Tell us a little about your latest or upcoming release.
So Beats A Hollow Heart is a sapphic gothic fantasy novella about losing the love of your life. I wrote it for Nicole Frail Books’ Cover Story Contest in February of this year, and still can’t quite believe I won! As an author, I think there are some stories you write and some stories that possess you; this was definitely the latter for me, even if there were some passages that made me want to tear my hair out.
It’s a story about grief and loneliness and what makes us human; it’s a celebration of women’s wrongs; it’s got a comic relief zombie called George.
Have you ever based your book or characters on actual events or people from your own life?
I’ve never pulled anyone wholesale from life, but as a writer it’s hard not to inject little pieces of your own life into your stories. If there’s a female character in my work that I want the reader to find sexy, she’ll always have a Mediterranean nose, because that’s what my fiancée has and I think it’s such a beautiful feature.
Is there a theme or message in your work that you would like readers to connect to?
So Beats A Hollow Heart is very much a story about grief, but it’s also about how queer and neurodivergent people view themselves in a world that can be very hostile towards us. I hope readers can find something meaningful and engaging within it, but at the same time I’m never really trying to teach my readers anything, just pointing at the little story from my head and saying, “wow, isn’t that f*cked up!”
When you’re not writing what do you do? Do you have any hobbies or guilty pleasures?
I love a good hobby. Most people in my life have received at least one cross-stitched gift in the past few years, and I’d love to try embroidery as well, although I find that a bit intimidating! I also pole dance once a week, which is good for my perfectionist soul—I encourage everyone to pick up a hobby they are dreadful at.
Is there a genre that you’d like to write that you haven’t tackled yet?
I’ve always been a huge lover of classic epic fantasy, but I don’t know whether I have the worldbuilding chops to attempt something like that, as much as I’d love to. If there is epic fantasy in my future, it’s pretty far off!
What book are you reading now?
I’ve just started The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. I love the Burning Kingdoms trilogy so I’m really excited for what she has in store for me with this new world.
What is in your to-read pile?
Since we’re currently in Sapphic September and definitely heading into spooky season, my TBR is feeling VERY gothic with Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, Bone of my Bone and My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna Van Veem, and A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson.
So Beats a Hollow Heart: A Novella B. M. Briar
Genre: Dark Fantasy/Gothic Horror/LGBTQ Fiction
Publisher: Attic Ebooks, an imprint of Nicole Frail Books, LLC
Date of Publication: August 18, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-965852-74-3 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-965852-73-6 (ebook)
ASIN: B0GX36X53Q
Number of pages: 116
Word Count: 22,000
Cover Artist: Covers by Sophie
Tagline: In a crumbling village of ghosts and grief, an assassin and a necromancer are drawn into a dangerous, intimate experiment to defy death—and loneliness.
Book Description:
A gothic horror story about losing the love of your life, So Beats a Hollow Heart follows a nameless assassin—a member of the feared Bloodcloaks—sent to rid a village of the necromancer who has been stealing its young women.
What the assassin finds is not the monster she expects, but a woman deep in grief, desperate to find a new body for the soul of her dead lover.
After her third experiment ends in failure, the necromancer—Isolde—turns her attention to the assassin. Neither woman can anticipate how profoundly they will be changed by Isolde’s fourth and final experiment.
So Beats A Hollow Heart is the winner of the Cover Story Writing Contest, hosted by Nicole Frail Books, LLC
Excerpt:
I
remembered the pain of transformation, if only as a haze of red and tearing
muscle. I remembered the awful rasp of my canines being filed blunt and the
burn of silver being placed over the stumps to keep my true nature at bay. I
had gone through hell so that girls like this wouldn’t have to, and now I was
failing her.
Isolde
walked into my field of vision, blocking my view of the tortured girl and
breaking me out of my spiral of self-pity; I folded up the memories and tucked
them away with the others, shifting my focus to the present. Isolde’s arms were
crossed, the tip of one boot tapping against the flagstones.
“This
is very impressive. Look more impressed,” she demanded.
“Can
I look horrified instead?”
Isolde
huffed, childlike and thwarted.
“I
suppose that will do,” she said. “You know, I was really counting on you to be
more entertaining than George. Do they surgically remove your personalities
when they pump you full of wolf’s blood?”
“I
don’t know. Do they surgically remove your morals when you sign the Mage
Registry?”
“Ha!
I’ll have you know that several of my colleagues are terrible sticks in the mud
and would take great offence at the suggestion. I’m quite certain they will
stay within the bounds of safe magic use and never go even a little bit mad.”
“And
you?” I ventured. “Have you gone a little bit mad?”
“Of
course you would see brilliance and call it madness. If I do go mad, it’s
because I have no one but a zombie to talk to. And George, I suppose.”
She
smiled, just a little quirk of her mouth at one side as if the two of us were
sharing a joke. I had never imagined that I would be gently needled by a
target. I did not like it.
I
would not say that I sulked. I had simply elected to end the conversation. It
was in Isolde’s interest to keep me talking, I reminded myself: if I was
talking, I was not thinking, was not planning. I needed to do both if I wanted
to get myself and the girl to safety. I could come back for Isolde later. Or
someone else could.
The
problem was that, devoid of entertainment, Isolde had taken to scratching the
bottom of a glass beaker with a scalpel. Her work was precise, careful, but the
sound of sharp metal against glass scraped at my ears, interrupting all
attempts at thought. I glared at her.
This
was a mistake.
“I’m
sure you must be wondering what I’m doing,” said Isolde, without looking
up.
“Not
particularly.”
“I’m
engraving the soul-binding runes into the base of this bottle.” She paused.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“No.”
She
was going to tell me anyway.
“I
am engraving the soul-binding runes into the base of this bottle,” Isolde
repeated, her voice heavy and her words overenunciated as if my disinterest was
an obstacle she could overcome by sheer force. “So that I can recapture the
soul, should the experiment fail.”
About the Author:
B. M. Briar spent most of her childhood in fantasyland, whether that be immersed in a book or forcing her long-suffering dad to play pretend for entire weekends at a time. Little has changed over the past two decades, except that she’s given her dad a break and taken up DnD instead.
Her work reflects her own experiences as a queer woman, is increasingly gothic, and always a little bit magic. She is the winner of the first Cover Story contest from Attic Books. So Beats A Hollow Heart is her debut novella.
Outside of writing, she is a cat mum, a cross-stitcher, and a truly abysmal pole dancer.
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