I was lucky to get an interview with Charlotte Kersten, the author of Sweetness and Blessings, one of this year’s #SPFBO8 entries.

Please, tell us a bit about yourself…
I grew up and currently live in Reno, Nevada, where I’ve lived most of my life except for brief university detours to California and Norway. I did my undergrad degree in psychology with a research specialization and a minor in gender studies, and since graduation, I’ve been working as a sexual assault advocate with a local nonprofit. I just returned to school for my Masters of Social Work degree, after which I plan to work as a trauma therapist. Other facts: I am a twin (fraternal sister!) and my twin is my best friend; I almost studied to become a flutist instead of pursuing psychology (and genuinely don’t know where my life would be if I had done that); and my favorite video game is Planescape: Torment.

Why did you decide to take part in the SPFBO?
I found the r/fantasy community a few years ago and became involved there, so that was how I first heard about SPFBO. After the initial push of putting my books out there, I was feeling quite lost about what I could do next to find more readers, and it seemed like SPFBO was the perfect opportunity to dip my toes in the indie fantasy community.

Why should we buy your SPFBO8 book?
Sweetness and Blessings is essentially my passionate, weird, intense little love letter to what I most appreciate in books and what is most important to me in real life: it is at its heart an exploration of trauma, survivorhood, and resistance to colonialism in a Victorian-inspired world with ghosts and vastly different planes of reality. It is a character study with a great deal of introspection, slow growth and conversation. Also, there are gay elves.

What got you into writing? And how long have you been doing it?
Sweetness and Blessings is actually the first non-academic writing I’ve done besides ridiculous writing games with friends and a tiny amount of [REDACTED] fanfiction since I was a kid. I initially started out just messing around with the world-building because I was really interested in the idea of an elven society that was inspired by some aspects of D&D’s drow culture (and other dark elf societies) but was inaccurately characterized as being evil by the outside world instead of actually being evil.

At the same time, I happened to read a certain fantasy book (which I will not name here because I don’t want to be shady!) that featured what I found to be an incredibly disrespectful and frustrating depiction of intimate partner violence. I started thinking about how I would do things differently and entered a fugue state where I wrote what would become the first chapter of S&B. I just kept thinking about what would happen to the main character next and gradually merged the elf world-building project with the abuse recovery story.

Why did you choose to write fantasy? And why pick this particular fantasy subgenre?
I grew up reading fantasy and I love it more than any genre. S&B is gaslamp fantasy, specifically, and I chose to write a Victorian-inspired world because there may or may not have been a Charlotte Phase in high school where I was absolutely obsessed with Victorian literature. The Victorian era is also a time period that featured huge changes in the topics I was most interested in exploring – sexuality, gender roles, women’s rights, colonialism, scientific racism – so that contributed significantly as well.

What’s the best thing about being a writer?
I love being excited about and entirely caught up in a creative project and seeing my ideas take shape bit by bit! It has also been a joy to share what I’m passionate about with my friends and family and the corner of the online book community that I hang out in. Finally, I made the decision to donate all my proceeds to causes that are associated with my books’ themes and it has made me really happy to do so.

What’s the hardest thing about being a writer?
I love everything about it except for the extreme anxiety that accompanies sharing my work. That is still very much a work in progress.

Do you have a tip, app, tool, or resource you recommend to authors?
Listen to feedback from your beta-readers and editor. In addition, I would say that sensitivity readers can be a great source for feedback on representation if you are writing identities or significant experiences that are not your own, which I did (not for the main character but another significant character).

Other than that, I just wandered off on my own path to write precisely the story that I needed to write/read and it was incredibly fulfilling, would recommend 100%.

What new projects are you working on?
A fairy tale retelling inspired by The Ballad of Tam Lin and Beauty and the Beast with an Ultra Yearning Romance in the vein of Juliet Marillier and Tasha Suri (hopefully!!!!!). So far, it has involved me Googling the phrase “physical gestures of affection” like I’m not in a committed relationship in real life and closing my Google Doc all blushing and embarrassed because the emotions are just too much to handle.

Anything else you would like to say before we close?
Good luck to all my fellow contestants and thanks so much for this opportunity!

Interesting answers! Best of luck in the competition, Charlotte, and with sales.
Thanks for doing the interview.