Thank you to Amie Kaufman for the interview and the team at Pan Macmillian for the help organising. Amie Kaufman is an Australian writer who is a NYT and internationally best selling author of science fiction and fantasy for young adults. She has recently published her first solo young adult fantasy The Isle of the Gods.

Interview

What was your inspiration for The Isles of the Gods?

I was walking along the Hudson River in New York and I saw an actual tall ship sailing along it. I have no idea what it was doing there, but I immediately started daydreaming about what it would have taken for those ships to still be sailing today. Pretty quickly, I was daydreaming about magicians who could control the wind and the water…

How did you choose which character to focus for the points of view?

I ask myself who has information we need to understand what’ll happen in this chapter, who the events will have the greatest emotional impact on, and who’ll be driving the action. In the Isles of the Gods, a chapter from Prince Leander’s point of view will give us a very different perspective than we might get from Selly, our sailor who’s never seen his privileged world before.

How do go about creating a new world to explore and share with readers?

I start with one change — in this case, it was that there are magicians who can control the elements — and work through all the ripples that would cause. I think about the way it would change the different aspects of everyday life, and pretty soon I’ve got a world that feels consistent, and full of interesting details, and very different to our own.

How would you describe The Isles of the Gods in five words?

Romantic highs seas fantasy adventure.

Did you have a favourite moment to write?

I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a moment in a nightclub that I had a lot of fun describing, and I very much enjoyed writing the y-e-a-r-n-i-n-g.