Interview with Author Rena Barron

 

Welcome Back, Booklovers! I've raved about Kingdom of Souls many times over the past year and her latest Maya and the Rising Dark has been added to my MG fantasy recommendation list. She put one of my favorite reads this year on my radar. I was so fortunate to be able to interview her about her latest release and her publishing journey.

 

First, congratulations on recently publishing Maya and the Rising Dark! How did the experience publishing your first middle grade book differ from your experience publishing your first young adult book?

Thank you! Publishing Kingdom of Souls was such an emotional rollercoaster. There is so much pressure in the young adult space to break out, yet so much of what happens is outside of an author’s control. It’s a weird space to exist in, especially as an African-American woman. Publishing has created this glass ceiling, and so many of us marginalized authors are working to collectively break it. That work has felt endless and exhausting at times, but we keep pushing to open the door for ourselves and future authors while remembering all the ones who came before us. 

There was less pressure to publish Maya and the Rising Dark, partly because I had worn myself out with KOS, or maybe second books are less stressful in general. With the pandemic, I expected a pretty quiet release, though I have been pleasantly surprised by the reception Maya has gotten so far. 

Maya and the Rising Dark is contemporary and takes place in a world similar to ours. Was it very different shaping the magic system in that world vs creating the magic system in a completely made up world?

I took a similar approach to building a magic system for my second world fantasy and the contemporary world of Maya and the Rising Dark. I always start with the foundation. What are the rules? How does magic work? Who can wield? What are the consequences? It was a little trickier to explain how magic interacted in a world that mostly doesn’t know it exists. 

 

You had quite the experience with Pitch War and your manuscript The Last Witchdoctor which would become Kingdom of Souls. How did you narrow down your agent from the 43 requests received? 

Wow! It’s hard to believe that Pitch Wars was only three years ago. I was able to narrow my offers down by making a spreadsheet to compare agents. I looked at their recent sales to see if they were successfully selling in my age category and genre. I also wanted to know what type of support system they had in place at their agency. For example, did they have foreign rights or a film agent in house? I chatted with clients (some who I reached out to on my own and some recommended by the agent), read interviews with the agent, and asked questions about their agenting style like whether or not they were editorial.

What kind of research did you do when writing Kingdom of Souls?

My initial interest in voodoo started when I heard about people in my community practicing it when I was growing up. I wanted to understand how hoodoo and voodoo coexisted alongside Christianity. I found Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Conjure by Jeffrey E. Anderson, an interesting exploration of how these three traditions manifested in the Americas. Other books I explored included 

Black Magic: Religion and The African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne P. Chireau

The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts by Baba Ifa Karade

Grasping the Root of Divine Power by HRU Yuya T. Assaan-ANU

Academia.edu had a wealth of research papers on West African history from authors from different backgrounds. Finally, YouTube doesn’t get enough credit. It’s an excellent research tool.

What can we expect with Reaper of Souls?

Reaper of Souls continues to build off the idea of sacrifice and the gray space between right and wrong. It explores choices and consequences, and how we live with them. I really wanted to expand the world and the mythology and the stakes in Reaper of Souls, so readers would get a complete picture of how we ended up in the situation at the end of Kingdom of Souls.

 

What inspired you to start writing? And was there anything that drew you to dark fantasy in particular? I fondly remember my days growing up on a farm and setting off for a perilous adventure in the woods to fight off monsters. I never stop telling myself stories, and they only got more elaborate once I started to write them down. As for loving dark fantasy, I think it has something to do with exploring the sides of ourselves that might scare us a little (or a lot).

 

When writing YA fantasy do you ever feel like you have to write your book to fit with the more popular titles?

Not really. I want my books to be commercially successful, but so much of that is out of my control. I don’t think it’s about writing to fit in with popular titles. A lot of what defines popular is what is hyped and financially supported in-house at a publisher. That excitement is swept down the distribution channels to schools, libraries, book clubs, subscription boxes, and the general public. Like most Black authors, I know that there is a tendency for our books to get dismissed if they don’t fit a particular archetype. 

 

What was it like growing up in small town Alabama and have you incorporated that experience into your writing? 

I had free rein of my family’s farm and the woods around it, so I spent much of my time making up stories. I don’t know if I would be a writer if I had a different upbringing.

 

 

What are your favorite Southern staple foods? 

Collard greens and cornbread with vinegar and hot sauce, but the twist is that it’s got to be vegetarian.

 

What are some of the books you’re looking forward to in 2021?

So much #BlackGirlMagic coming in 2021! Here are only a few, but many more on my list:

Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart

Wings of Ebony by J. Elle

A Psalm of Storms and Silence by Rosie Brown

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna

Blood Scion by Deborah F. Savoy