Kaela Rivera Takes Kids on “Adventures That Heal” in Her Brilliant Middle-Grade Series

Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly

Sean Tulien: I'm Editor Sean and today I get the pleasure of speaking with Kaela Rivera, author of one of my favorite kidlit series, Cece Rios. Book 2, Cece Rios and the King of Fears, is out now. And I'm eager to pick your brain, Kaela, about Cece, Juana, Tierra del Sol, Devil's Alley, and the wildly creative criaturas that populate the world you made. Welcome.

Kaela Rivera: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and get a chance to talk to you.

ST: Yeah, I'm glad to have you here too. Like we said earlier, it's been a long time in the making. So, getting right into it, I just want to say that you sure seem to know how to write emotionally charged scenes and characters, because early in the King of Fears, there's this really touching, long-awaited reunion between three characters, and then a tension-filled follow-up with Juana, Cece, and Mama. So, as an author, as somebody who's scripting these events and writing the dialogue and setting the scene, how do you manage to get such powerful emotions across?

KR: I think it's just because I have very intense emotions myself. So, I write things that explore all the things that I want to explore. I very often say that when I write, I write to understand things in my own feelings, other people's feelings, [or] how I feel about something. So, the first draft of anything will end up having that in it. Through revisions, I try to sharpen it so that what I have come to understand, or what I want other people to feel, comes across as well. I love that prologue. I know a lot of people at the end of the previous one were like, "What happened?" And I was like, "To be honest, what happens next also comes with so many more questions. I don't think you want it right now."

ST: Yeah. And I love the balance of questions and answers, keeping the readers and listeners curious, having unanswered questions, but not overwhelming them either. That balance is super good. I'm kind of curious, to what degree do you bring in your own feelings and your own experiences to the characters? Do you see a little bit of yourself in all of them?

KR: I think so, yeah. Some people have asked me, "Are you Cece?" And I'm like, "Cece's who I want to be. Cece is who I believe in being.” I am definitely Juana. I've been Coyote, Mama. I've been all of them. I think that something that I try to do is take something that I feel or an experience that I've gone through and flesh that out into a character so it has the full time to be explored, because we go through all kinds of different things in our lives. We meet different pieces of ourselves. But one of the things I love about characters is that we get to meet a piece of ourselves in them and explore that fully to better either know ourselves or to know what we want to do with that in ourselves.

ST: Writing as self-discovery in a way.

KR: Exactly. I think emotional intelligence and knowing yourself are both really important things. One of my favorite things about reading is that they help you do that.

ST: For sure. I wanted to ask questions about emotionally charged scenes, of course, but I also thought something related is you write fight scenes really well too. And the funny thing is I thought that was weird. I was like, "Okay, so she's good at both these things. That doesn't make sense to me." As a writer, I'm not good at those kinds of things. But then one of my colleagues, Melissa, pointed out, “Well, they both feed off emotions, right?”

KR: Mm-hmm.

ST: I've heard people describe a slight influence might be Pokémon in the sense that there’s these criaturas that battle with each other. I'm just curious how you write action as authentically as you do?

KR: Well, if it is any comfort, when I was younger, my family was like, "Your fight scenes are so extremely confusing. What is happening?” So, I had to work really hard at making that come through, like you can actually tell what's going on in it. I'm very happy that that's a strength now. It was hard-won. I guess it comes from the fact that my brain is like that. I actually have PTSD, so my brain runs fight scenes in the background of my life. I've gotten way better at trimming those down, and they don't interrupt my life anymore, which is lovely. It's just a natural instinct, I think, of how to protect yourself, what would you do in the situation, and running those simulations in the background of my mind. And I do them with my characters now, which helps me get that out, and then I just get to have a peaceful life, which is nice.

ST: Is it cathartic for you?

KR: Yeah. Writing has always been cathartic for me. When I was in college, my mom once asked, "Are you still trying to become a published author?" Not in a judgmental way. And I told her, “I don't know if I'll actually make it," which, gratefully, I know now I did. But at the time, I was like, "I don't know if I'm going to make it. But I know I'm going to keep writing because it's good for me.” I get a lot out. I explore a lot. A lot of it helps me come to peaceful places in the end. And I know if a book's not working that it's because something's not working inside of me very often, where I'm like, "No, I don't want that to be the answer. I don't want forgiveness to be the answer." But it is. And then I'm peaceful once I accept that.

ST: Yeah, it sounds like you write from a really personal space. And I think people who have something to say eventually find that audience.

KR: Yeah. I also trained in combat arts when I was younger, so that might also feed into the fight scene thing. I'm doing Taekwondo.

ST: Part of the thing that I really love about the action scenes and the emotional scenes is the narration. Now, in the first book, Almarie Guerra did all of the narration, and she did a wonderful job. I especially loved her depictions of Domingo del Sol and Grimmer Mother. The way she was able to flip back from characters into the narrative voice to the character voices, man, it was a lot of fun.

KR: She's so good at it.

ST: And then, just so our listeners know, in the second book Karla Serrato and Almarie Guerra split the narration, which I really thought was interesting because they alternate chapters between Cece's perspective and Juana's perspective. Can you tell me why you decided to take a two-perspective approach for the second book?

KR: Well, I knew that the second book was going to be centered around Juana and getting her soul back. And I realized that that was just such a personal journey, it needed to be from Juana's perspective. I just realized it was impossible to do it without dual point of view, because Cece has a journey going on, Juana has a journey going on. Part of Juana's journey is rejecting Cece being on her journey for a little while before coming back together at the end. It was just going to be impossible to have a story that was about like, "We have to go to the sea and find the ocean sanctuary," as well as "I'm going to go into Devil's Alley and steal my soul back.” You know? They're in two different places geographically in the story, as well as emotionally in the journey. And I realized that there was so much richness, too, in adding Juana's perspective, to see Cece through somebody else's eyes.

I think one of my favorite parts is when Juana is looking at Cece and she talks about her river stone eyes, the way that she always looks worried and concerned and on the edge of tears. And I was like, "Yeah, I think that's how Juana would perceive Cece." At the same time, we've been with Cece and know that Cece is worried. And she may be on the edge of tears in several instances, especially in highly emotional moments, and yet Juana sees her as this complicated—"She did something I've never been able to do. She saved me when I couldn't save myself," and yet she's this little sister with river stone eyes, you know?

ST: So, when we start Juana's chapter immediately following the scene you're talking about, she, in some ways, replays the scene in her own mind. It was really interesting to see how she saw Cece so differently than Cece saw herself. I think that adds so much depth to this listening experience, because you're hearing it from both sides. You realize it's kind of like a Rashomon perspective, like things actually change depending on whose eyes we're seeing it through.

KR: Yes, that was important to me, because Juana and Cece are very different people, but they love each other. That's sort of what we all go through in our families to varying degrees. And it was my experience growing up with my family, being very different from my siblings but loving them. Even friends, I've had friends who are very different people than me. I make tons of friends with clarifiers, people who are super detail-oriented and I'm just being a chaotic goblin in the background, but we love each other.

And realizing how much you can love somebody, and how much you can work to know somebody while being different from them, that's a thread that was important to me to have throughout the book—that there's never a point where Juana doesn't love Cece. But there are moments where she's angrier at her or is just frustrated or doesn't understand. And Cece, because she loves Juana so much, she wants to do everything for her. Things like that were all of the fun and painful and beautiful moments of trying to love each other well.

"There's never a point where Juana doesn't love Cece. But there are moments where she's angrier at her or is just frustrated or doesn't understand."

ST: That sibling rivalry is very interesting, especially when Cece refers to wanting to "fix" Juana. I was like, "Oh, that wasn't a fair thing to say." But it shows us that their perspectives are kind of rounding each other out. Along those lines, I love that Juana is kind of associated with fire, at least in the beginning, and Cece is associated with water as a curandera. That contrast is super fun. You do this fascinating thing with colors and feelings. Like, when Cece is holding one of the criaturas’ stones, she will feel a feeling coming from that criatura, but also shifting colors. How did you come up with that idea? Because that really seems to work for me personally as a storytelling device.

KR: Oh, I'm so glad. I did have to play around with it for just a little bit, where I was trying to figure out how do I translate what feelings feel like in a way that is also accessible and isn't just a bunch of adjectives, you know?

ST: Right.

KR: That's also how I feel about feelings, that feelings have colors to me. Not in a really obvious way, like when someone yells at me, I'm like, "Oh, the world's red" or something like that. But that anger is red, and love is pink, and depression is gray. That's just the association I have with all of those feelings. I was so glad that it ended up working because I feel like color also has slightly more substance to it than feelings. We understand pigment, we understand color, so it made feeling slightly more tangible.

ST: Yeah. It's a really clear way to get across feelings and the complexity of them too. So, the second book, I feel like the alternating voices also gave it a more mature feel in terms of tone. Was that a conscious choice on your part? Are you thinking these readers and listeners are kind of growing and aging along with this book series?

KR: I think it's kind of a mixture. So, I was aware that kids could be growing up with it. You know, this comes out a year later. You're going to be in a different place from 12 to 13. I remember 13 and 14. Whew! Tough time.

ST: And every year at that age is a leap. There's no small changes.

KR: It's so true. Every year is a giant stride in childhood. I was definitely aware of that. And I wanted to keep adding more of that meat that you start to crave at that age: “Give me big emotional talks and, at the same time, don't make it overwhelming.”

ST: It's a great balance, because you have those colors to guide, and you have the emotional complexity, the different perspectives and everything. It works wonderfully. It's like this perfect balance of emotionally mature content but accessible comprehension levels, if that makes sense.

KR: That makes me so happy to hear, because that's definitely what I was going for.

KR: And on the other hand, I think some of that just also comes from the fact that Juana is 15 in the story. She's half the story, so she's going to lend a harder or a more mature level in the story. She's going to add more of that tone. Plus, some of the topics require some level of deeper or harder emotional grappling. But at the same time, I'm still hoping it's just as accessible, because when the trilogy is done I want kids to be able to pick them up in a succession and never feel like, "I don't think I'm ready for this." And, of course, there will be some of that for any kid, because when you pick up a book and you're like, "You know what, I'm not... No, I'm okay. I can't do this right now." I still do that as an adult with different books. I'm like, "You know, that's okay. I need something else right now.”

ST: Oh, for sure. In this series, more than most others I've read and listened to, especially this year and the last year, I believe it will stand the test of time and be a popular book for a long time. I think it'd be pretty cool for kids to grow up and then have their kids read it as well. I could see that happening with a series like this.

KR: That would make me so happy. One of my little personal author statements to myself was I want kids to be able to grow up with me. I want that for their kids and their kids' kids. I don't know if I'll get that, if the book will stand the test of time, but boy would I love it.

ST: I had suspected that was the case, that you were thinking of these readers and listeners growing along with you. That's really cool. I would say one of the things that stood out to me in Book 1 is Cece's journey. There's a point where she says early on, "Anger gave me temporary armor." And it's interesting, because her journey moves away from that, more like what you might consider to be a typical bruja—at least as they're represented in the book—into a healer or a curandera. And it's interesting because it almost feels like the endpoint of Cece's journey is where Juana picks up at the beginning of Book 2, and it was really interesting to see how their journeys went back and forth in parallel.

KR: It's funny, I was intending this and yet, when I went back and was rereading the first one, I was like, "Ha! I didn't even realize I did it that well. Good job, me.” High five in the past, you know. I'm proud of myself. That's good. Throughout the fights, as Cece goes throughout the bruja fights in the first one, she was trying to tackle it like a bruja at first, because that's what she thinks she needs to be. But you notice the signs of her being a curandera only actually show up once she has rejected that fully. You start to see as she pushes back, "No, I am not going to do this. I will not kill Kit Fox." Those things actually start to grow because she's embracing the strength that is hers.

ST: Right, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I assume this relationship is going to grow in what I hope will be a Book 3.

KR: Yeah, there is a Book 3. Yes.

ST: Awesome.

KR: I'm revising it right now.

ST: Do you see this relationship continuing to grow in the next installment in the series?

KR: Between Juana and Cece? Yes. I don't even know if it will be so much as grow, because I think they get to a good place in the second one. But it will change, shift together, push deeper, things like that. The third one does not have Juana's perspective in it, but Juana is making important changes in the third one still, and Cece is also making important changes. They're both growing into a new and important part of their lives. And they are doing it in tandem, but they are still very different experiences for them. They end up bonding and having to reassure and grow into more of a real and respectful relationship where they can be more real with each other. Because in the first one and in the second one, there's a lot of layers of armor, either between Cece or Juana at the time.

Cece feels like she has to protect herself a little bit from Juana in the first one, because Juana expects her to be like her, with the best of intentions, but still. And in the second one, Juana is layered up with anger because she wants to have saved herself. And then in the third one, those layers sort of go away, and there's much more being able to meet each other on even ground. And that actually allows them, I think, to be able to grow better. That's where I want to take them.

ST: I love that, the idea of it as armor and kind of lowering the armor a little bit. I think the thing that I was most taken by is the world you've built here. As you've said in the back matter and the front matter of the book, it draws an inspiration from Aztec mythology and Hispanic culture. Some of the characters, like Coyote and El Sombrerón, seem to jump off the page or, I suppose, out from your headphones, if you're listening, as the case may be. But you've definitely made these characters all your own as well. I was wondering how you balance that, drawing from history and culture but kind of making it your own as well.

KR: Yeah, I had to figure that out as I went, especially with the first one. I was trying to figure out how do I want to approach this. Do I want to be very historically accurate or mythologically accurate? Where do I want to take it? But I ended up being most interested in what their folklore said that contributed to the discussion of the themes of the books. Like El Sombrerón, his mythology, half the time, he's like an imp. I made him this eight-foot-tall terrifying being. But half the time, he's this tiny, tiny person who braids horses’ hair. And he's half hilarious and half scary. But the part I was most interested in was this character who comes in and steals girls from their homes, who traps them, and takes them away. And that, to me, is genuinely terrifying. So, nothing about his impishness is funny to me because of the rest of it.

That really contributed to the story that I was trying to tell about respecting each other's agency, our right to choose, how we have to learn to work with each other, not overpower each other. In the story, you can literally grab people's souls, but we do versions of that in real life, where we're trying to put people—using manipulation or guilt tactics or all kinds of different things, actual physical overpowering. We all attempt to try and overpower each other. He's the perfect instigator of that theme, that he takes somebody against their will. And Cece, who does not feel like she is powerful, has no power to stop him. But she slowly comes into that power and realizes it's not like, "Oh, I have to learn how to be the bigger wolf,” it's “I'm going to stop playing with the wolves to begin with. I'm going to change the game."

ST: Wow, I love that. One of the more memorable visuals that I recall is the idea of his shelf that he keeps in his home and how each little compartment has a part of a fractured soul of one of the brides that he's taken.

KR: I love that that stuck with you. My editor said it best, she's like, "It reminds me of a serial killer with his trophies." And I was like, "Yeah, but middle-grade version of that."

ST: You strike that balance between it being intense, but not overwhelming, very well, I thought. If it made me nervous, but not uncomfortable, I think you nailed it because I'm really sensitive of that stuff.

KR: Oh, good, yeah. In fact, a lot of my beta readers are very sensitive people. I need to get into dark and hard things, but I never want it to rob you of something by the end of it. I always want to give you something by the end of the story that helps you face life instead of making you be like, "Well, I don't know why I'm here and everything sucks."

ST: So, after reading a little bit on your website and your bio, I know that you grew up in the Appalachian forests of Tennessee and were raised by Mexican American and British parents. How did your upbringing inform the world you built with Cece Rios?

KR: My dad is Mexican American and my mom is from England. So, yeah, that definitely feeds into that, because I realized very strongly that being Mexican American and being half Mexican American is a different experience from being Mexican. So, Cece is never written with the intention to be like, "This is Mexican culture. This is your 100 percent one-stop shop for learning about everything that is to do with Mexico or Mesoamerica."

But notice, Cece feels like an outcast in her society. And a lot of her story is learning to be both the powerful thing that she couldn't be as well as the sensitive, warm person that she is. And that those are her strengths, and using them as such. But the story dwells on that, because that's sort of what it feels like, or what it felt like to me—I can't speak for everybody—being half one culture and another. As a child, I ended up feeling like I didn't belong anywhere because of that, because no one was what I am.

As I grew up, I started to realize that, “Man, I got all of it. It didn't mean I got none of it,” and that I got to embrace my Mexican American culture and learn about it and thrive in it. And I got to go to England and love on my Nan and listen to her adorable British accent and embrace that as well, but also be very American, because I realized, when I go to England especially, very American [laughs].

ST: It's interesting, too, because it's not just different cultures clashing. It's different aspects of the same culture clashing.

KR: In any single culture you pick, there will always be something good about it and something bad about it. And there will be a value that you share with another culture, but you both have different perspectives on it. A culture can affect like, "No, we can't be weak," you know, stiff upper lip. Or "No, we can't be weak. Life is hard. Pull yourself up. We don't have time for this." Those are born out of a need to survive, which every culture has had a need to survive. And I respect that, while also being like, "We can change.” Like, our culture changes with us also. We take all the good things from our past and keep walking forward with it, but we keep taking the good things. That's my perspective on culture generally, is I just want to take all of the good things, greedy like that.

"We take all the good things from our past and keep walking forward."

ST: I believe in the afterword, you talk about how highlighting and exploring the beauty of cultural differences is extremely important to you. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

KR: I had to sort of discover my Mexican American heritage. So that became important to me in that way, actively looking and making something a part of yourself, because, of course, it is part of me, like DNA. But I wanted to connect with it in an emotional way as well. So, my mom being from England, she taught me all kinds of cool things—England, especially the time that she grew up in, is not nearly into the success-at-any-cost sort of thing that America is. And so she's always had such an interesting perspective when she saw like, “Everything is an award and you have to have all these accolades or you're not important” and all that. She just doesn't have that perspective. She's like, "But isn't it okay to just live a good life?"

So having her perspective on that, as well as Mexican culture being such a warm and inviting culture, where there's just so much personalness. For example, one of the things in my book that I had to fight for just a little bit was the inclusion of, there’s so much touching in the book. You know, people hold hands. They touch each other's hair. They lean against each other. And that's just because Mexico was like that. I'm not going to say all Mexicans are like that, but we're just very touchy. It's a really solid, connective culture. It's a very community culture as well. And there's beautiful things about that. And I just want all of the beautiful things.

When you explore cultural differences, you get to see through somebody else's eyes something that you didn't see beautiful, but [then] realize that it is, and get to incorporate that into yourself. For example, I live in Utah now, and I grew up in the Appalachians of Tennessee. I like my soft, forested mountains. So, when I came out here with these gigantic mountains, I'm like, "Eh! Where did the trees go?” And I didn't like it. But throughout the five years that I've lived here, listening to the people talk about how they love their mountains, and the way that they talk about it, where they're like, "I always know where I am because I can look to the mountains. The tallest ranges are to the east, and the small ranges to the West, and I will always know where I am in reference to home." And there's something gorgeous about that. And I was like, "Wow," and learning to appreciate both their perspective as well as learning to love and appreciate more than what is just you. I guess that's why that's important to me.

ST: That's amazing. So, I'd say out of all the characters in the book, my favorite has to be Coyote. And I think it's because he's playful, he's mercurial, he reacts on his emotions, but there's also introspective moments where he decides not to, which is something Cece is amazing at as well. His backstory is filled with intrigue and mystery, which I love because I'm a sucker for the complicated, mysterious characters. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it was like writing him because he really is something else. Every time he speaks or says something or has some role in a scene, it really struck me.

KR: So, Coyote is such an interesting character, and I adore him. If Cece has to be my favorite, Coyote is probably my second favorite, like, a slash favorite. He was really complicated to write though. Most things came together in that first draft. But Coyote, he took me a while to get my feet with him. He's a hard-won character. I don't want him to be the stereotypical "Oh, I'm such a mysterious bad boy." But I want him to have this air of mystery as well as this air of something a little bit otherworldly or old, some ancient quality to him that's hard to get your grasp on, and yet be a 13-year-old boy, with playfulness and mischievousness as Coyote is known to be. I just wanted him to be a really well-rounded character, while also be intriguing. And that was so hard to get.

But I remember the linchpin for me was watching Moana, which I really hadn't expected. And Coyote's not like Maui, but it's that one scene, where he's fighting Tamatoa. Tamatoa is just absolutely beating this man up, and watching the first shreds of Maui's vulnerability come out, as well as the backstory that people threw you away. And I was like, "Oh," and that relationship with humans, it comes from a really vulnerable need to be loved. That was sort of the linchpin for my Coyote, where I was like, "Yes, that's it. He has this really difficult relationship with Naked Man. Because he wants family. He wants to be loved, but he can't stand the way that they treat him." And he gets mad and disappointed with them, and he makes his own family. But he also doesn't really know what he's doing, because he's a mischievous, playful character who wants connection, but he also can be a really dark character when that is rejected, which I think is true about all of us.

I liked all of those tensions meeting in the one character—as somebody who wants to be loved, but has a difficult time loving when you mistreat them. Totally understandable. And a character who is both hopeful and cynical sometimes, as well as a character who is a very young boy but has also an ancient, 1,000-year life to draw on of memories or pieces of memories, history-book things that don't feel like who he is now. I loved all of those things meeting in one character. There's so much to explore. And the way that he rubs against Cece like sandpaper, a very hopeful young girl who meets him at his hopeful, tender, needs-to-be-loved place but also can see him in his darkness.

ST: Two quick thoughts that popped into my head when you were talking. One is that I love that we came full circle with the whole fight scenes and emotions thing, that seeing that fight scene in Moana helped you understand the emotional underpinnings. And then when I was listening to this, despite him being a criatura, and I'm cribbing a line from Blade Runner here, he's almost more human than humans, despite not technically being a human, because of his personality. I really liked that a lot.

KR: Oh, yes, thank you. That was a big important point for me, because these characters, like criaturas in this world, they are still people. And that's why Cece, in one of her big angry moments in the story, which are about Little Lion mostly, because he's a brat and I love him. But where she yells at him, "Who says you're not people? You love. You feel," and she's like, “I'm going to treat you like a person," aggressively [laughs]. They are all distinctly people, and that they needed to be extra distinctively people to show the contrast. The humans of Tierra del Sol, they're so divorced from contact with them, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to ignore how human they are.

ST: Right. I like that you bring up Little Lion, too, because, despite his gruffness, it’s clear that he feels like one of the characters that has the most trauma too, and it's interesting to see how that kind of back and forth goes where he opens up a little bit and he attaches to Juana in Book 2 so much.

KR: I loved having them on the journey in Book 2. I love Cece's journey in it, but Juana and Lion's journey in the story was the big motivator for me. It was the thing I was the most excited about. You just get two traumatized people, you put them together, they can both understand each other's emotional wounds, but they're also both really gruff and strong enough that it's impossible for either one of them to overpower the other. And so they end up having to work together in a more respectful fashion as well.

ST: I know that you said you appreciate the differences in culture and the beauty of the diversity of that. Is there a guiding principle you use when you're writing, like if you're feeling like you're spinning off into an area you’re not sure you want to be, is there something that kind of pulls you back to what your through line is?

KR: Yeah, I think the culture is a big important part of all of my books. I try to write the heart. That sounds really broad and a little bit cheesy, but I am interested in the human experience. I'm interested in where people's darkness comes from, where they ended up nurturing it, the point where somebody is retrievable or not. I'm interested in how people cope with trauma, and how they come back from it, how do they manage. All of the emotional grappling of trying to be a good person, while also going through all of the true difficulties of life, those are all really important to me. And so I tell myself, I want to write books that kids can grow up with, and I want to take people on adventures that heal. I try to remember that every single time: It needs to be an adventure that helps heal.

"They feel empowered to face day-to-day life after reading one of my books, not because it glances over painful topics but because it addresses painful topics and still gives you hope."

That doesn't mean that you read one of my books, boom, your trauma's gone. But something that can address the hurt child inside of you and take them by the hand and walk through an adventure that gives you hope again at least. Because I know all the difficult things through life, that whole spectrum of hurt on the inside. I always want hope to be in my books. That's my big through line. I want to give people hope to live their lives, giving them tools and equipment and then being like, "You got this." As they leave the book, back into the real world, they feel empowered to face day-to-day life after reading one of my books, not because it glances over painful topics but because it addresses painful topics and still gives you hope.

ST: Before we end this, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what might be next for you either in life or authorship or maybe a hint for your listeners to what they might expect next.

KR: So, I'm not leaving middle-grade. You can expect more middle-grade books from me, and they will still be spooky, and they will still be adventures that heal. I do have one that's coming up. I'm in revisions, my last revisions before I turn it into my agent. I pitched it as a middle-grade horror, like Hocus Pocus meets Labyrinth or Hocus Pocus meets Alice in Wonderland kind of thing.

ST: I mean, that sounds fantastic to me. I would love to see you tackle something with a really strong horror vibe to it. That'd be great. Thanks so much for your time, Kaela. It was a real treat for me. And I'm sure our listeners will get a lot out of it too.

KR: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, listeners, for listening.

ST: That's fantastic. Thank you. And listeners, you can get Cece Rios and the King of Fears on Audible now.