Inside the Mind - B.D. Carpenter

B- I've been creating stories my whole life. The first story I told in great detail was when I was four. My mom asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' And I wove her an entire story about how I was going to work at McDonald's, marry a school bus driver (I didn't even ride the bus nor go to school), live in an upstairs apartment, and have a horse and a cat (IN my apartment). The first story I wrote was when I was eight about a bunny on a picnic. And wrote my first book when I was thirteen a historical family drama told through diary entries inspired by Dear Mr. Henshaw. I took writing classes in high school. I was the editor for the literary magazine. I took writing classes in college, and wrote my second book in 2007. She never published any of her work because she always felt like her plots were a little too shallow. D tried to write a book many years ago but didn't finish it due to a profound lack of depth to his characters. In 2022, B and D got married and decided to combine their powers, shore up each others weaknesses, and finally become published authors. B brings a deep understanding of human psychology to create rich characters, a (mostly) attention to details, and ability to craft prose learned from years of study and practice. And D brings his analytical brain to develop deep plots and rich magic systems.

We decided to write The False kin Chronicles right after we were married. We were watching True Blood, D for the first time, when he looked at B and said, "Wow, everyone is turning out to be something other than human. What if there was a book where no one was actually human and we just all pretended so well because we think every one else is human." Tada. The #FalseKin Chronicles was born.

When starting with The Masks We Wear D created Beau, and B created Meep. Both characters popped out pretty full formed. Beau mirrors a lot of neurodivergent traits, just like us, and Meep embodies all the uncertainty and trauma that B refused to let break her. B- Meep's name is a funny story because at the time I was reading The Seven Kenning series by Kevin Herne and there are two animal characters--one named Merr and one named Eep--so when thinking of a name for the character I made a noise and then rolled with it. It turned into an entire cultural naming scheme. Other characters, like Kyle, Kathleen, Jessie, and Jeremy, were originally written as small bit parts or extras who insisted they had a story to tell and pestered us until we wrote them correctly--particularly Kyle and Jeremy.

D has a full time job as a software developer for a large bank, he flies through his work quickly and normally ends up writing on his phone via GDocs while he's waiting for code reviews. B- I get coffee, let the dogs out, then sit at my computer with the goal of writing. I normally get distracted by making marketing materials on Canva, managing my backlists on KDP, ACX, and BnN and/or website, or anything but what I should, and actually want, to do.

B- The sense of accomplishment is rewarding, but it's been really hard. I struggle so much with marketing that I'm often left feeling defeated. But every sale that comes through you get to see, you don't really get that in trad publishing, and its always such a great feeling and motivator.

Marketing. Both of us are very introverted and both have some amount of social anxiety. Marketing is so very hard. B- Currently I'm taking a certification course for Google digital marketing in the hope that I can get a handle on this stuff. I really want to do in person events but I psych myself out because I don't know how to do visual art, I can't decorate well, I need posters and table cloths and this and that, then I get freaked out and don't actually look into where to start. So far, it's been two years since we first published The Masks We Wear and I al getting better and better at designing things of Canva, so one day, I will finally have the confidence to take the final step.

We love Google Docs. It's simple, fast, accessible anywhere, and because we cowrite we find the ability to mark and leave comments invaluable. We've tried other tools, like Scrivner and Reedsy, but you can't leave comments and its not set up to handle more than one writer so that was a deal breaker. On GDocs we can also share it with out beta readers and critique partners for feedback in real-time. With Gdoc, for a full length novel, you have to split it up into separate files and link them together because with enough comments it will start to slow down and become a nightmare. B- I also have a lifetime subscription for AutoCrit that I have my personal projects on (the ones we aren't cowriting). I don't use it much because I've noticed that they leaned in a bit hard into AI and I don't like that. But I find the editing options very useful. For a non-writing tool, if you can afford a subscription to Canva that is so great. It's $15 a month which is a tough ask for many people. I make all my marketing materials. I use it everyday. And I have been getting better and better at design. I can look back on my first things I made back in 2024 and cringe. But I recently saw a quote that went something like, "If you can look back on your past work and cringe that is such a privilege, because that means you were brave enough to start and persistent enough to get better."

B- For me, marketing is harder than what I thought 'hard' was. Particularly if you're like me, (introverted, socially anxious, bad at visual arts/design/aesthetics) the only thing I'm good at is writing and that's not enough. BUT... Still, don't give up on yourself or your goals. And don't give IN either. I know that generative AI is there and tempting, so very tempting... but don't do it. And I mean Generative AI, not grammar check, if the AI is writing words for you that is where the line is. I'm ADHD and dyslexic, and I use a lot of tools to help me write novels, like grammarly, and sometime AutoCrit to show me things like echoes, and passive voice, those are accessibility tools, not generative AI. The best part of writing is pouring your soul onto the page. AI's don't have souls and even if they did they can't pour yours out for you. Even in the moments that you're stuck, that a scene is too hard, those words and AI spits out might sound great at the time... but they're not. LLMs (gen AI) looks for words that look good next to other words, and that's it. And if you're caught using gen AI even once, even for book trailers, cover art, or character art you're using in promotional materials, you'll lose audience trust. Your brand will have a stain, and marketing is hard enough.

When we wrote The Masks We Wear B wrote all of Meep's scenes, as well as the epilogue, and D wrote all of Beau's scenes. We started by bouncing ideas back and forth every night in the hottub, lol, it became a ritual. We'd go out for a soak and plan the next chapters of the book and make sure our plans for each character arc was going to line up. We're both pantsers and at best only made vague plans for a couple of chapters at a time. While B did all the self edits and working with their editor and proofreader D forged ahead and draft all of The Ways We Err. We would still soak in the hottub and make plans together even though he was doing 90% of the drafting. And while B worked on editing book two, D did book three, The Mantles we Bear. Unfortunately our hottub was one of those inflatable ones and water started filling up the sidewalls where the air was supposed to go, so we had to throw it out. B is still currently working on that one and D is chugging along with drafting book four, the final book planned for the series called The Faces We Share. The editing and the drafting for book three and four are going slowly, we blame the lack of a hottub, but it has more to do with trying to make sure all the loose ends are tied up correctly and the ending is satisfying all plot points. Alas, the downside of pantsing.

B has two other book in progress both in the cozy fantasy genre in the works, and a witch dark acedamia that she first wrote in 2007 to fix. D is playing with a scifi idea he has, and together we have tons of short stories in The #falsekin Chronicles to edit and get out.