K-A Russell - Fantasy Author (he/they)
I'm K-A Russell, full-time legal assistant, Canadian self-published fantasy author, wood burning enthusiast and all-around creative. I've loved making worlds and other languages, and coming up with songs and odd, unconventional characters since I was young. Half of my life is spent being a constructive member of society, while the other half is spent in an imagination full of other worlds and fanfic spinoffs of my latest obsession.
The A'thería's Wake series began as a fanfic at the age of 19 and developed into its own world in my early 20's. At the age of 26, I completed the first draft of The True Faithen's Plight by hand. The book went through at least seven revisions before self-publishing in 2018. The year after, I wrote the Prologue, The True Faithen's Dream, a novella introducing the main characters of the series. It would be another two years before I published my second book, The True Faithen's Choice.
In the large time frame between the first book and the second, I went through a lot of changes in my personal life. I taught overseas in southern Japan for three years in my 20's. I came out--first as bisexual, then lesbian, then trans masc non binary--between the ages of 30 and 33. I discovered that I'm autistic at the age of 31. And, most importantly, I left the church when I was 32, right before releasing The True Faithen's Plight.
To say that these major life experiences have affected my writing would be an understatement. You will notice a shift between the first two books as I began to explore my sexuality and gender and challenge the inerrant view of the Bible I had grown up to believe. I fell into a deep depression for much of 2019, which greatly influenced the progress and prose of The True Faithen's Choice. And the world knows that 2020 and onward have been turbulent years on a global scale.
So that brings us to today. This website is the third one I've launched since becoming an author. Yet despite the big life changes and a year and a half hiatus after completing The True Faithen's Choice, I look to the future with hope and ambition to eventually complete the A'thería's Wake quadrilogy.
I hope you'll join me for the ride!