Author Spotlight: Keith R. Fentonmiller
On our fifth author spotlight episode, we have Keith R. Fentonmiller. Keith works for the Federal Trade Comission as an attorney by day. In his spare time, he writes historical fantasy novels. The first novel of his series, Fate Accompli, is due to be published on May 18th by Ellysian Press. He is also the author of Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat, which was previously published by Curiosity Quills. This novel is currently under revision and will become the sequel to Fate Accompli so definitely keep an eye out for its rerelease later! You can contact Keith at his website, on Instagram or Facebook, or learn more about him and his books at Ellysian Press.
Episode Summary
We start the episode by delving into Keith’s journey to becoming an author, which encompasses his foray into comedy and theatre in his youth. Keith also believes that his analytical nature, combined with his interest in comedy attracts him to writing novels, where he can give perspective to important societal issues and yet balance these serious subjects with a sprinkle of humor.
We also discussed Keith’s experiences and the challenges involved in researching several different eras in time, and combining myth into different settings.
And of course, we were very excited to hear all about his upcoming book which has a very interesting premise; a witty reimagining of Greek Myth set in Olympus and the Italian Renaissance.
We moved on to discussing Keith’s experience of being published traditionally, and transferring his first novel from Curiosity Quills to Ellysian Press.
Finally, Keith talked a number of resources that he has found helpful. Links for conferences, workshops and books he recommended can be found below:
- Yale Writers Workshop
- Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference
- Stanford Continuing Studies: Creative Writing
- The Second City
- New York Writers Workshop Pitch Conferences
- On Writing, Stephen King
- Story Trumps Structure, Steven James
- The Portable MFA in Creative Writing, New York Writers Workshop
- The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression
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