Danielle Bryan's Blog: Coffee, Chaos, & Characters

Creating Chaos, One Chapter at a Time

If you’ve ever tried to wrangle a creative brain, you’ll know it’s a bit like trying to train a hydra — cut off one idea and three more pop up. Mine’s been in full mythical mode lately.

Between writing new chapters for Marked by Fire, outlining future books, and trying not to drown in caffeine, I’ve realized that this kind of chaos is exactly what fuels me. It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. It’s magic.

Right now, I’m deep in the next few chapters of Marked by Fire, and things are getting intense — the kind of scenes that keep me awake at 2 a.m. because the characters won’t stop talking. (Maverick, I’m looking at you.)

But alongside the writing, I’ve been setting up my new stories on Inkitt, where readers can follow along from the beginning. It’s wild to see how every project — every spark — connects to the next. Like my brain decided one story wasn’t enough, so it built a multiverse instead.

Writing has always been my anchor, my outlet, my form of therapy. And even on the hard days — the self-doubt, the exhaustion, the “why did I think I could do this?” — I remind myself: this chaos is mine.

So here’s to working hard, following inspiration wherever it leads, and trusting that the hydra brain knows what it’s doing. (Most of the time, anyway.)


The fire’s still burning — and the next chapter’s almost ready to rise. 🔥

Lightning split the clouds, and for a heartbeat she saw herself reflected in every drop of rain — fire and frost in perfect harmony.
(Excerpt from Shadefire: The World Unbound © Danielle Bryan*)

That line arrived while thunder shook my window. I typed faster than I could think, and it stayed — unedited, untamed, exactly as it fell.


Do you believe balance is learned… or chosen?

Steam curls like breath on glass.
December mornings feel gentler. The house is quieter, the words slower. I like to think the stories are sleeping under snow, dreaming of spring chapters.
This month isn’t about starting something new — it’s about remembering why we began. Writing, like winter, teaches stillness.

What part of yourself finds peace in the slower seasons?

Every story I’ve written started with a single heartbeat — but this one started with ink.

Not the kind that bleeds onto a page, but the kind that stays on skin.

The tattoo wasn’t planned as a story. It was supposed to be a reminder — of survival, of becoming, of the fire that doesn’t go out, even when everything else does. I remember sitting in that chair, watching the needle trace a symbol that meant something only I could feel. It hurt, but in that hurt there was something sacred: a promise to myself that pain would have a purpose.

Weeks later, I dreamed of a girl staring into a mirror that didn’t reflect what she expected. Her name was Alice, and she carried something inside her — something fractured and luminous. That dream became Mirrorborn.

Months after that, another voice came: Brianna, a warrior who rose from the ashes of her own mistakes, fierce and unyielding. She became the soul of Shadefire.

And then came Ash and Flame. Another world. Another echo. Another version of that same truth inked into my skin — that destruction isn’t the end; it’s transformation.

I didn’t realize it then, but that tattoo wasn’t decoration. It was a doorway. Every world I’ve built since has grown from that same place — the space where pain and purpose meet, where scars become maps, where ink becomes prophecy.

Maybe that’s what all stories really are: the marks we make to prove we were here, still creating beauty out of the burn.

Lightning split the clouds, and for a heartbeat she saw herself reflected in every drop of rain — fire and frost in perfect harmony.

(Excerpt from Shadefire: The World Unbound © Danielle Bryan*)

That line arrived while thunder shook my window. I typed faster than I could think, and it stayed — unedited, untamed, exactly as it fell.

Some chapters can’t be edited — only rewritten from the heart outward.

I used to think healing was linear, like revising a messy paragraph until it made sense. But life doesn’t work like a first draft. You don’t “fix” pain; you translate it. You find a new language for what you survived and keep writing anyway.

When I was working on Scars into Light, there were days I couldn’t touch the page. The memories felt too sharp. But each time I returned, the words met me differently — softer, wiser. Sometimes that’s what recovery looks like: learning how to write the same truth in gentler ink.

“Light doesn’t erase the scars; it simply learns how to hold them.”

What part of your own story have you had to rewrite more than once to understand it?

The mirror frosted tonight. For a heartbeat I saw the Carnival buried beneath snow, the tents glowing faintly under the ice.

I wondered — does magic hibernate, or does it simply wait for the brave to wake it?

Alice always reminds me that even silence hums if you listen closely.

If magic slept through winter, what would you whisper to wake it?

Every book begins with a spark — and too much caffeine.

When I started Mirrorborn, I had no plan for a series; I just wanted to know why the mirror hummed. That curiosity turned into a world, then into a heartbeat that refuses to stop.

Now, every time I open a blank page, I wonder which reflection, storm, or spotlight will call next.

The fun part? Half of my “best ideas” were just scribbles on napkins between work shifts.

What small moment has ever sparked something much bigger for you?

The coffee tastes different after October ends — less sweet, more honest.
The house is quiet again. Candle stubs line the desk like spent soldiers. The Carnival sleeps, but I can still hear the echo of its calliope under the hum of my coffee maker.

This morning feels like the exhale after a storm — everything softer, edges blurred.
I think every story has its own hangover. The trick is to pour something warm into the quiet and listen for what still wants to be written.

That’s how Mirrorborn: The Seal of the First Halloween found me. Not in the noise of creation, but in the stillness that followed. It began as a whisper — a fragment of a scene I couldn’t shake: Alice and Ronan walking the Carnival’s edge, the lantern light thinning, something ancient stirring behind the mirrors.

I thought it would be a simple addendum, a closing note. Instead, it became its own heartbeat — a story about what happens when memory itself begins to remember. About the way love endures even when the world forgets.

Writing it felt like tracing a reflection that kept shifting under my hand — familiar, but not quite the same. Maybe that’s what the Carnival really is: not a place we visit once a year, but a mirror that waits for us to return changed.

Reflection Prompt: What dream from October still lingers on your tongue?

Every year, Halloween brings its own kind of magic — a night when stories breathe, shadows whisper, and forgotten worlds remember our names.

The Seal of the First Halloween began as a simple idea: What if the carnival celebrated Halloween too? What if the veil between worlds grew thin enough for the mirrors to dream again?

I wanted this novella to feel like stepping back into Mirrorborn: Carnival After Dark — the scent of burnt sugar in the air, the hum of the calliope, Ronan and Alice walking beneath the lanterns that flicker like memories. But beneath the wonder lies something fragile: the fear of forgetting.

Writing this story reminded me that every myth starts with a question — and every Halloween, we answer it again.

☾ ✶ ◈ ✶ ☽

Read it now: Mirrorborn: The Seal of the First Halloween
Available on Kindle & Kindle Unlimited.

If you’ve ever wondered how Halloween truly began… this might be the mirror’s answer.