An Interview with Kelly K. Branyik

Kelly K. Branyik is an award-winning writer, painter, and photographer. Kelly grew up in Colorado and has lived there for most of her life. She holds a B.A. in English (Creative Writing) from Colorado State University. Kelly is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) and served in Chongqing, China from 2014 – 2016. By day, she’s a marketing professional in tech and often volunteers her skills to support small businesses, entrepreneurs, and authors in online success. Kelly lives in Southern Colorado with her partner, DJ, and their four fur babies. She speaks Mandarin Chinese and loves playing video games, taking long adventures, and helping others. Follow her online and subscribe to her newsletter at kellybranyik.com.

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Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I started writing Shadows in Dream Stone in 2022, post-Roe. I was feeling angry and hopeless for myself, women everywhere, and the generations of women who come after us. There are so many women in my life who would not have been here if they didn’t have life-saving reproductive care, but this also just felt like an attack on women.

My mom and I were in the car coming back from the grocery store when we got into a passionate discussion about the Supreme Court’s decision. In that same car ride, I dreamed up a Byronic hero, Abaddon Ordell, who’s a woman traumatized by her own loss but still willing to sacrifice her life to get revenge, if it means women have a future. I knew Abaddon’s sacrifice would require committing crimes she would’ve never fathomed in her life before her loss. I also knew I wanted her to be a bisexual multi-racial character. Diverse voices are growing, but literature is still full of white heroes, which I don’t fault because I love reading widely. But throughout our history, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and women have paved the way for many things we enjoy in this world today. And I wanted Abaddon Ordell in her bisexual and multi-racial glory to be that hero and really reflect that.

My mom and I basically laid out the whole plot and the main character details in a car ride. What I had initially wanted to be a standalone novel turned into a planned three-book series with a prequel.

Around the same time I started writing this, I had also picked up Katy Brent’s first novel on NetGalley, How to Kill Men and Get Away With It. I was really into this idea of creating a character who did bad things for a good reason. I connected with Katy online, asked her about her writing process; we became acquaintances across the pond, and here and there she’s encouraged me to keep going, even when I felt uncertain of my story being accepted by the world. I also am a long-standing fan of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Offred’s story encourages you not to look away, and I really resonated with that.

Both stories were inspirational when writing Shadows in Dream Stone, but the concept of the Byronic hero is one I’ve been long obsessed with since learning about it in college while pursuing my English degree. So, it felt like a must.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I joined the Peace Corps right out of college and went straight to living in Chongqing, China for two years, and it was life changing. I went overseas thinking I would change the world and help, even if it was just one person. Instead, my life there changed me, and I’ve never been the same since. That experience taught me how to look through the eyes of people drastically different than me and create understanding, friendship, and love. Although I write dystopias that are dark and disturbing, my time as a Peace Corps volunteer taught me to find beauty everywhere. And I carry that with me every day.

Once I returned from China, I started working in marketing as a content writer and have been in marketing for about eleven years now. I’ve been doing SaaS marketing for about five years, which is part of why my books are leaning more sci-fi these days. I got derailed into the marketing field by accident because I was able to harness my creative side with the power of tech. Although marketing wasn’t my first choice, it has served me incredibly well in producing and marketing Shadows in Dream Stone. I really wish it would get out of the way though so I could write the seventeen books occupying my brain at all times.

Growing up in the back of a video store and computer repair store is an interesting thing I don’t always talk about anymore. My sister, brother, and I would watch epic films, listen to badass movie soundtracks, play video games for hours, and write HTML on our Myspace pages. We’re just this little trio of storytellers with an assortment of unique interests that made us total badasses in our adult lives. My brother is a genius who had written a couple articles for Cracked.com a million years ago, and my sister is an aspiring music supervisor. Then my mom writes children’s books, and my biological father was a stand-up comedian, so storytelling just runs in the family.

Our childhood and our daily access to every film title you could imagine had a lot to do with my insane love of stories. And I was an insecure and weird little girl, so I wanted to be a journalist for Cosmopolitan, writing things and stories that inspired women, which is ultimately what drove me to excel in English and language arts my whole life.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Shadows in Dream Stone definitely went through many iterations. But I ultimately landed on it because there are dual meanings throughout.

During Abaddon’s confinement at Dream Stone prison, she describes the women as being mere shadows of their past lives. They’re just existing, and not all of them are there for harmful crimes. Abaddon herself is just as much of a shadow in this sense.

The second meaning revolves around the love interest in this story. Abaddon refers to her as a shadow and darkness denser than a dark star, but not in the devastating ways you might expect.

Dream stone is actually a type of rock that I collected from a vendor at a craft fair in Colorado. It looks like a cloudy sunset above a ridge, and every time I look at it, it feels like there is a whole world within it. I named the prison Dream Stone to keep it ironic, but there is also a part in the book where Abaddon’s love interest refers to the stone.

What part of publishing your book made it feel real for the first time?

I had gone through the process of publishing a book in 2021, which I hated and eventually unpublished to give Shadows in Dream Stone more of a runway. I knew the process but not like I do now with all my expertise in marketing and product launches. My production process is completely different now. As an indie author, I believe in hiring your cover artist, editors, typesetters, all of it. I hired them all because I wanted Shadows in Dream Stone to look like it was trad published, even if it wasn’t.

Katy Brent also connected me to another lovely author and human, Stephanie Butland, who edited my book. She writes cozy bookish romances, and here she is reading my crazy dark dystopia about how the world traumatizes women. It was a wild experience, and she did an absolutely stunning job. But as I was getting this on NetGalley for early ARCs, I got a review that crushed me. I almost pulled the whole book and didn’t publish it. When I confided in Stephanie about the review, she just said, “If you’re not getting negative reviews, you’re not reaching enough people.” That’s when I started realizing where this story could be impactful. Her positive reviews of my book toward the end made this all very real.

But there is nothing like holding the first copy of your book in your hands for the first time.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

So, I actually have a playlist for this, and there are so many! But some you might find on there:

Kiss Me, Kill Me by La Bouquet & Olivver the Kid

I Found by Amber Run

Fed Up by Ghostemane

Retrograde by James Blake

Fake It by Must Be Gold

You Never Knew by Branik

Arsonist’s Lullaby by Hozier

Take Cover by Petit Biscuit

If I keep going, I’ll never stop!

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

I know the topic is hard for a lot of people because they have told me as such. This first book in the series is not supposed to be easy or comforting, but it’s also true for many in the world right now. I hope this book helps validate those who are angry.

This book is also meant to establish that there is light and even love within the darkness if we choose to let people help us and care for us. I am no stranger to trauma, and there are a lot of women in my life and the world who have endured unspeakable things that should’ve left them broken. Women are AMAZING, and I am continuously in awe of their ability to emerge from pain with soft hearts.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

I think everyone worries people will hate their book, or maybe that’s just me and my imposter syndrome brain! But the most rewarding parts so far have been people actually reading it (of course) and getting positive Kirkus and BookLife reviews. Having literary reviews from trusted sources is a big deal for me as a career marketer.

Award-winning narrator of Phantasma, Laura Horowitz, is also narrating the entire Dark Stars series! The Shadows in Dream Stone audiobook arrives in spring 2027! She is amazing, and chapter one is already up on my Patreon if anyone cares to listen!

My book also physically lives on the shelf at Tattered Cover, Old Firehouse Books, Boulder Bookstore, and Kepler’s. Getting Shadows in Dream Stone into those first three bookstores was a dream!

What creative projects are you currently working on?

I’m finishing the next book in the Dark Stars series, Reaper of Daymares, which comes out in May 2027! It will follow Abaddon’s inevitable path to getting revenge on the people who criminalized her for her miscarriage.

I am also getting ready to release my tenth anniversary edition of my non-fiction book, It Depends: A Guide to Peace Corps, in June 2027 for aspiring Peace Corps volunteers out there.

And I wasn’t kidding when I said I have seventeen books in my head screaming to get out, so expect more from me in the future, whether unagented or agented (should I be so lucky one day). And expect them to be Byronic in nature.

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