A warm welcome to author D.M. Kannapan who is joining us today to talk about their book Fire’s Ally
Welcome 🙂
What Inspired this Book and How it Evolved
Now that Fire’s Ally is published, it’s pleasant to think back about what inspired this book all the way back in November 2019.
There were a few media inspirations, of course.
- I watched, in close succession, Avatar the Last Airbender, Princess Mononoke, and Frozen 2, and you’ll probably see some of those influences.
- I also love mysteries and spy thrillers, so Agatha Christie and John Le Carre leave their marks on anything I write.
- Uprooted by Naomi Novik was recommended by my developmental editor, and I’m very grateful because it ended up being one of my favorite books ever, and raised the bar for how well one can handle themes.
I was also inspired by wanting to write about climate activism. My experience of it. How it feels to be looking at a looming, slow-moving threat, trying to persuade society to change in response, and grappling with the magnitude of the transformation needed. And I wanted to show that it can be done. We have to imagine a way out of crisis, or many different ways, before we can enact it in our world.
Climate fiction often deals with apocalyptic visions of what could go wrong, to remind us how desperately we need to avert it. Some satirizes our past and current failures to act effectively. Both of these are valuable. We need to understand what is wrong, because so much is.
Less often, I see climate fiction that shows us how we might begin to address our problems (I’m sure some exists, and I welcome recommendations!). This last category is sorely needed, and what I am interest in. This is the type of story I set out to write.
In my book, the people of the continent of Ervu are under threat from an eerie, otherworldly, long-burning fire. I won’t spell out what it symbolizes, but instead I’ll leave that up to the reader’s interpretation. Climate change is probably the obvious interpretation, but there are others.
I also wanted to portray a relatively good and gentle society. An aspirational one. One that values life and the autonomy of individuals.
Ervuan society isn’t perfect, and definitely not without conflict, but it has care and egalitarianism at its core. You might think it’s hard to write a story in a world without battles and oppression, but I would argue that the stakes are even higher because of how much this society has to lose, and how far it could fall.
My young protagonist, Eleg, might be relatable to climate activists and people who care about issues today. She is impatient and inexperienced, but she also knows her society needs to be more proactive in addressing the threats. She fights to be heard and to be taken seriously, and to galvanize others around her.
One of my biggest challenges when starting this novel was understanding Eleg’s relationship with her society, and the root of the opposition between them.
That relationship is very different from my relationship with my society. Eleg didn’t grow up in a patriarchy.
She wasn’t being ignored because of her gender or social status–so what was the source of conflict? I had to find an answer that fit the ethos of this relatively egalitarian society, and I settled on one that embodied both their good intentions and their flaws.
When finding the tone and voice of this book, I had to undo my influences from typical fantasy novels that emphasized formality, status hierarchies, and power struggles. My book could have no grand titles, no bowing and scraping, and no identifying people by their bloodlines.
It was rather refreshing! I am tired of reading about monarchs and hereditary heirs. Speculative fiction lets us imagine any society we wish. We are not bound to the fiefdoms of old.
I finally found my inspiration for the speech of the people of Ervu–the Ents! In The Lord of the Rings, the Ents are tree-giants who speak in long, rolling sentences, adding clauses and details by increments as they approach a consensus understanding. This is of a piece with their worldview: deliberative, thoughtful, and unhurried. My characters, being human, don’t go quite as far as Treebeard and his council. But the Ents were my hook into understanding their voice.
The tone and voice were the last pieces of the book’s puzzle that fell into place, after I’d gotten through all the plotting and worldbuilding. When I finally found it, I wrote my first chapter in one sitting, and the next two chapters over the next two days.
I ran my first chapter by my writing critique group. When they praised the tone, I knew I had all the pieces and was ready to finish this book! Of course, they pointed out several other aspects that needed improvement, so I worked on those along the way. But the momentum only built from there, and I finished my near-final draft over four months (after nearly four years of plotting and planning).
I am so honored to now be sharing it with you.
D. M. Kannapan has a new YA fantasy cli-fi book out: Fire’s Ally.
For most of her life, Eleg has been obsessed with the eerie, persistent, wildfire claiming parts of her home. No amount of rain seems to be able to put it out.
She belongs to a gentle, bookish society, and her people have been fighting the fire back for decades. But they are not ready for the turmoil it is about to unleash.
Eleg understands the fire better than most. She has already once failed to protect the innocent in its path.
Though she would rather be alone with her charts and graphs, Eleg must become the unlikely hero her people need, and bring the continent together in an ambitious technological endeavor to save their home.
Fire’s Ally is a YA fantasy climate-fiction with queer characters, sci fi elements, and coming of age themes. It is cozy-adjacent but has high stakes. You’ll like it if you like deep, immersive worldbuilding and political intrigue.
Warnings: natural disasters, high control groups
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Eleg followed Aizl and Ovvet, glad to be in motion, and glad to be walking with Aizl. She wondered how much Ovvet had intuited about her desire to see the fire. For Eleg, insight came in short flashes and incomplete information. It was probably the same for Ovvet.
He didn’t act worried about Eleg wanting to observe the fire, though, as she suspected most adults would.
Her cousin Zott skipped beside her. The Pavilion Plateau touched the front of Urmetten, their village, and the hill it was built into, from the north.
From there, the children followed an eastward path into a narrow ravine. It was filled with towerlike rock formations that Aizl loved to climb.
As they approached the ravine from above, they had a view of its twin stony walls zigzagging into the distance, and between them, irregular rock pillars growing like stalks out of the ground.
Another few steps, and they were in the cool, craggy depths with the clear sky above and a network of paths ahead, among the bases of towers. The quiet dialect of the ravine creatures surrounded them. Eleg should come here more often. Maybe with Aizl.
There wasn’t usually much reason to come to the ravine. Its hardy denizens survived without any particular tending from the Urmettians. Nearly everywhere else, the villagers studied the soil, rock, and the water, gleaned insight about the health of their continent, Ervu, and offered whatever service a plant may want from their human hands.
And the gatherer parties didn’t favor the canyon for foraging when richer groves were a short walk away. Gathering for the kitchens was one of the few activities that pulled Eleg away from her hiding places.
“This is the best place to practice climbing!” Aizl said. She dashed ahead, her wavy hair bobbing, pointing out towers she’d scaled and the challenges each posed to even a skilled climber.
Eleg smiled at her enthusiasm and quietly hoped there weren’t too many good climbing towers ahead of their destination. The shapes in the fire wouldn’t wait for Aizl, even if Eleg wanted to.
Ovvet walked more slowly, his long robes dragging on the rocks, and looked back to check that Eleg and Zott were keeping up.
“This is the one!” Aizl rested her hand on an imposing tower, both taller and wider than its neighbors. Its lumpy shape formed natural steps. “Best to climb from this side.”
They scrabbled up with Aizl’s supportive guidance. Ovvet boosted Zott the first step. Eleg stopped on the second to adjust the drawing materials strapped to her side.
After a short but invigorating climb, they sat on the smooth top and gazed out across the expanse.
Aizl spread her arms. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
They were above the surrounding stone pillars, and each was sliced cleanly by the early-afternoon sunlight into a bright section and a deep shadow cast by the canyon walls.
Behind them were the vast hill ranges, with decorative stonework marking the entrances of the carved rooms that made up Urmetten.
On the Pavilion Plateau, which abutted it, small figures were still hanging art. The sacred river of Paclellic, lined with chirp-filled amber-and-yellow foliage, meandered into the valley. Along its banks, groups of visitors to the village made their camps, resting before entering the pavilion for the feast. A distant herd of goats made its way across the grassland, rippling the green around it.
And beyond it all, that fire, looming over so many lives with its tower of black smoke and stark flames. It was partially obscured by the mountain range that it intertwined.
Where it wasn’t obscured, its base was ringed with dead earth and black ash, and gray and yellow liquid leached into the earth in fine rivulets.
In the flames, the jagged shape Eleg had seen was still there, unlike in any of her previous sketches. She unrolled her drawing paper and looked over her shoulder at the others. They were looking the other way, toward the village.
Eleg followed their gaze. The air that filled the canyon was shimmering and changing. Thin tendrils formed, like corn silk blowing in the wind, but made of light or mist. The tendrils drew closer to each other in a bundle and began to cohere in an image.
“Look, it’s Puvvel!” said Ovvet, pointing out the image to Zott. The tendrils formed a cloud with a faintly recognizable expression—not quite a face, and yet it left the sense of looking at one. The expression was of playful excitement.
Zott took a look. “He looks like a cactus today!”
Eleg gave Zott some of her paper and charcoal to draw what he saw. Ervu’s Messengers looked a bit different to everyone, but Zott was still learning his plants and probably hadn’t actually meant a cactus. Aizl reached out a hand toward Puvvel, as if coaxing a butterfly to land on it.
Eleg took a deep breath. The visible presence of Puvvel must mean Ervu’s patterns were especially understandable to humans now—a brief moment of clarity, insight, and connection.
More often, when a Messenger didn’t appear, the land’s signals were mixed. Even then, the village scholars’ gentle lives of peace and study sharpened their ears, trained their eyes, and deepened their understanding, creating a sensitive perception that reached across Ervu and into her perennial workings—through the vibration of the earth, the ripples of the river, and the currents of the air.
It fell to the Urmettians to use their understanding to tend to the ailing land. They led the efforts of Ervu’s many peoples to beat back the fire and evade its effects, to replan their walking routes so they weren’t choked with smoke, and to heal landscapes when they were ravaged by ash.
The village youths had years of study ahead of them to develop their perceptual reach. But Eleg couldn’t wait that long—not when there were questions to be answered about the fire now.
D. M. Kannapan is a writer, engineer, and climate activist in the Los Angeles area. Apart from books, she works on space technology, paintings, and cartoons. She gave a TEDx talk in 2023 titled The Climate Movement Needs Your Creativity, Not Your Guilt.
Author Website: https://www.deeptikannapan.com/
