GUEST: Kim Antieau

How long have you been writing? I have been writing since before I could write!

When I was about five, I would draw pictures to tell a story, and then I’d make these stories into books. As soon as I could read and write, I started writing stories.

How long have you been a published author?

I was first published in my college literary magazine. My first paid publishing gig was in 1983.

What titles do you have available?

I have many titles available. Here’s the list: Her Frozen Wild, Swans in Winter, The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales, The Fish Wife: an Old Mermaids Novel, The Blue Tail, Deathmark, Church of the Old Mermaids, Ruby’s Imagine, Broken Moon, Coyote Cowgirl, The Gaia Websters, The Jigsaw Woman, and Mercy, Unbound.

What made you choose the subject of this book?

Many years ago I read a National Geographic article about frozen mummies in Siberia. Archaelogy and anthropology are avocations of mine. What fascinated me was that archaeologists believed one of the mummies was the corpse of a woman who had been a Scythian shaman or priestess. She had tattoos and had been buried with a long conical hat. I began studying Scythian tattoos, and I wondered if the tattoos could mean something more than what they mean to people now. Perhaps they were a kind of mystical acupuncture. I’d studied cave art for a long while, too, and I started thinking about them as being a kind of tattooing on the Earth. The story for Her Frozen Wild began to unfold. At the time, I was having intense dreams about bears several times a week, so I began studying folktales and mythology involving bears. Many indigenous people believed they were related to or descended from bears, and the rituals and ceremonies for hunting bear were quite elaborate, particularly in Siberia. The idea that people and bears were related made me think about shapeshifting—another subject I’m interested in. I combinated all of that with a love story, an Amazon-like tribe, and time travelling, and I had Her Frozen Wild!

Do you have any new titles coming soon?

I have several new books coming out soon. My husband, Mario Milosevic, and I have a joint short story collection, Entangled Realities, due out this month. Then I have my own short story collection, Tales: Fairy and Fabulous out the following month. My novel antebellum novel Jewelweed Station will be out this summer. Butch: a Bent Western will probably come out this fall. Sometime soon, The Desert Siren, which is about a women in the borderlands of Arizona searching for a lost herd of magical wild Irish “sea” horses, will also be out soon. I also have a few interesting projects that I’m keeping under wraps right now. I’ll have more to say about them this summer. I’ll just say now that one of them involves Hollywood and the other involves pirates.

What is your favourite genre and why?

I don’t tend to think in genre. I like all kinds of books as long as the characters and the stories are interesting! I tend to write between genres. I really admire the Latin American magical realists, and many of my books are like that: Ordinary life has mystery and magic woven right into it. Mermaids show up in the desert, along with fairies. People shapeshift into animals and vice versa. I like a little bit of weird in what I write and in what I read.

What, to you, is the most exciting part of the writing process?

I love sitting down and letting the magic happen. It’s as though the story is a memory and I’m just writing down what I experienced—or what my character experienced, and I feel like I’m there. I just love the creative flow of it. When I wrote Her Frozen Wild I was in Siberia hunting the bear, I was shapeshifting with the warriors, I was riding a horse across the Altai plateau, and I was traveling through time in the timeless caves. I love that!

If you could co-author a book with anyone, who would you choose and why?

If I could co-author a book with anyone living or dead, it would be interesting to write with Emily Dickinson, since she was one of my favorite poets. I love Mary Oliver’s poetry, too. I’d love to collaborate with her. Or maybe I’d just like to spend time with both of these amazing writers. But the truth is that I don’t think I could collaborate in the actual writing of a book. Since my stories often feel as real as memories, I wouldn’t be very open to someone else’s view of my story. I can’t change my memory, so it would be almost as difficult to change a part of my story to satisfy a co-author, or to let her/him change something.

Where can readers find you on the web? http://www.kimantieau.com/

FAQ about Her Frozen Wild:

http://www.kimantieaubooks.com/2012/01/her-frozen-wild.html

price: print: $16.99, e-book: $6.99

number of pages: 372

genre: adventure, mainstream, fantasy, science fiction

publisher: Green Snake Publishing

release date: January 2012

buy links:

print • kindle • nook • smashwords

Kim Antieau has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, both in print and online, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s SF, The Clinton Street Quarterly, The Journal of Mythic Arts, EarthFirst!, Alternet, Sage Woman, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. She was the founder, editor, and publisher of Daughters of Nyx: A Magazine of Goddess Stories, Mythmaking, and Fairy Tales. Her work has twice been short-listed for the Tiptree Award, and has appeared in many Best of the Year anthologies. Critics have admired her “literary fearlessness” and her vivid language and imagination. She has had nine novels published. Her first novel, The Jigsaw Woman, is a modern classic of feminist literature. Kim lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, writer Mario Milosevic.

Her latest book is Her Frozen Wild.

Learn more about Kim and her writing at www.kimantieau.com.

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About Her Frozen Wild

Scientists in the Altai in Siberia uncover the 2,500 year old frozen mummy of a tattooed priestess or shaman. This mummy has the same mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) as American archaeologist Ursula Smith whose mother disappeared in Siberia 30 years earlier. Ursula travels from the U.S. to Siberia to unravel the mystery of the “lady” and meets Sergei Ivanovich Polyakov, a Russian doctor who graciously invites her into his home. After they become lovers, she discovers he has the same tattoos on his body as the tattooed lady. He tells a disbelieving Ursula that they have met before and she is destined to save the ancient People, considered as devils by some and shape-changing gods by others. A shaman takes Ursula to one of the sacred timeless caves where Ursula’s mother supposedly disappeared. When Ursula allows the shaman to tattoo her, she is thrown back in time where she must unlock the mystery of the People and their link to her past in order to save them and Sergei—even if it costs her her life.