Interview: Daniel Breyer
In Smokebirds, Daniel Breyer narrates a story which uniquely blends fiction with autobiography. We meet the Peterson family, the lucky few Northern Californians that, in the year 2028, are rich enough to flee the annual fire season for their properties in Hawaii. Centred around the climate crisis, Breyer explores the psychological and societal fallouts of entitlement. Breyer asks many questions along the way to immerse us into a contemplative space.
Breyer has lived a life surrounded by people like the fictional Petersons. He gives an honest critique of wealth and interrogates nepotism, disaster profiteering and the corrupting nature of money. He sets this critique against the existential threat of climate change, which the wealthy inordinately contribute to and in the case of the Petersons, richly benefit from. His work is personal, and the character’s worlds are executed from an intrinsic affinity, and an upbringing that is familiar to him.
Breyer writes with clarity and precision to reveal the elements that are essential in shaping his story. He makes use of satire and wit in building his characters, and we see how delicate and troubled the minds of these characters are when we cross unexpected twists. The stakes are high. There are touching shifts between moments of introspection and immediacy which holds the reader’s engagement. Opposing emotions are brought to the surface, like guilt and rage, with a more subtle humility.
Smokebirds is a novel which illuminates an internal world. While there aren’t any solutions provided to an ongoing crisis, the novel asks the reader to slow down, to feel that internality, and to reflect.
—Mary Guiney
Mary Guiney: The climate crisis is the central motif of Smokebirds. At what point in developing the story did you know this crisis would play such a strong role? And what personal morals and ethics drove you to share this story with the world?
Daniel Breyer: I came up with the idea for the book in 2020 after wildfire smoke turned San Francisco into an orange-skied dystopia. What stuck with me most from that day was how many of the city’s wealthiest residents began making plans to leave—or even talking about permanent seasonal exits—as if climate collapse were just another inconvenience to manage with money.
That moment lodged in my head as a disturbing metaphor: climate change isn’t some imagined apocalypse—it’s here, and the wealthy have found ways to insulate themselves from its worst effects. The term “smokebirds” came to me as a play on “snowbirds”—those who flee winter—and refers to people who can escape climate disasters at the tap of a screen. The novel doesn’t offer solutions or answers. But I wanted to explore the psychological and social fallout of this privilege—how people justify their ability to leave others behind.
MG: Smokebirds is full of vibrant characters. I’m particularly struck by how well you show their vulnerabilities, pushing the reader to empathise with them. Can you talk a bit about your strategies for developing these characters? How difficult was it to animate them, and show their weaknesses? Who was easiest or hardest to bring alive on the page?
DB: The Petersons are narcissistic, emotionally avoidant, and entitled—but they’re also insecure and quietly miserable. That tension was always the point: I wanted to write about characters who are both absurd and believable, monstrous yet recognizably human. They fail each other and society in dramatic ways, but they also fail themselves.
They started as archetypes—Cole as the rebel, Duke as the empire-builder, Emmett as the stoner—and became fully dimensional through voice and contradiction. Once I found their blind spots and delusions, they began to write themselves. One strategy was making sure that even their worst behaviors came from something raw: fear, desperation, or the need to be seen.
I wouldn’t say one character was harder to write than another, but Bella was the one I struggled most to calibrate ethically. She represents the values many readers are likely to align with—urgency around climate change, frustration with inherited power—but I didn’t want her to serve as a moral compass or an easy foil to the Petersons. She complicates the conversation perhaps more than she resolves it. Her goals are noble, but she’s not above using manipulation or ego to get what she wants. In trying to speak truth to power, she occasionally starts to mirror it, adopting some of the same tactics she claims to oppose. Her moral certainty can veer into control, and in fighting for justice, she sometimes starts to wield her own form of dominance. That ambiguity felt necessary to keep the novel honest and prevent it from dividing characters into heroes and villains.
MG: Richard seems rather self-absorbed, playing his virtual games, not heeding much attention to Lily, and quite assured of himself. Compared to other characters, like Cole or Lily, I found it more difficult to connect with Richard, as he seems a little more opaque. Why was his character developed this way?
DB: Richard’s opacity is intentional. He’s emotionally flat because he’s committed to a persona: a charming and successful man respected by his peers. He avoids introspection because it would unravel him. He clings to games and routines to stay in control. Unlike Cole, who intellectualizes some of his failings, Richard suppresses them entirely.
In his rare moments of reflection—usually about aging or relevance—he edges toward something deeper. But the effort is short-lived. He’s not ready to peel back the layers. His detachment is a defence mechanism, which makes him a frustrating but psychologically consistent character. I also find him the funniest—he’s wildly immature, a spoiled child masquerading as an adult.
MG: How exactly did you go about developing and contrasting the character’s core values, for example Cole’s activeness towards the climate crisis versus Richard and Emmet’s passiveness?
DB: Cole was the most fascinating character to write because he embodies both rebellion and hypocrisy. On the surface, he’s trying to break away from his family’s legacy, but deep down he’s still performing. He says the right things because he knows how they’ll be received. But his critiques aren’t rooted in sacrifice—they’re calculated to make him look good.
Richard and Emmett, by contrast, don’t even try. They’re openly cynical or passive, and while that’s frustrating, there’s almost something honest about it. Emmett’s complacency is as dangerous as Cole’s self-deception, but it’s less disguised. That’s where the generational conflict lies: not in differing values, but in how those values are expressed (or weaponized).
Hopefully, readers will ask: Who’s worse—the person who openly doesn’t care, or the one who pretends to?
MG: I’m also interested in the way the characters in Smokebirds seem to be in conflict along gendered lines. Duke mentions his late wife, and compares their relationship to that of Lily and Richard; also it’s often apparent that Duke has little faith in his daughter, Eliza, in driving the business forward. What are you trying to portray about gender roles through the varying family relationships?
DB: Duke’s worldview is built on dominance, and he sees women either as muses or liabilities. He romanticizes his late wife as elegant and compliant, and punishes Eliza and Lily for not fitting that mold. But the real damage is subtler: Eliza has internalized those judgments. She measures her value (or, in her case, mostly lack of value) by beauty and charisma because that’s what her father rewarded—and because that’s what the culture around her reinforced.
What I’m trying to portray is how patriarchy survives through expectation as much as action. Eliza doesn’t need Duke to belittle her anymore—she does it to herself. It’s a portrait of internalized doubt, of what happens when capable women are raised in environments that constantly minimize them.
MG: This novel deals with large-scale themes related to wealth and the climate crisis, but also offers an intimate portrayal of generational conflict within the family, and other conflict among members of the same generation. How did you balance all of this in the drafting and revision? Were all of these compounds always part of the story?
DB: In early drafts, the novel leaned more heavily into satire. But as I revised, the emotional undertones began to emerge. The climate backdrop was always there, but it became more urgent. The characters’ interpersonal failures began to mirror the societal ones: denial, ego, moral outsourcing.
I tried to write in short, shifting chapters that allowed the novel to breathe across scales. A family argument might be followed by a literal fire. A petty insult might echo a broader ethical failure. The key was making sure each character had their own emotional climate—one that paralleled the physical world unraveling around them.
MG: Cole steps out of his comfort zone to become a climate activist; he shuns his family, and the rise of capitalism in gaining more wealth and power which harms others and the planet. Does Cole’s character bear any resemblance to the real you?
DB: In writing Smokebirds, I drew from the worst parts of myself, especially the tendency to intellectualize instead of act. Cole embodies that. He knows what’s wrong, and he knows what to say. But he’s more interested in being admired than being effective. He cares more about appearing ethical than actually making change.
What Cole understands—and what I struggle with, too—is that admitting your privilege can become a kind of loophole. If you confess to being lucky, you’re perceived as honest, even humble. But it doesn’t cost you anything. In fact, it can become a shield for even worse behavior.
That’s the trap I wanted to explore. Cole is what happens when a degree of self-awareness becomes a substitute for ethics. When you know all the right words, but still make decisions that betray your performance of virtue.
DANIEL BREYER earned his undergraduate degree in history from Brown University. He is also an investor and entrepreneur. His debut novel, Smokebirds, is set in his home state of California and explores the intersections of privilege and climate collapse. Told with dark humor, Smokebirds follows a wealthy family as they navigate legacy, betrayal, and wildfire season in an increasingly unstable world. He lives with his wife, Elle, and their dog, Nahko, in San Francisco.
MARY GUINEY lives in Dublin, Ireland, and is a recent graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, where she studied the MA in creative writing. She originally graduated with a BSc in biochemistry, to then go on and pursue a career in finance. After years, she realised her passion for reading, literature, and writing must be nourished. Mary has been a volunteer reader with CRAFT since May 2024, and is always delighted to read an array of diverse stories, both fiction and creative nonfiction. Since March, she has also taken on the role as editorial assistant.
