Ask the Author: B. Vale
Answered Questions (5)
B. Vale
It started with my grandmother's garden, honestly - the way she talked about heirloom seeds like they were relatives, something you were responsible for passing down correctly. I kept thinking about what happens when a family that values that kind of patience gets handed something that doesn't fit the timeline at all. Roots of Resilience grew out of that collision: a retired schoolteacher, a small Tennessee town built on slow, careful things, and a gift nobody asked for that starts changing what "family" means.
B. Vale
Mostly from watching how ordinary people handle change they didn't choose - a new tool, a new neighbor, a new problem nobody in town has a name for yet. I'm less interested in dramatic turning points than in the quiet decisions that add up to someone's character. Most of my ideas start as a single image or an overheard turn of phrase, and I just keep asking what would that actually cost someone.
B. Vale
Book two in the Verdi series, Seeds of Resistance. It picks up about a year after Roots of Resilience - Angela's farm is stable, the co-op is thriving, and I'm having a lot of fun making sure that doesn't last. Her grandson Eli gets pushed into more responsibility than he's ready for, and there's a pattern buried in the seed line that suggests Cookeville's story was never as isolated as it looked.
B. Vale
Finish the thing before you decide whether it's good. I spent years polishing opening chapters I never got past - it wasn't until I forced myself through a full draft, flaws and all, that I actually learned how to write. Also: read outside your genre. Some of what shaped this series came from books that have nothing to do with small towns or gardens.
B. Vale
Getting to sit with a question longer than real life usually allows - in this case, what we owe the people who come after us, and what it costs to actually protect something. And then, once in a while, hearing from a reader who tells me the book made them think about their own family differently. That part doesn't get old.
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