Author Spotlight: Queer West Asian Fantasy author Fetin Sardaneh

Fetin Sardaneh (she/they) is a Palestinian and Kurdish author born in the UK. They write stories rooted in cultural memory, resistance, and queer joy. The Jinn’s Bargain is their debut novel.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: fetin.carrd.co
IG: @fetinsardaneh

Read a Sample of The Jinn’s Bargain:
Sample on Wattpad

Pitch for Book Clubs/Readers:
The Jinn’s Bargain is a West Asian epic fantasy, filled with chaotic sultans and tea-loving jinn.

Your novel The Jinn’s Bargain is out now, with a sequel coming soon! Let’s talk about the titular jinn first of all. Can you briefly explain what the jinn are to readers who might not be very familiar with them? 

Jinn are supernatural beings that show up in stories across the wider Muslim world. In the West, they’re often flattened into the ‘genie’, but that version does a disservice to their origins. They’re ancient and powerful, with a society of their own and an agenda that doesn’t revolve around humans. They don’t exist to serve us, and they certainly don’t grant wishes for free; a bargain with a jinn is always a trade… but is it ever worth the price?

The novel was inspired by Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, and Persian folklore, beyond the jinn element common to Islamic belief; what elements of these folk traditions did you use in The Jinn’s Bargain, and was there anything you wanted to use but couldn’t include in this first book? (And will it appear in other books?)

Beyond the jinn, I drew on the kinds of folkloric beings and stories, like the biçura and the gulyabani. I also leaned into protective folk practices and charm logic: the idea that names, offerings, talismans, wards, and small rituals serve an important purpose. There was definitely more I wanted to include, but Book One already had a lot of moving parts, so I saved some things for later. As the series goes on, I can’t wait to bring in more creatures and visit other realms—and I’m especiallyexcited to introduce angels!

Introduce us to your FMC, Esin Sultan – where did she come from as a concept, and how did she develop as a character as you were writing? What about her love interest, Zinar – what did you enjoy most about pairing these two sapphics?

Esin started as a very specific concept in my head: a sultan who’s loud, makes reckless choices, and is incredibly dramatic. But the more time I spent with her, the more her humour became a shield with dents in it. She loves hard, commits fast, panics easily, and would sacrifice herself to keep her loved ones safe.

Zinar was born from the kind of character I can never resist: disciplined, and allergic to spectacle. She’s a Mîrzade who shows up through actions rather than speeches. Pairing them was a joy because the push-and-pull is constant: a classic black cat x golden retriever dynamic (very Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan-coded!). Simply put, Esin is all impulse and radiance; Zinar is restraint and devotion.

Let’s talk about the setting for the novel – what inspirations, research, and experiences went into creating this world, and what challenges did you face during your worldbuilding process?

For the setting, I drew heavily from pre-modern Anatolia and its neighbours, then built a secondary world on top of that so it could feel familiar without being a copy-paste of real history. A lot of my research was a mix of genuine study and very enjoyable procrastination: I watched an embarrassing number of Turkish historical dramas, then fell into rabbit holes on court etiquette, dynasties, succession, and how hierarchy actually moves through a palace.

The biggest challenge was Kurdish history. So much is erased, contested, or filtered through biased sources, so it took extra work to read critically. I cross-checked what I could, and leaned on Kurdish scholars and historians where possible.

Queer joy, resistance, and cultural memory are key elements of your work; can you tell us a little bit about why these elements are so important and central in your writing, and in particular, what do you want readers to encounter when they turn the pages?

A big part of why I wrote The Jinn’s Bargain is simple: I wanted to read a book like it, but I couldn’t find it. Magical fantasies aren’t as mainstream in Turkey, and queer themes are often censored. Kurdish representation is also scarce, and when it does appear it’s too often framed through a negative lens. When readers turn the pages, I want them to step into a world where people like us exist fully: complicated, powerful, messy, funny, loved, and worth writing legends about.

Can you share the premise for Book 2, and give us an idea of when it might be out?

The Stormcaller’s Lament takes everything you thought was devastating in The Jinn’s Bargain and proves it was only the warm-up. The grief hits harder, and the stakes escalate fast!

Esin, Selim, and Zinar are still dealing with the political fallout from Book One, while a much darker threat begins to reveal itself. Readers will also step deeper into the jinn realm and get to explore its strange bureaucracy. I don’t have a locked release date yet, but I’m aiming for late summer to early autumn.

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight.

Today: Clayton Graham is an award winning Australian author of several science fiction novels and short story collections. He has won many book awards including Author’s Show ‘50 great writers you should be reading’, Readers’ Favorite International Award finalist, and Book Excellence Awards finalist.

A background in aerospace engineering encourages his thoughts to surge skyward and well beyond...

https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/author-spotlight-clayton-graham/

#AuthorSpotlight #ScienceFiction

Deb Olin Unferth: Take Your Time

In this interview, author Deb Olin Unferth discusses going from scenes in a notebook to her new novel, Earth 7.
The post Deb Olin Unferth: Take Your Time appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/deb-olin-unferth-take-your-time

#BeInspired #Interviews #WriteBetterFiction #AuthorSpotlight #AuthorSpotlightSeries

Author Spotlight: Dark Flash Fiction author Narcissa Netal

Narcissia Netal (she/they), formerly Andi Galupa, is a writer from Lockport New York, and at eighteen years old, has already published eight to nine books (depending on what you count), at the time of writing this! Her goal is to write and publish a book a season and build worlds out of these books.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Instagram: @narcissia_netal
Threads: @narcissia_netal
YouTube: @NarcissiaNetal

Book: The Coldest Star (B&N)

Elastic Stage: narcissiasdiscordantdiscography
Bandcamp: andisdiscordantdiscography

Book Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs:

An uncomfortable story about classism and power from the perspective of an elite with no remorse.

Your story The Coldest Star is a piece of flash fiction based on the ‘Christmas.Inc’ world. What is Christmas.inc for those who don’t know, and how old were you when you started writing these books/how long have you been developing these ideas and characters?

Christmas Inc came out when I was eighteen, back in Winter’s publishing run. I publish every season, and it was the first novel in the “potential” world of Christmas.Inc. That was explicitly a “Literary Middle Finger” to what Christmas has become and corporatocracy/the death of meaning, explored through a rather extreme analogy.

When I started wanting to do Flash Fiction, this was a story I kinda sat on for a bit and it came out A LOT more violent. George Hulture went from a scummy salesman to a terrible human being.

This piece is an explicit critique of power, wealth, and classism – how has your experience growing up in New York as Gen Z influenced your writing and your perspectives?

So although this is a valid critique, I would rather like to point to my own trauma rather then just New York and Gen Z. A lot of my inspiration always comes from my own experience.

A lot of my inspiration always comes from my own experience, having survived extreme child abuse from my father, domestic abuse, bullying, a suicide attempt- so honestly, I’ve seen the worse of man. Having gone through everything, it really changes you. I have a short film, self filmed- more of a video essay, “4, 13, 2007” which is more of a good example of what I’m talking about.

So I pull a lot from my own discomfort with – for lack of better words – existence. Being trans, having to live with these memories. I feel we always run away from them, or dissociate or distract, but I’m alive because I face it. I “integrate” it, and learn to become better. Now living in a time where abject meaning has died, and commercialism and comfortability is worshipped, it makes me feel obligated to pull from these darker expierences to talk about these things we refuse to acknowlegde.

Who better to tackle the uncomfortable then the uncomforted you know?

Tell us about your main character, George Hulture’s journey, and how his psychology was developed. What was it like to delve into the mind of a character like that, and what drove you to create him?

You know, it was terrifying. George Hulture as a character really evolved in this piece of writing. He’s not supposed to be liked, and I never intended him to be. He’s a terrible human being, and when creating him originally for “Christmas Incorporated”, I made just a scummy CEO. With this piece, written to be a psuedo-prequel, he’s become much more terrifying and horrible, with his mindset on “classes” and his overall view of wealth and power being summed up in the quote, “Power is not dictated by statistics. It’s dictated by what you’re willing to do, despite the statistics.”

Diving into a character like him is terrifying, because he is morally corrupt with what he does. Having grown up in wealth, having all of this power, he doesn’t see people as humans. So you have to pull yourself into that mindset of “What if people are just toys?” which is… scary. A lot of times with myself, given how much I had thought and done in my past or seen, I pull out individual expierences or maybe take an emotion or thought and change it drastically (or not, depending) to make a character. For his psychology, he basically sees himself as god.

He’s essentially a narcissist, with a grand delusion of being invincible. In this short story/mini book, he’s told how his “confidence will be the death of him” and later that becomes true in this world. He’ll never understand empathy, because he’ll never have to. He’s had everything handed to him, and even his trauma affected his world view.

He’s had everything handed to him, and even his trauma with what his father did with his mother (having her lobotomized, coercered/threatened her life just to give him a heir, selling her out to other men after the lobotomy) affected his view, because Hulture grew up with a man who practically owned the world, and a brain-dead passed-around toy at this point (disgusting to even type that).

He’s the type of character that I “love” to write, not because I enjoy it in the moment or after- quite the contrary, but because their importance as characters serve to the higher narrative or critique. I quite hate him, and to even talk about him as a character disturbs me a bit, but thats the point of his character. He’s not meant to make you feel good.

What representation will readers find in your books, and why is this rep important to you to include?

I treat representation a lot differently then I think most people do. I remember growing up, I’d read novels where a character would be trans, or autistic, or gay and that would be all they had. Or even that being the selling point. And I guess thats fine, but even today I ranted a little bit about it because it shouldn’t be a selling point.

Though that sounds weird, I shouldn’t have to yell at you that I’m trans, or representation shouldn’t be about watering down a character to a label. There are minority characters in my books (genderfluid, trans, lesbian, and more). I don’t make it a selling point. Because it’s not. They’re human beings, and with the respect they deserve, they will be expanded past their identity. What they stand for, what they want, what they think. Their identity will play a role in a sense, but they’re a human being. They’re always going to be treated as such.

Representation is handled as it should. Showing these people are normal human beings, treating them with the respect they deserve, and telling their stories – whether it be explicit to their identity or not.

What content notes would you give readers, and can you tell us why you write about these topics?

This book is… honestly very dark. I’m gonna say Sexual Abuse, Violence, Murder – there’s A LOT in it so understand that this is not going to be an easy read. I write about this topics because there stuff I’ve witnessed and experienced. Earlier, I talked about trauma, but also from that comes a lot of philosophy and psychological things I read up on.

I feel that with everything I’ve been through, I can accurately write these things, and I feel that when they’re typically written, they’re not respected. Horror wasn’t about some scary killer in a mask, it was about the violence of man. The things we deny, the horror of our own mind. Our mind fabricates monsters and these fictional creatures that we, until recently, believe in. So I want to pull from that.

When we start censoring things like murder into “unalive” and rape into “grape”, we abandon any sense of urgency with these words. You shouldn’t feel comfortable when even reading this book. I don’t want you to be. I’d be concerned if you where. These characters serve a narrative, but I have to put you in their shoes to see this bigger picture, this critique. That’s honestly how I’ve survived, by always facing the world and its uncomfortability, or even my own with my own mind and my own body.

How does this flash fiction piece fit into your wider worldbuilding, and what is your vision for your books going forward?

I’m not sure. I said this in a Motivated Savages spotlight, but none of my books and stories “start or end”. It all depends if I can come back to this world for a good reason. Whether it be a purpose, or a reason, or a character. I have a couple ideas for Christmas Inc, revolving Jack and Walter, but nothing actaully planned. If it happens, it happens. I keep myself very loose and not restricted.

I will say that Face To Face, or the “Omnipresent” world should be getting possibly two flash fictions/mini books like this.

The Madness Of Middle Class MAY get one and MAYBE a sequel down the line.

But the longer running and planned series I would like to point people to is “The Sorry Soul Chronicles” as they are kinda different stories from different characters, the first one being “Alcoholic Abandonment” from Greg Hoff’s POV (possibly).

What can people look out for in the future – what is your next project?

Flesh Prison is the BIG SUMMER BOOK! I’d like to mention that each book has a soundtrack and Flesh Prison will have illustrations and fancy little things added. Flesh Prison is coming out summer equinox.

A sequel to A Poem For A Sorry Soul is coming out September 21st. It’s literally done, I sat on it for a while, and it just needs a soundtrack.

December 21st will have a sequel to Christmas Inc (can’t talk much, not even started) And 2027 will be focused on a three book series, each book potentially being 600+ pages each. Can’t say much, but remember the series title and the character name; “A World Without Weakness”; Austin Shroeder.

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Author Spotlight: Queer Gothic author Alice G. Brooks

Discover queer Gothic romantic tragedy, THE INK EATER, by Alice G. Brooks. It has a sentient house and ace rep!

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Author Spotlight: Paranormal Ecohorror author S.M. Mack

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Camille Perri: I Wasn’t Sure if I Would Ever Write a Novel Again

In this interview, author Camille Perri discusses reworking a script and turning it into her new novel, Social Animals.
The post Camille Perri: I Wasn’t Sure if I Would Ever Write a Novel Again appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/camille-perri-i-wasnt-sure-if-i-would-ever-write-a-novel-again

#BeInspired #Interviews #WriteBetterFiction #AuthorSpotlight #AuthorSpotlightSeries

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.

Today: National bestselling author Meg Macy first dreamed of seeing a book with her name on it in the school library. She’s always found comfort, adventure, and connection in books—which might explain why she now writes stories that offer all three.

Meg writes LGBTQIA+ romance ...

https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/author-spotlight-meg-macy-3/

#AuthorSpotlight #GayRomance #Fantasy

Author Spotlight: Queer Gothic author Alice G. Brooks

Alice G. Brooks (they/she), formerly published under Alice Brooks, is a sapphic indie author writing LGBTQIA+ fiction, heavily focused on deep-seated trauma and pain. When they’re not writing, they enjoy hiking, videogames, rewatching the same shows over and over again, and reading queer books.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Links to All Books: relinks.me/AliceBrooks
“The Ink Eater” Preorder: mybook.to/theinkeater
Website: alicegbrooks.com

IG, Threads, and Tiktok: @alicebrookswrites

Book Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs:

“The Ink Eater” is a gothic romantic tragedy in which the world of an immortal young man who eats stories to survive is turned upside down when one of his stories escapes and unearths the most painful parts of his past, ultimately leading to question whether everything he has ever lived for is worth the pain; or whether choosing himself had ever been an option.

Your book The Ink Eater is a queer Gothic romantic tragedy, featuring an immortal who creates and eats his stories, and a shapeshifting ink creation who escapes containment, perfect for fans of Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters and readers of Gothic fiction craving asexual representation. Tell us about your influences for this book, and where the ideas came from?

This book was partially inspired by “Don’t let the forest in” by C.G. Drews, partially by a beta read of an unpublished book by Wren Blackburne, and most importantly by my own need to share my own spin of the “sentient house” trope, while displaying a nice, slightly hidden critique of generative AI and adding a form of asexual representation that I don’t see nearly enough. Writing this story has squeezed my heart and unveiled parts of my soul that even I didn’t know existed.

What rep will readers find in The Ink Eater, and can you tell us more about why is that rep important to you?

Firstly, there’s a gay pairing between the two main characters. More importantly, the protagonist of this novel, Baird Cardall, is asexual. With asexual representation, it’s common to see it displayed as being unable to fall in love, hating touch, or being portrayed as childish or cold.

Baird is none of those things. He’s asexual and homoromantic, he falls in love, he adores physical touch (once he trusts), and he’s anything but cold. I think that media needs more of that sort of representation. It’s partially based on my own experience and displays a part of the ace-spec that many people don’t even know exists. I also rarely see the split attraction model being represented anywhere, so I wanted to include this as well, seeing as I’ve made my own experience with that.

Was it a conscious choice to write a romantic tragedy, or did the plot bend that way during the writing process?

A conscious choice. I’d gone in with the intention to write based on the story structure of Freytag’s Pyramid, which builds from exposition to the climax and the falling action; but it doesn’t end there. It ends with a catastrophe. I try to be very upfront about the fact that, yes, this book is tragic. It is not a romance, even though it contains one. It is not a happy story. I always knew exactly how Baird’s story was going to have to unravel, and I would argue that there’s a lot of potential for discussion and interpretation about the ending.

Tell us about your main characters, Baird and Hemming. How did you go about developing them, and where did the seeds of inspiration for these characters come from?

Baird existed first. I knew I wanted someone who eats stories and who survives off them, as long as they carry meaning and heart.

Hemming, originally, was intended to be a sort of paranormal investigator or something like that. I scrapped the idea when I came up with a story that escaped from the ink.

I’m a pantser, which means my stories are largely not outlined before writing them, so I discover a lot about my characters as I go. They developed on their own; I like to say that I merely write protocol for what they get up to.

Baird just naturally grew to be someone who loves nature, who talks to the animals and the plants, and who has a giant heart for everything around him but himself. He’s terrified of leaving the sentient manor he’s bound to, and hasn’t done so in the past 241 years. Why? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Hemming, on the other hand, is a bit of a snarky diva, but he cares deeply. He came to life through the story; he isn’t the story itself, but a being made of magic and ink who has been with Baird for a long time but didn’t develop a conscience until he took the name Baird created for a shapeshifter in his story and left the paper to be Baird’s friend. That’s his sole mission: make Baird happy. But that doesn’t mean he’s one-dimensional or lackluster, in fact, I think he’s one of my most complex characters. He’s the one who opens Baird’s eyes to the trauma he went through without truly realizing it, and without him, the whole story would’ve never happened.

What drew you to make the manor the main antagonist, and how did its role and character develop as you went through the drafting process?

I just really like sentient houses. At first, I didn’t have the manor in mind as an antagonist. It was just sort of a plot device, a secondary background character that made Baird’s existence more interesting and explained his curse. But then, as I was writing, its voice became clearer to me. And it does, in fact, have a voice. It talks to Baird; he refers to the voice as “his insides” throughout the stories, a voice that is “physical but also not”. It can control him to an extent, he’s the only one who can hear it, and he has a sort of codependent bond to the manor.

As I went through my latest editing rounds, the manor’s voice became darker and more manipulative, demanding in its wants and needs, and adding lore to Baird’s background. I’m very excited to see what people will think of Cardall Manor.

Was the sentient manor based on/inspired by any real/fictional buildings, and if so, what were they? If not, how did you go about designing it in your head as the setting for the book?

It wasn’t. The only room I had in mind was the story room, where Baird consumes his tales. I’d been picturing a gothic manor, but it can really be whatever you want it to be. The manor was built “so long ago” that nobody remembers when exactly it was created. But it changes and evolves with time, providing warmth in winter and coolness in summer. It has no plumbing but can draw a warm bath if one asks nicely enough.

The rooms of the manor were added as I was writing. The piano room and Lilith’s old bedroom were added later on, the foyer has been there since almost the start, and I had no precise image in head for the manor. Then, I had a friend draw it, and now that’s what it looks like in my head. There’s some art for it on my Instagram page, if anybody would like to see that.

What is your favourite piece of reader feedback or reviews for this series so far?

I’ve not yet had any reviews at this point, but my wonderful editor Sebbie [they/she/he] of Silver Press Edits has brought up so many interesting pieces of feedback and given me comparisons to different mythologies and tales that my story draws similarities to. It made me see the story in a whole new light.

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.

Today: After writing extensively in various fandoms as Thevina, Kristi Lee began trying her hand at original fiction. Her non-fandom stories will always include: a redhead, some knitting, complex sentences, and hopeful endings.

https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/author-spotlight-kristi-lee/

#AuthorSpotlight #GayRomance #Fantasy

From the archive:

Author Spotlight: The Visionary Behind "The Binding of Stars"

https://bpmiller.tech/author-spotlight-the-visionary-behind-the-binding-of-stars/

#authorspotlight #fantasyauthor #romantasywriter #fantasyromance #bookstodon