From Stuck to Story | Kristen Illarmo

The Scene That Stopped Her Cold: How Kristen Illarmo Writes Duologies That Burn Bright and Fast

What happens when a character takes the reins, and you’re brave enough to follow? In this episode, YA sci-fi and fantasy author Kristen Illarmo reveals how a poetry-loving kid from South Carolina became a New Orleans novelist crafting propulsive two-book series with heart, heat, and high stakes.

Kristen opens up about the scene that stalled her for years, and how she finally broke through. We talk about:

 Writing Process & Story Craft

• Why outlines fail her (but ruthless synopses don’t)
• How she sniffs out plot holes at the exact midpoint
• The moment she stopped writing for an “imaginary reader” and found her voice

 Building Worlds & Characters

• How travel shaped Enzo Cruz and the eco-drama at the story’s core
• Why pairing him with Maddie sparked the story’s tension and soul
• Astral projection, solar flares, and genre-bending sci-fi/fantasy blends

Creative Confidence & Craft Fears

• What to do when a scary scene blocks you for years
• How motherhood cracked open her imagination
• Her refreshingly honest take on revision, character agency, and trusting your gut

 Indie Author Life

• Meeting readers IRL at book fests and art markets
• Tools she swears by: StoryOrigin, BookFunnel, Voracious Readers, and more
• Her marketing mix: TikTok, Facebook ads, newsletters, and knowing when to call in an editor

Plus: What she’s reading now (hi, Marie Lu!), why she chooses duologies over trilogies, and how a sky-high TBR pile can feel like a promise instead of pressure.

The best way to reach Kristen is via her website.

If you're a writer, reader, or process nerd, this one’s packed with insight and inspiration. Hit play, then tell us: what’s the hardest scene you ever had to write?

👉 Subscribe, share with your writing crew, and leave a review to help more storytellers find the show!

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Links to Stephen's incredible novels:

The Death Letter
The Bondage of Innocents

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Welcome everyone to Stories from Cold Springs. I'm your host, Jay Stephen Bean. This is a podcast about storytelling and creativity. And our guest today is a storyteller, and she's very creative once you hear about the type of writing that she does. She's an author. Very proud and pleased to present her today, Kristen Dilarmo.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Oh, it's a pleasure. It is a pleasure. Let's do this. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, your upbringing, where you were raised, and that sort of thing? Our listeners like to know who they're hearing.

Roots, Early Writing, And Poetry

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yeah, definitely. Love the opportunity. So I am originally from South Carolina. I have been in New Orleans now since 2004. So everybody does a quick mind check and says, yes, that's pre-Katrina. And yes, I did come back. My roots are in South Carolina. My father is a tobacco farmer. That may be of interest to some of your listeners. They don't grow much tobacco in Mississippi, I know, but that's what we do over there in South Carolina, or at least we used to. I started writing in high school in earnest. I really uh started with poetry, and I went to the South Carolina Governor's School for Creative Arts for Poetry. At that time it was only a summer program, but it was one of the best things that I ever did around that time. I mean, it was just a phenomenal program. Won a few contests for poetry writing, really enjoyed it, did some poetry writing in college as well, also started with short stories in college, but really couldn't find my feet with short story writing. And as strange as it seems to be now, I could not think about writing a novel at all. Like I couldn't think about how anybody could do that. How could anybody come up with the ideas, you know, the storyline that you would need to carry an entire novel? It just seemed so out of grasp, out of reach for me at that time. And I guess maybe it was because I was just, I was dedicated to the short form. I was still dedicated to poetry. I then, you know, left college. I went traveling, as you do, as some people do. I did. Traveled for a while, foot loose and fancy-free.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

What was your major in college, by the way?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Philosophy.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Philosophy, okay.

Travel Years And Settling In New Orleans

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah. Philosophy with a with an undergrad, uh, an English uh minor, and I was doing a lot of writing classes in poetry and short stories. Went off to travel, moved to Seattle, went to Europe, came back, was living in Philadelphia for a couple of years, but also kept kind of going back to Europe at that time. Definitely fell in love with Berlin. Oh my gosh, Berlin is such an amazing city. Although I can't I can't be there during the winter. I can't do winters, which is why I left Philadelphia. So then I came down to New Orleans and decided to straighten up and get a real job. And people kept telling me that is not what you go to New Orleans for. And I said, Well, it is what I could go to New Orleans for because I had history here already. My sisters lived here, they went to Loyola. Well, one of my sisters went to Loyola, the other one packed up everything and moved the first time she came to visit. I kind of knew the city well and knew that I could set up shop. And that is what I did over time. I got a master's here, not at UNO, Go Privateers, not in writing. I did not get um my uh MFA. I doubt that I ever will, but who knows? Who knows? It would be something amazing to do to study. I would just love to do that. Those are the things that took me around. Oh, and and to bring me back to how I was able to kind of start writing novels, which I definitely have now. I've I've done three are out in the world. It was with my first child. For some reason, after I had my my oldest, the ideas sort of started coming, and they really haven't stopped. And as hard as it is to find time to write when you have little ones running around, I did find that time, and I and I kind of haven't stopped since. I was really able to hone the craft of storytelling then.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Let's go back a little bit. I'm always interested. When did you first start getting that little feeling that you wanted to write? Um for me it was sixth grade, but when did you first start feeling that?

SPEAKER_02 4:39

I think for me it was probably eighth grade. Our English teacher, I I remember it clearly. Our English teacher asked us to write a short story. And my first thought was, that's crazy. My second thought was, okay, great. So I wrote a short story that um she felt was extremely depressing and called my mother. And my mother is a therapist, and my mother had to take that very seriously, and you know, so then I had to have a talking to, hey, you know, eighth grade is rough, right? So you gotta write a rough story.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

But you were about 14, I guess, then.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Uh thirteen, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

13, whatever the age it was. Had you read a lot before that? Were you a reader?

SPEAKER_02 5:20

I was a reader, yes. Yes. I think around somewhere around that time, probably seventh grade, was when I read A Separate Piece, which was one of my favorite books, and really, yeah, really opened things up for me. But as a child, I was reading The Little Princess. Man, that's a favorite. Did you ever read that? I've read that. Oh, I love that book. Oh, I think I've read that probably six times. There were lots of other things I was reading as well, but not a whole lot of fantasy.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Wind in the Willows, I loved during the days.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yes, we read a lot of that. Yeah, love that.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

I guess in the sixth grade or seventh grade I read Tom Sawyer. Fell in love with that whole idea of of his writing. So back to you. So now you've grown up, you moved to New Orleans to straighten up, fly right.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

And the only one who ever did.

First Books, Timelines, And Process

SPEAKER_03 6:18

And so you wrote your first book.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

How how old was your daughter? Well, when I started writing it, she was two, about three, and it took a long time, and I took a lot of breaks. And actually, the first book that I actually published was not the first book that I started writing then. So I published my first book in 2021, after I started seriously writing this in 2014, probably 2013, 14, something like that.

Characters First: Enzo And Maddie

SPEAKER_03 6:50

You decided to write the book. You said it took a long time, it took a lot of breaks, whatever. As you thought about the fact that you were going to write a novel, I I suppose, as many of us do, you decided, well, I'm going to write a novel. We'll see how this goes. Did you have the story in your mind already and it'd been bouncing around in your head, or did you just start considering, I'm going to write a novel. What am I going to write? Let me think about that.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

The characters came to me first. Yes, this particular character, because the book that I just put out in October is the book that I started writing in October. Well, not October, but but in 2013 slash 2012. That's the book that I finally just put out. I've written this book probably three times, at least, like from start to finish, completely differently. I really like this one that just came out. So the version of it that finally got out into the world is the right one. It was the character, Enzo Cruz, the main character. He is the one who came to me, as they say sometimes, like a fully fleshed idea, right? And it really kind of was like that. He was informed by my travels to Guam, which is where my husband is from. We went to go see his family a couple of times over those years. And I learned more about the island. I learned more about their struggles. And I didn't meet anyone like the main character in my book, but I could see where over time that could happen, right? There could be a child, because he's a teenager in the book, right? So there could be a teen who was raised in an environment that made him feel like he had to be a paramilitary figure where he is fighting for clean air and water for his islands. And that idea gripped me. And then I was thinking, okay, well, what's on the other side of that? And that's where my other main character, Maddie, came in, and she lives in a completely different world, grown up with a silver spoon in her mouth. Where's the tension there? How are they brought together? Yeah, that's kind of where how the story unfolded for me was thinking about those characters and their journeys.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Stephen King says, create your characters, create the situation, and then see where they lead you. I find that to be true in my writing. I find sometimes characters say things or do something I wasn't expecting. Have you ever had that experience?

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah, actually, that's what got me to stop writing the book the first time I started because I wasn't a very confident writer and I got scared when I came up to a scene where Enzo was going to kidnap somebody, right? And I thought, oh no, I had to like stop because I felt like the reader would not like that and would be really um you know, like that the oh no, I can't have my protagonist kidnap somebody. You know, that's not that's not what we do. And I but I wasn't a confident writer, so I stopped. Just didn't know how to proceed. And so literally I left it alone for years. We're talking years, until I realized I can't think about the reader at this stage of the writing process. You just have to write. Yeah, I see a thumbs up there. Yeah. It took it took me a long time. You know, I had to write several other books before I kind of was like, of course, as a reader, I don't have to like everything that a character did. That's silly. Why was I thinking that? But you know, that's that's what it comes back to was at that time I wasn't a competent writer.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

So that took you a long time. You didn't publish it right away. So eventually you you started a second book. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

So the first one is called Without a World, and that was published about 2021. It was October 2021. And I published that one if you'd like to hear the story of it, because somebody told me I had to.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Well, there you go. They got tired of you waffling all the time.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Well, basically, a friend of mine gave me an assignment, and I've always been a very good student, and I'm very good with assignments. And she told me, I need you to write a novel that includes these elements, and she sort of laid out some elements. It had to have parallel worlds, it had to have twins, it had to have a black hole, it had to have some sort of demigod, etc., right? So she lays out all these things. She sets me to task. And so I had an assignment. And like I said, I've always been a good student, so I fulfilled the assignment.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Do you outline your books before you start?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

I try. Are you an outliner?

Assignments, Duology, And Outlining Habits

SPEAKER_03 11:23

I I'm not much of an outliner. I know where I'm going, basically. The last book that I just finished, Rough Manuscript, is now ready for people to tear apart. I knew what I wanted to happen. I had an ending point, but I didn't know how the ending was going to happen. But as I worked toward it, it came together for me. Uh but as far as there are writers who can't work with outlines that I've spoken with, and there are some, like, for example, going back to Stephen King, he never uses an outline, but you know, he's a crazy man. He puts out all those books and thousand-page books. Yeah, thousand-page books. Three of mine. That'd be three of my books. Okay, so your second book, and then and you have a third one?

Drafting, Synopses, And Fixing Plot Holes

Editing Philosophy And Working With Editors

SPEAKER_02 12:15

The third one is the one that just came out. That's a new series. Against the Red Sky is is a new series. So my first two books are a duology. So two books, the duet, right? That's Without a World and Collapsing the Divide. I call those science fantasy. And to go back to your question about outlining, I have certainly tried. I've tried so many times. But what I find is that I'll have a rough idea like you, like what you said. You know, you kind of know what's going to happen, probably. But if I write an outline, I'm going to change it anyway. Yes, every time. And I know people say it's fine to change your outline, but I'm also like, well, okay, then why did I do it? So, right. So the third book I've published, which is about the fourth book that I've written, maybe fifth book that I've written, considering how many times I rewrote Against the Red Sky. Now I think I've realized that I need to write the whole first draft and then write a synopsis. And then I can find all of my plot holes when I'm writing the synopsis, or just the things that aren't tight. Even works better if I give myself a word count limit for the synopsis. So 500-word synopsis is hard to do, but that's what I did with book two, the first draft of book two for Against the Red Sky. I have finished. And when I finished that, I just wrapped that up like two weeks ago. And I made myself write a 500-word synopsis. I had, in theory, sorted out all the story, right? But then I really needed to sort out the story very succinctly. And um that helped a lot. I was able to see the problem spots at the midpoint, the problem spots at the climax, and um the other pieces that I need to kind of sew up and and uh shipped up with the next draft.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Do you self-edit or do you have you hire someone to edit your books?

SPEAKER_02 14:07

I will hire someone, but not until I think it's finished. So when I think I have the best possible draft that I can have, that's when I will hand it over to an editor. And I'm totally fine if they tear it apart. That's fine. I'll, I'll, I'll start it again. But for me, I don't want to bring in a professional that I'm gonna pay a pretty good amount of money to until I know I've done everything I can to get that book in a perfect condition, even though there's no such thing as perfect condition. But you know, that's my take on that.

Why She Writes Duologies

SPEAKER_03 14:39

You said you're writing a trilogy. Do you already have that kind of in your mind where that will go, the arc of that trilogy?

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Against the Red Sky is actually going to be another duology. So it's gonna be another two book finished series. I really like those two book series. I know a lot of people write dual. I mean, they write tril trilogies or or longer series even than that. But to me, I like to read two-book series. I don't know if you've ever read anything by the by the author Marie Lou, but she writes a lot of two book series, and it just it's just nice. I like to read them, I like to write them. To me, it's like, well, the middle book is going to be lacking something.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

I just kind of feel like that. So I want a really fast-paced book that that it it just holds you from the beginning to the end. People say that they can read my books in one sitting, not all the time, but I've had plenty of people say that to me, which I'm also like, okay, great, because I took four years to write that. I'm so glad you read it after that's wonderful. But no, it is wonderful, you know, because it because it gripped them and they didn't want to put it down, and that's great. But yeah, to me, that middle book would probably be lacking something. Maybe one day I'll change my mind. But not not for this next series. It'll be two books.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

So this is what you want to do for the rest of your professional life in a novelist?

Poetry, Short Stories, And Goals

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Do you still do any poetry?

SPEAKER_02 16:06

I don't. I have not written poetry in a very long time. Let's say 20 years. Like a long time.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

But I do still have it. I still have my stuff.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Short stories?

SPEAKER_02 16:20

I had written some short stories. Yep. I do really like short stories. I love reading them and I like writing them. And I do want to write some more short stories. I think I would like to uh make myself write a short story a month. That would be a goal I have, not necessarily for 2026, but who knows maybe. But I think that would be great because at the end of the year you would have 12 and that would be enough for a compilation. I think that that would be a nice goal.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

I find short story writing harder more difficult than novel writing. Do you find that to be true?

SPEAKER_02 16:56

It is difficult. I don't find it necessarily more difficult than novel writing, but it is a different headspace, and uh there is no room for fluff, right? Which I actually kind of like about it, is that you just have to get as soon as you get the story started, you're also gonna have to be getting it wrapped up. You know, it's it's succinct. But I like that a lot.

Genre Line: Sci-Fi Meets Fantasy

SPEAKER_03 17:21

I've written several short stories, but one was just too long. I read the rules, ten thousand words or less is a short story. So I wrote one at 9,000 and something words. Sent it to a fellow who's actually in my family who has a PhD in creative writing. And that's it because he asked to see it. And then he had all these questions about statements like, I'd like to know more about so-and-so. I'd like to know more about I'd like to know more about as writing teachers do. And I finally said, I I I can't do that. I can more easily add 70,000 words than I can take out five thousand words because I just feel like my story would disappear. I know that's not true. It's just that I don't I'm I'm no good at being a short story writer. So that's where that comes from. Describe to our listeners if you would, since everybody gets pigeonholed. What uh genre do you work in?

Marketing Tactics And Events

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Definitely young adult science fiction, but also fantasy. So I usually say young adult science fiction and fantasy. I think that's fine. I delineate between the science fiction and the fantasy. I don't have any writings that are what I would call like a strictly fantasy or high fantasy. There are no swords, there are no dragons, there are no castles, I'm somewhat anti-princess. There is none of that in my writing. But there are spaceships, there are planets, there are, you know, solar flares. Okay, all of those are real things. There is some astral projection in my first uh series, which someone called out to me is what makes it fantasy. And I was like, okay, but really, really, maybe astral projection is totally real. You know, you just have to, what are the Breatharians doing out there wherever they're working? You know, you're gonna call them a fantasy? Well, they say they really haven't eaten in a hundred years. I don't know. Have you ever heard about the Breatharians? So these folks living on a mountain somewhere who claim to not eat food or drink water, and they've been there for quite some time. They're very alive. Anywho, I'm off on a tangent. But you know, uh, go ahead and claim that fantasy tag because there have been folks who say not everything in your books are science based. So I could also lean heavily on the fiction side of science fiction.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

Science fiction.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Fiction.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Every writer I've asked this in myself too, always a difficult thing to have to work with. But how do you market your books? How do people hear about your books?

SPEAKER_02 20:04

It's hard. That is a challenge. So I do like to do a lot of the events, like where I met you at the Mississippi Book Fest. Those are great. I love doing those. I do a lot of uh events here in New Orleans as well. Facebook ads, being on Instagram, being on TikTok. I've recently joined TikTok. Can find me there talking about stuff.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Me also.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Yeah. Woo!

SPEAKER_01 20:28

I gotta follow you over there.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Yeah. You follow me and I'll follow you. Right. That's that's how that works, right?

unknown 20:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yeah. So, you know, it's a it's a challenge. Something else I do is uh, I don't know if you're familiar with story origin. I use that for newsletter swaps, um, and I use book funnel for newsletter swaps with different authors. Written word media is a very useful tool for um getting folks on your newsletter. Um there's something called voracious readers that I use as well uh to get folks on to my newsletter. So there's different ways. So I'm putting out samples, uh, samples of my books for those as teasers or my short story puzzle box. I have that out in several different of those places that are teasers for folks to, you know, get on my newsletter.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Speaking of trying to get your work out there, do you do a lot of book signs say at I like indie bookstores? Do you do that kind of thing?

Current Reads And TBR Mindset

SPEAKER_02 21:33

I don't do a lot of them at indie bookstores, um, but mainly I guess I just do those sorts of events around town. I I have started doing art markets, which is fun. Uh people will come through and they're expecting to see, you know, I don't know, maybe pottery or earrings, and they're surprised when they see little old me with my table of books, and then they come over and they're like, wow, I didn't know there'd be any books here, and they get excited and we start talking about science fiction, and yeah. So that's been that's been fun.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Finally, when you have time, which doesn't sound like you have much, but what do you read? What do you, the author, read?

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Right now I'm reading Prodigy by Marie Lou. I mentioned her before. She really is one of my favorite writers. She has a series called Legend, which is one of her biggest series, and Prodigy is the second book in that series. I also like reading books by other indie authors. I just recently bought The Vale of Eden, which I haven't read yet, but that's from, or spy rather, um Andra Larkin. She is a TikTok gal. I saw her on TikTok, and that's how I found her book. So I thought, well, let me go ahead and and order that because it's a YA uh dystopian sci-fi, you know, book. So that's right up my alley. So I'm excited to be reading that soon. Right now I am working uh through a rather large list of books, uh, my TBR. A lot of in the past I've had just had ebooks that were like, you know, ready to be read, but now somehow I have a pile of physical books. So I'm really not sure how that happened, but although I am reading Prodigy.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

I have some stacked up as well. I used to feel guilty about it. I used to stay up with my reading. Then I read uh uh an article by some person that I I don't remember who it was, but it was obviously very wise because I agreed with him. He said that don't sweat those books you have stacked up there. Just remember they're waiting for you and they're full of interesting things and interesting stories. So rather than feeling bad that you bought all these books and you haven't read 'em, think of them as your future that you can look forward to.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I like to think of them as little friends who are like sitting there ready for me when I'm ready for them.

How To Connect And Sponsor Close

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Absolutely. Absolutely. How can our listeners contact you? Because they're gonna be interested in you after they hear you talking.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

My website is probably the best way to find me and and more about my books. That's Christian Ilarmo Books.com. Annie Larmo is I L L A R M O. So Christian Ilarmo Books.com.

SPEAKER_03 24:13

Well, thanks again. This has been fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Talking to other authors.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

I've really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Folks, pick up one of her books, see what you think. You can tell that she's obviously a very interesting person. So until next time, thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Producer Hill Kane here. You can find links and other details about today's episode in our show notes. This episode was sponsored by MC at Home Center Bellevue. They've got everything you need to make your home cozy and welcoming. It's a lot more than just a building supply store. Conveniently located at 7329 US 98 in Pittsburgh. See you there.