In a world where stories often emerge from our childhood dreams, Karen L. Mead’s journey is a testament to the transformative power of creativity. Inspired by her early love for comic books, Karen navigated the complexities of storytelling, ultimately embracing the novel format to bring her vision to life in the Demonic Café Series. With its rich tapestry woven from elements of Jewish and Christian mythology, her work invites readers into a unique blend of fantasy and reality, exploring themes of identity, self-worth, and the challenges of adolescence. Join us as Karen shares the inspirations behind her series, the personal experiences that shaped her characters, and the invaluable lessons she’s learned along the way.
- Can you share what inspired you to start the Demonic Cafe Series and how you incorporated elements of Jewish and Christian mythology into your story?
When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a comic book artist. I had a webcomic that I updated through college and beyond, but I just couldn’t draw at the rate I needed to in order to be successful in that field. It took until my 30s to realize that I could save myself a lot of heartache by just writing the story as a novel series rather than having to laboriously draw the whole thing, and thus the Demonic Café Series was born. Now that I’m older, I appreciate the irony that I thought writing novels was the “easier” option, because it’s certainly not easy!
As a teen, I was a big fan of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, and that series used ancient Jewish lore as part of the world-building. I was so fascinated I hunted down some of the original texts, like the apocryphal Book of Enoch and found them really interesting. As I was changing the original comic storyline to work as a book series, I realized I wanted a mystical element, so it was natural to me to look to the Book of Enoch for that. It’s not immediately obvious that it’s inspired by that text, but as the story goes on, more and more elements from Enoch (and some other elements of Jewish and Christian mythology) got weaved in. The basic story from Enoch—that angels came to Earth to shepherd the humans and ended up marrying human women who gave birth to monsters—is foundational for the series. Which may sound weird considering it’s also a series that’s very much about teenagers hanging out in a coffee shop, but that’s how it all came together.
- What personal experiences or influences helped shape the themes and characters in your series?
The original heroine of my comic was Aeka, a beautiful blond girl with a tragic past. I created a friend for her named Cassie, dark-haired and a little plump. I gave basically no thought to Cassie when I first drew her, I just wanted someone more realistic to highlight Aeka’s ethereal nature. However, the more I explored this little world, the more Cassie’s story appealed to me. What’s it like, to be the person created just to back-up for the main character? In my life, I’ve often felt like I’m just a background character in someone else’s story, and I gave that to Cassie to grapple with. That’s the nature of Cassie: she doesn’t believe she should be the heroine, she keeps waiting for the real heroine of the story to take over, and it’s a mixed blessing when she realizes that’s never going to happen, that she really is important and has to deal with the responsibility that brings. I think I’m still dealing with that in my own life, so it’s cathartic to write about.
- How did you manage the complexities of intertwining various plot threads in your series? Was there a specific moment where everything started to come together?
I’m a discovery writer, so I didn’t plan much in advance. I had some vague ideas for events that I wanted to happen, but I never sat down and plotted out any of the books. For me, the magic of writing happens when you have all these different plot threads that seem discordant, but you somehow find a way to make them work together. I find that playing fast and loose with plotting allows me to come up with much more creative solutions to story problems than I would have come up with if I sat down and tried to draw up grand plans.
- What have been some of the most rewarding moments in writing the Demonic Cafe Series?
If I had to pick one, the most rewarding moment of the series for me would be in the fourth book, where Cassie takes the SATs and a literal Apocalypse starts going on around her. There’s kind of this horror around the SATs, the idea that if you don’t do well on the test you’ll ruin your whole future. So, when Cassie takes the SATs, the world is literally ending, and I think it says a lot about what’s at stake for people at that point in their lives. Not the test itself so much, but just the fact that the decisions you make as a teen—where you’re going to college, what field you’re going to aim for, etc.—are just such huge decisions, and it really can feel like the fate of the world is riding on them. I wonder everyday how my life would have changed if I’d made different choices when I was 17.
- Can you describe a particularly challenging moment you faced while writing and how you overcame it?
Writing Book Five of Demonic Café was challenging, because I had just done the Apocalypse; what comes after that? You reach a point where you can’t raise the stakes anymore, so you can’t just keep inventing a bigger threat. Instead, the thrust of the story became about how the balance of power had changed; how the first book took place in a very male-dominated world, and now everything has been turned around. I had a lot of problems with that book, and I know it could have been better, but I’m glad I was at least able to find a way to keep the characters learning and growing.
- How has writing this series affected your mental health and well-being?
I feel like this series has helped me deal with the conflicted feelings I’ve always had towards religious beliefs. I’m not devout, but I do think there’s a lot of value in these ancient texts that people struggled to write down thousands of years ago, and that should be respected. So I kind of invented my own religion; not literally, but now I feel like I’ve made peace with those feelings and I can be respectful of religion without being an adherent to any specific belief system. Cassie also goes through a kind of sexual awakening, and I think that helped me make peace with my sexuality—or rather, the fact that I have a sexuality at all. I’ve always been inhibited about that and seeing how Cassie navigates growing into womanhood allowed me to explore some territory I wouldn’t have touched in real life.
- Have you ever experienced writer’s block or self-doubt? If so, how do you deal with these challenges?
I’ve been trying to write a mermaid book, which will hopefully become my second series, for seriously about a decade. I’ve tried to work on it so many times and I always hit a wall where I just feel like I can’t think of anything interesting for the characters to do that works with the themes I want the book to have. I start to doubt that there’s really a story there, whereas rationally, I know there’s a million stories there, if I can find them. I’ve recently started hacking away at it again, and I’m doing a little bit more of conscious plotting; not planning out the whole book, but thinking at least a few scenes ahead so I don’t get stuck. I’m really hoping I’ve found the solution to the problem and I’ll finish the book this year, but we’ll see.
- What strategies do you use to balance your creative work with other aspects of your life?
I recently got my MA in English and started teaching English 101 classes, and so far, I really haven’t been writing any fiction while I’m teaching. Going into this fall, this is when I really want to learn how to budget my time and keep creating even when I’m busy. The one element that always seems to get lost is keeping up with the cleaning, because I get overwhelmed and keep putting things off. I’m trying to psyche myself up by remembering I can be writing in my mind as I clean stuff. I also do some work as a freelance writer, so improving my time management is going to be really important going forward.
- What advice would you give to other women who are looking to start their own creative projects or writing endeavors?
The best advice ever, I think, is always just to do it, whatever it is; keep doing it until you get where you want to be. But I think it’s helpful to know that what you’re creatively passionate about can change. If you had told 20-year-old me that I was going to give up comics and move into writing novels, I wouldn’t have believed it, because I was just so passionate about comics at that time. Just because your passion changes doesn’t mean it’s not still just as valid as your original feelings.
- What role has community or support networks played in your writing journey?
I recently joined Scribophile and started taking part in their morning writing accountability meeting when I can make it. I don’t know why it makes such a big difference, because we’re mostly just all typing in silence, but coming together as a group at a pre-scheduled time makes it easier for me to concentrate. It’s largely thanks to the accountability group that I’ve started to break down the walls in the mermaid book project. In the future, I hope I can find some authors who I have a good connection with and we can all be accountability partners together. But I’m still just at the very beginning of putting that together.
- What future projects or goals are you excited about, and how do you plan to approach them?
I’m looking forward to writing more books in the Demonic Café series. I think of Book Four of that series as being like “the canonical ending,” and everything that comes after that is just fun. Of course there will still be problems for Cassie to solve, but it feels like the series has fulfilled the goals I had for it at the beginning and now it could conceivably go anywhere; it’s very exciting. I also just started a podcast where I review paranormal books, since I love reviewing, but probably isn’t the brightest idea from a time management standpoint…we’ll have to see how that goes.
IG/Threads: @karenmead_author
