We chat with author Kelly Anderson about The Wild Beneath, which is a fierce, haunting story of one woman caught between her first love and a mysterious stranger who upends everything—and the two worlds that won’t let her go.
Hi, Kelly! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a physician and writer living in rural Guelph, Ontario with my husband and two sons. I’ve spent the last fifteen years working in emergency and HIV medicine. I’m currently Chief Medical Officer at Felix Health, one of Canada’s largest digital health platforms. I never planned to write fiction, but in many ways it saved my life! The Wild Beneath is my first novel.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
As a kid, we lived by the ocean and I wrote constantly. I made up stories about sea creatures, women with telepathic powers, and magic filling them from the inside out. Around age twelve, when we moved to the mountains, I stopped writing entirely. It took decades — and a particularly dark chapter of my adult life where I felt I was living in a rinse-repeat cycle — to find my way back to it.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Matilda by Roald Dahl
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Your debut novel, The Wild Beneath, is out August 4th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
An ocean myth about metamorphosis.
What can readers expect?
It’s an immersive love story with threads of magic that feel like they could actually happen in our real lives, built for readers who loved Wild Dark Shore or The Time Traveler’s Wife. Annie MacLeod is the main character. She was raised on a sailboat in the remote Pacific Northwest until a tsunami strands her on shore, and she finds a mysterious man in the wreckage who emits a humming sound only she can hear. It’s a myth, and it’s also a story about coming home to yourself when you’ve forgotten your own instincts and intuition.
Where did the inspiration for The Wild Beneath come from?
In 2019, I was quietly drowning inside my own life when I found this story. I was raising our two young sons in the wake of my husband having a significant traumatic brain injury, while working clinics during the day and ER night shifts. I looked fine from the outside — I was highly functional, proficient at my job — but inside I felt robotic and flat, like I’d abandoned myself somewhere along the way. One winter morning I was doing a three-point turn in my driveway; the sun was blindingly bright and I’d forgotten my sunglasses. Out of nowhere, I found myself imagining a story about metamorphosis. It was the humming character, Walker, that I saw first. I think, in some way, I was looking for that kind of change in my own life.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved the research side of things. I read more articles on whale communication than I can count, trying to understand all the gaps in our knowledge about cetaceans. I’m fascinated by how much we do not understand about the uncharted, deep ocean. I’m endlessly grateful to the wildlife and forestry experts who spent hours on the phone with me while I pieced together a story.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I came from a medical background with zero training in fiction, so my first draft was very basic — I didn’t know how to write a novel yet. I had to go inhale books on craft and find teachers patient enough to walk me through revision after revision. The bigger challenge, though, was fitting it in: I was working three jobs at once, raising two young boys, and writing in whatever cracks of time I could find. There were many stretches where I didn’t believe this book would see the light of day. I kept showing up at my desk, which is all we can really do.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
It wasn’t linear. I rewrote this book entirely four times over five years. For a seven month stretch near the end, it went in a drawer and I wasn’t sure I’d ever pull it out again. In order to teach myself to write, I did the Bookends Novel Fellowship, the Gateless Writing Academy, and several courses with Sarah Selecky. I think the secret was that I was relentless about finishing. Luckily, I met my dream agent, Madeleine Milburn, who carried this story in her backpack until it found its home. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who believed in the book along the way—from my writing community to my exceptional editors and publishing teams — who brought the story to where it is today.
What’s next for you?
I’m in the middle of writing my second novel. It’s another multigenerational love story, with a similar reverence for the natural world and magic running through it. I also write a weekly Substack, wearethewild.substack.com, where I explore intuition, creativity, and what it takes to feel alive again.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I just finished Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser (basically in one sitting on the plane) and was obsessed with it, because it addresses this topic so near to my heart — how women have the capacity for metamorphosis.
