I was lucky to get an interview with B. S. H. Garcia. She wrote Of Thieves and Shadows, one of this year’s #SPFBO9 entries.

Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
I currently live in the PNW—Bend, OR, to be specific—though I’ll be returning to Colorado’s mountains within the year. So far, I’ve been 88% successful at keep two tiny humans, two cats, and a smol doge alive, so I guess I’ve got that going for me. I like mead, movies, and mountains. Somewhat of a cosplay fanatic thanks to my talented husbean (no, that’s not a typo). Books are life, obviously. I’ve only published fantasy, but I do intend to delve into sci-fi and horror down the road. If I’m not nerding out or lost in the woods during my once-a-month free time slot, I’m probably staring at the same page for an hour straight debating if that’s a good place to indent a new paragraph.

Why should I buy your SPFBO9 entry?
Because it’s cheaper than a latte.

Next question.

Alright, alright. You might like Of Thieves and Shadows if you:

• Want to escape the traditional medieval setting and characters that dominate fantasy

• Want to see what happens when you throw GOT, Avatar, and The Dark Crystal in a blender

• Want a story of epic scale that is character-driven

In a nutshell, OTAS is about a world on the brink of resource exhaustion, and therefore, war. It follows six individuals as they seek out answers and navigate conflicting ambitions. There are mythological beings, cults, fantastic creatures, ancient evils, magical artifacts, and lots of backstabbing. This book treads on dark fantasy with later books descending into grimdark territory. Spoiler.

What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
I failed at music and acting and moved on to the next best thing.

Just kidding.

I mean, the above are true. I had a stint in Hollywood and landed a stellar calculator commercial—don’t you dare look it up. Some of the small roles were fun, and so was theater, but the pressure proved to be too much for nineteen-year-old me. Walking into a room and being told no before you even start your lines is sobering.

After completing an English degree and deciding I did NOT have the patience to teach, I looked for other ways to utilize both my degree and my renewed interest in creating. I’d written off and on my whole life, including many short stories, but I didn’t sit down to crack out my first novel until 2018. It came surprisingly easy to me, but that’s probably because the story had already been icking around in my mind for nearly a decade at that point. I had a recurring vision of a scene—what is now my last chapter of OTAS—and I had to get it out.

Coming back to the original question, storytelling is what got me into writing. I’d been making up and orchestrating stories in various mediums since I was a little kid, and writing soon followed. But I wasn’t one of those people who always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a creator, a storyteller. And I guess I’ve always been.

Have you participated in the SPFBO before and where did you hear about the competition?
Never. I heard about this roughly two weeks before the sign up opened. Then I adjusted my release date the night of to qualify.

Why did you choose to write fantasy?
Fantasy allows for the rawest form of the human condition to be expressed in a way that makes palatable. Haters call fantasy fake and fluff, but they don’t realize that some of the truest truths are best told amid lies. No story has ever stuck with me the way fantasy has. I know a lot of people read it for escape, but I read it (and write it) to better understand the world and myself. It's like going through the looking glass. Same room, different paint, and now I see clearer.

I chose epic fantasy specifically because I like high stakes and big scope. I tread on dark and eventually grimdark because it’s real and raw.

Which other author has had the biggest influence on your writing?
This is so hard. Everything I’ve read and watched contributes to what I do or don’t do. I love N. K. Jemisin’s worldbuilding. I love Martin’s characters. I love Tolkien’s history. But I’m also a big film/gaming person. As much as novel writers have impacted me, I owe equal praise to Chris Nolan’s no-excess-or-filler approach, to Skyrim’s storylines, to Neil Druckman’s study of morality.

If you were to win the SPFBO, what impact do you think this would have on your writing career?
I’d maybe doubt myself a little less. Just a little.

What challenges did you face during the writing or publishing process, and how did you overcome them?
I’ve struggled with time management. I’m a mom of a toddler and baby, do some freelance work, and spent the better part of last year recovering from a traumatic c-section. I maybe get an hour or two (interrupted) in the evenings to work, and it’s been a challenge to juggle all the work that goes into publishing alongside writing. I’ve not overcome it so much as accepted that there are days, weeks, and even months that I’ll have to spend more time on the business side than the writing side, and I expect things to quiet down after launch so I can continue with book two.

Also, social networking. I’m introverted, and doing the whole marketing part is draining. Mead helps.

Do you have any tips or an author app, tool, or resource that you can really recommend we try?
My best tip is having a community of writers who support you. I wouldn’t be in this competition, let alone publishing, if I didn’t have a strong community around me. Same goes for my betas and CP. All software pales in comparison to the people.

And now it's time to yank out your Palantir! Let’s talk about the future. What new projects are you working on?
For the foreseeable future, I’ll be in the world of Quinaria. I plan at least four main series installments along with novelettes in between. Long-term, I’ve already completed the worldbuilding and outline for a sci-fi standalone (I think), and I have dabbled in some horror plots and middle grade fiction (also fantasy and sci-fi and horror). I will likely return to fantasy again, too.

Apps that are based on artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGTP and Midjourney, along with apps aimed specifically at authors, have caused quite a stir. Do you expect these new technologies will make your life as a self-published author easier or harder, and do you expect that they’ll mean you’ll earn more or less?
It will create more slush in the slush pile that is Amazon, so yes, harder, much harder, because readers will have to sort through more crap. The rate AI novels can be turned out at is also terrifying to someone like me who’s lucky to do a book a year. I don’t think it’s anywhere near rivaling the work of talented authors yet, but who knows how fast it will grow. As far as art, there are so many talented artists in the world. Support them. You can get covers designed for as little as $10, so don’t act like AI art saves you all this money.

At the core of this issue is the fact that art (dance, writing, drawing, pottery, etc.) is all that is human. Why on earth would I want AI creations? AI has no life, no soul, no love. I consume other people’s creations to better understand them, myself, and the world. Unless Data with an emotion chip is creating it, I don’t want it.

Do you have any dreams you’d like to share?
A dream of mine would be working on a screenplay, ideally an adaptation for my own stories. Oh, and building a ren faire fortress in the middle of the woods where all my author friends can come stay for writing retreats. But you have to wear cosplay. Sorry, thems the rules.

Anything else you would like to say before we close?
I have thirteen LOTR replica weapons. There's a free novelette on my website. I wrote all this while under the influence of hummus and Wardruna.

Thank you for some interesting answers, Bethany. I wish you the very best in the SPFBO. I hope a lot of readers discover your writing. Thanks for doing the interview!