I'm Helene Wecker, author of THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI. AMA!

Steve, you fiend, you HAD to ask the sophomore slump question. There's definitely been a slump of some kind, but I'm not sure how much of it is sophomore-related. It's more due to the immense changes in my life recently. In three years, I had a baby, a book tour, and another baby. That severely curtailed my writing time, and made it hard to get anything non-essential done. Since then I've had to relearn how to structure my days to keep distractions at a minimum. And to be honest, once the distractions cleared, it took me some time to restart my writing engine. I ditched two or three iterations of my sequel before I arrived at the current one, and part of it was because my head wasn't back in the game yet. But now I'm more used to the minor upheavals of everyday life with kids, and the writing's getting easier again.

As to celebrating my 40th, I honestly have no idea. It's not until end of September, so I don't have solid plans yet. A day to myself would be amazing. I could drink some wine and finally watch Age of Ultron.

For books that set me on the path: Neil Gaiman was my biggest early influence. I discovered SANDMAN in high school and felt like he'd written it for me specifically. Emma Bull too, especially WAR FOR THE OAKS, BONE DANCE, and FINDER. Those were some of the first fantasies that influenced me that weren't on the Tolkien/Europe/D&D model. Then I discovered Michael Chabon, and while it isn't strictly speculative, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY feels sort of meta-speculative, being mostly about comic-book writers and the heroes they create. His YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION is another good one. At some point in there I read Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS, which seemed like he was expanding on the work he'd started in SANDMAN. And then Susanna Clarke's JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, with its multi-threaded story and its fully realized world.

/r/Fantasy Thread Parent