🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where beauty and brutality coexist, trauma is treated with reverence, and fantasy becomes a language for healing.

This week, hosts Bethany Amanda and Sara Santillan sit down with Louve-CH, author of the hauntingly lyrical romantasy Awakening of the Starborne. This conversation explores what it means to write through pain, to build worlds that can hold broken things, and to trust your voice even when it scares you.

Louve takes us inside the emotional origin of Awakening of the Starborn, including how big, unmanageable feelings and a season of personal upheaval became the catalyst for a story steeped in trauma, resilience, and transformation. We talk heroines shaped differently by the same wounds, the power of lyrical prose to hold contradiction, and why she intentionally refused non-linear flashbacks in favor of a grounded, linear journey.

We dive deep into Savae’s arc: a feral, stubborn, trauma-forged heroine navigating deadly trials, an elite war university, dragons, and a world that is at once breathtakingly beautiful and relentlessly dangerous. Louve unpacks how healing shows up on the page — not as instant transformation, but as repetition, backsliding, and slow, hard-won growth.

We also get candid about the realities of indie publishing: seven months of editing, rewriting an entire 196,000-word book into present-tense lyrical prose, the sting of negative reviews for experimental writing styles, and the joy of a street team that feels like found family. This is a conversation about craft, courage, and the radical act of writing the book only you could write.

🐺 What happens when a “wolf-raised” inner child finds her way into epic fantasy?
✨ How can lyrical prose carry both beauty and devastation at once?
🔥 And what does real, messy healing look like when dragons are involved?

This episode is a must-listen for readers who love emotionally rich fantasy, aspiring authors wrestling with doubt, and anyone who believes stories can be both ferocious and tender.

🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT…

✨ Writing through grief, overwhelm, and “big emotions” — and why channeling them into art saved Louve.
✨ The idea of women being shaped differently by the same trauma.
✨ Choosing lyrical prose to hold contradiction, emotion, and atmosphere.
✨ Switching an entire debut novel from first-person past to present tense for immediacy.
✨ Savae as a feral, stubborn, deeply wounded heroine — and why that matters.
✨ Deadly trials, an elite war university, dragons, and the cutthroat worldbuilding of Awakening of the Starborne.
✨ First-person POV as a tool for intentional confusion, immersion, and emotional impact.
✨ Facing criticism of lyrical styles (à la When the Moon Hatched) and choosing her audience anyway.
✨ Writing for her inner child — and for readers who have lived through trauma.
✨ Letting characters (especially Savae) derail the plot — and writing around them.
✨ The secret subplots that will span the trilogy and a future prequel series.
✨ Why debut authors should take their time: “You only publish your debut once.”
✨ Comparison, bad reviews, and why you must know who you’re writing for.

CONNECT WITH US

🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Louve-CH – @uniqueradiance

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