How I Got Here

Part One

Self portrait, 2020

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To start out, I should probably introduce myself.

My name is Kira Bruner (she/her) and I was born and raised in north Texas. Think bare feet on burning concrete, Friday night lights, homecoming parades, foldable lawn chairs, and a crisp, refrigerated Dr. Pepper.

So how did I get here? Here, as in Oregon. Here, as in querying literary agents. Here, as in Substack.

Well, I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

I’ve wanted to be an author for almost as long as I can remember. I learned how to read by reading The Spiderwick Chronicles (thank you, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi) out loud to my dad, which was one of my earliest introductions to fantasy, at least in literature. My parents were big fans of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Charmed, Lost Girl—the list goes on. So, Fantasy and Sci-Fi have always been a part of my life. I’m even named after Major Kira Nerys from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

As a kid, every time me and my dad went to Barnes & Noble, I begged him to buy me a new journal, despite the fact that I hadn’t touched the last one (or ten) that he’d bought me, because I was obsessed with the idea that they were empty books just waiting for my stories to fill their pages. I would smile the whole way home thinking, This is the one. I’m going to write my masterpiece in this journal, and it’s going to be soooo good that I’m going to be the youngest author ever. (Didn’t we all?) I’d get home, fill out a page, and then feel immense guilt that I’d sullied that beautiful journal with my atrocious handwriting and amateur storytelling. Then, I’d rip out the page and put the journal away with the others for someday.

The closest I ever actually came to writing a book was when I was seventeen. I got about a hundred pages in before I decided it was absolute trash. Not the idea, but my writing. At seventeen, I just wasn’t ready to write a book.

But, as much as I wanted to be a writer, I equally, if not more so, wanted to be a visual artist. So, when I was applying for college, I had to decide: Am I going to pursue fine art, writing, or something “more practical?” My mom and I looked at a list of the available majors at the University of North Texas and she said, “How about graphic design?” It sounded like a more stable option than painting and drawing, so we went to tour the art building to see the kind of work their communication (graphic) design program produced.

And it was really cool. At the time, I still didn’t quite know what “graphic design” entailed, but I liked what I was seeing: a mix of illustration, photography, and typography on posters, all curated into a show in the Lightwell Gallery.

The only caveat was that the program was competitive. It was on a strict four year degree plan. Certain classes could only be taken during certain semesters, because that’s the only time they were offered. On top of that, you had to pass portfolio reviews during your first two years, where professors judged your work to decide if you were good enough to continue in the program. If you weren’t, you could either try again, which meant re-taking the same classes a year later, or choose a different major. They tended to only let about thirty to forty students in per year.

I gave it a shot anyway.

During my first semester, I took drawing classes alongside the basics, and an Introduction to Communication Design course.

I passed my first review that fall. Inside my portfolio: a painting of Ron Swanson, a charcoal drawing of a styrofoam Chik-fil-A to-go cup, and a few abstract mixed-media pieces.

The next semester, we learned how to use some of the Adobe programs: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I had felt so confident in my other art classes, drawing vases and building moving sculptures, but clicking on anchor points and dragging them across the screen felt disconnected to the work I’d done for my first portfolio review.

I’d been on the yearbook staff in middle school and had some experience with photography, but not much. Some of my classmates, however, had taken graphic design classes in high school and were already familiar with the programs we were using. It was…intimidating.

To cut the story short, I did not end up passing my second review. My work was inconsistent. On the projects I loved, I did well, but when I didn’t love a project, it was obvious. So, I had a decision to make: Do I try again or change majors?

By then I was invested and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. So, I tried again. This meant repeating the exact same classes I’d already taken, doing the exact same projects, and trying to do them better than I did the first time. The biggest thing that changed between my first year and my second was my mindset.

Instead of coming home from school, driving to Sonic for a large sweet tea during Happy Hour, going to the gym before starting my homework, and binging TV shows on weekends, I put myself on a much stricter schedule. Every day, I woke up early, went to get coffee, and got to work. I didn’t waste a second, staying up late not to just finish my projects, but to try to be proud of them. I had a job as a host at a restaurant on Fridays and weekends, so everything else had to get done during the week. That meant not a lot of sleep and a lot of cold brew. My life was work. But I wasn’t mad about it. In fact, I kind of thrived that way. (Not that it was healthy).

I passed the portfolio review my second time, and went on to graduate from the program. I even interned at a studio I admired and everything was looking up…

Until the pandemic hit the U.S. two and a half months before I graduated.

I watched friends who had been promised jobs lose said jobs, and others be put on hold indefinitely. Interviews I had lined up were canceled. Everything went silent. The world shut down. Well, you were there, so I won’t dwell on this.

It wasn’t until a year after I graduated that I got my first job in the industry—for a six month contract. When that contract came to an end, I was lucky to find a job, almost immediately, as an Associate Art Director for a creative agency in Fort Worth.

I loved this job, I loved my coworkers, and I worked hard, eager to progress in my career. After another six months, I was promoted to Art Director (a mid-level position at the agency).

However, just after one year, I was affected by an unexpected round of lay-offs, as were a lot of my friends. At the time, me and my boyfriend were living with my parents and we weren’t planning to stay there long, just until we could find another apartment. My lay-off changed things.

By December of 2022, Booktok and Bookstagram had grown so large that even I, who had been a lifelong reader but not active in those spaces, started seeing book content on my page. A friend of mine (Hi, Gretchen) read A Court of Thorns and Roses in October, recommended to her by a coworker (Hi, Steph), and got me to pick it up as well. This opened the floodgates for recommendations online.

Throughout college, I read some of my favorite books: Lolita, The Virgin Suicides, all of Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, and 1984, to name a few. At the time, I had the commonly misplaced idea that now that I was an adult, I should be reading adult literature. And not just adult literature, but good (highly-praised, well-known) literature. Because of this, I had thought that if I was going to write a book, it had to be on par with these titles, otherwise, what was the point?

I missed out on so many books that would later become some of my favorites, like Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. Thanks to the bookish side of the internet, I was finally getting recommendations for books that I would have loved all along. Having plenty of time to read now that I was unemployed, I was excited to catch up.

I had no idea how long I would be job-hunting, but after 2020, I had a feeling it would be a while. So, I thought, why not try to write a book again? And this time, why not try to write a fantasy book? I felt like I knew fantasy. I grew up on Buffy, spent my middle school summers glued to the computer, playing Wizard101, and I had made everyone in my life watch Game of Thrones just so I could rewatch it with them and explain the lore (sorry).

I asked myself, if I were going to write a book—like actually finally finish writing a book—what would it be about? And, pretty quickly, I had an idea. My background in design was more useful for writing than I had imagined. I’d already refined my own creative process. I didn’t know how to write a book, but I knew how to finish a drawing. I knew to start with a rough sketch, then move things around and erase what wasn’t working before doing a tighter sketch, and then keep refining things. Eventually, I would get to a place where I thought, This could probably be better, but I’ve gone as far as I can go with it. Because an important part of creating things is knowing when to walk away.

So, I began brainstorming, writing, and experimenting, knowing that I would suck at it until I didn’t, that it would be a lot of trial and error, and that if I just showed up every day and did the work, eventually, I’d have a book. I’d somehow gone from having never touched Adobe Illustrator in my life to being an Art Director. I figured, if I could start from nothing once, I could do it again.

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