Hello, fellow disciples! We've been searching far and wide for individuals who have cultivated for a long time. This month, we bring to you an interview with nyxiekitsune, the 2021 Watty-winning author of The Sable Spy and The White Fox.

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Tell us a bit about yourself!

I'm a fourteen year old Chinese writer currently attending boarding school in the UK. I've been writing since I was a little girl and predominantly write for the fantasy and historical fiction genres. In my free time you'll either find me reading novels or binge-watching the latest Chinese show I'm obsessed with, or staring at a blank document trying to write my latest chapter.

What is your writing process? Do you outline everything or write as things come to mind? Why?

I usually have a vague idea of what I want to achieve in a novel and jot down the main plot line and a few side plots, but other than that I usually have no idea what I'm about to write until I actually start writing it out. Half the time I don't even know the villain of the story until they appear in the story itself. I used to plan every chapter out in absurd detail, but it became really difficult to continue writing stories once I started noticing plot holes. I abandoned a few stories because of this and then decided to just start pantsing stories.

What are some things that influenced your story?

The media I consume, definitely. The latest TV shows and movies I've watched, the books I've recently read and loved, the songs I've been listening to nonstop for the past few weeks... those are the greatest influence on my stories. My real life sometimes seeps its way in too. While I don't usually base my characters off anyone I know, there are some characters who fit into the "types" of people I know in real life.

Tell us about the main character of one of your stories. What inspired their creation?

Cassalyn Diao is the protagonist of my novel The Sable Spy. She's a mature, confident young woman who's very comfortable with her power and position, but unable to find a place to call home. She was exiled from the country she was born in at an early age, her sister is constantly travelling around, she's unable to be herself around her family and she left her closest friends and allies years ago. She's a lonely boat in a stormy sea with no shore or harbour to land on and hide in.

Cass is a product of the brooding, sardonic hero that often stars in many stories. But because I didn't want her to be single-mindedly edgy and dark, I allowed her to be much more vulnerable when she's around the people she called friends and family. Cass is heavily influenced by characters such as Six of Crow's Inej Ghafa, These Violent Delight's Juliette Cai, Empresses in a Palaces' Zhen Huan and Young Justice's Artemis.

What were some challenges you experienced while writing the story?

My story is set in an amalgamation of all my favourite time periods in the world, and they don't necessarily clash together all that well. Qing Dynasty China and Regency England—the two time periods most heavily featured—may have occurred at the same time within history, but not to the level of intersection and connection as shown in my story. I had to find a way to mash them together in an almost modern-level interconnectedness all while keeping their unique cultures. Using the Chinese language and showing more niche Chinese culture within the story was also quite difficult, especially since it was difficult to find a proper English translation for lots of accessories and the like, or to describe it in a way that would be understandable to all.

Keeping track of my many countries and their unique cultures was also a bit of a challenge, especially since I didn't do much concrete worldbuilding beforehand and mainly built as I wrote. This caused a lot of contradictions that I had to edit.

What message do you hope your story will tell your readers?

I'm hoping my stories will raise interest in cultures around the world, especially Chinese ones, and show how effortlessly easy diversity can be achieved in stories. It can be a bit painful to still read heavily white casts when POC and other diverse characters could easily fit into the story and make it a more fruitful and rewarding read. A lot of very interesting Chinese culture is also heavily ignored, and I wanted to raise awareness of my culture so that more people would be interested in looking into the rich history behind my country.

If you woke up in a time or place that was very different from reality, what would you do?

Try to get back to the reality I belong to, most definitely! That is, unless you give me a brooding male love interest who only becomes soft around me, some magical powers, a villain who I need to beat who's dangerous but won't actually kill me, a found family, and maybe a magical familiar. Then, I'd be more than happy to stay exactly where I am.

If there was something you could learn (i.e., some spell, some martial arts, etc.) like the main character in your book, what would it be?

Cass' intelligence. Cass is a smart person. She has to be. She's a spy. She's able to note down and memorise details on the go, and she can easily read and analyse people like a book. She can manipulate people into doing and revealing what she wants with ease and she always knows exactly what to say to diffuse situations. While I'd love to learn how to fight and all the crazy stuff, I feel like that kind of cunning and shrewd intelligence would be much more useful in our real world.

Would you rather go through a lifetime of never finding love or be willing to go through several lifetimes of hardships just to save your love? Why?

Ah, the two classic xianxia C-drama plot lines. I'd probably say the latter for various reasons, the first being that it's far more dramatic, far more "nie" (the Chinese word we use to describe extremely heartbreaking and slowburn love stories), and, well, honestly just cooler. The idea of starting a family with your love in the heavenly celestial realm after many lives of hardship just to save them and then telling your children and grandchildren and your great-grandchildren about the mortal lives and torture you had lived through just to get here is very, very attractive to me for no particular reason.

What is your favorite creature from Asian mythology or folklore? Why?

The jiuweihu, otherwise more well-known as the kitsune. People keep forgetting that kitsunes don't just exist in Japanese mythology and it's quite frustrating to me. I just love the jiuweihu. They can be good and they can be bad. They could be wise and benevolent creatures who aid you on your journey and serve as companions to normal humans, or they could be vicious seductresses out to kill you and savour your soul. That is a range I am heavily impressed by. Not to mention they look ridiculously cool with their nine tails. But I have to admit my love and admiration for them mainly come from Dilreba Dilmurat's Fengjiu from the C-drama Eternal Love of Dream rather than actual mythology.

Oops.

But if you're talking about a love due to actual mythology, Jingwei! Jingwei was once the daughter of the Yan Emperor, but one day while playing next to the East Ocean she fell in and drowned. She reincarnated as a bird, the jingwei bird, and spent many years trying to fill up the East Ocean with branches and stones and other objects she picked up to prevent anyone else from sharing her fate. Her sheer determination and kindness really touched me when I first read her story.

What is your favorite Asian myth? Why?

The story of Daji! It's a myth that's based off history. Daji was the favourite consort of King Zhou of Shang, and it's the story of the hongyanhuoshui, the beautiful woman who leads to the doom of a man, the femme fatale. In mythology and legends, the real Daji was killed and impersonated by a jiuweihu summoned by the goddess Nu Wa to destroy King Zhou. She used her charms and wiles to keep the King obsessed with herself until he was neglecting his country and his people. The King was already a tyrant, and with Daji he became even worse. He began killing and torturing his own subjects and chancellors on a whim for her entertainment until the Shang Dynasty was driven to destruction. While Daji is generally seen as a villain, she's also a powerful woman and spirit, and I always felt as if she was a bit misunderstood. After all, if King Zhou hadn't been obsessed with her in the first place, or a tyrant all by himself, the dynast wouldn't have been driven to doom. It just seems a bit unfair for so many later historians and storytellers to blame it all on her.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, nyxiekitsune! We wish you the best of luck in your writing endeavors.

Until the next chapter, fellow disciples!