About

Published: 26 Jun 2024 | Updated: 11 Jul 2024

Hi! I'm Zachary Kai: 20-something, queer (he/him.)

I love reading, making things, learning, listening to music, and traveling. I write fiction about beautiful/broken people and a life in the stars.

I refuse to die without making something useful.

If I choose one word to describe myself besides queer, it's 'generalist.' My many skills include:

Amateur knitting in practice, advanced knitting in theory.
Amateur gardening: repotting, watering, weeding.
Backstage crewing for theatre productions: being a stagehand, bumping in/out, making props, microphone management, set construction, spiking, sound.
Recipe improvisation: I can create a meal with anything you have in the fridge and pantry.
Shoddy hand sewing.

Tidbits

As long as I'm typing in text files, I'm happy.
Adore the history, culture, and the art of making food. Still, I prefer subsisting on veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, and tofu.
Can't 'see' images in my mind, and I process through words.
Always listening to music. Despite listening to my favorite songs thousands of times, I hardly grow tired!
I'm fluent in English and speak intermediate (mostly Mexican) Spanish.
I alphabetize (almost) everything when organizing.
Saw A New Hope in 2015 and it changed everything.
Started sending letters, art, and ephemera to strangers in 2020, and I haven't stopped. Some of my dearest friends are penpals.
The internet is my livelihood, friendships, joys, curiosities... Without it, who am I?
Though I'm Australian, I write using American spelling, and British punctuation.

2015: First fiction story: fanfic for an obscure webcomic.
2017: First novel, NaNoWriMo: One Moonlit Night (58k words.)
2018: Entered the Jolley Prize. Second novel: Chrysanthemum Throne (72k words.)
2019: Entered the Jolley Prize again.
2020: Published my first book: the first of The Mara Files.
2021: Sought reviewers for The Mara Files. Started rewriting + expanding it.
2022: Finished rewriting Mara's Awakening. Emailed previous reviewers.
2023: Rewrote + published Mara's Choice. Published Mara's Reckoning.
2024: Republished The Mara Files as one novel. Began Don't Burn Too Bright.

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Statistics → Word Count: 334 | Reading Time: 1:13 mins