Meet the Author ♡
Steampunk | YA | Dark Fantasy | Poet
Eclecticism in motion: The clockwork heart behind Steampunk, Dark Fantasy, and Young Adult author, Riv Rains.
That’s it. You’ve found me. Welcome to the online abode of an Australian mumma, mechanic, wife, lover, and creator, who in the cracks—somehow—manages to be an author.
This glorious mess began when I was young(er). I wrote because I ran out of material to read on a remote family property in the far North of South Australia. Apparently, there’s only so many books a library will let you have, no matter how cunning your tactics.
It’s my parent’s fault.
Mum started it, sitting on the floor between our beds, letting dancing minds such as Edith Blyton introduce us to everything beyond our real and perceived boundaries. Dad finished the job when he handed me my penchant for Steampunk; teaching me to repair and create out of almost anything.
Life was pulling windmill bores, straining fences, and welding chassis. All of that has filtered down into a love of rust and dust.
Growing up in the sticks was a great way to learn the strengths of a quiet and still mind, while also making me infinitely hungry for people’s stories. Those rocks don’t speak enough! Geographically isolated, my sister and I homeschooled for the primary years, before catapulting into the capital for senior school. If you can imagine, we landed in a cloud of chaos at a boarding college, hours and hours from home, armed with only a short list of home phone numbers, a crisp new pillow case, and our very own pair of shiny nail clippers. How’s that for an awkward coming of age story?
YA (Young Adult Literature) will always be a passion. I write many others, but that particular path began early. There’s a strange, independent heart ache that comes from leaving home for school at twelve. It certainly isn’t all negative—quite the opposite actually—responsibility level-up! However, it does shape you in odd ways along the way. Instead of fighting with your parents when you stay up late, you’re caught by your geography teacher, wind up slamming a door in her face, get grounded, then sulk in her class the next day. Your parents? They get the tearful phone call, commiserating over the heartless gargoyle who did this to you. “I know, dear, I know!”
Teenagers are passionate creatures, pulsing, quivering dreams on legs—although that whimsical description is hindsight talking.
An establishment filled to bursting with teenagers all trying to elbow their way to adulthood sees some things! At the time, it’s a challenge to live with, day in, day out, no respite. Options for survival include: becoming a strange proxy counsellor—listening to all of their growing pains rub together like flint on steel, hiding rum in your dorm room roof cavity, thwarting authorities in minor, pointless ways as stress relief, or eating copious quantities of hazelnut spread with a spoon from the jar. Personally, in order to be thorough, I opted for all of those. Just…don’t tell my house mother.
Stories and incidents from those years still filter through to my world and words.
When I say it shapes you, I mean it sticks around like verdigris. There is a patina on my skin that I equate to those years. It shows as an unholy force of empathy, as social anxieties, and a plethora of conflict resolution skills deployable at times of thermostat adjustment. As an author, when I least expect it, I write a character curling over her knees, letting her heartbreak pour through her ribs, just as I witnessed my first term, or penning the same blank shock that follows walking in on self harm. In parenting life, it’s the realisation that teaching your kids to treat clothing stains at a young age isn’t necessarily normal, but dammit, it’s a skill better learned early!
For me, those shapes fit writing fantasy escapism, with real relationships and heartache at its core.
My mind thrives on taking relatable fledgling souls we recognize, and journeying with them to the extraordinary. Characters emerge charred, blackened and full of light, but hopefully whole. I wish I knew where they haunted before they came to me, but like all teens, there’s never time for pointless questions. They show up, catch my hand and run. It’s my job to try—desperately try—to find the hearts they’re looking for, and pass them over. Maybe that’s your heart, your little sister’s, your neighbour’s, or your dad’s. In so many ways, YA reaches hands across the world, which is perfect, because that’s where these guys want to go.
As long as they keep showing up, I’ll be here, loving my family, carving a little piece of rural river life into the shape of an author’s, and working like mad so someone can read my hot messes. I hope the desire to reach into your lives from between printed lines never vacates me, and as a bookgeek? That these characters—love or hate—get the chance to become a part of your family and story, too. That last will always remain the dream, because in the end, what better validation could I possibly have, than your hand upon theirs?
No matter what, if nothing else, simply enjoy.
What more can an author ask? ♡
Eclecticism in motion: The clockwork heart behind Steampunk, Dark Fantasy, and Young Adult author, Riv Rains.
That’s it. You’ve found me. Welcome to the online abode of an Australian mumma, mechanic, wife, lover, and creator, who in the cracks—somehow—manages to be an author.
This glorious mess began when I was young(er). I wrote because I ran out of material to read on a remote family property in the far North of South Australia. Apparently, there’s only so many books a library will let you have, no matter how cunning your tactics.
It’s my parent’s fault.
Mum started it, sitting on the floor between our beds, letting dancing minds such as Edith Blyton introduce us to everything beyond our real and perceived boundaries. Dad finished the job when he handed me my penchant for Steampunk; teaching me to repair and create out of almost anything.
Life was pulling windmill bores, straining fences, and welding chassis. All of that has filtered down into a love of rust and dust.
Growing up in the sticks was a great way to learn the strengths of a quiet and still mind, while also making me infinitely hungry for people’s stories. Those rocks don’t speak enough! Geographically isolated, my sister and I homeschooled for the primary years, before catapulting into the capital for senior school. If you can imagine, we landed in a cloud of chaos at a boarding college, hours and hours from home, armed with only a short list of home phone numbers, a crisp new pillow case, and our very own pair of shiny nail clippers. How’s that for an awkward coming of age story?
YA (Young Adult Literature) will always be a passion. I write many others, but that particular path began early. There’s a strange, independent heart ache that comes from leaving home for school at twelve. It certainly isn’t all negative—quite the opposite actually—responsibility level-up! However, it does shape you in odd ways along the way. Instead of fighting with your parents when you stay up late, you’re caught by your geography teacher, wind up slamming a door in her face, get grounded, then sulk in her class the next day. Your parents? They get the tearful phone call, commiserating over the heartless gargoyle who did this to you. “I know, dear, I know!”
Teenagers are passionate creatures, pulsing, quivering dreams on legs—although that whimsical description is hindsight talking.
An establishment filled to bursting with teenagers all trying to elbow their way to adulthood sees some things! At the time, it’s a challenge to live with, day in, day out, no respite. Options for survival include: becoming a strange proxy counsellor—listening to all of their growing pains rub together like flint on steel, hiding rum in your dorm room roof cavity, thwarting authorities in minor, pointless ways as stress relief, or eating copious quantities of hazelnut spread with a spoon from the jar. Personally, in order to be thorough, I opted for all of those. Just…don’t tell my house mother.
Stories and incidents from those years still filter through to my world and words.
When I say it shapes you, I mean it sticks around like verdigris. There is a patina on my skin that I equate to those years. It shows as an unholy force of empathy, as social anxieties, and a plethora of conflict resolution skills deployable at times of thermostat adjustment. As an author, when I least expect it, I write a character curling over her knees, letting her heartbreak pour through her ribs, just as I witnessed my first term, or penning the same blank shock that follows walking in on self harm. In parenting life, it’s the realisation that teaching your kids to treat clothing stains at a young age isn’t necessarily normal, but dammit, it’s a skill better learned early!
For me, those shapes fit writing fantasy escapism, with real relationships and heartache at its core.
My mind thrives on taking relatable fledgling souls we recognize, and journeying with them to the extraordinary. Characters emerge charred, blackened and full of light, but hopefully whole. I wish I knew where they haunted before they came to me, but like all teens, there’s never time for pointless questions. They show up, catch my hand and run. It’s my job to try—desperately try—to find the hearts they’re looking for, and pass them over. Maybe that’s your heart, your little sister’s, your neighbour’s, or your dad’s. In so many ways, YA reaches hands across the world, which is perfect, because that’s where these guys want to go.
As long as they keep showing up, I’ll be here, loving my family, carving a little piece of rural river life into the shape of an author’s, and working like mad so someone can read my hot messes. I hope the desire to reach into your lives from between printed lines never vacates me, and as a bookgeek? That these characters—love or hate—get the chance to become a part of your family and story, too. That last will always remain the dream, because in the end, what better validation could I possibly have, than your hand upon theirs?
No matter what, if nothing else, simply enjoy.
What more can an author ask? ♡
