For the Love of Stories That Stay With Us

I don’t remember the exact moment I fell in love with reading. I wish I did. I wish I could point to one book, one sentence, one particular afternoon and say, There. That’s where it all began.

But I can’t. Apparently, I neglected to document my origin story.

I’m kidding. I can.

First, it was the Twilight Saga. Then Percy Jackson had me in an absolute chokehold. Somewhere along the way, I was introduced to Sandra Brown far too early, which I’m sure was excellent for my development.

I firmly believe that combination shaped both my reading preferences and my writing style. Supernatural complications, impossible stakes, and romantic tension I had no business knowing that much about yet.

In hindsight, none of this is particularly mysterious.

But what I remember most is the feeling.

That strange, wonderful ache of finishing a book and realizing I wasn’t ready to leave. Of closing the cover and sitting quietly because the characters had somehow become people I knew. People I missed. People who had never existed outside someone’s imagination, yet had made a home inside mine.

There’s something almost unfair about that—the way someone can arrange words in just the right order and leave a complete stranger feeling things they don’t quite know what to do with.

I’ve spent a good portion of my life chasing that feeling. Voluntarily, which makes it difficult to complain.

A Little Bit of Magic

Fantasy has always held a special place in my heart. I love impossible worlds, ancient magic, dangerous creatures, and the possibility that something extraordinary might exist just beyond the ordinary.

Preferably somewhere with fewer emails.

But truthfully? It’s never been the magic that keeps me reading.

It’s the people.

Give me a character who makes terrible decisions for understandable reasons. Someone who loves too fiercely, carries grief like a second skin, or wants to be good but doesn’t always know how. Give me a villain whose story makes me question whether they were ever really the villain at all.

I want characters who feel painfully human, even when they’re anything but.

I don’t need them to make good choices. I do need to understand why they’ve chosen the worst available one.

For me, that’s where fantasy becomes more than an escape. Somewhere between the magic and the monsters, I find something familiar: a fear I haven’t named, a longing I recognize, a question I’m still trying to answer.

The worlds may be impossible. The feelings rarely are.

The Storytellers Who Made Me Want to Write

There are authors whose books I’ve enjoyed, and then there are authors who have made me put a book down and think, God, I wish I could do that.

Occasionally, I have to take a short break from admiring them to be annoyed about it.

Patrick Rothfuss is one of them. His writing reminds me that words can be beautiful without losing their purpose—that the way a story is told can matter just as much as the story itself.

Sarah J. Maas showed me how deeply attached I could become to fictional people. I love the emotional intensity of her stories, the heartbreak, and the way her characters can be powerful and vulnerable at once. I would have appreciated some advance notice about the emotional investment, but here we are.

Jasmine Maas inspires a different kind of admiration. I love the chaos, the darkness, the humor, and her willingness to write characters who aren’t particularly interested in being likable. It’s refreshing to meet fictional people who haven’t prepared an apology for being themselves.

With Jennifer L. Armentrout, it’s the tension that draws me in: the banter, the secrets, the romance that is both infuriating and impossible to put down. Her stories remind me how much can be said through the things characters leave unspoken—even when one honest conversation might save everyone a considerable amount of trouble.

And H. D. Carlton reminds me that fiction doesn’t always have to be comfortable. I admire her willingness to explore the darker, more unsettling corners of human emotion. Sometimes I want a story to unsettle me. Apparently, everyday life wasn’t being thorough enough.

Then, perhaps a little unexpectedly, there’s Taylor Swift.

I know. A singer-songwriter in a conversation about fantasy authors.

It’s my website. I’m allowing it.

What I admire most is her ability to bring a scene or memory to life with a handful of details. A color, a season, an ordinary object—suddenly, each carries more emotional weight than it should.

That’s the kind of imagery I love.

I want a hallway to hold a memory. A crown to feel heavier than its metal. A touch to mean something entirely different depending on who gives it.

I want the little details to matter.

These storytellers move me in different ways, but they all make me want to return to the page—not to write like them, but to discover what my own stories might become.

The Terrifying Part About Writing

Here’s something I didn’t fully understand until I started taking my own writing seriously:

There’s a certain safety in reading someone else’s story.

Writing my own feels different.

As a reader, I can disappear into someone else’s imagination. As a writer, I’m the one leaving pieces of myself on the page. Then I’m expected to proofread them.

Sometimes I stare at something I’ve written and wonder whether it’s any good. Whether the characters make sense. Whether the words sound as beautiful on the page as they did in my head. Whether anyone will ever care about these imaginary people as much as I do.

And beneath all those questions is the one I find hardest to ask:

Am I capable of writing the story I want to tell?

My brain generally raises this question when I’m trying to fix a comma.

I think that’s part of why I chose to write under the name B.R. Vesper. There’s comfort in a little distance between the person I am every day and the person brave enough to share her imagination with the world.

She sounds like someone who knows what she’s doing. I’m hoping the name helps.

Even when I’m writing about magic, war, ancient courts, or impossible love, there are pieces of me hidden in the story.

My fears. My questions. The things I find beautiful. The things I haven’t quite figured out.

Sharing those pieces with strangers is terrifying.

But I think it’s worth doing.

So, Here We Are

I’m still learning how to build worlds that feel lived in, how to write characters who exist beyond the plot, and how to trust my own voice without constantly comparing it to the writers I admire.

Some days, the words come easily. Other days, I spend an embarrassing amount of time rewriting the same paragraph and wondering whether I’ve forgotten how sentences work.

Eventually, I put it back the way it was. A productive afternoon.

But I keep coming back.

Because somewhere along the way, reading stopped being enough. I didn’t just want to visit impossible worlds anymore.

I wanted to create one.

Maybe, someday, someone will close one of my books and sit quietly for a moment because they aren’t quite ready to leave. Maybe a character I dreamed up will make a home inside someone else’s imagination.

I can’t think of a greater compliment.

Until then, I’ll be here: reading too much, overthinking every sentence, falling hopelessly in love with fictional people, and trying to turn the stories in my head into something real.

If you’ve found your way here, I’m glad you did.

Welcome to my little corner of the impossible.

I’m still working on the lighting.

With love and a little darkness,

B.R. Vesper