Interview with novelist Brenda Marie Smith

Today’s special guest author is Brenda Marie Smith and we’re chatting about her new post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel, If Darkness Takes Us.

During her virtual book tour, Brenda will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Brenda Marie Smith lived off the grid for many years in a farming collective where her sons were delivered by midwives. She’s been a community activist, managed student housing co-ops, produced concerts to raise money for causes, done massive quantities of bookkeeping, and raised a small herd of teenage boys.

Brenda is attracted to stories where everyday characters transcend their own limitations to find their inner heroism. She and her husband reside in a grid-connected, solar-powered home in South Austin, Texas. They have more grown kids and grandkids than they can count.

Her first novel, Something Radiates, is a paranormal romantic thriller; If Darkness Takes Us and its standalone sequel, If the Light Escapes, are post-apocalyptic science-fiction.

Welcome, Brenda. Please tell us about your current release.
In current-day Austin, Texas, Bea Crenshaw secretly prepares for apocalypse. She thinks she’s ready for any disaster that could befall her family until she’s keeping her four grandchildren for a long weekend and an electromagnetic pulse from the sun knocks out the entire U.S. grid. Her grown kids and husband don’t return home. Bea must teach her grandkids to survive without power, cars, phones, or running water in a world fraught with increasing danger before her heart and her hope give out.

What inspired you to write this book?
As a lifelong environmentalist, I’ve always been worried about ecological and societal collapse. I wanted to explore what it might be like for a modern-day American family to suddenly find itself without the many creature-comforts we’re so accustomed to. And as a grandmother myself, I’m intrigued by the relationships between kids and their grandparents. I would do literally anything to protect my grandkids, so I wrote a character who must face down her own fears in order to do just that.

 

Excerpt from Chapter One, Page 1 of If Darkness Takes Us:
No matter how desperately a mother loves you, she can only put up with so much. And so, the day came when Mother Nature lashed out against us.

I understood where Nature was coming from. My family never listened to me either, which is why I didn’t tell them about the guns I’d bought.

The whole thing started with the train wreck.

On a Friday in early October, the young adults in my family went to the Oklahoma-Texas game up in Dallas—a big football rivalry around here. They dragged my husband, Hank the Crank, along with them, leaving me in South Austin with my grandchildren.

At the time, I was glad to see Hank go. He’d been making me crazy since he retired: hovering like a gnat; micromanaging my coffee-making; griping at me for reading instead of waiting attentively for him to spout something terse. Lord, I needed a break from that man. The three-day trip to Dallas seemed perfect.

I wasn’t a built-in-babysitter type of grandma, and I only saw my four grandkids together as a group on birthdays and holidays. For weeks I’d been excited about spending a long weekend alone with them.

A cruel trick sometimes, getting what you ask for.

 

What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m doing the final proofread for the standalone sequel, If the Light Escapes, which comes out on August 24^th. The story is told from the point of view of Bea’s 18-year-old grandson, Keno Simms. A very different voice, and a stalwart young hero who wears his heart on his sleeve. This book is more action-oriented, but it also includes family drama, love, and romance. It’s a coming-of-age story about a young man who is thrust into manhood too soon.

I’m also plotting the third book in the series, as yet untitled, and I am developing another novel that’s a complete departure from the apocalyptic genre, Guru of the Ozarks.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’ve wanted to write all my life, but only got to do business and newsletter writing as part of my jobs until after my kids were grown. I took fiction classes from UCLA and took years to write my first novel, a paranormal thriller called Something Radiates. I was intimidated about finding an agent or publisher, so I didn’t try very hard before I decided to self-publish. But I didn’t really feel like a professional writer until SFK Press chose If Darkness Takes Us as their 2018 Novel Contest winner and published the book more than a year later. That was the validation I needed. And the fact that SFK is also publishing the sequel is icing on the cake.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I don’t write full-time, but I think about my stories almost full-time. I also do part-time work as a bookkeeper and income tax preparer. And I’m part of a very active critique group, so I spend a lot of time reading the books of my partners and helping to improve them. But I can be driving down the street and composing a scene in my head, or mindlessly crunching numbers while I work out a sticky plot point. For me, thinking is critical to writing, so that when I sit down to put words on the page, I have a clearer idea of where I’m going. I also spend a great deal of time on marketing and keeping my social media platforms active and up-to-date.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I often listen to news or political podcasts at low volume while I write. My mind needs the stimulation. For my first novel, I listened to music, but for apocalypses, the news of the past few years provides the right ominous, worrisome tone, I’m sorry to say. I also play video games while I write. I can’t help it. I’m antsy, lol.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Well, a writer, of course. I wrote stories and poems even as a kid, and I won national and state awards for them in high school. I took creative writing classes, journalism classes, and was editorial editor of the school paper. I worked as a proofreader for a big daily newspaper as soon as I was out of school. But then I married young and had kids, so I had to set my writing dreams aside for twenty-five years, except for the occasional poem. Luckily, I was able to get back to my dreams. By that time, I had a huge backlog of things to say.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
A big thank you to Lisa Haselton for hosting me on this blog. And thank you to the readers and the folks at Goddess Fish Promotions. I hope you all stay healthy and happy in the years to come.

Thanks for being here today, Brenda!

Links:
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Buy Links:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | BookPeople

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