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Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

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EP 461 - The Power of Stories to Instill Empathy, Resilience, Joy, and Hope with Ka-Yee Essoe

Feb 13, 2026

In this episode Mark interviews Ka-Yee Essoe about the power of stories to instil empathy, resilience, joy, and hope, based on her experiences in the academic world, in research, in teaching, and in writing an epic fantasy novel.

Prior to the interview Mark shares a brief personal update and word from this episode's sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by Toronto Indie Author Conference, taking place in Toronto, ON in April 2026.

In the interview, Mark and Ka-Yee talk about:

  • Mark and Ka-Yee's connection to Joshua EssoeKa-Yee's background with two different careers in academia
  • Studying how to help people learn therapeutic techniques better
  • Starting her creative writing journey in 2021
  • How this story (that became the first of a trilogy she is writing) started to unfold in her head as dialogue
  • 128,000 words of the first draft coming out in about 2 months of writing
  • Ka-Yee's move into an academic teaching role, which is something she's always wanted to do
  • One of the classes that Ka-Yee co-teaches for writers
  • HEXACO - the six-dimension personality test
  • Some of the opposite-character writing exercises that derive from this test
  • Debunking Myers-Briggs because it's not as science-based
  • Ka-Yee's desire to help writers to write who has some sort of disability
  • Helping students understand what therapy looks like and how to depict that relationship
  • Techniques on how to learn memory enhancement
  • How to evaluate routines and your process as a writer
  • The problem with getting into a habit of doing things a certain way and missing out on how to make it better
  • Ka-Yee not realizing she had ADHD until she was an adult
  • The side-effect of suffering from long Covid
  • The concept of deliberate rest
  • Applying the scientific principle to writing an epic fantasy novel
  • How people tend to have two different careers in their life
  • The Kickstarter that Ka-Yee is running for her new book SHAZZWICK OF LAND VOL1: Time Becomes Relevant
  • Aaron Fors as the talented narrator for the audiobook version
  • What Ka-Yee's book is about
  • How she sees the world differently now that she has written this novel

 

After the interview Mark shares a few reflections inspired by the interview.

Notes from Ka-Yee as mentioned in the interview:

Guidance I provided students to create their own weekly evaluation on their writing process
  • Before you begin, I encourage you to take stalk of your current process. What's your goal, what's your why, what works/doesn't, how often do you write, what resources do you need -- not what you WANT it to be, but what it is now.
  • Then create a survey using the guideline below. Answer the questions now as your baseline, then check in every week (ideally on the same day), revise the questions as you go. 
  • There is no wrong way to do this. These can be any format as you see fit, or a combination of. You can make the questions open-ended, some form of rating scales (e.g., rate from 0 to 10, or 1 = Completely Disagree to 5 = Complete Agree), multiple choice, or fill in the blanks. 
  • Just don't get too attached, you should be adjusting these as your process evolves or as life encroaches. 
Ask yourself 6-10 (ish) questions
  • 1-3 questions on what you did in the past week: e.g., did you change/stick with your process? did try something new? how did it go? were you able to stick to it?
  • 2-3 questions on how "productive" or "successful" you are--but remember, every one's measure of success is different. E.g., how much did you write? how good were the writing? how brave were you in sharing your work with others? how zen you were about taking feedback.
  • 2-3 questions on how you are flourishing vs languishing: e.g., do I have mental space to do OTHER things I love? Did I spend time with people who matter to me? Did I feel my life has purpose, joy, satisfaction, and meaning?
  • Last question: ask yourself something that gets to the "why" of your creative endeavour. WHY did you write this week? Did you remember to keep your eyes on that which drives you and keeps you up at night when you forget it. That which makes your writing something that you must do.
  • (okay, then the last last question: do I need to revise these questions for next week?) 
The most important thing is: again, update these questions as you go. This needs to be a living document, otherwise you aren't giving yourself room to grow and learn. 

 

Links of Interest:

 

Ka-Yee Essoe, Ph.D. (Psychology, UCLA; Psychiatry Postdoc, Johns Hopkins Medicine) is an assistant professor at a small, public university at rural Maine. As a cognitive neuroscientist specialising in learning enhancement, she understands the power of stories to instil empathy, resilience, joy, and hope. She began writing novels to do just that.

As an East Asian immigrant who enjoys many intercultural friendships, rich cultural diversity permeates the worlds and conflicts she crafts in her epic fantasy novels with integral love-story threads. Drawing on her personal experience and 10+ years mentoring others to navigate anxiety, disabilities, abuse, discrimination, trauma, and grief, her stories follow characters facing these struggles to encourage readers through their journeys and growth.

 

 

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0