We are a couple of weeks away from publishing ‘A NIGHT SO DARK AND FULL OF STARS’ – A short story collection by the one and only Nikky Lee, so it is a good time to have a chat about her stories, her writing, and her plans for the future!

Okay Nikky, let’s just jump right in. Tell us a bit about yourself – who you are, where you live, a hobby / passion you have outside writing.
Hi~ I’m an Australian-New Zealand author who grew up in Perth on Whadjuk Noongar country before moving to Auckland, Aotearoa. Outside the writing and reading world, I’m a keen kayaker, swimmer, gym bunny, pet parent, and raging coffee addict. New Zealand wines are also fast turning me into a pinot gris connoisseur (at least, I like to think so) and holy moly don’t get me started on the cheese. So yea, you can probably add foodie to that list too.

Writing goes hand-in-hand with reading, so what books are on your nightstand right now?
I’m a bit of a mood reader, so I have about five books on the go at any one time. Currently they are: 
Turncoat by Tīhema Baker, a future sci-fi in the vein of Claire G. Coleman, which holds up a mirror to Pākehā New Zealanders and asks: “What if it happened to you?”. 
This Plot Is Bananas (This Trilogy Is Broken #4), a LitRPG by J.P. Valentine
The Skin, an indie selkie fantasy by J.E. Hannaford
The Sword and the Hounds by Aussie comedy-horror author A.B. Finlayson
Cursed Shards: Tales of Dark Folklore edited by Leanbh Pearson (I have a story in this anthology and I’m slowly reading through my author’s copy).

Who are your literary heroes?
Robin Hobb and Martha Wells are two that immediately spring to mind. Andy Weir and Adrian Tchaikovsky purely from their ability to write hard science fiction—I was in awe before, but after writing ‘We Who Remain’ that awe has increased two-fold. Meanwhile, indie author Sarah Chorn has the market cornered when it comes to emotional storytelling, holy cow her stuff is so good. And from sheer productivity and how-the-hell-did-you-even-come-up-with-that standpoint, Rachel Aaron has me thoroughly wowed. 

However, in the case of A Night So Dark And Full Of Stars, I’d also say Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman were major influences/heroes. I was a massive fan of Jennings’ Uncollected series as a pre-teen and teen and it dawned on me when I was writing the zodiac stories that several of them were basically Paul Jennings for adults.

What do you write, and why?
While everything I write all fits under the speculative fiction banner, my range of speculative is quite broad. I do all kinds of fantasy—epic, urban, dark, western, sci-fantasy—and my sci-fi can range from far-future space opera to near future cli-fi and post-apocalyptic dystopia. More recently, I’ve been delving into horror, often genre-mashing it into my fantasy and sci-fi. 
As for why I write… Well, I can tell you why I started. Boredom. Summer holidays, age 13, and nothing but crappy daytime TV. The moment I started writing that first story, the writing gods had me forever. 
Storytelling, as I discovered, is bloody addictive. 

While my why varies depending on my mood—escapism, processing, probing, de-stressing, venting, raging—the compulsion stays. My brain is always working on a story. If it’s not going down on paper, it’s being carried around in my head—and on a bazillion digital Post-It notes—until I’m ready to do something with it.

We’ve been lucky enough to publish twelve – no wait, thirteen of your stories in our Zodiac series of anthologies. Thanks for submitting your wonderful pieces! Of course, the stories that you wrote for those anthologies are now being put together for your new short story collection – A Night So Dark and Full Of Stars. Which of these stories are your favourite, and why?
Gah, this is so hard to answer. A number of them I love for different reasons. ‘Ram’s Revenge’ (Aries) is quite personal to me as I wrote it right around when I was coming to terms that my paternal grandmother probably wouldn’t be around for much longer.

But the one I am most fond of is probably ‘Trident’s Song’ (Aquarius). I love the opening line and the journey the protagonist goes through—it’s a bit of a dark (very dark) ugly duckling story, now that I think about it. However, the real highlight of it is the friendship she develops with a deaf sailor (whose deafness turns out to be an advantage on an island of Sirens who lure sailors to their deaths).

‘Trident’s Song’ was also a story where I felt my writing ‘level up’, so to speak, as I was writing it. I remember really challenging myself to bring all the skills I’d learned and practiced to bear and the end result is something I’m still really proud of. 

A Night So Dark And Full Of Stars features two brand new novellas, ‘We Who Remain’ (Gemini) and ‘Maiden’s Dawn’ (Virgo).  How did it feel to be writing new Zodiac-inspired stories again?
So, a bit of a confession. I’ve been sitting on ‘Maiden’s Dawn’ since the Virgo anthology’s submission period. It was one of those stories that blasted past the word limit (and the deadline, if I recall) and kept going. I ended up submitting a piece of flash fiction instead that was accepted, which left ‘Maiden’s Dawn’ to sit on my hard drive for nearly four years. It was one of those pieces that was very awkward to place—too short to pitch as a novel, too long to go into the usual short fiction magazines. It wasn’t until late 2023 when I started thinking about collections compiling all the zodiac stories I’d written together, that I brushed it off and edited it. The best bit: because it’d been so long since I’d read the story, I got to fall in love with it all over again. 

Which leads me to ‘We Who Remain’. After the high of editing and (re)loving ‘Maiden’s Dawn’, ‘We Who Remain’ was a slog. About half way through I remembered that there was a reason I don’t write hard sci-fi—I have no science background whatsoever (and also incredibly subpar math skills for the record). I literally had notes in the story that said *sciencey things happen here*. And because I was writing about two parallel universes and subatomic particles, I needed to sound like I knew what I was talking about when I had no flipping idea. A lot of YouTube and science magazine articles were consumed in my quest to make the story’s ideas sound like they were grounded in some kind of real science. (There is, I discovered, a very fine line I can walk where I can describe the effects of my “science” without actually having to go into the science, but oh boy, was it a tough learning curve to get there.)

One thing that we love about your Zodiac stories is the diversity of writing styles and genres, from fantasy tales set in the worlds of greek mythology to supernatural tales set in rural Australia and New Zealand, to science fiction set amongst the stars.  Do you think you’ll ever settle down and just focus on one genre, or do you feel any pressure to do so?
Hehe, it’s unlikely. Especially in the short story format. I love using short fiction to experiment—whether it’s with ideas, voice, tense, point of view, character, genre mashes, or simply practicing something in preparation for a longer piece of fiction. Short stories are basically my testing bed for figuring out what works and what I’m good at. If you read my longer works, you’ll probably spot one or two ideas from these stories pop up again in my longer fiction. To give an example, ‘Maiden’s Dawn’ was very much a story for me to practice writing romance in preparation for a subplot in my upcoming Rarkyn Trilogy books.

From the stories published by Deadset Press, which one do you think best captures your writing style?
Ooof, this is super hard as it depends on the criteria I use to define ‘writing style’. In terms of voice, I’m something of a chameleon writer and my voice will change depending on the point of view I take (and to a lesser extent the genre I’m writing in). For my first person voice, ‘The Secrets She Eats’ and ‘Trident’s Song’ are probably the closest. Third person: ‘Scorpion’s Sting’ would be the best match.

However, something that I’ve grown more mindful of the more I write is making sure there is a strong emotional core to my stories. I’ve come to realise that while people don’t always remember what a story was about, they do remember how it made them feel. So in that sense, I’d say ‘Maiden’s Dawn’ is a good example of that. 

Can you let us know about another book or story (in any anthology) that you’ve written which you’re particularly proud of, and what you like about it?
Last year I was invited to contribute to a horror anthology: Remains To Be Told edited by New Zealand’s horror superstar, Lee Murray. As a baby horror writer, I was beyond thrilled to be included in this project. My story, “What Bones These Tides Bring”, is about bone witches and ghosts trapped in a far future, post apocalyptic New Zealand. It ended up as a finalist in the Aurealis Awards, won a Sir Julius Award, and is currently awaiting final judgment at the Austalasian Shadow Awards in October.

My “story behind the story” for this anthology was that I submitted the piece seven minutes before the deadline date (i.e. at 11:53pm) because the first story I wrote blew past the word limit (you’ll notice a theme here! ) and I had to start again from scratch with a completely new idea a few days before it was due.

If you have any other new releases coming up, can you tell us about them, and what makes them special to you?
My other big publication news is I also have the second book of The Rarkyn Trilogy, The Rarkyn’s Fall releasing on October 16th, mere weeks after A Night So Dark And Full Of Stars. In this installment, we’ve got prison breaks, street brawls, epic battles, intrigue, a teeny bit of romance, and of course, a boatload of magic and monsters. Fun times!

I’m still in the process of getting the print pre-orders up, but the ebook pre-order can be found here.

You’ve been writing for a while now – how has your writing process changed and developed in that time?
I think I’ve become more organised.* Writing a trilogy has definitely forced me to plan my stories better. When I started I was a massive panster, now I’m moving towards the plotter/planner end of the spectrum. 

*This is still up for debate.

Do you have any writing goals / achievements that you are striving towards? 
Finishing The Rarkyn Trilogy is big on the list. After that, it’s a bit of an unknown. I have several ideas that I want to pursue, but the big question will be which one I choose to do first. 

What’s your definition of success?
This is one of those tricky questions because those dang goal posts move! Five years ago it was having a book published.

So, for now, let’s go with something where the goal posts feel super far away: earning enough from my creative writing to do it full time. 

Thanks for answering our questions, Nikky! We can’t wait to publish ‘A Night So Dark And Full Of Stars’ and we’re eagerly awaiting ‘Rarkyn’s Fall’ as well!

You can order A Night So Dark And Full Of Stars here!