Delilah S. Dawson takes over Terry Brooks’ Shannara in nine days. Brona: The First Druids of Shannara hits shelves August 25 from Del Rey, the second book in the handoff and the first written primarily by Dawson rather than Brooks. Before that release lands, readers picking up a 48-year-old fantasy series under new management deserve to know what its new steward has said about her own creative process.
In January 2015, Dawson published a post at the group blog YA Outside the Lines titled “I Messed Up.” The premise was an apology. Her debut steampunk series, she wrote, had almost no characters of color in it, and reviewers had told her so. Her conclusion was that this was a failure she needed to correct going forward.
