Today we’d like to introduce you to Magaidh Dunbroch.
Hi Magaidh, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story is probably a little less straightforward than most.
I spent five years in the military, which taught me a lot about discipline, resilience, and how to function when everything around you is a complete mess. After that, I went into Information Technology. It made sense on paper. I was good at it, it was stable, and it was a career I could build a life around.
The problem was… I hated how little it made me feel.
I kept coming back to stories.
I’ve always been a gamer, a reader, and a bit of a nerd. I’m the person who can disappear into a video game for hours, get way too invested in a fictional character, or sit down for a D&D session and somehow turn a simple adventure into an emotional crisis for everyone at the table.
I’ve always loved fantasy, but eventually I started noticing something while I was reading: I wanted to see myself in these stories. Not necessarily literally, but in the choices, the flaws, the weirdness, the complicated emotions. I wanted characters who weren’t always good. I wanted characters who made questionable decisions, loved too hard, wanted too much, and lived somewhere in that messy space between hero and villain.
And eventually I thought, Well… if I can’t find the stories I want to read, why don’t I just write them?
So I did.
That decision became Magaidh Dunbroch.
What started as me needing somewhere to put all the stories living in my head turned into Faedoroth—a world of gods, fae, magic, death, power, mythology, and people who are rarely as simple as they first appear.
There are definitely pieces of me scattered throughout it. My love of mythology. My obsession with fantasy. My gamer brain. My D&D chaos. My fascination with morally grey characters and the question of what we would actually do if the rules of our world didn’t apply.
Writing gave me something IT never could: a place where I could build the world I wanted to see and put the characters I wanted to read about inside it.
And honestly?
I’m still figuring out where this story goes.
I just happen to be having a hell of a lot more fun getting there.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I don’t think life is supposed to be a smooth road. Mine certainly hasn’t been.
Since becoming an author, having my little family, writing my stories, and getting to meet and connect with my readers, I’ve realized just how much healing and struggle happen in their own time. They aren’t linear. Some days you’re thriving; some days you’re just trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing, and both are okay.
I also know my struggles are small compared to what other people have faced. But they’ve still shaped me.
I’ve always been the kind of person who thinks, “If I don’t have the money to make it happen, I’ll learn how to do it myself.”
That attitude has probably saved me throughout my publishing journey.
When I started writing, I knew almost nothing about publishing. I was scared of making a mistake because, honestly, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. Eventually, I decided to stop worrying about getting everything perfect and just dive in.
So I learned.
I taught myself cover design. I learned interior formatting. I figured out the publishing side of things. I learned how to make connections, how to network, and—probably most importantly—how to find people who were chasing similar dreams and weren’t afraid to help when I couldn’t find the answers on my own.
I’m still learning. I probably always will be.
But I’m better because of the struggle.
Every problem made me learn something new. Every mistake taught me something. Every person I met added something to the journey. And every time I thought I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to do this, I somehow figured it out.
Mostly because I wanted this. I wanted to write my stories. I wanted to build my worlds. I wanted to see my books in readers’ hands. I wanted to create the kind of stories I had been looking for myself. So I kept going.
And somewhere along the way, the person who was afraid to make a mistake became the person who thinks, “Well… how hard can it be?”
Sometimes the answer is very hard.
But I’ll figure it out.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
What I do is a little bit of everything—and honestly, I like it that way.
I’m a dark fantasy author, but writing is only one part of what I do. I also handle my own formatting and cover design, and I’ve started doing the same for other authors. Along the way, I’ve become someone other writers come to when they’re trying to figure out the self-publishing world without losing their minds in the process.
I mentor authors through self-publishing, cover design, formatting, and all the little things nobody seems to explain when you’re first starting out. A lot of what I know came from teaching myself. I didn’t have a roadmap when I started, so I made one as I went.
That has become one of the things I’m most proud of.
Not because I know everything—I absolutely do not—but because I’m willing to figure things out. If I don’t know how to do something, I learn. If I make a mistake, I fix it and own up to it. If I can’t find an answer, I keep digging until I do. And if I find someone else struggling with the same thing, I try to make their path a little easier than mine was.
I think that’s also what sets me apart.
I’m not interested in making publishing feel like some secret club where you need to know the right people or have a mountain of money behind you. I want authors to understand what they’re doing and feel like they actually can do this.
And then there’s the writing.
That’s where things get a little more dangerous.
I write dark fantasy filled with gods, fae, mythology, morally grey characters, complicated relationships, and enough questionable decisions to keep things interesting. I like stories that make you fall in love with characters you probably shouldn’t trust and then leave you wondering why you’re still rooting for them.
Maybe that’s the common thread in everything I do.
I like figuring out how things work, and then I like helping other people build something of their own.
Whether that’s a book cover, a beautifully formatted manuscript, or an entire world full of gods and troublemakers, I want to make something that feels like it belongs to the person who created it.
And I’m probably most proud that I didn’t wait until I knew how to do any of it.
I just started.
Then I learned how to get better.
What does success mean to you?
For me, success is being able to look around and realize I built something that once felt completely out of reach. A life with my family and my amazing husband who supports all my feral dreams, stories with my name on them, readers who somehow found their way into the worlds I created, and other authors who trust me enough to let me help bring their books to life.
That means more to me than a number ever could.
There’s something a little surreal about watching a story that only existed inside your head become a real book—and then seeing someone else fall in love with it. You realize, somewhere along the way, that the thing you were quietly building became real.
So maybe success isn’t about finally knowing all the answers.
Maybe it’s about becoming brave enough to keep looking for them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.blackbowpublishing.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/author.mdunbroch
