#full negative

Friends. Readers. Fellow nerds with impeccable taste. We are officially in the home stretch. The final 24 hours. The last lap. The dramatic climax of the movie where everything explodes in slow motion and the music swells and someone says something heroic right before punching a fascist in the face. (Okay, that last bit’s just wishful thinking, but after the week we’ve all had, I think we…

Our Best Books of 2025

It is not currently unfortunately. Under the FAQ here they say if they reach funding (they did), they'll work on developing an option for retailers. It may also be possible to purchase from Jenn's website at some point too, but neither of those are finalized and are still in progress.

(spoilers for A Chorus of Dragons)

She does plan to revist the world of ACOD--there are crazy dragons to be dealt with

Her next fantasy novel, Green and Deadly Things, will be traditionally published by Tor next year!

To summarize it as badly as she could: Plants vs Zombies

Full Negative, her first book, now rewritten with an upcoming crowdfunding for its publishing, was written because her first husband dared her to

To summarize Full Negative as badly as she could: An out-of-work woman's high school reunion goes poorly.

Full Negative features her most horrible socio-economi-political system yet!

She's hoping Full Negative will be a series, but we'll see

She has more series planned

Every book gets its own notebook, fountain pen, and ink color. Her current go to is Midori notebooks, though she likes Nuuna too.

her favorite part of writing is worldbuilding--she wanted to go more in depth on Doltar, but sadly ACOD didn't need it

ACOD's worldbuilding was heavily inspired by decades of playing and running ttrpgs, specifically DnD

Kihrin and Janel were both DnD characters she played!

She'd describe ACOD's world as middle-east influenced, as her step-dad was Assyrian, though her own whiteness also influences her writing

the worldbuilding came first, but also evolved--Jorat wasn't intended to be what it became. She meant for it to be like medieval France, and the tournaments came from asking herself "What if Wall Street fluctuations hinged on NFL game outcomes?"

it surprised her how many people think Janel is trans, which she isn't. She understands why, given the prejudice she faces and how much page time she gets compared to the actually trans characters, but it was unexpected.

It's been extremely important to her to write diverse characters, strong women, queerness, etc. despite pushback from a few nasty readers. It's made her more stubborn.

She hadn't always planned the poly relationship, but she realized early she was heading towards "who do I choose?" love triangle territory and did not want that at all. They'll likely keep showing up because they're fun to write

She knew how ACOD would end from the beginning, and had a rough outline for the series because Tor insisted on it.

She didn't know Sheloran would be as important as she became, so if she could go back she'd foreshadow/write her better.

She deleted like 30k of S'arric and Rev'arric flashback scenes

TROK was optioned before the book was even released, but it never went anywhere. They wrote a pilot for it, and she'd love to see the script someday.

She didn't realize how much TROK was about consent until a Hollywood exec pointed it out when it was being optioned, but they were totally right and she leaned into it the rest of the series.

Tor asked her to take down anything else on the market before publishing her, which let her get a much better publishing deal. And her short stories were all tied to a world she doesn't intend to revisit, so we'll likely never see them.

(spoiler for The Sky on Fire) She didn't intend to make the temple scene in TSOF into a school shooting, but realized half-way through and leaned into it

The first books she got were the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, and she loved Le Guin's Rombs of Atuan as a kid!

Some of her favorite dragons are Ancalagon the Black from Tolkien and Barbara Hambly's dragons, but she thinks all dragons are cool!

She says write for what you like, not whatever "trend" or "fad" is going around; be persistent and genuine. And DON'T quit your day job

When she was 19 she found out she wasn't an only child, but the youngest of 4, and that her biological father was CIA, which has strongly impacted her books

Some sci-fi recs: The Expanse by James S.A. Corey, Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, The Memory of Empire by Arkady Martine, and Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (says Ninefox's first chapter is rough, but push through)

A handful of author recs she gave: Martha Wells, Robert Jackson Bennett, and Max Gladstone (specifically Craft Sequence)

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow Mysteries and Alexandre Dumas' Romances influenced her writing, in answer to a question about what wildly different-from-hers genres influenced her the most (though she also thinks reading widely is good)