An interview with Aurora on Southern Discomfort

Thanks to y’all, The Tales of the Scorned Feminine Rage Charity Anthology raised over $1,000 in two days! It’s incredible that we’re able to donate royalties to funds that will serve others in ways our country needs it most during this time.

The anthology will be unpublished at the end of July, so you still have a chance to grab the ebook or one (or all!) of the four volumes available in paperback. Plus, it’s available to read through Kindle Unlimited, so save it to your library now!

Please know while the anthology will be unpublished, Southern Discomfort will be republished on its own at a later date.

I’ve been wanting to write a sapphic Southern Gothic romance for a while now, so I’m stoked I finally had the chance to do it and for a great cause (even if writing it felt like pulling teeth). I feel like I didn’t talk much about this one though, so I thought a little interview about it might be fun for this newsletter.

An interview with Aurora about Southern Discomfort

How did you come up with the title?

I feel like “Southern discomfort” is a common play on the name for a liquor of similar wording, so basically what happened is I used that as a placeholder… and ran with it because if it fits, it sits. And that title sat, boy, I tell you what.

How long did it take you to write Southern Discomfort?

An embarrassing amount of time for it being just over 14,000 words. Total, I want to say it took over 3 months.

I struggled, y’all.

What made you want to write a sapphic story?

I’ve wanted to for a couple of years now but scrapped the idea… and then couldn’t think about anything else. And because it bothered me, I knew I had to write it. Also, I honestly didn’t know how to write a male main character within the context of feminine rage besides the obvious “support women’s wrongs” or killing characters, so I didn’t.

Do you think you’ll write another sapphic romance?

Nah. This is the only explicitly sapphic story idea I have, and I feel more comfortable writing male love interests.

So is there something in your own life that inspired Southern Discomfort?

Oh yeah, definitely. Val’s story is deeply rooted in my own.

What’s your favorite scene from Southern Discomfort?

Val and Noelle at the motel. I spent the longest time on that chapter, not only because it was hot AF, but because it tapped into a really deep and vulnerable vein that bled out on the page like pure art.

It’s over. I finally “got it out of my system.” I can leave this hotel room and go back to business as usual knowing we’ve made our peace and did what needed to be done. Now, we no longer have to wonder, what if?

She falls to my side. The AC unit kicks on again and cools our overheated, sweaty skin. I look over at Noelle with words loaded, but they disappear at the sight of her glassy eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I murmur, stroking her cheek with the backs of my fingers.

She takes a deep, shaking breath. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” she whispers to the ceiling. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

Words fail me—there’s none to be found in Noelle’s soft cries and sniffles. All I can offer is a hand squeeze.

She chokes on a sob. “Will you stop being ashamed of who we are?”

–Excerpt from Southern Discomfort by Aurora Graves

Will you write more of Val and Noelle’s story?

I’ve been on the fence about expanding Southern Discomfort. I planned on it at first because I had so much I wanted to incorporate that put me well over my word count limit for the anthology. But like I mentioned earlier, writing it was akin to pulling teeth, so I’m no longer inclined to go back to it.

Why haven’t you dropped the playlist for Southern Discomfort yet???

Okay, okay, shit, here you go:

It ain’t much, and I didn’t really actually listen to it while drafting, but it exists nonetheless.

What I’ve been into lately

The last two weeks have been hell with one of my famous nonstop spring migraines, so things have been slow and easygoing this season.

Reading

I’m still not really reading anything, though I was convinced to finally read No Way Out by Santana Knox last weekend since it’s short. Currently toying with the idea of a comfort read (e.g., Carian Cole or Nikki St. Crowe), but we’ll see.

Watching

Mr. Graves and I have been binge watching Letterkenny for the hundredth time, plus I finally got caught up on Shoresy. Every girl deserves a Shoresy, fuck 😅 I’m also trying to stop using streaming services, so I’ve been on YouTube quite a bit lately, watching a shit ton of Nick Crowley videos (my favorites being his series on YouTube’s Darkest Videos, YouTube’s Darkest Channels, Darkest Moments in TV History, etc.) and palette cleansing with gardening videos. My favorite channel so far is Epic Gardening. Also been watching a ton of concert performances and history of black metal videos for whatever reason.

Listening

Still listening to Amorphis almost exclusively. Like, before I went on vacation I actually bought their last four albums to listen to on the plane. Relearning how to download and play MP3s was an experience, y’all 🤣 But when I do manage to break away from the Finnish gods, I’m listening to a lot of death metal and, lord have mercy, that is scratching a special itch in my brain right now. New faves include Scar Symmetry, Insomnium, and Dark Tranquility.

Writing

Photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash

I can’t lie: I’m back on my rock star bullshit. 22,000 words into it, in fact! It’s kind of funny to think that I’ve struggled so much with writing since February 2024, unable to write much of anything, when I simply needed to keep doing what I was doing in the first place. Here I thought I wanted a break from rock star romance 😂

Maybe I’ll feel comfortable sharing a teaser in the next newsletter.

Till then, stay fucked, abominations ❤️‍🔥