Author Interview: A Memory of Blood and Magic by K.N. Brindle

Thank you so much for joining us for this Q&A! We’ll start off with one of our standard podcast opening questions–tell us something great that’s happened recently.

My family recently got home from a week and a half house-sitting in the mountains of Vermont. The scenery was beautiful, and the isolation was very peaceful. And I managed to write about 6000 words on my current project.

What are you currently reading or what’s up next on your TBR? What made you pick up this book?

I recently read Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. He’s one of my favorite authors and I love the way he balances the mundane with the fantastical. Up next is Frederick Barbarossa: a prince and the myth by John Freed, which is a biography of Frederick I, first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. That’s research for my next big project. I’m not ready to talk much about it, but I’m super excited about it.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to start writing?

I grew up reading. The first “real” novel I ever read was The Hobbit and I read that in second grade, using a dictionary to teach myself how to read all the words that I didn’t understand. I raised myself on escapism (if you haven’t read it before, look up Tolkien’s take on escapism from “On Fairy-stories”… it’s beautiful). By the time I was in highschool, I was reading two novels a month on average, most of them SFF.

I was always in love with stories, in any form and any medium. The very first thing I “wrote” was a Doctor Who fanfic comic book called “The Killer of Death” (I was 9; no shade please). The first real novel I attempted was about 20 years ago. I wasn’t really ready to write that story then, and I won’t talk about it yet because it’s going to form the core of my next trilogy ☺️

I say I wasn’t ready to write that story because I was still lying to myself. I think the most important thing that an author puts into a story is truth, and it’s not possible (or at least it’s very difficult) to put truth into a story when you’re lying to yourself about who you are.

Because the truth is that I also knew from a very early age (~6) that I was not what everyone told me I was. But as an immigrant living in the US South in the early 1980’s, I had no access to the language that would help me make sense of that feeling. Nobody in my circles used the word “nonbinary.” My only exposure to queerness was negative and derogatory. So I spent the first half of my life hating myself and pretending to be something I’m not.

I didn’t come out as nonbinary until my late 30s/early 40s, and in all blunt honesty, I’m sometimes surprised I survived that long.

How do you spend your free time when you’re not reading or writing? Do you have any hobbies or interests that you can talk to us about?

When I’m not reading or writing, I’m hanging out with my family (we enjoy movies, road trips, and table-top role-playing), scratch-building scale models, and working on building my therapy practice where I work primarily with queer and trans clients.

Who are your favorite current writers and who are your greatest influences?

I love David Mitchell’s writing. He’s got this knack for creating a space that blends fantasy with mundane reality, and he’s a style chameleon. When you pick up one of his books—which all largely take place in the same universe—you’re getting a book wholly and perfectly grounded in the voice of its genre. Whether that’s the world of the 60’s British rock scene or Dutch traders in 18th-century Japan, his voice feels utterly authentic.

I also love Seanan McGuire’s work, especially her Wayward Children series. The emotional weight and human authenticity of her characters is something I strive for in my own writing.

As for influences… I’m not sure I could say. I’ve read so many authors in so many genres and time periods over my life. I’m sure there’s a little bit of all of them in there.

If you could collaborate with any one author, who would it be and why?

It would be amazing to collaborate with either Mitchell or McGuire. I’d be over the moon working with either of them.

How much do you plan when you write? What’s your writing process like?

I plan very carefully. Although with this book, I wrote the first 15K words in a sort of fugue state, I went back and carefully outlined the whole duology before moving on. Every scene in the book serves a purpose for the larger work, and does some lifting to prepare for the finale in the sequel. I personally love when dozens of story threads wind together into an intricate tapestry in the final moments of climax, and for me that’s only really possible when each of those threads and the final design of the tapestry are planned in advance.

This means that what I write in my “first draft” tends to be very close to the finished product. For A Memory of Blood and Magic and A Memory of War and Solace, I didn’t give my editor much work to do 😅 We cut one scene that wasn’t pulling its weight (and that resulted in rearranging a couple of other scenes because: character introductions), but other than that, she was mainly catching typos and spelling errors (which Scrivener is absolutely terrible at) and helping me trim down some length without losing anything important. We’ll see if that pattern holds with my next book Common Accord

Maybe the biggest thing that changed between drafting and editing is that I split Arin’s story into two books. The original duology as outlined—and as written—was a single work. I didn’t really have a great sense at the time of how long that outline would be as a book, and how much of Arin’s voice would come through. When I was done, I realized that at almost two-hundred-thousand words I’d have no chance of selling it as a debut novel (certainly not in the trad-pub world, which I was still thinking about). Through discussions with my editor and beta readers, I decided to split it into two novels.

This first book, A Memory of Blood and Magic, covers Arin’s early life and them learning to be who they are. The sequel, A Memory of War and Solace, sees Arin leaving comfort and obscurity to confront a rising power that threatens to overturn their world. 

Because of how these books were written, both are complete and edited, and the second book will be available in September of this year, so you won’t have to wait long to finish Arin’s story 😊

What do you think characterizes your writing style?

I’m now wrapping up my third novel (unrelated to Arin’s world), and even though this one is much lighter and more action-y than my first two, I feel like my style is really focused on emotional fidelity. As engaging and clever as I hope my stories are, my writing is about the people that inhabit them and their inner worlds—their feelings, their challenges, the pain and joy that they experience and how that shapes their lives.

How much of yourself do you write into your stories?

On its face, Arin’s life is not much like mine. But metaphorically, there’s a lot of overlap. While I was writing, I actually passed my chapters on to my therapist, who you could say was my alpha reader. Turns out there was a lot that I was working through in my own journey. 

One of my beta readers (who is also a clinical social worker) pointed out that the three parts of this book are roughly analogous to childhood, work life, and grad school, which is an arc that mirrors my own life—my current “self as a therapist” is a second, late-life career for which I was getting my Masters Degree at the same time I was writing these books.

Can you tell us a little bit about your characters? What are your favorite kinds of characters to write?

Arin, the main character and narrator of A Memory of Blood and Magic, is thoughtful and reflective. The entire story of their life is told by them to an unnamed listener, several years after the events described. They’ve had a lot of time to reflect and process things. While the events of the story are unfolding, Arin has a certain naivete, which even they comment on occasionally, but readers get to live with them through many years, watching them grow up, and grow into a person of incredible strength and kindness.

I also think it’s important—and I hope readers recognize—that there’s still some guilt and self-blame that Arin carries that they objectively shouldn’t. For many reasons, this story had to be told in 1st person, but it’s also critical that readers recognize that Arin is something of an unreliable narrator when it comes to certain aspects of their own life.

In any case, the story of Arin’s life is really a story about how they became the person who could make a very specific and incredibly difficult choice at the end. But saying any more would be a spoiler for Book 2 😉

There are other important characters, but I’d rather readers meet them over the course of the book. I will say that my absolute favorite (and the favorite of many of my beta readers) is Fanti. IYKYK.

Talk to us about your book cover! Can you tell us about the idea behind it?

I’ll admit I was a bit contrarian with my cover design. The current commercial trend in book covers is very “graphics” oriented, where each cover is essentially an app icon, because it has to read at thumbnail size. But I grew up reading books with covers by artists like Larry Elmore and Ian Miller, and that’s the aesthetic I’ve been imagining the whole time I was writing. 

Once I made the decision to stop querying (read: begging other people to see the value in my work) and self-publish, I had to deal with the cover problem. I’m a designer by inclination and training, and so it wasn’t something I felt I could skimp on. I looked into commissioning an artist to paint them, but I just didn’t have the money (grad school and starting a private practice will do that). So I painted both covers myself (for A Memory of Blood and Magic and A Memory of War and Solace) using Procreate and Affinity Designer. I’m mostly ok with how they turned out, though I also only see the flaws because of the kind of personality I have.

In the cover for A Memory of Blood and Magic, we see Arin and Sem riding mules through the wilderness on the road to Reft. This scene is right out of a chapter in Part 3. Arin and Sem are on a ridge overlooking a forested valley, and in the distance, they can see the tower of Redwatch, an abandoned ancient fortification that is used as waystop by travelers. There’s a storm moving fast, and they’re realizing they won’t reach shelter before it hits (the storm darkens the back cover of the paperback book).

Can you give us an elevator pitch for your book?

I’ve described A Memory of Blood and Magic with the following two elevator pitches. I think they’re both pretty good?

• A first person oral life history with a nonbinary main character. No fateful quests, chosen ones, or dark lords here. An intimate story of pain, acceptance, and healing. Powerful emotions, cinematic action, trauma-powered magic, and human-scale world-building transcend queer fiction and fantasy tropes.

• Arin's world was torn apart by a chance encounter with the villain Cal. As a nyssa (neither girl nor boy) Arin's magic is fueled by that very pain and trauma. When Cal reappears years later, will Arin choose vengeance and lose all they've built, or can they find a path of healing?

Describe A Memory of Blood and Magic in 3 adjectives.

Intimate, Emotional, Authentic

If you could choose one worldbuilding detail (a place, ability, or creature, for example) from your book to exist in the real world, what would it be and why?

That would be Reft. I knew during the planning stages of this book that I would have to contrive some way for Arin to learn their magical skills. I also knew that I absolutely hated the “magical school” trope and had no interest in engaging with it. I also had to create a place of refuge for people like Arin: nonbinary (in the words of the book: nyssa) and capable of Trauma Magic. They are a people who are marginalized in most of the cultures of Arin’s world, actively hated and discriminated against in some, and tolerated in others. 

It was important to give Arin a place to thrive and learn and grow. The solution to Arin learning to control their magic, when it came, was as perfect as it is obvious. People in Reft learn to control their Trauma Magic through therapy.

I was genuinely surprised by what evolved as the culture of Reft. I really didn’t set out to create a socialist utopia, I promise 🤣

In your opinion, what kind of reader would like A Memory of Blood and Magic?

I think anyone who likes character-focused fantasy will like this book. You’ll have to be a little progressive or open-minded, since I deliberately am not giving readers any room to pretend the underlying message is anything other than: trans and gender-diverse people are people worthy of living their lives. There’s no metaphor-coding going on to help readers ignore that.

That said, this isn’t “queer fiction.” I deny that categorization for the same reason that it’s unfair to categorize The Wheel of Time as “cis-het fiction.” This story is fantasy that centers characters that are nonbinary in the same way that other books center characters that are cis. Yes, Arin being nonbinary is a huge factor in the story, and it shapes their life in drastic ways. But that’s less because of their identity than because of the way that their society reacts to their identity. Notably, the central trauma that acts as the inciting incident for the events in this book (the deaths of Arin’s family) actually has nothing to do with their gender identity. 

More on this in the next answer.

What would you like readers to take away from A Memory of Blood and Magic?

There’s really two distinct audiences for the Paths of Memory duology. 

For readers who are queer or trans or gender-diverse or even questioning—especially those that don’t have supportive communities—I want them to know that they’re not alone, that I see them and believe in them and support them. The Paths of Memory duology exists in part to show them that there’s a path to their lives that they get to shape. As a (nearly!) 50 year-old therapist who is queer and nonbinary, it’s been simultaneously awe-inspiring and heartbreaking to see a nonbinary adolescent realize only after meeting me that it’s actually possible for them to grow up into an adult. That they’re allowed to be a whole person, when everything else in their world is telling them they won’t.

For cisgender readers (ie: people whose innate sense of their own gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth), I have other designs for this book.

Warning: Digression Incoming:

I can trace the spark that set this story alight to reading the book Starless by Jacqueline Carey. There’s a lot that I liked about that book. I don’t at all want to throw shade, and I won’t spoil it here. But one aspect of that book that bothered me (and I didn’t realize until well after finishing it just how much it bothered me—It actually made me angry) is Carey’s depiction of her main character’s relationship to gender.

I get that she was playing with and endorsing the idea that genders outside the binary can be real and valid (it’s unclear how Khai would identify in today’s language—nonbinary? Trans-masc? Gender-queer? Gender-fluid?), but he was very much a gender-diverse person written (probably unconsciously) to be palatable to cisgender readers: His “gender confusion” is caused by socialization and by others’ actions; His love-interest immediately tries to dress him as a woman; His discovery that he could wear makeup and dresses and “pass” as a woman is a revelation to him. I won’t speak to Carey’s intentions—I have to believe they were noble. But the unintended subtext is clear: Khai is a girl who believes he is a boy.

That’s not my experience, nor any trans person’s experience that I’ve ever encountered. Trans people don’t believe they are of a gender different from that they were assigned at birth. We are. This is something backed by decades of psychology & developmental research. Gender identity is a real and vital part of our psyche that everyone has and that only gets noticed when it differs from the way our physical bodies form.

So my first inkling of Arin’s story was that I wanted to write about a nonbinary character, not in a way that was palatable to cisgender people, but in a way that could help cisgender people understand some little bit about the experience of knowing that the whole world had been gaslighting you from the day you were born. To do that, I had to start at the very beginning of Arin’s life. I’ve had one agent that I queried tell me that they thought I started the story in the wrong place. I think they’re wrong, but they’d have to read the whole story to understand that, and that’s not how the query process works.

<end digression>

So this is what I’d like cisgender people to take away from this book: That people like Arin (or like me) exist. That Arin’s experiences are real, and that you don’t need to understand them for them to be real, or to champion (and in today’s world, fight for) their right to exist and live full lives. That they don’t have to be easy or fit into a narrative that makes you comfortable. And that they can still be beautiful and vital and amazing.

In short: Arin is nonbinary. And that is the least interesting thing about their life 😅

Do you have a favorite quote from A Memory of Blood and Magic that you can share with us? What about this quote in particular makes it your favorite?

I do. This is from the interlude/introduction to Part 3, about halfway through the book. At this point in the story, Arin is about 13 years old and has been pretending to be a girl to survive (although this, as with all of their narration, is coming from their reflections later in life). They have just been extracted from that life by a stranger who is taking them to a place called Reft where they don’t have to pretend anymore.

There are lies that we wear so long that they settle into our bones. We think they have become part of us, and that we have become the lie. But the truth is that they are always still a foreign presence. They inhabit us not like the breath of life, but like a rot that slowly eats away at our foundations. When the lie is ripped from us, torn from our bones in violence and necessity, it leaves us brittle and hollow. Fragile things requiring the utmost care to survive.

Tearing out the lie is sometimes violent. It is always painful. Grief doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a lie.

I think this experience is fairly ubiquitous to trans people who have been closeted about their identity. Coming out—especially later in life—can be extraordinarily difficult and painful, and it can come with both a profound sense of relief and joy, and also soul-crushing fear of loss (of family and friends, but also of self) and grieving that loss even before it manifests (even if it never does). 

Is it any wonder that people stay closeted for so long?

I also think that these feelings aren’t exclusive to gender identity. Many people who are not trans will identify, even if in a small way, with this feeling of pain and grief at giving up a comfortable but ultimately destructive lie shielding them from the world.

Is there anything you can tell us about any current projects you’re working on?

I’m almost done with my third novel Common Accord (about one chapter left to write). I’ve been pitching it as a blue-collar space opera, or “Firefly x ST: Lower Decks.” I’m hoping to ship it off to my editor later this month, and I’ve already got the cover done (commissioned an actual artist to paint some parts of this one) and it’s amazing. I can’t wait for people to see it.

I’m also tying up the last publication details for A Memory of War and Solace, the sequel to A Memory of Blood and Magic and the conclusion to the Paths of Memory duology. It will be published September 30th. I’ll be doing a cover reveal for it shortly.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions for us! Do you have any parting thoughts or comments you’d like to leave for our readers?

Absolutely, thanks for talking with me about my work! My greatest hope in publishing this book is that someone out there will discover and get to know Arin as I have done while writing it. I’d love to hear from readers who found something of joy or power or meaning in my work.

And finally, where can you be found on the internet if our readers want to hear more from you?

My website: https://www.knbrindle.com has the latest info on my work and links to buy. You can also find, follow, and chat with me on: 

Mastodon @knbrindle@creativewriting.social (I’m currently most active here)

Bluesky @knbrindle.bsky.social

Tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/knbrindle

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About the book:

Arin’s future was foretold at birth: They would be neither girl nor boy, and a witch besides.

When the prejudices of powerful neighbors intrude on the idyll of their isolated Freelander childhood, Arin’s magic is awakened and their life spirals into violence and tragedy.

Then an unexpected ally leads Arin to an unsettling understanding: Their magical abilities are rooted in the very pain and trauma that has overturned their world.

The first book in K. N. Brindle’s debut fantasy duology, A Memory of Blood and Magic twists the genre of epic fantasy to create a moving portrait of trauma and healing.

In this first-person oral history set in a world where magic is powered by pain and trauma, readers will come to know the main character and narrator Arin through the worst and best moments of their life.