# Rocky Mountain Book Box presents Brynne Weaver in conversation with Aurora Palit

An episode of [Smut Syndicate](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1850296328), 17 Jul 2026, 52 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2553001/episodes/19483641-rocky-mountain-book-box-presents-brynne-weaver-in-conversation-with-aurora-palit.mp3

Welcome Smut Squad to a very special episode of Smut Syndicate. On July 6, 2026 we were lucky enough to be a part of Rocky Mountain Book Box presents Brynne Weaver in conversation with Aurora Palit. It was such an incredible evening with great conversation between these two amazing authors. In this conversation they talk the interesting mind of Brynne, indie authors, the release of Harvest Season, and much more. Be sure to visit Rockymountainbookbox.ca to snag copies of Brynne and Aurora books and for all your bookish needs. We decided to remove the audience questions for the audience privacy. Recorded July 6, 2026 from a conversation between Brynne Weaver and Aurora Palit at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, AB. Click here to text us any questions, comments or book recommendations :) Support the show Live Laugh Mortal Trash

## Transcript

[0:07] SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone.
[0:09] SPEAKER_01: Who's excited?
[0:14] SPEAKER_01: All right, my name is Calica.
[0:15] SPEAKER_01: I am the owner of Rocky Mountain Book Box.
[0:18] SPEAKER_01: But before we begin, I would like to ask Tacity Short on stage to do our land acknowledgement.
[0:28] SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, everybody.
[0:29] SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys for having me.
[0:31] SPEAKER_00: My name is Tacity Short, and I am from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, which is located on the Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan.
[0:39] SPEAKER_00: We respectfully acknowledge that Jasper National Park is located in Treaty 6 and Treaty 8 and the national lands of the Beaver Cree, Ojibwe, Shushwap, Stoney and Metis Nations.
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: We mentioned this to honor the people of these territories and thank them for contributing to building our park, our province, and our nation.
[0:58] SPEAKER_00: That's all I kind of really have for you guys today.
[1:00] SPEAKER_00: So thank you guys again, and I hope you guys enjoy your evening.
[1:09] SPEAKER_02: Thank you everyone, and thank you so much for joining me and making time to come out and talk all things books.
[1:16] SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate it.
[1:18] SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
[1:19] SPEAKER_03: And thank you to Rocky Mountain Book Box for hosting this incredible event.
[1:24] SPEAKER_03: Can we give her a round of applause?
[1:31] SPEAKER_03: All right.
[1:32] SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna start with a soft opener.
[1:36] SPEAKER_03: Where the hell do you get your ideas for books?
[1:42] SPEAKER_02: I have a really weird imagination, I'm afraid.
[1:54] SPEAKER_02: I get a bit from my previous range of careers that I've had.
[1:59] SPEAKER_02: So forensic archaeology, like I don't take anything from real life except for the wood chipper.
[2:05] SPEAKER_02: We'll get to that later.
[2:08] SPEAKER_02: But I think, yeah, just a very active, crazy imagination.
[2:12] SPEAKER_02: It's probably a little weird up here.
[2:13] SPEAKER_02: I could start a cult.
[2:14] SPEAKER_02: Do you want to join my cult?
[2:16] SPEAKER_02: I already have.
[2:20] SPEAKER_02: She's gonna start a cult, so I recommend you all join it.
[2:23] SPEAKER_02: This is my role as cult supporter.
[2:26] SPEAKER_02: You can trust me, I'll take care of you.
[2:31] SPEAKER_03: So I'm sure I speak for many of you.
[2:34] SPEAKER_03: It's really special to have like such a huge, successful Canadian author, you know?
[2:39] SPEAKER_03: It's so special.
[2:45] SPEAKER_03: Can you talk a little bit about what it was like when your career really took off?
[2:50] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was it was a pretty big whirlwind.
[2:54] SPEAKER_02: I was self-published, as some of you might know.
[2:57] SPEAKER_02: So Butcher and Blackbird was, I think, my eighth book.
[3:01] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I was just really trying to like learn the ropes and and continue to put my work out there and grow my readership and learn how to market myself and my books.
[3:12] SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that people were saying to me, like, I I had a couple of serial killer dark romances, but they weren't rom-coms.
[3:21] SPEAKER_02: Um, but people would say, Oh, I really like the moments of humor in them.
[3:24] SPEAKER_02: So I was like, you know what?
[3:25] SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna have fun.
[3:26] SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna still write in that wheelhouse, but I'm gonna put my own humorous spin on it.
[3:31] SPEAKER_02: And then I just like literally chucked the book onto Amazon because I didn't like I didn't want to do a pre-order.
[3:38] SPEAKER_02: I wanted to see how that would affect like how Amazon would place the book.
[3:42] SPEAKER_02: And then like nothing major happened for about two weeks, but I could see how people were talking about it was maybe a bit different from what I had seen before.
[3:51] SPEAKER_02: Um, and then all of a sudden it kind of exploded on book talk.
[3:55] SPEAKER_02: Some of the bigger book talkers started picking it up just organically.
[3:58] SPEAKER_02: I hadn't sent it.
[3:59] SPEAKER_02: Um, and then they started talking about it.
[4:01] SPEAKER_02: And it was like suddenly, like everything kind of changed very rapidly.
[4:07] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I started getting these inquiries from foreign publishers who were like, We want to buy the rights.
[4:13] SPEAKER_02: Who's your agent?
[4:14] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I don't have an agent.
[4:15] SPEAKER_02: And they're like, Well, sign this contract, how about?
[4:17] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no, hell no.
[4:22] SPEAKER_02: So uh one of them took pity on me and he was like, Here, I'll give you the names of two agents.
[4:27] SPEAKER_02: And I emailed one of them, and she got back to me in 30 minutes on a Sunday, and I've been with her ever since.
[4:33] SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, it was kind of like being, I like to say it's like being a goldfish dumped into the ocean, which I know would kill a goldfish, but uh it felt a little bit like that.
[4:45] SPEAKER_02: I'm like, whoa, this is surrounded by a whole new world of publishing that I didn't really understand, but maybe I knew just enough to be a little bit of a pain in the ass to my publishers.
[4:58] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it was crazy.
[5:00] SPEAKER_02: It was crazy to like have it happen so quickly.
[5:03] SPEAKER_02: And at the same time as that, we had a farm and I was in a corporate job.
[5:07] SPEAKER_02: So I had written all these books, like just you know, in my spare time.
[5:13] SPEAKER_02: Um and we got the contract to move to the US because that's where the corporate office was.
[5:20] SPEAKER_02: So the same day I got my first publishing contract, I got my contract to move countries, which was like really wild.
[5:26] SPEAKER_02: So it's a lot of turmoil.
[5:29] SPEAKER_03: And I mean, like, because obviously you're in the middle of a book launch and a tour.
[5:35] SPEAKER_03: How do you stay grounded in all this?
[5:38] SPEAKER_02: Ask my husband, because he's like, she's not grounded, she's crazy.
[5:45] SPEAKER_02: Um I think like fortunately, I've got such a great group of friends and colleagues, and I think um, you know, you get to know people who uh kind of help to keep you grounded.
[5:59] SPEAKER_02: And um, as you know, it's a pretty tough industry and it sucks.
[6:03] SPEAKER_02: It sucks.
[6:04] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's really crazy.
[6:06] SPEAKER_02: I did not expect it to be the way it is.
[6:09] SPEAKER_02: Um, and there's just a lot.
[6:11] SPEAKER_02: There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and I think that probably helps to keep people grounded too, a lot of us, you know, because we all know, like authors know there's like a lot going on underneath it all.
[6:23] SPEAKER_02: So it kind of helps to yeah, take you down a peg when you're like, What have I done with my life?
[6:31] SPEAKER_03: Well, speaking of like a lot going on, so when I imagine Bryn planning a book, I imagine her in front of like a huge whiteboard with like pictures and that red string.
[6:41] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, sometimes she's crying, sometimes she's like laughing hysterically.
[6:46] SPEAKER_03: How did you know about the tears?
[6:49] SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, and your books have so many layers, right?
[6:52] SPEAKER_03: There's like horror, sometimes there's mystery and like a little bit of detective work, there's romance, incredible romance.
[6:58] SPEAKER_03: There's just so much going on.
[7:00] SPEAKER_03: Can like, what is plotting or planning your books like?
[7:04] SPEAKER_03: And if you tell me you don't plot, I will cry.
[7:09] SPEAKER_02: No, yeah, no.
[7:15] SPEAKER_02: Boo! Are you a plotter?
[7:19] SPEAKER_02: Do you plot now like I hate plotting, but if I don't do it, it's a mess.
[7:22] SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
[7:23] SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
[7:26] SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, just embrace the chaos then.
[7:29] SPEAKER_02: Like, just go with the chaos and then knit it together afterwards.
[7:34] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one way to avoid the dreadful plotting.
[7:38] SPEAKER_02: That's yeah, no, I I don't.
[7:40] SPEAKER_02: I um sorry.
[7:44] SPEAKER_02: I did, I tried because like I I started writing when I was pretty young, and I wrote like hand-wrote books in high school.
[7:53] SPEAKER_02: It was like my switch off.
[7:54] SPEAKER_02: It was like a safe place because childhood was kind of a little bit insane.
[7:58] SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it was like my safe place to imagine things, and I would write these books by hand, and I probably wrote five or six by hand, and I typed a couple.
[8:06] SPEAKER_02: Um, and then somewhere along the line, I got it into my head.
[8:10] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it was like in a creative writing class or something like that.
[8:13] SPEAKER_02: Um, but that I was doing it wrong and that you have to plot an outline.
[8:18] SPEAKER_02: Yes.
[8:18] SPEAKER_02: And then you do, and that you need like these super detailed like character um cards and things and notes, and like, I don't know.
[8:29] SPEAKER_02: I just I couldn't do it that way.
[8:31] SPEAKER_02: I kept abandoning it.
[8:33] SPEAKER_02: Of course she couldn't.
[8:34] SPEAKER_02: I couldn't my head wouldn't do it.
[8:36] SPEAKER_02: My brain would be like, you have to follow exactly what you just put down, and I wouldn't allow myself the space to like kind of do what I wanted to do, I guess.
[8:45] SPEAKER_02: So then when I started again in 2020, and I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna do it the way I had fun.
[8:52] SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to have fun, and that's what ended up working for me.
[8:56] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I like to call it discovery writing because you kind of like discover what the story is as you go, but I do have an idea.
[9:03] SPEAKER_02: Like I knew that I wanted to have certain anchor points in the books, and I knew what I was kind of like working towards, and then I knew that I wanted to have two brutal cliffhangers, so you're welcome.
[9:18] SPEAKER_02: So I was like working my way towards those.
[9:21] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[9:22] SPEAKER_03: So I had an idea.
[9:23] SPEAKER_03: I'm so torn because I know people are in their feelings about the cliffhanger.
[9:28] SPEAKER_02: These are your tears to think.
[9:32] SPEAKER_02: They are delicious.
[9:39] SPEAKER_02: That's why I have this.
[9:42] SPEAKER_02: There's a whole jug there.
[9:45] SPEAKER_03: I won't jump to the newest book and source of trauma yet.
[9:51] SPEAKER_03: I did want to ask though, you know, your search history on your computer must be wild.
[9:58] SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us?
[9:59] SPEAKER_03: Like, some what are some of the weirdest things you've had to read to learn how to do?
[10:05] SPEAKER_03: So your characters, characters can do it too.
[10:07] SPEAKER_02: There's like some really weird stuff about poisons that I was looking up, like specifically for in harvest.
[10:15] SPEAKER_02: So I'm not giving anything away, but there was like, I went down a real rabbit hole, poison hole.
[10:21] SPEAKER_02: Like, can I make someone bleed from their eyes?
[10:24] SPEAKER_02: Like, how would I do that?
[10:26] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[10:26] SPEAKER_02: So the FBI is probably like, what the fuck is she doing this time?
[10:30] SPEAKER_02: Um, but I like to say that the most frustrating one was in leather and lark when I was trying to make a body into a table, and I wanted it desperately to be a kitchen table, but I didn't want them to be like sitting like this, and then they'd have to like it has to be a certain depth.
[10:47] SPEAKER_02: So I didn't want them to be like eating like this.
[10:49] SPEAKER_02: So I was like, well, how deep would it have to be?
[10:52] SPEAKER_02: Like, how deep is the average human body?
[10:54] SPEAKER_02: And Google really hated that question.
[10:57] SPEAKER_02: Like, Google was like, the average height of a human.
[11:01] SPEAKER_02: I'm like, that's not what I'm asking.
[11:03] SPEAKER_02: And I kept asking in different ways, and I was like, body, soup pine, depth of body.
[11:10] SPEAKER_02: And Google's like, height of a body, and I was like, fuck it.
[11:13] SPEAKER_02: So I got down on the floor and I measured like the depth of like my boobs to the highest point.
[11:19] SPEAKER_02: And then I was like, it's fine.
[11:21] SPEAKER_02: It's a coffee table, whatever.
[11:23] SPEAKER_02: Like, whatever.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: Fine.
[11:31] SPEAKER_02: So FBI Bob must have been like, what the hell?
[11:38] SPEAKER_03: So gross.
[11:39] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[11:40] SPEAKER_03: I have to say, like, I have here, you know, I love your books have all these layers.
[11:46] SPEAKER_03: There's there's feminism, there's trauma and mental health, there's crimes against women and justice.
[11:52] SPEAKER_03: And then I feel there's this, you know, quiet environmental sustainability, like people become fertilizer.
[11:58] SPEAKER_03: People have to become tables.
[12:00] SPEAKER_03: So thank you for doing that research.
[12:03] SPEAKER_03: Yay, thanks.
[12:04] SPEAKER_03: So I some unnoticed, finally.
[12:07] SPEAKER_02: I don't really try to put like some sustainability in there.
[12:12] SPEAKER_02: It's a natural circle of life.
[12:15] SPEAKER_02: Into the wood chipper, into the fertilizer.
[12:19] SPEAKER_03: So you kind of um earlier alluded to, you know, writing being a safe space, safe space for you.
[12:25] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[12:26] SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure you know, we have lots of wonderful readers and maybe people who are thinking about writing their own books or have ideas they just can't stop thinking about.
[12:35] SPEAKER_03: Do you have any advice for people who are interested in maybe putting pen to paper, bodies to coffee table?
[12:42] SPEAKER_02: Improving your Google search history, how to delete it, gaining an FBI agent assigned to your home.
[12:50] SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I think like, I think we all kind of one of the main pieces of advice that always comes out in questions like this is like you have to get words down on a page, which is true because you can't edit a blank page, but how you do that is like is is really particular to that person and it might take you some time to figure out what works best for you.
[13:14] SPEAKER_02: So I think one is to try and shut out some of the noise and figure out what feels the most natural to you because it might be having a detailed outline and and then writing to those specific points on your outline that works really well for a lot of people, might not work for you.
[13:31] SPEAKER_02: So you have to kind of like figure out what seems to call to you and resonate to you, is one thing.
[13:36] SPEAKER_02: And then I think the hardest hurdle for me anyway, and I'm curious to hear about your your advice here as well, is that it it's that first hurdle of like getting your work out into somebody else's hands and like letting it go and letting them read it.
[13:53] SPEAKER_02: It's very hard, like mentally, to get over that barrier, but trust me, it gets easier.
[13:58] SPEAKER_02: And especially once you think that, like, well, once I put the work out, it's like any piece of art, it doesn't belong to you anymore in some ways, even though you feel very connected to it, it then belongs to the readership.
[14:11] SPEAKER_02: So that helps to kind of like keep yourself from looking at good reads and spiraling if there's like a negative review.
[14:19] SPEAKER_02: It's that that's part of the process of people resonating with your work in one way or the other.
[14:24] SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
[14:25] SPEAKER_02: What about you?
[14:26] SPEAKER_02: What would you give to aspiring authors?
[14:29] SPEAKER_03: It's not dissimilar.
[14:31] SPEAKER_03: I always remind myself that um the first draft is not your last draft.
[14:36] SPEAKER_03: I think people start writing and just get in their heads about making that perfect first sentence, perfect first chapter, and it's just get to the end.
[14:45] SPEAKER_03: And if it's crap, you can fix it.
[14:48] SPEAKER_03: If it's, you know, if you need a positivity pass from someone, you can get it.
[14:52] SPEAKER_03: You know, authors can be so supportive of each other.
[14:54] SPEAKER_03: So it's just, you know, don't worry about, you know, you're gonna write a great epic tale on your first try.
[15:02] SPEAKER_03: It doesn't, it doesn't happen.
[15:04] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I totally agree with you.
[15:06] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Stephen King of all people.
[15:09] SPEAKER_02: Um, God, who knew that he would have great advice about writing, but he does.
[15:15] SPEAKER_02: Um, he says to to tell yourself the story first, which makes a lot of sense, actually.
[15:20] SPEAKER_02: Don't worry about trying to write for somebody else's like viewpoint, just write for yourself.
[15:26] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[15:27] SPEAKER_03: Um, and just on the same kind of advice track, since we're here, um, I know in the audience we have several local indie authors, and that's how you started.
[15:37] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, give yourselves a round of applause.
[15:45] SPEAKER_03: So, as someone who started indie and now has had, you know, a lot of commercial success, do you have any advice for indie authors?
[15:53] SPEAKER_03: Um, maybe things you wish you had known when you first started?
[15:57] SPEAKER_02: I so I love being an indie and a hybrid.
[16:01] SPEAKER_02: I think there's just so much that you can learn and so much control that you have over your career as an independent author.
[16:09] SPEAKER_02: Um, plus, you get to keep more of your royalties, so that's always nice.
[16:13] SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's hard.
[16:14] SPEAKER_02: It is, it is definitely like thinking about it as a business.
[16:18] SPEAKER_02: It's it's not just like, you know, creating the work.
[16:21] SPEAKER_02: It's also you have to learn all these things about like marketing yourself and how to deal with like Amazon and retailers and all of that stuff.
[16:28] SPEAKER_02: It's a lot to learn.
[16:30] SPEAKER_02: Um and I think like if your end goal is to be traditionally published, I think it is a fantastic way to do that actually, because you you learn enough that you can advocate for yourself in some corners where like you're like, well, I've done marketing.
[16:47] SPEAKER_02: Like I know a Facebook ad.
[16:49] SPEAKER_02: I know when this one's wrong, like I know what copy kind of works.
[16:52] SPEAKER_02: So you can like have those discussions in a way that's maybe a little bit um unique to the industry and it's still trying to catch up.
[17:00] SPEAKER_02: Um, so don't forget that you're in many ways like pushing the industry in ways that it's never been pushed before.
[17:08] SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a really important contribution that indie authorship has to the publishing environment because otherwise it has been very insular, very hard to break in.
[17:19] SPEAKER_02: It's very, very gatekeepy, gatekeepy and like incestuous little environment.
[17:25] SPEAKER_02: So I think it's wonderful.
[17:27] SPEAKER_02: It's so great.
[17:29] SPEAKER_02: But you're like breaking new ground and you're pushing publishers to think differently and explore other authors that maybe they wouldn't have like looked at before.
[17:39] SPEAKER_02: And you're saying what the readership really wants.
[17:42] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, kudos to the indie authors out there because they're really breaking new ground.
[17:55] SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about breaking new ground.
[17:58] SPEAKER_03: Um the segue.
[18:04] SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna steal uh a term I read in harvest season.
[18:09] SPEAKER_03: I would call you the murder daddy of serial killer romance.
[18:15] SPEAKER_03: You've founded it, you've broken new ground, your characters have broken new ground.
[18:20] SPEAKER_03: Um I know, you know, for a lot of romance authors, and a pardon the pun, um, we have to get over that hump that people are gonna read sex scenes that we write.
[18:32] SPEAKER_03: But what about for you?
[18:33] SPEAKER_03: Like, your imagination is wild.
[18:38] SPEAKER_03: How did you get over, you know, people, family members, people you know, friends reading all that you do?
[18:46] SPEAKER_02: Well, it was really weird to me when I first started publishing because like I thought more our family and friends would like pick up the work, like because I was like talking about it at first, and they don't really, just like super supportive.
[19:04] SPEAKER_02: My family doesn't read either.
[19:06] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and like it's so weird.
[19:08] SPEAKER_02: Like, you're like, I finished a book, it's a monumental achievement, and everyone's like, Cool, yeah.
[19:13] SPEAKER_02: And you're like, Do you want to read it?
[19:15] SPEAKER_02: And they're like, No.
[19:17] SPEAKER_02: But my mom has read some of my books, which is super weird because she's very religious and like the these books are not her taste, and she lets me know.
[19:29] SPEAKER_02: Didn't like the sex scenes though.
[19:31] SPEAKER_02: Like, thanks.
[19:32] SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I think like maybe it's maybe it's an age and maturity thing that like I used to when I was younger.
[19:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was really concerned with what people would think about me, and now I just don't really give a shit.
[19:45] SPEAKER_02: So it's great, it's very liberating when you don't care.
[19:48] SPEAKER_02: And then the the less that you care, the better it is, right?
[19:51] SPEAKER_02: So now I'm like, yeah, go ahead, mom.
[19:54] SPEAKER_02: Go ahead and read it.
[19:55] SPEAKER_02: Let me know what you think because it's outside your comfort zone.
[19:58] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, now I like indulge in the awkward.
[20:01] SPEAKER_02: I think, yeah, embracing awkwardness is that helps.
[20:05] SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, go ahead, call a cringe.
[20:08] SPEAKER_02: I don't care.
[20:10] SPEAKER_03: I am very close to her right now, and her eyes are getting so intense.
[20:14] SPEAKER_03: I love it.
[20:15] SPEAKER_03: Psycho eyes.
[20:16] SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna calm my face down.
[20:22] SPEAKER_03: So, as someone who tends to write their enemies into their books, where do your characters come from?
[20:28] SPEAKER_03: Man, my eyes were just gonna get huge then.
[20:31] SPEAKER_02: Sometimes they do that.
[20:33] SPEAKER_02: I do write enemies into books.
[20:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
[20:36] SPEAKER_02: Do you have lots of enemies?
[20:38] SPEAKER_02: I have some.
[20:39] SPEAKER_02: I have lots.
[20:40] SPEAKER_02: Do you?
[20:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[20:41] SPEAKER_02: They don't know, but I know.
[20:43] SPEAKER_02: Does anyone does anybody know the my novella Exterminatrix?
[20:48] SPEAKER_02: Does any oh yeah, you know it.
[20:50] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[20:51] SPEAKER_02: So I was like, one of my one of my books, this was before Butcher and Blackbird, but Black Sheep, which is a co-written book.
[20:58] SPEAKER_02: It's a dark romance.
[20:59] SPEAKER_02: It was like blowing up on Twitter, which is like the devil's asshole.
[21:04] SPEAKER_02: Um and like all these misogynistic trolls were commenting because it was like a shot of the first line, which is uh um, I don't always fuck a man before I kill him, but when I do, I find they all have one thing in common.
[21:19] SPEAKER_02: They're disappointing.
[21:21] SPEAKER_02: So as you can tell, that brought some trolls out of the woodwork.
[21:29] SPEAKER_02: And one of them was very vocal.
[21:31] SPEAKER_02: And I went to bed and I was like, you know, I'm gonna like tomorrow morning, I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna find the worst troll, and I'm gonna write him into a monster romance because I really love monster romance.
[21:44] SPEAKER_02: And so I did.
[21:45] SPEAKER_02: And I told him all about it as I was doing it, and I made him into a lizard man who lived in my basement and the family of the farmhouse, because we were living in a farmhouse, called an exterminator to have him kill.
[22:00] SPEAKER_02: And then this woman comes along and they have like a dallions in my basement.
[22:05] SPEAKER_02: And he has another extra dick in his chin because I, as I told Castro at the time, he didn't really, he needed help in that department of pleasing women.
[22:16] SPEAKER_02: So that's how Exterminatrix came to be.
[22:22] SPEAKER_02: And I made an enemy into a book.
[22:25] SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
[22:26] SPEAKER_02: He was not thrilled about the extra dick.
[22:29] SPEAKER_02: It might have been that it tasted like Shirley Temple.
[22:32] SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
[22:35] SPEAKER_02: I don't know what to say.
[22:39] SPEAKER_02: So my answer is yes.
[22:40] SPEAKER_02: I like to write enemies into books.
[22:49] SPEAKER_02: I don't drink Shirley Temple.
[22:54] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[22:56] SPEAKER_03: Something I wanted to say.
[22:59] SPEAKER_03: I don't know if all of you know, Butcher and Blackbird is turning into a movie.
[23:04] SPEAKER_03: Did y'all know?
[23:08] SPEAKER_03: Congratulations.
[23:09] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
[23:10] SPEAKER_03: That's like the holy grail, right?
[23:12] SPEAKER_02: To an extent.
[23:13] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[23:14] SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us anything about it?
[23:17] SPEAKER_02: Yes, I can tell you some things about it.
[23:21] SPEAKER_02: That it's like a weird thing that there it can be very quiet on the surface, but there can be like a lot going on underneath that you're just not really allowed to talk about.
[23:32] SPEAKER_02: So I can say it's moving along really well.
[23:36] SPEAKER_02: Um, like the team is just they're amazing.
[23:39] SPEAKER_02: Um, Chris uh McKay, he's the director.
[23:43] SPEAKER_02: So he did the Tomorrow Award, he did Lego Batman.
[23:46] SPEAKER_02: No, it's not gonna be in Lego figures.
[23:50] SPEAKER_02: He did Renfield, like he's just he was the very first person I talked to, and I probably talked to about a dozen people when we were like getting a lot of interest, and he was just super passionate about it, and he's just maintained that the entire way.
[24:06] SPEAKER_02: Like he had to find financing to be able to participate in what was essentially an auction.
[24:11] SPEAKER_02: So we had like Lionsgate and Sony, yeah, an auction.
[24:14] SPEAKER_02: And he likes it in, like, he found um like his own independent partners to finance just like in time to be able to do the auction.
[24:24] SPEAKER_02: And it was just he's got such a specific vision.
[24:26] SPEAKER_02: So just today we were like looking at um things from the production uh uh production designer, I think it was, and like looking at images and like the the colors and yeah, pieces of art that they wanted to bring into the filming.
[24:43] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's like we're in casting, we're doing all kinds of things, definitely like a hardcore pre-production.
[24:50] SPEAKER_02: We've got timelines and things that we need to do.
[24:53] SPEAKER_03: So and so because I know from other authors, um, they've told me, you know, they didn't even know their book was being picked up until they saw it online, but it sounds like you're pretty involved.
[25:04] SPEAKER_03: So are you kind of getting to like does it feel like your movie as well?
[25:08] SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, yeah.
[25:09] SPEAKER_02: They've it was like my one of my questions that I had for everyone that I spoke to is like, would I be able to participate in some way?
[25:18] SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't want to get my fingers in every pie.
[25:20] SPEAKER_02: I don't want to like be um prescriptive about how they operate that vision.
[25:26] SPEAKER_02: I just want to see it come to life.
[25:29] SPEAKER_02: And he was like, oh no, no, I want you like I want you on the set, I want you in the editing room, I want you like reading the script and doing all these things.
[25:36] SPEAKER_02: So I am executive producer, which is really great, which can mean a lot of things.
[25:40] SPEAKER_02: Like it can mean you just it's like a credit and nothing else.
[25:44] SPEAKER_02: But they, yeah, they really involved me in lots of things and like playing with the script, which is super fun.
[25:50] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's been great, like very, very collaborative process, and I couldn't ask for better people to be ushering it into the world.
[25:59] SPEAKER_02: And I just liked seeing like their artistic take on the book itself and solving challenges with them is really fun.
[26:06] SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
[26:07] SPEAKER_03: If you could choose any one of your books to like the next one to be on the big screen, which one would you choose?
[26:14] SPEAKER_02: I would go like then straight into Leather and Lark and do that one next.
[26:18] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and do that whole series.
[26:22] SPEAKER_02: So didn't say anything.
[26:29] SPEAKER_02: Okay.
[26:30] SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah.
[26:32] SPEAKER_02: And I what's that?
[26:34] SPEAKER_02: Somebody said something, but I missed it.
[26:36] SPEAKER_02: Oh, thank you.
[26:38] SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
[26:39] SPEAKER_02: Bonus scene.
[26:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, coffee table.
[26:41] SPEAKER_02: I was like, bonus scene, and you're like, coffee table.
[26:45] SPEAKER_02: Different halves of the same brain, I think.
[26:47] SPEAKER_03: It's like a movie and decorating, I think.
[26:50] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
[26:51] SPEAKER_03: And glitter everywhere.
[26:56] SPEAKER_03: What and so of like all the books that you've put out, can you kind of pinpoint like which has been the easiest to write and which has been the hardest to write?
[27:04] SPEAKER_02: That's a good way to do it.
[27:05] SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes people will ask, like, which one do you like the most, which is a very hard question to answer.
[27:11] SPEAKER_03: Especially when we call the book our book babies.
[27:13] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[27:14] SPEAKER_02: And they're all like a little time capsule, so it's really hard to like separate one from the other.
[27:20] SPEAKER_02: I'd say the easiest one to write, other than Castro, because that was pretty great.
[27:25] SPEAKER_02: Like being able to harass him at the same time was so fun.
[27:28] SPEAKER_02: Um, I would say A Shadow in the Reaping was really, really fun.
[27:34] SPEAKER_02: Like I had such a blast writing that book.
[27:37] SPEAKER_02: I wrote it in like two months.
[27:39] SPEAKER_02: I just like rocketed through that book.
[27:41] SPEAKER_02: It was like I could not keep up with the characters.
[27:43] SPEAKER_02: It was so much fun.
[27:44] SPEAKER_02: And then the hardest one to write was actually harvest season because I needed it to stand on its own in my mind.
[27:52] SPEAKER_02: And there was like a lot of stuff that I wanted to cover and a lot of like things that I also still needed to set up for the third book, but it still had to be its own entity.
[28:02] SPEAKER_02: And like the characters, I had places in their relationship that I wanted them to get to.
[28:08] SPEAKER_02: And it was just like really challenging.
[28:11] SPEAKER_02: Like it was a really behemoth book.
[28:13] SPEAKER_02: It's actually a little bit long for me.
[28:15] SPEAKER_02: I think it's about 110,000 words.
[28:17] SPEAKER_02: So it was like to me, it was like really hard to keep it like tight.
[28:22] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[28:24] SPEAKER_03: Oh, I had a question really related to this, and then you said the word tight, and I left.
[28:33] SPEAKER_03: Where's that diction?
[28:34] SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
[28:35] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[28:35] SPEAKER_03: Um yeah.
[28:37] SPEAKER_03: So when you started writing tourist season, did you know you were going to write a trilogy?
[28:42] SPEAKER_03: Did you know what you would do in the second book test?
[28:46] SPEAKER_02: No, not really.
[28:47] SPEAKER_02: Well, kind of.
[28:49] SPEAKER_02: Okay.
[28:52] SPEAKER_02: Originally, and we never said this.
[28:54] SPEAKER_02: People just assumed that it was going to be interconnected standalones because Ruinous Love was interconnected standalones, but I had already done a proper trilogy of the same couple when I did like the Shadow Realm series.
[29:05] SPEAKER_02: So it's just, you know, it could go either way.
[29:08] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I had told my publisher I thought that it was going to be interconnected, but I didn't promise anything.
[29:15] SPEAKER_02: Okay.
[29:16] SPEAKER_02: And then I was about two-thirds of the way through writing tourist season, and I was like, these people, they just hate each other so much.
[29:23] SPEAKER_02: I need to give them space to like get over that and get into like a proper relationship.
[29:29] SPEAKER_02: So I texted my agent and I was like, so it's got to be the same couple through all three books.
[29:34] SPEAKER_02: And she was like, okay.
[29:36] SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I think the uh Sando might not love that.
[29:39] SPEAKER_02: She's like, don't care.
[29:41] SPEAKER_02: So probably even better.
[29:44] SPEAKER_02: So she texted them and they were like, actually, they were a little bit nervous, but then they were just went with it.
[29:49] SPEAKER_02: So I did nonetheless, like, I thought it was going to be Max and Lucas that were gonna be the second book.
[29:56] SPEAKER_02: Um she's like, pulled it, pulled it.
[30:00] SPEAKER_02: Um, so I thought it was gonna be like Maxine who's the ATS daughter and Lucas, but I still knew like some of the things in harvest season were going to happen.
[30:11] SPEAKER_02: I just thought it would happen through their eyes.
[30:14] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[30:14] SPEAKER_02: So then it just made more sense to keep it with Harper and Nolan.
[30:20] SPEAKER_03: And you know, that's that's also a good tip that she kind of hinted at.
[30:26] SPEAKER_03: If you do ever decide to pursue writing, advocate for yourself and find an agent who will advocate for you too.
[30:32] SPEAKER_03: It it matters.
[30:34] SPEAKER_03: And I'm so glad.
[30:35] SPEAKER_03: I'm so glad she had your back so that you could traumatize us this way.
[30:42] SPEAKER_02: You're so right though.
[30:44] SPEAKER_02: A good agent is so important.
[30:46] SPEAKER_02: Like, and I know with um there are a ton of different ways to do it if you're indie as well.
[30:52] SPEAKER_02: Like, I didn't have an agent until BNB blew up, but um, agents can be great, even if you want to hang on to your rights domestically and you want to like do foreign deals with your indie works, like we're doing foreign deals with with the Shadow Realm series now, which is backlist and still independently published.
[31:10] SPEAKER_02: So um, but yeah, having a good agent makes a world of difference because they really it it was like I think in my publishing like journey, you know, sometimes people have asked, like, was going to trad like the biggest moment.
[31:26] SPEAKER_02: It really wasn't.
[31:27] SPEAKER_02: Like one of the biggest, most memorable moments was hanging up the phone of my agent, and like, and that was like the first call, and knowing I was gonna sign with her, and walking out onto the deck and like looking at my husband, bursting bursting into tears and going, like, oh my god, and I have an agent, because I knew I would have somebody in my corner.
[31:48] SPEAKER_02: And like finding that right person makes the world of difference because immediately we were into like a hellscape of like all kinds of crazy shit that we had to do, and she was like there every step of the way.
[32:00] SPEAKER_03: Yes, a good agent for the devil's anus.
[32:03] SPEAKER_03: Yes, so important, yes, for the devil's anus.
[32:07] SPEAKER_02: She will help guide you through like X-Lax.
[32:13] SPEAKER_03: And with that, fiber, so important.
[32:16] SPEAKER_03: So important.
[32:18] SPEAKER_03: So this next question comes directly and with love from our host, and it's about Arthur.
[32:25] SPEAKER_03: It's a little long, so bear with me, but you can feel the heart.
[32:29] SPEAKER_03: So you explore the complex and sometimes devastating relationship a family member may experience when someone they love is diagnosed with some form of Alzheimer's disease.
[32:39] SPEAKER_03: The care and dignity in which you write the dynamic of Harper, Lucas, and Arthur is impressive and highly relatable for some readers.
[32:48] SPEAKER_03: Can you talk a little bit about the importance of Arthur and his diagnosis?
[32:53] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think Arthur is definitely one of my all-time favorite characters.
[32:59] SPEAKER_02: Um, my maternal grandparents both had dementia.
[33:03] SPEAKER_02: My grandfather, and when they were quite elderly, I think they were both diagnosed when they were in their 90s.
[33:08] SPEAKER_02: Um, and my grandfather had like identical symptoms to Alzheimer's, but he had had an accident where he flipped his truck and hit his head, and that was what caused it.
[33:18] SPEAKER_02: Um, but the symptoms really were the same.
[33:20] SPEAKER_02: Like he would go wandering and and like wandering without his shoes and like all that stuff, memory loss, all of it.
[33:27] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I was I was raised with my maternal grandparents, so I was really close to them growing up.
[33:33] SPEAKER_02: And then um I was kind of his caregiver a lot of the time.
[33:37] SPEAKER_02: Like, so if my grandmother had to go to the hospital, I would stay with him overnight.
[33:41] SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I would I remember once waking up in the morning and thinking, oh my god, like what if he got out?
[33:48] SPEAKER_02: And he wasn't, he was in his bed, thankfully, he hadn't gotten out.
[33:52] SPEAKER_02: But he had left a note and it said, uh Syberry aircraft engineer.
[33:58] SPEAKER_02: And I was like, it really struck me that he was trying so hard to hold on to his identity at some point in the middle of the night.
[34:05] SPEAKER_02: And like seeing these little things about people trying to just hold on to their personhood and their memories and who they are, and that's the only reason why he wrote that.
[34:15] SPEAKER_02: No, it's just holding on to what he did and who he was.
[34:20] SPEAKER_02: And so that ended up carrying into my professional career because I went into neuroscience research and I was primarily working in Alzheimer's disease research.
[34:29] SPEAKER_02: And it's such an incredibly difficult field of research.
[34:33] SPEAKER_02: Um, I was working for pharmaceutical companies in RD, and it's like neuroscience is just it's so, so, so hard.
[34:40] SPEAKER_02: Like with all of the advancements that we have, finding a drug that will actually affect it is like near on impossible.
[34:47] SPEAKER_02: And to see how hard the doctors and the researchers were working, how tirelessly and yet every drug would fail, it was like inspiring in a sad kind of way.
[34:57] SPEAKER_02: And I think I eventually just felt like I was ready to put that experience of both sides, personal and professional, into a book.
[35:06] SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to be able to like have an elderly person who is like the elderly people that I had grown up with that we all know, but we have this tendency to infantilize in Western culture.
[35:18] SPEAKER_02: Um, but people with rich lives and people with humor and people with hearts, maybe a little bit murdery.
[35:25] SPEAKER_02: My grandparents were a little bit murdery.
[35:27] SPEAKER_02: They didn't actually kill anybody, but they did try.
[35:30] SPEAKER_02: Um so, you know, like I wanted to have this like really well-rounded person and to also show what it was like to be someone who loves someone like that, and how difficult and yet how uh fun it can be sometimes and how crazy, and it's all the things, it's all humanity, you know.
[35:51] SPEAKER_02: So I just really wanted to put that into a book, finally.
[35:55] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[36:03] SPEAKER_03: Little choked up.
[36:05] SPEAKER_03: Um I got through that story without crying, though.
[36:08] SPEAKER_03: I mean, thank you for sharing that with us.
[36:11] SPEAKER_03: I think um writers, when you write about personal experiences or experiences that are inspired from your real life, um it's a very vulnerable situation.
[36:23] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[36:23] SPEAKER_03: And then we asked you about it in front of all these people.
[36:26] SPEAKER_02: No, it's good.
[36:27] SPEAKER_02: I like talking about it because I think we should talk about dementia more openly.
[36:33] SPEAKER_02: Um, when I was doing research when I first started in that field, it was only 45% disclosure rate.
[36:40] SPEAKER_02: So that means that when someone would go into a doctor and say, I feel like I am forgetting things and I have memory loss issues, a doctor might say, Oh, yeah, that's probably like, oh, you know, they'd run the tests and do the um, you know, memory loss questionnaires and things like that, and maybe do a spinal tap.
[36:59] SPEAKER_02: And then they would say, Oh, yeah, it's like some age-related memory loss, but only 45% of the time would they actually tell them it's Alzheimer's disease because it felt so hopeless, you know, and so I think the more that we talk about that experience, both as people who love someone with it or have lost someone with it, and people who might be at risk of it, like we need to be open about it because we all need to help each other out.
[37:24] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[37:25] SPEAKER_03: And I really appreciate like, first of all, Arthur is also fucking hilarious, but you know, you didn't just try to, I don't know, put like a rose-tinted lens on it.
[37:36] SPEAKER_03: Like, he's also manipulative, and um, sometimes it just wrecks Harper to deal with him.
[37:41] SPEAKER_03: So um, yeah, I think you you did it very well.
[37:44] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
[37:45] SPEAKER_03: Very well.
[37:46] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
[37:48] SPEAKER_03: All right, so one thing I've learned about Brynweaver, she's a very cosmopolitan woman.
[37:54] SPEAKER_03: You've lived everywhere.
[37:56] SPEAKER_03: Your husband has an indecipherable accent.
[38:00] SPEAKER_03: I got it wrong.
[38:01] SPEAKER_03: He's not from Australia, hint.
[38:03] SPEAKER_03: Um what in what place inspired Cape Carnage?
[38:09] SPEAKER_03: It kind of has like a Peggy's Cove kind of vibe.
[38:11] SPEAKER_03: Oh, you are so close.
[38:13] SPEAKER_03: You know what?
[38:14] SPEAKER_03: I do not take credit for that one.
[38:16] SPEAKER_03: That was explained to me club.
[38:19] SPEAKER_02: What's up, a Peggy's Cove vibe?
[38:22] SPEAKER_02: Actually, more like the Picto New Glasgow area inspired a lot of that.
[38:27] SPEAKER_02: So on the like Northumberland straight on that coast.
[38:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because we used to live in that area.
[38:33] SPEAKER_02: Um, but I've lived in a few places in Nova Scotia, and like the thing is like I wanted originally I was thinking I was gonna set it there, but because of the like logistical things about Harper having stolen an identity and her getting across the border like feasibly, it just didn't make sense.
[38:49] SPEAKER_02: So I had to like keep it in Maine.
[38:51] SPEAKER_02: But there's like there are actual place names that do come in from Nova Scotia that are like fictional place names in the book as well, like Mel Murby Beach, which is just outside of New Glasgow.
[39:04] SPEAKER_02: I changed like one letter, so it's it's not exactly identical, but same type of thing.
[39:10] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, like living in those small towns, I was always curious about um like they always have a history, right?
[39:17] SPEAKER_02: And some of those towns are quite old for our country.
[39:20] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I was always kind of curious about like what it would be like to keep secrets in a place like that where everybody knows everybody else, half of them are related to each other.
[39:31] SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, what that would actually be like for people who are keeping like really critical, the biggest secrets you could possibly keep.
[39:41] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[39:42] SPEAKER_03: So and so in your travels, where have you seen the decapitated head with the like downhill racing?
[39:52] SPEAKER_03: Or did you make that up?
[39:53] SPEAKER_02: Like the oh, the gravity races, that's actually based on fact too.
[39:57] SPEAKER_02: The grab not the dead part.
[39:59] SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
[40:01] SPEAKER_02: I'm watching the wrong sports.
[40:03] SPEAKER_02: Oh, when we used to live in the UK, there's this little town.
[40:06] SPEAKER_02: If you ever get a chance to go to this, it's super fun.
[40:09] SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's called Cookum Dean, and they do these gravity races every year, and people go absolutely fucking bananas for this thing.
[40:18] SPEAKER_02: Like one year there was a tank and it shot bubbles, but it's all made of cardboard and shit, like wood and wheels and stuff.
[40:24] SPEAKER_02: And it played like classical music is like dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, and there's like three people in this thing, and it's like going hurtling down the hill, and everybody's drunk, and it's just the best time.
[40:36] SPEAKER_02: It's so fun.
[40:37] SPEAKER_02: And I just thought, well, what could I do in Cape Carnage to make it more Cape Carnage?
[40:42] SPEAKER_02: Well, they race with like a pretend corpse.
[40:44] SPEAKER_03: Of course.
[40:45] SPEAKER_03: Of course, yeah.
[40:46] SPEAKER_02: So you build your corpse and you have your corpse companion and you get extra points.
[40:50] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[40:51] SPEAKER_02: It made sense.
[40:52] SPEAKER_02: It makes sense.
[40:52] SPEAKER_02: Yes.
[40:54] SPEAKER_02: In my head, it made sense.
[41:04] SPEAKER_02: So you know, like you been to Cookum Dean?
[41:08] SPEAKER_02: Yes.
[41:10] SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
[41:11] SPEAKER_02: See, I was not lying.
[41:12] SPEAKER_02: She's actually done it.
[41:14] SPEAKER_02: Have you seen the dog or the tank?
[41:16] SPEAKER_02: The crazy dog?
[41:18] SPEAKER_02: The dog is is like looks like it came out of the pits of hell.
[41:22] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it looks crazy.
[41:23] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
[41:25] SPEAKER_02: That's great.
[41:27] SPEAKER_03: So what do you hope readers take away from harvest season?
[41:34] SPEAKER_02: Um we can talk more about the dog out of hell.
[41:37] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we can talk.
[41:38] SPEAKER_02: I was like a little bit like wound up with like remembering what the dog looked like, which was very scarring.
[41:43] SPEAKER_03: Um then there's the devil's anus.
[41:45] SPEAKER_02: Like, it all coming out now, like the depths of my imagination.
[41:50] SPEAKER_02: Um I want readers, like I I actually we had a similar ish-ish question uh at my event with Chloe Lisa, which was really interesting.
[42:02] SPEAKER_02: And she was talking more specifically about like young women who are getting into reading.
[42:07] SPEAKER_02: Um, and that I really wanted defiance in women to be celebrated.
[42:12] SPEAKER_02: And I think that still holds true.
[42:14] SPEAKER_02: Like, the more that I've kind of thought about that and and what I want people to take away.
[42:20] SPEAKER_02: And I think it's yeah, it's really that because Harper is a very defiant person by nature.
[42:25] SPEAKER_02: Um, she doesn't like just bow down when this guy, hot guy, murder daddy, comes to town to kill her.
[42:31] SPEAKER_02: She's like, no, I'm gonna steal your murder book and you're gonna do my bidding.
[42:35] SPEAKER_02: And I think that's like, yeah, that defiance is a wonderful thing, and we should celebrate it more.
[42:43] SPEAKER_03: I like that.
[42:48] SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us anything about book three?
[42:52] SPEAKER_05: Yes.
[42:53] SPEAKER_03: Please and thank you.
[42:55] SPEAKER_02: Who here's Red Harvest season?
[42:59] SPEAKER_02: Oh, halfway through.
[43:00] SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm gonna keep it very spoiler-free, but um, so I think like for me, the way it kind of went was like book one.
[43:08] SPEAKER_02: I knew that I wanted to make it like fun and kind of like crazy and to try and like draw people into this new world.
[43:16] SPEAKER_02: Um, as you probably know, it's connected to uh the Runus Love trilogy.
[43:20] SPEAKER_02: So it's in the same universe, but it's its own world.
[43:23] SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I wanted to really get into like the depths of it.
[43:27] SPEAKER_02: And I feel like harvest season is more about like the start of consequences, like this it being able to do three books that are are like the same couple, it allows you to go so much deeper into their relationship.
[43:42] SPEAKER_02: And I would have had to have compressed it so much if I made it into interconnected.
[43:48] SPEAKER_02: Um, so I get to play with the idea of like what kind of foundation are they really building for this relationship?
[43:54] SPEAKER_02: Like, does it work?
[43:55] SPEAKER_02: Is it gonna be sustainable in a place where everybody knows?
[44:00] SPEAKER_02: Everybody else's business, and it's so easy to fuck up, and like really, what does a fuck up in that kind of situation look like?
[44:07] SPEAKER_02: It's pretty bad.
[44:09] SPEAKER_02: So I wanted to like play with consequences, and I think that was something that I got to do in book two.
[44:14] SPEAKER_02: And book three, it's like kind of the continuation of that, but then like, well, how do you like what what do you choose?
[44:24] SPEAKER_02: And who do you choose to be?
[44:26] SPEAKER_02: And what do you choose to give up for someone, or what do you choose to hold on to for yourself?
[44:32] SPEAKER_02: So it's a lot about choices, and it's a lot about like the narrative as well, and like perception, our perception of ourselves and our perception of others, and how somebody else's perception of you might be totally different to how you think about yourself.
[44:48] SPEAKER_02: And their story about you might be different to your story about yourself.
[44:52] SPEAKER_02: And what does somebody's like, how does somebody's nature change when they're being observed all the time?
[44:59] SPEAKER_02: And that for me was really important in book three because I was I had a stalker situation, and I was like in and out of court to try and get a uh restraining order, and like it was like a lot on my mind about surveillance and to like what your story looks like to you being watched, and what it looks like to somebody else who's watching you.
[45:24] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[45:24] SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of like the essence of book three is choices and like what kind of foundation that you build for a relationship.
[45:32] SPEAKER_02: I do promise you that they are end game.
[45:35] SPEAKER_02: It's just I wanted to be able to put everyone through some pain to get there.
[45:47] SPEAKER_03: I feel like at this stage we wouldn't expect anything left of you.
[45:53] SPEAKER_03: I have more questions, but I don't want to spoil anything for anyone.
[45:57] SPEAKER_03: So all I will ask: was it difficult for you to write the ending of harvest season as a romance writer?
[46:09] SPEAKER_02: No, because I knew.
[46:12] unknown: No.
[46:13] SPEAKER_02: Did I give it away?
[46:14] SPEAKER_02: I'm so sorry.
[46:16] SPEAKER_02: No, that was like deeply joyful for me.
[46:19] SPEAKER_02: Of course it was.
[46:20] SPEAKER_02: I had a wonderful time.
[46:22] SPEAKER_02: Like those last two chapters are were my favorites to write.
[46:27] SPEAKER_02: They just sailed along.
[46:28] SPEAKER_02: They were so much fun.
[46:30] SPEAKER_02: Um, they're so sad.
[46:32] SPEAKER_02: I don't, I love the tears.
[46:35] SPEAKER_02: I bring it on, bring the pain.
[46:37] SPEAKER_02: Um, no, I had a blast.
[46:39] SPEAKER_02: I had a blast, but I also knew that they were like, I know where they're getting to, right?
[46:44] SPEAKER_02: Like I knew what they would and where they would end up.
[46:46] SPEAKER_02: So that helps.
[46:48] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, oh no, when I like that whole thing and the thing and the thing.
[46:53] SPEAKER_03: The thing and the thing.
[46:53] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I was like, when I came up with that whole thing, oh, I know what he's gonna do.
[46:58] SPEAKER_02: And then I was like, oh, that's so fun.
[47:01] SPEAKER_03: I have no idea.
[47:02] SPEAKER_03: I don't really know what she's talking about.
[47:04] SPEAKER_03: You lost me at like the third thing in the thing, but I have bad hearing and can't read lips, but fine.
[47:19] SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you later.
[47:20] SPEAKER_03: You don't have to.
[47:21] SPEAKER_03: I'm the worst moments.
[47:24] SPEAKER_02: That's my favorite.
[47:28] SPEAKER_03: She and I are very different readers.
[47:32] SPEAKER_03: Um, should I jump to the rapid fire?
[47:34] SPEAKER_03: Do you guys want a little bit of rapid fire with Brynn Weaver?
[47:39] SPEAKER_03: And then we will go to audience questions.
[47:42] SPEAKER_03: Yes?
[47:42] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[47:43] SPEAKER_03: All right, here we go.
[47:45] SPEAKER_03: I wish I could read these fast to put you on the spot, but I also can't do that.
[47:51] SPEAKER_03: So nice and slow.
[47:53] SPEAKER_03: But don't take your time.
[47:54] SPEAKER_03: When do you write, morning or night?
[47:57] SPEAKER_03: Afternoon?
[48:01] SPEAKER_03: Preference, plot twist or cliffhanger?
[48:04] SPEAKER_03: Cliffhanger, of course.
[48:07] SPEAKER_03: Do you write in silence or need background noise?
[48:10] SPEAKER_03: Background noise.
[48:11] SPEAKER_03: I need music, yeah.
[48:13] SPEAKER_03: What kind of music?
[48:14] SPEAKER_02: I like build a playlist for every song and I start building or for every book, and I start building it before I even start writing that book, so based on vibes.
[48:24] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it can it changes for each book, but it's like usually more like alternative-ish kind of stuff.
[48:31] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[48:33] SPEAKER_03: What's your preference for physical book, ebook, or audiobook?
[48:36] SPEAKER_03: Ooh, I'm an ebook person.
[48:39] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[48:40] SPEAKER_03: What comes first for you?
[48:41] SPEAKER_03: Character or plot?
[48:43] SPEAKER_03: Neither.
[48:45] SPEAKER_02: I'm kidding.
[48:45] SPEAKER_02: I'm kidding.
[48:46] SPEAKER_02: I'm kidding that time.
[48:48] SPEAKER_02: Character.
[48:48] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, probably.
[48:49] SPEAKER_02: I think.
[48:50] SPEAKER_03: Are there any um characters that you've written that you really closely identify with?
[48:54] SPEAKER_02: Um I think maybe the one I'd be most similar to, I guess, would be Kiri from Marrow.
[49:04] SPEAKER_02: I I would want to hang out with her.
[49:06] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[49:06] SPEAKER_02: She's a science girly, but she's also like murdery.
[49:10] SPEAKER_02: I'm not murdery, but you know.
[49:12] SPEAKER_02: Well, we don't know.
[49:13] SPEAKER_02: We don't know.
[49:15] SPEAKER_02: But she works in like the forensic field as well.
[49:18] SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
[49:20] SPEAKER_03: Do you need to drink a glass of wine before writing sex scenes?
[49:25] SPEAKER_03: No.
[49:25] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[49:26] SPEAKER_03: Just checking.
[49:27] SPEAKER_03: It's nice to have a glass of wine.
[49:29] SPEAKER_03: Yes.
[49:30] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[49:30] SPEAKER_03: I just know for some people that's like a prerequisite.
[49:33] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[49:33] SPEAKER_03: Not for me.
[49:34] SPEAKER_03: Well, doesn't matter.
[49:36] SPEAKER_03: Not right now.
[49:37] SPEAKER_03: This is in my this isn't my rapid fire.
[49:40] SPEAKER_03: Um, what is harder, starting or finishing a book?
[49:44] SPEAKER_03: Oh.
[49:45] SPEAKER_02: I think finishing in a way because you then miss the characters.
[49:50] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you feel the same way, but like I always thought it would feel like such a feeling of accomplishment.
[49:56] SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I guess it does, but it's more sometimes it can be more sorrowful because you're like, oh, I don't get to live with these people in my head anymore, and I miss them.
[50:05] SPEAKER_02: Do you ever feel like that?
[50:06] SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm like good riddance out of me.
[50:09] SPEAKER_03: This someone else can read them and it's their problem now.
[50:13] SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
[50:14] SPEAKER_03: Um standalone book or series?
[50:18] SPEAKER_03: For reading and writing, which do you prefer?
[50:20] SPEAKER_02: Uh, I think series, actually, for both.
[50:24] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you can get so much deeper into the characters and like the story takes all these twists and turns over time.
[50:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[50:31] SPEAKER_02: And there's usually cliffhanger, and I like reading cliffhangers too.
[50:35] SPEAKER_02: What's your favorite TV show?
[50:37] SPEAKER_02: Oh, lately it's been Widow's Bay.
[50:40] SPEAKER_02: I really liked Widows Bay.
[50:41] SPEAKER_02: It's very Cape Carnage coded.
[50:43] SPEAKER_02: Even down to the mushrooms.
[50:45] SPEAKER_02: I was like, come on.
[50:48] SPEAKER_03: And the last question: what's the last memorable book you read?
[50:53] SPEAKER_03: Mmm.
[50:54] SPEAKER_02: I read Grim Tidings as an ARC by B.K.
[50:58] SPEAKER_02: Borison.
[50:59] SPEAKER_02: And like that was really good.
[51:00] SPEAKER_02: And I felt like that was really um heart-wrenching in a specific way.
[51:06] SPEAKER_02: And when you get to the acknowledgments of that book, you'll see why.
[51:10] SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna spoil anything for you, but it's like it's really beautifully written.
[51:13] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[51:14] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[51:15] SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for hosting and for putting on an amazing event and this murdering little life.
[51:27] SPEAKER_00: Live, laugh, mortal trash.

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