At the same time, I wanted to write about American patriarchy, the ways that sexism and misogyny manifest in our day-to-day lives, and what that does to the people who live in that society. I wanted to write a world with the feel of Japanese folktale, where the worlds of the mortal and the spirit exist side-by-side. TC: I’ve come to realize that I’m a concept-first and character-second kind of writer, so it was the world of A Thousand Steps that came first. In your latest book, A Thousand Steps Into Night, What was your process like in terms of creating your characters and the worlds they live in? And how did this differ from your process in past books like The Reader? Of course, I later added a prophecy, a secret society, a little court intrigue, some clowns, and a war generations in the making, but throughout it all, the core of the story remained the same: a girl on a pirate ship with a magic book.
In 2008, my friend Tucker asked me to write him a fantasy story, so I opened up Facebook Messenger, started typing, and what came out was an idea that stuck with me for the next ten years: a girl on a pirate ship with a magic book. The initial spark of the Reader Trilogy came from a similarly unexpected place: a Facebook message. An epic story! That I could control? I immediately knew that I wanted to be a video game designer and even started trying to create my own game, which quickly led me to writing fan fiction, poems, and stories of my own. That game has a whopper of a story, with magic and ecoterrorism and monsters, and I was enthralled.
When I was in seventh grade, my mom finally allowed my brother and I to get a video game console, and one of the first games we got was a role-playing game called Final Fantasy VII.
Traci Chee: I’ve always been in love with books, especially sci-fi and fantasy, but my journey toward being an author actually started with video games. What led you to your journey of being an author and when did you get your first idea for your novel, The Reader and the ensuing trilogy?
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