F. C. Yee grew up in New Jersey and now calls Denver, Colorado, home. He is the author of the critically acclaimed The Epic Crush of Genie Lo and The Iron Will of Genie Lo. (Check out the Roarbots Review here.) He is also the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi.

The Roarbots: What drew you to YA fantasy/romance? Why was it important the Genie Lo duology focus on a 17-year-old protagonist rather than an adult at a crucial moment of her life?

F.C. Yee: I first started writing fiction during a time when I was reading a lot of YA fantasy/romance, so it likely had a stronger imprint on what I was producing. Also, the majority of writing I was doing prior to fiction was comedy writing, and I think I found a better fit for that kind of snappiness and tension in YA. Lastly, while I was pulling together the ideas for Genie Lo, I was going through a lot of professional frustration in my day job, and realized the last time I’d felt so stymied was when I was a teenager, facing the horde of gatekeepers every teen faces.

RB: Duologies are increasingly rare in fantasy; most people write standalone books, or more commonly, trilogies. What made a duology the right format for Genie’s story?

Yee: Unfortunately, I don’t have a craft-based answer for this. When I wrote the book that became The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, it was originally a standalone. It went on submission with some minor open-endedness added to it, and the offers I got back were mostly for two books, instead of one or three.

I do like the duology format though. If you subscribe to the three-act structure or the five-act structure for storytelling, then your central turning point comes at the end of the first book in a duology. I enjoy the opportunity a duology gives to do character setup in book one, and showing off character growth in book two.

RB: Do you remember when you first developed an interest in mythology? What kept it fed over the years?

Yee: Edith Hamilton, baby! But in all seriousness, the storytelling in mythology is what kept me interested in reading and rereading it. The way mythology continues to power creative visions today is endlessly fascinating and makes revisiting source materials so rewarding.

RB: How did you get involved in the Kyoshi project? Why do you think she suited you particularly as a writer?

Yee: My publisher had worked with Nickelodeon in the past and came up with a generally agreed-upon proposal for the project before contacting me. On a superficial level, my name might have been put forth due to writing a tall, overpowered protagonist in an Asian-influenced setting, but hopefully the fit was also due to the kind of kinetic energy I tried to capture in my writing. I was a huge fan of Avatar before I started my fiction career, and it was undoubtedly one of my creative influences in fiction, before I ever came near the Kyoshi project.

RB: How many more books will there be about her? What elements of her story did you feel were the most important to include?

Yee: There’s going to be two Kyoshi books: The Rise of Kyoshi which is already out, and The Shadow of Kyoshi, which is due in 2020. I think the elements of her story I most wanted to capture were the challenges and changes that led her to become the type of person whom we see in the animated series. It would have been less gratifying, in my opinion, to read a backstory where she was always so stern and unyielding even as a young person, so I believed it would be important to include a journey where you see the seeds of her as an adult develop.

RB: Were you working from a story bible or did you have a fair bit of free rein?

Yee: There was no story or history bible for Kyoshi’s time, so I had a lot of free rein with how I portrayed characters and lore. I also had a slight get-out-of-jail-free card in that Kyoshi’s adulthood lasts so long that any mistakes I made could conceivably be washed away by the passage of time in the Avatar world itself.

RB: What do you enjoy most about being a storyteller?

Yee: I like stressing people out, whether it’s characters or readers. I think there’s ways to do that with both comedy and tragedy, so it’s always an interesting challenge. Those moments where you solve a narrative problem in a really satisfying way are also cool, but I don’t like the “getting stuck first” part as much.

RB: Were there responses to Genie or Kyoshi you weren’t expecting? What were they?

Yee: People seem to like my sidekick characters as much as or more than my main characters (Yunie, Rangi). I wonder if I’m somehow writing supporting cast members as wish-fulfillment for the main protagonists.

RB: Many authors have pretty substantial online presences. You tend to be more private. Was that a conscious decision? Any particular reason(s)? No judgment.

Yee: I’ve never been a skilled social media user; I only created a Twitter account after Genie Lo sold because I read that authors should have an online presence. I have a goal to talk more in the future with my fellow authors on social media, because the YA community is awesome and supportive.

RB: What are you working on right now?

Yee: Putting the final touches on The Shadow of Kyoshi.

There you have it, folx! Run to the bookstore or the library and grab the Genie Lo duology and The Rise of Kyoshi! The Shadow of Kyoshi is scheduled for release on July 21, 2020, which means I am 100% buying it as a birthday present for myself, and I might let the kids read it when I’m done.