Future Fantasy, Real-World Resilience with Randee Dawn

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Future Fantasy, Real-World Resilience with Randee Dawn – How To Write the Future podcast epsiode, 178

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“I love plot, I love character, and I just feel like the colors are bolder and brighter and there’s more to work with when I’m writing about science fiction and fantasy.” – Randee Dawn

In this How To Write the Future episode, “Future Fantasy, Real-World Resilience with Randee Dawn,” podcast host Beth Barany interviews Brooklyn-based author and veteran entertainment journalist Randee Dawn, where Randee shares how her love of “new journalism” started and they discuss how to portray monsters in their novels that leave their readers guessing whether they’re good or evil, how to craft stories with emotional resonance, and the power of a writing community. 

Platforms the podcast is available on: Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify| YouTube

 

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RELATED EPISODE: Monsters and Humanity in Fiction with Surekha Davies https://www.buzzsprout.com/2012061/episodes/18046744-177-monsters-and-humanity-in-fiction-with-surekha-davies 

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About the How To Write the Future podcast

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers.This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

ABOUT RANDEE DAWN

Randee Dawn is a Brooklyn-based author and veteran entertainment journalist. In 2025, she has two dark rock n’ roll fantasies being published through Arc Manor/Caezik: The Only Song Worth Singing (April), and Leave No Trace (September).

Her first novel, a “funny as hell” pop culture contemporary fantasy, Tune In Tomorrow, was published by Solaris/Rebellion in 2022. A new – and presumably also “funny as hell” novel in the Tune-iverse, We Interrupt this Program, will be published in March 2026 by Solaris Nova.

Her short fiction runs the gamut in the speculative genres – fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. Her shorts have been published in multiple anthologies, and she published a short story and poetry collection called Home for the Holidays in 2012.

A novella featuring a character from The Only Song Worth Singing, called “Rough Beast, Slouching,” was published in Soul Scream Antholozine Vol. 1 in 2023. Two short stories based on characters in Leave No Trace have been published in separate anthologies: “Can’t Find My Way Home” in 2017’s Children of a Different Sky; and “The Way is Clear” in 2021’s Another World: Stories of Portal Fantasy.

Meanwhile, she pays the bills with features, interviews and lifestyle stories for publications including Today.com, NBCNews.com, Variety, The Los Angeles Times and Emmy Magazine. She’s also written for Soap Opera Digest and The Boston Phoenix, E! Online, New Musical Express and Mojo.

Randee co-edited of The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion; co-edited the anthology Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles, and teaches an online class through Creative Coaching Partners called How to Be Interviewed.

Born in Virginia, raised in Maryland, she’s now based in Brooklyn with her spouse and never enough mangoes.

Website: https://randeedawn.com/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRandeeDawn

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/randeedawn/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randeedawn/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@randee.dawn

Transcript for 178 – Future Fantasy, Real-World Resilience with Randee Dawn  

Introduction and Host’s Background

BETH BARANY: Hi everyone. Welcome to How To Write the Future Podcast. I’m your host, Beth Barany. I am an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author and a creativity coach, editor, podcaster, obviously, and filmmaker. And I love interviewing people about their take on how we can write the future. Because I believe with our creativity as creative writers and creatives in the world and creative thinkers, we can actually reshape what does it mean to be human?

We can revision. That’s fiction is great for that. So I’m really excited to bring in a guest today. 

[00:35] Guest Introduction: Randee Dawn 

Randee Dawn. Welcome, Randee. So glad that you’re here. 

RANDEE DAWN: Thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here. 

BETH BARANY: If you could tell us a little bit about who you are and then we will dive into the questions.

RANDEE DAWN: Yeah, no problem. So I am an entertainment journalist, uh, but I’m also an author obviously. I write for outlets like Variety in the LA Times and the Today Show website. But I now have three books out with the fourth one coming out in March, and my most recent book is called Leave No Trace. Which is a blend, it’s mostly fantasy, but it does blend sort of a futuristic sci-fi because we have a war going on between humans and Fae, and that sort of precipitated needing to come up with something that’s a little more, you know, up to date than just say, you know, sticks or, or spheres or magic or something like that.

So yeah, that’s, that’s where these two have blend and that’s it’s, that one is out September 23rd, which I imagine will be out by the time this podcast airs. And that is my most recent book. 

BETH BARANY: Yes. 

[01:32] Balancing Journalism and Fiction Writing 

And I, I see that you are, into today’s media, but then also writing material that, you know, science fiction and fantasy, and, I’m curious because I almost took a journalism route. I mean, I did do some journalism before I dug into fiction. What is it about fiction writing that really calls to you and now I’m kind of have my coaching and editor hat on because I think it’s so interesting, like you have one foot in the daily world with entertainment, but then here you need to have it, it looks like an outlet for your imagination.

But deeper than that. I’m curious, what drives you to to also write fiction in addition to being a an entertainment journalist? 

RANDEE DAWN: So for me, um, fiction was really always the goal. Like journalism was the how I’m going to actually get paid for this thing, because I think even when I got started early on, I was like, I knew that fiction was not super remunerative.

And as I’ve got into it, I realized that even more deeply. But, I wanted to write and I wanted to get paid to write. I really love disappearing into worlds and creating worlds. And one of the neat things that I like to do with journalism when I had the opportunity, which doesn’t always present itself, is I love the long form interview. So with journalism they, you would occasionally get a cover story or you get to do a profile, and I’m super nosy and I love asking people all sorts of, you know, questions. And then when you have several thousand words to fashion a profile, which I’ve had a couple of times in my life, it’s not that you’re making up fiction about them, but you’re sort of putting a fictionalized narrative into reality. Um, when this first came out in the sixties, I believe it was called New Journalism, and there were authors like Gay Tellis who were really pioneering this narrative. And that was always really very interesting to me to really get to know people and then, look for the metaphors that presented themselves and the interesting ways to shape their life into something that felt almost like a story, but not with, but without making up anything. Like you wanted to make sure that, that it actually was really accurate and showed who they were. So that was always something I really loved, but I had been writing fiction for many, many years before that and eventually got published. It just took a long time to get published as an author.

BETH BARANY: That’s so interesting. And, and I mean, I was similar in that I always wanted to do fiction, but journalism was kind of like the, an easier way, easier entry point. Yeah. And also just, I wanna plug to writers listening to us that sometimes journalism is a easier entry point to writing, so take those opportunities if they’re in front of you. Uh, and keep writing fiction on the side. 

[04:11] Exploring Themes in Speculative Fiction

So moving into the themes of today. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you see science fiction and all speculative fiction, which includes fantasy and all kinds of variations, how it can really help us explore human resilience? And I, I take it that’s one of your themes, in your work.

RANDEE DAWN: You know, I think a lot of fiction can explore human resilience. I feel like with genre fiction, specifically science fiction, fantasy, I do occasionally even write a little bit of horror. It just gives me a wider palette to work with. I am not personally a big fan of just straight up literary fiction.

I love plot, I love character, and I just feel like the colors are bolder and brighter and there’s more to work with when I’m writing about science fiction and fantasy. And then in terms of just being able to explore the potential that people have, I love being able to pair them with- they’re like humans, but they’re not humans, so a lot of my stories are contemporary fantasy in which humans are living or existing alongside, ma magical or mythical creatures. And that, that fires my imagination so that I can think about what would it be like if you were immortal? What would it be like if you were a human who had become immortal or you were dealing with an immortal creature?

How they’re gonna see the world different than you are? And that really gets me going in terms of thinking of just how we approach the world, how we go into the future, how we think about, what humanity, I think the thing is that I’m trying to sort of make this up on the fly, but basically I don’t, I don’t think about this necessarily like word for word. But I, I think that you know, sometimes we work better by looking into a mirror and seeing something that is very familiar. And sometimes we work better by looking into sort of a distorted mirror and seeing things in there that reflect back to us. So I think that when I’m writing about the things that make me passionate in the first place, and then also when they are sort of invented creatures, I get a lot more out of it in terms of how I wanna approach the world and how I can see the world and what the, what the op, what the options are that are out there. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. I really love what you just said about the, you can look at yourself or reflection of yourself, or you can look at a distorted mirror, which, you know, in your case could, is your mythological magical creatures, and, and I too, I write about monsters, I write about, uh, I also write about Evil, ’cause I’m, I also have a science fiction mystery series, but when I’m working on my fantasy, I’m, I have monsters. And when I’m working, I also have a romantic paranormal, romantic suspense series I’m working on. And there it is monstrous behavior, but it’s also for like this, my humans are becoming God-like, or have the potential to be God-like.

And my villain wants to be like God essentially. And so he wants to exploit their power. So, um, and then I’m dealing with time travel, which is always such a big thing. 

RANDEE DAWN: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the other thing too is that we, you mentioned monsters for example, right? So that actually comes up in multiple books that I’ve in that I’ve written because the definition of monster.

What does that actually mean? And when we’re looking at the reflection, we can see the monstrous inside ourselves, not just the ones that we might be encountering along the way. And maybe the creature that is external to us is not the monster at all and is just been defined that way. And I, I love exploring that the we the things we think our monstrous may not actually be.

BETH BARANY: I’m with you on that. I’m very much wanting to explore that in a in my Henrietta, the Dragon Slayer TV show material that I eventually wanna create. Coming back to this notion of human resilience, I was wondering if you could touch a little bit more on that in terms of, is that a theme that you are focused on, that you care about? Are you thinking about, and more specifically, is it like, how will humans survive the next decade, fifty years? A hundred years? Like how do you think of human resilience? 

RANDEE DAWN: Uh, well, I think in my books in general, I like to have them sort of present tensey, but I also like writing about people who overcome not just the obstacles that are external, but the obstacles that they create for themselves.

Because we are are the ones who hold up our own, um, our, you know, our own progression in a lot of ways. I actually have a a magnet right over here on the, on the thing which says, get out of your own way. So we can sometimes be the obstacles that prevent us from getting to the next step. And so I love writing characters who find creative ways to be resilient to what comes up against them, and then also to not maybe think outside the box in terms of how they’re going to solve whatever problems they have. 

With Leave No Trace I do have an unpublished manuscript that’s sort of near futurey, but Leave No Trace is really the first thing I’ve published that’s kind of near futurey. I wanted to imagine an idea that if you picture that there’s a veil between worlds, between the Fae world and the human world, but what happens if that starts to disappear and we don’t know the reasons, for example. This is all, this is kind of background to the book and you have magical creatures streaming over, well, I think it, it’s a very, it’s a fairly easy metaphor to look at. What happens when people who don’t live in one place try to get to another place? what, how humans react. And they’re like, no, don’t, don’t come here, you can’t, you don’t belong here. 

So that’s where this Fae versus human world comes from and it’s, uh, that’s why I wanted to put a little bit in the future to see what that would be like when the two go up against each other. Because in theory, you know, humans don’t have magic so how do you actually fight a Fae, right? Well in, if there’s, if it is necessary to do so, you are gonna create new weapons. So I started thinking about new weapons and how those might affect a Fae or affect somebody who carries magic. And that just took me into this near future where people are afraid of strange things, which is not all that futuristic. We’re always afraid of strange things and then how we deal with them. And in the course of writing this book the, the real world situation that we live in has be, has mirrored it a lot more than I intended necessarily, but I like this idea of what happens if people who aren’t, who haven’t traditionally been here, or creatures who haven’t been here now are here, how do we cope with that?

How do we live alongside them? How do you accept, accept the things that they are different about, you know, the things that they may need that we don’t need or we do need? That’s, and when we talk about resilience, I think that can be one of those things that you then consider that you have to be resilient about.

You don’t have to, I always think of resilience as something that you bounce off of or you overcome. But I think that resilience can also be just how you stretch your own borders mentally, literally to accept the new and the different, and taking this a little bit into the future and examining how that might work was really interesting to me. 

Uh, Leave No Trace is a standalone book, but I do have an idea for another one in the series in which we go past where the war is over and maybe the Fae worlds have completely uh, uh, you know, ceased to exist. But we’ve managed to change our own civilization while trying to fight them off to the extent that we’ve actually dialed ourselves back in time in a way, not literally like your time travel book, but more like we are now a different sort of society than we had been. So that’s a book that I would like to write and I haven’t, I, I don’t have time at the moment, but we’ll see how Leave No Trace does. And then I, I do see there to be more in the story if possible.

BETH BARANY: I love that, uh, and what you were saying about the borders and just, you know, stretching who we think we can be. I really love that. 

[11:46] Crafting Stories with Emotional Resonance

So in terms of craft, how have some, where are some of the challenges that you’ve had in crafting a your story Leave No Trace and while keeping the story grounded, in emotion?

RANDEE DAWN: The, the Leave No Trace is its own, is its own huge story. Just because I’ve been writing a version of this story since like middle school. I had this idea of a young woman whose father takes her off the grid and because he’s scared about the real world and they go and they live in the forest and she grows up in the forest. And there was always this sort of bigger than life bear that was in the forest, that in some way, uh, was was both a threat but also a comfort. And those are kind of the only elements that have still remained right?

But, so it’s, that was one of the, coming up with the actual story that I wanted to tell, and then being being comfortable enough with showing it to people. That was some of the biggest obstacles for me because I, one of the reasons, I mean, maybe I just wasn’t really good enough and that’s, I accept that, but for many, many years I just was afraid to show anybody my work.

So that whole phrase, get outta your own way, I was totally in my own way for many, many years because I didn’t understand how this process was supposed to work as an author. So getting Leave No Trace to this point, that was like the biggest obstacle. And then when I sat down and I was finally showing it to people and getting reactions and seeing what worked and what didn’t work, it was about then finding a new way to, to tell the story I wanted to tell that I’d been trying to tell for so many years, but also incorporate the changes that needed to be made.

And my friend LJ, who is also an author, actually her quote is on the front of the book. She came over at one point and we sat down and did like a a writer’s brainstorming weekend because there was the middle part of the book, which is usually the hardest part of the book. The beginning and the ending got ’em. Middle part of the book is the hardest part where you gotta start joining stuff together, and there was some parts of it that simply weren’t gelling and I had to rethink. It was kind of like when you have all the furniture in your house, but you have to find the right place to put everything. And it was like, okay, I know I want the cave to be important, but it’s not working as it is, so let’s move it over here into this corner and let’s use it in a different way, let’s turn it into a portal in the back or something like that. 

So that was one of the other big challenges was just finding a way to put all the furniture in the right place. And I went in places that I honestly had never gone before and surprised me completely. But I think that’s what happens when you, when you poke the muse in your head enough to say, all right, you gotta gimme something better, we gotta, we gotta amp this up. Don’t just, don’t just hand me stuff you maybe have seen structured some way before, or told some way before. Let’s work with what we had to tell a different kind of stories. So those were kind of the big obstacles for me. 

BETH BARANY: I really love that because you’re, you’re demonstrating through your story, something I’ve seen time and time again with other writers, myself included, where the story is calling to you and you need to do something more than just the norm.

And it, and I think this is where creativity lies. This is where our our work as as creative writers. And I love that, that you had a writer’s weekend and I think every writer needs to have their buddies to help them do this, right? Uh, and that’s why I I do what I do too as a writing teacher and a creativity coach, like we all work in community to actually make our work better.

It’s after a while the there’s a limit to what we can conceive of, but when people challenge our ideas and then we can start to stretch. So that’s that’s wonderful. That’s a great example of resilience right there. 

[15:14] The Power of Community in Writing

RANDEE DAWN: One of the things that I find also shows up in the work, but is also real in real life, is the sheer energy that you get from being around other people. You know, for me, one of the great things about a writer’s weekend is that you’re just sitting, sitting there and both doing the work in parallel. It’s like parallel play that kids have. There’s just an energy that is created when everybody is focusing, even if it’s only on their own task.

And I love the idea that the group is stronger than the individual. I mean, individuals bring specialized things to the group, but you can accomplish so much more when you have this group. There’s another book that I wrote that came out in April called The Only Song Worth Singing, and I, that there’s very much the sort of power of friendship as human magic, um, that comes up in it.

And so I, I, I very much believe about that. That exists and that we have to trust in it to make ourselves greater. Um, there’s plenty of stories about invent inventors who went into their garage and came out with whatever new doodad was important, but I don’t think anybody really does any of this all by themselves.

BETH BARANY: I am so with you on that, and I, I got chills when I heard you say that about how friendship is its own magic. I I think that’s so powerful. I wrote that kind of story I didn’t even realize in my Henrietta, the Dragon Slayer book one, and, and then the whole series builds on that, which is that friendship.

And actually it was a reviewer who said, wow, your, about how important friendship is and more important than she, she realized. So I just love that. And I think that’s a big part of resilience as well, is being able to, um, join together in community and allow each other to influence each other. Uh, because actually conversation like this on a podcast and any conversation, we’re actually co-creating something and it’s beautiful and it’s greater than than us, and it’s also unknown. We’re walking into the unknown, which I think is a big important part of being resilient. I noticed that I, I think this is a beautiful theme because I’ve been, I’m about to embark in a new adventure, a training creative writing professionals, helping other creative writers.

It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a really long time, and I notice as you enter into business, any kind of business, you need to become more and more comfortable with the fact that you don’t know. 

As we embark on a new book, uh, any kind of entrepreneurial endeavor, we need to be comfortable with, the unknown. 

[17:29] Emotional Resonance of the Characters

I wanted to circle back to, how you, as an author make sure, I mean, you’re talking about how making sure your plot is working, but how do you also make sure that the emotional resonance of the story of the characters in their journey, that it’s alive. That it’s there on the page and it’s, you know, it’s not all just world building and and plot.

How do you do that for yourself? 

RANDEE DAWN: You know, it’s, this is one of those things that I don’t have like a, um, a part what, like a number one, number two, number three, like the. It just kind of, this is where we enter the, the woowoo area of writing for me at least, because I know there e everybody sees or feels their story that they’re writing differently.

I’ve got the movie going on in my head. I’m that kind of person. So I’m sort of describing what I’m seeing and as I’m reading it, I things just kind of, they, they flow naturally together and then when they stop flowing naturally together, that’s when I have to stop and pause and take back, take a step back and think about, okay, did I go off in the wrong direction?

You know, am I trying to force the story at this point? And the the book that I’m working on right now, which, um, you know, might be out in another year or so. I’ve had this one section where it’s like, I know where I want her to go and I know how I want her to feel when she gets there, but I’ve been stumbling over the process of how to get there.

So in terms of making this all fold together,I don’t really know how it works except, so sometimes you have to do it over and over and over again, and sometimes you have to take a few minutes back, and think about a different way of approaching it. And I’m very much a person who I’ll lie back in bed at night before I go to sleep, and I’ll think about, you know, what can I do with these characters? What am I not thinking about? Can I bring somebody into the room who hadn’t, I hadn’t thought to and even include in this scene yet? You know, how do you open it up for yourself? So, I don’t know if that’s exactly what you are hoping for, but, that, that’s what works for me. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Well, I’m really just wanting to hear your own process there.

You know, there is no one right way, in my opinion, to write a book. And the fact that you are willing to try it again and again and again, I think is just so wonderful. It opens up a lot of possibilities. You’re letting your, you’re letting, on the one hand, it sounds like you’re really trusting yourself.

You’re like, it’s not quite right, and you’re acknowledging that. And then on the other hand, you’re like, let me figure out maybe this, maybe that, maybe this, maybe that, and maybe you do rewrite the scene multiple times. And I think that’s a great demonstration. I mean, you’re a working writer, you’ve got your journalism.

I also wanna share to our listeners, like, this is what writing is. Writing is actually rewriting, right? That famous saying, someone said writing is rewriting. And if you’re willing to continue to rewrite your work until you hit that, until you know, the scene is wonderful. And, and I kind of say it sings, right? It’s like harmonious. Everything comes together. The rhythm. Yeah. Oh right. So it’s that willingness, that willingness to allow the process to unfold and not to, not to turn away, not to think that it, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a writer. It just means you haven’t figured it out yet. And so you’re just demonstrating through your own story how you’ve, how you sit with your process.

And I just think that’s a beautiful thing. 

RANDEE DAWN: And there’s all sorts of other ways to that. There’s writing and then there’s writing, right? Like I actually was at a, a conference, uh, over the weekend and at some point we were doing these, these flash five minute quick reads to, writes to a prompt.

And somebody in the, in the audience said, I don’t think I can write like that. Like, I don’t think you can just gimme a prompt and I’ll just start writing on the page. And I, and I spoke up and I said, look, writing is sometimes just staring out the window and  thinking about the story. So if that’s all you can do in the five minute period, that’s writing too.

And like you said, sometimes it’s rewriting, sometimes it’s pre-writing, sometimes it’s just getting the, they’re getting the pieces together in your head. So it’s all part of writing. And I think that’s something people who don’t do it regularly, maybe don’t think that it is, that don’t understand that that’s what it is. I think they think that you have a story and you just start writing and then you finish and you do spell check and then it’s done. Like that’s, that’s barely the beginning at that point.

BETH BARANY: Totally, totally. And, and this is something I noticed, beginning writers don’t quite realize how much rewriting goes into the work and how much noodling, daydreaming, thinking about it when you’re falling asleep, thinking, talking it over with buddies or other writers.

I have gotten my biggest, some of my biggest story insights, talking to perfect strangers. One time it was, it was at a writer’s conference. Other times it’s been with people who aren’t writers, but hear me describe the story, and then they’ll say, oh, but I’m not quite sure how to handle X, Y, and Z. And they’ll, they’ll say something ‘ cause they’re far away, you know, they’re on far on the outside and it opens something up for me.

Maybe they said something I use directly, but often it’s something, two or three steps removed, that opens it up. And that kind of comes back to like bringing other people’s eyes and attention onto our work that allows it to be something we couldn’t do by ourselves. 

RANDEE DAWN: Totally agree with that. Totally agree with that.

I mean, it’s just about flipping things around and hearing other people’s take some things. You might describe something and you think you’re being totally clear and then they, they mirror it back to you and it’s like, no, it’s not what I said. But I like that. I could take that.

BETH BARANY: Can I take that? Yeah, absolutely. 

[22:30] Behind the Scenes of ‘Leave No Trace’ 

So as we wrap up today, I was wondering if you had any behind the scenes insights from creating your book Leave No Trace and how it reflects the possible futures that we might face. 

RANDEE DAWN: Like I was saying before, it’s a near future thing. So you start thinking about the world all the way through, and I have little bits and pieces of technology that I talked about. Some of our characters are these musicians who are trying to escape the paparazzi, but I wanted to describe what it might be like to be a famous person in basically a surveillance state. Because I had this idea that you could have integrated contact lenses where you might be able to film, and you don’t even have to move from where you’re sitting. Uh, you don’t even have to show that there’s a camera going. 

So I started to think of how that might, how our world might look like in this near future. And it’s not just about how do we create a new weapon that would take down, take down, magical creatures or something like that. It’s about imagining the whole world being a few steps along from where it is now.

And by doing that, you actually can look at your own world and see, okay, how would, how, how can this be different? How might this change? How can I be involved in supporting something that is actually making that change? So by by writing something that’s near future or even far future. It starts to fire up your imagination for the world that you’re living in, which I think is a really fun experience.

BETH BARANY: Yeah, that is so wonderful. And I know that a lot of futurists, and foresight practitioners do that. It’s such a great exercise, and I think any writer who’s writing about the future, the near future, the far future. And what could be, we are in an exercise, uh, just like those foresight prac practitioners, we’re just like putting a whole story behind it, uh, and, and really detailing one possibility.

So I have one final question I like to throw at people, which is, what does it mean for you how to write the future?

RANDEE DAWN: I think it’s a great privilege. You know, what does it mean for me to write the future? Like I, I’m sort of assuming that I’m allowed to, you know, it, it doesn’t feel like something that somebody has to show up to you and say, now you get to do it. I just sort of decided that this is what I wanted to do and I just wrote the story that it needed to be.

I think that there’s not necessarily a lot of overlap between fantasy and, and sci-fi futures because we we often put fantasy into the past. Uh, it always has to be surrounded by castles and quests and knights and things. But one of the things I love about writing contemporary fantasy is that you don’t have to even write it when it says contemporary, it can be future fantasy, right? It, there’s a lot of sci-fi that actually is fantasy and even if sci-fi people don’t wanna hear that. So, uh, I, it just, it’s just a privilege for me and it, it has helped me open my mind in a lot of ways and just see stories in, in, in a whole new way. And I’m, like I say, I have a, I have a manuscript that’s sort of near a little bit further than this one, but a sort of a, an advanced future that I would love to get my hands back on again because it’s just a lot of fun to, to picture things that way.

BETH BARANY: Oh, that’s so wonderful. 

[25:28] Final Thoughts and How to Connect

And, how can people find you, find your books and get their hands on on your wonderful fiction? 

RANDEE DAWN: So the best place is to go to my website, which is randee dawn.com. It’s Randee with two E’s. So just be prepared for that. So randee dawn.com.

Pretty much everything is on there, but I’m also all over the social medias as either you know, Randee or author Randee Dawn or Randee Dawn. So that’s where you can find me. I, I got in early, so I have some really good handles. 

BETH BARANY: That’s great. That’s so great. Randee, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy creative schedule and talking to us at How to Write the Future. I really appreciate it.

RANDEE DAWN: It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

BETH BARANY: Alright everyone, that’s it for this week. Write long and prosper. 

RANDEE DAWN: And that’s a wrap. 

BETH BARANY: That’s right. Thank you. 

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ABOUT BETH BARANY 

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Beth Barany teaches science fiction and fantasy novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor. She’s an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and runs the podcast, “How To Write The Future.”

 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

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