unnatural progression into place with our artificial selection of animals and everything that we do. But I don't know, sometimes I have to remind myself that, like, maybe this is all part of the same big thing and it's all. It's all, it's all perfect, it's all where it's meant to be. That, like humans are here doing our thing, is where quote, unquote supposed to be and we're not some like unnatural separate entity, like we often feel like we are, and that maybe that's okay, for better or for worse. I mean, we'll see where it goes. Like you said, there's problems.
D. Firth Griffith:in the immediate sense it's not always good, but I don't know yeah doing what we're doing, that's for sure yeah, I think there's a there's a large difference between the acceptance of technology as a prerequisite to human action and then the other side of that being technology that can aid human interaction and action and everything else. I think about stories, which I know is on your mind as it is mine, but stories are oral, they were carried over hearts and fires and they're carried in the winter season and that's not the case anymore. We can still have that be the case, but at the same time we have this other medium which is like syllabaries and written words and symbols on vellum or paper or calfskin, and you know papyrus, and now today, you know, whatever this is engineered, paper whatever this, this, this horrible white thing is in front of me, yeah, but like that's not to say that you shouldn't use it.
D. Firth Griffith:You know, it's like I think you could become quite um rugged in your living of the world, and maybe that's for some. But there's also like a usable case that technology can provide us to like write our way out of a very modern problem or think our way through, or like a podcast like this, like I would much rather sit with you in person and nobody tunes in and it's just me and you. Like I think it'd be great. We can't do that. So you know, we use the mediums that we have. Technology doesn't have to be unequivocally a negative, destructive force.
Angie Kelly:No, it's all in how you use it, and like I mean, we never would have been able to chat like this if it weren't we're on the opposite sides of the continent, so I never would have found you otherwise. Yeah.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. What? What brings you to British Columbia? Cause you're from Alaska, right Like the coastal region of Alaska.
Angie Kelly:Yes, Um, man, that's a long story. The short answer is I came here for graduate school. I got my bachelor's degree in Montana, I should say. I moved from there to New Zealand at the end of that education. Uh, met someone there who was from England, went to England with him for a bit and then we're like, well, where do we go that we both can live and work? Um, so I went home to Alaska to work for a bit and then he moved down here and I was like, well, well, you know, I'll figure out, I'll go to school, I guess I'll get a master's degree and we'll just see where that goes, Cause that was kind of always something I wanted to do anyway. Um, and then we ended up not sticking together, which is totally fine when our separate ways but I just kind of threw a long chain of events ended up here and still still here seven years later, or something.
D. Firth Griffith:So so you, you, um, you got a bachelor's and then a master's in biology and, to my understanding, um, you spent about 10 years working with fish and wildlife biology and consulting in that way, and while I think that probably still gets you going, you've also walked down a different path. I think, um, I think that would still gets you going. You've also walked down a different path, I think, um, I think that would be really interesting to talk about and explore it as far as you want to go, and you can just talk for the next two hours if you like, all about it. But I think maybe a lead in question would be like why, cause I understand your story that you were working on this book. You were working through it in the weekends and the nights and such, and it was happening, but not really. And then you decided to write. You stepped away and, from what I can tell, it took a very small amount of time to actually craft that initial narrative Once you stepped away, like what was the transformation? What was the impetus behind the transition?
Angie Kelly:Um, that's a great question. When I started in biology I started from a research and subsistence management standpoint, for salmon specifically. So where I grew up was very connected to the ocean and the land in that way, which I loved. And the way that Alaska manages its resources, especially its fisheries, is for future generations first. That's always the priority. So I came from a background of really responsible research driven management, which at the time I didn't realize how special that was and how lucky I was to grow up in that community and to kind of cut my teeth in the biology worlds in that job. It was fantastic.
Angie Kelly:And then I moved away, got more into research with my master's degree, studied wildfire and owls and other critters and got my first real taste of how natural resource management is done in other parts of the world and was a little devastated.
Angie Kelly:Alaska is lucky that we learned from everyone else's mistakes, but the kind of the further east you go, the more of that legacy you see of mismanagement, I guess, to put it simply.
Angie Kelly:And then, coming out of my master's degree, I needed a job and needed to get paid, which kind of sucks for people to have to do, in my opinion.
Angie Kelly:So I started working in consulting. I spent some time up north in Fort McMurray, alberta, which was fascinating and heartbreaking, and I couldn't stick with that for very long because working in camps and doing 10 days on, four days off was really tough and I always had this idea that my priorities were kind of elsewhere, the like that the way that I'd learned conservation and natural resource management just really wasn't um present in those jobs in the way I wanted them to be Like. I understood like the capitalist necessity of what we were doing. Um, but some of the work that I did, especially in that first job I was in helicopters, a lot and a little anecdote. One of the things that we did was we would fly from these huge um oil leases so to back up in Fort Mac. The way they do oil extraction is not through like ground drilling, it's through huge open pit bitumen mines because it's all kind of sitting in the sand right at the surface.
Angie Kelly:It's just the geology of the area. So they take like the first 300 meters to like two kilometers of the earth's crust, basically scrape it off and process it um, and send it out, and so they kind of extract the oil from those sands that's why it's called the oil sands Um, and there's a ton of leases up there and these huge open pit mines cover like kilometers of land and when you're walking around in them it's hard to get a sense of scale, um. And then as soon as you get up in helicopter, it's all very flat up there. So as soon as you get just a little bit above the ground it's like, oh, holy shit, like this is like the earth is gone, like this is missing, yeah, um.
Angie Kelly:So what we would do is we would fly out to these areas where they were going to expand these open pit mines, and we were looking for two things we were putting audio recording devices out for birds and then we were looking for egg masses of frogs to estimate how many frogs were around. How many frogs were around, uh. And then the plan was that in the next year or two, these companies would um place these huge dams in the earth, basically, um, and then expand these open pit mines into these highly sensitive habitats, um, because up there it's it's a lot of wetland habitats, it's these patterned fens that are very, uh, unique and special and they form through the circulate, like the natural circulation of water under plant life. Basically, um, and it's really cool when you're out there, it's like these bands of trees alternated with like long, narrow ponds, um, and then when you walk into them, you're kind of just walking on this floating mass of vegetation that's very easy to fall through, which happens pretty often when you're running in and out of helicopters.
Angie Kelly:So, anyway, I did that job for a while. It kind of eroded my soul for a bit, even though it paid well for a bit, even though it paid well. Um, and it was pretty surreal to to be standing in these places waiting for the helicopter to pick you up or right after it drops you off, and it, you know, the world goes quiet and you're the only one out there and you're like, wow, I'm the last fucking person that's going to see this. Like it's going to be totally gone and it's not ever going to come back, because you can't rebuild those things. They were formed from the last ice age, right? Like they don't.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, we don't get that back. No, it's just gone what was that. Can I interrupt? What was that like?
Angie Kelly:Like if you could just rambling no, please keep rambling.
D. Firth Griffith:I'm enjoying it, but if I could stop you like, what does that feel like? So you got dropped off and, to be very clear, this is like a virgin landscape from an oil perspective that you're documenting before the oil men come in.
Angie Kelly:Yes.
D. Firth Griffith:Right, what does that feel like? I know you just described it a little bit, but like could you put more words to that?
Angie Kelly:Oh yeah, um, it's very special and it's very tragic at the same time. Um, I really love owls and birds. I've done some research on owls in the past and and I had this one owl that I always really wanted to see, which was the Northern hawk owl. It's one of the only owls that's active during the daytime and they're super nomadic. They move around a lot and they really love open landscapes, especially landscapes that have been burned by fire. So when I was doing my master's research in wildfire, I was always like, oh, I'm going to see one of these, like this is going to be the time. And I never did.
Angie Kelly:Anyway, I was standing in this patterned fen waiting for the helicopter to pick me up, which you usually only have like five minutes. He was quick. He would drop you off, you would run out, place your ARU, do your egg mass check. He would be back, take you to the next spot. But I was take you to the next spot.
Angie Kelly:But I was standing there waiting and I turned and looked to the side and there was northern hawk owl just perched on top of a tree, like they like to do, just sitting right there looking at me, and I was like, yes, finally I finally got my bird. It felt so good to see. And then right after that, it's like god damn it, like you got like a year left, buddy, and this whole place is just gonna get nuked, and I'm so sorry, like it just really sucked, because it was that like contrasting comparison, I guess, of being in this like really beautiful, really special habitat, and then anytime I had that moment of wonder or like, oh, look at all of this wildlife, or look at this river otter running along through the water next to me and diving under the pond, or look at all of these birds, or you know. Just the next thought was like this will all be gone.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah.
Angie Kelly:And it'll just be gone and there's nothing we can do. So, yeah, it was really hard, hard and especially cause. Like you get into this job obviously because you I I at least love animals and wildlife and wild places and that was always what I wanted to do is go to these places and learn how to protect them. And in consulting, you get to go to a lot of cool places and work on a lot of cool jobs. But, like you got to take the jobs that pay and that's where the money is, and especially in places like Alberta, really everywhere in the world.
Angie Kelly:But it's it's very apparent in Alberta, fossil fuel industry is their industry. It controls their economy. It's their number one export. It makes everyone their money.
Angie Kelly:Like hundreds of thousands of people are connected to this and in Fort Mac it it's it's quite obvious just to see the amounts of money and like the, the numbers that people would throw around when we would talk about these projects, like like, uh, they have these huge trucks up there, um, that that run through the mines. That are just massive. They they're like I don't even know how to explain it they're like bigger than houses and their tires alone cost $50,000 each just for the rubber on one tire and they run on like six or eight tires or something. Wow, it's nuts. And then they have to replace those all the time and I'm like, oh, this whole job we're doing costs 75 grand. Like that's our budget for this entire like bird research thing that we were doing. It's like pennies to them. It's crazy.
Angie Kelly:So I dunno, I like I understood it, I guess from both perspectives of like people got to work, they got to feed their families, like that's what we got to do, but man, it comes at a huge cost and it is not sustainable. And and that's what's so wild is is they sell this as the only way and they sell this as as getting rich. And all of these young men especially are sold this dream of like, oh, come up here and get rich on the oil rigs and and feed your family and buy a big truck and you can buy a second house in British Columbia. And they do. But like I think that ends.
D. Firth Griffith:It ends without any sort of rebirth. Like that's what petrifies me. Like I'm okay with death. Like my wife and I, we were trained butchers. We travel all over the world teaching butchery and field harvesting and sacred hunting and everything else. Like I'm good with death, yeah, but if there's no rebirth it's just murder with the capital m. It's just termination, it's just ruin? Yes, absolutely, and they don't have to have.
Angie Kelly:No, no, that was exactly right. Um, that's it. And, like you said earlier, like the reclamation was a joke, like that's what it is. They don't have to be accountable or have a plan, right, they just at most have to record what's going to be lost and then you know, fuck it, it's gone, like, and that's that's what it leaves behind. Yeah, and that's it, man, like they, they'll just leave it, they'll just go. Especially if they go bankrupt. They don't have to fix anything, right, they'll just bleed it dry and yeah, that's.
Angie Kelly:I feel like I mentioned this a little with the fisheries, but I feel like the East Coast is kind of like just a few steps in the future from the West Coast from a natural resources standpoint, and like you describing the poverty of these places and me describing like the current wealth of them, you're just a couple of generations ahead. Like the current wealth of them, you're just a couple generations ahead. And like when these mines go and they will go because they have to, there's a timeline. Like these communities will collapse and if that's all it's based on, you got nothing for the next generation. They do that with forestry here as well, it's. It's just like get rich as fast as you can and get out, and it's not sustainable. Um, but yeah, I didn't answer. I never actually answered your question, I just went on a tangent.
D. Firth Griffith:Big oil and biology to epic fantasy. How did that happen?
Angie Kelly:Yeah, um, I don't even know it's nuts really. How did that happen? So, anyway, I was up there breaking my own heart over these places all the time, feeling like such a loser because I'm in these camps full of thousands of men who are making way more money than I am and they're totally fine with it, and I'm like crying myself to sleep every night in camp. Just being like this is killing me. So I quit that job and I got a different job in consulting. That was much closer to where I live now Smaller company, really lovely people, just like. Much better. A bunch of my friends already worked there. So it was.
Angie Kelly:It was a pretty good, wholesome time for a couple of years, but a lot of similar projects we didn't do. One of the things I really liked is the company has never done anything with big oil, um, and we've kept it that way, which was a relief for me. But you know we still got to do what we got to do. So we worked on, like you said, other uh projects like with mining, with selenium pollution. I've done that. We work for a smelter that's on the Columbia river. They were actually lovely clients, surprisingly and but yeah, they have a full hydroelectric power plant that just powers their smelter. That generates yeah, and it generates as much electricity as the city of Vancouver.
D. Firth Griffith:No doubt. Now what? What is smelting Like just at high level? What is that energy used for?
Angie Kelly:It's creating metal, so it's creating metal alloys. I don't even know what all they make, but I know what makes it into the river, because they use the river water in a massive amount, um to to cool things and generate stuff and it goes through the whole facility and then it goes back into the river, um, so I I think they make a lot of nickel and stuff. They make a lot of like metal alloys, um. So I worked on that project a lot, which was actually fun, cause it was just me and my boss on a boat in the river by ourselves quite a bit, which I really enjoyed. He was really fun and we would rip around real fast in our jet boat and see lots of birds and it was good.
Angie Kelly:But, um, it was hard and it was stressful and the whole time I was doing it I kind of just felt this like misalignment, I suppose.
Angie Kelly:Um, even though I loved the people I worked with and the projects were fine, just being in that like nine to five kind of corporate environment, like man, I was so stressed and I was so tired all the time and I I love working out and exercising and being outdoors and it was like just to work 40 or more hours a week and then make myself go to the gym four times a week and maybe get out on a hike on the weekends, it's like it was way too much to keep up with and it was exhausting. And I've always I've always loved myth and writing and storytelling and I kind of just started dabbling with writing a bit here and there. During that time, um, and I'd, for a few years, I'd had a dream of writing a book. Uh, I I think I started thinking about it more seriously when I was working in Fort Mack, because I I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass at the time, which is a fantastic book. I hope you can't hear my cat meowing at me.
D. Firth Griffith:Oh, it's perfectly fine.
Angie Kelly:She's very needy and I was reading that book while I was working on these oil projects and it was such a nice spiritual connection to make to another human being that I would never meet or talk to. Because that's what she was talking about in this book was all of these things that we're doing to our landscape and then like the spiritual, indigenous perspective of those places and I was like man I want to do, to do this, like this is the shit that makes a difference. Like this is this is how you actually connect to other human beings and like share a value system and communicate in ways that mean something and isn't just like writing fucking reports to get paid and like to let whatever mining company do what they're going to do, you know, to check their boxes and avoid their fines from the government or whatever the hell. So that kind of lodged in the back of my mind for a long time and I started writing my book just on weekends and after work and squeezing it in wherever I could, and then it sort of just consumed my brain and it was all I could think about and I didn't want to write my silly little reports anymore and I didn't want to go to work. I couldn't like force myself to focus, um, and so I thought about leaving for months and, uh, I think by the time I finally left, I was like I don't have a choice, like I'm going to lose my mind if I try to keep forcing myself to do this thing that I clearly do not want to do anymore.
Angie Kelly:And my fiance was actually so encouraging because I think I never considered that like people can just write books and make that their job. I was like this is a dream that other people get to have and not me, and this works for a few other already famous authors, but I'll never. You know, this isn't practical, I shouldn't do this. And he was like, no, you can like people do this. This is a real path you can go down and you can just write a book and see what happens and like just try it. And I was like, well, I guess you're right, let's just see what happens.
D. Firth Griffith:Right, it seems like it's opposite from this, like big oil mentality, that like we have to destroy the world in order to move forward. But like to me as an author, it feels, and I feel the same energy from you. It's like no, like we literally can tell a new story, like it's right there, the tip of your fingers yeah, at any time you can just make another choice and go another way.
Angie Kelly:And yeah, I won't make as much money, that's probably true. I'm like who gives a fuck? Hey, I'll be happier, I'll have more time to take care of myself and my family and do what I actually want to be doing, um. So, yeah, I I finally quit and it was really sad and hard, cause I really loved all the people I worked with and my boss and I were pretty tight, um, but he knew it was coming. It was funny when I finally walked in to tell him, he was like I sat down and like took a breath and he was like, hey, I know it's okay, and I just like instantly started crying. Um, but yeah, it was. It was very sweet, um, and I did have one moment before I left. That was kind of like my little push from the universe, my little antidote um that I was.
Angie Kelly:I take my dog to work, um. Just another lovely thing about working there is he always came with me and I was standing outside in the grass with him in the spring and I was thinking about leaving and I was all stressed out about it and upset and uh, I looked down and for some reason, I had this thought and I was just like all right, I've never found a four leaf clover before in my life. If I find one right now, I'm quitting my job. I looked down and it was just right at my foot, like I was standing barefoot in the grass. It was right there. I was like, oh God damn it, there it is. I have to now. That's amazing.
D. Firth Griffith:So I've had the privilege and honor, I've read the first three chapters which you sent me, which I thought was wonderful For anybody listening. I don't know if this is an apt comparison, but this is what came to me immediately when I thought if I could make a comparison in this book to some other book out there that some people might know. And again, this is my best attempt, but also my fastest attempt. It's like a combination between like Rachel Gillig, who wrote like one dark window, or it's that also with this, um, ancient rage, of like john gwen, who wrote uh, uh, the malice series, or, uh, shadow of the gods, or does that make sense? Have you read any of these?
Angie Kelly:things you're gonna make me cry. Well, you can't go ahead and cry.
D. Firth Griffith:I don't mean to, but I think I think that's pretty good. It's, it's there's like.
Angie Kelly:There's a rage component there which I want to talk about and I don't.
D. Firth Griffith:And you can go ahead and cry. I don't mean to, but I think I think that's pretty good.
D. Firth Griffith:It's, it's there's like there's a rage component there which I want to talk about and I don't, and you can maybe help me with a better word. There there was, there was some feeling that uh was very sincere, that I will call rage for now, but at the same time there's romance, um, very similar like I said to Rachel Gillig. The writing I thought was pretty similar also, but why, like, let's just start at the top. So the book and your story, halja is that the main character's name?
Angie Kelly:Yeah, Halja.
D. Firth Griffith:Halja, I appreciate that.
Angie Kelly:That's all good. You never know with the J's and the Y's.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah.
Angie Kelly:Interchangeable interchangeable.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah well, especially with like that area of the world that you're writing about.
Angie Kelly:I mean, it's just, it makes no sense the way we pronounce our words no, I also did a very confusing thing where I combined um names from two different regions, which I did on purpose, but then in retrospect I was like people are gonna be confused, yeah there's some, there's some dhs in there, you know to find, yeah.
D. Firth Griffith:And then there's obvious you you know Norse or Scandinavian type Northern Isles.
Angie Kelly:Yeah.
D. Firth Griffith:That's. Where did that come from? That's, I guess, one of my questions coming from. So where did this story come from?
Angie Kelly:The rest of it came from my own brain and my childhood. Yeah, I loved. Thank you so much for your quick little review there. That was really sweet. I love that you said it had a lot of feeling and kind of captured that ancient rage because I think that is one of the very deep themes of the book is this very ancient, very feminine kind of primal rage and anger that just builds steadily in this character until the end and then it reshapes her entirely. She kind of goes through this, she steps through this kind of transformational fire as this rage consumes her and then comes out on the other side, a different person. But anyway, you asked where it came from.
Angie Kelly:I have always loved the myth of the Selkie. That is a story that is kind of circumpolar in the Northern hemisphere, which is one thing I love about it. It's common in Scotland and in Norway and in Iceland, but it's also a common tale all around the Arctic, in Alaska. It was an indigenous story. I don't know for certain about Russia, but I would assume it's a Siberian story as well. It's actually. I have it tattooed on my chest. That's so cool. It's my little metaphorical image of that story. That's my little metaphorical image of that story, and so when I started writing, I was out hiking, like I often am, and I kind of just had this one scene pop into mind, on this very stormy, wet coast, of this woman finding a seal skin and kind of getting pulled into this tailed selkie. And so that was how it started and I I wanted it to hold.
Angie Kelly:Another theme of the book is that this, our main character, and pretty much all of the characters in the story, especially the women, holds a lot of duality. Um, there's this kind of like two sides of them. There's their human side and there's their seal side. There's this like surface level person that they walk around as and talk to other people and live in society, and then there's this deeper, primal, more animalistic, natural side, um, which is also the myth of the selfie, that you have your external, external world, where you live as human and you walk around on land, and then you have your internal soul, home, where you live as a seal and you swim around in the depths of the ocean. Um, and I've always loved that metaphor, uh, especially for women. I think it's very, I mean it's fitting for everyone, but I think it captures the kind of especially for women. I think it's very I mean, it's fitting for everyone, but I think it captures the kind of dark depth of the feminine pretty well. So that was where that was where that started and that was the theme I wanted to carry through, and a lot of her, a lot of her early experiences in the book, kind of the setting of her family and her parents and all of her little turmoil right at the beginning there was.
Angie Kelly:I tried to just pull from my own childhood and from the complexity of family systems, um, and then the landscape itself. I really wanted to be a big, not character in the book, but I wanted it to be a big um driver of of the tension and the conflict and to just be in this place where, like, the climate is harsh and the storms are intense and it has an impact on everyone every day, because that's what they have to survive. And I think in places like that you need a lot of community and you need a lot of love and you need to feel very safe with the people that you're with because you all depend on each other. That's just you have to for survival. And so she was kind of an outsider.
Angie Kelly:She kind of had this like she didn't feel super safe with her family. She has things that set her apart and harsh and, you know, haunted by mythical monsters like my book is. Being alone is you're not going to last Like it's an extremely dangerous way to be. So she ends up kind of running off headlong into the wilderness into winter by herself, you know, trying to make it on her own in a world where we really shouldn't be, and I think that's true of humans in general. We need our societies, we need each other, we need our communities and to be supportive, and especially in places where you're still very connected to the land and you depend on the ecology around you and perhaps that land and weather is not so forgiving it just carries even more of an impact. So there's my ramble answer.
D. Firth Griffith:Okay, so I think this is chapter two, and I could be wrong. You can place us. There's a moment where someone in the story tells a story when the two families originally come together. I can't remember their names either, but it's when the two dads are gone at the market and they've been gone for a little bit and the two families the one family goes to the other one studying and there's a story told over a fire. That story I don't know if this is a question, you can address it as if there's a question in it. But have you ever read? So I guess here's a question have you ever read the Mabinogi, like the Welsh tales, the four branches? No, oh my God. That's amazing because like this, it's not a, it's identical.
Angie Kelly:No, it's not identical from like an author's no.
D. Firth Griffith:No, no, I don't mean that negatively, but like I was reading it, the story being told. It's like you are a studier, like a true student of Western European mythology, Like it reads like that, Like the story, like there's so many stories told in books and I always find that when I read in a book a character telling a story within that book it often bears the same language of the author. You did not do that. It was so cool. I felt like I was reading like actual mythology, Like I highlighted some things and I won't read it.
D. Firth Griffith:Maybe later we can talk about it. But yeah, it was beautiful, like just everything about it was like mythology was like reawoken in that moment, both like in the book. But then, as for me, who, like I, all I do is read mythology, like I read the Mamma Nagy like five times a year, kind of stuff, you know but I read it and I was just like this is this is really cool. So I guess, if there is a question, if I were to make up a question to get your mind going and hear your opinion on it. The way the book is written is entirely poetic but entirely readable. Rachel Gillick, to me, is a fine example of that. Her writing is beautiful but at the same time it's entirely approachable. But it still bears that heavily mythological tone to it, the phraseology, et cetera. I don't want to ask the same question where does that come from? But what's the inspiration of that? You said earlier you're a fan of mythology, like maybe what mythologies have you read or?
Angie Kelly:what draws you to mythology. There's a lot of places I'll follow you, um. I think the reason I managed to hopefully try it at least to get that uh, sort of storytelling mythology voice in there was because I really love um, women who run with the wolves by clarissa pinkle estes, and I just thought about her. She tells a super similar selkie story like almost too similar, if I'm being honest and I love her, but I love her rendition of the selkie story so much, and I was like I really want to make mine different, but I don't, because the way she tells it was exactly fitting for what I needed my characters to hear in that moment, um, and and to kind of set up this foreshadowing for later, um, so I guess I got it from her as a short answer to your question.
Angie Kelly:It's amazing, though and she captures that voice so well of that like yeah, kind of cause there is a different voice that you use when you talk about mythology, right, or at least that people, people write it in that tries to capture this different language and like a more ancient way, and I wanted that to be the setting. I wanted it to be a bunch of women sitting around the fire when the weather is shitty and you don't want to be outside and you've just had a really nice warm meal and we're just hanging out watching the kids wrestle and telling stories, like that was what people did. So I just tried to capture that, capture that voice, and um set her voice apart from other characters, which is something I try to do anyway. Like I think I'm sure every you know this is not like a novel thing that I'm special for, like every writer does this, but you want all of your characters to sound unique and to have their own voice and I just wanted to really give her that like storytelling elder kind of voice.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, Well, I enjoyed it. So I think other people at least I hope other people do- man, I do too.
Angie Kelly:Thank you Really hope so.
D. Firth Griffith:In that same vein like what's your process? I know writers both like love and detest this question. Um, but like what? What motivates you to write? Um, maybe what is some habits around writing that you found to be really successful for you in like, not necessarily in putting words on paper, like.
D. Firth Griffith:to me, that's just yeah, I don't want to say it's dull, but like I want to go a little bit deeper than that. Like what? What is that spirit that actually like animates the typing that turns the story into something more than just, you know, black things on white white pages.
Angie Kelly:Yeah, uh, it's man, it's chaos. I just, I feel like people are like oh, I have a routine and I get up in the morning and I do my morning routine and then I think about my stuff and I map it all out and I'm like, I don't know, I just it's just nuts. I just freak out and go with whatever pops into my mind.
D. Firth Griffith:um, well, it works and I think that's fine.
Angie Kelly:yeah, like I, I hike a lot, I walk a lot. That's my, that's my biggest not physically writing writing tip is that, like I walk, I go to the gym a lot and I go on little hikes with my dog, like pretty much every day. Most most days a week, you and I get out and hike by ourselves and I, I love hiking in the same places over and over again. Um, I think because I have a lot of anxiety and a lot of insecurity and going to the same places really helps me actually get out of my head and calm my mind and just be present. Um, and I also love how you get to know a place, like from a ecologist or biologist standpoint. I love seeing the same individual birds all the time. I love seeing the same coyotes and knowing where they're going to be at what time of day, and it just it makes me feel very connected to the land.
Angie Kelly:So that's my favorite non-writing writing process is just getting outside and making quiet space in my head to just listen. And every time I get a little freaked out and I'm like, oh, I don't have enough story or I don't know what's going to happen next, or I haven't, like, mapped it all out perfectly. Just don't worry about it, just don't freak out, don't think that it's like your story is suddenly going to fall apart and not have an ending or fail or whatever, like it'll come to your own heart and your own mind and whatever you know, whatever wisdom comes to you from, from the outside and from nature, and just let it let it flow and don't try to contain it or structure it or put labels on it or think it should go any other way than the way that it is going. I think that's like my biggest thing is just not try to force it.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, there's so many books I feel like are in this category that you write in that present the land like in a similar way as you do, like a very hard place, like it's. It's, you know, the storms that you write about, like they, they move rocks and I mean like these are big, big deals in the story and the landscape is obviously cold and there's some dark aspects to it and such. And I wonder how you view these things. And again, I only read the three chapters and so maybe there's just a little bit of naivety here and so straighten this out.
D. Firth Griffith:But the land doesn't feel like an evil, negative force. The land doesn't feel like an evil, negative force. It rather feels like there's a lack of community in that ancient rage and that the community, or like maybe the family, or welcoming or kindness or however you want to phrase that would have been the solve to a very arduous landscape, as opposed to the landscape being an evil force, in inevitable in its own way, that is to say, it's evil is inevitable. How do you think about that? Did you intentionally try to do that, or you know?
Angie Kelly:what else is going on. Wow, you nailed it, thank you. Yeah, I think so. Yes, I think you absolutely nailed it. It's not.
Angie Kelly:I never wanted, like the natural forces or nature, to feel dark or evil or anything other than indifferent, like they're just what they are. That is just the way of the world and it's the natural order and it's. It's neither good nor bad, it just is, um. And then you know, later in the book, I think in the last chapter, you read there's, there's this monster, and those come up later as well that are kind of separate from the natural world and they are bad and dark and that's. You know, they're scary and that's the kind of horror element. But yeah, I think that really goes back to my childhood and where I grew up.
Angie Kelly:Um, I grew up in a small, remote, uh, fishing community in Alaska, um, in the Prince William sound and the weather. There is one of my favorite things about it it's it's harsh and it's big and we get these huge storms that brew in the gulf of alaska and then that's where they make landfall. So, especially in the winter, it's lots of snow and rain, tons of like really high winds. Um, like, our roof got ripped off our house once when I was a kid, because, wow, yeah, it's like hurricane force winds like over 100 miles per hour all the time. They're just not called hurricanes because they're in the Pacific and that breeds a really tight community because it has to Like there's no road leading to my community so you can't drive out, it's only planes or boats that you can travel with, so it's pretty isolated. And so I think we all had this like very innate interdependence that everyone kind of understood, especially like kind of between my friends as we got older. People just know that you have to step up for one another or you won't make it Like if we get really heavy snowfalls it doesn't happen as much anymore because, uh, the climate is changing and we don't get as much snow there now. Um, but when I was in high school, we had this crazy record year of snowfall and people's boats were sinking in the Harbor because they couldn't shovel them off fast enough, and so there would be crews of friends that would show up with a shovel because somebody's boat was going down and you know, you'd have 10 guys on one boat just shoveling as hard as they could and then onto the next boat just to keep these boats from sinking, um.
Angie Kelly:So it's stuff like that where it's like you see someone that needs help, or you see something happening and you do something about it, or like you have a little extra, you give some to your friend. Like the subsistence lifestyle there is, um, really a big part of it. Like, most people harvest one moose for their family every year in some way or another. Every year in some way or another, excuse me. And if you don't get a moose that year, you know you go over and you help your buddy butcher his, and then he gives you some and you fill your freezer. That way it's. It's just a lot of like sharing is caring. I guess you got you just have to.
Angie Kelly:So I think for this character I wanted to both capture that in the landscape and in the people around her, in the fact that, like she and her mother went over to their friend's farm to just help them do their winter preparations because they needed help and they had work to do, and that was just that's just what you do.
Angie Kelly:You just you go, help out, um.
Angie Kelly:And then I also wanted to capture the feeling of her being separate, from that of not having the friends and the community, that she needed to survive there and not having the support that she needed when she needed it as a young woman because of her lineage and because of her difficulty with her father and her parents and these things that really set her apart, things that really set her apart. So she's living in this place where she understands these values very inherently. She knows that to survive and to be a good, valuable member of her community she needs these relationships. But she's been separated from them, kind of against her own will, for her whole life. And then you know the rest of the book she goes off and she figures it out herself, she finds other places to go, she learns these other skills, she finds another community and a found family and makes her own way. But yeah, I wanted it to start from those kind of two opposing forces, I suppose, of being able to see what she needed and not being able to actually have it.
D. Firth Griffith:I think that's a lot of people today, though, yeah, you know like there's a lot of people in our communities that they really want to like co-farm and you know collaborate and you know co-live and and I believe in all of these things, but I always my wife and I we always talk about. We find ourselves often talking about this how, when you don't actually depend upon each other, like it's just a feeling, yeah.
D. Firth Griffith:Like the communities break down because when they actually need something like Walmart is still there, target is still there, amazon is still there, and then when?
Angie Kelly:it becomes inconvenient to go do it for someone else, or you don't have the time, you don't.
D. Firth Griffith:Exactly so. There's a lack of need that's so paralyzing, like we have this drive but we don't actually need to fulfill that drive. Yes, at least we we lie to ourselves, thinking that we don't actually have to fulfill that drive.
Angie Kelly:Right or yeah, that end, we don't have the time. Like maybe we do know that our friend needs help or we'd like to be there, but like man, we've got 50 hours to work this week and a deadline to hit, and like, sorry, I'm at work, yeah, and that takes a lot out of communities, I think.
D. Firth Griffith:There's oil to mine, yes, yes, and we can talk about it in any way that you you find comfortable or that you find a desire to put words to. You reached out to a lot of agents. You got a lot of rejections. Um, you had to lean into that, if you will, and now you're walking down and it's seemingly happily walking down another path. Where's the peace in the path that you found yourself in and maybe are now happily walking in because it seems like you have peace about it?
Angie Kelly:and maybe are now happily walking in because it seems like you have peace about it. Yeah, I get what you mean. I think that the idea of traditional publishing feels a little more like you finally made it. You know, because you have this outside approval and you have these industry professionals that are literally telling you you're good enough, like you've made it, this is good enough for our attention and for us to print and we're going to send it around the world. You know, here's the big gold star, which is great, and if you achieve that, like hell, yeah, good for you. That's like that is slim chances and that's pretty impressive.
Angie Kelly:Um, but as I was applying to all of these agents, I think that was what I was realizing is um, I know people send in way more than 90 applications like that's. You know, there are famous authors out there have been rejected like 200 times, right? Um, it's just part of the game. And uh, first it was really hard getting rejected that much and then, as they kept coming in, I was like, oh, this is just how it is, like it's just another industry, like it's, it's a. These publishers, all these agents, have to be able to sell something to the publishers that the publishers think will sell and they are beholden to this capitalist machine that they're laboring under and that's just the game. And uh, I actually had this one agent actually respond to me for real, which was cool, cause usually they're just like no thanks, and you're like cool, I'll go fuck myself. But he responded and he was like. He was like. He was like you know, I can see the imagination and intelligence in this book and your writing is good. And he was like I am just I'm gonna say no and I'm gonna tell you that even my favorite writer that I have signed right now, he wrote four books that were all rejected by me and every other agent he spoke to until I finally took him on and he was like he's my best writer and it took him that many books and that long to get in and I think that kind of clicked something for me.
Angie Kelly:I was like, oh, I don't want to wait for anyone else's approval. I don't want to wait for some agent in the UK to finally decide that I've worn him down enough and he's going to take my fourth book and I don't have to like there's another way for this is that sales and marketing teams in um publishing houses have more control and more say than ever before and like they're the people that really need to be impressed right now. Um, so if they don't think it's going to sell for whatever reason, if it's not like commercial fiction enough, as they say, they just won't take it, even if it's good. And I think that kind of set me free because I was like, oh, I don't, I don't need that, like I I can trust that this is good and I can do it anyway and see where it goes.
Angie Kelly:And most days I honestly still struggle with that because I'm like I don't trust that this is good enough, but we're going to find out. Um, and I think that's just the risk I have to take. But that's the. That's the other side. That self-publishing offers is that if you want to just be in control and do it yourself and decide that you're going to just do what it takes to make it happen, you can just do that and you know we'll see how far it goes.
D. Firth Griffith:But that's that's the plan. So I think for me it was like it felt good because it was kind of empowering. I've been I've been through like the quarrying and agenting process many times and yeah, I was going to ask about yours.
D. Firth Griffith:I have the same opinion that you do Kudos to those who could get it.
D. Firth Griffith:But I was talking to one agent, also in the UK, who was like my dream agent for the book that I was writing.
D. Firth Griffith:Just, it was exactly like every other similar work this this gentleman had um represented and uh, and he did he re.
D. Firth Griffith:He responded back you know one of the only ones, and it was one of those big days where you got that email where, like you saw, you felt seen, which is like to some degree after getting like you, like, like I feel, like it was hundreds of rejections, like being seen was really wonderful, like, like I feel, like it was hundreds of rejections, like being seen was really wonderful. And he said I get um 25 queries a day and I select about 15 to 20 books a year. And so I I did the math and and and that's, that's insane, yeah, like the number of queries he receives for for books and the number of books he actually accepts, let alone the percentage of that that he actually then proposes to publishing houses that don't die in the agenting process. I mean, it is so select. And he said exactly what you were told. It's not necessarily about the book, as much as it is the potential readership that that book may have.
Angie Kelly:Yeah.
D. Firth Griffith:Right, and so, like a good friend of mine, she's probably published 30 books and I guess I should say more of a mentor, but a dear friend as well and she made the comment the other day. She said, daniel, cause I've also self-published all of all of our stuff, my stuff and um. And she said, daniel, if I was a new author today, I don't think I could be published. Wow, like the only reason that I could publish today, like she wrote a book a couple of years ago, was because I have 29 other books and a couple of serious prizes and a Booker finalist prize. I mean, it's just like and she talked a lot about social media and online.
D. Firth Griffith:You know stuff about how, when she started writing, like writing, like, yeah, marketing and publishing and selling like it's still like writing has for a very long time been in the capitalistic ballpark. I mean, it's just, it's a game. In capitalism, money matters, books have to sell, etc. But the marketing, the sales and the pr started to dominate right when social media and personal branding and websites and everybody has one. You know like, as soon as that started to take over as ferociously as it has, that like the story used to matter exponentially more than the story matters today. Yep, um, and, and there's a lot of interesting thoughts there, but I guess what I'm you know what about? Like there, like there's peace in finding, like you know what, no, like this is good enough. I, I'm going to move forward.
D. Firth Griffith:And then there's a lot of doubt, and like I mean just last night, I had a huge moment of doubt with my wife, and we were just staying up late yelling with each other. I don't know how else to say that. My wife is like the editor of all of my books and anyways.
Angie Kelly:Oh, that's so cool.
D. Firth Griffith:Wow, and so we kind of just yell at each other, like in a good way. That's how books are written in our house A lot of emotion and that's great.
D. Firth Griffith:But like, where do you find the confidence? Cause, like I woke up this morning and I sat down, you know, in a little bit of my habit, and I started writing and like I feel really happy with what I wrote, you know, and that was a moment of confidence. Like I find that I get confidence in like the consistency, in the like the slow wins, and then I get really angry when they're not every moment of the day, and then I get all upset because nobody else thinks I'm a writer, but myself that's the way I feel, because I don't have an agent and other things. But how do you, how do you get that confidence? Or do you have that confidence?
Angie Kelly:Yeah, Cause you have no outside validation Um.
D. Firth Griffith:I feel that I don't have that confidence. I don't think anyone does. I think that it's. I honestly think that it is made up.
Angie Kelly:I think that if you were a good writer and you are pushing, yourself and you are being honest with yourself and you are really trying to like be a fucking artist. It feels like shit most of the time and I think it should. I think you should push it and doubt it and question it and be like what am I doing? And it should feel a little bit insane because it kind of is Um, it's crazy to just be like I'm going to make up a story. Here's my little day dream. I hope you like it. Pay me money Like that's nuts. Um, so I.
Angie Kelly:It sucks that it feels that way, but I think that that's right. Um, but I know what you mean of like you were, you were writing and you were like I'm really happy with this, what I've done today, the scene that I'm on, that is when I feel it is when I'm actually putting the words down and I'm with my characters and I see the scene and I thought of something cool and it's just flowing. Like it is the best feeling in the world when it is just your own and no one else has seen it and you haven't even read it twice. You're just like this is the first draft, I'm just going to rip it, you know like that's the best.
Angie Kelly:Um, I think that's the only way I can actually show it to other people or actually do it at all. Um is because when I'm in that moment and I'm writing and I'm flowing and it feels so good, I just pretend that no one else will ever see it. I just tell myself no one will see it, even when I publish something. Um, cause I write on sub stack too. Every time I hit the post button, I just, I just take a minute and I'm like the only person that's going to read this is my parents and my fiance.
D. Firth Griffith:Well, me though me and me to the list, cause that's how I found you, that's how we got connected so nice. Yeah.
Angie Kelly:I appreciate it. But that's what I have to do, is just be like nobody cares, nobody's going to read it, no one's going to think about me, no one can see me. And then you know, and then you do it, um yeah, and I I don't know if, like, maybe that confidence comes later. I guess you can tell me that because you've published. Yeah, it doesn't.
D. Firth Griffith:But I agree with you in the sense that I don't like it. It seems entirely fictional, not in a novelistic sort of way, but like entirely made up, in the sense that when I think about stories and I wonder let me know your opinions on this, this is just my thought, it's completely unbaked. But if our ancestors told stories over the winter season, in the dark, lit by fire, in the night, that is to say the early setting of the sun, it was like secretive it was, it was, clothed it was. You're not doing this to like a large audience with all of the lights on. The lights are off, you know, but all the modern publishing world wants us to do is like turn all of the lights on, like I need you to be a social media reel creator.
D. Firth Griffith:Exactly, I need to be on TikTok, I need to be creating all of these reels with the lights full blow. But I always feel I said this many times in the past but, like when I write, I feel utterly naked. And as long as it's the wintertime and as long as all the lights are off and it's just a fly fire lapping, it's, you know, general, you know very diluted light against the walls and all we see is like shadowed faces. I could be naked. I'm perfectly fine with that.
D. Firth Griffith:But then you go to the publishing side and all of a sudden all of the lights get turned on and and then it just, it scares the pants off of me, Like I don't self publish cause I'm a renegade. I just, I just don't want the lights to turn on. What do you think?
Angie Kelly:Oh my God, I feel that yeah, yes, I agree, and it, um, it's such a point of tension with me, I think, all the time, especially now that I'm approaching my first book release and I have to, as you say, turn the lights on. I have to show people. Like even just today, before we sat down, my fiance was like you should screen record this, like you should, you know, like save some snippets and put it on your Instagram. And I was like you are right.
Angie Kelly:I'm not going to do that need I don't want to, oh, yeah, and I might, like it's, you know we should do these things, um, but yeah, it's scary, like I, and I feel like that's the way that people um, like expect you to make it with writing now, like that's, that's what the agents are doing, right, they're?
Angie Kelly:They're sitting there waiting to see who hits a million followers on tiktok, yeah, and who will basically sell their book themselves and then you put out you know, you self-publish your series, and then your series blows up and then you get an agent and a deal and like that's fine and cool, but it's a different game than it was, like you said, and uh, it's it feels very unnatural, I think, even though, like, logically, I know that if I want to keep doing this, I have to sell books and make enough money to write the next book. I have to have a home to live in and, you know, be able to pay my bills. So I get that I have to do it. But uh, there is something very, um, unnatural or like counter intuitive about that side of it. Yeah, have you felt that way like the whole time with your self-publishing too?
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, I think you've provided a fine language for this and maybe the extension is is unnecessary or inappropriate. You can clear me up. But like you go to college because you love birds and owls and obviously write an entire book on like seals to some degree, you know like you love these things and then you go to work in big oil, like that's the opportunity, you know. I feel the same thing is true for writing. Like you have these brilliant stories, you have this whole new vision for the future of the world by looking backwards and you're dreamwalking in two ways. And then it's like but I need you to go sell yourself now, right? So you have this like intrinsic vision for the world. That is to say, you want to go be with the birds study the birds, let's say and yet all you're doing is studying their collapse in oil fields.
D. Firth Griffith:In the same sense, you just want to write these stories that lift people up, but all you have to do now is sell your soul and meta's programs online, tiktok. And it feels like to me that there's an inevitable tension point, and when I say tension point, really there's like a vanishing point in the canvas that we've been giving. We're like it's inevitable that we're leading in a particular direction which is, at some point in time, people like you and I would love to be included. So maybe people like us like we have to burst out, Like there's a new ether we have to explore, which is like the love of animals without destroying them. Right, it is to be a good storyteller without turning the lights on.
Angie Kelly:Selling out, yeah, selling out.
D. Firth Griffith:And the interesting thing about your story, both the story of this podcast but also the story that you provided in your book, is to me I'm convinced that there is a lacking community in the. I give a damn about what I'm actually writing. I don't necessarily care if it sells, I need it to sell. But the story I'm telling has no basis in its like, essence and like its own validity based upon the number of copies it sells. And if there was a community there to actually like, hold that and treat that and love it as that family, like, maybe it could work. Um, which is like kind of the role of publishing, which also brings me to my knees and a little bit of tears. Like the idea of publishing was to help authors get their work out to some degree, but it's been, you know, co-opted and compromised, I mean not in the last decade, in the last 200 years maybe, maybe a lot in the last decade too.
Angie Kelly:But it's like an exponential speed on that. I think it's just getting like quickly so much worse. I try to stay positive about it because, on the one hand, I think it's really cool that, like, while the publishing industry is getting so not gatekeepy, maybe that's the right word it's closing off, it's getting extremely hard to get into, while that gets worse and worse. It's really nice that we have a tool to connect to other people over and to be able to do our own marketing and, like you know, you and I wouldn't have found each other without it, so that's really nice. There's plenty of supportive people I've talked to on Instagram. It's cool that we can kind of take control of that in our own way. At the same time, I really wish we didn't have to, and all the time I'm like, like when the US had that really short ban on TikTok for just that day, I was like what if we do this?
D. Firth Griffith:What if?
Angie Kelly:everybody bans social media and it just dies and we all get our fucking lives back and we can just write and just sell books to each other and talk on the phone and have actual community again, instead like everyone's screaming about themselves into the void. But and I think you're right you said that we were kind of approaching this, uh, tipping point. I suppose that we're it does feel that way, that like something has to give soon. Um, and I think people are getting sick of social media. Like every day, people are like oh, I deleted my Instagram. Like send me your stuff somewhere else if you want me to read it. I'm like awesome, yes, so I'm hopeful that things like books are going to keep. I think they're coming back in popularity to a degree and I think they're going to keep doing that. I think people are going to be seeking more like long form projects and long form entertainment and like being down with digging into a book rather than just like scrolling reels all the time.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, Um, especially when self-published authors that are entirely free to be creative with the thing, especially as we can create, like I feel like I get really excited about, like the new avenues for getting books to people. Like, for instance, recently I've become a huge addict. I like to read a lot, but people are calling it interactive reading, where you listen to the audiobook while you read the book.
Angie Kelly:Oh, I've heard that I haven't tried.
D. Firth Griffith:And only recently have I started to do this and it's life-changing. It is so cool.
Angie Kelly:You like it.
D. Firth Griffith:Oh my gosh, oh it's so cool. Oh it's so cool, oh it's so, it's so cool. You can't do it with every book but, like, a lot of fantasy is really cool, because when I read fantasy I get really tied up in like the different names and how to pronounce them and everything else.
D. Firth Griffith:And when you're listening to it, all of that goes away so you can enter the story a little bit more fully, which I really appreciate. Really be creative about how we actually deliver these stories, in which medium, to these people, our readers, our friends, whoever they are. I love that as a concept. I did remember real quick what I was saying about Bookstagram. I was saying that I was doing a lot of research and I found a lot of self-published authors who are really successful on Instagram, and I don't mean this uniformly. I can give you some examples that stand against this pattern, but generally speaking, I found that there is a parallel relationship to the number of reels and followers I should say an inverse relationship to the number of reels and followers and the substance of their book. Like I believe every author that writes is is deservative to be read, like anytime you spend the time to meet the muse court, the muse write, the muse put it out like that is worthy.
D. Firth Griffith:My point is it is an interesting trajectory that, in order to get away from marketable only producing marketable books in the traditional publishing ground like that's what they care for a marketable book Some self-published authors have become self-published and then have focused on writing marketable books because this is the direction they sell.
D. Firth Griffith:Does that make sense? And so, like there's a lot of slippery slopes, like traditional publishing isn't great, it's also not evil. Self-publishing isn't great, it's also not evil. Like individual choice still matters, which is like everything you've been talking about, though, about biology and oil fields, all the way to the transition and why you wrote the story, and the impetus and the ideas and mythology behind the story. Like that is what matters and, in my opinion, like not necessarily only in storytelling, but like to like the satisfaction of, like the human soul, like who you are right, like taking back that ownership of your, of your body, of your mind, of your heart, of all of these things is so entirely important, and I think stories can do that, but stories trying to do something more than a story should often fail to also do that.
Angie Kelly:Yeah, absolutely. It's like, um, when I was querying agents, you know you come across their wishlists and all of the like genres that they post. What the hell is commercial fiction? Cause that's what you're talking about. Right, Like these authors, try to do this and I get it.
Angie Kelly:Like you got to sell books, man. Like you want to do that, you want to write, you have to sell them. So it all becomes very commercialized and and you can see it, like you said, on their Instagrams they have a ton of followers, but they post the same reel over and over and it's AI art which for one.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, get it off. Don't even get me started.
Angie Kelly:And then it's just like it's either quotes from their book, which is cool I should do that too or it's tropes. They list out the tropes of their book and I'm like God I hate that I'm so sorry. Damn it. I detest that.
D. Firth Griffith:I will never read a book because I understand its trope, like I want to read a book because of all of the reason we've talked about, like the characters, the meaning, what is trying to go through, the mythology that you're reawakening in a new sense, whatever it, is you know, this is a slow burn fantasy, oh god enemies to lovers.
Angie Kelly:Yes, yes, I want it to not be yes exactly, exactly, if it happens to be cool, but like, and then you get that you can feel when they're writing to, that you can feel when their character is empty and they've set up a conflict to force it to be enemies to lovers, yeah, and then you can look at those characters and be like there's no way that they should be enemies or there's no way that they should fall in love or like. Neither of these things make any sense or it's not chosen this trope.
Angie Kelly:Yes, yeah, you've chosen this trope and that's what you're gonna do and it's like they write to to tick these boxes. But the thing is is I guess it works because they have all of these readers that I suppose, read to tick these boxes and want to know those tropes. Maybe we're wrong, maybe we're the ones that don't know.
D. Firth Griffith:I was about to say I'm still jealous. I'll say what I say, but I'm still jealous of them.
Angie Kelly:Maybe we're the ones that don't know how to sell books, but whatever.
D. Firth Griffith:It is interesting. One of my favorite authors um. Have you ever read any? Ursula Le Guin? Ursula K Le Guin.
Angie Kelly:Yeah, only a little. Um, I don't know why I haven't read more. I really want to read the earth sea series, but I've read um left hand of darkness.
D. Firth Griffith:Okay, um. Another short book that I think is the best that she's ever written is um. The word for world is forest oh it's unbelievable. I mean it's, it's, it's. I've read it twice in the last month.
D. Firth Griffith:I don't know how else to say that like it's how do you do read a lot well, it is an unbelievable book, but even still so, like ursula lequin, like I read a lot, right, um, and she's a new author to me, like only recently, in the last year or two, I've really stumbled upon her, you know, really dove into a lot of her works and all of them are published in the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s, at the latest of reading Ursula Le Guin and at the same time, like there is a reinvigoration of readers reading Ursula Le Guin and so to some degree, there's there's this reality in publishing or writing or telling stories where, like you could publish your source of storms, you know book, and it doesn't really do much, and then, 20 years from now, people are like whoa, and so the traditional publisher relationship of, like, the advance is going to get you that 20 year, I mean like it's not going to get you all the way to the 20 years financially, but there's, there's, there's catches there, like there's a reason that the systems exist as it exists.
D. Firth Griffith:But in the self-publishing it feels to some degree at least I've always felt this way that it's like if the book is that or uh, because it doesn't come back, it's fleeting.
Angie Kelly:I suppose is the word I want. Yeah, they say, don't they say that that like your first month is your best shot and then that's it, like it's downhill after that besides me, which is not always true we have this unbelievable relationship.
D. Firth Griffith:Now, you know like yeah, but that's the goal, right like that's what a writer really wants to be like.
Angie Kelly:You want to be timeless, you want to to future generations, you want to be able to like cross the bounds of time with your piece and have like write something that is human, that's still going to apply to other generations and other times.
Angie Kelly:Right, I shouldn't talk about this because it's Neil Gaiman and he's in a bunch of trouble right now and I that is like heartbreaking to me, side tangent, I think I cried when I heard that. But anyway, as some like just discovering an old author for the first time, I recently started reading Neil Gaiman in the last like a couple of years, and for some reason had never read him before and I just read american gods and I was like where was I? This is incredible, like just really fantastic fantasy and writing and, um, and it sucks that he is a. You know, everything that's going on with him is really unfortunate and heartbreaking to me, but that's aside, it's his. You know this piece that's going on with him is really unfortunate and heartbreaking to me, but that's aside, it's his. You know this piece that he wrote is still timeless and like he wrote that, um, I think it came out in 2001 and it's still an incredible book. So that's I mean that's more of the goal.
D. Firth Griffith:Well, how? How can um talk about the book in your release? Um, if people are interested, they've listened this far. How? How can they find it? How can um talk about the book and your release? Um, if people are interested they've listened this far how can they find it? How can they support you? What is the book title? When is the next one coming out?
Angie Kelly:Great question. Um, the book title is the source of storms. Uh, it will be. Hopefully it'll be out on February 22nd. Hopefully I'll be out on February 22nd. I'm hoping to be able to open a pre-order for the ebook only on February 15th. The week before. It'll only be on Amazon for now.
Angie Kelly:I you know how we all feel about Amazon. I've been talking about like anti-capitalist stuff this whole time, so I shouldn't not really supporting that. But as indie authors, that's what we got to do. So it'll be on there and then I'm going to try to get it into other other places and other bookstores that people can order from once I get it rolling. And then, yeah, you can find me on Substack too. I, my Substack is called the Selkie. It's also my newsletter, so if you want to like stay up to date with my publishing stuff, it'll all be on there.
Angie Kelly:What else about my book? Oh, it's the first in a series of three, so I'm actually almost halfway through writing book two. Congrats, thank you. I got really stressed about this one coming out and releasing and I've just been like obsessing over it and freaking out and I keep going back and like tweaking things, which is very dangerous, and I have to stop doing so. I was like I'm just gonna really dive into book two to get my mind off it. Um, so yeah, book two should hopefully be out and not too long, cause it's kind of cruising along now. But um, yeah, it's amazing, I also have a website, uh, that we can put somewhere.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, I'll put all this in the show notes. It says all the same stuff Okay. Awesome. Thank you All of it.
Angie Kelly:It's all the same.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, I had, I had encouraged I. I really enjoyed it, and I'm not just saying that, I really did. I sat down a little bit last night and then this morning and read the three chapters that you sent, and I mean, I read it in one sitting.
Angie Kelly:It was wonderful. Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
D. Firth Griffith:I haven't gotten much like outside feedback yet, so I really appreciate it.
Angie Kelly:Well, there you go, there you go. Yeah, I'll send you the rest of it.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, beautiful. Well, thank you, angie, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for your time at uh when, when the book comes out and we were preparing for the next book. I think we'll just do this again and we'll talk so much more about all these things.
Angie Kelly:That would be so fantastic.
D. Firth Griffith:Then we can get more into like um indie publishing too, cause I'll actually have gone through a round of it and we can like compare scars or something gone through a round of it and yeah, you'll, we can like compare scars or something Just length and depth of scars, you know just the number is going to be, you know, equal for everyone, but just how deep was it? Yeah, we'll just cry with each other. No, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's wonderful, and and um, also, I think, the bane of my existence. So, um, yeah, well, thank you again.
Angie Kelly:Thank you so much. This has been so lovely. This is my first ever podcast.
D. Firth Griffith:Nobody would know, nobody would know.
Angie Kelly:We'll see. Thank you, I feel really, yeah, really honored to get to do this with you. This is great.