Welcome to the bookcase.

I'm your host, Shauna Richards, a sometime writer and a longtime reader.

I invite you to join me as we explore the bookcase and celebrate Virgin Islands authors and talent.

Each week on the books, we'll introduce you to a local author and learn more about them and their work.

A storyteller lives in each of us, and I'm so excited to give our homegrown storytellers a chance to tell their story.

Tonight's selection from the bookcase is ten steps to Kill a King.

And I'm honored to welcome its author, Achieve a Prince Achieve.

Welcome to the bookcase.

Thank you so much for joining us this evening.

Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.

So I'd like for you to take a few seconds and introduce yourself to our audience.

Well, I am a prince.

I am an author, 31 years old.

When I sang for the Virgin Islands.

And I have so much more stories to tell.

Well, that is exciting to hear.

So tonight, we are actually here to talk about your book, Ten Steps to Kill a King, which is a crime mystery.

What inspired you to write this book?

Storytime.

So for a while, I was kind of doing a little survey, kind of little project, and I was asking a lot of people what kind of genres do they really like to read?

And believe it or not, a lot of people would tell me they liked how to step books ten steps to do this kind of books.

And I was like, I can do that.

I can work with that.

So I thought of something that would be a little shocking as a title.

Came up with Ten Steps of Killing a King.

And for a while I was like, I like fantasy.

Should I make it where it's like an Immortal king or something like that?

Whereas, like, you have to do some kind of magic thing, you know?

But I kind of tried to make it more grounded, and I decided to make it more of a crime crime thriller, thriller kind of story.

So and it is definitely a thriller.

In this book, you take us into the underworld, literally, literally into the underworld.

But we are introduced to so many diverse characters.

And and in reading it, there is so much nuance.

And as I was turning the chapters, and you really should have written a longer book by the way.

Okay.

But in internal chapters, you just you think, okay, I've got it, I've got it figured out.

And then you flip a page and say, was it was it hard, you know, to to build out this story?

Yes and no.

When I write a story, I like to create the world itself and then plot my characters in.

All right, Survive.

And how you gonna do it?

We'll figure it out, though, because you got to survive.

It's okay.

Because you're the main character, bro.

I mean, come on.

Maybe he might die.

I don't know.

But I tried to come up with something that is different that no one's ever really seen, but in a way that people are familiar with.

Example, we were talking about Harry Potter earlier and what makes Harry Potter interesting to me okay, has been very interesting to me is yes, does it matter?

Does Dragons is three headed dogs, is Quidditch or stuff like that.

But a lot of the characters are very, very human.

They're very real what their intentions are, what their motivations are, why they do what they do, being muggles or muggle born, and what that experience is like, which is semi racism, I guess we would call it.

So it kind of gives you a real perspective of, yes, these people are wizards, but they do live in the real world, you know, And I still like those kind of grounded stories because that's what life is really like, you know, And it just teaches us interesting story.

Interesting lessons, even though we're in a world that doesn't exist.

So it's interesting to be put in that scenario and be able to read that and see what they do with it.

But as someone born and raised on scene, Kroy And you create this story of essentially an underworld.

Are there elements of Saint Croix that you pulled from in writing your story?

Not really.

Honestly, I got to be really true.

I kind of stayed away from the version after my first book was set in the Virgin Islands, and it wasn't the reason.

There was no reason.

Like, I don't want to be a virgin.

I was right.

It wasn't that.

I just want to kind of create a place where had never been before, and I have different stories that are sort of islands and mythical stories, you know, islands that literally are floating in the air, you know what I mean?

So I kind of was like, let me try something in the city.

I was trying to city someplace like New York, but not New York.

Let's change it.

Let's make it my New York.

And that's what I did.

Kind of like a little Gotham, a little bit of Gotham City.

A little bit, a little bit New York.

I was technically born in Philadelphia.

That's a little bit of Philadelphia.

So I kind of just took a little different typical perspectives, except for just the one that I was raised in.

So what is your hardest challenge in world building?

That's a good question.

It depends on what the world building is.

It depends on what the genre is.

If it's fantasy or anything like that, it might be probably religious beliefs, language, location.

How does the word interact this, the timelines that kind of got us where we were on the timelines were where we are today with the stories being set.

Those things kind of will take me a while to make sure I have it concrete and because I am telling a story in this area, sometimes certain things that happened before might change because of where I am right now.

Like, I can I can go back and change this or this can make sense.

So there's a scene like this out of nowhere to make it feel very rounded and full, and for someone to feel like if they lived in that world, that could actually be something that they can actually feel like they lived there.

Like it really feels lived in.

You know, that's the hardest part sometimes, right?

Because I think as a as a reader and in reading, tend ten steps.

I believed in that world and there wasn't anything that pulled me out of it, which I think sometimes in reading, in reading fantasy and in that genre, you have to be really immersed in it and your characters have to be immersed in it because it can just be something really simple that pulls you out and then your story isn't believable, right?

Was that something that you were really conscious of as as you were writing?

Yeah, definitely.

I definitely want to make sure that if you're reading one of my stories that you forget who you are, that you become that character.

And that's why I want to make sure these characters feel real.

They feel human so you can really feel like you can live in their skin and there's certain things that you might be like, I understand this.

This is kind of rubbed me the wrong way because this is what they're going through.

And I don't feel good knowing that I'm reading this story and this person is going through what I'm going through.

I don't like this, but it does is it's a good thing to be able to know that when someone says something that I wrote, they do feel like they're actually in that world and there's not anything that's going to take them out of it unless they put the book down because someone call them or something.

Unfortunately, that happens, but that's really the best thing about writing fantasy and just to kind of find a way to get people involved and geared and have them keep to turn the page and figure out what's going to happen next and learning more about the world that they're living in and learn more about this creature and that creature.

And how does this work?

How does the magic work?

How does these skills be able to develop over time?

Those are some of the craziest things I love to really write because that's how I feel, like I'm getting involved in the characters themselves.

Because, yeah, I wrote them, I created.

But there's certain things I still want to learn about them myself.

They're going to teach me something too.

I'm like a little gardener.

So when you were growing up, what were you seeing people like yourself in the books that you were reading?

So you reference Harry Potter, but what other books were you reading that really helped to, you know, inform and develop your love of fantasy and fantasy writing Chronicles of Narnia because of the four children being into a whole different other world and will be wrote.

You had a lot of time, especially growing up, where I felt like I was different from a lot of people around me and Caribbean people occlusions me because of how I talk.

I don't really use the cruise.

Your accent that often.

So there was kind of a disconnect and I really loved a series of unfortunate events.

It's not really too much of a fantasy.

Yes, they're fantasy elements, but what the characters go through these kids and they're trying to be the best kids they can be and the nicest kids ever.

But everybody is just so terrible.

my gosh, Everybody is so terrible in those books.

So terrible.

And even the kids, they they have their they have their issues.

You know, one is very talkative and knows a lot of things about books and things like that, but at the same time can be very reserved at certain times.

And one the girl she's a little more takes more of a demand, more of a front seat when it comes to decisions they make because she's good for her hands, you know, I mean, but she even still, she can be a little pretentious at times.

And in the baby is a baby.

She I don't know.

I mean, so those kind of stories like that, I can give you all different kinds of stories that I've read.

I can think of all the different names now.

I even read Insurgents, those that book series.

And just to see what Tryst goes to, because she was raised in a world where she's not going out doing all these crazy, wild things that they do in this new fiction.

She's used to being very reserved and, you know, thinking of others and doing everything for everybody else but for her.

And a lot of those books are really categorized as young adults.

Yeah, absolutely.

But really, the stories are universal.

Absolutely.

And those stories I would still be now as an adult and still feel it.

Still feel it.

So have you gone back to revisit any of those books now as an older reader?

Yes.

And has there been anything that jumped out at you and said, why I wasn't getting this when I was a kid?

Yeah, a lot of things.

A lot of things like watching cartoons.

I don't know, like, I didn't realize that.

Yeah, I didn't realize covers of Carly Dog.

I didn't realize how crazy that show was.

When you watch it now, you know, it was the same thing I read in those books is like, wow, these this is really kind of dark, not dark being just bad but dark being like, Wow, this is very mysterious.

I don't know what's going on here.

Like, and now that I'm kind of learning what's what it really means now, because I'm an adult, I'm like, Dang, I read this as a kid and I loved it, you know, and I still do it just But now you have the benefit of life experience to really understand what these characters are really saying, especially the adult characters.

Like you're not going to know once you get to adult.

Yeah, you know, you're telling these characters in the story, they're not going to stand.

And I'm sitting there like, Whatever.

Brown mama don't like Snape was right, bro.

You were so right.

You and Dumbledore and everybody else.

When did you first start writing?

That's a good question.

I honestly don't know.

I think I started writing when I was just a kid doing poetry.

Okay.

Honestly, just doing poems for fun while short stories are fun, do not really know what I was doing.

For a long time I thought I was going to be a musician or something for a long time that I was going to be not a rapper but a producer and also do like sound effects for movies.

That's one thing I went to school for I really enjoyed doing.

I still do it sometimes, just do a little YouTube, so it's always fun.

But writing, I cannot tell you where I started.

I can tell you when I wrote my first book, Long Story was when I was 14, 15.

I get an assignment for school or just something that you were motivated to do on your own.

I just did it for fun.

It was just a fun experiment that I did.

It was just kind of like a slice of life going from junior high to high school.

What that was like.

New people, new friends fall in love, different things like that.

Certain experiences that I had in my life in high school, I did put in a story different names, different people.

But yeah, that was like the first time I really set down every night and I took like 30 minutes to an hour and just sat there and wrote and it was written terribly.

There was so much misspelling.

There.

Was your first story, Were you already were you starting to delve into fantasy and mysticism and all of those elements yet?

No, no, not yet.

Not yet.

It was just set in What I saw and what I understood.

I didn't really get into fantasy.

Even though I loved fantasy and read it, I didn't really get into it as a writer yet until I got more into college.

Okay.

I started doing that.

And what what triggered that jump for you creatively to say, I think I'm ready now to tackle this genre that I love so much.

For to just tackle writing as an actual as actually something I would love to do.

It was Game of Thrones, the TV show, and it wasn't because of I watched this my God, as good a show because everybody loved it.

That's not what it was.

It was because I realized, my God, this is a book.

And I was like, I have to read this so that was actually the TV show was my introduction to the book.

So I went back and I read it.

I read the series, which is so far beyond.

It's amazing.

Yeah, that that is definitely my favorite book series.

And it is.

Game of Thrones is a great TV show.

It's not my baby.

It could have been it could have literally ended perfectly.

It was still not my favorite, but the books are definitely my favorite when it comes to the book series.

And I read them over and over as much as I can.

And I think just reading Game of Thrones, reading that series, it's really a master class that you could have a fully populated world and have characters that are rich and nuanced.

I did not feel in that entire series that there was any character who was a throwaway, right?

And in your book in Ten Steps, you have a fully populated world and your characters are fully our whole people.

And I thought that was when in reading it and you in your introducing new people.

And of course, the challenge for me as a reader was basing my perceptions on them because I was like, that's, that's a really bad person.

But then somebody else would come along like, Whoa, that's a really bad person.

So great job.

Can I ask you one question?

When you read the story, did you feel and am I going to say I'm a ghost?

Because you know what happens?

But at the end, did you ever think that out of all the things that I created made you feel old as a bad person?

this is even worse.

this is the worst person.

Did you ever feel like Vivian was the worst of all?

No.

Good.

I did not even know what she did at the end.

You know, knowing it's a revenge story.

Even what she did at the end.

You don't think she's a bad person?

No.

Okay.

No, because you have her motivations.

And every one, every character is working through their own sense of justice.

Right.

And in the world that they live in, it made sense not if you were to pull them out and put them in a different environment, a different world, a different story.

Would it make sense?

But in that world that you created?

Yeah.

But you know, as I say, revenge is the best dish served a dish.

Best served cold.

Yes, very cold.

How did you develop Vivian as a character?

Was she based on strong women in your life?

No.

No, not not really.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

So how did.

How did Vivian present herself to you?

When I created Vivian, I didn't think about like I wanted to be a strong woman or anything like that.

I didn't think about Trope.

I wanted her to be the kind of woman who was wounded, who was angry, who was sad, but wasn't afraid.

I would not.

But not the trope of an angry black woman.

No, no, no.

Not just the angry black woman.

I wanted to be angry when it comes to what she's experienced and knowing that everybody else is kind of like not really upset like she is, because through most of the story, she's very pleasant.

She's very sweet.

I love Vivian.

Yeah.

I mean, but there's no that she's there.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's why she's there.

So it's not that she's going to be pleasant because that's just, you know, natural.

Yeah, it is.

But at the same time, she knows.

She's also trying to make sure no one around here knows what her and her associates are doing as they're at the gala.

You know, I mean, so she knows how to play the game.

But I didn't create it to be a trope where she has she's so strong and everything like that.

No, because and I'll actually read from here, if you please.

Who are you sure about?

This person acts.

You know how personal matters are.

And that's why our plan is with Vivian Malcolm.

Tell him if it were up to her, we'd have just let some girls leave some bombs all around the building and just be done with it.

But we're playing a different game.

And the reason why I have that line there is not because, well, Malcolm is coming in to be the guy that's going to like, well, save the world.

Save the world.

We know he has his own thing going well, he's doing is making sure that she doesn't go overboard because he knows that she's upset right now.

She's angry and no one really feel what she feels.

She has no brother around.

Everybody else is basically outside the family.

Her just from that.

Yeah.

Who feels that?

Knows it exactly.

And she knows she knows what she's going through.

And Malcolm has been journey to what she's going through.

He's been there.

He's been there with her.

Exactly.

So he's willing to take a backseat when it comes to this is what I want to do.

So.

cool.

I'm there with you.

I love you.

I'm there with you.

But we're not going to go in there and just do this and destroy everything that you, your father, everybody else is built.

I'm going to do it right.

I'm going to do it right.

Okay.

So how we doing?

This did it.

Well, I can't do this like that.

Okay, well, how would you do this?

Okay, cool.

So we're a team here.

We're doing this together, you know?

I mean, but at the same time, Vivian is the one who is the catalyst for this because she's the one.

She's the key.

She's the one who is grieving here, you know, And Malcolm is just the one that's going to support her.

So like I said, I didn't think about like, well, she's a strong.

This is strong.

No, she is.

She is.

But I just want her to be realistic when it comes to the world she's in and what she's experiencing right now.

And that's why Vivian became who she was and was created to be who she was.

So in your story, in ten Steps, there is a steady march towards the end.

Yes, Every chapter is building on this movement.

Maybe chapters of step here.

Every chapter is a step.

And in writing it, What was your process?

Did you plot out every chapter?

Did you knew the end goal when you started writing it?

You knew that this was how I would end?

Yes and no.

I planned out every step, but I didn't plot out where the story is going to go through out the steps.

I knew that these are the ten steps I want to climb to get to the end.

The fallout.

So I knew the characters were at this time.

I knew what they were doing.

I knew the reason they were here before I decided to do steps or anything like that.

I knew why they were here.

When I created the steps, I was like, okay, well, we need this.

We need these things.

Certain things we need.

If I'm going to do it this way, we need certain things.

But as the characters maneuvered to these steps, that was something that just kind of happened.

As I write the story, you know, that was the gardening part.

The architect part was just me actually having the actual steps set up.

But it was strange to see it that way.

Like, how do you have certain things like a certain thing set this way in and have your character just maneuver your way through it?

It works.

Trust me.

It works that you had.

But the the the trigger to this story happened before the story started.

Yes.

Certain things I already knew was going to happen.

But and so we're coming in and we're finding these characters who have their motivation.

Yes, they already have their motivations.

I know what they're doing.

And everyone has a different motivation.

Yes.

Yes.

So So you've got some you've got some really a lot of things in there.

You have you have romance.

Revenge, crime.

Yes.

Mystery.

Did I miss anything?

I think that's it.

Yeah.

Okay.

deception.

So, you know, so a real a real crime story.

And honestly, when it comes to the romance, I think that Joy and Percy's romance is more of the reason they're doing what they're doing than Vivien and Malcolm.

Vivien Malcolm already established They already are.

I love.

They already have what they're doing.

They're already ready to be engaged and everything.

Joy and Percy is at a point where they're they're them being together is dangerous, you know?

So they're, they're, they're because of them for each other, you know?

I mean, yes.

Joy is Vivian's friend.

Yes.

Percy is works for Malcolm.

But overall, their love is what really motivates them even more than Vivian and Malcolm.

And even though we are in this world where there are a lot of very dark and mysterious things going on, there's still humor and still laughter.

And they did try really hard.

Was that hard for you to insert that in there, or were your characters just living their lives?

I created a few characters.

That's not like the comic relief, but I let them be a little more.

There's always going to be a few characters in a crime story where everything to him is everything to them as a joke.

He's dead.

Okay, that's funny.

You know, it is like that.

There's going to be guys like that.

So that's that's that's what made it easier for me to write jokes.

I'm like, I'm not really a comedy writer, honestly.

I tried to do comedy and YouTube, but that's a challenge as well.

So yeah, it was kind of a challenge, but I did create some characters, so when I do those jokes, it wasn't out of place.

It was geared to the right people.

So again, you know, feel is genuine.

Do you see yourself writing in other genres?

So this is a crime, a mystery.

Do you see yourself writing in in any other and any other forms?

I'm writing one right now, too.

Speculative history.

I am writing a story about not low fantasy, high fantasy, but a story where it is geared towards slavery, where these people find a slave and try to keep them hidden.

So that's more of a suspense, a little bit of thriller, but more of a suspense.

I love worldbuilding, so I have a few stories that are just worldbuilding where there's no main characters.

The main characters is a country or a kingdom or a family.

I have one story where for a thousand years no one died, and then after a thousand years, the first woman to ever give birth who is like just turned thousand.

She dies so now everybody can die.

Death has been introduced, you know, I mean, so that story's not there's no main characters.

It's just the world itself is more of a speculative history or speculative evolution is what the term is.

But because I'm not taking humans to a different planet and terraforming planets and creating different species, I don't consider it speculative evolution as I just consider speculative history.

So in getting all your books from your head onto the page and out of the public, are you working with a publisher or are you self-publishing?

I was working with a publisher.

Unfortunately, my publisher said that we don't do fiction anymore, Mr.

Prince.

And I said, dang it.

That wasn't ready to publish yet even then.

So even if he said, We'll publish this one for you, but just after that, nothing.

I wasn't ready, you know.

So I will be doing self-publishing.

There is a woman that speaks that calls me from the States about publishing as well.

But I'm not ready for the manuscripts are not ready yet.

I am ready to publish again, but I want to make sure my manuscripts are prepared.

So are you going to be focusing on still novellas or are you going to be doing short stories?

Are you aiming for a novel?

What?

What?

What is your future work look like?

One novella next year, just speculative history and one novel as well.

Next year I'm hoping to have to publish next year I would like to do a book of short story, which I've already started.

I have so many different projects I'm working on one Are you a full time writer?

Not professionally.

I do have my regular 9 to 5.

I work at Virgin.

I was partners in recovery, so that's what I do there.

But I do write every day and that was the question.

How do you balance how do you balance the demands of your day job with being creative?

Just to find the time is really just finding time.

I like to either measure by share my time, or a set amount of words.

I would say between 500 to 1000 words a day, which can probably be three or four pages depending.

Or I just say I just want to make sure I have 30 minutes or an hour today day to put some work in.

And then the same thing with my YouTube channel.

I have to find 30 minutes to an hour every day, if not more, every day.

So do you write best in the morning at night?

What's your process like?

Not a time is more of a feeling, not a time I can wait for inspiration and inaugurate little first thing in the morning.

I really get up in the morning just right now because I'm feeling it and I would try and be like, No, this is not working right now.

I'll try later and later I'll be better sometimes.

The whole day would not be a writing day and I just won't do it.

You know, I don't want to force anything because then if I already wrote it down, it's going to be months, maybe until I come back and look at the edit and be like that.

I wasn't fully ready when I wasn't fully in the spirit when I wrote this.

I hate to change that.

I just waste my time.

So real quickly, what's your tip for any aspiring writer out there?

What's the tip?

I'll give you the cliche one.

I'll give you a non cliche one.

The first cliché one is just to do it.

Have an idea to do it, Take the time.

Don't overthink it.

First, you need to put the words on a page.

And once you start doing that and get comfortable doing that, then decide.

Do a little short story and just yeah, just start building from there.

Great.

From there.

It's been a pleasure to learn more about our local talent at Sea Prince and his book Ten Steps to Kill a Prince.

For more information on this book or any of the books featured on this program, visit our Web site at WW w TJX Dawg.

We appreciate your support of our local authors and we'll see you next week when we take another break from the bookies.