Diving into SciFi: An Author Interview with SciFi Author Keyla Damaer

Step into the imaginative world of Keyla Damaer, an Italian author whose passion for storytelling began in childhood. Her travels—especially throughout the United States, where part of her family lives—allowed her to deepen her love for the English language, a fascination she’s cherished for years.

Title Of Book: Scars of Perfection
Series: The Vigilante’s Code Book 1
By: Keyla Damaer
Genre: SciFi
Sub-Genre: Action/Adventure, Space Opera, Tech Noir, Strong Female Lead, Reluctant Hero
Release Date: April 15th 2025

About The Book:

They promised success. They delivered pain.

Sixteen girls vanished. One common link: a cosmetic surgery clinic. Private investigator Lauren Kutyna is hired to find answers, but the deeper she digs, the more dangerous the truth becomes. Caught between corrupt corporations, a shadowy conspiracy, and the enigmatic Detective Hunter, Lauren must unravel a web of deceit before she becomes the next victim. The scars of perfection run deep, and the price of beauty may be too high to pay.

Discover the dark side of beauty now.

Start the series off with a Free Prequel

One mission. One target. No escape.
When Outpost 9001, a remote research station orbiting Mars, falls silent, Lieutenant Lauren Kutyna, a highly trained security officer with the Astra Corps, is sent on a solo mission to investigate. But what begins as a routine check quickly descends into a terrifying nightmare. Alone, with a sabotaged communication array and a killer on the loose, Lauren uncovers a chilling conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the Astra Corp.
Trapped millions of miles from Earth, Lauren must fight to survive and expose the truth.
Join the fight. Get your copy now.

Interview With Keyla

What are you reading now?
The Ink Black Heart, Book 6 of the Cormoran Strike series, by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling, mostly as a case study for the series I’m currently writing with a P.I. as the main character.

Describe your writing space.
I use an old MacBook and a huge LG screen because the laptop’s screen is too small for my eyes. The tablet and phone are always beside me, with at least two external HDs. Several paper notes hang on a corkboard. Music is often on. Genre depends on my mood or what I’m writing.

Is writing your full-time career? Or would you like it to be?
No, and no. I write full-time most of the year, but during the tax season in Italy, I take care of tax returns not only for my customers but also for someone I collaborate with during that season, from May to September. During these months there’s little to no time to write stories because I work 7 days a week, and take care of my newsletter in my spare time.

What inspired you to start writing?
I don’t know. Stories just want to be told. I suppose the answer to the question is … life? I’ve always had a vivid imagination. When I was a child, I used to imagine stories in my head, and I sometimes enacted them. In my teens, I started to write my stories down, and I still have my first novel somewhere on my bookshelf. One day, perhaps I’ll read again and laugh, or cry, depending on my mood. I bet it’ll be aweful.

Tell us about your first published book. What was the journey like?
A nightmare. And the odd thing is that I never gave up completely.

I mean, it started as a game, with a piece I wrote just for fun, and that I sent to a friend (who later on became the cover artist for that series). He said to me: ‘Write this story and publish it.’ It took me some time to persuade me, but in the end, I wrote the story (this was back in 2016), and he helped with the initial editing. I published the first version of the novel one year later but received negative feedback about … everything: passive voice, info dump, filler words, telling, and everything a newbie will write wrong.

I found a bunch of authors who helped me understand what to fix, why, and how. Then I hired a professional editor and published a second edition (the one currently on sale) of the novel in 2020. The book is The Parallels and is the first novel of the Sehnsucht Series.

Where do you get your inspiration?
Inspiration is everywhere around me. The shower is a place where a lot of ideas come out, and I hear this is common to many authors, but anything will do. For the final chapter of The Parallels, the inspiration came from a news report about a terrorist cell being taken down by police in Brussels. Needless to say, the scene in the story portrays violence.

If you could choose three people to invite to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
Among the living, Joe Abercrombie. Among the dead, J. R. Tolkien. Why? Because they both excel in writing, obviously. You might wonder why I name two fantasy authors instead of sci-fi authors, which is what I usually write. I just like everything they published.

I’m not sure about the third person. I think it would probably be a scientist. Einstein, perhaps? Or David Brin.