The Sneakiest Peek

AKA: what's next?

Whew, guys, it’s been a weird couple of months.

The Arch-Conspirator tour was really excellent— thank you to everyone who came to the events or preordered a copy or otherwise supported AC! I so appreciate it and I had such a great time with you all. (Also, because I feel like people don’t actually know this: one of the best ways to support authors is to leave reviews, even if they’re not raves! Wherever you bought the book from is a good place to start, or on Goodreads, but really, wherever.)

Then I got Covid and found myself inexplicably binge-watching The Closer and playing Two Dots on my phone for five days.

While all that has been going on, I’ve been finishing up two projects. One is a short story that will come out this year, and it’s very fun; I hope to share more about it soon. The other is my next novella, which comes out next year…but I’m going to tell you a little more about it anyway.

For context, in the period of time I like to refer to as Mid-Divergent, I had to stop talking about my works in progress at all because…they were Insurgent or Allegiant and THE EYES OF THE WORLD WERE UPON THEM, and people would read entirely too much into a stray remark about a bad writing day, or the songs on my playlist, and they would bombard me with panicked messages online. So I trained myself to keep everything locked down, all the time. Of course, now that I am no longer in the middle of a series being adapted into movies, there’s no need for that level of intensity. But sometimes when you’ve kept your hand in a fist for that long, you don’t know how to unclench it; it’s like hey, I just have a fist instead of a hand now, that’s normal, right?

This is all to say, I’m going to start relaxing that hand and share more about what I’m working on. Especially here.

A few things about my next novella:

• It’s long. We’re talking…the upward limit of what technically still counts as a novella. (40,000 words, for those keeping track.) So if you read Arch-Conspirator (~23,000 words) and enjoyed the novella format but wished there was a little more meat on its bones, this should be good news!

• It’s fantasy. Some of my other work (Carve the Mark, Chosen Ones) has had fantasy leanings, but always with the incorporation of some obvious sci-fi element, such as superpowers, spaceships, portals, alternate dimensions, and so on. This one is Fantasy, capital F, though set in the real world.

• It’s set in Chicago. There is an actual reason for this beyond my enduring love of Chicago—

• It incorporates Polish folklore, and Chicago has one of the largest Polish communities in the world outside of Poland itself. This was really meaningful for me, because as a first generation American, I’m a little detached from this aspect of my identity, and writing this novella helped me to engage with it more. I did a lot of research on the history of Polish immigration to Chicago, as well as into the folklore itself, and my uncle proofread the Polish in the story itself, which was both nerve-wracking and touching. Dziękuję @ him.

• The title is based on a Polish idiomatic expression that may or may not be used by actual Polish people, I’m sure they’ll let me know— but I came across it and loved it and it was just right for the story.

• And lastly it has a playlist which I have made public on Spotify…

If it’s been awhile since you listened to Flagpole Sitta or any kind of System of a Down: you’re welcome. I listened to them while writing fight scenes.

Also…a Pinterest board.

That’s all I have for now, but let me know in the comments if you have any requests for ~behind the scenes things!

And as usual, give me your book recs. :)

V