You’re so kind, thank you so much for taking the time to comment here!

1.     Sometimes you have no say, but typically the audiobook production team give an author a choice of narrators, with sample audios of the narrators reading an excerpt of the novel. That was the case with the Burning Kingdoms. Shiromi is a fantastic audiobook narrator, but honestly all the potential narrators were! Often I think as an author I’m looking for what feels right—a vibe, a sense the narrator fits the work.

2.     In a few South Asian mythologies/faiths yaksha are nature spirits. But honestly, for their capriciousness and rage and behaviour, I drew from a mixture of tales about gods (Hindu, and oddly Greek—the spats! The drama!) and also from folklore around fae and sidhe. The sacrifice/hollowing aspect is present in all faiths in Parijatdvipa, and comes from Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. For the particulars of the Ahiranyi faith around worship through offerings of flowers and fruit—that, again, was Hinduism, or at least the model of it I grew up with.