“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their Inspirations and Influences. In this feature, we invite writers to talk about their new books, older titles, and their writing overall. Today our guest is author Dianna Gunn, whose novella Keeper of the Dawn is our inaugural 2017 Novella Initiative title! Last week we unveiled the cover (gorgeous art by Reiko Murakami) over on Tor.com–today, we are thrilled to invite Dianna to discuss the inspirations and influences behind her LGBT YA fantasy novella. We are so excited to publish it this spring–please give a warm welcome to Dianna, everyone! Roughly ten years ago, I decided to write a parody novel. I wanted to stretch my skills as a writer, and frankly, I wanted to write something less depressing than my typical work (spoiler alert: I only accomplished one of these things). I also adored a long list of parodies, including Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels. I spent several weeks building a world and the perfect ragtag team of fantasy adventurers, but one of these characters quickly became more real to me than the others. Her name was […]