K.A. Wiggins is a Vancouver-born Canadian speculative fiction author, speaker, and creative writing coach known for the award-winning, genre-bending YA Fantasy series Threads of Dreams.

She writes YA Fantasy with an edge and a broad array of dark and difficult speculative fiction for middle grade (forthcoming), young adult, and all-ages/adult audiences. Her storytelling explores the tangled webs of society, environment, and identity through intricate, dreamlike tales of monsters and magic.

Her short fiction has been published by Fantasy Magazine, Enchanted Conversation: A Fairytale Magazine, Frozen Wavelets by The Earthian Hivemind, Hungry Shadow Press, Fiction-Atlas Press, and Virgibooks (in translation). She currently leads the Children's Writers & Illustrators of British Columbia Society (CWILL BC) and teaches with the Creative Writing for Children Society (CWC).

LEARN MORE | Contact: [email protected]

For bimonthly updates and exclusive content, including a free ebook copy of Threads of Dreams series prequel, Under:

Join the newsletter





News & Updates

WRAD2023 Plus A Not-Announcement

Jan 25, 2023

Shoutout to the awesome team at Word Vancouver for the invitation to host their in-person World Read Aloud Day event this year!

I’ll be chatting with CWILL BC member and recent debut Emily Seo as she presents a reading from her 2022 middle grade novel The Science of Boys and demonstrates some live science.

Local schools will be joining us for this celebration of reading aloud at Surrey Library Central City Branch from 10-11 am on February 1, 2023.

I do also still have availability open on the afternoon of Feb. 1 for schools or libraries who want to book a short, free virtual reading (or, locally, live reading).

In other news, I’m very excited to not-yet-officially be able to announce my first audio adaptation has been licensed! Hollow will be coming to a horror podcast near you in the not-so-distant future.

The market has requested the official announcement wait until the story goes live, so all I can really say now is that it’s an eerie, Twilight-zone-esque short story inspired by Hollywood North, a Horror Writers of America-qualifying sale, audio-only (first print rights still available), and despite the horror label, suitable for all ages.

And, as a word of encouragement for the writers out there: don’t self reject! Getting into this market felt like a real stretch to me, the story is kind of a different direction from my usual (more “straight horror” than cross-genre? But not actually that scary? More unsettling/chilling than gory or bloody?), and I’d very nearly retired it from my submissions rotation when the license request came through on a long-dormant sub. You never know what will connect and with whom!

Looking forward to seeing how they interpret this story to audio—so many fun opportunities with the sound design. Will keep you posted when it goes public!


Read more


Want to Write a Book With Me?

Jan 10, 2023

Need a plan to tackle that “finally write my book” New Year’s Resolution?

Find yourself typing “the end” faster (or maybe for the first time ever!) with a structured, supportive 20-week (term-length) workshop starting January 28 (9 am for adults, 10:30 am for kids) on Zoom.

Each weekly workshop includes live, interactive access over Zoom with short writing exercises and presentations on creative writing, storytelling, plotting & publishing, slide and video archives (for later review and/or if you miss a week), office hours, + individual feedback on up to 20 pages each week.

These workshops are best suited for kids, teens, and adults looking for step-by-step guidance, accountability, and encouragement in starting (and finishing!) the first draft of a (fiction or narrative nonfiction) book.

Class sizes are small due to the amount of individual attention, so don’t miss your chance to join!

Learn more & apply now!


Read more


Birth of a Micro-trilogy

Jan 08, 2023

Escape the past. Save the girl. Take back the future.

A century after Dreamfall scorched the earth and woke its merciless protectors, Spectre squad’s first unsupervised mission is boring as dirt. After all, they’re dream walkers—ecologists and healers, not soldiers.

But when second-in-command Ghost saves a strange girl from sea monsters, they stumble across a secret that shatters the foundations of their society and will change all their lives—if they survive to tell the tale.

The fate of the world rests on the shoulders of one boy desperate to escape his destiny.

Spectres of the Old World Part 1: Mud Monsters & Revelations is a fast-paced YA Dystopian Fantasy of loss, destiny, and inter-generational trauma in an eco-punk, post-apocalyptic world overrun by monsters.

This novelette-length adventure ends in a mild cliffhanger and kicks off a three-part YA Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic Romance “micro-trilogy” in the same world (parallel timeline) as the Threads of Dreams trilogy (featuring “Ash” as the crossover protagonist.) Spectres of the Old World stories can be read as a standalone series or, due to spoilers, following Burn the Skies.

Spectres of the Old World are Kindle Unlimited (Amazon) exclusive releases:

**Part 1: Mud Monsters & Revelations Part 2: Rattlesnakes & Nightmares (23/01/24 Part 3: Sedition & Sea Monsters (23/02/06)**

_

. . . Which begs the question “what is a micro-trilogy?”

When I relaunched the Threads of Dreams series in 2021 with the fifth-anniversary edition covers, I missed two titles: Under and Spectres of the Old World

Under was launched in 2019 as an exclusive novella release for my newsletter subscribers and is still available as a free download. (I’m working on a small glow-up and planning a wide release for later this year.)

Spectres is brand new. The only completely new release in the Threads of Dreams extended story world since Burn the Skies wrapped up the main trilogy in 2020.

I actually wrote Spectres a couple years ago and . . . just didn’t find the right moment to release it.

Or maybe knew, at some level, that it wasn’t quite finished.

Because it started as a short story that turned into a long short story—a novelette. And then hit a time-skip and turned into another novelette. And hopped past another chunk of time into the unwritten future of Cole and Ash and the gang where, you guessed it, another whole novelette’s-worth of adventures unfolded themselves.

So I had a novella’s-worth of story on my hands, split into three roughly-even parts, two of which ended on mild cliffhangers, the second darker than the first . . .

Sounds awfully like your classic three-act structure—or a fantasy trilogy.

At the same time, I’d been meaning to play rapid release strategies and KU. So this is a bit of an experiment, allowing the story to follow it’s own natural structure while giving readers an episodic mini-series sort of reading experience. Hopefully it’s fun! And, at some point in the future, I’ll probably pull Spectres from KU and give it a more standard wide-release in novella form. :)


Read more


Achievement Unlocked!

Dec 16, 2022

Very excited to sneak some (slightly nerdy?) author news in before the end of the year: Fantasy Magazine just licensed first English world rights to “Children of Earth”(!!!)

Skip this next bit if you’re not into geeky publishing insider talk, but: this news is kind of a big deal because, for writers, short fiction markets operate on a scale from “for the love” (unpaid/for exposure) through various token (small money) and semi-pro rates (little bit more money) up to “pro-market” rates. While I love every story I’ve put out into the world and support and appreciate every publisher and market that I’ve worked with, Fantasy Magazine is my first “pro-market” sale. In real terms, it means (a little) more money, the potential for more exposure and recognition, and it’s also a qualifying step toward membership in professional organizations like the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association. So it’s a real milestone!

There’s a bit of fun backstory to how this all came about. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s weekly business-for-writers blog is a must-read for anyone in publishing or thinking about/moving toward publishing, and her weekly free short stories were also instrumental in nudging me (back) into writing short fiction. She’s an amazing, prolific writer with enormous range, who just so happens to be married to another amazing writer, Dean Wesley Smith. Together, they own WMG Publishing. Which, in addition to putting out great books, does some really fun stuff in terms of Kickstarter projects & author education workshops. (One of my “when I grow up” big deal/pro author dreams is to actually do a workshop with them in person one day when I have the money/time, lol.) Definitely recommend their online or live workshops if you’re able/interested. In the meantime, I sneak in the occasional virtual workshop when I can.

In Fall 2021, I did a virtual workshop with WMG Publishing called “Writing a Pulphouse Story.” Pulphouse Fiction Magazine is a cross-genre quarterly that publishes “strange” lit. I’d already written “Castoffs” (the body-horror meets humour short story in It Was Only A Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right) by then, so I thought it might be my kind of thing. I blew it so hard on the week 1 assignment. Week 2 wasn’t great either. But for week 3, I wrote “Children of Earth.” Dean, who edits Pulphouse, offered to buy it for the magazine. Which was amazing. But, even better, he said I could shop it around first & he’d still be interested in reprint rights. Solid dude. So I entered it in the Writers of the Future contest and (for the first time) placed, with an honourable mention in Q1 of this year (I later received a silver honourable mention in Q3 on a different short story that I’m still shopping around).

Anyway, a big shoutout goes out to Dean Wesley Smith of Pulphouse, Smith’s Monthly & WMG Publishing for pushing me to get as unhinged as possible and not edit my voice into oblivion before submitting. I also just so happened to be reading Rebecca Schaeffer’s (fantastic, twisted, dark, violent, complex) Market of Monsters series when I wrote “Children of Earth.” So the viewpoint character, “Mirella,” is an homage to Schaeffer’s series, and I suspect the body...
Read more



Fall 2022

Nov 28, 2022

Yet again I’m waaay behind with updates (join my Twitter or newsletter if you want news while it’s still news, I guess), but here’s some of the cool stuff that’s been going on:

Congrats to CWILL BC Nikki Bergstresser, who just took home the Literary Arts Award in front of a sold-out crowd at the Abbotsford Arts Council’s 18th Annual Arty Awards. As last year’s recipient, I was honoured to have the opportunity to present. :D

BC Teacher-Librarians’ Conference was a blast! I had a great time presenting (over 50!) new releases by BC authors and illustrators of books for kids and talking about collaboration opportunities between school librarians and local authors. CWILL BC will plan on making this an annual event going forward. Word Vancouver Festival was also super fun, with two jam-packed live days plus the virtual/school presentation programming to moderate.

It’s also been a strong year for short fiction:

  • CASTOFFS in It Was Only A Dream: Bad Horror Tropes Done Right (Hungry Shadow Press, 2022) has done amazing. Cannot believe how much buzz this antho has got!

  • THE UNSOUGHT LIGHT was licensed to be reprinted in Seasons Unceasing (Worldsmyths Publishing, 2022) and is 2/3 of the way through edits, scheduled for re-release before the end of the year

  • A pre-published speculative short, CALLOUSED, recieved Silver Honourable Mention in Writers of the Future Awards 2022 Q3

  • A pre-published speculative short, CHILDREN OF EARTH, recieved Honourable Mention in Writers of the Future Awards 2022 Q1 and has been shortlisted in a keystone speculative professional market

On that note, longer releases will be the focus for 2023, including a new novella and a novella rerelease in the Threads of Dreams series, a spooky middle grade/junior teen novel, and a new adult speculative series. And it looks like my spring creative writing workshop will be mostly middle schoolers, which is going to be super fun. Can’t wait!

Finally, World Read Aloud Day is coming up. I’m happy to volunteer a short reading from an upcoming middle grade novel, YA novels, or short fiction, or from works that inspired me for interested classrooms ranging from grade four through high school. Shoot me a message at [email protected] to book a free 10-20 minute reading + author visit on February 1, 2022!


Read more


More News


Events

Abbotsford Arts Council Presents Workshop Wednesday: Intro to Publishing

Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Time: 6pm

Location: Online

Type: Workshop/Presentation, Q&A

Join us for the second webinar in Abbotsford Arts Council’s Workshop Wednesday series! I’ll be taking attendees through a whirlwind overview of all things publishing–local visibility, in-person sales and ecommerce as a publishing strategy, as well as planning, drafting, editing, product design/development, launching, pre and post-launch marketing, sales & PR, with time for a Q & A at the end.

This webinar is perfect for local writers looking to learn more about the world of publishing and getting their work from their screens to the shelves. Learn more and register at the Abbotsford Arts Council website.

And check back later for more great local artist resources from AAC. I’ll be offering an asynchronous, multi-part marketing and cover design workshop before the end of March, and there’s more...
Read more



WORD Vancouver Presents: World Read Aloud Day 2023

Date: Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Time: 10-11am

Location: Surrey Library Central City Branch

Type: Author Reading & School Presentation

Shoutout to the awesome team at Word Vancouver for the invitation to host their in-person World Read Aloud Day event this year!

I’ll be chatting with CWILL BC member and recent debut Emily Seo as she presents a reading from her 2022 middle grade novel The Science of Boys and demonstrates some live science.

Local schools will be joining us for this celebration of reading aloud at Surrey Library Central City Branch from 10-11 am on February 1, 2023.

I do also still have availability open on the afternoon of Feb. 1 for schools or libraries who want to book a short, free virtual reading (or, locally, live reading).


Read more


Write A Book In 20 Weeks Workshop(s)

Date: weekly from January 28 to June 10, 2023

Time: Regular workshops at 9-10AM PST (12-1PM EST), Kids’ workshops at 10:30-11:30AM PST (1:30-2:30PM EST)

Location: Online over Zoom

Type: Writing Workshop

Need a plan to tackle that “finally write my book” New Year’s Resolution?

Find yourself typing “the end” faster (or maybe for the first time ever!) with a structured, supportive 20-week (term-length) workshop starting January 28 (9 am for adults, 10:30 am for kids) on Zoom.

Each weekly workshop includes live, interactive access over Zoom with short writing exercises and presentations on creative writing, storytelling, plotting & publishing, slide and video archives (for later review and/or if you miss a week), office hours, + individual feedback on up to 20 pages each week.

These workshops are best suited for kids, teens, and adults looking for step-by-step guidance, accountability, and encouragement in starting (and...
Read more



Past Events