BOOKS


Author Interview Aisling Fowler


Aisling Fowler‘s début middle-grade fantasy was won at auction by HarperCollins, with rights sold in 22 territories to date


Fiona Noble @fionanoblebooks 32 9th July 2021


A


isling Fowler was watching her husband play a video game when inspiration for the heroine of her début novel first came to her. “He’s very keen


to stress that he’s not a gamer,” she laughs, talking to me over video call from Sydney, where said husband is currently working. The female main character was very active and heroic and something about her connected with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who Fowler had loved obsessively as a girl. “I suddenly thought, ‘Why aren’t I writing characters like this?’ Almost immediately Twelve came to me. Not fully formed, but the idea of her. I knew that she was brave and bold and didn’t really care what people thought of her.” Fowler sensed anger in her too, and in trying to unpick where that came from, the story unfolded.


Fireborn: Twelve and the Frozen Forest will be published by HarperCollins this autumn. It’s a thrilling, immersive middle-grade fantasy balancing high-stakes adventure and nightmarish monsters with humour, friendship and an unforgetable heroine. The book is set in the world of Ember, a vividly imagined prehistoric world inhabited by seven clans and plagued by dark magical creatures.


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