I chose my pen name when I was ten, because I knew even then that my legal name would be more trouble than it was worth. – Marie Brennan
At one point in the ‘Onyx Court’ series, I think during ‘In Ashes Lie’, I suggested that Lune might come to love someone else eventually. Which was me pushing back against the narrative trope that people only get one True Love in their entire lives – an idea I think is kind of pernicious – but in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t done it there. – Marie Brennan
I think if you write for long enough, you eventually have a problem with everything, because you start figuring out where you could be doing better. But as far back as I can trace, I always wrote clear, grammatical prose. – Marie Brennan
I’ve only written two novels, neither of them published, where the book is dominated by a male point of view; in the ‘Onyx Court’ series, it’s split roughly 50/50. – Marie Brennan
There was a brief period of time when I was very young where I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian – largely because I liked cats – but then somebody told me I would have to cut animals open, and that was the end of that. – Marie Brennan
I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history. – Marie Brennan
I’d love to see more novels and short stories where the characters have their own folklore that isn’t the Plot-Bearing Prophecy of Doom. – Marie Brennan
I read a lot of the ‘Pern books’ growing up – basically up through ‘All the Weyrs of Pern,’ maybe a couple after that. As far as formative dragon influences are concerned, she’s probably one of the top ones; I know I read other fantasy novels that had them, but none particularly stick in mind. – Marie Brennan
The truth is that real history was a lot more complicated than our popular understandings lead us to believe. – Marie Brennan
When I’m working on a novel, I generally do write every day, but in between those marathons, I take breaks. My brain needs time to recharge. – Marie Brennan
I’m a writer; as soon as I imagine what would happen if I found the fountain of youth, it turns into a dystopia in my head. – Marie Brennan
I didn’t really distinguish between genre and not-genre as a kid, until I made the transition to adult fantasy via Terry Brooks. – Marie Brennan
I’m the sort of person who, once I put dragons into the real world, feels obliged to think about how their presence would have changed history. – Marie Brennan
