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Keri Lake on Nocticadia
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
The premise that wakes you at 3amLake has never spoken in these sources about the specific moment Nocticadia arrived. What she has articulated, across multiple interviews, is the test every project has to pass before she will commit to it.
The truth is, I have to write what I want or the story will flop. It’s the reason I mostly write standalones and I bounce between genres. The story has to excite me and wake me up at three in the morning, or I’ll cast it aside.
warhawkevault.wordpress.com, “🎙 Author Interview: Keri Lake | Warhawke’s Vault Book Blog”A parasitology mystery set inside a crumbling island university sits squarely at the intersection of two things she carried into this book: a laboratory career that included ambitions toward forensic pathology, and a gothic literary tradition she has cited since her earliest interviews.
Her laboratory years were not background color she later borrowed for fiction. They were the field she trained for and nearly stayed in, and the scientific architecture of Nocticadia, whose central mystery is a parasitic disease investigated in a research laboratory where ethical lines have been crossed, draws directly from that formation.
I am a science nerd with degrees in Microbiology and Medical Technology, and at one point, I wanted to be a forensic pathologist.
warhawkevault.wordpress.com, “🎙 Author Interview: Keri Lake | Warhawke’s Vault Book Blog”Before the science came the poetry. The literary sensibility that eventually produced Nocticadia’s gothic register did not start with novels but with a childhood spent memorizing verse from her mother’s collection.
My earliest influences were actually poets. My mom had a huge book of poetry and I’d sit and memorize the poems. I started out writing poetry and my love for twisted tales eventually evolved over time, turning into short stories.
How she wrote it
Disasters on the page, then structureLake’s drafting method is built around speed and deliberate roughness. Getting a manuscript into shape is a later problem; getting it onto the page is the only first problem.
Oh boy, my first drafts are a disaster. It’s all about getting the words onto the page as fast as I can.
warhawkevault.wordpress.com, “🎙 Author Interview: Keri Lake | Warhawke’s Vault Book Blog”From that rough draft, the manuscript moves through a structured sequence: a story-level pass with her editor for plot holes, an alpha reader review, line edits returned in quarters, beta readers, and a full read-through with the alpha reader before publication.
The writing itself happens before the rest of the household wakes. She described the practical conditions in a 2013 interview, where the necessities were specific rather than atmospheric.
Coffee and music are must haves. I wake up at ungodly hours (sometimes 3:30am) to write.
Nocticadia was designed from the start as a complete, self-contained story. When she released the companion novella Phobia shortly after publication, she opened it with a disclaimer that drew a careful boundary around what the original book was meant to be.
I did not intend to write a second book, as Nocticadia was meant to remain a standalone. Please note that this will not be a complete story before diving in. It’s merely a glimpse of these two characters and nothing more.
The personal thread
Dark and twisted, from the beginningLake’s gothic register is not a mode she adopted for a particular market. It is the direction her writing moved in on its own, from poetry through short stories and into novels.
My writing tends to be dark and twisted.
When a reader on Goodreads asked whether Nocticadia would continue, Lake’s answer was brief and left the door open only narrowly. The phrasing suggests she felt the original story had arrived at its own ending, even if the world around it had not.
I don’t have plans for these characters (though I might consider additional books in this universe at some point), but I do have a short novella bonus scene available as a free download on my website.
What she wants us to sit with
A story complete on its own termsThe sources here contain no direct statements from Lake about what Nocticadia is trying to argue or what she hoped readers would carry away from it. What the sources do preserve is the principle she applies at the selection stage, before a project begins, which doubles as a description of what she believes a finished book owes its reader.
The story has to excite me and wake me up at three in the morning, or I’ll cast it aside.
warhawkevault.wordpress.com, “🎙 Author Interview: Keri Lake | Warhawke’s Vault Book Blog”