AMoRaR Interview – Ruth Miranda

A Month of Rain and Reads Interviews4 months ago6 min readAdd comment

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 Ruth Miranda, author of the Blood Trilogy.

Describe yourself like you would a character in one of your books.

She lacked the capacity to measure her words, unable to express her sentiments and thoughts with less than blunt honesty, which had, so far, brought her a lot of trouble – thus the constant masking and morphing when she was around other people. Living mostly in her head, she constantly lost herself in stories – both those she wrote and the ones she read. Despite her dread of confrontation, she found it very hard not to react and fight injustice, which often brought out the vociferous rebel sleeping within her. Wild, she had been, in her youth, but life had made her careful and fearful in her fifties.

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 love curling up on my daybed reading while it’s raining outside. Although it’s Autumn around here, I’m yet to see any rain, but am already daydreaming of when I hide under a throw with SaYe/Run Wild Volume 3, crying at every chapter in it!

What else do you want our readers to know about you? You were once a food blogger?

I was, yes. I’ve suffered from eating disorders all my life and one of the things I learnt that helps me with that is to not see food as the enemy, but rather as something necessary and beautiful. Having a food blog was my way of diving into that mindset, and I did love not just the cooking part of it but the stage-setting and photographing.

Why did you decide to self-publish, and what has been your biggest success so far?

I tried trad pub in my youth and it didn’t happen – back in the 90s. I decided to self-publish when a friend who’d done so told me to try it. This was 2015 and though I had what would be my first published novel already drafted, it took me a year to take the plunge. My biggest success, I’d have to say it’s been Blood, book 1 from the Blood Trilogy series – at least in terms of reviews and ratings. As for sales, one of my Byanamese Romance novels, The Fine Line Between Us, still stands as my best seller so far, though it barely has any reviews, go figure!

What is your favourite thing about being an indie author?

The freedom to not have to answer to others and being able to do things myself, without having to depend on somebody else, I think.

Looking at your books, I see what looks like fantasy, horror, and romance. What can readers expect to find in your stories?

Unlikeable, realistic characters who screw up constantly, a lot of mental health issues addressed, world-building that’s a little crazy and yes, a lot of romantic subplots. I don’t consider any of my books to be horror – there’s a supernatural/paranormal angle in some, but I would never categorise any of my books in the horror genre, though a certain platform decided I was wrong and went ahead and did it. Perhaps there’s some horror in my stories but of the internal sort? As in, the mind of my characters is the monster in their stories?

What themes are important to you, and how are they reflected in your writing?

Mental health and the self. My books are very character driven and all heavy on these themes.

What are you working on next? Can you tease us?

I’ve been slowly drafting a xianxia and wuxia inspired tale that takes place in a world of floating isles that the gods have abandoned – there is a quest, of course, and a few heroes. It’s something very much inspired by my love of CDramas and East Asian imagery

And a few quick questions. What’s your favourite…

…book, in recent times?

Micah Nemerever’s These Violent Delights

…game, in recent times?

Legends of Andor, every single board (we have them all)

…writing advice?

Don’t listen to writing advice

…advice for someone who wants to publish their own book?

I do not give that kind of advice, as I barely know what I’m doing, myself, but… don’t draft and publish in the same year. Let it sit for months after finishing drafting and only pick it up after you’ve gained distance from it. Then let it sit again for a while before returning to it with the intent of publishing.

…source of inspiration?

China. The aesthetics, the sceneries, the people, the stories, the ancient culture and history, the mythology.

…way to clear your mind when everything gets a bit much?

I don’t have one, honestly, and being neurodivergent, I find that everything is constantly a bit too much *insert laughter here*

Do you have any last words? Any shoutouts to authors who have supported you or whose books have inspired you?

B.S.H. Garcia’s been an inspiration, and Venetia Constantine’s debut The Last Starborn Seer unlocked something in my mind and made me dream and want to go back to drafting when I was convinced my well had run dry

Ruth Miranda

Ruth Miranda is a Portugal born and raised author who feels more comfortable around words than people, especially if those words happen to be in English, a language she once taught for a living – amongst other varied jobs. She started making up stories in her head as a child, to put herself to sleep, but the stories kept growing with her, so eventually, they needed to be put to paper. Her published work includes The Heir of Avalon Series, the romance novel Danseur and the Byanamese Romance series. You can find her being social on Instagram, where she shares snippets of upcoming and published work – always dark and always queer centred.