We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful J. Reese Bradley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with J. Reese below.

Alright, J. Reese thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I wrote the first in my series, Brumbletide and the Daughter of Eve, in 2017. It wasn’t called that. It had another name and was almost another story entirely. I was so proud of it! It was time to start the long journey to getting published. An author who would like to publish their book traditionally (meaning sell your manuscript to a publishing house like Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, Scholastic, etc.) has to query literary agents to hopefully receive an offer of representation. If, by chance, they can get an agent, the agent then tries to sell their book to publishing houses.
To my humblement (it’s totally a word), Not Brumbletide was rejected by literary agents somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand times. So, I wrote the whole thing all over again! New name, new characters, pretty much a whole new story, and low and behold, what was now called Brumbletide and the Daughter of Eve got a literary agent in August of 2019!
A few months after signing the contract, the manuscript went on submission to publishers. I have no horn to toot, but I have to toot the horn right now to tell my story. Almost every one of the top publishing houses requested my manuscript, every one of them read it, almost every one said they loved it…and every one rejected it. By September of 2022, the writing was on the wall that Brumble wasn’t going to get a book deal, and I decided to remove it from submission and self-publish.
What does this story have to do with anything? Nothing really…except that during that year I was on submission, I got to see what agents and editors are calling for and what children’s, middle grade, and young adult books are being published. It’s something called Diverse Books, and if you or your manuscript is not on board with its narrative, you aren’t getting a book deal.
Before I go further, let me make it clear that Brumbletide could be horrible. They could be the worst books ever written! And because of this, they had no chance of getting published anyway. But the story behind my mission today is that because of my time of querying agents and then my year on submission, I know that even if Brumbletide were the best in middle grade history, it wouldn’t get a book deal in today’s traditionally published world because it doesn’t meet the criteria for Diverse Books.
If you are thinking that the meaning of Diverse Books is the inclusion of different races and social backgrounds, that’s what I thought too. But no, it is the inclusion and celebration of homosexuality and transgender ideologies, as well as pro-abortion narratives. Every author (of children’s books, mind you) that is getting a book deal now and in recent years has either written a Diverse Book or are at least outwardly supportive of them.
So, if you are a Christian or have conservative views, not only will you never get a novel published by one of the Big Five publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan), but you should know that all the recently published books that are available to your children at their local bookstore, library, or school bookfair are Diverse Books.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’ve written four books of the seven-book Brumbletide series, so I’m still plugging away at that. The fourth, Brumbletide and the Queen’s Doctor’s Story releases in May! In addition to writing, I am now on a mission to find, support, and lift up talented authors who happen to be Christian or conservative or both and have written FANTASTIC stories that your kids/teens will love. I started a Youtube channel in September of 2022 where I interview these authors and anyone else on board with the cause live for about an hour and a half. The name of the channel is J. Reese Bradley, and I call the interviews JRB LIVE. I’ve had the most amazing guests!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Getting rejected so many times was definitely discouraging. Then any author who is Christian/conservative but doesn’t write explicitly Christian fiction knows what an outsider you are in the book world. Liberals don’t like your books, but then a lot of conservatives don’t like them either because they aren’t squeaky clean. For anyone feeling this way, don’t give up. Keep writing, keep marketing, keep networking. With eight billion people in the world, your audience is out there. I’m thankful for the whole journey and wouldn’t change it because of what I’ve learned.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that self-published authors are terrible. There’s always been a stigma with self-publishing that still exists today. Because anyone and everyone can self-publish a book, there are a lot of bad ones—but there are even more amazing authors who have self-published brilliant stories! Let me suggest Nick Goss’s Travelers League Series for your middle grade reader or Huck Warwicks’s Henry Halfmoon for your young adult. So good!

Contact Info:

• Website: jreesebradley.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jreesebradley/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jreesebradley/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jreesebradley
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjbGUCZnK8NJx_FOB2dSG6g