Frank Herbert’s Dune came into Jessica Cluess’s life at a pivotal point. At 24, she’d just gotten out of college, and with a recession on, finding a job was easier said than done. She decided that an escape was just what she needed, and it came for her in the form of Dune. “I wasn’t a sci-fi or fantasy person at the time,” she says, “but I’d heard about it and got completely sucked in.”

Cluess could feel the heat of Arrakis despite Chicago’s bitter cold, and two things happened when she finished the novel: “One, I became a terrible nerd, and two, I realized the power of genre fiction, its ability to transport and immerse people.” This is when she began to write in earnest. It wasn’t only Dune that inspired her, though. The Lord of the Rings was the book that made her passionate about fantasy, and she loves the dark twists of James and the Giant Peach.

Cluess’s route to publishing was speedier than most. She first tried to publish an adult urban fantasy, but the market was oversaturated, and she admits that her book “wasn’t as good as it could have been.” When she changed tack and turned to YA, she learned that “one failure doesn’t mean failure forever,” and found the publishing process to be much faster than it was with her first submission. Success “is just a factor of timing, luck, hard work, and an understanding of the industry,” she says. “It’s not personal.” Additionally, her editor, Chelsea Eberly, has been “pretty much the ideal editor,” Cluess says. “Her advice and suggestions are always 100% gold. If there’s ever a note I question or maybe disagree with, we get on the phone and talk it out.”

A Shadow Bright and Burning (Random House, Sept.) is a fast-paced tale set in Victorian England, with a pragmatic, witty heroine in 16-year-old Henrietta Howel. It also turns the much-used trope of the “chosen one” on its head. When asked what she admires most about Henrietta, Cluess cites her tenaciousness, her compassion, and her practicality. “I know that teenagers lack experience and it’s important to show that, but some people seem to think that teens have no ability to think rationally,” Cluess says. Indeed, she points out that “some [teens] are already more poised and pragmatic than most adults I’ve met.” And she knows of what she speaks, since she teaches children and teens for the Writopia program in Los Angeles.

For Cluess, writing for young adults brings a unique joy to the process. She describes the teen years as being “such a brief, but vibrant and exciting time,” and calls getting to relive a bit of that time through her writing “wonderful.” Plus, she says, “Teens are the most honest and exciting audience to write for. When they like something, they really like it. There’s no artifice.”

As for what advice she would give to a young writer, Cluess says that it’s very important to be able to edit yourself and that finding a group of people who are also trying to publish can be crucial. As for what comes next, Cluess has finished copy edits for book two of her Kingdom of Fire series and is just about to start on the third and final volume. There’s also a new idea in the works, which she is not ready to talk about yet, but “it’s the sort of thing I’ve always wanted to write,” she says. “So: fingers crossed!”