My fantasy story "The Ice Tree" is in the second issue of Apparition Literary Magazine! A hero-in-her-own-mind amateur sorceress sends a village into chaos while trying to prove herself, and vows to undo an ancient curse to make up for the mess she's made. Things do not go well.

I initially wrote this story more than ten years ago, and very little of the original survived when I re-wrote it in 2014 at the Clarion Workshop. It again became a different monster based on workshop feedback, and it took me a lot of drafts to get it just right. In the Clarion version (which unfortunately will be housed forever in the Clarion archives at the UCSD library), I was responding to feedback from a classmate who said my language tended to be dull. I was trying, desperately, to write more lyrical and beautiful sentences. The result just sounded…kind of silly. So I doubled down on that, and the character of Mirella developed naturally from that "extra" tone. She's not a likable character—she's not meant to be—but I hope you enjoy her anyway. It's much easier to get away with this kind of a male character—I drew inspiration from Zap Brannigan, Gilderoy Lockhart, and Ash Williams, but Mirella is definitely her own brand of delusional egotist.

Here's a brief excerpt, a bit of backstory about how Mirella developed the magic she's now abusing:

If you'd like to see the Pinterest board I made for the story, you can check it out here. And you can pick up a copy of the issue on Kindle at the link below, or read the story online at the Apparition Lit website.

Leena Likitalo is one of the fantastic authors I was lucky enough to get to know at the Clarion Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, which we both attended in the summer of 2014. Though many of our cohort have published a good deal of short fiction since that summer (some of it very well received), and a few have landed small press book deals, Leena is the first of our group to be published with a "Big Five" publisher like Tor. THE FIVE DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON by Leena Likitalo is out today, July 25, 2017, and the sequel, THE SISTERS OF THE CRESCENT EMPRESS will be available in November 2017.

I'm thrilled that more people will finally have the chance to experience the wondrous worlds that flow from Leena Likitalo's fingertips.

Sarena Ulibarri: In a nutshell, what was the path from manuscript to publication for THE FIVE DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON?

Leena Likitalo: The Five Daughters of the Moon came to me, demanding to be told right at that moment, and perhaps that's why everything happened so very fast.

The story came to me first in November 2014. I had just started in a new job and resolved not to work on any novels for the time being. This story didn't care about that! It was so insistent that I had no other option but to scribble it down as a short story.

The good thing about insistent stories is that they pretty much write themselves. The next summer, when I had some time off from work, I jotted down a synopsis for the duology — by then I'd realized the story was too big and complex for one book. It took me around three months to complete the first draft of the novel, and in November 2015, I had a book in my hands.

I'd been in touch with Claire Eddy—my editor-to-be—before about a different project. While she said no to that one, her kind feedback encouraged me to approach her with my new project in February 2016.

Fast-forward to June of the same year, and there I was with a two-book deal from Tor.com, represented by the wonderful Cameron McClure of Donald Maass Literary Agency.

SU: What advice do you have for young writers who are struggling through the first draft of a fantasy novel?

LL: You can do it. You can. Just keep on writing. Word after word. Sentence after sentence. See, put them after each other like that. There's your first page, chapter, and the rest will follow. It's fine if you don't know how the story is going to end. Eventually you'll get there if you just keep on going.

Keep on writing. Write every day, even if it's just a word, even if that word is wrong, or perhaps it's the right one. One sentence a day is a lot. A whole page? You're on the right track.

Finish what you're writing. Cherish it. Toss it away in shame. Both are fine. As long as you feel something toward what you wrote, you're doing it right. If it's bad, you know you should probably try a different thing next time around. If it's good, then great!

Google. Google your favorite author and how they got where they are now. Read forums on how to become a writer. Learn the trade. Blog post after another, websites, too. Standard manuscript format, synopsis, query, publishing deal anatomy, foreign rights. You want to know all about them. Just in case one day…

So you have a novel in your hands? I'm so happy for you! Is it ready go or do you want to work on it still? It's ready? Then it's time for the next step on your journey.

Query agents. Get rejected. Cry. Get over it. Submit again. Rinse and repeat. This is writer's life.

Put the first novel into a drawer. Start a new one. Rinse and repeat until success follows. It might take only one iteration. Or then nine. But eventually, one day, maybe one day your writerly dreams will come true.

SU: What books, authors, or films most influenced you when writing THE FIVE DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON?

LL: I've always loved Russian literature. When I was fourteen, we read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in school. I was the only kid in my class that cheered on the assignment. But darn, that language, the impeding melancholy… that's my cup of tea. And if you want to read a novel with the most fabulous cast of characters ever brought to life, try War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

Around the time The Five Daughters of the Moon came to me, I wanted to brush up my Swedish. Maria Turtschaninoff had just won the prestigious Finlandia Junior prize for her novel Maresi, and so I decided to try that one.

Maresi is a quiet and dark story that builds up slowly and stays with you months and months after reading the last page. The women in the story are strong, each in their own unique way. This novel inspired me to seek new dimensions in the stories I had to tell -- I realized that it was possible to write tales where women are in control of their own fates even if the world is set against them.

Now movies, you ask? Gimme historical dramas. I like the aesthetics of Downtown Abbey – the dresses, the country houses, ridiculous dedication to etiquette. Another favorite of mine are the Hercule Poirot movies. The best one is of course Murder on the Orient Express.

SU: What’s your favorite memory from the Clarion Workshop?

LL: Ah, Sarena, you should know that there are too many to name just one!

I think the utmost best thing about Clarion was making connections that last for years and years to come. We're still in touch with my group, and it's been immeasurably valuable to me! No one understands writer's pain and anxiety like another writer… And to see my fellow classmates selling stories and becoming editors – it's a fabulous thing to witness!

SU: How many stories did you write at Clarion, and what became of them?

LL: I had decided that I would write six stories in Clarion, and while I did stay true to my decision, I think I might have been better off with just four or five.

My Week 1 story was not good at all, and I knew it even when writing it. The sole purpose of that story was to remove the writerly blocks lingering in my blood and get going with the actual business of telling tales.

My Week 2 story, Operating Santa's Machine, was a hit amongst my Clarion classmates — but let's just say that there's not much market for naughty Santa stories.

My Week 3 story, Give Your All to the Cause, started as a silly car-ride conversation about buying political favors with organ donations. It took me half a year to finish this story, but once it was done, I was very happy with it. This one found home at Galaxy's Edge magazine and I think it's one of my best scifi stories to date.

My Week 4 story, The Village At the Shadow of a Sleeping Cyclop, crushed me. It spiraled out of control, and I couldn't finish it in the way I wanted. I'm still thinking of fixing it, because I like the imagery and concept. But there's so many stories I really want to tell, that this one might need to wait a few more years still.

After Week 4, I was sure I couldn't piece another story together. And then this epic poem came to me pretty much out of nowhere, and so Ocelia, Ocelia was born. Jeff VanderMeer bought it for weirdfictionreview.com, and there's a Finnish translation available, too, coming out hopefully this year still.

And then there was Week 6 — rather than letting an idea come to me, I decided to go with an idea I'd been toying with for some time already. The end result was crafted rather than organic. Not my finest piece.

SU: Do you have any readings or signings coming up? Where can readers find you?

LL: Worldcon 75 will be organized in Helsinki — my very hometown. I'll be participating in a panel there, and hanging out in countless others.

You can find more about me and these events in www.leenalikitalo.com.

Leena Likitalo hails from Finland, the land of endless summer days and long, dark winter nights. She lives with her husband on an island at the outskirts of Helsinki, the capital. But regardless of her remote location, stories find their way to her and demand to be told.

While growing up, Leena struggled to learn foreign languages. At sixteen, her father urged her to start reading in English, and thus she spent the next summer wading through his collection of fantasy and science fiction novels. She has fond memories of her "teachers": J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Roger Zelazny, and Vernor Vinge.

Leena breaks computer games for a living. When she's not working, she writes obsessively. And when she's not writing, she can be found at the stables riding horses and playing polocrosse.

You can visit her online at www.leenalikitalo.com.

I've been pining for this book ever since I first heard it announced, and I was lucky enough to win an advance copy. It definitely lived up to all the hype! A Shadow Bright and Burning is like a Lovecraftian Harry Potter, with some shades of a not-as-graphic version of Penny Dreadful (it is YA, after all). It's dark and beautiful, with characters who will haunt your thoughts long after you set the book down.

Jessica Cluess was a year ahead of me in the Clarion Workshop; she attended in 2013 and I attended in 2014. Clarion has a history of turning out amazing and successful writers, and it's always exciting to see writers from recent classes making a name for themselves.

Jessica was nice enough to talk with me today about her novel, her influences, and her favorite Clarion experiences.

Sarena Ulibarri: In a nutshell, what was the path from manuscript to publication for A SHADOW BRIGHT AND BURNING?

Jessica Cluess: After I finished editing, I queried the book for five months. One week after sending my query to him, the man who became my agent offered me representation. After that, we polished the manuscript for several months before finally putting it on submission. That was nerve-wracking, but I’m glad we worked on it for so long, because it hugely paid off. We had an offer after less than two weeks on sub, and went to auction after that. All told, it was nearly two years from the first day I sat down to write the book to the day we got the offer to publish. It seemed long at the time, but now it feels like a whirlwind.

SU: What advice do you have for young writers who are struggling through the first draft of a fantasy novel?

JC: Beyond anything else, especially when it’s fantasy, I say this: it’s better to write a galumphing, messy, weird draft that has something passionate and exciting on every page than it is to write a clean, perfectly constructed draft that you don’t feel anything for. It’s actually easier to edit the weird one, because at least you know the feelings you want to evoke. Bottom line: just get it done. You can’t edit until you’ve written.

SU: What books, authors, or films most influenced you when writing A SHADOW BRIGHT AND BURNING?

JC: My biggest influence was Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I describe it as Jane Austen’s Lord of the Rings, and it really is that. If you love a comedy of manners mixed with an outrageously interesting magical system, you’ll dig it.

SU: What’s your favorite memory from the Clarion Workshop?

JC: The water gun fight we had with Robert Crais and Kim Stanley Robinson. There is a picture of me shooting Stan in the back while he runs away that is among my top five favorite pictures of anything.

SU: How many stories did you write at Clarion, and what became of them?

JC: I wrote five stories, because during week one we reviewed one of my submission stories. The truth is, nothing much has yet come from those stories, largely because I’m not really a natural short fiction writer. A lot of the people in the program were already masters of the short story, so I had a lot of catching up to do. One of them has already won a Nebula for her short fiction! I may see if I can get a novel out of some of them; my stories always ran on the long side.

SU: Do you have any readings or signings coming up? Where can readers find you?

JC: Yes! I’ll be on tour the last week of October, in San Francisco, Denver, Salt Lake City and Austin. It’s going to be a whirlwind week!

Jessica Cluess is a writer, a graduate of Northwestern University, and an unapologetic nerd. After college, she moved to Los Angeles, where she served coffee to the rich and famous while working on her first novel. When she’s not writing books, she’s an instructor at Writopia Lab, helping kids and teens tell their own stories.

Website * Twitter * Goodreads

I first met Dianna Sanchez through the extended network of the Clarion Workshop, and was thrilled to learn her novel was coming out soon from Dreaming Robot Press, a small press located in New Mexico (where I live and where I run my small press). I had the chance to chat with both Dianna and her editor last month at Bubonicon, Albuquerque's local science fiction convention.

If you're unfamiliar with the Clarion Workshop, it's a six-week intensive writing boot camp taught by some of the finest writers and editors in the field of science fiction and fantasy. It's a grueling experience of non-stop writing and critiquing, bad food, watergun fights, making lifelong friends, and questioning everything you ever thought you knew. I recommend it wholeheartedly. Dianna attended in 1995; I attended in 2014.

Dianna was nice enough to talk with me today about her new novel A WITCH'S KITCHEN, her path to publication, and her Clarion workshop experience.

Sarena Ulibarri: It was great to meet you this year at Bubonicon! How was your Bubonicon experience? Had you attended it in the past?

Dianna Sanchez: Despite having grown up in Albuquerque, I had never been to Bubonicon before. I didn't find out about the existence of science fiction conventions until I'd gone off to college in Boston, and even then, I didn't attend one until after I'd graduated. It seems downright absurd that I waited this long. Bubonicon is a pleasant, small, well-run con, with some good panels. I love that the gaming room is right in the thick of things, instead of shoved into a distant corner somewhere. I could just wander in and grab a pick-up game between panels.
 
SU: In a nutshell, what was the path from manuscript to publication for A WITCH’S KITCHEN?

DS: Nov. 2013 - Started writing what I thought would be a 10-page story as a Christmas present
Dec. 2013 - Three chapters later, realized it was a novel
Jan. - Feb. 2014 - Took an Odyssey Online course, Powerful Dialogue in Fantastic Fiction with Jeanne Cavelos
Mar. 2014 - Completed first draft
Summer 2014 - Joined Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators
Jan. 2015 - Attended Arisia in Boston, did a pitch session with N.K. Jemison
Apr. 2015 - Attended the New England SCBWI conference in Springfield, MA. Won the Pitchapalooza.
May 2015 - Started up a critique group of folks I met at the conference
June 2015 - Started querying the novel, exchanging manuscripts with other SCBWI authors
Aug. 2015 - Dreaming Robot Press expressed serious interest. Called in my Pitchapalooza prize, an agent consult.
Sept. 2015 - Began revising per DRP's developmental editor's request
Fall 2015 - Took Writing MG/YA Novels with Holly Thompson, learned plot structure
Nov. 2015 - Committed to completed revision by January 31st
Jan. -Feb. 2016 - Took Odyssey Online course Getting the Big Picture (novel revision) with Barbara Ashford
Jan. 31, 2016 - Turned in the revision
Feb. 2016 - Met with Corie and Sean Weaver of Dreaming Robot Press in Albuquerque and negotiated contract. Signed a week later.
Mar. 2016 - Completed final revision (v.11.5)
April 2016 - DRP launched Kickstarter campaign for A Witch's Kitchen and The Demon Girl's Song by Susan Jane Bigelow. We funded the same day, in the middle of our Facebook author party.
June 2016 - Got the ARCs, started pushing for reviews, readings
Sept. 25, 2016 - Launch day!

SU: If you could go back in time and give young-Dianna one piece of writing advice, what would it be?
 
DS: Writing is not just a hobby. Writing is not less important than physics. Writing is what you love to do, and it's what you do best. Stop apologizing, to everyone else and to yourself, for spending so much time writing. Just write.

SU: What’s your favorite memory from the Clarion Workshop?

DS: Oh, man, that is so hard. It was such a blast from beginning to end. Was it playing Assumption (the card game from instructor Tim Powers' novel Last Call)? Watching Bruce Glassco playtest an early version of his board game Betrayal at House on the Hill? Boffer weapon battles with Lucy Snyder? Making an enchilada casserole in Chip Delany's oven? Congratulating Kelly Link on her first sale to Asimov's? Hmm... okay. I think it was shouting in the hall. We'd be up in our (totally not air conditioned) dorm rooms, pounding away on our stories, and someone would open their door and yell something like, "Hey, anyone know how long the day is on Mars?" Because it was 1995, and Google did not yet exist. AND SOMEONE WOULD KNOW. Every single time. I miss that so much, the collective gestalt of it, the marvelous feeling of being in my tribe.
 
SU: How many stories did you write at Clarion, and what became of them?

DS: I have it in my head (though my head is often wrong) that I wrote nine stories, and that this was a record at the time, promptly broken the following year. I think, though, that they were counting my submission stories, and I really only wrote seven during Clarion. And I also think that I may have actually written more and not submitted them all. I'm a quick writer; I can churn out 1000 words per hour. I learned at Clarion that some people just don't write that quickly, and we wouldn't always have three stories to critique the next day. So I took to just writing stories on the fly and then, if we didn't have enough stories, I'd pull one out. Mind you, most of them were complete and utter crap. I think that by the end of the workshop, people were ready to strangle me if I pulled out one more horrible story. Guys, I hope you've forgiven me by now. Alas, all the stories are in the Clarion archives. Only one, "A Recipe for Martian Enchiladas," eventually turned into a saleable story, "Weeds," which is appearing in the 2017 Young Explorers' Adventure Guide.
 
SU: Do you have any readings or signings coming up? Where can readers find you?

DS: I have two book launch parties coming up:

Sunday, September 25, 2-3pm
Remember Salem
127 Essex St., Salem MA

A kid-friendly event with a costume contest, bad joke contest, and raffle! I will read from A WITCH'S KITCHEN and answer questions from the audience. THERE WILL BE COOKIES.

Saturday, October 1, 7-9pm
Pandemonium Books and Games
4 Pleasant St., Cambridge MA

Together with my Kickstarter buddy Susan Jane Bigelow. We will read from our novels, A WITCH'S KITCHEN and her YA fantasy THE DEMON GIRL'S SONG. No word yet on whether I can bring cookies. ; )

Readers can check my web site, diannasanchez.com for more appearances, subscribe to my newsletter, and contact me on Facebook or Twitter.

Dianna Sanchez is the not-so-secret identity of Jenise Aminoff, whose superpower is cooking with small children. She is an MIT alumna, graduate of the 1995 Clarion Workshop and Odyssey Online, active member of SCBWI, and former editor at New Myths magazine. Aside from 18 years as a technical and science writer, she has taught science in Boston Public Schools, developed curricula for STEM education, and taught Preschool Chef, a cooking class for children ages 3-5. A Latina geek originally from New Mexico, she now lives in the Boston area with her husband and two daughters.