Foz Meadows’ An Accident of Stars was one of the most delightful debuts of 2016, a new twist on a familiar trope of the portal fantasy that aimed to take about the conventions of the genre and consider what it would really be like to cross over into another world…and come back. Much of that fallout will play out in book two, A Tyranny of Queens, and judging by the cover art—which we’re showing off today, courtesy of the publisher—the journey this time is going to be a rather darker one.
Check out the full cover, featuring art by Hugo Award-winner Julie Dillon, after the official summary, and then keep reading for a special treat: an interview with Foz and another Angry Robot author.
Saffron Coulter has returned from the fantasy kingdom of Kena. Threatened with a stay in psychiatric care, Saffron has to make a choice: to forget about Kena and fit back into the life she’s outgrown, or pit herself against everything she’s ever known and everyone she loves.
Meanwhile in Kena, Gwen is increasingly troubled by the absence of Leoden, cruel ruler of the kingdom, and his plans for the captive worldwalkers, while Yena, still in Veksh, must confront the deposed Kadeja. What is their endgame? Who can they trust? And what will happen when Leoden returns?
Alongside the cover reveal, we’re presenting a previously interview conducted with Foz and fellow Angry Robot author Keith Yatsuhashi (Kojiki) during Worldcon 74 last summer. At that point, both of their books had just been released. They discuss the experience of being debut authors, and provide insight into the work that goes into writing sequels—two books slated to come out later this year. Enjoy.
I was trying to figure out a reason to interview you together, aside from the fact that you’re both Angry Robot authors, and I came up with the fact that you both had debuts out in 2016.
Keith: We came out on the same day!
Foz: We’re book siblings.
“Debut” has become a marketing term, when often the writers have trunk novels or previously published novellas.
Foz: I’ve got two YA novels that came out in Australia but not internationally, and I’ve got a novella that came out [in 2016].
Keith: This is the big debut for me. The same book was with a publisher that didn’t last a year, but talking with the folks at Angry Robot, they said, “No, it’s still a debut.”
What has been your experience as debut authors? In one sense, it’s exciting, because you’re a new talent, and no one has read a novel from you before. But also, you’re unproven, it’s harder to do promotion, and you don’t have a sales record.
Foz: It’s a bit different for me, because I do have the two YA fantasy books out in Australia, but no one had really ever heard of them outside of the hemisphere there. But people have an expectation for the kind of stuff I produce because I’m known for blogging, and so there’s a comparison to that. What’s exciting for me it that it’s an international thing, where it’s come out in the US, and the UK, and Canada, and Australia. So it’s exciting for me to get a wider release, and see reviews coming in from all over.
Keith: Reviews are scary.
Do you read your reviews?
Keith: I do. I can’t help it.
Foz: It is kind of compulsive.
Keith: You don’t know; you’re so into your own book that you don’t know how anyone else is going to receive it. And the only people who are looking at it are the people who like it. Your circle of friends, who are biased. Angry Robot, obviously they really like it. You don’t know how the market is going to feel about it. That part is scary. As for being a new author, it’s so hectic. We’re constantly writing blog posts, doing this promotion, doing that promotion. But Angry Robot has been fantastic in managing it. They know exactly when to hit me up for something. And Foz, I don’t know if this is true for you, but I’ve got a draft of [book two] due to them, so I’ve got the added pressure of getting that ready while doing all the debut work, and the excitement of seeing the book on the shelves. You’ve got some many different emotions going on.
Foz: Do you find yourself looking at the reviews coming in and thinking, “am I going to find some advice that will make the sequel better?”
Keith: Only the things that instinct tells me weren’t right. There are those areas where I knew I could have done something better. The other areas, I’m sort of taking it as, it just wasn’t right for that reader.
How deep are you into your sequels at this point?
Keith: My draft is just about done, then I’m going to give it one more read-through and hand it in.
Foz: Mine is not nearly finished. It’s a bit more than half at the moment. The problem is, I made a couple of small errors earlier on in the draft, and the consequences of them snowballed across what I wrote, and I could feel as I was writing it, “something’s not quite right.” But I thought I would push through and get as much done as I could. But I reached a point where I physically [couldn’t] write the next scene, because it’s dependent on something that hasn’t happened yet, because I screwed up this other things. So I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to desperately untangle that issue.
Keith: It’s like that whole time travel concept: you mess something up in the past… My situation is funny: I was at the point that I wasn’t sure if I could sell Kojiki, so I wrote the followup as a followup, but then thought, if I can’t sell [book one], this is going to have to be my standalone. So I went back and scrubbed any reference to it, and now I have to go back and put it in.
Foz, yours seems like a traditional sequel. Were you always planning multiple books?
Foz: I was always planning on two. I have an idea in my head where the third, if there is ever going to be one, would go in a slightly different direction. We have the character going into a world, and then coming back, and I always wanted that concept of aftermath, of what happens next, now that she’s come back, and how do you then deal with the fallout. I was always keen to deal with that in the second book.
Keith, did you plan a sequel?
Keith: Not really. It sort of grew organically. There’s one character [in Kojiki] who still has something to deal with, and I wanted to deal with that in the second book. I wanted to be careful, because I didn’t want to fall into the trap you see in comic books, where you say “this is the worst, worst, worst-ever villain,” and then have to say, “no, we’re kidding, there’s somebody worse out here!” So I found a story I know will work, and I’m really happy with it.
It seems like both of you are dealing with traditional fantasy tropes in real ways: urban fantasy and portal fantasy. Were you trying intentionally to subvert them?
Keith: I wasn’t. I fly by the seat of my pants, and it just sort of happened organically.
Foz: So, I have wanted for years to write about someone who goes from our world to another world. As a teenager, it was kind of an escapist fantasy, but I could never get it off the ground. It took an adult look at portal fantasy books, and going, ok, they’re a traditionally safe genre for the protagonist. You’ve got the Pevensies going to Narnia, and they come back, and time has folded up and they’re children again. Dorothy comes back from Oz, and Alice comes back from Wonderland. The thing that always frustrated me as a kid was the denial of consequence. All of these wonderful things they’d learned and done and experienced were held not to have mattered somehow, because the adventure has folded up.
On the other hand, there was a movie in the ’80s called Return to Oz, and it begins with Dorothy being institutionalized, because she’s been talking about what happened in Oz. And it’s this terrifying scene of her being locked up and having to escape, and I loved that, because it felt like, “ok, there is a consequence to this.” So I just wanted to write what I keep calling “an epic portal fantasy with the safeties off.” She’s not magically suspended in time, she’s aware that she’s being missed, she’s not a chosen one, she’s not there for a magical purpose, she’s just there. And can we make that a more meaningful journey for not being simplified?
Keith: For me, it became a fantastic device for more books, because they go through the portal, and there are an infinite number of worlds where all the characters are scattered. So I can just go from there, with sort of a Doctor Who concept: they can drop in, see the problem, and either fix it or not fix it.
Both of your books are coming along at a moment in the genres when there’s a greater emphasis on representation and gender. How do you think that has influence whether you get published, or how you decide what you want to write?
Foz: It creates a space where you—especially because I’m bi and genderqueer—all of the talk about diversity encourages you to feel safer to tell the kind of stories you’ve secretly been wanting to for a long time. And it’s not that you’re guaranteed an audience, but that you’re not doing something unprecedented and insane, that doesn’t really fit. It’s a bigger smorgasbord of things I can possibly do.
Keith: For me it was a no-brainer, because I was looking at who I am, being Japanese, and my family, and keeping that part of the characters’ lives. As I went forward, I did make the conscious decision to make certain characters people of color. I think it helped immensely in getting noticed and getting published. But that said, there’s such an interest in Japanese culture, and in anime, I think that was probably more of a selling point than the diversity. Though I hope the diversity matters.
Kojiki and An Accident of Stars are available now. You can preorder Kokoro (April 4) and A Tyranny of Queens (May 2) now.
