– Thanks for joining us here at YALC. We would love you to introduce yourself
Hi! My name is Jen Williams, I’m a fantasy author from London currently living in Bristol. I write character driven fantasy novels, including the award-winning Winnowing Flame trilogy and the Talonsister duology, and when I’m not doing that I enjoy playing video games and messing about in our wild scrap of garden.
– Can you give our readers an overview of your YA novel The Dreamless?
The Dreamless is the sequel to The Sleepless. In the Sleepless, we meet our main characters: Elver is the adoptive child of the Queen of Serpents, and it is her duty to guard the forest of monsters from any human threat. Artair, a young man confined to a monastery for much of his life, has been tasked with stealing a monster from under her nose. Complicating matters is Lucian, the dark spirit that inhabits Artair’s body when he goes to sleep at night. In the second book, our complicated trio realise they have a common enemy, and all three are drawn into a dangerous conspiracy of vengeful gods and chaotic magic.
– And, if you could do it in just 5 words or less, what would they be?
Monster girl meets Monster Boys
– Who was your favourite character to write and why?
Lucian was my favourite, mainly because he gets most of the funny lines; he isn’t remotely worried about offending people, so has no problem saying outrageous things. All of the gods were fun to write simply because they are all so weird, and it’s always interesting to decide how an all powerful being will react to something.
– Is there a character that you relate to?
When I first sketched out the idea for these books, the world was just entering the current unending bin fire, and I felt like going to live in a forest with just weird creatures for company sounded like a reasonable plan. So I feel like Elver’s reluctance to leave the monster forest is pretty relatable.
– Was the plan to always have The Sleepless and The Dreamless as a duology?
Yes – as always with fantasy books the world is big enough that I certainly could have written more books in that setting, but I had a sense that the story of Elver, Artair and Lucian was two books long when I started.
– Did the ending turn out how you planned? Or did it change throughout your writing process?
I always had a reasonably clear idea of how it would end, and that came into focus a lot more as I was writing The Dreamless. When it came down to it, I had a few conversations with my editor about how things eventually shake out for Elver and the boys, because I knew people would be looking for something in particular with this ending. Ultimately, the final chapter and the epilogue were my favourite bits to write.
– Were there influences from mythology, horror or folklore in the world building?
I love all of those things, so I think inevitably they influence my work, although I suspect largely in ways I’m not necessarily aware of. I was a big reader of horror when I was a kid, and similarly, I was obsessed with various pantheons; the Greek gods and the Norse gods in particular. When I was around five or six, like a lot of parents at the time my mum and dad decided that Watership Down was a harmless bunny movie and perfect viewing for their small child… I quickly became obsessed with that too, and when I was a bit older I read the book. Realising that you could create your own mythology and put it in a book was a life changing moment for me.
– What came to you first, the setting, the magic or the characters?
It’s almost always the characters for me, and that was the case with the Sleepless duology. I had this image of a girl being thrown into a sea full of serpents, and Elver grew from that: what sort of person do you become if the town where you grew up sacrifices you to save themselves? What are you like if you grow up in the woods with only monsters for company? And once you ask those questions you also have to ask: what sort of magic requires sacrifice? What sort of gods would accept these tithes? For me, this is how you start building a book.
– How did you pick which gods and monsters to include in these books?
I wanted to have a wide range of gods, and I wanted them to feel unique whilst still nodding at the sorts of gods you might find in a pantheon. So there’s Barleycorn, a classic god of hearth and home and crops and things, who takes the form of a brash man with a fiery beard, but on the weirder end there’s Milik the Small, a god who looks after all the tiny creatures (she looks like a child-sized mouse). Weirder still is the Pack, a god who takes the form of a group of floating, spectral wolf heads… There were also gods that I needed specifically for the story – so a trickster god, a god of death, a god of ambition. This is one of the reasons writing fantasy is so fun – I could really go wild with the gods.
– Did you listen to music while writing? If so, what kind?
I do listen to music while writing, although I find I can’t listen to anything with lyrics or I’ll just be distracted. For the last few books my writing playlist has been made up of a lot of retro electronica, the sort of music you might imagine appearing in an early 90s video game or an 80s cyberpunk movie. Recently there’s been a lot of Magic Sword, OGRE Sound, Nightstop and Carpenter Brut.
– Did your writing process change between the first and second book?
Not in any drastic way, no. These days I tend to plan quite a bit in advance – there’s a website called Trelo where you can organise all these little cards under headings. I use each card to plan a chapter, and the headings to separate the three acts. And then I work my way through the first draft (although, I should probably admit, I usually start ignoring the plan and have to go back and rewrite all my cards about 20,000 words in). It gives me a structure to work around with enough space to follow the story and characters if I need to.
– Who would you cast as the main characters if your book was turned into a movie?
Ah this question is always difficult because I rarely think of characters in terms of real world equivalents, but funnily enough (assuming we can whisk actors back in time a bit) I think Aaron Taylor-Johnson would make a great Artair/Lucian. Someone statuesque and powerful should be Mother Maura, like Hannah Waddingham, and it’d be fun to have Tom Hiddleston as the human form of Lord Tisk (typecast as trickster gods? Possibly). Elver is harder to define I think; maybe a young Emma Stone or Jenna Ortega.
– When scene do you think the readers will enjoy the most?
I suppose it depends on what you want from the book, but I would guess any kissing scene! More seriously though, if readers are familiar with The Sleepless they will know that it’s nearly impossible for Artair and Lucian to communicate with each other – well, in The Dreamless I found a way for them to be onstage at the same time, and their interactions were some of the most satisfying scenes to write of the whole duology. It’s fair to say they have a complicated relationship.
– Where do you write?
I’m lucky enough these days to have a dedicated office in my home, something I have dreamt of for decades. I have an adjustable height desk that is usually crowded with stuff: piles of notebooks, bottles of ink, a clay pen pot I made myself called ‘Bert’, a marimo moss ball in a jar, and a large number of family photos.
– What do you hope readers take away after finishing both books?
Mainly I hope they enjoy themselves, and that the characters and the world stay with them for a little while.
– What is your favourite genre to read?
I read all sorts, but drift mainly towards fantasy and historical fiction. Both genres take me away to new worlds.
– Where can our readers find you on social media?
These days I can usually be found posting photos of trees and books and drawings on Instagram (@sennydreadful19) or on bluesky with the handle @sennydreadful.
– Finally can you give us your favourite quote from a novel (it can be yours!)?
One from a great book:
‘Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.’
– Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
THE DREAMLESS by Jen Williams is out now, published by First Ink, HB £16.99.