On the third Thursday of every month Bookmans Mesa Cafe hosts the Young at Heart Book Club. In August we read Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner. Bones of Faerie is the first in a trilogy of books taking place in a post-apocalytic fairytale. The human war with Faerie has destroyed much of the world. Janni Lee lives in Tucson and attended the Mesa book club to listen to the discussion, share opinions with the members and give us insights to the character and unique settings.

Your first books are geared toward younger children. Why did you make the jump to Young Adult?
I've always had a range of stories I was interested in telling, some focused on younger characters than others. From the start I wrote short fiction for a mix of child, teen, and adult audiences, but it just sort of turned out that I wound up telling novel-length stories for younger children before I told them for teens. I'd always had ideas and snippets of stories for both groups in my head, so it's really just a matter of which ones got written (and sold) first!

The first part of Bones of Faerie was written near St. Louis. What impact did your move to Arizona have on finishing and rewriting/editing?
I wrote the opening chapter of Bones of Faerie in St. Louis, but it was after I got to Tucson that I sat down and thought about what the world that went with that opening would look like. Living here, it seemed a natural leap to fill that world with magical plants that wanted to eat people -- because seriously, some days it feels like the plants here really do that! In the world of Bones of Faerie, it's the war with the faerie folk that made the trees go wild. Here, of course, they're happy to attack without that excuse.

Do you believe in Faerie?
As a literal place, no. As a powerful metaphor that we need and that so keeps echoing through the stories we tell as a society, yes.

What is your favorite thing about the Arizona literature scene?
I'm a very landscape-oriented writer, and the Sonoran desert is a landscape it's hard not to feel inspired to write in. The people here are fabulous: we're laid-back enough a state that it's easy to connect with readers and writers both here. Of course, I consider Bookmans, Changing Hands, Poisoned Pen, and Antigone Books all an important part of my Arizona literature landscape, too!

If you could write yourself into any existing book or series as a new character, which would you pick?
I might like a chance to ride with Gaudior, the unicorn in Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Though there's also something to be said for choosing the most boring book I can find and settling down in some uneventful corner where I can continue telling stories. I can only live one story, after all, but I can write many more than that. I think writers are people who aren't content to limit themselves to one story.

We highly recommend Bones of Faerie, sequel Faerie Winter, and the third and final book Faerie After, which will be released May 2013. Join Young at Heart on Thursday, September 20 where we will discuss another local authors work, Cryer's Cross by Lisa McMann.