An Interview with Freya Marske
Freya Marske is an award winning Australian author of queer fantasy novels. Building from her passions and childhood interests, Freya has created fascinating characters and magic systems that linger with the reader long after finishing. Her debut novel, A Marvellous Light, was published in 2021, quickly becoming an international bestseller and kickstarting The Last Binding trilogy. Her other works include her novel Swordcrossed and debut novella Cinder House.
We recently spoke with Freya about her writing process and inspirations.
Q: What got you into writing in the first place?
The stunningly unoriginal answer is that I was always a big reader, and it seemed like a natural progression even at the age of five, which is when I believe I first had a poem published in the kids’ section of the city newspaper. Books beget books, don’t they?
Q: When do you write? How do you find time to write?
I’ve never had a set schedule or preferred time of day; the answer to this has always changed month to month, and right now it’s very different to any previous year. “How do I find time” has always been a matter of “I work less than full time, and also I don’t have kids”. Right now it’s “I DO have a kid, but I haven’t gone back to work yet”. Check in with me in three months and the answer will probably be “TIME TO WRITE?” followed by hollow laughter.
Q: Are there any particular authors you look up to?
So many! So very many! In terms of both lifetime oeuvres and admiration for their sheer ability to tell a story, I think Terry Pratchett, Dorothy Dunnett and Lois McMaster Bujold are at the top of my list, but I also admire so many of my contemporaries for many different reasons. To name just a few: I’d love to write horror like T. Kingfisher, I’m always chasing the romance skill of K.J. Charles, and I want to roll around in Akwaeke Emezi’s prose until it sticks to my skin and sinks in.
Q: What are you reading, listening to, watching and/or playing at the moment?
Given the “recently had a kid” thing, I’m very behind on television and films. I’m excited to start the second seasons of both Severance and Andor. I was also sad to miss seeing Wicked in theatres, as I’m a huge musical theatre tragic, so I can’t wait to catch up on that.
Reading wise, I’m in the flush of discovery of the huge backlist of a new-to-me author, which is a fantastic feeling: the historical romance author Laura Kinsale, who writes incredible sprawling books full of absolutely bonkers plots and expertly handled emotion. I respect an ambitious swing of a book, and I am so glad that I have a whole pile of them waiting for me.
I’m also about to dive into an ARC of The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, whose debut Leech was a Gothic medical horror-fantasy which absolutely blew my socks off. I can’t wait for my feet to be denuded again by this one.
Q: What inspired you to write The Last Binding?
Disparate pieces had been floating around my mind for a while: a murder mystery on an Edwardian ocean liner, a confused public servant who got accidentally named liaison to a magical bureaucracy… and I wanted to write a fantasy series that drew on the historical romance structure of focusing on a different couple each book, while letting the same plot connect all three. So, to be honest, I began with the few pieces I had, and the characters of Edwin and Robin, and sat down to write A Marvellous Light, and discovered all the magical worldbuilding and other characters along the way.
Q: How long did it take you to write the trilogy, from inception to finished manuscripts? How much time was spent planning and plotting?
A first draft takes me somewhere between nine months and a year, and I always spend at least a month trying to hash out an outline before I actually begin drafting. If I don’t know the vague shape of the book, I can’t write a sentence. Once I got to books 2 and 3, the planning shifted more to how to wrap up the larger trilogy plot and juggle the existing characters while also creating self-contained murder mysteries and romances. But I had less worldbuilding to do, so it all balanced out.
Edit rounds depend on my editor’s schedule, but I usually do one single round of incorporating changes and fixing up the prose, which takes about a month, and then later will do a final polish/copyedit.
Q: The ‘cradling’ magic system is fascinating and original, how did you come up with it and what inspired it?
I had a book of cats-cradle & string tricks as a child, and spent a summer working through it. Clearly something about the idea of making pictures and designs in string stuck with me! It ended up being perfect for the books because it fitted so neatly with what I wanted for the character of Edwin: a way of learning and practising magic that was considered a focusing aid when you didn’t have a lot of magical power, and so was looked down upon by most magicians.
Q: There is such an emphasis on found family across the series, particularly in the third book. Is there anything you wished you’d be able to explore with the characters that simply wasn’t able to make the cut? Any darlings you had to kill?
Not really, I have to say! Perhaps because of my background in fanfiction, I like it when a narrative leaves a lot of tantalising gaps, as well as leaving the ‘and then what?’ up to the reader to decide for themselves! So when the epilogue of the third book came around, it felt very self-indulgent to show a glimpse of what was going on after the main plot had wrapped up. Of course there are conversations and interactions and futures that I imagine for them, but I don’t think my readers need my versions of those. Anything the author creates is canon, and for me the canon is the trilogy. Everything else is up to the individual’s fond imagination.
Q: What was it like going from writing an expansive story featuring so many POV characters in The Last Binding to a standalone like Swordcrossed? Were there any challenges you faced writing a more concise work?
I actually did do this in the more sensible order: Swordcrossed was the first novel I ever wrote, and I was conscious that I was learning the ropes as I went along, so I kept it self-contained and fairly straightforward. And then after that, being a wildly optimistic person and also a longtime fantasy reader, I decided that of course I should plunge right into writing a trilogy.
Now, having written eight books and published four, I know that being concise is always my biggest challenge. Drafting is about spilling words onto the page. Editing is about working out which ones to cut.
Q: Will we see a return to the world and characters of Swordcrossed in the future?
Nothing planned at present, although there are a couple of potential ideas tucked away in my mind!
Q: What was the one moment that made you feel like a Real Author™?
There have been many, but the one that’s crystallised in my heart is from when I did a signing and event at The Ripped Bodice in Brooklyn, during a trip to the US in 2023. I remember sitting next to the amazing romance author Sarah Maclean, who was about to interview me, and looking out over a packed shop full of readers who were there to see me, and they were holding piles of my books, and the atmosphere washed over me in a brilliant wave of gratitude and disbelief and joy. I’ll remember that forever.
Q: How do you beat writer’s block?
Usually a long walk where I leave my earbuds at home (else I succumb to the temptation of a podcast) and let my mind chew over whatever the issue is. Often I’ll pull to a halt at the side of the path and make frantic notes on my phone.
If it’s a matter of motivation and losing confidence in a project, I remind myself that at least twice per book, every single book, I will become convinced it’s a steaming pile of rubbish that should be ritualistically destroyed. The only way past that is to keep writing, tiny bit by tiny bit, until the thing’s done and some perspective has returned. It always helps to know I’ve done it before.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d like to give to new writers who are eager to break into the speculative fiction world, especially queer writers?
Related to the above, I’d say: get practice at finishing things. I gained so much confidence and learned so much about myself as a writer simply by finishing my first novel-length draft. And then learned a lot more, finishing a trilogy. Some of the books I’ve written aren’t published; some may never be. I don’t regret writing any of them. Learning to get to the end of a story, and then edit that story, is huge.
Publishing takes persistence and tenacity, far more than it takes the inspiration of a single brilliant idea or the cadence of one beautiful paragraph. So much of it comes down to luck and timing and other things outside your control. Practice writing the stories that you really, really want to read. Practice finishing them. You and the world will both be richer for it, even if it takes a long time for the luck-and-timing to hit.
Freya’s debut novella Cinder House will be out October 2025 and is currently available for preorder! A full list of her publications can be found on her website: freyamarske.com