Today in the newsletter, our first author spotlight! I met Deva Fagan through the Codex writing forums and realized I had read a couple of her middle-grade books, and that the most recent—A Game of Noctis—had been buzzy around the library I work in. I was especially excited to hear about her then-upcoming adult fantasy debut, House of Dusk, and read it soon after its release in August 2025.

I admit I had high hopes for House of Dusk, due to a dry spell of adult fantasy books falling flat for me… and those hopes were well-surpassed. Fantasy adventure has, in recent years, been largely eclipsed by romantasy, a crop of books that (for me) don’t hit the way Mercedes Lackey, Ellen Kushner, and Sharon Shinn’s “romantic fantasy” of the 80s and 90s did. Alternately, if you profess a desire for fantasy adventure, someone will suggest Brandon Sanderson.

(If you suggest Brandon Sanderson to me, you owe me the price of my post-Mormon story collection.)

House of Dusk includes a queer romantic plotline that’s smoothly integrated into both its larger viewpoint-character’s narrative and the book’s overall narrative. But it also prioritizes the “adventure” part of fantasy I find so appealing—the characters’ movements echoing the plot’s, the world unfurling at the reader’s feet—while still maintaining a true standalone feeling. If there is a House of Dawn in the future, I’ll read it and be delighted! But House of Dusk is complete in itself. Drawn from Bronze Age civilization and a melting pot of Near Eastern mythologies, the book isn’t a straightforward retelling of any one myth, but a second-world mythopoetic work in the mode of Megan Whalen Turner, Cynthia Voigt, and Tasha Suri. It deals in heady topics like trauma and reparations through Sephre and Yeneris, viewpoint characters whose voices are singular and refreshing. It’s cogent, subtle, and absorptive, often very funny, and after finishing I immediately wanted to gossip with Deva about even a few of the book’s many strands.

We did just that recently, and I hope this slice of our conversation piques your interest in House of Dusk and Deva’s other books!

D: I'm interested to hear you say that while working on an epic fantasy project, you aren't necessarily reading for fun in that corner. Is it a case of not wanting to be overly influenced by other books while revising?

Deva: It's not as intentional as that. I've never really felt like reading things influenced me in a negative way. It's more that my brain is too full of my own fantasy world, so I have a hard time fitting in anyone else's!
Do you find that you have to avoid things that are too close to what you're writing?

I do tend to avoid books that play in the same pool as my current project, but I think more because my reader brain wants something different to enjoy—especially when I'm at the point of revision where I'm trying to apply Reader Brain to my own writing.

That makes sense!

In terms of influence, prior to drafting do you do a lot of let's say, topical front-loading, as in reading through books you think might hit the vibe or worldbuilding you're going for, or reference materials as needed?

Oooh, good question! It depends on the book. For House of Dusk I did read a lot of nonfiction on various Bronze Age civilizations (and listened to podcasts on the same) during the brainstorming and drafting phase. For my next middle-grade novel I started watching Survivor as research, and got addicted to it! I ended up putting a couple Easter eggs into the book for fellow Survivor fans! 🙂

But in terms of vibes, I usually wait until after I've finished my first draft.

And that's not The Delta Codex, which is about to come out; that's the middle-grade book after?

Correct! It's called The Island, and it takes place on a deserted tropical island...!

You really never know where inspiration is going to arise.

It's one of the best parts of the creative process! The magpie experience of gathering lots of shiny bits and then figuring out which ones go together.

As I was thinking about House of Dusk, I recalled while reading it I had a similar experience of my brain seeking ingredients that might have gone into the mix—or you might say even akin to Nilos' seeking the scattered parts of the Serpent! Other than the nonfiction about the Bronze Age, what are some of the House of Dusk ingredients? Were you a big mythology kid?

Yes! I actually have a little hand-bound booklet from the fourth grade that our teacher had our class make containing poems and short stories and the like that we composed in our English class. My contribution is a story I made up for our lesson on mythology, explaining how whales got baleen. I was both a mythology nerd and a marine biology nerd as a kid.

But getting back to House of Dusk, it's a bit harder to enumerate because I was trying to write it for about 20 years, and have several previous books that are very different (entirely different plots/characters) but with some recognizable elements (the Phoenix and Serpent, the undead skotoi, the Labyrinth of Souls). Let me see what other ingredients I can identify!

20 years is a hell of a time to spend with a book. I'm glad House of Dusk made it into the world, and that you kept on with it!

I wanted to write a book that felt like a Dead Can Dance album. I wanted to write a book with layers of history and myth where the truth was something you had to piece together from sometimes-contradictory bits and pieces, because that is something I love as a role-player! OH! Brother Cadfael!

Ahh, so much Cadfael I watched with my grandma.

One of my favorite mystery series! I loved the idea of a former soldier becoming a monk and taking care of the garden. And also having an innocent young novice to have to watch out for! So Sephre and Timeus are very much drawn from that pool. I love that you watched it with your grandma!

It's a really fun show, and it definitely prepared me to be kind of obsessed with The Name of the Rose in college.

Oh, interesting! I only ever watched the movie of that—were you obsessed with the book, the movie, or both?

I watched the movie first and then found the book, and was really into both. from one direction, it made sense because I loved books like Midnight Magic by Avi, the Squire's Tale series, and Catherine, Called Birdy as a kid; and then the other direction was becoming interested in linguistics and literary theory.

Oh nice! Have you worked any linguistics stuff into your own writing? I love invented languages and codes and would love to put that in a book at some point!

I admire people who can do conlangs, or the kinds of texts that both function as codes and include codes in the narrative, but I don't have the kind of brain for that. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how and why humans create narratives to explain things (ourselves, our natural world), and experimenting with making new constellation myths. So one aspect of House of Dusk I especially liked was the feeling of old, or almost-familiar knowledge from our world, translated into Sephre and Yeneris's world in the forms of these stories that shape their cultures and religions.

Ah, that makes me very happy to hear!

There are some instances like the kore, that's almost a Persephone story, but with an entirely new bent.

That's exactly the reader experience I was hoping to provoke.

Of course there have always been myth retellings in popular literature, and we've been in a boom of this type of book for some time now; I think practically every goddess, witch, and female demon has gotten a tell-all book by this point. since House of Dusk is second-world fantasy, do you think about it in the lineage of retellings?

Yes! As a kid reader, some of the most impactful books I read were inspired by real mythology and fairy tales (Lloyd Alexander and Robin McKinley) or were books that had fictional mythologies that felt "real" (Lord of the Rings and Watership Down). More recently I read and love Madeline Miller's Circe, which I think was part of what kicked off that recent trend!

I feel like mythology-inspired books and retellings often have a sort of numinous quality that I love.

I think when working on any sort of mythic story (especially in a retelling) that there's a challenge in not relying too much on the "mythic" elements to create depth—I want my characters to still feel real and organic against that backdrop, if that makes sense.

Definitely! And House of Dusk achieves that, I suspect in part because you spent so long with it. Working toward a final form over multiple decades allows for so many more influences to seep in as a writer moves through stages of their reading life. I believe some of the comparisons you got for the book were to authors like Samantha Shannon and Tasha Suri, which I can definitely see—but I suspect we're close to the same age, and while reading I also saw authors of a previous adventure fantasy era like Sharon Shinn and Jacqueline Carey. The book feels lived-in, full, and accomplished in a very mature way. I liked that so much of its story was about stories that Sephre, Yeneris, and Sinoe told themselves, or inherited.

Aw, thank you! I am honored by those comparisons!

I have heard from other author friends that moving between age groups can be tricky, but most of them move between YA and adult. it seems like it must be a bit simpler to move between middle-grade and adult... but is that true?

For what it’s worth, I've had the greatest struggle writing YA! Whenever I've written YA I've gotten feedback that it either felt too middle grade, or too adult! I think it depends on the writer, though. For me, I find that the story drives things. Some stories just come out as MG, others as Adult.

I also think that in some ways, MG and Adult are more similar to each other than YA. YA is often (not always, of course!) focused inward, more about inhabiting the feelings of the protagonist and coming to terms with them. Whereas I think (again, not always, but in broad strokes) MG is often more about the character learning about the world and their place in it.

I think people assume that for adult fiction, no holds are barred and you can do whatever you want re: plot, violence, sex, etc. which may or may not actually be accurate for any given book. But on the other hand: are there things you can do in MG that you can't do in adult?

Oooh, good question! One thing I find interesting about MG is that the genres aren't siloed to the same extent as adult. Both in terms of publishing (with adult having specific imprints for genre) and in bookstores. I do feel like I've been able to write a greater variety of different sorts of things in MG (though I've also been doing that longer).

Do you relate to the notion of writing "the book I needed when I was young"?

I do think that I write a lot of my MG for myself—not necessarily for my kid self but for the part of me that is still that kid! But I was fortunate in that I DID find a lot of amazing books that gave me what I needed as a kid. I fully recognize that a large part of that is privilege though! I recognize that for folks with other identities, that was not the case. Do you find you write for someone specific, Dee? Or for yourself?

Oh, definitely for myself! Part of it is "do it for her" (who is an eternal 12-year-old) and part of it is Toni Morrison's writing the book you want to read. I think we write the books we need to see as adults, as well.

I love that. Honestly I feel like a lot of the time I am still mostly just a 12-year-old too!

Well, as a past and former myth kid, I want to thank Deva for House of Dusk and The Mirrorwood in particular, and for chatting with me for this newsletter. If you check out one of her books, let me know what you think! If you’ve incorporated an unexpected influence, like Cadfael or Survivor, into a project, tell me about that too!

Deva Fagan (she/her) is the author of A Game of Noctis, Nightingale and other books for young readers (including The Delta Codex as of April 14, 2026), as well as adult epic fantasy House of Dusk. She lives in Maine with her husband and her dog. When she’s not writing she spends her time reading, playing video games, doing geometry, and drinking copious amounts of tea. Find her on Bluesky, Patreon, and Buttondown for news and updates!