The Mythic Mic Podcast

🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where sometimes the morally gray assassin is becoming good while the soft-hearted heroine might be headed in the opposite direction.
This week, host Sara Santillan sits down with author Samantha Nell to discuss Soulfire, the first book in the Godsfire series, a romantic fantasy filled with elemental magic, dream walking, reluctant allies-to-lovers, a mystery villain pulling the strings, and a magical fire gifted by the gods.
At the heart of the story are Taryn, an assassin beginning to question the person he's become, and Airess, a half-Elven nobleman's daughter destined to marry an evil prince. When their paths collide, they're forced to flee together through a world where Fae command the elements, Elves wield light and shadow, and dreams can become something far more powerful.
🔥 What happens when a morally gray assassin starts moving toward the light while the heroine begins moving toward the darkness?
🌙 What if you could train your mind to walk through dreams and turn those experiences into magic?
🖤 And can you uncover the villain when they're telling part of the story themselves?
If you love elemental magic, dream walking, reluctant allies-to-lovers, assassins, morally gray characters, one bed, one horse, opposites attract, hidden villains, deadly magic, and characters whose moral arcs might be crossing in very unexpected ways, this episode is for you.
🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Samantha's journey from writing Wattpad stories as a teenager to finally finishing and independently publishing her debut novel.
✨ Creating the gorgeous Soulfire cover before the first draft was even finished and hiding story clues throughout its artwork.
✨ Navigating indie publishing, building an author platform, and generating early buzz through character art and social media.
✨ Taryn, an assassin questioning his morally gray past, and Airess, a half-Elven noblewoman facing an unwanted marriage to an evil prince.
✨ Why Samantha chose reluctant allies-to-lovers instead of traditional enemies-to-lovers and how Taryn and Airess grow in very different directions.
✨ Turning Samantha's real lucid dreaming experiences into the dream-walking magic of Soulfire.
✨ The mystery villain POV that lets readers watch someone pull the strings without discovering their identity until later in the story.
✨ The Godsfire behind the series and how each installment will explore a different magical fire gifted by the gods.
✨ What's coming in Book Two, including new POVs, new worlds, political intrigue, more fighting, more magic, and more reveals.
CONNECT WITH US
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Samantha Nell – @nellbooks
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.

🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where arranged marriages become political weapons, deadly magic refuses to stay controlled, and the feared warlord may be the safest person in the room.
This week, host Bethany Amanda and Mythic Mic Team Member Amara sit down with fantasy author Rebecca Robinson to discuss The Serpent and the Wolf, The Wicked and the Damned, and her Dark Inheritance trilogy. 
Rebecca shares her journey from high school administrator and lifelong writer to traditionally published author, including balancing deadlines with a full-time career and family. She opens up about finding peace in an imperfect work-life balance, writing at a sustainable pace, spending nine months on submission, and proving that authors can still rise from the traditional query slush pile.
We also dive into The Serpent and the Wolf, where Vasa is married into a rival nation while fighting a deadly magic she cannot control. Her new husband needs a wife to secure his political future and offers to help her master her power in return. Rebecca discusses arranged marriage, slow-burn enemies-to-lovers tension, one-bed proximity, complicated political systems, found family, and writing enemies who oppose one another without treating each other cruelly. She also teases how The Wicked and the Damned forces Vasa to return to the place that harmed her and tests everything she learned about love, safety, and herself.
🐺 What happens when the violent warlord from every whispered warning turns out to be a green flag?
🔥 Can Vasa control the magic threatening her life without surrendering her freedom?
👑 And can an arranged marriage survive when love collides with political ambition, trauma, and rival nations?
This is a must-listen for romantasy readers, arranged-marriage and slow-burn fans, lovers of political intrigue and found family, and anyone who wants enemies-to-lovers without cruelty between the central couple.
🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Rebecca’s life as an author, mother, high school activities director, and fearless home cook.
✨ Planning proms, rallies, homecomings, and student events while building an author career.
✨ Why writing 500 words a day can still produce a complete novel within a year.
✨ Choosing financial stability while continuing to pursue writing as her greatest passion.
✨ What happens during the year between turning in a manuscript and publication.
✨ Why the second Dark Inheritance manuscript had to be divided into two books.
✨ Querying traditionally and becoming a self-described “slush pile baby.”
✨ Landing her dream agent while seven months pregnant.
✨ Spending nine months on submission before selling the series to Saga Press.
✨ Why indie success is rarely as sudden or effortless as it appears from the outside.
✨ Vasa’s rage, trauma, uncontrolled magic, and arranged marriage into a rival nation.
✨ Writing a democratic and oligarchic political system instead of another monarchy.
✨ Building a fantasy map by throwing snacks onto poster board.
✨ How salt, rivers, and geography shaped the world’s nations and political structures.
✨ Writing enemies who genuinely oppose one another without emotional cruelty.
✨ Arranged marriage, reluctant allies, slow-burn romance, and one-bed tension.
✨ Why love from others can sometimes help someone begin learning to love themselves.
✨ The egotistical new lord Rebecca had to rewrite because she found him far too attractive.
✨ Green-flag heroes, toxic fictional men, dragons, audiobooks, and rapid-fire chaos.
CONNECT WITH US
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Rebecca Robinson – @RRobinsonWrites
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.

🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where sometimes the monster in the classics department isn't the professor who literally eats people.
This week, host Bethany Amanda sits down with author and medieval scholar Taylor Grothe to discuss Lethal Kiss, a dark academia horror romance blending Jennifer's Body energy, Nordic folklore, murder, monsters, queer romance, and one deeply sinister university.
At the center of the story are two professors: Marcella, an ancient Nordic revenant hiding centuries of trauma and a need to feed, and Lacey, an autistic mortal professor desperately fighting for tenure in a system seemingly designed to keep her from succeeding. When they discover a body on the top floor of the classics department, they're dragged into the festering underbelly of their university, where some of the monsters are supernatural and some definitely aren't.
🩸 What happens when one of your professors is literally an ancient monster?
📚 What if the darkest part of dark academia isn't the supernatural horror at all?
🖤 And can falling in love make horror even more terrifying?
If you love dark academia, queer horror romance, ancient monsters, Nordic folklore, feminine rage, morally gray characters, murder, academic corruption, forbidden knowledge, literary horror, camp, gore, and romances between women who have absolutely been through it, this episode is for you.
🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Taylor's journey from medieval scholarship and studying Arthuriana and Nordic saga to leaving academia and becoming a published author.
✨ The realities of changing literary agents and why Taylor believes authors should remember that an agent is ultimately a business partner.
✨ Moving from YA horror into adult fiction and why writing for adults had always been Taylor's long-term goal.
✨ Lethal Kiss, a Jennifer's Body-meets-Ninth House dark academia horror romance about two professors, a dead body, and a university crawling with monsters.
✨ Creating Marcella, an ancient Nordic revenant inspired by medieval saga and Beowulf, and Lacey, an autistic professor fighting for tenure while carrying religious trauma.
✨ Using supernatural horror to explore the corruption, misogyny, elitism, and systemic problems Taylor encountered within academia.
✨ Why Taylor believes romance doesn't soften horror but can actually make the horror more intense.
✨ Going completely full throttle with gore, camp, unhinged winter formals, and a final showdown Taylor describes as “crazy bananas.”
✨ The deeper themes of trauma, self-acceptance, and learning that what happened to us can shape us without having to define us.
✨ What's next, including the gothic fantasy Monstrous Beautiful Things and a deeply unsettling spore-horror story filled with grief, mushrooms, and things that definitely should not be happening.
CONNECT WITH US
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Taylor Grothe – @TaylorLGrothe
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.

CONNECT WITH US
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Wanda Hellmund – @WandaHellmund
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.

Have tropes become more important than the actual story?
Welcome to another episode of Off The Shelf, Mythic Mic's monthly segment where we dive into bookish trends, deep dives, hot takes, and all things fantasy!
In this Off the Shelf episode, host Britt is joined by Mythic Mic team members Amara and Teresa Diaz to unpack the rise of trope-driven reading, BookTok marketing, microtropes, and the increasingly blurry line between using tropes to describe a book and using them to sell the entire story.
From enemies-to-lovers and forced proximity to fated mates, slow burns, miscommunication, cinnamon-roll love interests, and shadow daddies, the conversation explores why readers gravitate toward familiar tropes and whether knowing them upfront helps or hurts the reading experience. The group also gets into whether trope lists can accidentally spoil a book, why the same trope can feel completely different depending on the writing, and whether authors are starting to feel pressure to build stories around whatever trope is currently trending.
We’re asking:
Have tropes become their own genre?
Do trope lists help readers find books they’ll love or spoil too much of the story?
Are authors feeling pressured to write toward popular tropes?
Can the right book make you love a trope you normally hate?
Along the way, Britt makes the case for “diet enemies-to-lovers,” Amara champions fated mates and cinnamon-roll heroes, Teresa defends the much-maligned miscommunication trope, and the group debates everything from Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Crescent City to Swordheart, Ashwalker, and Dungeon Crawler Carl.
If you’ve ever picked up a book solely because it promised enemies-to-lovers, immediately rejected one because of a trope you hate, wondered whether happily-ever-after is technically a spoiler, or found yourself asking whether the trope is supporting the plot or becoming the entire plot, this episode is for you.
CONNECT WITH THE MYTHIC MIC TEAM
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
👤 Britt – @BrittBooksit
👤 Amara – @Bored_Military_Wife
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.