INTERVIEW: Author Brittany N. Williams

Brittany N. Williams on Debut Book: That Self-Same Metal, Being a Shakespeare Fan and Feeling Grounded in History

I have been loving what I’ve been seeing and reading from the YA genre, especially the fantasy category in recent years. Black girls as the chosen ones, Black girls as mermaids, Black girls as sorcerers, assassins and shapeshifters and so much more. Brittany N. Williams is a classically-trained actress who studied Musical Theatre at Howard University and Shakespearean performance at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London. Previously she’s been a principal vocalist at Hong Kong Disneyland, a theatre professor at Coppin State University, and made appearances in Queen Sugar and Leverage: Redemption.

Her short stories have been published in The Gambit Weekly, Fireside Magazine, and the Star Wars anthology From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back. Williams’ debut is described as a “A stunning YA fantasy perfect for fans of Holly Black and Justina Ireland, about a Black girl (and sword expert) fighting a Fae uprising in Shakespearean London”. I wanted to know more about this very special and deliberate placing of a Black girl protagonist with a special gift in a time period that I don’t often see folks of color, centered. Williams was happy to answer my questions about her debut book and the inspiring research and labor of love that went into writing it.

Note: this edited interview was conducted earlier this year before the release of That Self-Same Metal, which is now out! Enjoy!

Carrie: Let’s talk about setting! I LOVE historical fiction in every section of literature: fiction, nonfiction, even manga and other comics, etc. I’m always so fascinated by stories set in the past. I am so curious about all the homework you did, how extensive was your research?

Brittany: WHEW! What research did I NOT do?! I had like a — I’m gonna post a picture of a stack of my research books, but it’s, it takes up two shelves on my bookshelf of the or at least like Yeah, yeah, it’s just a lot of books I’ve read.

I’ve picked up as many things as I could find. The book that kind of started me into all of it is called The Year of Lear. Shakespeare in 1606. And it’s by James Shapiro. Way back in like 2016, I worked his book launch event, and I worked at the table where we were, you know, selling people’s books and letting him sign them. And so I was given a free copy of this book and it just talks about what was going on with Shakespeare and England in 1606.

And this was like following immediately after the failed gunpowder plot where they tried to assassinate the king and they would have blown up like a full quarter of the City of London if they’ve been successful. And 1606 is the year that Shakespeare wrote King Lear and he wrote The Scottish Play. So it was just thinking about that and how like real life events would have been inspired Shakespeare to write those plays that drove me down the kind of path of like setting it in that particular time because the book is set in 1605 in London.

C: Ah, yes Shakespeare! I know you’re such a big fan of his. I am so fascinated by the allure and the appeal of Shakespeare’s stories and the histories and influence of his plays. Any other research of yours that really helped define your writing that may surprise us, readers?

B: Shakespeare, like I’ve been obsessed with Shakespeare since I was a kid. I used to watch Shakespeare the animated tales on HBO 7am every Saturday morning. So yeah, I could not of couldn’t resist making him a character in my book. There are all kinds of like, books about Shakespeare and how people would have lived in his time. So I read a lot of those. I have a book about fashion in the time of William Shakespeare. I read Thing of Darkness by Dr. Kim Hall.

It’s basically looks at race and the development of racialized identities in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. And just trying to find like, as many things as I could by Black scholars and scholars of color, particularly women of like, particularly women, like female scholars. And so Kim Hall was one, Dr. Ayanna Thompson was another whose work I really like sought out and tried to read as much of it as I could.

Also: Dr. Margo Hendricks. She’s also a romance writer, and she writes historical romance with Black characters set in like the Elizabethan into Jacobian period. So it’s like yes, that’s my girl like we write, bar for bar. And then one of the books that I came to or that I found later, was a book called Labour’s Lost and it was specifically about the women who were involved in play making in the Elizabethan and Jacobian period.

C: Oh, Nice! I want to read all of that.

B: Yay! Because so many of us have heard of like, oh, yeah, “it was all men like only men being on stage”. So there were boys playing women roles and everything, but just because only men could be on stage didn’t mean that women weren’t involved.

So there were women, dressers, costumers, women bookkeepers, women taking like, the money for the entry fee for the theater performances, and also women performed at the Royal Court in masks in like, actual like these big elaborate…basically pageants. They performed in them, like the queen performed in them, her ladies performed in them. So they could do that, like rich people could Yes, but not rich people could not.

C: Oh, so just nepo babies? (laughs)

B: Right! (laugh)

So yeah, it was when I got into one of the later drafts of my book, and I realized that most of my side characters were men and I was like, That can’t be right. And so when I found Labor’s Lost, I was like, great. You’re a woman now, you’re a woman now. Right? Like, get these male characters out of here. Bring the ladies!

C: WOW! What great insight on your part, to acknowledge this. You really were like OH. I’ve seen this on the page. I am not making the same mistake! I must fix it!

B: Right, right. I was like Don’t! Don’t do the easy thing. Yes, you do the true thing.

C: I read the first two chapters of That Self Same Metal and I have to say that I love this marriage of Joan’s lineage and gift–her gift to control metal as blessed by Ogun (powerful spirit of metal work) and how that connects her to her African (Yoruba) heritage.

I’d love to know more about this fascinating backstory for our main character in regards to the world-building you’ve done here in regards to the Orisha, whom we have been seeing pop up more in fiction, pop culture and in television shows. Did Ogun (the Yoruba, God of war and iron) make his way into your story for another reason other than the metal connection?

B: Yeah, so I will say the idea of the main character being blessed with metal powers from Ogun–that was a foundational part of the story. So, back when the first story idea bubbled up into my head, it was really what would a person who’s been blessed with control of iron by Ogun do if they had to face the Fae, who are vulnerable to iron, what would that conflict look like?

So that all of that was that kind of through the different versions and iterations of the story until it ended up as what it is now. Those two things stayed. And then when I first got the idea, it was a very like the idea of I had looked Ogun on the internet and found it I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. I love that West African mythology, great. Since then: I have developed a different relationship with the Orisha and with Ogun and everything because of my exposure to Santeria– the like, actual practice.

So I personally have a closer connection to Ogun and all of the Orisha and a better understanding and that has affected how I approached the book, that affected how Joan and her family all interact with their Orisha, particularly how Joan interacts with Ogun. And I wanted to give people an introduction to the Orisha while understanding that it is a closed practice.

So not actually revealing any intimate secrets that I may know and also knowing that there’s a bunch of stuff that I don’t know because I am not initiated into the religion and just kind of connecting to that that West African tradition that has shifted and morphed and become something different because of the slave trade and you know the diaspora be and what it is.

But it is fun to kind of make up what it is like figuring out what power each child of each Orisha would have. Some of them are really easy, some of them not so easy. And, and yeah, just really kind of fun using that and Shakespeare to aggressively place black people in Western history.

C: Boom! That’s the quote! That’s the post! That’s the tweet!

B: Yes, I reference a book–there’s a note at the back of my book like a historical note and then a note on the Orisha and I reference a book that’s like a very, you know, Baby’s first book about the Orisha written by someone who’s in the religion but without, you know, doing too much because there are so many instances of spectators inviting themselves to ceremony and stuff and then writing these like tell all books and inviting people into spaces that they should not be in.

C: I am really, really glad you were responsible with that. With Joan, I’ve been very interested in her character. It’s not just her backstory, but like how you kind of came to, you know, creating her and placing her in this time period in the story. But I’m really, really super happy that you were responsible as there are enough cosplayers with, like our lives and cultures.

B: Yes. I want to make clear that readers actually will not learn any of the Orisha veneration from reading my book. Readers may become interested in finding out more but my book is not an instruction manual and it’s not intended to be and it’s never going to be!

C: Good to know! Here for that!

C: So I know you’re a big Dungeons and Dragons player. And I’ve heard a bit of some of the shenanigans your creative players have gotten into it. Since the Fae are a important element and also important characters in your books, have any of your created players done some nonsense like…destroy a fairy ring or two-timed a love Fae interest only to find they belonged to an important family?

B: Well, it’s funny because the character I’m playing now and like my ongoing campaign we’re on like we’re into year three of this campaign is its fate is like a Fae being. She’s a changeling. So she’s a shapeshifter. And so she gets into all kinds of shenanigans. There was one time , my character went out into the woods to try to like turn herself into a spider, but she couldn’t grow any extra legs. (laughs)

So she was just like this humanoid, black fuzzy thing with me later on, I found out my DM was like, “Listen, if your character’s friend hadn’t gone with you out into the woods, I was gonna have the rest of the party come and hunt you”. I was like yoooo,why are you trying to kill me? I’m just having some fun! Have we gotten into any trouble with the Fae? I am the Fae trouble!

C: You are the drama! You are the villain!

B: I AM! I am the drama! So yeah, that’s a nice little flip from writing from from the main character being a human who’s taken on the faith to the main character in my mind being Fae taking on all kinds of beings, creatures, everything.

C: You’ve done sword training before, correct? For a stage production you were in? Did any of this physical training help you when you were writing this first book?

B: Absolutely. ALWAYS. Fight scenes are very hard to write. Because…using too many words or sentences that are too long really takes the reader out of the moment and they kill the immediacy of the fight. And like when you see a fight in real life, or in a movie things happen very quickly. So you just have to, like trying to capture that pace accurately. In writing is very difficult. It’s fun. I love it, but it’s hard.

And the other thing that’s difficult and you see this with fight scenes and with intimate scenes, is sometimes you can lose track of what people’s limbs are doing. Like, you’ll be like oh, she did this with this hand and then that with this hand, and then she did this with this and it’s like this third hand comes out of nowhere. OR people have weird, contorted moves or like moves that don’t flow into each other the right way.So in my brain, I choreograph all of my fights. And if I ever am unsure about a move, I’ll try it out myself and I have like a practice sword and a practice dagger.

So I can actually like, take a minute, go through the sequence of moves and be like, Does this make sense going into this move? Like if somebody is getting attacked like this? What would be the logical next move that they would do to block themselves? I’ve done some fight choreography that has been flashy and interesting and fun. So I’ve tried to put some of those pieces into my fights. And it’s just, yeah, man. I love it. I love doing fights and plays and I really loved putting it on the page!

C: I adore a great fight scene! I’m so excited to see what stuck in your final draft!

C: Final question time! Who is That Self-Same Metal, Book One in The Forge & Fracture Saga for? What do you want readers to take away from when they read this book? Lastly, what are your hopes for this book and this universe you’re introducing to us?

B: Honestly, I wrote this book– writing backwards in time to my sixteen year old self. And, you know, the kid who was enamored with Shakespeare, but kept being told over and over again that there was no place for a Black woman in Shakespeare, Shakespeare in performance, except for servant roles, tiny like roles, whatever, you know.

Right and back to that, that kid. And just to say like, they were wrong! Black people have existed before slavery, even in the West. (To that kid, to myself) You are not putting your nose where you don’t belong. And also, you know, the same kid who was having feelings for boys, of course, but then like, feeling a little more than friendship towards girls and being confused about it and being like, “That can’t be right”. Like, I don’t know what that is, like, ready to give that? That kid like, maybe not the answers but some answers. Just to let that nerdy little confused black girl know like you are special, but you’re also normal.

I just want other Black girls to read this and feel confident in themselves and to feel more grounded in history. I also want them to be able to rebut all the people who tried to erase us from the spaces where we do exist. And have always existed.

Yeah, and then I had an ex who told me that William Shakespeare wouldn’t have known any like black people from anywhere in Africa other than northern Africa, like Black people from West Africa. And I was like, that sounds like a lie. So this book is also YOU WERE WRONG! I told you it was a lie! I did my research and it was a lie. So, there’s that too!

C: A bold faced lie!

B: Black folks have been in England since the Romans. Okay, there is historical evidence. This book is here to say “We out here, we’ve been outchea!” Well, I just want this book to be something else that lets Black girls, Black kids move through the world with more confidence. Like just another thing in their arsenal to be like, “Nope, you can’t tell me about me because I know about me.”

C: I love it! Brittany, thank you so much for speaking with me, I am so excited for That Self-Same Metal!

This week, Williams revealed the cover of Saint-Seducing Gold, Book 2 in the Forge & Fracture Saga and the sequel to That Self-Same Metal!

Pre-order the book here, coming April 2024 here and read an excerpt here!

That Self-Same Metal (The Forge & Fracture Saga, Book 1) was released on April 25, 2023. Brittany Williams is a Classically-trained actress & author, see more of her on her personal website here and other places online here.