Are you ready to slip into a hidden world of shapeshifters positioning for power, struggling with identity, and longing to belong? Welcome to YA novelist Emily Renk Hawthorne’s Of Mountains and Seas book series. The second book, From the Depths, will be released on June 9, and Hawthorne will attend a book launch party on June 14 at the San Luis Obispo Barnes & Noble.
Meet the author
Local author Emily Renk Hawthorne will sign copies of her new young adult book, From the Depths, at a book launch party at SLO’s Barnes & Noble on Sunday, June 14, from 2 to 4 p.m. Hawthorne’s series explores a shapeshifting community living in California and is inspired by Chinese mythology. Learn more on her website: emilyrenkhawthorne.com.
“When I was young, my dad was a huge reader, and he read us lots of books,” Hawthorne, a pediatric dentist, explained during a recent interview. “The earliest books I remember are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And then we used to get this magazine called Cricket magazine, and they had writing contests in it quite often for kids, so that’s when I started writing back then.”
Fantasy is in her blood. It’s her favorite genre. Hawthorne likes that it gives readers “that ability to escape the real world, the feeling of something magical. Also, it’s really fun to use that different world to explore parts of our world without being so contentious. Sometimes when you explore something directly, it can bring up feelings of defensiveness, but when you have this alternate world to draw parallels, it’s easier to explore an area that’s not as offensive to people.”
Parent/child struggles, insiders and outsiders, otherness, cultural identities—Hawthorne’s novels dig into a lot of complicated issues.
“I hope it’s a way just to broaden people’s ability to—if not accept something new right away—be introduced to it without hostility. I hope I’ve been able to do that.”
Hawthorne knows what it’s like to be caught between two worlds. Her father is American, and her mother was born and raised in Taiwan. Hawthorne speaks conversational Mandarin and has a keen interest in Chinese culture. This led to her desire to combine her love of fantasy with her Asian roots.
“Growing up, there wasn’t as much diversity in fantasy, at least from what I read. I did grow up with books and movies from Chinese mythology that my mom would read or show me. Early mainstream Asian-inspired fantasies have all been mostly set in like Asian worlds. So I was thinking, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great if I saw someone more like me who grew up here in California, but with that background?’ That’s what got me started mixing my own personal experiences, being a Californian, but also from a mixed background, and setting it in a fantasy world.”
Her first book was a long time coming. Fantasy and writing became passions through early schooling until she got busy in college, but she always dreamed of returning to her youthful passion.
“I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to get back to it, write a novel someday, and I was like, ‘Oh, it’d be great if I did it before my 30s.’ And then, ‘Oh, it’d be great if I did it before my 40s.’ I was still working full-time dentistry at that point, but [the need to write] built up enough in the background that I finally signed up for an online course. I needed that accountability to get in the habit, so that’s how I finally got back to it.”
She took four online courses through UCLA Extension, including classes in short story writing.
“I kept getting feedback. ‘This doesn’t feel like a short story. It feels like part of a much bigger world.’ They said, ‘If you want to write a novel, just write a novel, stop trying to write a short story.’ It’s just a different craft form, so I finally started getting into the novel. And the funny thing was that while I was working full time, I was actually consistently writing the novel. I would do it between patients and write at work and then COVID hit and the lockdown. I had all this free time, but I think just the anxiety and disjointed, sudden change of schedule threw everything off, and I didn’t write at all that year.”
Of Mountains and Seas ended up taking five years to finish, but it became a defining learning experience.
“I wrote completely by inspiration. I had like no outline,” she admitted. “I had so many different character points of view and timelines that I hit a point about halfway into the book where I suddenly realized I needed to outline it to keep things straight. I’m not one of those people who could just remember everything I wrote, and that took a while.”
She finished From the Depth in just two years.
“I outlined it from the get-go, and I think having Book 1, I read through, noted all the plotlines that hadn’t been tied up yet, so I had a list of things that I needed to hit and then that was easy to put into an outline and go from there.”
Both books are deliciously complex, which may skew readership to older teens and adults “who would be able to follow or have the attention span for that type of plot structure,” Hawthorne noted
She’s already hearing from readers that they’d like a third book to “explore certain characters who haven’t gotten their own focus in the story yet,” which is why she may add a novella to the series, but for now, she’s already turned her writing attention to exploring a “Gothic paranormal” story or a “winter romance, but with a magical element to the town.”
“I’ve discovered through writing and reading that my favorite thing that draws me into a book is some bit of mystery that you’re trying to solve and piece together the clues. And that’s what drove me to also use the different points of view and timelines, because you’re getting snippets of clues until everything comes together. People who like that type of puzzle solving would find that in my books.”
Hawthorne lives in rural San Luis Obispo with her ER doctor husband, 3-year-old-daughter, and two elderly giant breed dogs. ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Pride 2026.
