Interview With Author Lynn Strong
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hi! I’m Lynn, and I’ve written hundreds of thousands of pages of news articles, professional documentation, and fanfiction over the past 30 years, but professional fiction is new territory for me. I have three books and anthologies out so far, another book coming September 13, and a trilogy in progress for next year.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Haroun and the Study of Mischief began as a novella for the Cozies for Disability Rights outreach project in spring 2025; I wanted to tell positive and hopeful stories for disabled folks, since I am one myself. I started with “so, City of Cats. What if Dog though?” And the corollaries kept spinning off from there: “If Dog, what is medieval equivalent of Terrible Knitted Granny Dog-sweater?” and “If Blind Dog, who is his Seeing Eye Human?” and “How much does his Seeing Eye Human regret his eyesight in the presence of Terrible Knitted Granny Dog-sweater?” And it just kept accumulating more and more of a gleeful romp along the way.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t know if it’s unusual to write in Google Docs, because my disabilities mean I need different tools on different days depending on how functional my eyes and I are. But it may be unusual for me to take my in-progress notes (and my grocery lists) in unsent Gmail drafts, because they’re more quick-note-shaped and available in 10 seconds as opposed to navigating the whole Google Docs infrastructure to get a file open. And then I can open the Gmail draft on whichever device I’m on next.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
How long of a list can I make here, and in how many languages? Terry Pratchett, Miguel de Cervantes, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Apicius, Celia Lake, Robin McKinley, Casey Blair, Gerard Manley Hopkins, ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, Daniel Newman, Nawal Nasrallah, Cariadoc’s Miscellany, Hiromu Arakawa, KL Noone, whom I knew by her fandom alias before her books were published… I’m the kind of person who wallpapers with bookshelves!
What are you working on now?
Juggling way too many spinning plates: Day job, marketing two books while writing a third and plotting two more, working out timing of when I can get more cover art from artist and illustrator and how that affects writing, editing, and ARC time, rebuilding my mailing list in a different platform because my current provider just booted half their customers into a price tier that’s more than my ebooks earn in an average month, ongoing combat with low-vision-unfriendly interfaces, planning presentations for three upcoming conferences, one of which I’m running… there are occasionally moments when insomnia is an accidental blessing!
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’ll let you know when I figure it out! Amazon has provided 95% of my sales, even after the algorithm chewed me up and ate me for breakfast, and I’m still trying to work out how to get visibility. I’ve had several reviewers say things like “Sometimes you find a gem in unexpected places,” or “This was better than I hoped it would be,” which is great to hear! But also I have 30 years of writing experience, which is not at all the same as marketing experience, and apparently you need both in addition to TikTok virality.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Figure out what works for YOU. A lot of the advice out there absolutely doesn’t work for me, between my disabilities and my need to avoid everything Meta owns, which means no Facebook, no Instagram, no Threads, which means the top platforms that everyone recommends you do the social media song and dance on are not an option for me. Combine that with the “sprint” timer idea that pulls me out of the flow state by the timer going off just when something was getting rolling, and/or someone on a group sprint chat setting off Discord pings… the standard recommendations just really don’t work for me. So I’m still figuring out what does work.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I was a theater major as an undergrad, so I’ve heard all the variations on “so you want to be a writer/artist/actor/creative? If you can do anything else, do that instead.”
My specific adjustment of that is “Make your money doing something that isn’t paid creativity for someone else, so that you have your own creativity left at the end of the day.” I can tell when I was doing tech writing vs QA vs other jobs because I have a finite number of words in my head per day, and when I was tech writing they all went into work. When I was making my money doing QA or other jobs, I had enough words left for fanfiction or original fiction for myself.
What are you reading now?
My own in progress drafts, because when you’ve got a series with a prophet you need to make sure the prophecies line up across all the books!
What’s next for you as a writer?
After Haroun’s out the door, Chai and Charmcraft is the first in a trilogy. I love flipping all the tropes, so the Prince Charming here isn’t the Disney model; instead he’s a sweet, shy, anxiously foresightful, middle aged bureaucrat who would much rather negotiate with a dragon over a nice cup of chai than duel one to the death. And with his prophetic foresights always warning him of how things could go wrong, he very much enjoys the city of the cats, because mischief is also troublesome but it is much less hazardous and much more fluffy than the cataclysmic varieties of trouble that he might otherwise foresee.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
If the Internet’s not allowed? The Whole Earth Catalog, a Pratchett omnibus, the unabridged Thousand and One Nights, and The Joy of Cooking.
Author Websites and Profiles
Lynn Strong’s Social Media Links
Author Interview Series
To discover a new author, check out our Featured Authors page. We have some of the best authors around. They are just waiting for you to discover them. If you enjoyed this writer’s interview feel free to share it using the buttons below. Sharing is caring!
If you are an author and want to be interviewed just fill out out Author Interview page. After submitting we will send it out in our newsletters and social media channels that are filled with readers looking to discover new books to read.
If you are looking for a new book to read check out our Featured Books Page.