Today we are happy to welcome Mishell Baker, author of Borderline. In case you missed our review of her book, it received 5 full stars! Definitely worth checking out.   Welcome to the Speculative Herald, Mishell! Thank you for answering some of my questions.   For those who may be unfamiliar with the story, can you give us a brief synopsis ofBorderline? A double amputee with borderline personality disorder gets recruited to a secret organization policing traffic between our world and a parallel magical one. Her first assignment is to find a missing fey nobleman who has vanished somewhere in Los Angeles. As she follows the trail of clues she begins to uncover a conspiracy that could lead to a war between the worlds.   Borderlineis a combination of several unique elements: the film industry, the realm of the fey, characters with mental illnesses, and more. How did you decide to bring all these elements together in a story? They say “write what you know,” especially with a first book, and so it began with my attempt to write about the things most familiar to me: Los Angeles, mental health, the entertainment industry. But I can’t seem to write any story…

I’ve been salivating over this amazing cover for months now, and I was so excited to be able to read Mishell Baker’s debut. I thought I was going to get one type of story, but ultimately Borderline blew me away with its odd—but somehow workable—combination of elements. First, the setting is Los Angeles, Baker’s hometown, and sunny Tinseltown turns out to be the perfect setting. The story revolves around a famous film director whose “muse” has gone missing. It turns out that every creative person on Earth has a muse from a parallel world called Arcadia, where the Seelie and Unseelie Courts are real, and the fey are not just the stuff of movies. And then there is Millie. Millie is definitely a new favorite character, and despite her rough edges I dare you not to fall in love with her. Baker has given her a double whammy of disabilities. First, she has borderline personality disorder (which I didn’t know anything about before I read this book) and she’s been institutionalized for the past six months after a suicide attempt, during which she lost both her legs. So not only is she mentally ill, but she’s a double amputee as…