We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Kenfall. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.
Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I started writing Hamtaro fanfiction when I was 11, but the real journey started in 2018, when I received a comment on one of my Yu-Gi-Oh! stories on fanfiction.net that stated something similar to “this is great, but it has a lot of purple prose”. For some reason, this comment made me irrationally angry, and I decided to “show them” by writing an original book. Around the same time, a friend at work introduced me to NaNoWriMo, or national novel writing month. I dove in head-first, checking out a dozen books on writing from the library and watching every writing podcast I could find. If I could go back and do it again, I would spend more time critiquing for other writers, not only because I learn more while reviewing other work, but also because networking is so important in this industry. The most important skills I’ve developed along the road are patience and determination. The former I still struggle with, but the latter I have in spades. Perhaps that was why I refused to give up even after dozens of rejections. I knew from the start that as long as I didn’t give up, I’d eventually reach my goal.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Well, I’m an autistic author of one adult paranormal romance, Marked for Harvest, and three upcoming adult historical romance books, the Seductive Sleuths series. My books feature autistic characters struggling with things like unmasking, societal pressure to confirm, and sensory overload. I tend to write high-heat spicy scenes, and my books often include mystery solving.
I started writing as a pre-teen with fanfiction. In particular Inuyasha, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Skip Beat!. I think if I’d been borne 10 years later, I would have been a dedicated ReyLo fan, because after that movie came out I read fanfiction of them obsessively. On social media, I design, sew, and make videos with historical outfits, usually from the 1800s.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I discovered I was autistic while writing my first historical romance, Companion to the Count. One of my critique partners (who is autistic) mentioned that the main character, Saffron, resonated with them strongly. That conversation led me down the path to self-discovery, and I realized that there were so many things about my own life that I had never seen represented in media. After coming out as autistic, I’ve read several books by autistic authors that have left me SHOOK, as if the author ripped open my head and peered inside. That feeling is what I want to elicit in my readers, that sense that someone else has shared their experience, and that they aren’t alone.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I didn’t learn about QueryShark and the X (then Twitter) writing community until quite late in my querying journey. I cringe now thinking about how bad my query letters were. I actually sent out my very first manuscript to a publisher (Tule) in its SECOND DRAFT. Absolutely horrifying. Thankfully, they were very kind and gave me detailed feedback, even saying it was a “close decision” (which I appreciate even if it was just to encourage a brand-new writer).
Contact Info:
- Website: https://melissakendall.ca/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makendallauthor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MAKendallAuthor/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MAKendallAuthor
- Other: https://www.threads.net/@makendallauthor
Image Credits
Alexander Prince