Books / Jen Williams
Bristol-based three-time British Fantasy Award winning author publishes new book for YA audiences
Swapping London for her new home of Bristol in recent years, three-time British Fantasy Award-winning author Jen Williams has written books including The Copper Cat series and the Winnowing Flame trilogy.
She has now published the sequel to The Sleepless, which as well as being her first novel for YA audiences, is the opening book in a romantasy duology inspired by her move to Bristol.
The gods-and-monsters saga has now been concluded with The Dreamless, newly published by First Ink.
Williams spoke to Bristol24/7 to share more about her writing life, and how it continues to evolve.
The cover for Jen Williams: The Dreamless, 2026, published by First Ink
The Sleepless was your first book for YA audiences. How did your approach to this differ from previous work you had undertaken?
“A surprising amount of the writing did not change significantly for The Sleepless duology – I was still building a fantasy world, and still attempting to populate it with complex and interesting characters. The main differences were around pace and length – my fantasy books for adult readers are, I would say, significantly longer – and around the sensitivities and motives of the main characters.
“Elver, Artair and Lucian are all young people, and so their perspectives will be different to the older, more seasoned characters I’ve written in previous books. Often I think YA fiction is really about transformative experiences, and about growing up, so those were the things I kept in mind while I was writing.”
Did the reception to that book surprise you, and do you feel an extra responsibility to your audience with this sequel?
“I was surprised and touched by the passion readers had for these characters and this story – they really took Elver’s world to heart, which is a dream come true for a writer. Finishing a series is always a little nerve-wracking, because often people will come to the ending expecting certain things, or hoping for them, anyway, and you want everyone to go away happy, or at least satisfied.
“But on the other hand, if everything just falls into place for the characters, with no real strife or consequences, that can be unsatisfying for the writer too – and I have a love of bittersweet endings (anyone who has read my Winnowing Flame trilogy would attest to that, I suspect). It’s a fine balancing act, and I had several chats with my editor about exactly how to end this story. When it came to it, writing the epilogue of The Dreamless might have been my favourite part of the whole process.”
Jen Williams
How is your relationship to your characters changing as you continue to work with them?
“You do get fond of them over time – protective almost, which is a shame because I am in fact the person making them suffer… The biggest changes come with the characters you didn’t expect to be around for long, or to have a big impact. There are several characters in The Sleepless duology who initially I thought would have minor walk-on parts, but then turned out to be integral to the story.
“The monster pup that Artair kidnaps in the first book, for example, was a handy plot device who quickly became the emotional heart of the book in many ways; or there’s the pantheon of gods who get to cause a lot more trouble in The Dreamless. Writing is always at its most fun when characters and plots go in unexpected directions.”
As a reader, which authors are inspiring you currently?
“I have been in a very historical fiction place lately… I just finished reading the Lonesome Dove quartet at the beginning of the year, which I loved; Larry McMurtry surprised me by providing me with a new favourite fictional character – I would die for Gus McCrae, it turns out. The books are funny, dramatic, achingly sad, and full of human beings doing extremely human things, like making terrible decisions.
“Just recently I read Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell (the novelist, not the comedian), which is both a rip-roaring celebration of the 1960s music scene and a completely bananas fantasy thriller. Mitchell is a hero of mine for managing to get some really quite marvellously weird stuff onto the literary fiction shelf.”
Jen Williams and partner, fellow fantasy author Peter Newman at Wake the Tiger
Your partner is also a fantasy author – to what extent do you collaborate on ideas and their development?
“We talk everything through together, which I love. I always used to be quite a solitary writer, in that I would write the first draft in isolation, and then send it to my agent or editor for their thoughts. I had a distrust of writing groups, probably because I am something of a control freak. Since moving in with Peter though, I read each new chapter aloud to him, and then we have a chat about it afterwards, and at the planning stage too we bounce ideas off each other.
“Having that different perspective is invaluable, it turns out – at least, it is when it’s coming from someone who knows stories inside and out. Peter wrote the Gemmell award-winning The Vagrant and is genuinely some kind of genius when it comes to generating ideas. We’ve played around with writing a book together and have even written a decent chunk of it, but with other commitments and a wedding to plan, I’m not sure when it will get finished – it’s a lot of fun to work on, though.”
You have switched London for Bristol. How do you feel about your newly adopted city?
“Ah, it’s brilliant. I didn’t imagine I would ever leave London, but I fell in love with Bristol almost immediately. Whenever I go into town I’m getting my phone out every five minutes to take a photo of something that has pleased me – a parrot someone has painted over some posters, the trees in Castle Park, or the graffiti in a restaurant toilet.
“Also, and I do not say this lightly, the food here is ludicrously good. I could write a whole article just about the food I have eaten over the last couple of years. And it’s a friendly place too. People always say London is unfriendly, which I don’t think is exactly true – you might say, as a Londoner, I have to say that – but people in London are just run ragged by the pace of things and focused on their own stuff. It took me a while to get used to people in Bristol making eye contact and being chatty; it’s been a delight.”
Jen Williams
The Dreamless by Jen Williams is out now, (published by First Ink). Follow the author @sennydreadful19.
All photos: courtesy Jen Williams
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