The Person Behind The Pen: DM Fike

If you enjoy fantasy stories, check out DM Fike’s novels. 

“There was no other family like mine growing up among the farms in southern Idaho,” DM Fike says at the beginning of the interview when I asked her to tell me about herself and she quickly explains why. Her mother’s side of the family is Japanese, but growing up, she never learned anything cultural growing up and her dad’s side of the family helped make Idaho potatoes famous.

She only became interested in her heritage in college when she took Japanese language classes. She was in love with it so much that after she graduated, she lived in Japan for two years and taught English as an assistant at four high schools.

Perhaps this is why she loves characters who straddle cultural lines.

“The protagonist in my Magic of Nasci series is half Japanese like me for this reason,” she says. “She’s a rookie nature wizard learning elemental magic to protect Oregon forests from cryptid monsters.  Her goal is to find her place in a secret society that doesn’t understand her personality or her unique lightning abilities.”

DM sat down with me and answered these questions as part of her author interview. Check them out and get to know her better, then check out the links below to follow her on social media or get her books!

Are you a full-time author? If so, what did you do before you became a full-time author? If not, what do you do for a living in addition to writing?

I’ve spent most of my career in the video game industry.  I started out in marketing and project management until I became a producer at Disney Interactive for the reboot of a classic game called The Incredible Machine.  I switched from being a producer to a writer a few years ago.  My biggest writing credit is for a mobile game called Battle Strike Force, starring Sylvester Stallone.  I even got to meet Sly when he read the dialogue lines I wrote.  Talk about a career-high!

Are you a pantser, plotter, or plantser? Have you changed over time or have you always been that? And how does it work for you?
I used to be a pantser, but nowadays I’m a plotter.  I always have at least a rough outline before I write any story.  I don’t have everything fleshed out, but I have to know my climatic ending and a few plot progressions I want to foreshadow before I ever start putting fingers to the keyboard.

What does an average day look like for you?
Like a lot of people nowadays, our household had a shift with the COVID-19 pandemic.  Because my husband has a full-time job and our school district is remote learning only, my mornings are mostly full of school work with my kids.  We usually finish things up in the morning, though, so I get in a few hours of writing in the afternoon and then a few more in the evenings after they go to bed.

Every author has their own unique method when it comes to writing. What is your routine when you sit down to write?
I don’t have a routine, per se, but when I get stuck, I often put on a pair of headphones and go somewhere quiet to just think for a while.  It really helps me get past writer’s block when I can’t figure out how to get from Point A to Point B.

What in your life helped to create your stylized vision for your character/world and how have things in your current life helped to further that stylized world/character?
My books are mostly set in rural Oregon, the state I live now.  Growing up in the semi-arid deserts of Idaho, I always wanted to be out in the woods somewhere.  Since I moved here fifteen years ago, I’ve spent a ton of time at the Oregon coast or among the inland trees hiking.  I can easily imagine nature wizards roaming the untouched wilds, protecting us from nasty mythical monsters.

What would you say is the hardest part of the writing process for you, and how do you yourself, overcome it when creating a novel?
The hardest part of writing is meeting reader expectations.  I can write all day for myself, but creating something that others want to read is always a challenge.  You always hope your interests and readers’ align, but it doesn’t always work out that way.  And the only way you can really know for sure is by putting your novels out there for criticism.

Why do you write?
Because I want to do it.  I’m at a point in my life that I can make money doing other things.  Project management is fun in its own right, but my dream job since childhood has always been to be a writer.  It’s been fun writing first for video games and now tackling novels.  I’ve learned much more than I ever thought possible about story-crafting and how to keep people entertained via different formats.

What advice would you give writers struggling with their own vision and worlds, characters and subjects on how to best go forth with their writing, instead of allowing the negativity of their own minds to keep them from doing something?
It’s always helped me to find one or two other people who “get” what I’m creating.  You don’t need an entire fanbase (although it’s nice!), but I gave up writing novels in the past because I had surrounded myself with people who didn’t believe my books had any value.  Find someone who loves your writing, your characters, and your worlds so you can always move forward.  It’s preferable that they can offer you constructive criticism because they are more likely to give it to you in a way you can digest.

Have you ever pushed yourself to the point of burnout and how did you recover from it?
I’ve never burned out specifically with writing, but I have with other aspects of my career.  A break usually helps, if you can swing it.  Also carving out time for yourself at least every week (if not every day) goes a long way to ensure you’re working to live and not living to work.

What tip would give to a creative writing class?
Don’t listen to the academics who tell you that the only “real” stories are the literary ones!  I was told time and again at my university that “genre” stories are garbage.  Forget all that.  I love reading literary fiction now and again, but my favorite books are fantasy and romance.  Once I stopped being ashamed of that, I became a happier person in general.

What genres do you enjoy reading? Who is your favorite author(s) in those genres?
On the fantasy side of things, I absolutely love the action/romance blend of Ilona Andrews. Jim Butcher crafts fantastic plots with characters that constantly grow in his Dresden series. You can’t beat sheer world-building with J.R.R. Tolkien. And my favorite fantasy book of all time is Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle.

On the romance side, besides my paranormal favorites, I’m a sucker for 90s Julie Garwood and Jayne Anne Krentz.  Although technically a mystery series, I absolutely love the “will-they-won’t-they” of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series.  Jane Austen is always brilliant, and my favorite books growing up were the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery.

Now for some fun questions.

What is your favorite cocktail?
I’m only a social drinker, but I’ll have some fruity cocktail now and again.  The less it tastes like the alcohol underneath, the better.

What is a food you’ve never tried, but want to?
There is a very small part of me that is interested in trying fugu, Japanese blowfish, but if the chef doesn’t prepare it right, the fish’s poison will kill you.  I’m too chicken (ha! Food pun) to ever try it.

If you could sit down and visit with any person, past or present, who would it be and why?
This is a really tough question because I wouldn’t want to be disillusioned about how a famous person’s private persona is different from their public one.  For that reason, I might choose physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson because he seems his genuine self even to the point of cringe-worthiness.  I’d love to hear him talk about almost anything because he’s so passionate and he can boil it down to a rudimentary level for me.

If you could sit down and visit with any AUTHOR, past or present, who would it be and why?
Chris Claremont.  He’s a comic book writer who defined the X-Men in the 80s, some of my favorite narrative storylines.  He also wrote the novel sequel to the movie Willow.  His creative mind blows me away.

What would be your perfect vacation?
I visited the Isle of Skye in Scotland on my honeymoon.  That place is pure magic.  Driving around Castle Dunvegan, you know why superstition and fairy tales are so rich there.  I’d love to go back to rural northern Scotland again with more time.

If you could pick ONE supernatural/paranormal creature that could be real, what would it be and why?
This is pretty dangerous because who knows what kind of havoc they could unleash on us poor unsuspecting unmagical people?  Maybe a mermaid because then we’d hopefully be forced to treat our oceans a little better.

Marvel or DC?
1,000% percent Make Mine Marvel!  My favorite character of all time is Nightcrawler of the X-Men.  My desperate wish as a teenager was to be accepted into Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

Star Wars or Star Trek?
Tough choice, but probably Star Trek.  I love the Next Generation crew.  Who wouldn’t want to serve under Captain Jean-Luc Picard?

Connect with DM Fike

Website: https://dmfike.com/

Amazon Author Profile: https://www.amazon.com/DM-Fike/e/B0876124R3

Newsletter Sign Up Link: https://dmfike.com/subscribe/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DMFikeAuthor

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/dm-fike

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20330126.DM_Fike

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