Today, we continue our author interview series by speaking to Alysha Kaye, the author of The Waiting Room, a story about two lovers who find themselves meeting again in the afterlife.

You can find out more about Alysha on her website, or you can follow her on Twitter to see what else she’s up to. Listen to what we talked about below, or read on to find out more…

“If you like romance, if you’re interested in the afterlife, The Waiting Room is for you”

We speak to author Alysha Kaye

When we speak to Alysha it’s our third interview of the day, but the energy is still high because we’ve been looking forward to this one - while I haven’t been able to grab a copy of The Waiting Room yet, it’s on my ‘want’ list and I can’t wait to get my hands on it in the future.

“I tell people that it’s about the afterlife,” Alysha says. “But as I’ve been getting more and more reviews, people are mainly focusing on the romance aspect of the novel, which is fine – I like that, but it’s definitely unexpected for me because as an author, I focus more on the philosophy in the novel, in reincarnation and the possibility of meeting up with another soul after you die. It’s really cool to see how readers are taking it, ‘cause they’re focusing on the two main characters, who get to relive different lives together over and over.”

In many ways, it allows the readers to define the novel and get involved in it themselves, rather than just being a passive audience. “I’m definitely enjoying the different genres that I’ve been categorised under,” Alysha tells us. “I did say that it was a romance, but I never would’ve called it a paranormal romance.”

Believe it or not, the two of us have quite a lot in common - we both studied creative writing at university, and we’ve both worked in marketing. When I asked Alysha how important it is for writers to surround themselves with fellow creatives, she said “it means so much to me to have fellow writers reading my work and critiquing my work, giving me pointers. It means something so much different than my readers, so it’s great.”

And Alysha herself is surrounded by the English language - she even works as an English teacher, and is going in to her first year of teaching ninth-graders in high school. “It gives me so much inspiration,” she explains. “The things that come out of their mouths are hilarious. I even used some of their names in my novel - I don’t know if they’ll ever find that out because my novel’s not exactly a kid’s book, but I just loved their names so much and was like ‘I can use that’.”

“I tell all of my students that they’re not going to be good writers unless they write,” Alysha continues. “Which a lot of them have trouble understanding. I’m like, ‘You need to write a lot – not just half a page, not just one page.’ They’re like, ‘Miss, I wrote,’ and I’m like ‘No – you have to write so much, not to mention read!’”

The Waiting Room is set predominantly in the afterlife, and so we had to ask how that compares with Alysha’s beliefs about what happens after we die. “I definitely think that reincarnation could be a possibility,” she says. “But I’m not what you’d call a believer. I’ve just always thought that it would be an amazing thing to happen after death, but I think more along the lines of ‘we’ll see what happens’.”

In many ways, that reflects Alysha’s early life, when she drifted in to writing as an only child - “I definitely needed some sort of creative outlet,” she says. “I had a lot of alone time, no brothers and sisters, and so that kind of became my thing. I would get lost in books and those books made me want to create my own worlds and my own stories, so that’s another thing I tell my students – writing your thoughts and your feelings, it helps you so much. It helps you grow, and it helps you cope.”

Now that she’s all grown up, Alysha is taking her writing to the next step, and she says that the support she’s received through social media has been “insane,” adding “I just never realised how much Twitter and WordPress and Facebook could actually do for me. Some of my biggest fans and biggest supporters are complete strangers who I’ve met online, and it’s been so amazing. All over the world, people are blogging for me and tweeting for me – it’s been amazing, I rely on them so much.”

As for the future, it’s looking bright - “I definitely want to start my new novel soon,” Alysha tells us. “I have one chapter written but I’m not exactly sure if it’s going to go anywhere. Right now, I’m focusing on marketing The Waiting Room, and I just got two offers from two different indie publishers who want to republish them.”

Over on her Facebook page, Alysha said it was like choosing which of two guys she wants to date her daughter. “I don’t know what to do,” she explains. “Because I’ve become accustomed to being a self-published author and it’s so hard to decide if I should keep going and hope that better things will come along, or if I should take one of these offers and sign a contract. It’s really, really nerve-wracking.” A lot of writers refer to their work as being like a child, and editing your work has been described as “like murdering your children”, something which Alysha agrees with.

And like most authors, Alysha Kaye is also a keen reader - “I just got roped in to starting the Lunar Chronicles,” she tells us. “It’s a YA series, where Marissa Meyer takes fairy tales like Cindarella and puts them in this futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. I thought it would just be a fun, fast read, but now I’m deep in to book three of the series. I’m loving it, I’m definitely a fan.”

As for Alysha and The Waiting Room, I asked why she thinks people should buy it - her answer was short, concise and convincing. “If you like romance, if you’re interested in the afterlife, The Waiting Room is for you. And it’s a great price on Amazon, so there you go.”

Alysha Kaye is the author of The Waiting Room, a story about two lovers who find themselves meeting again in the afterlife. You can find out more about Alysha on her website, or you can follow her on Twitter

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