Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to L.R. Braden. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
L.R., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
When I was very young, my mother read to me. Then she read with me. Then I read on my own, and I’ve been reading ever since. It’s fair to say that reading was my first, best, and most trusted teacher when it comes to writing.
As a child I carried a book with me everywhere. I read during recess. I read walking home from school, occasionally looking up to cross streets. And what I read transported me. From the upper Yangtze River, to the deserts of Egypt, to the fantastical worlds of Xanth and Shannara; from the far future to the distant past; books carried me far from the monotony of day-to-day living and primed my imagination for a career I didn’t even realize was possible at the time. “Author” never came up as an option in the single life-planning session I had with a disinterested councilor in high school. I think they told me I should be a mechanic based on the results of the standardized test we all had to take. Neither did my parents have any advise about possible career paths.
When I went to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I just kept doing what I’d been doing—I drew and I read. Alongside my art classes, I took every class that promised I’d get to read a lot of books, and as a result, I ended up graduating with both a studio art degree and an English literature degree.
If I’d understood my options better, I might have taken a creative writing class. Looking back on my life now, I wish I had. I’d always gotten high marks on writing assignments, but they were generally academic in nature. I was also more accustomed to receiving than transmitting information. I’d spent most of my life listening, observing, and absorbing, but rarely sharing anything of my own thoughts or feeling with the outside world. At the time that I attended college, I still hadn’t made the mental connection that anyone, including me, could write the stories that I so loved reading. Then one day, lightning struck. I was sitting in my living room when I was twenty-nine years old, reading, as usual, when I had a brilliant realization: I could write my own stories!
I sat down at my laptop that very day and wrote a rough outline for a story idea. That outline turned into five separate books that would eventually become the foundation of my Magicsmith urban fantasy series. I wrote my first novel in three months, having never taken any type of writing class in my life. I relied on my copious experience as a reader to understand what made a story work, basing my decisions on what I enjoyed in other books.
This was fairly early in the self-publishing transformation of the industry. As someone who had no clue what I was doing or how to do it, zero industry contacts, and no idea how to evaluate if I’d even written a decent story, I decided to follow the traditional path to publication. I started submitting to agents. Needless to say, I didn’t strike gold on my first attempt.
I revised my manuscript after every rejection. If an agent or editor provided specific feedback, I made the changes they recommended. If they didn’t, I reread and reworked the manuscript anyway. Every pass refined my story, tightened my writing, and made my pitch stronger. Around this time, I also decided to attend my first writers workshop. It was a simple one-day event in a nearby town where a local agent discussed how they selected which works to represent from their “slush pile,” a term I had never even heard before. I enjoyed that experience so much that I signed up for a full conference put on by the same group: Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.
My first writers conference was an exhilarating and terrifying event. I’m an introvert, through and through. Being in crowds makes me incredibly uncomfortable, and I define a crowd as more than two people. Needless to say, walking the halls and sitting in lectures with a hundred strangers who all seemed eager to chat with one another was a harrowing experience for me. But I attended all the lectures I could. I raised my hand and volunteered to read my writing out loud, though I barely managed to walk to the podium and back without fainting. A lot of that conference was a blur, but I survived, and I learned. For the first time, I learned that the story structure I’d been writing intuitively actually had a name, and there were more structures that I could draw from. I learned about story beats and pacing. I learned tips and tricks for self-editing. I learned how to pitch my book, and I even got the chance to practice pitching in person to an agent. I also got a massive reading list of book recommendations focused on improving my craft. Armed with this new arsenal of information, I studied on my own and continued to revise and polish my manuscript. A year later I had an agent, and a year after that, my debut novel was published.
I’m still learning. Every draft of every book I write is an experiment and a lesson. I still attend writers conferences, though now I speak on panels as well as sitting in the audience. I learn new things every day, but the very first, number one, most important thing that made a difference to my becoming an author was simply realizing what was possible.
I had a very haphazard journey to authorship. That tends to happen when you don’t know where you’re going and are afraid to ask for directions. A combination of my isolationist nature and tight financial situation led to me having a slower start to my writing career than I might have otherwise, and those two factors continue to affect my growth even now.
Writing workshops and conventions aren’t cheap, even before factoring in travel and hotel expenses. Despite knowing how much benefit can come from conferences and conventions, I have trouble justifying spending enough to attend even one per year. As a result, I’ve relied heavily on books, the internet, and trial-and-error to learn the ins and outs of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing. Luckily, there are quite a few assets available. Would attending workshops be a faster way to grow my skill base? Absolutely. If you have that kind of financial liquidity, I highly recommend them.
Networking is another powerful tool, but it’s a difficult tool for an introvert to wield. If I’d known someone when I was younger who’d said, “Hey, you’re good at writing. Have you considered becoming an author?” That might have made a big difference in the time it took me to find this career. If I’d had any sort of mentor to show me the ropes or point me in the right direction, I might not have spent so long in the trial-and-error stage of my writing career. Even now, as a published author, I struggle with reader reach because my network isn’t as large as someone who’s comfortable reaching out to other authors and influencers.
Like the workshops, I definitely would have learned the skills necessary for writing and marketing faster if I’d had friends or mentors to talk to along the way. Even with the limited number of contacts I’ve established, I’ve learned so much from each of them. From mistakes they made to tactics that succeeded, from advice on craft to the practicalities of setting up a signing event, people are a wealth of information if you’re brave enough to talk to them. So if you’re anything but a hermit, I suggest you find a group of fellow writers to connect with. You’ll be amaze how much you can learn from each other.
L.R., before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I often describe myself as a daydreamer and storyteller because, for me, daydreams are where all great stories begin. Having grown up an avid reader, I devoured fantasy like no other genre. Fantasy broke the rules of the world and made absolutely anything possible. For a kid who spent most of her time in her own head, fantasy offered endless fuel for my imagination. And imagine I did. It’s not surprising then that, when I started writing books, I sought to bring the magic and wonder of those daydreams into my waking world.
While I always enjoyed reading epic fantasy, when I was first exposed to the newer subgenre of urban fantasy, I fell in love. This was a genre that brought magic home in a way that stories taking place on other worlds never could. This was a genre that matched up with my daydreams! Running with that ball, I wrote my Magicsmith series, books that bring all the classic elements of fantasy—detailed magic systems, grand adventures, sweeping battles, political turmoil, and a plethora of magical creatures—to a mundane setting that any reader could imagine was their own back yard. In my case, it literally was. I set my Magicsmith series in Colorado, where I was born and raised. I used landmarks any local could recognize. I overlaid my real world with the world of my imagination and twisted them together into a believable reality that, hopefully, provides readers with simultaneous feelings of familiarity and wonder.
While I do hope to support my family with my writing someday, I didn’t become an author to get rich. Despite what many people seem to think, authors don’t make much money. At least not until they reach Stephen King or J.K. Rowling fame, and most of us never achieve that level of affluence. I also didn’t become an author because I had some great moral lesson to teach, although I find more and more that fiction is a surprisingly good vehicle for sharing ideas. When I sat down to write my first book, my only real goal was to make someone, somewhere, smile. I’d gotten hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of enjoyment out of reading, and I wanted to share that. I wanted to take people on an adventure and let them see the world in a different way, even if only for a little while. And maybe reading my books will spark someone else’s imagination. Maybe one of my books will inspire that light bulb moment that turns a next generation reader into a writer so the cycle can continue. At the very least, I hope I’ve put a few more smiles out there in the world.
Since the release of my debut novel, A Drop of Magic, in 2019, the Magicsmith series has grown beyond what I originally envisioned, evolving with each new story to become richer and more fleshed out. The Magicsmith books are written from a single, first-person perspective. The main character, Alex, explores the Magicsmith world as someone who starts off thinking she’s a regular human doing her best to avoid anything involving magic. In this way, readers get to share in her discoveries, both about herself and the world she inhabits. Each new book focuses on a specific antagonist or problem, each containing a complete story, but they also contribute to the overall growth of the characters and the world as Alex struggles to accept each new revelation and challenges those around her to do the same. I currently have seven books in the series, with several more outlined. I’ve also written a spin-off series that follows different characters who live in the same world.
My Rifter series, beginning with Demon Riding Shotgun, is written in dual, third-person perspectives. These books follow a character named Mira who is possessed by a demon and a PTF agent (think FBI for magical threats) named Ty. If you’re familiar with the Venom character from the Marvel universe, you can picture Mira’s relationship with her demon like that. The demon is an incorporeal being who manifests as a snarky voice in Mira’s head who also takes over her body from time to time. This series is both a little darker and has a little more humor than my Magicsmith series, but it incorporates a lot of the same themes—primarily acceptance, both of yourself and others.
As much as I love my Magicsmith series, I’ve really enjoyed getting to explore this shared world from a new angle in the Rifter series. While Alex does her best to color inside the lines of society, Mira is forced to live her life in the shadows, since her very existence is illegal. Alex draws people to her and becomes a figurehead for active change, while Mira pushes people away and quietly protects the world from threats most people aren’t even aware of. Despite their differences, all of my books have a fast pace, plenty of action, and often incorporate elements of mystery and mild romance. If you enjoy fun, magical stories full of heart and courage in the face of overwhelming odds, I think you’ll like my books. But, of course, I’m a little biased.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I’ve had plenty of “normal” jobs. I’ve been a bank teller, a library clerk, worked in retail . . . and I was good at them. But they were boring. I found that at least half my mind was always somewhere else. As an author, I can focus 100% of my efforts on something that I truly care about, so from a personal-fulfillment perspective, writing is far more engaging and brings me more joy than anything else I’ve ever done. But that’s not actually the best part.
I owe a lot to the authors who came before me, the people who wrote the books that were my constant companions growing up. For me, the most rewarding part of being an author is filling that role for someone else. Every time someone posts a review, sends me an email, or walks up to me at a convention and says that my books meant something to them, that my stories affected them in some positive way, it makes my day. All the hours of writing, editing, marketing and promoting boil down to one fact: I write to bring enjoyment to others. The most rewarding aspect of being an author is hearing that I’ve achieved that.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
There are so many amazing resources when it comes to the craft and business of writing. Not all of them will work for every writer since we all have different styles, but I’d recommend checking out a few and seeing what fits. For setting up your story, a process that some call outlining, some call pre-writing, and some don’t call anything because that just feels too restrictive, I recommend reading Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Brody; The Heroine’s Journey by Carriger; Goal, Motivation and Conflict by Dixon; and 5 Secrets of Story Structure by Weiland. My favorite editing book is called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne & King.
Moving to online resources, check out Jane Friedman’s blog, where she discusses trends in the industry; Writer’s Digest, which has an online university; the website WritersHelpingWriters.net, which has tons of great resources; and, as a fantasy writer, I’ve greatly enjoyed Brandon Sanderson’s lectures on YouTube.
If you’re creating ad graphics for your books on a budget, take a look at GIMP, Canva, and BookBrush.
And the very best resource I can recommend: other authors! Find an active writing group, even if it’s only online, where you can ask questions and get feedback.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lrbraden.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurenrbraden/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LRBraden
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurenRBraden
