Q&A With Livia Blackburne 

Tonight I’m doing a Q&A with Liva Blackburne, who is the New York Times Bestselling author of “Feather and Flame,” book 2 in the newest Disney series “The Queens Council.” “Feather and Flame,” is a sequel to Mulan where Mulan has an all-female militia and the emperor has chosen her to be his heir. 

Q: What were your favorite novels you read this year?

A: I recently read Rise of The Vicious Princess by CJ Redwine, which was phenomenal. Political intrigue, slow burn romance. I really loved it so much. Highly recommended it if you’d like my books. 

On the contemporary side, I really enjoyed How Moon Fuentes Fell in Love with The Universe by Rachel Vasquez Gilliland. It’s a really beautiful love story that touches on family, growing up, and finding your place in the world.

Q: What advice do you have for those wanting to be a writer?

A: Critique groups are great for accountability and feedback! Find partners who enjoy the genre you write and who give you a good mix of positive and negative feedback.

Q: Which scenes did you have the most fun writing in “Feather and Flame,” which scenes were more challenging to write? 

A: My favorite scene was actually one that I wrote to audition for the part. I could pretty much propose any scene I wanted, so I played to my strengths, which was writing action sequences. I wrote this midnight sparring session between Mulan and Shang. Besides the action, I also got to write them taking out their aggressions on each other. All the simmering emotions and frustrations of the past few chapters come out in this fight. 

I can’t think of a specific scene that was hard to write, but I always have trouble with the connecting scenes in the first third of the book. That’s when things haven’t gone incredibly wrong yet, so you’re trying to get in all the developments to set up the explosive plot developments later on, and you have to do it without losing the reader’s attention.

Q: Are you writing a new book now? If so can you spoil if its apart of the Queen’s Council series or if it’s a separate book from that series? 

A: I just turned in copy edits for my first YA romantic comedy, Clementine and Danny Save the World (and Each Other). It’s about two teenagers who fall in love while trying to two save a local strip mall from gentrification, without realizing that they’ve been online enemies for years. That one should come out May 2023.