Today’s Featured Author: B. C. Taylor
I met Brooklyn at the Kenosha Halloweekend book event, and she was kind enough to meet me in person for our interview.
Brooklyn has written the Hayden Black and the Salem Witch Trials series, a 5-book Young Adult fantasy series with two spin-off books. You can find them on Amazon and Bookshop.org. She is currently working on a poetry book called 28, set to release May 5th and can be pre-ordered on Amazon. She’s also working on her romance series meant for a more mature audience, with the first book set to release in August.
This interview was conducted on March 21, 2026. Enjoy!
Meet Brooklyn
When not casting spells, brewing potions, or flying her broom, Brooklyn writes middle grade and young adult fantasy with a hint of wickedness. While she currently lives in Wisconsin, Brooklyn enjoys traveling throughout the country and recently traveled to Thailand, where she engaged in daring adventures like feeding elephants and petting tigers. During her travels, she pushed the boundaries of her comfort zone by learning new skills, from wake boarding and surfing to country swing dancing to expanding her martial arts background. Despite the adventurousness of her reality, Brooklyn’s magic power is daydreaming of witches and wizards, angels and demons, and other supernatural creatures that live within the shadowy realms of books.
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Q&A
What inspired you to start writing in general?
I have known I wanted to be a writer since fifth grade. I loved to read, especially Harry Potter and Percy Jackson at that time, but I felt like there weren’t that many young adult books like that. I wanted more stories like those. I loved living in a fantasy world, so I knew I wanted to be an author one day.
I didn’t start to write seriously until I was in college though. I was stressed from school and some personal relationships at the time, so I started writing, and it turned into this really cool character, so I deciding to publish it.
What inspires you to continue writing?
I just love stories. I don’t really write one-offs very much, I’m more into writing series. Once I start writing, I have more ideas. I also keep getting more ideas from reading and meeting other authors.
My passion is young adult fantasy, but I want to hit on different life experiences, too, so I’m actually writing a poetry book, too. Plus, I’m started a romance series under a different pen name. I just have so many stories I want to get out there.
It also helps to mix things up. When you’re stuck on the same thing all the time, you almost lose your motivation, so it’s good for me to do something different and then come back to young adult fantasy later.
When did you know you wanted to publish a book?
I decided I wanted to publish in March 2020. I was in a bad relationship at the time, and it was long-distance. I also didn’t really like my job at the time. When COVID hit, I just knew I needed to publish what I was working on. Deciding to publish gave me a purpose in life again. I feel like finding that purpose gave me permission to break out from my bad situations.
How did you first get published?
I did all the research on doing traditional publishing first. It’s a lot of work to find an agent and there’s still a lot of unknowns after the fact, plus I would still be responsible for marketing my book. With all that work in mind, when I saw how they pay you out, I decided to self-publish.
Once I decided that, I went through a ton of education and resources online to figure out how to do it. I ended up creating my own business to publish the books under.
What is your writing routine?
I will say right now I don’t have one. My job has been stressful since November, and there’s been a couple other things happening that have taken my time away from writing.
Normally my writing process is my weekends are dedicated to writing. I’ll get up and write for an hour, then go to the gym or do something to move my body, and then I’ll come back and write for another hour or so.
Some days are for plotting, but I always try to get something down on paper. If I sit down and focus, then I can get 3000 words or so a day.
How do you develop an idea from initial spark to finished manuscript?
I am a plotter. I plan out all the scenes in advance. I will plot out across however many books will be in the series first. For instance, for my witch series, the main character is a witch who controls the five elements, so I knew each book would focus on a different element and then there would be two spin-off books. So I planned the main challenge in each book and breaking each book down into the theme and what needs to happen.
Because I did it like that, I could actually write the books out of order. I wrote I think book 1 and 2 first, and then 4 and part of 6, and then book 3, 5, and 7. I’m really weird with this, I don’t know many other authors who do it like that. But that’s my process.
Have you dealt with writer’s block and how do you handle it?
Yes, with book 3 I was having really bad writer’s block, and I just could not get anything out and I was like, you know what? I have only a couple of months to like get this written before it needs to go to editing.
So I actually sat down and forced myself to write. I think I wrote like 20,000 words of just garbage that got deleted later, but by doing that, I finally started to get in this rhythm and was like, okay, now, this is good stuff. It ended up being a really good book, actually, for me, but I had to cut out that 20,000 words.
I don’t think that works for everyone but for me, if I just keep going, I’ll get something that eventually is good. You almost just have to write down the bad stuff to get through to the good.
Another way I deal with writer’s block is I’ll just move onto a different project. It depends on how bad the writer’s block is, but if it’s just the scene I’m having trouble with, I’ll write a note for what I want there and move on to write a different scene first.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
There’s a quote I saw somewhere that said “reading is breathing in and writing is breathing out.” I really like that because I felt like I knew how to write a book before I tried simply because I read so many books, and so many books in the genre I wanted to write in.
I think whatever genre you’re going to write, you need to read it, too, to appreciate the genre and the craft of writing that genre.
Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
I would say my first piece of advice is before you even write the manuscript, read the book Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. It’s a plotting book, and it’s extremely useful in understanding what makes a book.
For other advice, I would say to just start writing. I think some people overthink it, but your first draft is most likely going to suck, but it can’t get better without that first draft. I think I edited my first book 20 times before someone else ever looked at it, so just get that first one down on paper and then figure it out from there.
Also, find a mentor. If you can find someone else who has gone through the publishing process already, that’s huge. People in the community are so friendly and supportive, so make friends in the industry and find that mentor.
Which books or authors have most influenced your writing?
I would say the Percy Jackson series has influenced my writing the most. There’s also Chandelle LaVaun, her books are for a more mature audience than my writing, but they’re such good books. Finding out she was self-published helped me think I can do it, too.
What books are you currently reading?
I picked up the first book for The Wingfeather Saga series. Those are more for ages 8-10, so a bit younger than my target audience, but I think it’s important to read what my target audience would be reading. I also just started the Crescent City series.
What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?
Maybe something they’d be surprised by is I’m not an English major or anything. I’m an engineer, which doesn’t overlap much with creative writing. I went to school for a material science engineering degree, and then I got my master’s in manufacturing systems, so I had eight years of school focusing on just math and science for the most part.
I do think that actually helped me with writing because it gave me a different framework to come at it from. I also think it made me enjoy writing more because it doesn’t feel like work. Writing is my passion.
What are you currently writing? Anything coming out soon?
I’m currently finalizing my poetry book, which is available for pre-order. It’ll be released May 5th. It’s called 28. I chose to call it that because my birthday’s in the month of May, so it’s going to come out before I turn 29. You can pre-order it on Amazon.
After this poetry book, I’m hoping to have the first book in my romance series written by the end of May and have the second book written by the end of summer, so the first book would be published in August. That’s my goal.
Connect with Brooklyn
You can find B. C. Taylor’s books on Amazon or through Bookshop.org. Consider purchasing through Bookshop.org. Every purchase supports independent bookstores and helps sustain Notes from the Shelf. (Affiliate link; I may earn a small commission.)
Follow along on Brooklyn’s writing journey on Facebook and Instagram. Check out her Goodreads to see all her completed works, and check out her Pinterest page to stay up-to-date with her inspirations. Also, join B. C. Taylor’s mailing list to access bonus material and never miss an update on the World of Asylum.
Wrapping Up
I absolutely loved Brooklyn’s determination to self-publish not just one book, but a whole series! Her story is a reminder that creativity doesn’t follow a single path. Whether you come from an engineering background or a lifelong love of books, what matters most is showing up, putting words on the page, and trusting that even the roughest of drafts can lead to something wonderful.
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