Today we’d like to introduce you to B. L. Blanchard.
Hi B. L., please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’m an author, a mom, a map nerd, voracious reader, and lawyer. I’m a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and originally from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (we call it the “U.P.”) , but I’ve lived in San Diego for more than 15 years, so I can no longer handle cold weather.
My debut novel, The Peacekeeper, was published by 47North in 2022. It was a featured book at the 2022 National Book Festival, named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan, and won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Long-Form Work.
I have always written stories and wanted to write a book. But I had to support myself financially, and being a writer is not a good way to do that. So I went to law school, became a lawyer, and spent years hardly having time to read or write. I missed it.
In the summer of 2018, I was driving to work downtown on the 163, and just as I was driving out of Balboa Park and into downtown, I had an image in my head of a high-rise building with a dreamcatcher built into it like a Cathedral window. Images and ideas of a present-day world in which the Americas had never been colonized flooded into my mind. I spent the next year plotting out, planning, and researching the book. That book eventually became my debut novel, The Peacekeeper.
I wrote the first draft of The Peacekeeper in the fall of 2019, while on maternity leave with my second child. I figured that with two kids, I’d never have free time again once I got back to work, so I decided to write while I was “only” taking care of a newborn and a five-year-old. I finished my first draft before returning to work, spent the next year writing, got a literary agent in early 2021, and the book was published in 2022. I wrote The Mother–a heist novel set in a modern-day Britain that never had the British Empire–during 2021 and 2022, and that was published in 2023.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
So many struggles! Like many authors, my first published novel was not my first completed novel. I have been writing my whole life. I have probably a dozen incomplete/abandoned manuscripts that I never finished and likely never will finish. My first two completed manuscripts were not of publishable quality; I first tried to get a literary agent in 2018 with one of those manuscripts and struck out completely. Between law school, studying for the bar exam, and learning the ropes as a lawyer, I spent almost 10 years neither writing nor reading regularly, and I missed it.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a novelist with two published books, both of which have been nominated for awards and which have won awards. My novels are both alternate history novels that are set in a world in which Europe never colonized the world. The Peacekeeper is a murder mystery set in a North America that was never colonized, in a modern, 21st century indigenous society. I am an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and the book envisions a world in which we were never subject to colonization. The Mother is a companion piece and is a heist novel set in a 21st century Britain that never had the British empire–as a result, the nation is more impoverished and backward because it could not steal the riches and labor of the Americas.
In The Peacekeeper, North America was never colonized. The United States and Canada don’t exist. The Great Lakes are surrounded by an independent Ojibwe nation. And in the village of Baawitigong, a Peacekeeper confronts his devastating past. The Mother asks the question of what if Europe had never colonized the world? It is a world that never had overseas empires, the transatlantic slave trade, or the Protestant Reformation. There is, however, in an obscure island nation called England, a woman running for her life.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Stories and storytellers will always have a place in our world. People talk about AI taking over storytelling and writing books, but stories come from the heart, and I think we’ll always need writers to help tell those stories.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.blblanchard.com
- Instagram: blblanchard_writes
