In 2016, Susan Dennard’s YA high fantasy, Truthwitch, launched a bestselling series that’s now in development for television with the Jim Henson Company. After four books and one illustrated novella set in the Witchlands universe, Dennard is pressing pause to offer fans something different—a trilogy-opening horror-tinged fantasy adventure called The Luminaries, about a clandestine organization that trains hunters to protect an unsuspecting public from nightmares come to life. PW spoke with Dennard about The Luminaries’ unique origins, what it’s like to juggle two series at once, and writing as therapy.
Can you talk a bit about The Luminaries’ winding path to publication?
I originally came up with the idea almost 10 years ago, but paranormal was on the outs, and my publisher at the time wasn’t interested, so my agent and I set the proposal aside, and I turned to the Witchlands series. Then, in 2019, I was in a rather dark place personally, having gone through failed IVF and a miscarriage. I was sitting at LaGuardia and didn’t really want to be with my thoughts, so I distracted myself by pulling out that old idea and saying, “Let’s turn it into a Sooz-your-own-adventure on Twitter!” I didn’t actually think anyone would participate; I just thought, “Let’s just throw it out there and see what happens—if anyone answers my poll.” I think the first tweet was: “You wake up on the morning of your 16th birthday to find a crow tapping at the window. Do you…” And then the people on Twitter got to choose: Did they want to go open the window, or go back to sleep? And they chose to open the window, so the story began.
Then, over the course of six months, people kept voting every day on what Winnie Wednesday would do. And I just built everything from this proposal, this world I had crafted years before. When we were done, I thought, “You know what? I’m going to turn that into a book!” Although ultimately, the book itself is very different. It’s the same world and the same characters, but a totally new plot, and has lots of Easter eggs for the original fans.
Did you initially try to marry the plot to the way the story unfolded on Twitter?
Yeah, I did, because I thought that’s what people would want. But one, it wasn’t fun for me, because I am more of a discovery writer, and that was like writing from a very strict outline. And two, the internet makes very bad choices. Like, it was fun, and people made poor choices on purpose just to see what I would have to unspool in the story, but there were so many choices they made that nobody would actually be OK with in a book. I also found that such a big part of the fun was the community, and I was afraid if I tried to tell the same story, it would fall flat because there wasn’t that part of it. I think I wrote two chapters, and I was like, “Mmm—nope. This is not going to work for me.” So I set it aside, and let it sit for a bit—probably six or nine months—and came back to it a few months after I had given birth, and had just finished Witchshadow. Then I was like, “Oh! I see a story now.”
Who or what served as the seed for this book?
I feel like it was probably the mythology. I liked the idea of these nightmare hunters fighting each night of the week, when these nightmares would rise in a nearby forest. And I was like, if it’s an ancient society, maybe they’ve divided into these clans, one for each night of the week, and I just thought that was cool. I think that was my main initial spark, and then I went from there. The name Winnie Wednesday came to me, which is a kind of absurd name. A lot of it is a little bit campy, and I love that about it. I hope that people read it and they feel like they are watching a really awesome CW show.
How much did you pull from existing mythology to create the living nightmares with which the Luminary hunters do battle?
I did not, mostly because I think that way lies a lot of potential risk, not to mention cultural appropriation. So what I tried to do was, I have a book of monsters at home, and I would thumb through it, and use that as inspiration for my own versions of things. I felt like it was okay to have some Western roots, but I still made the creatures very different. It’s almost like if the Luminaries were real and there really were nightmares rising around the world, then the mythology we know grew out of that. The vampira, for example—they’re giant, pale, glistening, praying mantis-type monsters that are terrifying, and are possibly an origin for vampire myth.
You’ve described The Luminaries as the first book in a trilogy. Do you have all three books planned out? Do you already have an ending in mind?
Yeah, I do. I have an ending in mind. Like I said, I discover as I go, but I need to have an emotional resolution I’m aiming toward, so that I know where I need my characters to go. The second book was a real struggle as I was trying to lay down all the plot threads that I hinted at in the first book, but it’s done. We’re in the last round of edits right now, and I’ve actually started the third book. The trilogy is such a comfortable structure. I think the challenge is that middle part, and then you kind of get to ride out the third book. I’m excited for that. If anyone has read my Witchlands series, they know I can get real complicated real fast. I wanted to rein myself in on this series and not go nearly as complex and sweeping and huge as the much longer Witchlands series.
And you still have at least one more Witchlands book in the works, correct?
Yup, one more. The first one came out six years ago. I obviously love that world and it’s one final book, so I want to get it done. But I mentioned earlier, I had gone through a lot of IVF, and then a miscarriage, and then I had an extremely difficult pregnancy when I did finally get pregnant, and then I had a very traumatic childbirth where I nearly died. I then had an extremely long physical recovery, throughout which I was working on Witchshadow, which is the last Witchlands book I finished. So, to be perfectly candid with you, there’s a lot of trauma wrapped up in that book for me. I know that I will have to reckon with that, because I do need to write the last book, and I have started it.
But my hope is to get a little bit into the third Luminaries book and then shift to that. Then, when I get sick of the last Witchlands book, I can jump back to the third Luminaries book. I just met a reader at New York Comic Con who gave me an interesting perspective I hadn’t considered and that I’m absolutely going to use, which was that maybe I can use this last Witchlands book as healing instead of being so afraid of it. I don’t quite know what that will mean or look like, but I was like, “That is what I needed to hear. I’m going to ponder that now, with my therapist.”
That means you have two active fantasy series, each with its own complex mythology. Do you ever have difficulty keeping the two worlds straight in your head?
I think what I catch myself doing is leaning into the same sort of twists or beats or tropes, and having to be like, “Oh, wait! No! You did that! You can’t do that again; the reader will think you have one move!” So, that’s more of the challenge. The actual worlds are just so different in the way that they feel to me—they are very separated in my head.
Do you think you’ll need to refamiliarize yourself with the Witchlands books before switching back?
Oh, yeah—most definitely. It’s been a while, and I have so many seeds planted. I know what I wanted to do with them, but I need to refresh. And who knows what little secret things I planted for myself, or my subconscious did? So I do want to go back and read the whole thing and refresh and remember everyone—not just where they’re going, but where they’ve been.
Many writers have full-time day jobs and treat writing as an escape. You write full-time, so what’s your preferred form of escape?
Since I had a child, it’s less full-time, so the writing actually has shifted, in many ways, back to being an escape. I live in a rural area, and then with Covid—it took us as very long time before we could find any childcare assistance. That was another reason I wrote The Luminaries instead of the final Witchlands book—it required significantly less brain power, because it’s so much simpler, and features only one point of view instead of seven. Now I have a very set window each day of four hours when I have help and it’s like the brain switches on: it’s your time—go! It’s amazing how much one can get done in four hours. Back when I was just writing, I had no idea. Like, “Oh, Susan, you wasted so much time!” So, it is an escape. Alternatively, I’m a pretty big gamer, so I love to game when I have the time, and turn my brain off.
You have a master’s degree in marine biology, but you write fantasy, not science fiction. Has your degree influenced your writing career in other ways?
Oh, yeah. Winnie is a science nerd, so I framed her like me. Even if I’m not still working in science, it’s still the lens I have on the world. Winnie has that same lens, it’s just that instead of being able to tell you all about fish and their evolutionary history, she can tell you everything there is to know about a nightmare. I also use it in the way that I world-build—I come first from landscape and ecology before I even think about the people that live there.
Have you ever considered writing in genres other than fantasy?
I tried to write a contemporary romance 10 or 11 years ago, because I enjoy reading those sorts of books. I also enjoy reading historical romance, and I love cozy mysteries. But what happened was, the contemporary romance turned into a cozy mystery which then turned into a terrifying ghost story. I respect those authors so much, who can create tension without having to throw in beheadings. I wish that I could, but I just can’t seem to do simple.
The Luminaries by Susan Dennard. Tor Teen, $16.99 Nov. 1 ISBN 978-1-250-19404-6
