An Interview with S. Jae-Jones, Author of Guardians of Dawn
Author Interview #9
S. Jae-Jones (called JJ) is an artist, an adrenaline junkie, and the New York Times bestselling author of the Wintersong duology and the Guardians of Dawn series. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives on the wrong coast, where she can’t believe she has to deal with winter every year. When not writing, JJ can be found working toward her next black belt degree in taekwondo, being run ragged by her twin dogs, Castor and Pollux, or indulging in her favorite hobby—collecting more hobbies.
First things first: fandom questions. Who is your favorite Sailor Scout? I’ll let you pick two since I can’t pick between Saturn and Mars myself.
JJ: Mine are also Saturn and Mars! I love Rei because she is probably the closest to myself in terms of personality, but my inner goth finds Hotaru’s powers the coolest. Being the Senshi of Ruin and Rebirth? YES, PLEASE.
What are your favorite CLAMP works? For me it’s Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, xxxHolic, and X/1991. They just hit so good and all for different reasons.
JJ: I love all the titles you’ve mentioned, as well as Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and Tokyo Babylon. Tokyo Babylon in particular always struck me as being tonally different from a lot of their other work, especially as it is darker in themes. One of the first toxic yaoi I had ever read.
KPDH was obviously the Event of the Summer and the Soundtrack of the Summer, but which KPDH song was The Song of the Summer?
JJ: I am very basic, and for me, it is “Golden.” I may have singlehandedly contributed to it going #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
AC: Hey, you saved the Honmoon!
This is going to sound bizarre, but I have no other way to explain it. We’ve had such a long drought since anything that truly felt like Magical Girl came out that reading Guardians of Dawn by you and A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon plus watching KPDH and Wicked was like coming home. Do you feel that we’re ready for Magical Girl to come back with a bang since the success of KPDH appears to show a massive gap in the market for stories in that sphere that are also love letters to a specific culture?
JJ: I think the success of KPDH and the desire for Magical Girl stories reveals something of a hole in the publishing landscape, and personally, I think that hole is the lack of youthful, girlish fantasies. To me, there is something inherently young about the Magical Girl genre—so many of them are stories about girlhood, girl friendships, and the magical abilities that help them navigate the injustices around them, both with their own power and with the love of those around them. Those of us who grew up with these stories feel nostalgic for them, which is why I think KPDH hit so hard. A lot of YA these days tends to be older and edgier, which is fine as I enjoy that too, but I think there is a hopeful sincerity to Magical Girl stories that feels younger. But I do think there may be a turning in culture at large! With the reception of KPDH and even the new Superman movie, I think we are all hungry for stories filled with hope and kindness.
I’m gonna make you pick a favorite child. Which of the couples in Guardians of Dawn is your favorite and why?
JJ: GAAAAAAAAAH. I love all my children equally, but I suppose if you were to put a gun to my head, I would have to say that writing Han’s POV (and therefore his romance with Zhara) was probably the easiest and most natural for me. I love a himbo, but also Han is very close to who I was as a sixteen-year-old. But the sapphic yearning in Yuli was a lot of fun to write too…
They’re the hottest terms of the last two years and nobody can agree on what they mean: how do you personally define the difference between Romantasy, fantasy romance, and romantic fantasy and where does Guardians fall?
JJ: Back in my day *shakes gnarled finger* we had fantasy romance (genre romance in a fantasy setting) and romantic fantasy (genre fantasy with a strong romantic element). Today, I would say that the consensus on the term “romantasy” seems to be that it is fantasy romance—genre romance in a fantasy setting, and therefore subject to genre conventions (like the HEA or HFN, whether by the end of the book or the end of the series). Personally, I don’t really think of Guardians as any of these! While there is a romantic storyline for each of the girls, the primary relationships are with each other, so the romances are less prominent in the narrative. But if pressed, I would probably say they are romantic fantasies.
Did you look at the common archetypes in Magical Girl and design the Guardians with those archetypes or did it come about organically that Zhara is the Pink Soldier-type and Ami is the Blue/Green soldier-type?
JJ: While writing the Guardians, I definitely designed the characters the way I used to design my manga OCs when I was a teenager—with associated colors, flowers, animals, etc. A lot of that was due to the elemental nature of their powers and also the seasonal and directional association with elements in East Asian culture. I even gave notes to my cover artist—for Zhara, her element is fire, so her season is summer, the direction south, her colors red/pink, her flower is the water lily, and her celestial companion is a lion. For Ami, her element is wood, so her season is autumn, the direction west, her color green, her flower the cosmos, her celestial companion the unicorn. Yuli is the Guardian of Wind, and her season is winter, the direction north, her colors gold/white, her flower ice flowers, and her celestial companion an eagle. As for personalities, the girls just showed up the way they are and had less to do with their archetypes and more to do with their fairy tale inspirations. Zhara is inspired by Cinderella, so I imagined a kind-hearted dreamer, Ami by Beauty and the Beast, so she was bookish and autistic. Yuli, on the other hand, just announced herself and had nothing to do with her fairy tale, which is Little Red Riding Hood. I love me a flirty butch with ADHD, and lo and behold, Yuli said, “I’m here.”
With every subsequent book, two POVs are added to the series. Have you found it easy or difficult to keep all those different voices distinct and separate?
JJ: I don’t find the voices difficult to differentiate, but logistically, having multiple POVs is kind of a nightmare. Who knows what pieces of the plot and how it all intersects and trying to keep it all straight had me like Charlie Day before a conspiracy board. Deciding which POV would tell this part of the story was also stressful; I frequently wrote scenes from the wrong POV before I realized that a different character had more at stake emotionally, and I would have to start all over again. It has gotten easier with each book, but the LOGISTICS. Sob.
Yuli and Kho are childhood-friends-to-lovers romance while Zhara and Han are friends-to-lovers and Ami and Gaden are kind of enemies-to-lovers. What’s your favorite romance couple dynamic?
JJ: I’m open to any and all romance couple dynamics, but my favorite is probably where one party is emotionally closed off and oblivious, while the other is emotionally open and obvious. The best example for me is actually Katniss and Peeta from The Hunger Games. I haven’t had a chance to write this dynamic yet though. Hopefully soon!
Your world is sprawling and filled with so many small details that help enrich it. What was your process for building the world?
JJ: Lots and lots of research. Research is my favorite way to procrastinate from actual writing; it feels so productive! I draw a lot of inspiration from history and anthropology. I enjoy worldbuilding, but I think what I enjoy most about it is finding ways to talk about humans—our societies, our histories, and our cultures—through a fantastical lens. I have pages upon pages upon pages (practically its own book’s worth) of worldbuilding notes for Guardians, but only a fraction of that actually made its way into the narrative itself. (For example, I wrote a lot about the religious systems in the Morning Realms.) I’m of the belief that worldbuilding in a book is on a need-to-know basis; we don’t constantly explain the rules of our world to ourselves, so my characters shouldn’t either.
You had five riddles in Yuli. As someone who really loves riddles and wants to include them in my own books but struggles to come up with them, I have to selfishly ask if you have any tips.
JJ: Oh man, I wish I could help you, but I have to admit I outsourced the riddles to my friend, Roshani Chokshi, who is very good at them. So my tip is…become friends with someone who is actually good at it?
AC: New life goal: find a person who is good at writing riddles.
I loved that Yuli and Kho were silently saying ‘I miss you’ to each other. It really shows that they have their own unspoken language going on. What was your favorite part of their love story?
JJ: I loved the yearning between them. Unlike the other couples in the series, Yuli and Kho have emotional history and baggage, and that dynamic creates a lot of friction and tension. Wanting, but being unable to have. One of my favorite novels is Persuasion by Jane Austen, and it is filled with such longing. I wanted to write that sort of longing, and it was delicious.
Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and now Little Red Riding Hood have found their way into Guardians of Dawn. How do you decide which fairy tales to use for each book?
JJ: Vibes? I do love fairy tale retellings, but I will admit I picked fairy tales because I am bad at plot, and I found having vague plot points to write toward extremely helpful. I’m also more familiar with western fairy tales than stories from other cultures, and I think a lot of my audience is similar, so I thought about which ones would be the most recognizable. Assigning a fairy tale to each Guardian was somewhat arbitrary, but it did direct the romance when I was writing them!
Did you write down the Language of Flowers somewhere or is it all still kind of nebulous?
JJ: To me, the Language of Flowers are Chinese characters. In the Sinosphere (East Asia, parts of southeast Asia), a lot of different peoples have some working knowledge of at least a handful of Chinese characters, and in places like Korea and Japan, a lot of vocabulary is derived from the native pronunciation of said characters. It is almost, but not quite, like Latin in that way. In a lot of western fantasy systems, magic spells are derived from Latin, and so I thought about what the equivalent might be in an East Asian fantasy setting. Chinese is also an interesting writing system in that it is not an alphabet or a syllabary; they are logographs, where the character represents an idea rather than a sound. Egyptian hieroglyphs and cuneiform writing also fall into this system of writing.
We talk about coding in fantasy worlds a lot these days and what responsibilities authors do and do not have to ‘get it right’ for worlds inspired by a specific culture. What are your thoughts on this and were there any hurdles for you for Guardians?
JJ: Oh boy, this is a fraught topic. First, as authors, we need to be aware of what are closed practices/cultures and be respectful of their boundaries. Whether or not we get those practices “right” is immaterial; we do not have the permission to profit off their cultures. That’s the most important thing. Second, we have to interrogate what “getting it right” means. Is it cultural accuracy? We also have to consider the fact that authors of color are held to a higher standard of “cultural accuracy” than white ones, and why white authors are afforded grace that non-white ones are not. Personally, getting it “right” means that the world feels cohesive—through language and diction, through social norms and taboos, through shared history and geography, and a lived-in feel. What I bristle at in books set outside the western norm is the “exoticization” that often arises. But “exoticization” is subjective, what I find off-putting someone else might find normal. It’s a fine line and I don’t pretend to have the answers to this.
Gaden and Ami and Zhara and Han were separated fairly early in this book, letting us spend more time with Yuli and Kho but also making us miss couples we're already attached to. Was that a difficult decision or did it feel like what needed to happen so the book would be more focused?
JJ: Sending Han and Gaden off to deal with the larger conflict was necessary for the plot to move forward (although we will see them again in book 4!), but I will admit it made things easier to keep track of for Yuli’s book. Also, the idea of having to juggle not just 4 POVs, but 6 felt so overwhelming at the time. (Let’s not speak of how many POVs I had to manage in book 4…) I do miss them, especially Han, who really is the easiest character for me to write.
As someone who is Autistic, Enby, Bi, and a great lover of Romantasy, Sailor Moon, and fairy tales, Guardians of Dawn, especially Ami, has become very dear to me. Were you ever concerned that you would get pushback for the concepts in this series?
JJ: I have been incredibly lucky in that my publisher has been very supportive, although I will admit to some anxiety about how the subjects would be received by the broader audience. But these are my lived experiences too, and I wanted to incorporate them into my fantasy world. I’m also neurodivergent, queer, and disabled, and I wanted to see myself in stories. Thankfully, my readers seem to agree with me!
There is an abundance of Queer identities in this series. Magical Girl has always had Queer themes but you really brought it to the forefront. Was there any element of ‘I wish I had this in the series I grew up’ when you started writing Guardians?
JJ: Honestly, I feel like I just turned the subtext into text, haha. But moreover, other cultures have different expectations of gender roles and performance than we do in the west. This isn’t to say that gender roles don’t exist in other cultures, only that they are different to ours. I wanted a world where the baseline was gender neutral, which was somewhat easier for me to conceive since East Asian languages don’t have a gendered third person pronoun. Translating that into English meant that by default, everyone is introduced with the pronoun “they” and other gender neutral terms until the character identifies themself. I, myself, have a rather indifferent relationship to gender; I do not identify as a woman, although I joke that I am in coalition with women. I really wanted that non-assumption and neutrality to be a defining part of Guardians.
Since romance novels are a big part of Zhara and Han’s story, what romance novels do you think your six leads would enjoy?
JJ: Oooh, okay. Zhara would be the most familiar with romance titles and is probably a big category reader, especially of historicals. She would probably love A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson. Han is definitely a rom-com guy, so maybe something like Cotillion by Georgette Heyer or an Ali Hazelwood. Ami isn’t all that interested in the convention of the HEA, but she would probably enjoy a good mystery with a good romantic subplot. Or a Nora Roberts novel, especially with her incredibly competent heroines. I think Gaden would gravitate toward books with queer themes, especially transness, and they would probably love the Farseer books by Robin Hobb. Yuli doesn’t really have the attention span for reading, but she would like graphic novels and webtoons. She would probably like Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. Kho is more of a horror girlie, so something like The Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas, or even Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
AC: Oh, those are great picks for them!
As with any Magical Girl, the Power of Love is a major theme in Guardians. What other themes did you set out to explore in this series?
JJ: The governing principle of the Guardians world is the concept of the balance between order and chaos and what actually constitutes balance. Balance is not stasis; it is dynamic and ever-changing, and there is a collective responsibility to maintain it. I hope by the end of the series my point is made clear!
There's all kinds of advice out there in regards to the writing process, but I've found that the best thing to do is experiment with a lot of authors' processes until you find a combination that works for you. What's your process like?
JJ: My process is chaos. I wish it weren’t. (Thanks, ADHD.) Over the course of writing six books, I’ve discovered that while I can’t outline to save my life, I do need to have some idea of where I’m going before I start to write. I journal a lot, and before starting a draft, I write what I call the “long, shitty synopsis.” I suppose the long, shitty synopsis is actually a zero draft; the one for book 4 was 23,000 words long, and quite detailed. Somehow, writing something in synopsis form removes the pressure to be “good” straight away, and it also makes changing things easier when it’s just a paragraph that needs to be rewritten rather than an entire chapter. But other than that, I don’t really have any rituals or routines. I tend to write feast-or-famine style, which is terrible on my physical well-being, but since my ADHD brain is motivated by novelty or stress, I can’t seem to get myself to work unless I am up against a deadline or in the midst of a hyperfocus session.
We talk a lot in writers spaces about how you have to read modern authors to be part of the conversation going on in our genres. What books are your book in conversation with?
JJ: There are certainly books that are a huge inspiration on the Guardians series, including The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, I do feel that Guardians is perhaps in conversation with current YA as a whole. I feel there is an increasing pressure to “age up” our books to appeal to an older audience—to make things darker, edgier, sexier. After writing my Wintersong duology (which are older, darker, and sexier), I wanted to write something wholesome and sincere and unabashedly for my inner fourteen-year-old teen who was obsessed with Sailor Moon. So I suppose in some respects, my current books are in conversation with my past ones too.
Author as Brand feels like a big part of being a writer these days. What do you want your Brand to be?
JJ: I’m too undisciplined to care or focus about Brand much—look at how different my two series are from each other, haha. But is there a commonality between all my work, even if there are large tonal and thematic differences? Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I suppose I would want my “voice” to be understood as immersive, insightful, and a little playful, perhaps. I resent and resist having to perform a persona online; I’m not interested in being an influencer. Thankfully, my publisher hasn’t required this of me.
AC: This is my favorite answer to this question and probably very close to the one I would give if I was asked.
Some authors focus on food, others on clothes. What's your favorite way to show time and place/worldbuild?
JJ: I just taught a workshop on worldbuilding, and this is a topic I can go on about for AGES. I don’t have a particular detail or aspect of worldbuilding I like to focus on so much as I’m striving to evoke a time, place, and culture for the reader through diction, social mores, and specificity. I try to achieve this through sensory details—not just sights and sounds—but the heavy quality of the air in a tropical setting, or the thinness of light in winter, etc. I don’t want to explain my worldbuilding to the reader; I want to immerse them in it.
What's next on the horizon for you?
JJ: I am currently working on my proposal for my option for my publisher, which is another YA fantasy. As is my wont, it is once again tonally different from Guardians—a little bit less optimistic, but more romantic.
Are there any writers you wanna give a shout-out to?
JJ: I just finished the most recent book in the Legendborn series by Tracy Deonn (and I am DYINGGGGGGGGGGG I need the next book!), which I highly recommend. I’m also in the midst of reading Human Acts by Han Kang, which is a translated Korean novel about the 1980 student uprising in Gwangju and subsequent massacre. Considering the political climate in the USA and around the world at the moment, it hits perhaps a little bit too close too home.
AC: I love Hang Kang. We Do Not Part was incredible
Thank you so much, JJ!
Yuli playlist:
Where to buy (Yuli):
