Interview with B. Dalton - Author of the Aura Wielders Series

Welcome to the exciting world of "Citadel," the first book in the captivating Aura Wielders series by B. Dalton. This novel presents a thrilling blend of portal fantasy, mystery, and elements of science fiction, all woven into a tale of self-discovery and transformation. As we delve into the life of Eli Walsh, a young man caught between the expectations of his family and the pressures of his own beliefs, readers are invited to explore a rich narrative filled with magic, identity, and the complexities of friendship. In this post, we will provide detailed information about the book, including its themes, representation, and the journey of its characters, along with an insightful interview with the author himself. Join us as we uncover the layers of "Citadel" and the vibrant world that awaits within its pages.

Book Information

• Title: Citadel

• Series: Aura Wielders 1

• Author: B. Dalton

• Publisher: Self-Published

• Publication Date: September 15, 2026

• Genre: Portal Fantasy, Mystery, bit of Science Fiction Dystopian Time Travel

• Age Category: New Adult 18+

• Known formats: e-book and Hardcover

• Known languages: English

• Format: Novel

• Representation: mental health, diversity, self-discovery

• Themes: identity, friendship, faith, power, belonging, transformation, found family

• Read around the world: Florida, USA - Author and Partial Setting

• Trigger Warnings: Violence, death, alcoholism, grief.

Book Synopsis

In "Citadel," Eli Walsh faces a crossroads between faith and destiny as he reluctantly prepares for a two-year church mission. Torn between his mother's expectations and his own wavering beliefs, Eli's life takes a dramatic turn when his rebellious best friend, Mary, introduces him to an ancient power. Transported to a magical realm, Eli encounters a world of warring armies and mystical forces, where he discovers his unique ability to amplify others' magic. As he navigates this new reality, Eli questions his understanding of belonging and faces dark forces determined to thwart his awakening. "Citadel" is a journey of self-discovery, magic, and survival, where the true battle lies within Eli's soul.

Interview Questions for B. Dalton

Q: What inspired you to write Citadel and the Aura Wielders series?

The idea had been turning over in my head for years. I even tried to write it once and gave up not long after. That early version wasn't a portal fantasy, and it stayed inert until I reframed it as one. That gave it a sharper edge. I grew up on portal fantasy, the kind of books where a door opens and a kid suddenly gets to matter somewhere else. I wanted to write one where the door opens at the exact moment the character's real life is about to swallow him. Eli isn't escaping boredom, he's escaping a version of himself that other people wrote. And then the new world hands him the same problems in a different shape, the life he left mirrored back at him with higher stakes. Once I saw it that way, I knew I had to write it.

Q: Can you tell us about your journey as a writer and how it led you to create this book?

The long way around. I went to film school convinced I'd be turning screenplays into the kind of movies people argue about online at 2 AM. Nobody made those movies, including the bad ones. But I never stopped caring about stories. Ideas kept landing in my notebooks, and once I stopped picturing them as movies, the answer was obvious. I still hesitated for years. I tried NaNoWriMo once and threw in the towel at 40,000 words. Then last October, my mother passed away. I took one day to mourn. The next day was November 2, two days into Novel November, and I sat down and said: I'm writing this book now. She would have wanted me to. She was the one who encouraged me to read and write as a kid. When I was maybe ten, she sat me in front of an old typewriter, and when I said I didn't know what to write, she told me to write a poem about whatever was beautiful to me.

Q: What themes in Citadel are most important to you, and why did you choose to explore them?

Faith and doubt, and the gap between the person you're expected to be and the person you actually are. Eli spends the opening chapters faking a belief to protect his mother's heart, and the book is about what happens when that mask stops being available. But the theme under everything else is vulnerability. Eli grew up learning to flinch, and his real education isn't magic, it's discovering that you can show people who you actually are and still be accepted. That letting someone close enough to hurt you is the only way anyone gets close at all. It's why the magic in this world runs on real bonds between people, which institutions can't manufacture. The power system is just that idea wearing armor.

Q: How did you develop the character of Eli Walsh? What aspects of his journey do you relate to personally?

Eli started as a question: what does it cost to be the kid who sees everything and understands almost none of it? He catches every shift in a room, every change in a voice, but the why of it escapes him. People surprise him constantly. He moves through the social world like everyone else is following a rule-book he was never given, so he watches, copies, and hopes. Some of that comes from learning to be small in a loud house. I relate to that part of him more than I'd care to admit sometimes. As for the personal part: I wrote Eli's first chapters while I was back in my hometown for my mother's funeral, walking around inside my own childhood and teenage years, taking inventory. A lot of doors opened that week that had been closed a long time, and what came through them went straight into those early pages. So yes. At one point in my life, I was him.

Q: Can you discuss the role of friendship and found family in Eli's story?

It's the spine of the book. Mary drags Eli to that mound because she refuses to lose him quietly, and on the other side he lands in a cadre of strangers who have to become something more than classmates to survive the Academy. There's a threshold most of us cross somewhere around that age, the first time you're alone in the world as an adult while still feeling like a kid, and the people who find you there aren't the family you grew up with. That's the terrifying gift of it. They meet you without your old story attached, and suddenly who you are is something you get to decide instead of something you inherited. Eli just gets the extreme version. I love found family stories where the family is inconvenient. Nobody in Eli's cadre would have chosen each other. That's what makes it matter when they do.

Q: What challenges did you face while writing a portal fantasy that incorporates elements of mystery and science fiction?

Keeping the mystery fair. There are real answers underneath Citadel's magic and the world it happens in, and a few readers will clock the clues early, which I want. The challenge is building a system rigorous enough to reward that kind of reader while keeping the story about the people. Whenever I had to choose between a cool mechanic and a character beat, the mechanic lost.

Q: How do you approach the representation of mental health and diversity in your writing?

Carefully, and from the inside. Most of what I've dealt with in my own life went undiagnosed, the way it does for a lot of people. There's a particular loneliness in struggling with something that has no name yet, being on the outside of rooms without knowing why, and only recognizing it years later for what it was. That hindsight is all over this book. Eli's anxiety isn't a trait I gave him for flavor. It shapes how he reads every room he walks into, and the book treats it as part of how he survives rather than a defect for magic to cure. I try to write people coping instead of people being lessons. Whether it works is the reader's call, not mine.

Q: What can readers expect in terms of character development throughout the Aura Wielders series?

Slow and earned. For Eli, Book 1 is about finding people who accept him. Book 2 is about what you do with that once you have it, because trust is one thing, and un-learning a lifelong habit of hiding yourself is another. It doesn't dissolve just because people finally see you. And his other demon comes along too: faith and doubt don't stay behind on Earth. A boy who spent years faking belief for other people has to figure out what belief looks like when the only person asking is himself. Mirah's arc runs the other direction. Readers meet her in Book 1 as a girl holding a promise, and in Book 2 she starts finding out who she is when the promise isn't the whole of her, and what it means to value herself for the first time. And all of it plays out in front of a much bigger audience, because the Citadel has announced its first Exhibition in a century.

Q: How do you balance world-building with character-driven storytelling in Citadel?

This being my first book, I can't claim I knew what I was doing. I learned most of it the hard way, which meant cutting a lot of material once I realized I was essentially info-dumping. There's a place for the info-dump, but by the end I understood that the world lands better when it arrives through the characters' experience of it. And when you get the world-building right, it isn't scenery anyway. It generates the conflicts that push the characters. So it's a balancing act, deciding what goes on the page and what stays off. Eventually I landed on a rule: if a piece of lore didn't change a decision somebody makes on the page, it went in a drawer for a later book. I'd like to say I never strayed from it, but the truth is I solidified that rule somewhere around the third time I broke it.

Q: What was your writing process like for this novel? Did you have a specific routine or ritual?

The first draft was a Novel November sprint, ugly and fast on purpose. I work full-time, so writing every day really meant writing every night, usually late into it. I was sleep deprived enough that a co-worker who knew what I was doing asked me whether this was a sprint or a marathon. I answered without thinking: both. On nights I was too tired, I'd go to bed early and set an alarm for 10pm, then get up and force myself into the chair. I slept through that alarm a few times. Most nights I didn't. I'd kill the internet at the router so I couldn't wander off, and eventually I moved an old Mac mini into the walk-in closet and made that the dedicated writing cave. I was also posting a chapter every night to a serial fiction site, and there was one reader there who commented on every single chapter. Usually just "Thanks for the chapter!" It helped more than he'll ever know. On the nights I didn't want to write, I'd think: he's read this far, he's on this adventure with me, I owe him the next chapter. Then I overshot. I kept writing well past November because I didn't know how to stop, and the finished draft turned out to be Books 1 and 2 in one enormous pile, which is why there's a Book 2 arriving in December. Then came seven editing passes, which sounds like punishment but was my favorite part. Drafting is a hurricane. Editing is the calm after, walking the property, deciding what to clean up first. I might have done seven more if a friend hadn't told me: enough already, put it out, you'll never be completely happy with it. He was right. At some point you call it done and move on. Another lesson learned.

Q: Can you share any behind-the-scenes stories or moments of inspiration that influenced the plot or characters?

The mound is real. (If you're ever near Fort Walton Beach, the Indian Temple Mound Museum is worth the stop: trailoffloridasindianheritage.org/indian-temple-mound-museum.) Florida is dotted with ancient indigenous mounds, and I've stood on a few at twilight and felt the in-between of them. Nothing as dramatic as a portal opening. More like a sense that the place is a seam, a connection across time between the people who built it and the rest of us who inherited it. That feeling is where the image came from: two kids on old earth, asking for something they don't understand. It arrived before almost everything else in the book and never changed through any draft.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from Citadel after finishing the book?

That being seen is worth the terror of it. Eli spends his whole life managing other people's ideas of him, and the story is what happens when that stops being possible. If a reader closes the book feeling a little braver about letting someone actually know them, that's the whole ballgame. Also, goth best friends are a blessing and should be protected.

Q: Are there any particular authors or books that have influenced your writing style or approach to storytelling?

So many. Too many to name, but I'll try anyway. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Otherland, The Wheel of Time. Orson Scott Card's early books were formative: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Songmaster, Wyrms, Enchantment. I can't defend his political views, but I read them all as a teenager and they left their mark. And not just fantasy. I read Shogun at fourteen on a dare and then went through everything else James Clavell wrote. King Rat is still vividly with me even now. If those books taught me anything, it's that people and their intentions are messy, that it's rarely black and white, and that the complexity is exactly what makes them worth studying. And since this is a book with a magic academy in it, I'd be lying if I said Harry Potter wasn't in the mix somewhere. More recently I read A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. So good. If only I could write institutional brutality half as well. Highly recommended.

Q: What are your thoughts on the current state of the fantasy genre, and where do you see it heading?

The gates are mostly gone and I think that's exciting. Indie publishing, web serials, and traditional houses all feed each other now, and readers move between them without caring much about labels. Whole genres that would never have made it past the old gatekeepers are rising to the top. LitRPG alone is proof: The Wandering Inn is an inspiration, and Dungeon Crawler Carl is getting a TV series. Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter showed a generation of authors what's possible. People say there are no new stories, but authors keep inventing new and interesting ways to tell them. Speaking of which, the magic school is supposedly an exhausted trope, and yet readers keep showing up, because school is where we all first learned who we were. That well doesn't empty.

Q: How do you envision the future of the Aura Wielders series?

Book 2, Aura Wielders: Exhibition, arrives December 15 and is up for preorder now. Book 3 has a title: Exile. Beyond that, I have outline enough for at least five or six books, maybe more. Mirah in particular is headed somewhere by book three or four that I can't wait to write. I'd love to say what's in store for Eli, but I'll keep those cards close for now. I'm treating this as a long game. I'd like to still be writing in this world ten years from now, and I'm pacing it like that's true.

Q: How did you develop the powers in the book? Did you encounter any difficulties while creating or writing them? If you could select one of the powers for yourself, which one would you choose?

Aura came from wanting elemental magic that felt structural instead of decorative. Less fireball, more architecture. The hard part was making sure every ability had a cost and a seam, because magic without seams is just special effects. As for Eli's particular relationship to magic, that's one of the book's mysteries, so I'll leave it for readers to discover. For myself, water wielding. I live in Florida. It's a practical choice.

Q: Can you tease any upcoming plot developments?

The title Exhibition is doing exactly the work you think it's doing. The Citadel likes an audience, and Book 2 gives it one. Everyone will be watching. That's the tagline. And here's a bit straight from the blurb: "The power Eli has spent so long burying may be the only thing that carries his cadre through the arena. Use it, and he shows the world exactly what he is. Hold back, and the only family he has found here pays the price." So yeah. The stakes are larger.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring authors looking to publish their first novel?

I don't know if I should be giving advice yet, so I'll just say what I learned. Finish the ugly draft. You can't edit a document that doesn't exist, and the version of you that revises is smarter than the version that drafts, so get the pages to that second person as fast as you can. Then be patient in revision, because that's where the book actually gets written. And then put it out. The only risk is you might have written a bad book. Hopefully by book nine, people will have forgotten. ;)

About the Author

B. Dalton, a name reminiscent of a beloved bookstore, embraces the irony of his moniker. Residing in Somewhere, Florida, he immerses himself in the natural beauty of the swamps, capturing moments on expired film with vintage cameras, and indulging in the ethereal sounds of dreampop, often in the solitude of his garage.

Dalton's passion for storytelling has been a lifelong pursuit, leading him to film school with dreams of transforming screenplays into thought-provoking films that spark late-night debates. Despite his aspirations, the opportunity to bring those visions to life eluded him, prompting a shift in his creative journey.

In a moment of inspiration, he resurrected an old Mac Mini from obscurity, setting it up in his walk-in closet. This marked the beginning of his literary adventure as he participated in Novel November, ultimately leading to the creation of his debut novel, Aura Wielders: Citadel. This work is a portal fantasy that delves into themes of faith, doubt, and the complexities of identity in a world indifferent to one's past.

When he is not crafting narratives, Dalton can often be found wandering through wetlands, where he whimsically imagines the mosquitoes as part of the atmospheric experience.

Conclusion

"Citadel" by B. Dalton is a remarkable entry into the realm of portal fantasy, skillfully weaving together themes of identity, friendship, and self-discovery. As readers journey alongside Eli Walsh, they are not only immersed in a captivating narrative filled with magic and mystery but also invited to reflect on their own experiences with faith, belonging, and the complexities of human connection. The insights shared by the author in our interview further illuminate the depth of the story and the personal inspirations behind it. With the promise of more adventures in the upcoming installments of the Aura Wielders series, readers can look forward to an evolving exploration of character and magic that resonates on many levels. Whether you're a long-time fan of fantasy or new to the genre, "Citadel" offers a rich and engaging experience that is sure to leave a lasting impression.