Q&A with Author, Rachael Ikins
Rachael Ikins – Author Bio
Rachael Ikins is a 2016/18 Pushcart, 2013/18 CNY Book Award nominee, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, & 2019 Vinnie Ream & Faulkner poetry finalist. 2021 Best of the Net nominee, 2023 2nd place winner Northwind Writing Competition. A Syracuse University graduate. Author/illustrator of nine books in multiple genres. Her writing and artwork have appeared in journals world wide from India, UK, Japan, Canada and US. She is associate editor for Clare Songbirds Publishing House.
Q&A
What is it about dragons that you love so much?
I love the possibility of dragons. Wouldn’t the world be a dull place if magic was not real? Who is to say dinosaurs were not dragons. I was raised on Grimm Brothers and other grisly fairytales suitable for making nightmares, but I never was afraid of dragons.
On the contrary as a part of my life disappeared in a haze of too many psychiatric medications in massive doses for mental illness which was really “just” Aspergers, I looked to the magical realm. I was unable to write poetry at that time, but oddly enough I started writing fantasy tales. I always remember it that I couldn’t write. No, I couldn’t write poetry, but I was still writing. The protagonist was an elderly myopic messenger dragon named Gabrielle. She had been forced into retirement due to the myopia for which she wore a pair of goggles.
One day ten years and a different house later, I was standing in the driveway looking up at the roof peak of my barn. I was sure if I squinted and if I believed, that Gabrielle was newly landed there, peering down at me to ask if I had any jalapeño tea. Thus began the book Totems originally titled The Complete Tales from the Edge of the Woods. This particular story from it, where Gabrielle lands on the barn and meets an elf girl named Moti and her cat, Katydid, was published by Aurora Wolf Literary Journal many years ago as a short story.
Why do you enjoy writing about dragons?
For me what ended up being years of writing fantasy even as I weaned off the medications, crashed and learned to live with permanent nerve damage, lost my house and pretty much everything else, writing about their world gave me somewhere to go when the world I inhabited was too painful. We had left the city and ended up living in a tiny drafty camp on the side of a mountain surrounded on three sides by woods. To begin with nature is healing but to find myself in such surroundings led me inevitably to write more about the dragons and to coax them out of the forest and the sky. Gabrielle was joined by a veteran warrior dragon named Bartoleme who was blinded in battle in one eye. He wore fabulous, embroidered patches over the scarred eye and told many tales to the trio of orphaned dragonets clustered around his feet. Gabrielle had rescued them from a far place after their mother lost her mind and left. Moti and her husband Merthwyn adopted and raised them. Bartoleme taught the young ones how to fly. He was a great teller of tall tales, best friends with the Wizard of the Woodland and like most dragons extremely fond of cake, cookies and of Moti’s cat Katydid, who never liked anyone but chose to sit on
his shoulder to groom herself.
Through these characters I was able to heal myself as much as possible from the chemical damage to my body and mind. The stories languished in a notebook until years later when I found myself once again in a dark place in an abusive marriage. My art and writing studio was in a corner of the basement. When things got too frightening, I sat down there, usually with my cat and dogs and rediscovered the dragons and their world and began to enlarge upon it. A shapeshifter came to life and a family of humans that was special in that they lived on the border of the world as we know it and the Veil beyond which the dragons lived.
What are some of your favorite books to read featuring dragons?
My favorite dragon themed books of all time were all of the series of Ann McCaffrey’s The Dragon Riders of Pern. What I loved about these enough to read them ragged was how
real the bond between dragon and human was. How the dragon imprinted on the human he or she was destined to join while still in the egg. The Fire dragons so like in my mind
cockatiels. You could really see how the author brought her own love of animals and research to her characters in an authentic way to make readers accept and believe.
I did not like George R. R. Martin’s series because of the endless depression of it. Nothing good ever happened and it became too dreary to continue, but I did love the Mother of Dragons and the three eggs she nurtured.
I also liked the representation of Smaug in the Lord of the Rings movie. Though my personal preference is a dragon as friend and ally, still I really believed the reality of Smaug due to fabulous computer animation. I loved the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books as much as I did McCaffrey’s.
Whether you are writing a story or reading one both venues offer escape from daily life. And whether it’s a cat, dog or dragon there is no love quite like being loved by one of them.
What got you into writing?
I wrote my first poetry at age 7 after years of my father having me read poetry to him from the anthology he was given when he joined the Army. He was a bomber pilot from Texas who was dyslexic and a math genius. Back then nobody knew what dyslexia was so he managed to finish college by taking a speed reading course. I also believe he
was on the autism spectrum, again, before anyone had a name for it. Language was hard for him but he was an amazing gentle father and wonderful with animals. I am sure he is a part of some of those characters I mentioned above. I was learning to read very quickly, bored, skipping to the end of Dick and Jane and their adventures in first grade so it wasn’t too long before my father had me reading classic poets as well as psalms from the Bible. I had no idea I was doing something that would be considered difficult for a first grader. By third grade I was reading Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and other books before school and after and sometimes caught during class with a book. I remember I did try Tolkien then but his words were beyond someone who was by then eight years old. I figure reading for my
father is where my interest in writing poetry came from. There were no other writers in our family.
Fast forward to eighth grade when I was put in advanced English. We had a new teacher who had just begun at our school. She spent a whole unit on poetry which included performing poems from books like The Spoon River Anthology after school in the library, to making notebooks of found poems from magazines and finally to writing our own. I was working at my desk on a free verse poem about man and his mother we had driven past on the way home: he was tinkering with his car while she watered the lawn. My teacher looked over my shoulder, I sweated and after she finished she said “No doubt about it. You are a poet.”
Until then I had no special plans for a college major but that planted a seed. I wanted to major in English and be a writer. My parents said “No. You can’t do that.” I did not insist or rebel rather obediently went to college after high school for liberal arts. All those years I continued to write poetry and not just in English but also French, Spanish and German. My teacher had submitted two of my poems, and published in a UK journal the summer I turned 14 but that didn’t deter my mother from her stance that majoring in English to be a
writer was a no-go.
Off I went a directionless 18-year-old and found myself in a British Lit class my third semester. I fell apart and could not stay in college. My father drove to Ohio to pick me up. After I was home and seeing a therapist the English professor of the literature class wrote to ask me if I would send him all the poems I had been working on. He wanted to see if he
could give me a grade rather than Incomplete. I sent him a fat Manila envelope and in return received an A-. I have always been grateful to Professor Miller for that.
Instead of majoring in English and from there to an MFA CW program I floundered, a 15 year Baccalaureate adventure. Three colleges and a degree for being a sign language
interpreter and teaching assistant later, working at mind numbing jobs to pay for therapy years ago, all the while writing writing writing I have ended up an indie author with
many prizes, many journal acceptances, multiple books in multiple genres and have built my own professional life around writing. If you love it, fight for it.
If there was one piece of advice you could give to other writers, what would it be?
My advice then to someone who wants to follow this path is know that it is a hard and lonely path. Long swathes of no feedback or no reward for hours and hours of work that
may never be published. Many many submissions, many “thanks, we’ ll pass this time” and so on. The writing world is super hard. That said, if the Muse has touched you and if you shook its hand, then be determined and fierce and keep going. Be a dragon for that lovely gift that you have received. Work your butt off.
It is better to follow this path than to lock yourself into a parent’s or someone else’s preconceived notion of who or what you should do with your life. Take workshops, read
books, keep learning. Don’t give up. The folks who came up with cliches had it right, nothing worth doing is easy. I do have to say I believe this is why my mother, an artist who
did not practice art most of her life, was against me pursuing writing. It is a hard path but if you love it and you have some way to keep food on the table and the lights on
that doesn’t drive you crazy, then do it.
Where can readers follow your writer platform?
https://www.facebook.com/RachaelIkinsPoetryandBooks?mibextid=eQY6cl
https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/rachael-ikins