We chat with author Jenn Lyons about The Sky On Fire, which is a page-turning adventure with conniving dragons, high-stakes intrigue, a daring heist, and a little bit of heat.
Hi, Jenn! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a nerd who loves books (obvious, but still…), ttrpgs, video games, mythology, and in general has far more hobbies than I have time to pursue them. I’ve been an illustrator, an art director, and a video game producer, and through it all, a writer.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve loved stories for as long as I can remember. Indeed, one of my earlier memories is my mother’s chagrin upon realizing I’d accidently (I promise) stolen a library copy of Snow White. (We’d moved to a different state and I think she ended up mailing it back to them.)
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Ahem. I’d say Snow White here, but no. Doctor Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham.
- The one that made you want to become an author: That’s not just one book. If I had to name one of the most formative for me, it was probably Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tombs of Atuan.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: That also changes. Right now, the one I can’t stop thinking about is the book I’m currently writing.
Your latest novel, The Sky on Fire, is out July 9th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Dragonriders of Pern (meets) Ocean’s 11. Okay, that’s six words, but I really don’t think that ‘of’ should count.
What can readers expect?
It’s a very ‘me’ book, so readers can expect:
- Dragons
- Shenanigans with family secrets.
- Very queer.
- Betrayals & backstabbing.
- Intricate worldbuilding.
- At least one character whose romance language is ‘stabbing’
- Lots of magic and the economic consequences of such.
- A little spice.
Where did the inspiration for The Sky on Fire come from?
A few years back, someone on Twitter started passing around a thread asking “If you could re-write any book you wanted, what would it be?” There were some fantastic answers, most of them along the lines of “A Tale of Two Cities” or “Moby Dick” (I kid. Pretty sure nobody answered “Moby Dick.) Personally though, the first thing I thought of was the Dragonriders of Pern series by Ann McCaffery. I meant it as a joke—it would’ve been impossible for me to ‘rewrite’ those books, given that I am not, in fact, Anne McCaffery—but while I was talking about it with someone, I made a throwaway comment. I observed that the dragons in those books—in almost every dragonrider book, really—are sometimes a bit more like flying dogs than anything else. Intelligent, absolutely, but mostly unshakably loyal to their riders. Which immediately led me to the thought: what if that wasn’t true? What if the dragons were incredibly intelligent, but not loyal? Who would be in charge? To which my brain immediately replied: not the humans.
At which point, it stopped being a joke, and became something I had to write.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
There’s this running joke the people who record the “No Page Unturned” podcast have in which they call a character who unexpectedly gets a larger than planned part in one of my novels the “Tyentso” character. (This is a reference to my debut book, THE RUIN OF KINGS, in I’ve admitted that the titular Tyentso was originally meant to be a small, throw away part, and yet outgrew that role to the point where she basically became one of the main characters. So any character who breaks free from their original boundaries is the Tyentso character. This usually happens because A)they turn out to be more plot critical than expected and B)they were a lot of fun to write and I didn’t want to stop.
In this book, Sicaryon is the Tyentso character.
Can you tell us a bit about your process when it comes to worldbuilding?
Well, I first start by creating the sun, then determining the size of the planet and its position in the goldilock’s zone…
No, but seriously, I do. (Did I mention I’m a nerd?)
In this specific case, I knew that there were certain parts of the ‘Dragonriders of Pern’ homage that I wanted to keep, one of which was the idea of colonists stranded on an alien world. So I had to create that alien world, which ended up being a planet that has a lighter gravity and thicker atmosphere than Earth Norm. The mountains are taller and the preferred atmospheric pressure for human breathing is found around 17,000 feet up.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently finishing up another stand-alone fantasy novel, this one about a young knight who accidentally wakes a slumbering evil necromancer only to discover that doing so has left him magically bonded to her.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I’ve really enjoyed John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build A Nest In, as well as the West Passage, by Jared Pechaček. And I can’t wait to get my hands on Max Gladstone’s next book, but I’m pretty sure it’s not available yet.
