The Drowning City

Besides the literary influences, I’ve always loved to travel, and I get a lot of inspiration from visiting or reading about other places.

The Drowning City is a novel with an amazingly lush setting and unique world. How did you derive the idea for this novel?

Several different ideas had been floating around in my head for a while: the character Isyllt, a spy novel, and second-world fantasy (I’d been working on several contemporary fantasies previously, and wanted a change of pace). And then in 2005 Hurricane Katrina came, and as I watched all the horror and ugliness and heroism and grief, I thought of the title The Drowning City, and all the disparate ideas started to come together. Which makes me feel a little like a vulture.

In writing the novel, were you particularly influenced by your time living in Southeast Asia?

Having lived in Arizona and Texas since I moved back to the States, I really miss rainy seasons. So as soon as I had a book with monsoons, a South Asian-inspired setting seemed perfect. The most specific influence on TDC, though, was in the scene with the pigs. That was something I heard too often, living up the hill from a pig farm on Yap.

Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?

Definitely Isyllt. She’s one of my oldest characters, and survived an unfortunate juvenilia project that will otherwise never see the light of day. She can always be relied on to run straight into dangerous situations-or crawl into them in the dark-and otherwise get herself in trouble, which I’ve discovered is the most useful thing a character can do when I’m trying to plot a novel.

What can readers expect inThe Bone Palace?

Intrigue, heartbreak, and more forensic necromancy. And vampires, though not the oversexed variety.

As a debut author, what has been your favorite part of the publishing process?

Seeing my cover art! Book covers have fascinated me ever since I started to read, and even the bad ones are often very entertaining. That I really like the preliminary cover art for TDC is just an extra helping of awesome.