Barbara J. Webb's Blog

Some time ago (what even is time?), a thing went around the site formerly known as Twitter. One of those fun little meme-questions that’s supposed to be a game. Except for me, I read it, and suddenly started to question my entire writer-life.

The idea was to list the things people would fine in a You-branded book. The elements core to your writer identity, that people could expect every time they picked up a book with your name on it. 

I played along. I started listing things. And realized…

None of those things were in the books I was working on.

Somehow, for no reason I could articulate, I was not writing books I would describe as being elementally me.

So I sat with that a while. Reconsidered everything. And started working on new books. Some of those books are now ready to be released into the world! I’ll have more on those soon—covers, release dates, all kinds of goodies.

But in the meanwhile, I wanted to talk about my answer to that game. 

I have a lot of stories I want to tell. So many characters to introduce you to. Many different settings. Even different genres! But these are the things you will be able to expect to find whenever you pick up a book of mine.

Big stories. Stories that take multiple books to tell. Stories that start seemingly simple until you start to pull away layers and layers and find that everything is complicated. Stories with magic. Wizards. Dragons. Spaceships. Demons. My books have always embraced the fantastical, and that isn’t going to change. Not ever.Kissing! I love reading romance. I love writing romance! I love big feeling and sweeping passions and just because we’re saving the world doesn’t mean we can’t find love along the way.Secrets. Unreliable narrators. Histories constructed by the winners. Truths that must be uncovered. I love nothing more than that moment of discovering things are not as they seem. Queer characters. Characters representing every letter in the acronym. I love my queer family, and everyone should get to fall in love (or get a happily-ever-after friendship, because I see my aro-ace siblings too!)Shadows and spiders and things that go bump in the night. There’s always going to be a little bit of horror in my writing. In some books, that touch will be light. In others, it will live on every page. But the world is a scary place, and that’s going to be present in my writing.

One more special note— the Happily Ever After! 

Although everything I write is going to contain romance, not every book will be tagged as being in the romance genre. However, I promise you, if I am labelling this book as a romance, no matter how horrible things get, it will be all right in the end. Even if it sometimes takes a few books to get there, love WILL triumph. That’s a Barbara guarantee. 

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I’ll be heading back to GenCon this year, for the first time since 2019. Looking forward to seeing friends and spending way too much money in the dealer room. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be easy to find in my bright purple and pink mask!

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There is a school of thought that circles the internet that says professional entertainers shouldn’t talk about politics. 

You’ll lose sales, they caution. You’ll turn away potential audience. Entertainment is some people’s escape from the real world!

Maybe this is true. The trouble is, whether or not that’s a good idea, the question comes, when you’re a writer, is it even possible?

My politics exist in my books. The narrative I’m building is full of characters striving towards a better world, and as the writer, I decide what that better world looks like. I decide who gets to have a happy ending. I decide the nature of the struggles my characters experience. All those ideas are shaped by my own personal beliefs of what is right, what is fair, and who gets to live the life they choose.

The point is, no one who reads my work should be shocked by my politics. 

I live in the US, and this week, we inaugurated a new president. It is, shall we say, a relief. It hasn’t sunk in yet, the full impact of this change just on my mindset, but there is a dawning, tenuous sense of hope that I haven’t known for a while.

These last four years have not been great ones for creativity. Since the horror of election night in 2016, it has been as if a heavier and heavier weight has been tied to my brain and I’m only just now starting to tug at the ropes to see if it’s finally gone. 

There are still a lot of problems in the world. There’s still a lot of work to do. But I’m starting to think maybe I can go back to thinking like a writer again. Maybe I can go back to being a writer again.

Thank you, everyone who’s been with me on this journey. Thank you, again, readers who have stuck with me through some…let’s say…irregular schedules. 

It’s a New Year.

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So now that there’s a good solid chunk of Serpent’s Kiss out in the world (and much more to come—settle in!), I wanted to talk a bit about why I’m so excited to be writing and sharing this book.

I’ve already discussed over on Twitter and on Wattpad how much I love mixing magic and romance together. I spent a lot of years trying to pick just one of those genres, because if I didn’t choose—well, how will anyone know what shelf you belong on in the bookstore? The Apocrypha: Dying World books, the Invisible War books—those are definitely shelved in speculative fiction, even if I tried to sneak in just a little romance. But I was trying very hard to play by the rules with those books, and I think they suffered for it.

(Side note, when I write the next Invisible War book, there will be much more romance in it.)

So there was no question the Empire of the Four Suns series was going to contain both romance (of the steamy sort) and magic. The magic part was easy. Worldbuilding has always been a game for me, so exploring the new world and poking at its hows and whys was fast and easy. The romance part…well, there were more decisions that had to happen there.

From what I can see, there has been a line in romance for a long time. A wall, really. With straight romance on one side and non-straight romance on the other, and never the twain shall cross. On a superficial level, this is frustrating because it means those books feel artificially limited. On a deeper, more dangerous level, it separates people, divides and others them. (Romance Writers of America are struggling through some of the effects of that othering right now.)

The Empire of the Four Suns series is an epic length story, with an epic length cast of characters. Frankly, it would have been boring if everyone in the world were straight, or gay, or cis. A cast of this size gave me the opportunity for variety, to have ALL the characters that I want to write. 

And this decision brought me back to the fun of worldbuilding. What does a world look like where people are free to express themselves, to live the way they want to live and with whom? Is this a world where everyone can make their choice free of discrimination? (Spoilers: yes…and no.) What’s it like to be on any part of the sexuality spectrum among the clans? What about the gender spectrum? These are fun questions to engage with as a writer! (Special call out here to Lukas Tolvaj, who has been friend, advisor, and sensitivity reader and who’s questions sent me in all kinds of interesting directions. He’s amazing. Hire him!)

At this point you’ve met Yeijiro, Corinne, Alexia, Tōru, Roman, Satsu, and Andreas. There are many more to come. There are a lot of relationships ahead of us. I hope you have as much fun reading them as I have had writing them.

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You can find me on Patreon now if you’re interested in supporting me:

https://www.patreon.com/BarbaraJWebb

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Well, it’s been a hectic few months, full of travel, sickness, and unexpected life chaos, but starting January 1st we will be back online.

Twisted Secrets posts will resume on Wattpad and Tapas starting on January 2 and will continue with a schedule of new scenes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Serpent’s Kiss will launch on January 1! With a posting schedule of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I’m so excited to be back to work and to be sharing with all y’all. 

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May 2017 be better for everyone.

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So a while ago, author Mark Lawrence started up what he called the Great Self-published Fantasy Blog-off, wherein he solicited self-published fantasy works from over 250 different writers and then divvied those books up between a number of popular book reviewers who had agreed to look at them, pick their favorite of the batch they were given, then read and rate everyone else’s favorites.

I sent in City of Burning Shadows, and it got sent to Ria of Bibliotropic. And last week, Ria announced that of her 26 books, Shadows was her favorite.

So I’m moving on to round 2. 9 other reviewers will take a look at Shadows, and I can’t wait to hear their response.

The SPFBO has been an amazing opportunity, and it’s so great that Mark Lawrence worked with these review sites to set it up. As has been acknowledged, it’s hard to get noticed as a writer, and that becomes doubly hard when one is self-publishing. Of course, I’m grateful for the recognition Shadows has received, and it always feels nice to win, but the review alone–the opportunity for consideration–were a huge deal to me and, I suspect, to my fellow participants.

So thanks to Mark and thanks to Ria, and I’m excited to watch what other books get pulled out of the other reviewers’ piles.

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February 2015 edition.

Thanks to some tweaks by the fabulous Clockpunk Studios, the website now has a progress meter. So you’ll be able to see, live, exactly what I’m working on and how far I am into it.

In addition to those updates, you can now read a novel in progress over on Wattpad. It’s a fantasy romance novel in the Apocrypha setting (although not on the same world as the Dying World books). After this draft is finished, it will get revised, edited, and published like anything else, but if you simply can’t wait, or you want to see what ideas are like fresh out of my head, I invite you to go read it.

 

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Things I liked about Interstellar (the not particularly spoilery version):

The whole movie was gorgeous.

Space was silent.

The robots. Everything about the robots.

Space travel is really, really complicated. Other worlds are really, really complicated.

Black Holes.

We are explorers.

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