In August 2024, I’m excited to combine two of the loves of my life: cruising and LGBTQ+ fiction and romance. I hope you’ll consider joining me on the first Rainbow Readers Cruise! Until then, I’d love to introduce you to one of the attending authors, Kim Fielding.
About Kim Fielding
Kim Fielding is pleased every time someone calls her eclectic. Her books span a variety of genres, but all include authentic voices and unconventional heroes. Winner of the 2021 BookLife Prize for Fiction, she is also a Rainbow Award and SARA Emma Merritt winner, a LAMBDA finalist, and a three-time Foreword INDIE finalist. She has migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States and currently lives in California, where she long ago ran out of bookshelf space. A university professor who dreams of being able to travel and write full-time, she also dreams of having two daughters who think she’s cool and a husband who isn’t obsessed with football. Some dreams are more easily obtained than others.
Interview
If drinks by the pool are already a given, what are you most looking forward to about the Rainbow Readers Cruise?
The peopling! I’m actually a pretty hardcore introvert, but even so, I really enjoy my occasional forays into socializing. Those forays are especially great when I’ll be joined by folks who share my love of books.
One especially fun thing about this cruise is that my husband will be there. He’s never once been able to go to a convention with me, so I’m looking forward to having him see me do something as an author besides mutter at my keyboard.
I should also note that I’ve never been to Key West. I’ve twice planned to go but my visits were thwarted by various circumstances, so I’m hoping the third time is the charm!
Which of your books would you recommend as the best way for readers to get to know you before meeting you on the cruise?
This is such a hard question because I’ve written a lot of books in… sort of all the genres. So it depends a lot on readers’ tastes. But forced to pick one, I’m going to say Farview, a fantasy set in a fishing village in sort of an alternate universe version of Cornwall. I had so much fun writing it, and the audio narration by our lovely Joel Leslie is perfection. The book won the 2021 BookLife Fiction Prize, which I’m so proud of! The tale celebrates the need for hope, and how love can find people when they least expect it, and the enduring power of stories to get us through our lives. I’m also very fond of the characters. Felix is, as his name implies, a perpetual optimist despite his difficult situation, and he’s basically a bard. Oliver, on the other hand, is more dour and circumspect, but he has loyalty, courage, and a strong sense of what’s right. The setting — inspired a bit by The Pirates of Penzance — is also great fun.
Which of your characters (from any story) would you most like to go on a cruise with?
How about Haz Taylor, the captain of a spaceship in my space opera, Potential Energy? As any good space opera captain should be, Haz is a bit of a scoundrel, but of course, he’s a scoundrel with a heart of gold. The kind who can’t help doing the morally right thing even if it costs him, and even if he grumbles while he does it. He’s a little snarky. I can definitely imagine sitting poolside with Haz, drinks in hand, and listening to him tell (possibly somewhat embellished) tales about his adventures. He’d probably also want to give advice to the cruise ship’s crew because sailing a cruise ship is totally the same thing as piloting through space, right?
Even if you don’t use this trip as fodder for a future project, most stories require a bit of research. Can you tell us the coolest thing you’ve learned while researching for your work, regardless of whether it made it into the text?
Oh, I have so many things I could talk about! Like the time I watched an autopsy of a person who’d been hit by a freight train, or the time I spent half a day trying to calculate the value of a male slave in 15th-century Bosnia, or my recent attempts to locate all the police stations in 1880s London, or… I’m a total research nerd.
But my best research comes in the form of travel, which I do as often as possible. I recently visited Mljet National Park in Croatia, where there’s an old monastery on an island in a saltwater lake on an island in the sea! It’s a beautiful place. I learned quite a bit about what life was once like there, and I came away with some really great plot bunnies.
Hey, this is supposed to be a review blog! Recommend your favorite book that I should read and review by another author joining us on this high-seas adventure.
Oh man, it’s really hard to choose! I’m going to mention a book that I loved and I think deserves more attention: Jordan L. Hawk’s The Magician’s Angel.
This book was part of a multi-author shared universe series (I also had a book in that series). All the stories involved an angel Christmas ornament, but they’re set in different places and times. One thing I love about Jordan’s story is that the setting — 1910s Iowa — isn’t one we see often. I also really enjoy stories about magicians in general. And as always, Jordan writes beautifully; he really gives us a sense of time and place and makes us hope that things will turn out well for his characters.
Finally, what other projects are you working on currently?
A lot of things! Last year I wrote a book called Crow’s Fate (which Joel narrated!), and now I’m working on the sequel. It’s sort of a sprawling paranormal/urban fantasy thing that spans centuries and continents, and that focuses on a guy named Simeon Bell. He’s one of my favorite characters.
I’m also working on the final two entries (books 12 and 13) in my Bureau series. These books are about a federal agency like the FBI, except their jurisdiction covers events involving non-human sentient species. You know — vampires, Sasquatches, shifters, ghosts, demons, and so on. The books center on different characters in different decades, but there’s been a slowly growing underlying story, and the final two books will wrap that up.
I have a few other things planned as well, so I’m keeping busy!
Connect With Kim Fielding
Website | Sign Up For Kim’s Mailing List
Facebook | Reader Group | Instagram | Twitter/X
Amazon Author Page | BookBub
About the Rainbow Readers Cruise
The Rainbow Readers Cruise celebrates the readers and creators of LGBTQ+ fiction and romance. The cruise departs from the Port of Fort Lauderdale on August 19, 2024, and returns August 23, 2024, with stops at Key West and Coco Cay (Celebrity’s private island). Along the way, meet and mingle with some of your favorite LGBTQ+ fiction and romance authors and creators, as well as attend panels, meet and greets, small group social activities, and the Signing at Sea. Plus, the cruise itself, with fabulous destinations, food and drinks, entertainment, and more. You can find all the details about the Rainbow Readers Cruise on our website: https://rainbowreaderscruise.com.
