Episode Details

🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where desperate wishes cost years of your life, mirrors become gateways for demons, and the creature everyone fears may be far less monstrous than the holy man hunting him.

This week, host Bethany Amanda and Mythic Mic Team Member Britt sit down with fantasy author Charlotte B. Plumb to discuss her highly anticipated gothic romantasy debut, Reap and Sow. 

Charlotte shares how reading His Dark Materials at thirteen sparked her desire to make complete strangers cry through fiction, why her first queried manuscript received little interest, and how she found the perseverance to write another book instead of giving up. She also opens up about being laid off only days before receiving offers from Penguin Random House UK and Berkley XO and the surreal mix of joy, terror, and imposter syndrome that followed her breakout publishing deal.

We also dive into Reap and Sow, set in the gothic city of Blackbridge, where anyone desperate enough can trade years of their life to a demon in exchange for their deepest desire. Eda Shaw and her brothers are indentured to one such demon and forced to recruit new people willing to make bargains. But when her brothers are arrested and a deal goes disastrously wrong, Eda must form a pact with Kit, another demon who may claim her heart along with her remaining years. Charlotte discusses Faustian bargains, reluctant allies, forced proximity, deceptive appearances, grim humor, and writing a demon who loves humanity opposite a human woman who has lost faith in it.

🪞 How many years would you surrender to receive the one thing you desire most?
🖤 Can Eda trust a demon who seems more human than the people surrounding her?
⏳ And what happens when the bargain meant to save her family begins costing her far more than time?

This is a must-listen for gothic romantasy readers, fans of dangerous bargains and morally gray demons, lovers of forced proximity and reluctant allies, and anyone who prefers their book boyfriends snarky, sinister, and slightly reminiscent of a wet angry cat.

🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Charlotte’s lifelong love of fantasy, role-playing games, and story-driven adventures.
✨ Baldur’s Gate 3, Dragon Age, The Witcher, The Sims, and her predictable Astarion romance.
✨ How His Dark Materials inspired her to pursue the “black art” of making readers cry.
✨ Querying a manuscript that received almost no agent interest, and why market timing can matter as much as the quality of a manuscript.
✨ Writing the next book instead of allowing rejection to end her career.
✨ Becoming part of Berkley XO’s inaugural launch list.
✨ The joy, terror, and imposter syndrome surrounding a major debut deal.
✨ Creating memes, unboxing ARCs, and learning to appear on camera as an introverted author.
✨ The Peaky Blinders question that sparked the idea for a criminal fantasy family.
✨ Drawing visual inspiration from Edinburgh, Prague, Elizabethan England, and gothic architecture.
✨ The creation of Blackbridge, where demons grant desires in exchange for years of human life.
✨ Eda and her brothers’ indentured service recruiting people into dangerous pacts, and the deal that forces Eda into an alliance with the demon Kit.
✨ Writing Eda as a jaded human who resents humanity.
✨ Creating Kit as a demon who loves humanity and longs to imitate it.
✨ A romantic dynamic built around two characters who unknowingly have something to teach each other.
✨ Kit’s Howl, Spike, and Astarion DNA—and his wet-angry-cat appeal.
✨ Why the demon is not the true monster of the story.
✨ Balancing grim subject matter with snark, wit, and emotionally revealing humor.
✨ Why humor can act as “cerebral foreplay” between romantic leads.
✨ Tripp, Kit’s rude imp familiar and Charlotte’s scene-stealing favorite character.

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