I absolutely adored Daughter of the Bone Forest and knew I had to ask the author more! Luckily, Jasmine Skye was willing to humor me and this is one of my favorite interviews! Get ready for the next book as well! Keep reading this interview for all the behind the scenes.
Daughter of the Bone Forest by Jasmine Skye
Rosy is a bone familiar, gifted with the power to shift into animals marked with exposed bone. She spends most of her days in the magical Bone Forest, caring for her feral grandmother and hiding her powers to avoid conscription by the Witch King’s army. Until the day that Princess Shaw, a witch known as Death’s Heir, visits the Forest. When Rosy saves Shaw’s life, the princess offers her the chance to attend the prestigious school, Witch Hall, as payment. Though Rosy is wary of Shaw’s intentions, she cannot pass up the opportunity to find the cure for her grandmother’s affliction.
But at Witch Hall, Rosy finds herself embroiled in political games she doesn’t understand. Shaw wants Rosy for her entourage, a partner to help lead the coming war. All Rosy wants is to stay out of trouble until she can graduate and save her grandmother, but she can’t deny her attraction to Shaw or the comfort Shaw’s magic gives her. Will Rosy give in to her destiny, or will the Bone Forest call her home once and for all?
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Find Daughter of the Bone Forest on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, & Blackwells.
In DAUGHTER OF THE BONE FOREST, you present a queer normative fantasy world. Can you talk about your world building choices and why it was important to create a space for queer normative relationships?
As much as I appreciate stories that highlight and discuss the realities of homophobia and transphobia, I have always gravitated to stories that model a different type of reality. If I’m already creating an entirely different societal structure because of the inclusion of magic, why should I feel confined by the heteronormative expectations of our world? It takes work to uncouple our upbringings and societal training when developing new worlds, but I’m firmly of the opinion that it is worth the effort. With Daughter of the Bone Forest and all my books, I wanted to show readers of all ages that it shouldn’t have to be a big deal what your gender is or who you’re romantically interested in (or not interested in). There’s plenty of other conflict my characters go through without having to bring their gender & sexuality into it. I want my queer characters to get to experience the same kind of fantasy adventures cishet boys have gotten to have since the dawn of storytelling.
Speaking of the world, can you talk about your journey writing the different magical systems? What were the hardest and easiest decisions in the world making process?
In Daughter of the Bone Forest, magic manifests in four categories: bone, flower, ice, and glass. When I was in the initial planning stages of the book, I knew I wanted to write a witch story, so I took the common areas of witchcraft and expanded them out. Bone witches can commune with the dead. Flower witches can heal. Ice witches can prophesize the future. And glass witches can imbue objects with enchantments. I also wanted to play with the idea of a witch’s familiar. A lot of traditional witch stories see witches with cat or owl familiars. When I was a teenager, I enjoyed the anime Zero no Tsukaima, where a human from our world is accidentally summoned as the familiar of a witch in a magical world. I love the idea of witches forming partnerships with humans and thus came the idea of making those classic animal familiars into humans–but unlike the deliberately ordinary main character of Zero no Tsukaima, these familiars can shapeshift into animals.
So now I had witches with four types of magic and the ability to bond with familiars who were humans that could shift into different animals. The thing that complicated all of it was adding the bone/flower/ice/glass embellishments to each type. This was based entirely upon my desire to create a living setting. The idea for that started way back in 2013 with a 20k story that never went anywhere, but which included a forest of bone pines filled with skeletal animals. When I attached the idea of this Bone Forest to witches who could commune with the dead, I knew I needed each of the other types to have their own special setting. Thus Lake Bloom, the Frozen Mountain, and the Obsidian Desert were all born. And then the familiars ended up being categorized as well–so bone familiars became only land mammals, flower familiars aquatic, ice familiars avian, and glass familiars reptilian. Deciding upon those categories took a lot of playing around, but in the end I’m happy with how the whole magic system came together and helped me develop the physical landscape and political structure of the Cursed Kingdom.
How did you approach the main relationship between Rosy and Shaw especially in this dual POV set up? How did you position their getting to know each other and their feelings as we see through both of their eyes?
Daughter of the Bone Forest is Rosy’s book first and foremost. The main character arc is hers, so of course she needed the larger page time. The behind-the-scenes secret here is that Shaw never originally had POV chapters. The draft that my agent and I went on submission with actually only had a single Shaw POV chapter–almost at the end of the book. The readers were meant to be uncertain about Shaw’s motivations right until the climax. The problem was, this POV chapter came out of nowhere and many early readers loved the idea but not the execution.
When I received an R&R request by my now editor, Holly West at Feiwel and Friends, I decided to play around with adding Shaw’s POV into the book earlier. Thus the current structure of switching the POV every fifth chapter was born. These chapters became a window into Shaw’s motivations. But because they’re spread so far apart, there are huge jumps in Shaw’s feelings and her perception of the events of the plot. When deciding what was vital to put in these rare Shaw POV chapters, I had to write out Shaw’s own secondary arc and then give the readers scenes that would snapshot its progression in the shortest amount of time.
Can you talk about the relationship between Rosy and her grandmother? How did you create her grandmother’s character and did anything change while drafting?
Gran was simultaneously one of my favorite characters to write, and one of the most difficult to get right. I’ve never been to war, but I wanted to be respectful of the trauma many veterans struggle with. I pulled a lot from the experience of my own PTSD and extrapolated out those symptoms to a greater extreme. In many ways, Rosy’s relationship with Gran is my own relationship with my traumatized self. Because of that, I had to tweak a lot about how I discussed Gran and her PTSD throughout the various drafts of the book.
Conversations around trauma aside, I’m also blessed with many grandparents whom I love dearly. The relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren is something I find very interesting and that I’d love to see explored more often in fiction. I hope I was able to touch upon the kind of complexity that can come with those kinds of relationships–not just with Rosy and Gran, but also Rosy and her dead grandfather, Pops, and Shaw and her own grandmother, the former Witch Queen, who she’s often compared to.
Rosy’s own relationship to her power is one that I loved to witness in DAUGHTER OF THE BONE FOREST. What is her relationship to power and what drew you to this theme?
Rosy is an extraordinarily powerful familiar. I’ve always loved the trope of an overpowered protagonist, but I also hate the trope of the reluctant heir. So I deliberately created Rosy and Shaw to be in contrast with each other. Rosy is someone who has excessive magical power but no political power–and she’s seen the downfall of that particular combination through the trauma her Gran has experienced. Shaw is someone with both magical and political power, but no agency over her own destiny as she’s been prophesized to lead her kingdom into war. Throughout the book, I wanted Rosy and Shaw to realize how similar they were to each other and also help each other see things from the other point of view. Rosy is very aware of the price that comes from having no agency and is determined to hold onto her freedom by hiding the extent of her magic from those in power. Shaw is very aware of the responsibility those in power must have for the safety of all and is willing to do whatever is necessary to get the tools she needs to save her kingdom. They both have lessons to learn by the end of the book.
A theme I liked which you explored was this question of having the power to make a difference, to change, and what if we choose not to? Do we have an imperative? When do we act? Can you talk to us about your approach to this theme and if you knew you were always going to chat about it?
I always knew the responsibility of people with power was going to be a major theme. It has been from the very first draft, and as I mentioned in the previous question, was a fundamental force behind the development of both Rosy and Shaw’s characters and their relationship. That being said, the particulars of this conversation did change with each draft. There is a lot of nuance in the theme of responsibility and in the varying ways people have power. I didn’t want readers to come away thinking that there was only one correct way to handle power or responsibility. Rosy and Shaw’s perceptions both change throughout the book. Their beliefs about power are shaped by what they experience in the plot, but their character arcs around that theme aren’t done yet.
I enjoyed getting to know Rosy’s cousin throughout DAUGHTER OF THE BONE FOREST. For new readers, can you give us an introduction and talk about how you addressed her character at school and the differences between Rosy and her?
When I was first developing Rosy’s family, I wanted to show how close “extended” family could be to each other. We already talked about the relationship Rosy has with Gran, but her relationship to her cousin, Toketie, is just as important. Rosy and Toketie grew up as sisters and best friends. They shared a room. They did everything together, at least until Toketie shifted for the first time into an ice swan and went off to Witch Hall, leaving Rosy behind. Rosy is a bone familiar–she’s stuck in the past. She doesn’t want things to change. She wants her and her family to be left alone to what she perceives to be an idyllic ranch life. Toketie, meanwhile, is an ice familiar–she’s stuck dreaming about the future and doesn’t understand Rosy’s stubborn desire for things to stay the same. The ups and downs of their relationship are a mirror of Rosy’s own character growth and the way Rosy’s presence at Witch Hall impacts all the students there.
Who is your favorite side character?
It really depends! My favorite to write was probably Aklemin–I love the cryptic seer trope. I have a soft spot for Toketie. I adored Oluk’s growth as a character and the relationships he forms. The teachers were all also fun to write, each in their own way. But if I had to choose one favorite side character, it’s actually Guanyu. (Someone stop me before I write fanfic about my own character.)
What is Rosy and Shaw’s theme song?
I am one of those authors who puts together a whole playlist for my books and listens to that playlist exclusively when I draft. Rosy and Shaw have several theme songs, each for a different point in the book. But if I had to choose one that encapsulates their relationship, it’s Wolves by Selena Gomez and Marshmello.
Give us a teaser of what we can expect from book two please!
This story was always meant to be a duology. Daughter of the Bone Forest was Rosy’s book. Daughter of the Cursed Kingdom is Shaw’s. So you can expect to see a reverse of the POV situation from book one–you’ll be getting four Shaw chapters for every one of Rosy’s. I mentioned already, but both Shaw and Rosy still have lessons to learn around power, responsibility, and choice. That being said, this is Shaw’s book and thus you can expect a lot more politics, a definite increase in conflict related to her prophesized war, oh and an answer to the slowburn will-they-won’t-they relationship.
Find Daughter of the Bone Forest on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, & Blackwells.
About the Author
Jasmine Skye is a queer-romantic, grey-ace, bigender fantasy author. Growing up, Jasmine learned sword fighting, renaissance dancing, and equestrian skills through the SCA, a medieval recreation society. S/he especially loves to create magical worlds where LGBTQIA+ heroes persevere through hardships to claim their own happy endings.
In college, Jasmine studied Psychology, Anthropology (with a specialization in Native and Indigenous Studies), and Multidisciplinary Honors in Writing. S/he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program.
Jasmine has a dog, a cat, and a snake, grew up with horses and chickens, and expects to own a menagerie by the time s/he’s fifty. When s/he’s not writing, Jasmine works with high schoolers across Texas as a DEI outreach coordinator.