Author Interview – Patience d. Schoene

1. For readers discovering you for the first time, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your journey into becoming an author?

Hi! I’m Patience d. Schoene (pronounced shay-knee). I live in Seattle, and I love gardening, the beach, and rescue pitbulls. My writing career has been in fits and starts. I started writing as a teenager, but got discouraged. I didn’t get my ADHD diagnosis until much later in life and that made high school really difficult, I routinely got the message that I wasn’t smart enough in my classes. I started to write again when I retired from Burlesque in the early 2000s. That’s when I wrote the first draft of Shadows of the Stage, The Shattered Moonstone and about four other titles. Then I let them sit and never touched them again, I just didn’t have the faith that they were good enough to attempt to publish. In 2020. I decided to get a Master’s degree in History which required a lot of writing, and that gave me the confidence to revisit those manuscripts. Since then I have been working on learning the industry, editing what I’ve already written and writing new books.  

2. Your books Shadows of the Stage and The Shattered Moonstone both explore fantasy worlds. What can readers expect from these stories? 

Shadows takes place in Seattle, in the world of Burlesque. The settings and characters come from my time in that world, the places I performed and the people I met (no one is exact 1:1, just to be clear). The main character is a vampire who is hiding from her past, her maker and everyone around her. At its heart, Shadows is about finding inner strength, trusting yourself and building community.

Shattered takes place on the Olympic Peninsula in the towns of Port Gamble and Port Townsend. It falls a bit more on the cozy side of urban fantasy. The main character has been alone most her life and discovers she has inherited a Victorian home, complete with sentient rainbow gargoyles. Her journey involves trusting herself, building a found family and learning how to make better choices.

3. What originally inspired the ideas behind these books?

I love the PNW; the mountains, the wild ocean (especially in winter), the tiny towns, the grey foggy weather. I find all of it inspiring and I get ideas on every hike and every roadtrip. I can see the magic in every tree. I also pull a lot of ideas from things that I’ve experienced, like my time in burlesque or how haunted the cemetery in Port Gamble absolutely is. I also like to surround myself with powerful, funny, self aware women, they always inspire me through their stories or their antics and I love getting their permission to incorporate them into characters.

4. Your background in dance is such a unique element. How has your experience with dance influenced your storytelling or worldbuilding?

I think the techniques I learned in dance and in teaching dance translate to writing movement whether that is a fight, a dance scene or something spicier. My own body awareness helps me visualize what I want the scene to look like. I also believe that creativity layers, if I am stuck on a scene I can play music and freestyle and the scene will come. 

5. Do elements of performance, movement, or stage presence find their way into your characters or scenes?

Ha! Sometimes too much. If I am guilty of anything in my writing it is over-explaining. As I am writing I see it in my head like a play, so characters don’t just have dialogue they are moving while talking and then I try to write it that way. My feedback is always to trim it up, readers don’t need to know she keeps drinking her tea. I think that’s one of the fun things about writing, you are always getting better. The next book is always better written than the last and I am a big fan of constant improvement.

6. You also explore spiritual and witchcraft themes in your writing. How do those elements shape the worlds you create?

My spirituality is very important to me and in the worlds I create magic is a default. That isn;t to say that every character can tap into magic but magic connects every tree, rock, person etc. This is how I see our world, and so I had to bring it into the worlds I create. I think witchcraft can bring people more inline with nature and community, it is an inherently matriarchal practice and I believe the world needs more of that, so I made sure my characters got to live in that world.

7. Fantasy often allows authors to explore deeper themes through metaphor. What themes are most important to you in your stories?

One of my biggest themes is women finding their own inner (and outer) strength. My characters always have journeys of self-discovery, whether that be their personal magic, their purpose or their physical strength. It was important for me to write characters that were allowed to explore all the sensuality of life, that could be food, beautiful art or sex, but it has to be for nothing more than for their own joy and without judgement. I hope that someone is inspired by that and takes their own sensual self-discovery journey.

8. As a neurodivergent author, has your perspective influenced the way you approach characters or storytelling?

It has made me a more seat of my pants type of writer, I have chosen to lean into how my brain works as a gift rather than a disability. I think it has allowed me to connect with my characters and see them more fully and give them quirks. It’s also where I get most of my ideas, I have maladaptive daydreaming and that is a constant source of stories. I like to think I am channeling for some other universe when I do this, it’s fun for me to see it that way.

9. Do you intentionally incorporate neurodivergent representation in your characters?

I don’t really. I got my diagnosis so late that I spent most of my life trying to fit my round self into a square hole, I learned to mask like a champ. I don’t want to put my experience onto my characters, so I prefer to not incorporate how I’ve dealt with being neurodivergent. That being said, all my characters have self-discovery and self-acceptance journeys, and that does speak very strongly to what getting my diagnosis did for me.

10. What was the most exciting part of creating the worlds for your books?

You get to have that, “Empress of the World” moment. It gets to be exactly what I want it to be, I can go completely off the rails and imagine anything. Not as much in urban fantasy but I have some dystopian and epic fantasy that are really challenging me to stretch my imagination.

11. What was the most challenging part of writing them?

Translating vision into words, and having it make sense. An idea may come to me in the middle of the book and I just need to incorporate it, but then I have created a paradox that doesn't make sense.

12. Do you have a favorite character from Shadows of the Stage or The Shattered Moonstone?

Shadows would have to be Caleb, the pitbull-ish side kick. Shattered would have to be Jolvaan and Margarith, my pot smoking twin gargoyles. 

13. When starting a new story, do you usually begin with the characters, the world, or the central theme? 

It's a toss up between them, sometimes inspiration strikes from a place and then I build around that, other times its a character. Every story has been different.

14. What does your writing process typically look like?

It starts with lots of notebooks and whiteboards where I can drop random sentences and scenes as they come to me. Sometimes those are for the current WIP, other times they are for future books. Once I am ready to start a book I do some general plotting, but then I dive in and start writing, often having to replot 2-3 times as the story adapts to the characters. The first draft just has to exist, then I can go through another 2-ish times and clean up anything that doesn;t make sense.

15. Are you more of a plotter, pantser, or somewhere in between? 

I have a plotter side that gets derailed by my pantser side. 

16. What part of writing fantasy do you enjoy the most?

Fantasy is such a powerful genre, it can teach lessons, it can change minds, it can dare us to imagine a better world and challenge us to be better people. It can question what heroism is, examine power and ethics, and It does all this without really showing all its cards. It also offers immersive escapism unencumbered by reality.

17. What part of the process is the most challenging?

The first draft is always the hardest, I actually love editing and building on what I already wrote but the first draft often can feel like it goes so slowly. Or marketing, it might be marketing. Being an author is like seven jobs in a trenchcoat and writing is just one of them, and the easiest one.

18. What authors or books have influenced your writing the most?

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher was the first Urban Fantasy series I read and the way he created a whole magical world that weaves around the human world was really inspiring. Ilona Andrews (which is actually a duo),  Innkepper Chronicles series. It’s so fun and unique, and that series really gave me permission to change the mythology around some creatures. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s book The Women Who Run with the Wolves is a book I go back to over and over again. It’s a beautifully written book that dives into wild women archetypes through myth, and I use it often to give my characters a little extra magic.

19. What do you hope readers feel or experience when they read your stories?

I want them to escape into a different world and then come back inspired by the journey. 

20. You’re based in Seattle, which has a rich creative and mystical vibe. Does the setting influence your writing in any way?

Seattle and the PNW are ripe with stories. You can find them on every corner of the city and every small town. It would take lifetimes to capture all that magic. So far all my books are set in these towns, I have big dreams of branching out to other locations but this area keeps pulling me in.

21. What are your biggest writing goals for the future?

My biggest writing goal is to start my own publishing company. I'm taking an editing and publishing certification course from the UW to get me there. I want full creative control over my own work, and I want to support women in their publishing and writing goals as well. Am I insane, yes absolutely, but I know it’s the right path.

22. Are there any upcoming projects or stories readers should keep an eye out for? 

I have a YA Dystopian novel that I am putting out a chapter a month on wattpad. I originally wrote it way back in the early 2000s, but now I am editing it and sharing it. I also have an urban gothic fantasy/paranormal romance that I hope to publish next year. 

23. What advice would you give to aspiring fantasy authors?

First: Write the book. Write it weird, write it bad, write the scene that makes you cringe, doesn't matter, write it. Worry about plot holes and paradoxes later, just get draft one done. Second: Don’t let a rejection crush you. If you want an agent, pursue that, incorporate feedback but also know, that’s not the only way to do things. Find what works best for you.

24. What has been the most rewarding part of your author journey so far?

Finding myself through writing characters, it has allowed me to dream even bigger than I would have. 

25. Where can readers connect with you and keep up with your work?

My website is patienceschoene.com. You can find me on wattpad here: https://www.wattpad.com/user/PatiencedSchoene

My socials are: https://www.instagram.com/patience_schoene_author/ and https://www.tiktok.com/@booksbypatience

 

---

 

Rapid Fire Fun 🔥

26. Coffee or tea while writing? Coffee - too much coffee

27. Morning writer or night writer? Morning now that I am self-employed, but night when I had to.
28. Favorite fantasy creature? Do you have three pages for this one? I really want to incorporate a Sundel Bolong from Indonesian mythology, they’re very dangerous to lecherous men.
29. Paperback, ebook, or audiobook? Ooo - so hard, audiobook when I am cooking/driving - paperback any other time. I can’t do ebook, it doesn’t work for my brain.
30. Favorite place to write? Westport, with an ocean view.
31. One word to describe your books? Batty, or maybe that describes me.
32. Favorite writing snack? Anything potato.
33. Music while writing or silence? Television - right now its original series Star Trek. I need the noise but music makes me dance.
34. Favorite magical element in fantasy (magic systems, creatures, artifacts, etc.)? Creatures
35. One thing readers might be surprised to learn about you? I have very controversial food tastes. I loathe bananas. I know, it's a weird fruit to hate but the flavor is a hard pass for me, and yes, that includes banana bread. I love black licorice and coconut, two things that get me the most disgusted looks when I say it outloud.