Hi! It’s almost half-way through July, so one and a half months since the official start of the 9nth annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. This week’s theme seems to be red covers, immortals, queer love, and authors whose names start with ‘J.C.’. This Thursday, we have J.C. Snow with …
The Phoenix and the Sword
Cursed with immortality and destroying fire, Aili Fallon will cross life and death to find the truth.
Aili is desperate.
Determined to escape her past, the young woman refuses to let anything impede her training as a combat nurse. But when the woman she loves binds her with blood and disappears, Aili is transformed into a magical killer, a blood-bound healer, an immortal being.
Gambling with her own existence, she crosses through phoenix gates into a new world. But when she is reunited with her lost love, she learns they have been pawns in an ancient game of immortals, the keystone in a demon’s curse.
Will Aili’s newfound power and the secrets of her past destroy her, or can she and her lost phoenix unravel the binding of life and death?
The Phoenix and the Sword is the first book in the Crane Moon Cycle, a queer epic fantasy novel set in a world of spiritual powers, past lives, and beings of myth and legend. Unexpected, multilayered, and beautiful, The Phoenix and the Sword begins a tale of love and adventure that crosses centuries and worlds.
I like phoenixes and I don’t see a lot of them. So …
Onto the Questions!
As a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) Entrant, you’re not just independently published, but self-published. Can you start by explaining a bit about why you chose that route and how it’s been for you?
I think the main reason I chose it was because my books (a duology) were originally written as one book, and I knew I wanted them to come out very close together so that people would be able to finish the story (I hate waiting to finish the story!). As I looked into traditional publishing I heard that it was very difficult to query unless a book was a standalone – and I know that it’s possible to get commitments to series, but a lot of people with experience shared with me that it was much, much harder, and that even if I did get a series commitment the books would not be out close together in time. The Phoenix and the Sword, my book in SPFBO, does work as a standalone, but the whole story, having both books, changes the entire experience of reading. There’s a huge difference between stopping at the middle, where there’s been some resolution but the character arcs are very much still in play, and coming to a really satisfying ending. I also became more and more interested and excited about what I was learning about self publishing. I’ve been self published for almost a year now, have definitely made mistakes, and have learned so much, and while I may try querying something in the future, I feel that this was the right choice for these books, at this time, for me.
That really makes sense! The kinds of delays in traditional publishing can be so annoying – for authors and for readers! (Just so you know, that duology – it’s going to be out this Monday, the 17th!)
On a related note, why did you enter the SPFBO contest? How do you expect to find it? Refreshing your blog’s page every five minutes, or sit back and chill?
I had heard about it vaguely on twitter (I rejoined social media pretty much just because I was selfpublishing, it is not a thing that I love), and then found out more details through the Indie Accords discord. Basically through community. Which is what I love about being a self-published writer, I have found so many people eager to help, share, lift up other writers, there’s such a great energy. I really wanted to do SPFBO and so I had my material ready and woke up at 5 AM Pacific time and completed the upload at 5:02. And I’m really grateful I did. Beyond that, I’m loving the community around it, and being introduced to these blogs and reviewers who are themselves introducing me to books. I think that reviewers like this become more and more important to help readers find their books, and authors to find the readers that are looking for stories like theirs, when there are so many thousands of options. Especially in fantasy, which is an immense and diverse genre.
LOL, I joined social media in the first place because I was thinking of publishing! It is not my favorite thing either 😀
Book titles. Why did you choose the title, The Phoenix and the Sword?
The original title of this book was “I will find you” as found in my dropbox records. It’s not really a title but that’s still the file! And that reflects the initial impetus: a phoenix seeking the person they loved and lost a thousand years ago. It became “Power in the Blood” in beta reading, because the power of phoenix blood is central to the story. And it became “The Phoenix and the Sword” because “Power in the Blood” has a lot of religious references that were absolutely not intended (and because a phoenix and a sword has much better cover art options). The phoenix is a character, and there is a swordsman who is also a main character, but it reflects another central issue in the book: phoenixes cannot fight, use weapons, or injure any being. For the phoenix to be drawn to the swordsman is part of the tension of the novel; both of them need to work through what it means to live in a world that’s saturated with violence.
That is a cool story! And I can definitely see how you wouldn’t want the religious connotations of the first title 😀 For what it’s worth, I’m loving your phoenix concept even more!
I won’t ask for your favourite scene since I know some people don’t have those (like me; I never have favourites), but can you share a (non-spoiler) scene you really like? Or something about a character if that works better!
It is almost impossible to do a scene without spoilers! The book is nonlinear/dual timeline and there are some important revelations. But I’ll share about one of my favorite characters, Zhu Guiren. He’s an extraordinarily beautiful man, but he’s also a demon, a liar, a vicious manipulator, a brilliant thinker, a powerful fighter, and someone who at heart is lonely and trying to do the right thing (he just has no idea what the right thing is because demon upbringings are not conducive to virtue).
Ooh! Nonlinear/dual timeline can be really cool! — I hope Zhu Guiren gets a chance to grow!
What are some elements or themes, or combinations thereof, that really make your book stand out to you?
I’ve heard from readers that one thing they love is the realism of the characters and their relationships, which means a lot when almost all of them are phoenixes or demons, and thus immortal or nearly so, and very far from a normal human experience. The phoenixes are immortal healers that must watch everything around them suffer and die, and the inability to stop suffering, yet the impulse to keep trying – that’s very central. There are a lot of bad things happening to good, innocent people, and that trauma is not minimized.
The nonlinear structure of this book can be unexpected for readers used to a linear and straightforward narrative. But this duology is partly about how the past creates the present, and in The Phoenix and the Sword that’s shown through a dual timeline, with three different world/time settings intertwined together.
The overall theme of the duology really is the longing for love and the different forms that love takes, and how loving changes people and can change the way that the world works in subtle and unexpected ways. And I should add that there’s a ton of queerness – all the main characters are gay or lesbian – and some subtle things going on with gender identity that are very important to me and to a lot of readers. The issue of what an identity is, what the core of a person is – that’s part of it too.
Realism in characters and their relationships? A character novel with themes like the immortal phoenix healers? You have SOO many good points!
Take this in any direction you want, and share a little extra about your book and your thoughts on self-publishing, if you would!
What makes this a “cultivation” novel? I sometimes describe this novel as “cultivation” because the “magic system” (a term I cordially dislike) is inspired by xianxia, a Chinese fantasy genre where human and non-human beings can meditate and study to develop spiritual power and advance in longevity and skill, even sometimes becoming deities. However, it’s very different from most English language cultivation novels, and also from Chinese language, because I have really shifted some of the traditional Chinese understandings of phoenixes and demons (yaomo). I was inspired to write the book originally because of my love of danmei, a Chinese genre that focuses on loving (and sometimes very angsty) relationships between men, and sometimes but not always overlaps with xianxia. I honestly can’t recommend Chinese fantasy novels enough. They’re often written in a webnovel form with very quick pacing and a focus on relationships, and a nonlinear narrative structure. All of those things were part of my inspiration. Some of my favorite authors are MXTX (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu), Priest, Rou Bao bu Chi Rou, and Fei Tian Ye Xiang, and some of those works are now being officially published in English, but there are literally hundreds of authors and works in these genres and I never get tired of them.
Self publishing lets you constantly improve your work and try new things. One thing that I’m continuing is to write within this world, and sometimes with these characters, but not in a traditional series. The current work in process, The Seaglass Tide, is chronologically set after the duology closes. Yet it’s also very different in setting, tone, theme, and the problems the characters are solving; it’s not a sequel per se. And there is a “second series” I’m working on which again, could be considered part of one giant series, or could be taken as a second trilogy with the characters in a different time setting – this is also a great thing about having more or less immortal characters. It is fun to work through all these possibilities and imagine how to take these risks creatively AND write books that readers will enjoy and connect with.
Ooh! Someone else who HATES the term ‘magic system’! And that sounds like a form of ‘Cultivation’ that might be more interesting to me! And interconnected but separate books/series! This sounds super interesting, and I am definitely going to check it out sometime! Thank you for sharing!
J. C. Snow (she/her) is a queer fantasy author as well as an academic historian of religion and history. Her fantasy worlds are filled with beings mortal and immortal in settings inspired by world history. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Columbia University and has written extensively on religion and race in American history, including a book on religion and early Asian immigration to the United States, and another coming out in August 2023 on mission, race, and empire. She lives with her amazing partner and child in the Bay Area. When not writing she is mostly wishing she could be writing, or wandering around unsupervised at night listening to spotify character playlists.
You can find J.C. Snow on her Website, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
You can get her debut novel and SPFBO9 entry, The Phoenix and the Sword, from most retailers here, or check it out on StoryGraph and Goodreads.
And, not to forget, the full Crane Moon Duology is releasing as an omnibus on July 17th in just a few days, and you can preorder it now!
Enthralled By Love 
Pingback: Book Review: The Crane Moon Cycle (The Phoenix and the Sword, The Shoreless River) by J.C. Snow – Enthralled By Love