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We’ve had some truly excellent submissions this Summer and are delighted to have signed our title for 2025. It’s been a tough secret to keep under wraps, we have adored getting to know Dawn, falling in love with her manuscript, and we can’t wait to share more with you! In this author introduction, you'll find out more about our wonderful new author Dawn Chen as well as her upcoming novel, The Witch Who Chases The Sun.
Q: Please introduce yourself with 3 fun facts.
Hi, my name is Dawn and I'm going to be answering a few questions as the new author for Asteria Press. Here are three fun facts about me and how I became a writer: first, I did a law degree in university and it made me lose my faith in humanity. So, I chose to write fantasy instead of pursuing my law career. The second fact is that I have a God complex and I love to torture my characters. The third fun fact is that I wrote a Chinese queer story ten years ago, and stopped writing for about 7-8 years. But then, that story blew up and made me feel like, as a queer writer, I really did have a lot more stories to tell that can resonate with people. So here I am!
Q: What are your favourite cosy fantasy titles?
Some of my favourite cosy fantasy titles are: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T J Klune. I think it is the first queer cosy fantasy that I have ever read which truly made me feel like 'oh my God, I want to live in that world'. But, at the same time, that story deals with a lot of heavy themes too which, I think, is what makes them more effective as a cosy fantasy as the cosy elements play into the more heavy subjects. Another title that has a lot of similar themes as my book is Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. This one is a manga and anime series. It is also a story that happens after a typical fantasy ending where a party of heroes in a Tolkienesque world wins against the Demon King, but the story follows what happens after the elf has outlived all the members of her party. This has a very similar vibe to what I wanted to write about in my book.
Q: Can you tell us more about the magical society in your novel?
I think what readers can expect from the story is a clash of Chinese myth-inspired alchemy, especially surrounding necromancy as a concept, which is very different from the Western sense of what a “witch” is. But there is also all these old, very stereotypical European ideas of witches — which is the elements of prophecy, and having a familiar, and reading the future. I think it's interesting to smash these different types of magic together and see the world that it creates.
Q: Love and loss are both central themes in your story. Can you tell us a bit more about it?
This story is based on the concept “what happens after the end of a typical fantasy story?” So, after the Great War, after the scores are settled, what happens after the "happy (or maybe not-so-happy) ever after"? What does it feel like to live now that you are supposed to be happy, but you are not? I think the aftermath of war in fantasy settings are sometimes downplayed and seen as an “oh, they'll fix themselves” situation. I have always loved stories that give you a glimpse of how characters cope in their day-to-day lives, which is also where the "cosy" element of cosy fantasies come in. There is a lot of healing, but at the same time, how far can that healing go for characters who have endured a lot during a war? Different people cope with trauma differently, and traumas can break supposedly “happily ever afters” apart. How can people can find each other after that trauma?
Q: There is a sapphic romance at the heart of your story. What can readers look forward to?
At the centre of this story is a sapphic romance between two witches. Some of the tropes that one can expect are: firstly, second-chance romance between two characters who have a very long history with each other, but also had a lot of things on their plate that separated them. And secondly, there is very much a “grumpy x sunshine” dynamic going on, a bit TOO literally at times. The third trope is the star-crossed lovers trope. The two witches are going to be from opposing factions during the fantasy war. There is already a lot of things that happened between them, their opposing ideals and backgrounds are going to come back into play within the story. And the last trope is “are they in love or are they just stupid??”, which is, I think, the best way to summarize their relationship.
Q: Why have you chosen to publish with Asteria Press?
I came upon Asteria Press on Threads and saw that their guidelines say they want “cosy fantasy with an edge”, and I'm like, ‘oh wait, that is the story that I have right here!’ And so, I sent over three chapters and the synopsis to them and received a request for the full manuscript. We then all got together for a meeting, and I think my book could not have found a better publisher who have this sense of, ‘oh, we're going to make this story happen because we really enjoy the story you're trying to tell here’ than Asteria Press has.
The Witch Who Chases The Sun will be publishing summer 2025. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on social media to receive all the latest updates and behind-the-scenes content 💌