Talking To: Niamh Caldwell

We caught up with Niamh Cadlwell to discuss her debut dystopian and fantasy novel ‘Splintered’. The book follows Calluna, who is desperate to win a one-way ticket to a better life. But when a diary full of secrets exposing her perfect society falls into her lap, Calluna’s life and her goals change forever. For fans of Delirium, Legend, The Hunger Games and all things twisted, ‘Splintered’ is an NA fantasy about a world hell bent on perfection torn apart by the very woman it created.

So, Splintered just came out a month ago. How are you feeling about it?

It's still really weird because it doesn't really feel real to me, because I've been trying to publish it for so long now. I had someone message me today, just some random person, saying “I really liked it” and it's so strange because it’s like, “oh, wow, it's actually out there in the real world”. I don't really feel like it should be because it's been sat on my computer so long, so it’s really weird but really exciting as well.

So for our readers who haven't yet read the book (and if you are in this category - what are you are waiting for?), can you give a spoiler-free overview of what the book is about?

It's about a girl called Calluna who was born into a society that demands perfection in terms of physical perfection and performance perfection, but behind closed doors, you can kind of do whatever you want. And it's her realisation that the world that she lives in is not as perfect as it seems. When she helps out a friend and breaks the law her world starts to shatter and splinter and she realises that who she is is not who she's supposed to be. Then she goes seeking imperfection, basically.

I think that when I read it, the one thing that I thought was because you just said about who she was or who she wasn't supposed to be, it taught me something very important; that we're not supposed to be perfect, even though society tells us that we should be.

Yeah, I definitely feel like that was my main inspiration. On social media you present yourself in one way, through pictures and through posts, there is the pressure of the perfect standard and the pressure of having that and maintaining that perfect life; it's just not reasonable, it's not doable. Who you are behind the social media, that is not the same person that you present yourself as, that was my main reason for writing it really.

What inspired the story?

I always say two different things. When I was 13, I was in the car and I had just gone to the cinema, I can't even remember what I’d watched now, but it was really dark outside and I was looking out of the window and I saw the moon reflected in my pupil and it gave me the whole idea of ‘what if the colour was in the pupil, instead of in the iris?’, like an eye modification. I thought that was really cool and just noted it down on my Blackberry and then I left it. And then after that, I feel like the real foundations of it is was when I was doing GCSE English; we were looking at Dorian Grey and Jekyll and Hyde and duality. It’s the same thing with Jekyll and Hyde; how he was a respectable man, he was wealthy and had a great position in society and it meant that he was forgiven and it was assumed that he couldn't be doing these terrible things. That's where the main idea came from; duality. Also a woman's place is in the home; all of those kind of things felt really important.

What's the meaning behind the title?

So I actually had a different title before which was The Pursuit of Imperfection. I thought that was really long and then I thought to myself “who actually is Calluna and what does she actually go through?” I realised the book is the journey of someone who thinks they know who they are and then they just completely get splintered by everything they go through; what happens at the end as well and unlearning the indoctrination she had to go through. It's breaking down her character and she now has to go into the second book, trying to figure out how she's going to piece herself back together and who she's going to be when she does.

I found that really interesting because I think we see this frequently, especially at the start when she's doing her test. We see this character that is very much a law abiding citizen and then towards the end she just changes completely. It was nice to see her character development.

Yeah, definitely. It took me a long time to get that character development in there properly, I changed it so many times since first writing it. At the beginning it was more that she had no idea what was going on and she was perfectly fine with society, whereas towards the end she knows that something is not 100% there; like she shouldn't be helping Carolyn, but she wants to because she knows that's not right for someone to have to suffer that way just for something so small. She does question it a little bit and then having the main event break it, that was really difficult at first because you obviously don't want to have her delve into being a completely different person straight away. I want to explore that a lot more in the sequel as well; who she actually is.

I think it was quite interesting to see her very slowly change entirely, and I think that the starting scene was really significant in showing how she did have this very tiny idea that the society they were living in was actually quite flawed in its structure, but all she needed was just that little push to see it entirely.

Yeah, definitely.

So this was independently published. Can you go through the process of how that was for you?

Yeah. So I tried to get it traditionally published for ages. I started to query right in the middle of covid and publishers just basically said, ‘we have so many of these in the same genre (fantasy dystopian) in our mailboxes.’ I just kind of thought to myself, ‘if no one else is going to do it, I might as well do it myself because there's no point waiting, and it's sitting there not getting done.’

So at the time I'd met a few people through Tik-Tok, especially Jasmine Watson who just published her debut Torn. And I messaged her because we've become friends on Tik-Tok and I was like, ‘how did you do it?’ and she was so helpful. She went through Ingram Sparks which is a publishing website and she talked me through how to do it. She gave me some contacts for the cover and then it was basically just a process of trying to figure out how to go through it because I don't feel like it's ever really discussed how to self publish. It's always kind of ‘find a literary agent and then they'll find your publisher and the cover design and editing is done for you’.

It was a really cool experience to do it for myself because I got so much say in it, especially with how I wanted the cover to look. I got different arts made and I got to do the editing. I think it's awesome but also quite daunting if you don't really know anything. If I hadn’t been friends with Jasmine and other people on Tik-Tok, I definitely would have really struggled to self-publish.

I think your Calluna side was coming out when you self-published.

Definitely. It was so scary, but I was like, if I don't do it and if I keep querying and it keeps getting rejected, then I'm just going to accept that, but I thought I might as well just do it.

How long has the book been in the works? And how did you find the planning stage?

I think it’s been kind of in the works since I was fourteen or fifteen, so nine years, which is a long time and obviously, like I say, it's such a different book from when I first wrote it. But I think I officially started working on it when I went to university when I was eighteen. And it was really weird because obviously, I had to go back and go through all of the stuff I'd already written. I had to pick out the parts that were usable, and pick out the characters that I still liked and edit such a big amount. I think planning was probably one of my favourite parts; I'm really meticulous with planning. I have the book in my hand right now. I've literally been doing it today. I'm still editing the book because planning is my favourite thing.

I had everything on big sheets and loads of different colour charts. University really helped with planning as well because I did creative writing and they kind of taught you how to do things like the hero's journey and the character archetypes; it was just so helpful to learn how to do all that stuff and the pacing. And also, I submitted sections of my book for assignments, which was really helpful as well, because it meant everyone was workshopping it so I had proper feedback on it.

Who's your favourite character?

I don't know, I feel like it's so hard to pick one. I definitely feel that I liked writing Kellan and Azhani the most, but also I really liked writing Alfie as well. It's such a weird thing because you messaged me saying you liked Alfie and I was like, ‘yeah, I really love Alfie’, but I love him so much! He's not really in the first book a lot but I'm really biased towards him.

I feel like I grew to dislike Theodore at the end.

Oh yeah, me too. That's my favourite thing because when I sent out my arc boxes I always had people at the beginning saying they loved Theo and that he was so great, and then they'd message me when it gets to the end say they hated Theo now. That is my favourite character development of all time!

I think Kellan has quite good character development as well because at the start you find him pretty annoying and then towards the end, just as Calluna starts to warm up to him, I think the reader starts to warm up to him as well.

Yeah, that's definitely something I tried to do with Theo and Kellan. They were perfect opposites at the beginning but also opposites at the end, but in a different way. This is because who Calluna is when she first meets them and who she is at the end of the book is a completely different person; it's like they awakened to who they actually are because she needs different things in those different moments.

I think Calluna softens because Kellan strengthens her.

Definitely. I just actually loved writing Kellan so much, I love his sarcasm but I also like the soft moments as well. I think I like the versatility of his character, the different tones of his character, more than anyone else.

Our protagonist Calluna grows into this incredibly inspiring, independent young lady. What was the reasoning behind shaping her character into this?

I think mainly I just wanted to show that if you feel like you don't really belong that it doesn't really mean anything in the end. It's all about who you actually are and the strength you actually have, and I think it was really important for me to show that she's overcoming the trauma and the indoctrination, and that it's not her physical beauty that gives her that, it's who she becomes at the end of it. So I think that was really important for me to get across.

Do you think that in some sense you wrote this book for yourself, in terms of just trying to empower yourself; for your younger self and maybe even your current self too?

Yeah, I definitely think so because obviously I do still struggle with feeling like I don't meet a certain beauty standard because I've always been bigger. I've had all my friends growing up really skinny and it was a lot to deal with and I feel like a lot of times I'll come back to the book, and even when I'm writing the sequel, and it reminds me that it doesn't really matter because it's just a surface value thing. That was why it was so important to me to make her dad the way he was. For example, he’s the best person in that section of society, he's not a nice person, it doesn't matter that he's perfect physically and how he acts outside; he is still a monster. So it doesn't really matter what you look like because she's physically perfect, and she's still not happy with how she looks. You'll never be happy with how you look.

I really love the diversity in this book. Where did you get the idea from to make a diverse cast list?

I went to a lecture at university and there was a children's author and she put on the screen the statistics of the representation in children's books, and it’s something like 86% of characters in children's books are white and then 15% of animals, and it was something like 3% were people of colour. I just thought to myself ‘that is actually insane’; the animals get more representation than people of colour and that is ridiculous to me because that's not how the real world actually is, not everyone is white or straight. That's why it was so important to have not only ethnic diversity but also sexuality and different body types. Like Meredith is a plus-size person, Azhani is midsize and Farren has a more masculine build. Not everyone has the same size and not everyone's the same colour and that was really important to me because as someone that is bigger, I never really had any representation in books growing up and I know how sad that made me feel. And I don't want anyone to feel like they can't be represented, or they can't have someone that they can recognise and say ‘that's me, that’s who I am.’ That's why that's so important. It shouldn't be completely different just because it’s fantasy.

We see quite a few romantic interests emerge. Which is your favourite?

I don't really know because I'm very biased towards Kellan because I know what's going to happen in the sequel. I kind of like Azhani a little bit as well. I think they do different things for Calluna. That was really important; I wanted all the love interests to be different things. So Alfie was like that comfort childhood crush that you can always rely on that's like your best friend and then Theo’s the person you think you need and the person that seems perfect on paper, but they're actually not. And then Kellan's the choice that you’re like ‘I don't think that's going to be good for me’, but it's really passionate and bright.

Calluna talks about having an electric feeling with both Azhani and Kellan.

Yeah, definitely. And I feel like with Azhani as well, it's a different thing. It's ‘is it what she wants in the moment or is it what she wants, long-term?’ I think I like exploring different types of love.

The book handles some pretty tough topics with a trigger warning at the start. What was the reasoning behind addressing these types of topics?

I wanted to put them in there because these are things that I have gone through myself. And I feel like people can identify with characters that go through it and who can process it and deal with it. And it's not always that you deal with it in the perfect way and you don't always deal with things how you should do, or how you're supposed to. I like that people can see that, sometimes it's okay to be messy and it's okay to have these feelings and be so broken by something, but that you can also build yourself back up afterwards as well. You can take the time to heal yourself, but sometimes it does take time and sometimes it is very difficult.

What books are you reading at the moment?

I recently finished reading A Song Below Water which was so, so good. And now I'm currently reading These Vengeful Hearts and also The Love Hypothesis as well.

I assume you're also doing a re-read of Splintered as well to prep you for the second book?

I'm always going through it. I've got so many tabs because I've even found grammatical errors, and it's so crazy because I edited it so many times. I don't understand how I've managed to have just silly mistakes in there, but I've been going through it recently and pulling out ideas for the sequel so I can make sure I have everything that happened properly in my head and structure the sequel. And I'm also trying to figure out some spin-offs; I've got three spin-offs I want to do so I'm pulling ideas to inform those.

So what can we expect in the second book of the duology? And do you have any idea of when it will be released?

The second one deals a lot with Calluna’s grief because of what happens at the end. I feel like it is a lot darker because it explores grief, depression, suicide and dealing with what happened at the raid. I feel like a lot of books that I've read don't really dedicate a lot of time to actual grieving and the aftermath of battle. So definitely her grief. Definitely a lot more action, a lot more from different love interests as well because I'm still not sure who I want her to end up with. I knew what I wanted to happen, but the characters changed and they informed the narrative and they no longer fit into what it was supposed to be. There will be a lot more from Alfie as well because he's now in that world; I think I definitely want to explore him adjusting to it because I feel like Calluna adjusted to it a little quicker than Alfie because he's not had that same realisation that she had before she left. He didn't have that dramatic event where he realised that things in this society were wrong. I definitely want to explore Kemal, Meredith, Azhani and Farren, I want to make sure that they all get their own special moment.

It was interesting to hear their stories and why they are the way they are.

Yeah, that's definitely something that I love to do because every single character has a backstory, whether or not it actually gets told. I know it's there and I know that's what's informing their decisions, but I definitely want to focus on more of the minor characters in the second book.

So the final question is, is there anything in the works beyond the Broken duology?

Yes, so I'm currently working on three spin-offs from the original world. I'm working on a spin-off that explores Chris and Darwin's relationship, from when he first met Darwin to obviously the end of this book where we know what happens. Also what happened after Calluna leaves Saddon. I really wanted to see and explore what happens after she's left, and how the world evolves now that she's gone and what they do following that. I also have one that explores the young Emperor coming to Earth and how Saddon actually got formed. And then my final one is such an obscure one because it’s about Kellan on the hill and when he speaks about the man with seven daughters and sons.

You’ve got a lot planned, I’m quite excited for it.

You can get a copy of ‘Splintered’ here.