LT: Love & Homegrown Magic is a genre-crossing novel with elements of a fantasy, science fiction, and spirituality as well. Did you start writing with this in mind, or did this happen organically as you were writing?

PB: Organically, for sure! The working title of the novel was “Daughters of the Bride” but as the protagonist’s character began to take shape, and as secondary characters stepped into the moonlight, the story itself blossomed into a play on ancestral patterns, traditions, and folk-magic, and the true name of the book revealed itself.

LT: What is one thing that you hope the reader takes away from Love & Homegrown Magic?

PB: As human beings, we all look for ways to get us successfully through our day. Some take a practical approach; some go for the spiritual route; others choose a balancing act.

Love & Homegrown Magic is a glimpse into how one woman incorporates faith, tradition, and supernatural practices into a daily collection of rituals, like prayer, candle lighting, and new moon intentions, to produce the winning attitude she needs to succeed.

Maggie, protagonist extraordinaire, puts the weight of her faith into mundane activity and infuses it with a magic that is all her own—I hope that readers of my new novel choose to give every-day tasks a magical twist too, recognizing that it does wonders for our outlook.

There is magic in a smile, a song, a spontaneous hug, or the preparing of a meal, we just have to believe it.

LT: When creating Maggie did you have a plan for development and character traits, or did it grow organically as you were writing the story?

PB: The novel, which is based on a handful of real events, began with starry traits; I knew where in the zodiac Maggie and her daughters sprung from.

As the story unfolded and of their own volition, the characters’ personalities developed to work through and reshape ancestral patterns.

LT: What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be published?

PB: The coming months will be a different kind of hectic for me, as I won’t be writing a new novel. Instead, I will be translating book 1 of the Faerie Legacy Series, Faery Sight, into Spanish!

My goal is to start on December 1^st. If it turns out that translating is quicker than writing a new manuscript, I might have translation of the whole trilogy, Cradle Gift and Nahia, completed by 2022!

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