Subito Story 1: Karina Kantas

Karina Kantas

From time to time on change the Story we share a short feature we call Subito Stories. In today's Subito Story We are traveling to a Greek Island to meet an artist who I think personifies the unrelenting potency of the imaginative muscle to entertain, to provoke, and to heal.

Her name is Karina Kantas.

[00:01:04] KK: I've always had a wild imagination. So I was writing from when I was a young, middle in the path. just baking stories and poetry and everything at school.

BC: Like many of our guests the impetus for Karina's creative life path started with an inspiration, in this case a writer with a story that made her feel like she had a kindred spirit out there in the world who could help her better understand her own story.

And it's because of that book and the film cause the film's amazing. it's because of that book and the film that I became an author, I went to the library after reading holler books to find some more type of rebel fiction, like when she was writing, I couldn't find that.

I knew there was a hole in the marketplace and I had a story to tell I wanted to write it.

[00:02:16] KK: Yeah, there's always a piece of me in my books, whether I'm writing a fantasy, a horror, thriller, there is Karina inside, but in times of violence being, it was my first book was very biographical, but I never tell people which parts were real and which parts were, and that's my business, but there was a lot of me in that book.

And the second book that I really put a lot of myself and experienced. In what's called stone cold, which is a young adult, supernatural thriller take away the murders take away the possession and the supernatural. Most of that book really happened. so a lot of the experiences in that book I went through and it's to do with bullying.

So it was, I got a lot closure from writing that book because. Bullying it doesn't, go away when you leave the playground. It may do for the bully, but it doesn't for the victim. I'm not gonna say victim don't like that word. It doesn't for the person who's been bullied. It carries with them through their life.

Terrifying, absolutely terrifying. It was mental and physical bullying and it went through every one of my schools. It was like I had a target on my back, even new schools. I never knew anybody. Some reason I was the one to be bullied So to get over that after college, you get a job. You grow up, you fall in love, you get married, you have kids on your own.

It's still there.

It's something that I never talked to people about. It's something not, I deliberately didn't want people to know about, but I've kept it hidden away in my mind that I basically forgot about what happened. Something triggered something, triggered it back, and I'm the memories came back and so the nightmare started and I'm talking middle-aged here,

It's still there and you worry for your own children because you don't want that to happen to them. Yeah.

I got a lot closer from that book because I killed them all off. Very gruesomely.

BC: Whether its Gruesome, fantastical, thrilling, romantic or funny, Karina's way with words has definitely hit a chord with readers around the world. Who interestingly enough she says she does not think about whan she is writing.

KK: I write for me. It comes out. So that those that are reading have been through the same thing can relate to it. And that's why we write about our darkness and things that we've been through in the past, because in the hope that somebody will read it Because it will click.

I should, by rights, care about who's going to read my book. But I do not. I write for me, I write some me. I don't even think about, who's going to read this book as I think about, should I put that in the book because it's really popular now with fiction. Should I do this? Because I think the readers will really enjoy it. None of that entered my mind until the book is finished and published. And then I look at it and think what, who is my ideal reader now from that? Who Do I market this to, but I don't write for the people I write for me.

BC: Whoever Karina writes for she certainly has written a lot. But thats not all by a long shot. I have 14 books published. Um, several of them have one book awards. I write SIFA, fantasy young adult thriller, supernatural, comedy, historical, erotica, mafia, motorcycle clubs, the list goes on.

KK: I also won 14 awards, so far international film festivals for book trailers of my books and other authors books I'm the official graphic designer for a going D now, which is a platform for India's, creatives. and, so I narrate, my books on social media also people hire me to read an excerpt from their book because they love my British accent.

I've representing Greece. I've entered again this year And in the summer, because I'm living in a tiny Greek village with lots of old people and donkeys, which is a tourist resort, during the summer So they have karaoke bars there. So I go down there and I think it microphone, I start singing and I get people into the bar because they send outside and they listen and then they come in for.

So I get to sing my heart out I take my daughter with me. We do songs together. so yeah, I wear many hats and I will try anything. anything once I'll give it a go. I love. Being able to create. I love to be able to inspire, to be able to give back what I've learned and to be able to make people happy in smile.

KK: I did.