Meet the Author: Beth Barany

Today's author is Beth Barany, a multi-passionate writer, coach, filmmaker, and teacher. Beth and I had a wide-ranging conversation that covered so much fascinating ground—including what it's been like to turn her stories into film!

Beth Barany is an award-winning novelist, certified creativity coach for writers, and master neurolinguistic programming practitioner. With over 20 years of experience, she has helped hundreds of writers get unstuck, reconnect with their passion, and finish their stories.
​
Beth specializes in coaching science fiction and fantasy writers, offering customized approaches to start, write, and complete their first drafts. As an author herself, Beth has published 12 books in the science fiction and fantasy genres, weaving magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure to empower girls and women to be the hero of their own lives.
​
She runs a 12-month group coaching program to help writers edit their manuscripts and get published, and also offers one-on-one coaching and consulting programs. Beth is known for her hands-on courses and workshops, packed with useful tools that you can implement right away. An experienced international speaker and podcaster, she has recently ventured into filmmaking.
​
Beth runs the podcast How To Write The Future: Tips for Writers, and has a YouTube channel where she shares tips and resources for writers at every stage of the creative process.
​
For more information about Beth's services for writers, visit https://bethbarany.com/ or follow her on Instagram, X, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Let's start with Into the Black. What's it about?

​Into the Black is about an investigator who works on a high-end casino space station up in high Earth orbit. There's an elevator that goes up there that staff ride; the guests come in jets. She is a newbie. She just got hired, and she's made a few mess-ups. When we meet her on page one, she is in a situation where, if she messes up again, she could get fired, and that would be bad. She's her mom's sole financial support, and her mom is on this expensive drug for a difficult-to-treat illness. Janey is this only child. It's just her and her mom and the community she grew up in.

There's a lot on the line when we meet Janey on page one. She has to prove herself. She finally catches this pickpocket that's been plaguing them. The story opens in this huge, beautiful casino with an amazing 30-foot window looking out at the stars. There's a Cirque du Soleil jetpack acrobat thing going on outside. The guests are in their tuxes and ballgowns, and they’re from all over the planet. This is her environment as the leader of a security investigative team. And then hijinks ensue, and the next case leads her to clash with this insurance investigator who's there to maybe protect the victim, and things start to get really complicated.

Of course, a murder happens, and Janey’s agenda of solving the murder is clashing with this insurance investigator's hidden agenda, and they end up having to work together. It's not a romance, per se, but there are some sexy and romantic elements.

It's basically CSI in space. Into the Black is the first book in the series, and it's very fast-paced, and readers seem to really enjoy it. She's very action-oriented and science-oriented, which are my two favorite things to have. She has an eye implant, an ocular implant. The book is set 100-plus years in the future, and her eye is like her superpower. That, of course, doesn't always go as planned. Things start interfering with her eye. It's a world where some political things have shifted, self-determination is a right, and the space station is technically its own little nation-state. So that's what allows her to have jurisdiction. But there is also a world government, so things kind of bump up against each other.

How did you come to write this series?

Oh, my goodness, such a long, circuitous route. This is my third series. I have two other series out. One is a young adult action-adventure series, my first series, and one is a sweet paranormal romance series.

I was casting about for another book to write in 2016. My husband and I went to a screenplay conference in Los Angeles. I came into the conference thinking, “Wow, this is going to be a great time to learn a ton and juggle some ideas and make a decision.” I was between this science fiction mystery idea, which was in a much earlier form, and a romantic paranormal suspense series that's still brewing in the background. I sit on my story ideas for a long time, and this idea for the space station mystery adventures came to me in a dream, an actual dream.

Earlier in the year, I had pitched a paragraph to an agent. I'm independently published, but I pitched a paragraph to that person, and it forced me to put into words this dream I had. I remember conceptualizing my main character. She was undercover as a waitress at an art installation on a space station. She’s having a tete-a-tete with this person who she thinks is a criminal but isn't sure, and they're having a sexy repartee, and he's kind of a James Bond character. That was the dream. I woke up thinking how awesome of a story this would be. That little kernel stayed with me for a long time.

Then came the screenplay conference. I went to a talk by a lecturer who would tell us the key ingredients to a successful science fiction story. I knew this was a science fiction story from the get-go, obviously. He said, “I'm going to challenge you to write a 50-word pitch.” I'd written pitches. I'd written back cover blurbs. I had six, seven, eight books under my belt. So I did it. And then, because I'm not shy, I raised my hand when he called on people, and I gave the pitch, and he nodded. He liked it. And then he said to me, “CSI in space.” And I'm like, “Yeah, that's it.”

I just felt it in my bones that because of that opportunity to pitch it, because of getting feedback from this guy, this was going to be my next project. That really got me excited. I got to have confirmation in a public space, and the story was ready to be spoken about.

I work a lot on intuition. That got me going, and then—I'm going to get a little political here. Then the 2016 elections happened, they did not go the way I had wished, and I was so pissed. But there I was, starting the first book. She searches for justice; she goes after the killer. I could channel all my anger into fiction, into art, and, of course, listen to the soundtrack of Hamilton a million times while I was in the cafe working. My amazing cohorts were out marching, and I was working on my book. Because, to me, that's my activism. I put my thoughts and heart and soul and fears and anger and resistance and fighting into into art. Because there, I have control. There, I can make the world how I want it. She always gets her person, and she gets to be a speaker for the dead, and she gets to try and right the world a little bit.

I wrote the first draft in seven to nine months. Draft fast, edit slow. That's how it works around here. Then, my father was ill, so that slowed everything down in my life. He passed away in 2018, and I spent a year grieving. He was a big supporter of my stuff. He read everything I wrote. He read early drafts of these books, which was fun. He didn't like them as much as the romance. He was a big softy.

This was a new genre for me, too. I had done fantasy. I had done paranormal romance, which is basically fantasy coming into the real world, and now here I was switching to science fiction with romantic elements. I was like, “What am I doing here?” I didn't really know. I gathered an early reader team of about 50 people. I would send them chapters every two weeks for light edits and beta reader questions. I did that over the span of two years. We went through all four books while I was taking care of my dad and trying to run a business.

Around the end of 2019, I'm like, I have to get serious here. I've done the slow crawl through all four books because I knew I wanted to release these books fairly close to each other. There's a lot of cross-talk in the editing process between the books. My head was starting to clear. My heart was starting to clear.

So, that is how I spent my time during this pandemic. I'm like, “The world is falling apart. Thank god I have my books to edit. I published Into the Black in 2020, and then I put myself on a schedule with marketing plans. In the span of two years, I published four books. I did a Kickstarter for the fourth book. Now, three years later, book five, hopefully, will be coming out.

How would you describe your writing habits?

I'm a writing teacher and a writing coach, and I am full-on in love with the creative process. I mean, it is my happy place, teaching about it, talking about it, thinking about it for myself and others. I discovered what worked by accident, and then I would consciously go, “Oh, that worked. Let me bring it back into my process some more.”

I divide writing into three to five main phases. I've created a whole structure for myself that I teach, and that helps me brainstorm. Once I've decided on a story, it'll help me brainstorm it rather quickly and give me a roadmap. It doesn’t get too detailed—I'm not a plotter, and I'm not a total pantser. I'm a plotster. I'm somewhere in the middle. But I need guidelines, and so I know how to create that now. I can do that in one day for a novel, maybe two.

I came of age as a novelist during the beginning of NaNoWriMo, way back when. And even before I learned of NaNoWriMo, I put myself on a regular schedule. I will put myself into a regular writing habit, which is about four to six days a week. I know I can write a first draft in two months, a full-length novel, if I do that. I'm not super strict. If it takes three months, that's fine. I have a life. I have other commitments.

I like that fast gallop through the first draft. I like to write after lunch, so I generally have a routine where I walk down to the cafe, which is about a 12-minute walk downhill, have a coffee, and write. I actually need the walking before the writing. I did a little series on YouTube years ago called Am Writing, Am Walking. It's so important to me, and I've learned that if I don't get some writing time, it's hard to get to the creative time.

You also have a film coming out! Tell me more about that process.

I wrote the script for this short film about seven years ago. I've wanted to be in film for a very long time, and I've been wanting Henrietta the Dragon Slayer to be on the screen for almost 20 years. I've been dabbling, and then I started volunteering at a film camp for teens and nonbinary high schoolers who learned to make a movie in five days. It's incredible. I got to be around it and learn and be a story consultant, but also just be an adult in the room.

In 2017, I started a script for another TV show. I love TV. Henrietta the Dragon Slayer has a trilogy, and the idea of adaptation blows my circuits. I am not doing that. I'm not gifted in that. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in telling new stories about Henrietta and her friends. So that's what I did. I wrote a 30-minute pilot of Henrietta going on an adventure with her friends. A few years ago, I hired a screenplay coach who helped me give me feedback. I wrote what's called a cold open, or the teaser, what you see before the credits. I got really great feedback. People really liked that. Of all the parts of the script, that was succeeding the most.

Last year, when I was coming in as a story consultant at this camp called Real Stories, I met the organizers, people in their 20s who have either done the camp as teenagers or went to film school or both. I took one aside after my talk, and I'm like, “Can I pick your brain about what it would take to turn my script into a film?” And she's like, “Yes. Let's do it.” What do you mean? She's like, “Yeah, let's make it. We are absolutely going to make it.”

I spoke to each coordinator, learning about their interests and finding out one loves costumes and the other was a documentary filmmaker, but she was open to everything. I started having meetings, and within a few weeks, I had a crew. It was amazing. I had a production designer, I had a costume designer, and I had an in-person meeting with this woman, Morgan, who's like, “Yep, I want to be a director.” She's a Black woman. She's like, “I want to bring Black women up through film.” I asked her to be my first AD, assistant director. Morgan has become more than that. She's become my buddy, my partner, and because she went to film school and has done a few short films and is a coordinator in this program, she’s my main advisor.

Someone in the film community got us sound. We found someone who could do props. There’s someone to do the slate. We found a cinematographer who is now currently in film school as an undergraduate. We found someone to do our poster. Everyone is working for nothing but I promised them money. Some people are surprised that I'm paying them.

We did an audition. We've got two actors. I found some associate producers. I raised a portion. I raised about a quarter of what we need. I plan to do a few fundraising parties locally. We aim to release this in June, at least to our backers. I don't have it all worked out, how we will send it to the big, bad world. There are options on the table, early conversations with folks, so I don't know. People can sign up for my newsletter at Henriettathedragonslayer.com and you can also follow us at Henriettafilm on Instagram, where we have fabulous behind-the-scenes shots. Our poster draft is up there. You can see great headshots for actors. You see our actors in costume.

This is a dream come true. It's incredible. I have big dreams. We'll see more stories of mine. I have the rest of the episode that I want to write and film, and it's a big endeavor. I mean, we're filming in a local park up in the redwoods, which is awesome. Two actors, 12 crew. It was amazing. People don't realize how much goes on behind the scenes. It takes a lot of people to make TV and film happen. Yes, you can do things with a very small crew. I know AI is coming in to do a lot of things, but nothing, nothing replaces real people doing real things.

I have a whole TV series in mind, with Henrietta going on adventures with her four friends off into this crazy territory that I've been envisioning, kind of a no man's land where weird things happen and they encounter a monster every week.

You write and publish, you are creating films, and you're a coach. You're an editor, you're a teacher—you do all this stuff. How?

First of all, that's a good question. I've always been somebody who has a lot of projects in the hopper, and it's always been a bit much, but that's kind of a comfort zone. It's an ongoing struggle to constantly say no to things so that I can say yes to the things that I really want to be doing. That's been a big process of discovery. I started my business in 2006. That's almost 19 years. I jumped into the deep end and had to learn a lot. You don't do it all. You do one thing at a time.

So that's a constant, internal, filling up and release. A lot of coming back to what's true, really following the feelings. That's how I'm wired. For any Human Design folks out there, I'm an emotional generator, meaning I have to follow my emotional wave, and I've learned to be okay with that. When things are stuck, that's a sign that I need to stop and feel all the feels because they're flowing and they're telling me something.

I'm not a machine. I am trying to disengage from being treated like a cog in the machine, which is a capitalist behavior. Even before capitalism, there were those treating people like they had no say in the system. My ancestors didn't have a say. And now we have a say. But it's also very new to have a say. Learning how to exercise my voice, that I have a voice, and encouraging other people to have their voice through writing is something I practice for myself and then make room to help others do the same.

I've had to come to terms with the fact that I can't do everything. I have actual physical limitations. I don't have all my fingers. I'm dealing with pain and arthritis, and that's a real physical limitation; that’s a hard stop. I would like to pretend it's not there because I'm headstrong. I have that independent, I-can-do-it-myself, firstborn energy. The body’s like… not so much. I'm in menopause, the body's like, “I'm just sitting here on the couch, leave me alone.”

There's this energy where the body is like, you can't move me. Sorry, not sorry. Every day, it's a conversation with myself. What can I do? What makes me happy? What lights me up? Being of service. Creating stuff.

I have a podcast. I'm making a movie. I have books. I like making things. I need to make things all the time. I like working collaboratively. I spend a lot of time having networking conversations, co-working things, and, of course, meetings.

I love working one-on-one, too, so I have lots of one-on-one clients. I love teaching, so I try to find ways to teach, whether at summits, getting paid to teach at writers' communities, or being flown to Saudi Arabia to teach in the cultural center, which I've done a few times.

I'm not marking up people's books. I don't do that. That is not my happy place at all. My happy place is getting on Zoom and saying, “Great. So you got my notes? Let's talk about it.”

Helping people stretch as writers, teaching them techniques and tools in the craft, but also helping them get closer to their core dream. How do they remain true to their vision and bring out what readers want?

What programs do you offer?

Some people elect to be in the 12-month group coaching program. Some people prefer one-on-one work, but they still get access to all of the classes, and there are over 20. For those who attend the group, I'm also creating new lessons and tailoring things for them. That's really fun. I love it. It's my experimental cauldron, and they get exactly what they're asking for. That's specifically for science fiction and fantasy writers who have finished their first draft.

I have a program that's just one-on-one for people who want to finish their first draft, and so I'll work with them in that process, helping them create creative habits and helping them come to their writing in a way that they're super excited about because now they're doing what they love. They're doing the writing.

I bring coaching into that, a little bit of teaching, and a lot of NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, which allows me to support them in building those habits.

Can you say more about NLP, what that is, and how you use it?

I took a big certification program on it. Big shoutout to NLPmarin.com. Neuro-linguistic programming studies how humans are wired cognitively. How is it that we learn? How is it that we grow? How is it that we change? Back in the ‘70s, a linguist and a computer scientist got together, and they were like, “Let's decode this.” They came up with ways to map how this amazing psychologist got results with her clients, and how this hypnotherapist did what he did.

We all think survival is the priority, but actually belonging is the priority. Belonging allows us to survive. Without being a part of a community, we would die, and that's now proven scientifically. But how does that work on a one-to-one level? The training focused on the one-to-one level, so I learned how to watch people.

“Let me help you have what you want.” That's the focus. We learned how to observe how people's eyes moved. If people are familiar with EMDR, that’s an offshoot of this work. Cognitive behavioral therapy, that's an offshoot.

When I meet with someone, I will ask them, what do you want? What's your book goal? What's your writing goal? I watch their behavior, and I will start to notice when they light up and their breathing changes and their cheeks flush. I will be writing the words they use, and then I will repeat back to them the words they use. That's called keyword backtracking, so that they feel safe, so that they feel seen. And then it's about supporting their vision. I'm not imposing my vision. I know how books get made, and there are some best practices, but that doesn't mean their process will be my process.

I ask them to paint me a picture of their dream. Then, we look at the gap between where they are and what they want, but I'm not just looking at the gap. I'm looking at their current internal structures and behaviors. There's a reason we aren't at the finished book.

NLP gave me a framework to do that, and how to walk them from here to where they want to be. We do it gently, in a way that feels safe.

It’s like being a mechanic of the soul but with permission.

If you had to give a writer one piece of advice, what would it be?

Writers write. It's very simple. Writing begets writing, and often people are stuck in a very sad and upset place because they're not writing. They want to be writing and they're not writing.

I'm a huge proponent of timed writing. Playful timed writing. Use prompts if you need them. I have a few books of prompts in my arsenal. Just play.

I gave an in-person workshop. I had people doing five and ten minutes of writing, and people were surprised at how much they could do. I asked them to journal in the voice of their character. If you're writing fiction, journal in the voice of your main character. It is powerful.

I use 20-minute writing sessions, and so does my husband. We are both experienced writers. Starting can be really hard, and you will feel so much better if you can do even five minutes.

I challenge you to have fun with it.

What's the best book you've read recently?

I'm an avid science fiction and fantasy reader. I'm reading A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon, and it's the second book in her series called The Entire and the Rose. It's so involved. I love her stuff, very rich, very strange, very interesting. That was full-on science fiction.

Switching gears, this next book I am so eager to read. It’s Resurrection Bridge, book five of the Hawthorn House series by Sean Cunningham. It's an urban fantasy set in London with magic and vampires and creatures and changelings and werewolves and all kinds of things. He's got great characters. He's got this 10-year-old girl who's kind of a tech genius, she’s sassy, she runs into danger. She’s a main character; she's got this weird hidden identity that she's more than she realizes. And that's one of the mysteries.

London is our modern-day London with magic. London has layers in its real life, but then you overlay that with fun, fantastical, magical things going on, ghosts, and the war between the werewolves and the witches. One of the characters gets to have dreams of London. London is like a character, and she has these dreams where she goes back in time and you get to feel London at all these different stages. I love big cities. He's so imaginative.

---

I came away from my conversation with Beth energized and excited about writing. Beth's work is an incredible example of all the potential outlets we have for our creative output. What will you create next?

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.