Being Hunted Down To Write A Story

Author Reflection: What This Interview Taught Me

Every time I sit down to answer these questions, I learn something new about myself as a writer and as a person.

This time, I realized that I’ve been trying to earn my worth through productivity for most of my life, and that’s a sure path to burnout. Writing Wasteland of Dreams is forcing me to confront that truth. Dreyma’s obsession mirrors my own. Lixiss’s emergence mirrors my healing.

Sometimes the story you write is the story you need.
Sometimes the character you create is the person you need permission to become.

Behind the Scenes: What Didn’t Make It Into the Video

A few things I didn’t say out loud:

• I originally tried to write this entire book from Dreyma’s POV, and it broke me.

• My office really did fall apart during burnout — like, plants dying, piles of papers, apocalypse-level chaos. I had to hire someone to come help me control the chaos.

• Lixiss wasn’t planned. She “dropped in” when I needed a character who could break the rules of Dreamland because I needed to break some of my own internal rules.

• The series where all my characters died? I didn’t write for six weeks afterward. It devastated me. But! That’s how Devices of War came to be. If you read that trilogy and you’re like, “Did Frankie really write this?” Yes. I had to write something completely different because I was in mourning.

The writing life is messy, emotional, and often a mirror you didn’t ask to look into — but it’s also where growth happens.

Books Connected to This Conversation

If this interview resonated, here are the books most closely tied to the themes I talked about:

Dream Lord Wars / Wasteland of Dreams

• dream magic

• toxic hope

• healing

• obsession

• rebuilding identity
  This is the series born from my own burnout arc.

Whiskey Witches / Para Wars

• fierce women

• impossible choices

• trauma alchemy
  Paige’s story taught me how to fight.

Devices of War

• steampunk fantasy

• characters who learn the hard way

• emotional grit
  Synn’s arc is the perfect example of “the price you pay to grow.”

Interview Series: Where Stories Come From & How Characters Grow

Hi, I’m Frankie Jo Blooding, and I’m here with more interview questions. I’ve decided I really like doing these — they’re fun, and they let me geek out while giving you a peek behind the scenes of the writing life.

Writing is so much more than sitting alone, drinking coffee or wine, and thinking angsty thoughts. There’s plotting, outlining, budgeting (yes, publishing is a business), marketing, and about a dozen roles I never meant to take on. And honestly, part of why I burned out so hard is because I got swallowed by the business side.

I’m a project manager in construction, and I instinctively brought that mindset into managing my author career. When you’re the only person doing everything, it’s overwhelming. It’s easy to lose sight of why you started writing in the first place — especially when you’re not making “mad amounts of money,” even if you’re doing well enough to survive.

I’ve won awards, hit bestseller lists, got my “letters,” and I even lived on my author income for a while. But I never reached that dream level of success. And oh, if I allowed myself to dream? I’d love to write a story powerful enough that people connect with it so deeply that I get to go on a real book tour. Not for the autographs — but to look readers in the eye and say hello, knowing exactly what’s connecting us.

But today, let’s talk about stories — because coming back from burnout means reconnecting to the part of this job I love most.

Where Do Stories Come From?

Have you ever had a story hunt you down until you wrote it?
Yes. Absolutely.

The story hunting me right now is Wasteland of Dreams (working title — I hate it, but it fits). I’ve carried this story for years, but always from Dream Lord Dreyma’s perspective.

To understand her:
Dreyma is devoted to Dreamland — a sort of Matrix-like infrastructure connecting multiple worlds. She’s trying to save humanity across all these realities. But she’s doing it for the wrong reason:

She’s desperate to feel like she’s enough.

No matter what she does, no matter how much she gives, no matter how many worlds she impacts — it’s never enough. She keeps losing the people she loves. Her life keeps reinforcing the message:

• You are not enough to stay.

• You are not enough to matter.

• You are not enough to be kept.

• You are not enough to fight for.

So she clings to Dreamland as the thing that will finally make her “enough.” But that obsession becomes toxic — both to her and the dreamscape she’s supposed to protect.

And for years, this story echoed something in my own life:
my obsession with proving my worth through my writing career.

I chased gurus.
I chased trends.
I listened to advice that wasn’t meant for me.
I worked with wildly successful authors and thought, “Okay, that’s how you do it.”
I poured everything into my work… and ignored everything else.

I pushed myself into burnout because I was trying to be “enough,” and it cost me relationships, time, energy, joy, and parts of myself I didn’t realize were slipping away.

Like Dreyma, I built something beautiful — but I poisoned myself building it.

When the Story Becomes Too Much

At one point, Wasteland of Dreams started to feel like Demon Whiskey — where writing Paige’s trauma forced me to relive wounds I hadn’t healed. I had to switch to her sister’s POV because Paige’s perspective was too raw.

I realized:
I couldn’t write Dreyma’s story from her perspective because I wasn’t ready to hear it.

I wasn’t ready to face the parts of myself that mirrored her.

So I created someone new.

Enter Lixiss — A Character Who Heals by Existing

Lixiss is a Dreamlander unlike any I’ve written.
Most Dreamlanders can’t exist outside the code that creates them — if they stray, they get reset or recycled.

But Lixiss does.
She dreams.
She disobeys her programming.
She breaks the rules of her world just by being.

She was born into a family of Lumineers — beings who relight hope across the dream plains — but she isn’t one of them. She’s a Reclaimer, restoring light to dreams themselves.

And I realized:

I needed her.
I needed someone who could reclaim my dreams, because I wasn’t dreaming anymore.
I wasn’t wanting, or hoping, or feeling.
Everything inside me was gray.

Creating Lixiss helped me relight something inside myself — the part that believed I could still become someone I wanted to be.

She also gave me a new perspective on the story, and on my own life. Characters do that — they act like therapists you don’t have to pay.

How I Decide the Price a Character Has to Pay

Short answer:
I don’t decide. My characters do.

Long answer:

When I was doing author services, I created a system for understanding writing styles:

• Lorekeepers

• Mythmakers

• Heartweavers

• Wildscribes

I’m mostly a Mythmaker — I build systems and architecture and underlying meaning.
But when I write, I’m a Wildscribe — I guide the story, but I don’t control the characters.

I outline enough to know where we’re going, but how we get there? That’s chaos.

When a character reaches a big moment and hasn’t learned anything, I throw something bigger at them. Harder. Heavier.

I didn’t used to write that way. But now I do because life teaches us the same patterns:

If you don’t learn the lesson, it comes back stronger.

I once wrote a series where every main character died halfway through book three because the heroine refused to learn what she needed to. The story died too. There was no way back. I cried. Hard.

Now, if a character won’t grow, I make the consequences bigger — because that’s what growth costs sometimes.

In Devices of War, Sin was unbelievably dense. I threw problem after problem at him, and he kept shrugging it off. I eventually dropped his whole family from the sky — literally — and that finally got through to him.

Every character has a different breaking point.
I architect the world, but I don’t control their reactions.

It’s a strange way to write, but it’s honest.

Closing Thoughts

This turned into another long interview — because I’m a novelist, not a poet. I don’t tell short stories. I tell big ones.

My husband just got home, so I should wrap this up before he barges in with his usual cheerful obliviousness to my “recording” sign.

I hope you’re having a great week.
And if you’re not, I hope you’re honoring where you are and giving yourself a moment to breathe.

Find something that brings even a tiny spark of contentment — a comfy chair, a good beverage, a book that helps you escape.

Until next time…
read on.