Episode 174 – Saph Dodd – Sovereign Fourth

Overview Saph Dodd has been writing for as long as she’s known how. Since she first picked up a pencil and learned to string sentences together, she’s been creating fantastic and intriguing stories. This twenty-six-year-old writer adores reading, especially action-adventure, fantasy, and horror stories, as well as lore and mythology.  Her first novel, published when she was sixteen, spurred her to continue to do what she loves. Writing is her passion. She lives in a small Tennessee town with her family: a younger sister, Jennifer, a constant source of inspiration, and supportive parents. Book https://www.jumpmasterpress.com/product-page/sovereign-fourth Favorites YouTube https://youtu.be/CYSX-gHrdJA Transcript Stephen: Today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Saf Dodd. Saf, how are you doing today? I'm doing really well. How about you? I'm, I'm doing good. I'm not as pink as you are today. Saph: Yeah. Pink is, it's a takeover in here. Stephen: Got it. Okay. So we know you like pink. Before we talk about your book, tell us about some other things about you, what you like to do outside of writing. Saph: Well, shocker. I like to read. Okay. Mostly action, adventure, fantasy or horror, but I also I also do makeup. I'm a full time beauty specialist. So like I, I do makeup looks a lot and I Stephen: cause, Oh, nice. What's your cosplay characters, Saph: Ladybug from miraculous ladybug, Marinette from miraculous ladybug sailor moon, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, both versions and Cinderella. And a couple of characters from Bluey. That's what I've got in my roster right now. Stephen: Oh, nice! My daughter loves Miraculous Ladybug. Oh, yes, I love it. I actually know that one a little bit. Saph: I actually got to meet the voice actress of Ladybug at Huntsville Pop Culture Expo when I was there to sign books. Stephen: Oh, nice! Yeah, that's always fun to do. There's been a lot more of those in recent years. I think it's a good change in the culture that there's so much of this available. So tell us where do you live? And if there's anything really cool about where you live. Well, Saph: I live in Nashville, so it's Nashville, Tennessee. To music city, I guess, like, I've lived here all my life and it doesn't seem like it's that cool. But, like, I guess, like, everybody moves here to get big and country Stephen: music. I can relate. I live near Cleveland, the rock and roll capital. I've only been to the 1 time. So, yeah. Nice. All right. So why did you wanna start writing, and then what made you wanna write this book? Okay, so Saph: I have literally been writing for as long as I know how, I knew how I started at a very early age, just writing stories down in notebooks and stuff because I, I, and I, I would excuse me. I would try to, I would tell stories to my mom before I knew how to write. And then, like, when I learned to write, I was like, this is so cool. Now I can put my ideas down. And, you know, there wasn't much structure to it because I was a really young, but it's built, it's built into something more of a, more of like a craft that I do. And I, I started writing because, like, I felt it in me. I knew that I needed to, like, I was always destined to write. And this particular novel was really hard for me because I wrote it to eat, like, because I wrote it to get through my grief over losing someone very close to me. That's why the main core themes in Sovereign Fourth are lost in grief. So I wrote that to help me kind of move on and cope. It's dedicated to my uncle. Stephen: That's a that's a coping mechanism. That's a way recommended is writing your feelings, writing things down and channeling that into a story is, I guess you could look at it as taking the bad thing and putting it into something good. Yeah. Saph: And then it became my debut album. I Stephen: know a lot of people do. Nice, nice.