Our SPFBOX interviews continue with B. L. Brown, author of Ritual Income.
SPFBO (the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off) is a free online contest run by author Mark Lawrence. 300 authors compete across ten judging teams to see who will be the winner! You can read more about the contest here.
INTERVIEW WITH B. L. BROWN
Tell us a little about yourself and let our readers know which blog you’ve been assigned to for SPFBOX!
I’m a lifelong fantasy fan finally putting my English and ComLit degrees to good use writing about witches in Florida and monsters at a band camp in Appalachia.
I cut my writing teeth in journalism, contributing to music and lifestyle webzines and blogs in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Like any good millennial, I spent a large amount of creative hours posting on fanfiction.net.
My book, RITUAL INCOME, has been assigned to CoversWithCassidy for SPFBOX.
What inspired you to write this book?
Can you tell us a little bit about your writing or editing process? What’s most exciting to you about writing or editing?
I’m a writer with ADHD, so developing a cadence and ritual around writing was very important. I’ve settled into an exploratory-style of outlining, what I call a “skeleton draft”, that sits somewhere between a traditional outline and a first draft. It starts innocently enough with high-level beats and major plot points, but as I go I end up writing full-on scenes, descriptions, and exchanges of dialogue. My most recent skeleton draft ended up being 110pages, which my critique partner informed me was “absurd.”
But! I find keeping to an outline style with deep description and character dive allows me the space to explore and take tangents. It’s far easier for my brain to backtrack and pinpoint where I need to try to light a new path forward, versus getting bogged down in the manuscript style first draft.
And to me, that’s the most exciting part: the “Ah-hah!” moment in that beefy outline where I realize what needs to be done, or modified, to make a plot point land or a reveal carry the desired impact.
I wanted to examine feminine rage, pain, and recovery in a way I had not come across in urban fantasy or paranormal romance.
Who or what have been your major literary influences?
What makes your SPFBOX book unique?
Do you have a favourite character from your SPFBOX entry? Tell us about them!
Dies-well With Remembrance Goodman; a Puritan vampire carrying out multiple life sentences in the employ of the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
He first stepped onto the page as a throw-away character because I needed a boots on the ground detective with ties to the vampires of New Orleans. Within five pages he had talked himself into a complete backstory, name, and personal character arc. It is a Good Day when I get to write a Dies-well scene.
I love the trope of a high-powered magic user hiding away from the world and being hauled back into the spotlight, and what better cause to fight against than a pyramid scheme targeting women?
How does your work fit into (or challenge) its genre?
Broadly, Ritual Income fits well into the tropes of its genre: we have a witch in hiding, a magical world kept secret from the mortal world. A grand scheme by the big bad threatening that veil and all humanity.
The fun in writing and revising the work came in the challenge – I wanted Milla’s literary ghost to be a Real Ghost. I wanted a formerly wicked witch to be in hiding for a very good reason beyond “we keep magic away from mortals”, and I wanted to examine feminine rage, pain, and recovery in a way I had not come across in urban fantasy or paranormal romance.
So I wrote an urban fantasy detective noir as told from the perspective of the femme fatale.
What do you hope readers take away from your SPFBOX entry?
What are you currently working on?
I’m just over the halfway-point of a heavy revision on Ritual Dues (Witch of the Demesne Book 2), and scrambling to get through the work before shipping it off to my editor!
Ritual Income
Every witch has her Way.
Milla is a witch who wants to hide. Grieving the loss of her mentor, she retreats to St. Augustine where her only goals are to run her antique store and tend her demesne into obscurity. But C.R.O.W. has other plans for the formerly wicked witch.
As if being saddled with a new apprentice and trying to get rid of the Aural Insurance Adjuster sent to observe her isn’t enough to deal with, a pack of multi-level marketing huns sets their sights on Milla, intent on burning her store to the ground.
When a threat to the demesne, and the witches and mortals under Milla’s care, raises its ugly head it is up to her to decide:
Is living out her days as a nothing witch in a nowhere demesne what she truly wants, or is the formerly wicked witch ready to rejoin the witchy world of C.R.O.W.?
Add Ritual Income on Goodreads.
Purchase Ritual Income from Amazon.
B.L. Brown writes about messy characters solving their problems through banter and questionable choices. Her debut novel, Shady Depths, released in April 2023, and her follow-up novel, Ritual Income won second place in the Spring 2024 Bookfest Awards – Paranormal Romance Genre.
Her short fiction can be found in Tails, Trysts, and Tentacles: One Monstrous Summer, Fireside: Modern Legends and Lore, and The Future of Us, A Moms Who Write Anthology.
