The Kendall Reviews Interview
Konn Lavery
KENDALL REVIEWS: Could you tell me a little about yourself, please?
KONN LAVERY: Sure! Thanks for having me on the site. My name is Konn Lavery, and I am a Canadian indie author who writes primarily in dark fantasy, horror, and thriller genres. On occasion, my monthly short stories bleed into other genres like SciFi.
I’m a graphic designer by trade and have been freelancing since 2014, giving me plenty of flexibility to write as needed. It’s a beneficial skill for marketing, formatting, cover art, and website work.
KR: What do you like to do when not writing?
KL: My free time is spent drawing in my sketchbook, which does help my design craft. I spend time reading (of course) and making music under my industrial project. Some of these musical aspirations bleed into novel scores that accompany some of my releases. The latest being the Missing Head Highway, the compilation soundtrack to my new horror novel, Rave.
All these extra hobbies of mine do help my overall obsession with transmedia storytelling. Basically, transmedia storytelling is enhancing a story through various art mediums. Some BIG examples can be seen in Star Wars or The Walking Dead. It’s far more difficult on a smaller scale – like being a single author – but I love pulling in my visual design, music, and the written word into one multimedia artwork.
So . . . maybe I never actually stop writing?
KR: What is your favourite album, and does music play any role in your writing?
KL: Music plays a HUGE role in the work that I do. As I mentioned earlier, I put together novel scores for some of my books to complement the stories. They’re kind of like how movies get soundtracks, but these ones are for books.
Music seems to be the universal language that surpasses all other forms, so I find major inspiration in it. I couldn’t nail down a favourite album as moods change over time. Many of my interests fall in the obscure experimental works commonly seen in early industrial music, trip-hop, and loop-based sample artists.
But, for writing, I cannot write songs with lyrics. The voices are far too distracting, and I tend to stick to electronics (psychill, dark psytrance, synthwave, and dark ambient).
KR: What was the last great book you read?
KL: There are so many! Lately, one book that’s sticking with me is The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain. It’s a dense read and tackles heavy topics of civilization, the birth of the alphabet, and how it brought the rise of left-brain thinking.
KR: E-Book, Paperback or Hardback?
KL: I enjoy them all from a designer’s perspective. . . but would have to go with my e-reader. It’s a small kobo that fits in your pocket like old pulp fiction. Plus, the night light is super handy.
KR: Can you tell me about your latest release, please?
KL: My latest release is a Canadian horror novel called Rave. The book is a tense twenty-four-hour gore ride of murder and vengeance covering small-town struggles, toxic masculinity, sexuality, and substance abuse. It’s a fast-paced novel with a dark humour narrative, providing insight into Canadian youth’s life in the underground music scene during the 90s.
It too has transmedia storytelling components through the photo-illustration artwork found within the book and the novel score.
The book is currently available on all the major platforms like Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Nook, etc.
KR: What are you working on now?
KL: I’m in the process of a new dark urban fantasy series with a working title of Ash that bridges the gap between all the stories I have written.
The dark fantasy, horror, thriller, and shorts I have written have name-dropped hints of characters, places, and events for a while. They all take place in The Macrocosm. An interactive timeline version can be found right on my homepage.
So this new Ash series is going to make the subtle hints blatantly obvious. I’m pretty excited to pull this series together and rope in all these hints I’ve been dropping for years now.
KR: Thank you very much Konn.
Konn Lavery
Konn Lavery is a Canadian author whose work has been recognized by Edmonton’s top five bestseller charts and reviewers, such as Readers’ Favorite, Literary Titan, and The Wishing Shelf Awards. His work has also been curated into the Edmonton Public Library’s Capital Press collection.
He started writing stories at a young age while being homeschooled. After graduating from graphic design college, he began professionally pursuing his writing with his first release, Reality. He continues to write in the thriller, horror, and fantasy genres.
His literary work is balanced alongside his graphic design and website development business. Konn’s visual communication skills have been transcribed into the formatting and artwork found within his publications, supporting his transmedia storytelling fascination. The previous works have also included musical scores primarily composed by Konn with occasional collaborators, also found within his audiobooks.
Find Konn Lavery’s work at:
Patreon (Monthly New Short Stories)
Follow Konn Lavery
Podcast and Episodic Audiobooks
Rave
Twenty-four hours of drugs, bloodshed, and lust.
Cursed by love, desire, and his cousin’s crime, Seth needs the greatest rave of 1999 for an escape. But his hopes of sweet release wither as he and his friends carelessly get their DNA on an unexplainable murder.
The RCMP are going to love them! They’ll completely believe that these drugged-out kids at an illegal festival saw a horned man-beast decapitating people–right? Oh, and Seth’s cousin Floyd shows up to shed light on his dark, unsettling past.
These four kids are in for the rave of a lifetime.
You can buy Rave from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Leave a Reply