Welcome to A Month of Rain and Reads, a celebration of self-published and indie SFF throughout the entire month of November. To find out how you can take part and view the whole list of content, visit our introduction post.
Today, we share an interview with Arden Powell, author of the Flos Magicae series and more. Arden also designed our wonderful banner for A Month of Rain and Reads!
Describe yourself like you would a character in one of your books.
A tall, pale creature of ruffled dark hair and forest-brown eyes, with ink-stained fingers and a quiet disposition.
Our theme for November is A Month of Rain & Reads. Do you subscribe to the idea of curling up with a good book while the rain pours down outside? What book would you read? Would you bring tea and a blanket? What would make the moment perfect?
I absolutely do. My ideal fall reading conditions are to be in bed in the evening after it’s gone dark, listening to rain beat against the window, with blankets piled over my knees and a warm drink in reach. Hot chocolate if it’s earlier in the evening, mint tea if it’s later. I like to read really immersive fantasy novels like this, something with lots of tangents that isn’t afraid of taking its time to tell me a story.
I just finished Alexandra Rowland’s A Conspiracy of Truths, and it was perfect. Or I’ll reread an old favourite, like Howl’s Moving Castle. I’ve had Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur on my bedside table for almost a year now, slowly picking my way through a few chapters at a time whenever I’m too tired to stay up long enough to get into a book properly. It’s going to take me another five years to finish, at this rate. It could probably cure insomnia.
What else do you want our readers to know about you?
I’m queer. I’m Canadian. I would rather live vicariously through fictional characters than go out and have my own adventures. I dictate all my books rather than pen or type them due to chronic pain in my hands. I have more works-in-progress than I’ll ever finish writing in my life, not least because I’m constantly starting new ones. One of these works-in-progress is going to win the publishing lottery and land me a nice six- or seven-figure book deal I can retire on. I just need to figure out which one it’s going to be
Why did you decide to self-publish, and what has been your biggest success so far?
I started self-publishing in 2020. I had already written a few books and published one through a small press, so I knew I wanted to pursue a career as an author. We were in lockdown, which meant I suddenly had all this time to figure out the publishing process without any distractions.
I have two books that I consider to be my most successful. The Bachelor’s Valet is the first of my Flos Magicae series, a collection of standalone queer romances with different pairings set in a 1920s London with magic, originally intended as a Jeeves and Wooster homage, but actually gay. That’s my bestseller, and it helped pay my bills through those early pandemic years while I was between dayjobs.
The second is The Bayou, a southern gothic horror that has consistently sold very well through word-of-mouth despite being a standalone novella. It recently caught the attention of Tantor Media, who made me an offer for the audio rights. I’ve been going through auditions this past month to choose a narrator. I just got the date confirmed this week, so this is my official announcement: The Bayou will be released in audiobook on March 17, 2026.
What is your favourite thing about being an indie author?
Being able to set my own schedule. Having the creative freedom to pursue side-quest projects on a whim without having to convince anyone else of their marketability. There’s no one to stop me from micromanaging every inch of my own publishing process.
All of these are double-edged swords, of course.
You’ve written in several speculative genres, like historical fantasy romance, horror, and more adventure type short stories. Which genre do you like to write the most, and why?
Secondary-world fantasy is my first love, but the scope is so overwhelming that I’ve only published short stories so far. (Obsidian Island almost counts, but no.) I have longer works-in-progress set on a supercontinent with a pantheon of gods and a few thousand years of history and creation myths that I need to pin down.
I love secondary-world fantasy for the absolute creative freedom it offers. I’m forever chasing that feeling I got as a little kid reading novels like The Neverending Story, getting transported to these places where everything is wondrous and beautiful, even when it’s dangerous and horrible and wants to kill you. The kind of fantasy that makes the world feel huge and unexplored again.
Of the books I’ve already published—I like alternating between lighthearted romance and gothic horror. I get bored easily; my moods and interests swing back and forth between the two. They feel like opposite ends of the SFF spectrum. I don’t think I’d be able to write just one or the other long-term without taking breaks in between as a palate cleanser.
Romance generally pays better, though. And that does influence the choices I make as to where and how I spend my time.
You’re also an artist and you’ve designed the amazing banner we’re using for this event. Thank you so much! But you’ve also done covers, for yourself and other authors. What makes a book cover a good one?
I got into book cover design by illustrating my own out of necessity, and then a few other authors reached out asking me to draw theirs as well, which is of course incredibly flattering. I was delighted to be invited to draw the banner for this event, too.
Cover art is all marketing. Basically, it needs to do two things. One: reassure readers that the book is a professional product worth spending their time and money on. You can get a decent premade for under $100 and upgrade it to custom art later on when you have more money. If you have a $0 budget, making your own cover is still better than using AI. Yours might look amateur (my early attempts were Not Good, but you can find free online tutorials for just about any skill you need to learn), but AI just looks careless and scammy.
Two: clearly communicate the book’s subgenre. Every subgenre favours certain trends, from fonts to colours. If you want to buck the system, understand that your ideal readers might bypass your book while browsing if they can’t recognize what they’re looking at.
What themes are important to you, and how are they reflected in your writing?
The easy answer is themes of queerness. In my romances, it’s queer joy and queer resilience, finding ways to thrive despite the social restrictions of a historical setting.
And romances with their happy endings are lovely, but sometimes I need to write a horror story where everyone dies. In my horror, I keep unintentionally coming back to the inescapability of fate. There is something omnipotent that my characters can’t get away from, and they need to make peace with that and either give into it or find a way to work within the system imposed on them. I think every horror I’ve written comes back to this. Their fates are sealed and there’s nothing they can do to change the path they’re on; by the time the story is underway, it’s already too late.
It’s possible I feel a little dread about the precarity of my situation in the wider world, but who doesn’t feel a looming sense of doom dogging their every step and decision these days? I’m sure it’s fine. To think of things more positively, even romances are marching onward to an inevitable fate, it’s just that their endings are destined to be happily ever after.
What are you working on next? Can you tease us?
This is maybe the first time where I genuinely can’t guess which book I’ll finish next. Which is kind of freeing, and kind of incredibly stressful. I’m trying to slow down, take my time, and really improve my craft for whatever comes next.
Readers who follow me on Patreon might be familiar with The Black Knight Saga, which I’m reworking from an episodic-style serial into a proper novel, but every time I touch it, it gets bigger and more sprawling and more ambitious. I have no earthly idea when that will be ready.
I have a new Flos Magicae novel partially written.
I’ve also been working on a queer romance set in a small town in a fantasy world, which was originally going to lean towards the cozier end of the spectrum, but which keeps dealing with heavier and heavier topics. I’m really excited about this one, but I need a solid chunk of uninterrupted time to dedicate to it, and I keep getting distracted by regrettably necessary things like Life and Dayjob.
In general, I’m publishing short stories and little things pretty frequently on Patreon, for anyone who wants to support me and see what I’m up to in between books.
And a few quick questions. What’s your favourite…
…book, in recent times?
Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland: a queer small-town romance; cozy fantasy with humour, worldbuilding, and depth.
And also The Magician’s Daughter by HG Parry: a historical fantasy coming-of-age story with excellent fairytale vibes.
…writing advice?
Read everything. Read outside your comfort zone. Read in genres you don’t necessarily know you’ll enjoy. You’ll learn things about storytelling, craft, and your own tastes that you can’t learn otherwise.
And practice finishing stories. Working on your first book for years without ever learning how to finish it is less helpful than actually finishing a dozen short stories and novels and moving onto the next thing, even if none of them will ever see the light of day.
…advice for someone who wants to publish their own book?
The Venn diagram of passion project books and easily marketable moneymaking books looks different for everyone.
Your writing can (and perhaps should!) be weird and self-indulgent and subversive, but as soon as you publish it and start charging money for your work, you need to behave professionally. Have a business email and a newsletter to keep in touch with people who want to follow your career. Set aside money for taxes.
And don’t use AI.
…source of inspiration?
Really great books, and shows and movies that fall short of their potential. The books need to be aspirational for me in terms of craft, and the shows and movies need to be something I want to improve on in some way. I don’t know why that distinction is so clearcut, but that’s how it is.
…way to clear your mind when everything gets a bit much?
I require a solitary walk in nature every day where I can see some trees and clouds. If I’m very lucky I’ll meet a dog, or see some deer or some neat birds. This is deeply necessary for my physical and mental wellbeing.
Do you have any last words? Any shoutouts to authors who have supported you or whose books have inspired you?
Thank you very much for hosting this event and for having me by for this interview! I’d like to give a quick shout out to my writing group on Discord, my everpresent friends and commiserators in publishing. Some days (lately with increasing frequency) it’s just passing the upside down smiley face back and forth, interspersed with the little melting guy emoji, but we’ll persevere.
About the Author
Arden Powell (they/them) is a queer Canadian author and illustrator with stories in Lightspeed Magazine, Baffling Magazine, and Haunt Publishing, and whose books include The Faerie Hounds of York, The Bayou, the Flos Magicae series, and their short story collection, The Carnelian King and Other Stories. A nebulous entity, they live with a senior rescue hound and an exorbitant number of houseplants, and enjoy the company of both. Everything they write is queer.
- Website: ardenpowell.mailerpage.io
- Bluesky: ardenpowell.bsky.social
- Goodreads
- Patreon
