Author B.L. Blanchard Talks Inspiration for Her Decolonized World Building

Author and Lawyer B.L. (Brooke) Blanchard sat down with Daybreak Star Radio’s RONN!E and Sherry to talk about her books, her process, and where she believes we could have gone in an uncolonized America.

Growing up, Blanchard always wanted to be a writer. Having been a veracious reader most of her life, that quickly turned into wanting to write her own. As she got older, however, that part of her became dormant and she set those dreams aside as she went to law school and started her career as a lawyer. It wasn’t until 2018 while driving into work that an idea for a world and a story struck her. Blanchard comments that the stories choose you, and she was happy and honored that the story that found her was one that allowed her to center her traditions and culture at the center of it.

B.L. Blanchard’s two current books revolve around the idea of an uncolonized world, and what that would have looked like and become over time. Using her background as a lawyer, she explains one way she thinks it would have been different is the justice system itself. Our current system in America tends to revolve around the perpetrator and penalizes them for their crimes. Blanchard thinks that an uncolonized world could have seen a justice system that revolved around restitution. Centering the victims and asking what would best help them find peace.

Whether one agrees with this assessment or not, Blanchard hopes that people who read her books take away their own ideas of what the world could have looked like. To sit in their thoughts and think of the world in a different way from how we experience it now. That is one of the benefits of sci-fi and fantasy, and what draws Blanchard to those genres. They don’t force you to be bound to the world as we know it but allows us to see how powerful the human imagination can be.

For others out there who are considering writing their own stories, Blachard advises to get the bad words down. The first draft just has to exist, the good words come after. Write for yourself, your day-to-day life, the stories you tell yourself, just practice getting it down. And become comfortable showing your writing to others. It can be hard and vulnerable but getting used to others reading your writing can help you improve and find a community with others trying to do the same.

Check out B.L. Blanchard’s two books The Peacekeeper and The Mother on her website!