Paige E. Ewing
Paige writes about superheroes and sentient cities, were-spiders and gun-loving fairies, werewolves and fighter pilots. By day, Paige writes articles and technical books for O’Reilly Publishers about analytics software and data architecture. In her spare time, Paige loves to shoot arrows and throw axes and spears. She lives in the middle of Texas, and will show you far too many pictures of her garden if you let her. She once invented a way to grow food on Mars that NASA liked, and has a cute trophy to show for it. Her dogs and horses are unimpressed.
Facebook: @paige.roberts.507
Instagram: @paigeewing_author
Favorite non-reading activity?
The two things that I love doing most that don’t involve books are gardening and SCA archery. My husband and I moved out to 40 acres on a rocky hillside a few years ago. The land used to be a cattle ranch, and I’ve spent the last few years turning our yard of rocks and cactus into roses and daisies. I have spent many a happy afternoon chasing butterflies for pictures. Every bit of nice weather sees me outdoors, either planting and weeding, or practicing with my bow. We have a nice little range that my husband and I have put together, but we both like shooting with a group better than alone. I’m the local marshal, aka SCA referee, for the closest group to us, and I help run a practice for as many folks as show up twice a month.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
All too often. It’s endemic to this industry that the goalposts for success are always moving. Are you an author? Have you published a story? Yes, well then, have you published a novel? Did you self-publish? Well, that doesn’t count. Oh, but you don’t have an agent. You do? Yeah, but you’re not on a best-seller list. Or, you haven’t won a prestigious award. Oh, you have? Well, yeah, but will your next book sell, too?
There’s no end to it. There’s no stake in the ground that you can ever set that means, I’ve arrived. I’m successful. I’m an author. So, there’s always some niggling part of you that says you’re not really good enough. The best advice I’ve ever gotten is: Celebrate the wins. As you go along, there is no end goal, so what you need to do is glory in each accomplishment. You sold a story! You wrote a whole novel! Each accomplishment isn’t just a stepping stone to something else, it’s a win in itself. Give yourself a pat on the back and a “Woo hoo! Way to go!” And when you’re wondering if you’re the real deal, remember back when you just dreamed about how cool it would be to do those things that are now in your rearview mirror.
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
I write for a living. My day job is explaining how awesome some really complicated data analysis software is, and why everyone needs it, and how it’s going to change the world. I give speeches that I wrote at tech conferences, publish articles that I wrote in prestigious journals. I write website copy and blog posts and new feature announcements and explainer documentation. I’m a writer every day of my life.
For me, at least, being an author feels like a different thing. When I publish a fiction story I wrote about AI in the Learning to Be Human anthology alongside writers like Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells, I’m an author. When I write a fantasy fiction book with characters I created in a different world I invented, I’m an author. For me, the tricky bit is when I co-write an O’Reilly technical book on the software architecture of a complex database, or how to get your machine learning into production faster. Is that the work of an author, or a writer? I think in the end, the skills are the same, it’s just a matter of how each one makes me feel.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I draw, paint, and dance. When I have time. The creative piece of me that wants to draw and paint feels like the same bit of my soul that drives me to plant flowers and chase butterflies. Dancing has always felt more like joy pushing its way out of my body. My time is so limited these days that I had an unfinished painting sitting there for more than two years. But dancing is something that just happens, any time I’m feeling particularly wonderful or the music I’m listening to fills me to bursting. It has to explode out somewhere.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
Other than English, the only language I’ve ever been truly fluent in was ASL, American Sign Language. I taught at the Texas School for the Deaf for years before I made the jump into the tech industry. That understanding that words and meaning are not synonymous with sound has found its way into several of my stories.
I’ve studied other languages in the past, French and Japanese, mostly. While I’ve never been fluent in either, I catch a few words here and there in both, and understand a lot more about the culture and history of both simply from having studied the language.
Right now, I’m learning Spanish. My son-in-law and the many members of his large family are from Puerto Rico. It bugs me a lot that I can’t have a conversation with my own family members. So, Duolingo is part of my day every day. Having lived most of my life in Texas, I can’t help but know a few words here and there, but it’s remarkable how very different Tex-Mex Spanish is from the Spain Spanish I’m learning, and both are different from the Puerto Rican Spanish my in-laws speak. One interesting thing is that I’d already started writing a paranormal romance book with a Puerto Rican main character before my daughter got married. Now that I have a family full of Puerto Ricans, that character is likely to be much more fleshed out and genuine before the book finds a good publisher.
