Meet Gabriella Batel

We recently connected with Gabriella Batel and have shared our conversation below.

Gabriella , so good to have you with us today. We’ve got so much planned, so let’s jump right into it. We live in such a diverse world, and in many ways the world is getting better and more understanding but it’s far from perfect. There are so many times where folks find themselves in rooms or situations where they are the only ones that look like them – that might mean being the only woman of color in the room or the only person who grew up in a certain environment etc. Can you talk to us about how you’ve managed to thrive even in situations where you were the only one in the room?
You see that square brown necklace I’m wearing in all my pictures? Generally, I’m the only one in the room wearing it. It’s a scapular: I’m Catholic—and how many of us have you heard of writing thrillers and dark fantasy? Or, better yet, how many thrillers or dark fantasies have you read where the main character is Catholic (and not completely awful)?

As a teenager, I wanted books about people like me, but they just weren’t out there, at least not where I could find any. So, I decided I would write them. Eventually, that little seed of an idea was bursting out of every piece of me.

As I grew in the field, though, I realized publishing would be sticky for me. Mainstream traditional publishers would have a bit of a gamble (which, let me tell you, they do <i>not</i> like) representing my controversial culture, but I certainly don’t write Christian or “Catholic” fiction either.

Then, at a writer’s retreat in the foothills, which I received as a gift, I met a lovely lady, Corinne O’Flynn, my mentor and a USA Today bestselling author. I can still picture where we were, walking on our way to the dining hall, when she told me that there was another option: I could tell any story I wanted and get it out into the world if I was willing to independently publish. If I was willing to take that step into the deep on my own.

I was. I am. I’ve loved that decision from day one. It was nerve-racking to talk to a big author I didn’t even know at the retreat, but now, my mentor, Corinne, has had my back at every turn. It was daunting to research and reach out to editors and cover designers, but now they are the most amazing friends and allies. It was exhausting to learn and apply each step to getting my book out there, but now I know the process by heart and can offer it to others. Each step along the way, it has taught me: be bold.

If you’re not what people are used to, that’s going to make them nervous. In fact, it’s probably going to tick some of them off. I am, for sure, not everyone’s cup of tea. And that’s okay. Don’t be timid and silent in the hopes of dulling the discomfort. Everyone’s already uncomfortable. Own it. Make the most of it. No, make something EPIC from it. You, your passion, and your mission are a voice as unrepeatable as your fingerprint. If it’s silenced, we’ll never get a second chance to hear the song.

For me, that meant starting my own independent publishing company, Crown of Thorns and Roses Press. And then it meant talking to people about my two thrillers. To family (who know me as their young darling and had never read my darker half). To friends (who I didn’t think read as a hobby). To people at church (who I thought would hate the gritty content). To bookstagrammers (who I thought would be put off by my perspective). To Catholic authors (who, let me again clarify, write in a completely different genre). And to strangers (enough said).

From experience, let me tell you this: whoever you are and whatever you offer, your audience is massive. They just don’t know about you yet.

My mom, who only reads educational non-fiction when she has to, was brought to tears. My friends critique it—and then beg for more. Elderly church ladies love my gritty thrillers. The spicy romantasy lovers on Instagram rave about my story with my Catholic protagonist. Christian romance authors said they’ve been dying for a book like this. Two cashiers at the supermarket (at the same time!) wrote down my name and the title, excited to read it. And, dream come true, the YA thriller fans have fallen head over heels for it. I have fans in (at least) four different countries. I have fanart.

And once you start making some noise, your people turn their heads. I met an extremely talented horror author who’s Catholic. I talk with a major dark fantasy author—as in, her books are front and center in Barnes and Noble—who’s Eastern Orthodox. I found an entire writer group of people like me (and an editing job!). From there, it only snowballs in the best way imaginable.

I’m not saying that everything is going to be straight success and support. It’s not. I run face-first into a wall as many times as I make a connection. But it turns out, I’m not the only one in the room that looks like me. I just couldn’t see them standing there yet. I needed to raise my voice for us to meet. And now that we have, we’re all pulling each other to the front.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I read <i>Divergent</i> by Veronica Roth when I was 12 and was absolutely smitten. I was in love with words. I was in love with stories. I was in love with characters. I wanted in. I wanted to make something as beautiful and moving as this. I wanted to give people the chance to experience all those emotions surging through me—and I wanted to bring my own spin to it.

The past ten years have been iterations of me growing into this craft that I love so much. Have an idea, dive right in, execute it poorly, learn from the masters, go back and change it, read, get a better feel for the words and the story, start from scratch, have a new idea, make it deeper, make it better, have fun, struggle, have fun, learn, practice, put down the masterstroke, learn some more. Repeat. I can barely even express how much I love creating characters that make my heart throb, and spinning them into words and into worlds that reach in to touch souls.

The piece that makes all the 2am nights and eye exhaustion and burnout and public speaking worth it is being able to make people really <i>feel</i>. Exhilaration, suspense, glee, heartbreak, curiosity, disgust, excitement, fury, enchantment—every emotion that makes us human, I get to dig into, summon up, and give to my readers.

That’s what I’m aiming for with every book, chapter, page, sentence, word. And as an editor, I have the immense treat of helping others do the same.

So far, I’ve completed a thriller duology, the Don’t series. The first book, Don’t, follows Paityn D’Agata, a teenage girl with near-terminal lupus. The pain keeps her up at night, and that’s how she crosses a murderer—for the second time. Now, the murderer wants to keep her quiet about what she saw. And the best way to keep Paityn quiet is to silence her family.

Then, the second book, which was released this past October, picks up three years later with two side characters: Mercedes and Luiz. Mercedes, the one left behind, with only her baby sister left. Luiz, the one who took everything from her. But Luiz’s father, Roman, isn’t satisfied with how everything ended. He wants a blood debt paid. But Mercedes won’t lose the people she loves most, not again, and Luiz won’t let anyone else suffer because of him, even if that means they are each other’s only allies.

(PSA: there’s a spinoff coming in 2026.)

I also have a prize-winning story about an apocalypse survivor and her medusa guardian, in <i>There Be Dragons</i>, an anthology from LegendFiction. In 2025, I’m publishing my very first fantasy mystery-thriller, titled <i>Ending</i>, the first in the Element Cycle duology. I just finished an outline to <i>Othecary</i>, the first in a horror duology involving an infinite empty library and a dislocated soul, and am mulling over the world of some creatures called sangrinwraiths.

So, yes, lots of crazy fun.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the most important quality in any type of journey is relentlessness. But let me elaborate: relentlessness isn’t glitzy. I think it’s easy to have this image of natural-born herculean strength for a glorious task, immortalized in a polished pose. You are going to need a fierce amount of strength, but there’s nothing glamorous about it. It’s not like the movies.

There are moments when you hate the slog, you can’t fathom that there are so many obstacles, the list of annoying little tasks is overwhelming on top of the list of intimidating big strides, you wonder if it’s worth it, you want to quit, and you, against your better judgement, waste some time on YouTube because you’re just so tired, then go to bed feeling like you failed. There are days like that. The important thing is that you remember why you started: you remember this awesome creation that is burning inside you, and you pick yourself up, swipe the dirt from your skinned knees, and keep tackling that mountain one step at a time. The view keeps getting better from higher and higher up.

A skill that has helped me immensely is letting go of worrying what people think about me. Your work isn’t you—your value (or even the work’s value, for that matter) doesn’t fluctuate depending on other people’s reactions. You can decide that feedback isn’t conducive or applicable to your goal and let it fall aside, or you can apply it as useful advice to bolster your next steps, but nobody is ever going to do everything perfectly for everyone. If I try to accomplish that impossible—literally impossible—task, I am going to wind up undermining myself. I wouldn’t have written my most powerful scenes if I tried to please everyone.

Again, it’s not some magical knack that you are born with; it’s something you have to nurture. My first instinct is to care deeply about people’s opinions, so when things sometimes (often?) don’t work out or land well, that stings—a lot. To keep moving forward, though, I have to remember that whatever happened, happened; I can’t change it, and I can only grow from there. And that’s freeing when I try something new or approach people. I don’t have to do something perfect. I can just do something awesome.

Finally, the ability to gain a feel for my craft by osmosis (e.g. practice) has been invaluable to me. With any art, including writing, there are certainly rules and best practices to make your work good; that’s why it’s called a craft, and we’ve all seen what happens when that’s missing. But on the flip side, there’s no formula for it. No matter how many educational books you read, lectures you attend, or classes you take, there’s that element that you can’t school-teach. Take sketching as an example. I can read all the books on sketching theory and symmetry and shading, I can listen to the masters teach, I can study the lines and lighting of objects, but I will never actually get good at sketching until I sit down and <i>sketch</i>. The same goes for writing. You have to get your hands dirty, try, fail, try again, fail, try again, fail a little better, and by soaking in your own creation, you’ll find your own voice and flow. I had to rewrite a novel from scratch at least four different times to get to this point. It’s hard sometimes, but it is so worth it because that’s what takes you from a story structure sheet to a striking novel.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I am absolutely, always, all the time, looking for people to collaborate with. I’ve talked a lot about the joy of writing, which is 100% true, but that’s only a sliver of the job of independent publishing. A massive amount of it is finding that audience, and to do that, you have to meet and connect with a lot of people. And a great way (my favorite way, honestly) to do that is through social media, particularly YouTube, Instagram, and podcasts. Send me an email at askgabi@gabriellabatel.com, and put “Bold Journey Collab” in the subject line, and I would be beyond excited to join you on your channels/accounts for fun bookish and/or author videos, reading experiments, book swaps, plain fun conversations, or anything that’s an easy, relatable time where a bunch of people can let loose and chat about books.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
No credits, all self-taken

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