Please behold this vital list of THINGS YE NEEDS TO KNOW, like for instance, where will I be this weekend (spoiler: NYCC), some news about Dust & Grim, a light little tour preview, and more.

First up:

Yes! I’m going to NYCC this weekend. I’m vaguely terrified! It’s probably a bad idea! I really need to figure out how to get a mask to cover my entire beard. Can I wear a hazmat hood? We shall see. My schedule is as follows:

FRIDAY 12:45PM – 1:45PM

PANEL: Authors on the Best Advice They Ever Got

PANELISTS: Peter V. Brett, Terry Brooks, Wes Chu, Delilah S. Dawson, Naomi Novik, Chuck Wendig (moderator: my excellent editor, Tricia Narwani)

Location: Lit Room 1B-02

FRIDAY 2:00PM – 3:00PM

POST-PANEL SIGNING – Authors on the Best Advice They Ever Got

Location: Autograph Area

SATURDAY 12:00PM – 1:00PM 

SIGNING at Penguin Random House booth

Location: Well, duh, the Penguin Random House booth.

So, that’s that.

What else?

WELP, Dust & Grim has been chosen as B&N’s October Monthly pick for young readers — which means the book gets some very nice placement and is in fact deliciously inexpensive at $6.99. You can grab online or in stores!

I will be going on tour for Wayward — it’s not final yet, so dates and times are TBD, but the loose tour, Good Lord Willing and the COVID Don’t Rise, will be PA (Doylestown) to GA (Atlanta, Eagle Eye) to Asheville (Malaprops) to Charlotte (Park Road Books but hosted at Queens University) to Richmond (Fountain) to Alexandria (B&N). Those should be launch week or before (Doylestown is likely the Saturday before launch, I thiiiiink), and then I’ll do a couple local dates in December (Let’s Play Books on 12/4, B&N in Bethlehem/Easton 12/10). I ask that everyone mask at these events if possible. I’m boosted, and you should also get your bivalent booster immediately, as Omicron is still ripping, and new Omicron subvariants are rising, and the bivalent booster protects against Omicron specifically (BA4 and BA5, I believe, in particular). COVID is still a thing!

Also, please note, if I’m not coming to your town, it’s because of personal reasons, as in, I don’t like you personally and have chosen to punish you directly as a result. (This is not true. I do not set my tour dates, but rather, work with the publisher to get those places and dates chosen. This tour is focused largely on the South. Which is exciting as I get to visit some stores I’ve never gone to!)

ANYWAY.

Right now, I’ll be doing signed, personalized copies of WAYWARD through Doylestown, but I also expect that some of these other stores will have their own opportunities for such. Presently, feel free to nab at D-town; they will ship.

Wayward is out 11/15.

Kirkus gave it a starred review.

Hope to see you soon.

LET’S SEE, WHAT ELSE.

I finished my Evil Apple book. Well, first draft, anyway.

I have a new middle grade in mind. We shall see.

Starting to conspire what the next adult horror-ish will be.

Have an introduction to write for a talented horror author, so that’s an honor, and I better get on that ASAFP.

I think that’s it?

More as I have it.

BYE.

HEY, YOU.

PSST.

PSST!

I got a shiny new paperback book right here. It features *squints at list* a monstrous funeral home, rampant sibling rivalry, a mysterious cemetery, a coupla magical wolves, a bezoar, a vampire named Dave, cosplay, and uhhh *squints harder* something called FLORG.

It’s funny! It’s scary! It’s Florgtastic. Florgariffic. FLORGDERFUL.

If you want a signed, personalized copy, you can look no further and ping Doylestown Bookshop. They can get you sorted.

Otherwise, B&N is doing a wonderful promotion this month on the book, and you can run there and find it, or fetch it from the link. Plus, your local indie bookstore is certainly your friend, and you can go there and grabbit.

Wait, I should probably do the proper descriptions and such…

From a bestselling author: Miss Peregrine meets The Graveyard Book in this middle grade adventure about rival siblings running a monster mortuary.
​
Thirteen-year-old Molly doesn’t know how she got the short end of the stick—being raised by her neglectful father—while Dustin, the older brother she’s never met, got their mother and the keys to the family estate. But now the siblings are both orphaned, she’s come home for her inheritance, and if Dustin won’t welcome her into the family business, then she’ll happily take her half in cash.

There’s just one problem: the family business is a mortuary for monsters, and Molly’s not sure she’s ready to deal with mysterious doors, talking wolves, a rogue devourer of magic, and a secret cemetery. It’s going to take all of Dustin’s stuffy supernatural knowledge and Molly’s most heroic cosplay (plus a little help from non-human friends) for the siblings to figure it out and save the day…if only they can get along for five minutes.

Bestselling author Chuck Wendig’s middle grade debut is equal parts spooky, funny, and heartfelt—perfect for Halloween and year-round reading!

And here are some very fancy blurbs:

An Amazon Best Book of October 2021

“A clever, heartwarming tale of funerary rites, ghosts, and the undying power of family.”—Holly Black, Newbery Honor-winning author of Doll Bones and The Cruel Prince

“Wildly inventive, totally hilarious, and unexpectedly moving.”—Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Silver Arrow and The Magicians

“A one-of-a-kind delight—mysterious, exciting, inventive, sometimes scary and always funny, Dust & Grim reads like a rollicking ghosts and monsters story, which it is. But just as important, it’s a compelling and tender story about family. Sibling duo Molly and Dustin will find their way into readers’ hearts as surely as they find their way into each other’s.”—Trenton Lee Stewart, bestselling author of The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Sucks you in with a wise-cracking zaniness that soon spirals into a delightful rampaging chaos of swarming vampires, thorny wolves, walking trees, and eldritch horrors. And yet even as the dangers for Molly and Dustin increase and the wise-cracks keep flying, the importance of family both lost and found grounds their story with a profound sense of heart.”—Paolo Bacigalupi, bestselling author of The Windup Girl, Ship Breaker, and Zombie Baseball Beatdown

“Spookily charming, bewitchingly creepy, full of hope, heart, and horror, Dust & Grim is the sort of book you gobble up in one sweet and salty bite.”—Delilah S. Dawson, author of Star Wars: PHASMA and Mine

“Every line of Dust & Grim is packed with a laugh, a sharp observation, or something radically cool, and sometimes all three at once. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Wendig is a welcome new voice in middle-grade fiction, and we are lucky to have him.”—Greg van Eekhout, author of Weird Kid, COG, and Voyage of the Dogs

“Siblings Molly and Dustin Grim are the most unlikely of heroes, and for that reason they are among the greatest. The fact that they must save the world from within a secret monster mortuary is only the first of many surprises that bestselling tale-spinner Chuck Wendig has created for this full-of-heart debut about trust, friendship, and the importance of having the perfect costume for every occasion. A fantastic, spooky adventure!”—Fran Wilde, Nebula Award winning author of Updraft and Riverland

“Playing to strengths demonstrated in his many comics and tales for older audiences, not only is Wendig a dab hand at concocting extremely creepy critters, but here he also pulls together a secondary cast of quarrelsome but supportive allies for the beleaguered teens.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Wendig charges onto the middle-grade scene with a monstrously fun tale of family and funerary arts…. [The] easy writing style is a perfect vehicle for the humor and rapidly paced shenanigans that propel the narrative…. Monstrously fun…. A sure pick for those enamored by Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Tahereh Mafi’s Whichwood.”—Booklist

“Wendig thrills, enchants, and amuses in equal measure…. Peppered with nail-biting action scenes, the well-paced storytelling is as heart-felt as it is heart-racing, and readers who appreciate word play will love the snark-filled banter and witty narrative voice…. The ideal read-next for fans of Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, this is also perfect for readers who embrace the weirdness of family.”—BCCB

“A spooky, heartfelt, darkly funny adventure…. The importance of relationships, regardless of blood relation, runs deep and gives an endearing core to this perfect Halloween read.”—Shelf Awareness

“The supernatural realm meets a cosplayer teen in this…blend of horror, spooky, funny, pop culture, cosplay, and sibling rivalry.”—School Library Journal

“Packed with pop-culture references and creepy beings, the novel is written from Molly’s sarcastic-beyond-her-years viewpoint and subtly threaded with life lessons that together create an engaging narrative.”—Publishers Weekly

Best children’s books of 2021: ages 9 to 12—Amazon

Journalist Jamie Vega is Sleepless: he can’t sleep, nor does he need to. When his boss dies on the eve of a controversial corporate takeover, Jamie doesn’t buy the too-convenient explanation of suicide, and launches an investigation of his own.

But everything goes awry when Jamie discovers that he was the last person who saw Simon alive. Not only do the police suspect him, Jamie himself has no memory of that night. Alarmingly, his memory loss may have to do with how he became Sleepless: not naturally, like other Sleepless people, but through a risky and illegal biohacking process.

As Jamie delves deeper into Simon’s final days, he tangles with extremist organizations and powerful corporate interests, all while confronting past traumas and unforeseen consequences of his medical experimentation. But Jamie soon faces the most dangerous decision of all as he uncovers a terrifying truth about Sleeplessness that imperils him—and all of humanity.

The entire experience of bringing a debut novel to life is a non-stop learning process, especially so since this book was the first I ever wrote. I could fill up a much longer list, but for now, here are five things I learned writing The Sleepless:

Sleep Evolved Before Brains, and Other Rad Trivia

Creating a science fictional world where some people do not have the need or ability to sleep meant doing a lot of research about sleep science. I learned that “fear naps” are a thing, and that cognitive behavioral therapy is more effective than medication in treating insomnia. I learned about g-suits, which are pressure trousers worn as a part of an astronaut or pilot’s flight suit to prevent g-force induced loss of consciousness. And did you know that sleep deprivation is a public health epidemic, and that about a third of Americans get less than six hours of sleep a night?

One of the more surprising things I learned is that most of our sleep research has been brain-centric, focusing on how it functions in complex creatures; after all, those are the ones with physiologies that you can hook up probes to. Yet newer research has shown that simple organisms like cockroaches, or even brainless ones like hydras and jellyfish, do sleep or engage in sleep-like behavior.

There are a Lot of Hate Groups Out There

One of the more unpleasant parts of my book research for is learning about hate groups. The Sleepless world has created a new class of people, and with it, a new basis for othering. Because of their condition, the Sleepless are treated differently: they are discriminated against, and they suffer threats to and loss of life, liberty and security.

To more realistically depict this, I delved into different kinds of hate groups, reading about their origins, their supposed ideologies, and their modus operandi. I learned their names and histories, how they are structured and funded, where they are located, what their membership looks like and how they recruit. Resources like the Southern Poverty Law Center were invaluable for this purpose–and for my own education. Through their research and databases, I gained a deeper insight into how widespread hate is in this country, and the different forms it takes. Things I thought I already knew. Not to sound alarmist, but things are worse than we think.

Genres are Meant to Be Blended

I’m a wide reader–I have no overwhelming favorites in terms of genre, setting, style or form and I feel that I have an richer reading life because of this tendency for openness. When I decided to become a writer, that translated into the stories I created. The premise of a sleepless world came to me first, so I knew The Sleepless was going to be a sci-fi book, but I also was drawn to the idea of writing a locked-room mystery, so I tried mashing those two together. I also wanted deep character interiority and a slow build, so I also had literary fiction conventions in mind as I was writing.

This made the process both rewarding and complicated: I was playing in several story sandboxes that I love, but I also needed to learn how to write each of them individually, in order to execute them well as a whole. That meant honoring each genre tradition, knowing their tropes and hallmarks, and examining what made me fall in love with them. That also required a willingness to depart from those hallmarks, to break them and bring my own spin on them, all the while finding ways to make everything cohere.

Life Imitates Art Sometimes, And That’s Okay

The world of the Sleepless was brought about by a global pandemic of mysterious origins, which was fun to write back in 2017 when I started, but not as much in 2020. Real-life events had a lot to teach me, learnings that made their way into the book. I saw first-hand the fear and confusion caused by a pandemic, as well as the pain and hatred that misinformation and panic can cause. I also saw how our institutions responded to the threat; the inefficiencies, the incompetence, and the iniquities of world leaders and private entities were, unfortunately, useful fodder for my world building.

In 2020, I was in the middle of revising and pitching it to agents and publishing houses. I received some rejections that responded to that aspect of the book, which taught me a lot about how difficult the industry is in general, and how much more so during an ongoing crisis. Compound that with the fact that I’ve written a pandemic-adjacent book, and it truly felt like an unwinnable uphill battle. Yet I stuck to it, refining the details of the pandemic to be more grounded in reality. I believed in my story and though I sometimes had doubts, I believed that there were readers out there who would too, despite the circumstances. Luckily, that turned out to be true.

Who I Am as a Writer is Ever-Changing

When I started drafting The Sleepless, I did it mostly for myself. I didn’t aspire to publish; I didn’t even know how. As my first book, writing it was largely a process of me discovering the story, and also myself as a writer. I knew what kinds of stories I liked to read, but I didn’t yet know what kind I liked to write, or the kind that I had the skills enough to write. I didn’t know process either: would I create better stories if I plotted or if I made things up as I went along? What’s the best way to motivate myself to keep working on a project?

And there were deeper personal questions too. How much of myself do I want to infuse in my work: as a brown person, as an immigrant, as a queer man, as someone raised in a religious and lower class background, etc. Even more, do I have to? What part of my personal values and beliefs do I want to examine, or to challenge, in coming up with my stories? I didn’t have ready answers to these questions when I first put words to paper; for the most part, I now do, but they are always shifting. My knowledge increases, my interests grow and expand, and with that my view of myself and the author’s life becomes clearer and more refined. On several levels, writing is constant exploration and investigation; it’s a journey of self-discovery, one that I’m glad I set out on.

***

Victor Manibo is a Filipino speculative fiction writer living in New York. As a queer immigrant and a person of color, he writes about people who live these identities and how they navigate imaginary worlds. Aside from fiction, he also spins fantastical tales in his career as a lawyer. He lives in Queens with his husband, their dog, and their two cats. He is a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, and his debut science fiction noir novel, THE SLEEPLESS, is out August 2022 from Erewhon Books.

Victor Manibo: Twitter | Website

The Sleepless: Bookshop.org | Indiebound | B&N | Amazon

From the acclaimed author of The Remaking and Whisper Down the Lane, this terrifying supernatural page-turner will make you think twice about opening doors to the unknown.

Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with her charismatic but reckless college ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he asks her to bail him out of rehab—again—she knows she needs to cut him off. But days after he gets out, Silas turns up dead of an overdose in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and Erin’s world falls apart.
 
Then a friend tells her about Ghost, a new drug that allows users to see the dead. Wanna get haunted? he asks. Grieving and desperate for closure with Silas, Erin agrees to a pill-popping “séance.” But the drug has unfathomable side effects—and once you take it, you can never go back.

***

Let’s talk about tarps.

Clear plastic tarps in particular. I’m going to go on record as saying there is nothing more frightening than a simple strip of transparent polyethylene. You can buy rolls of the stuff at your local hardware store, over a hundred feet long. Four hundred feet. The sheeting shields your furniture from dust during construction demos. It prevents soil erosion, creating a protective barrier for asbestos abatement. Winter insulation. Leaky roofs. You name it.

I find them terrifying. Why? Wes Craven. That’s why.

Let’s go back to 1984. A Nightmare On Elm Street is out and disrupting our sleep cycles. I’m far too young to be watching this film, but of course that’s not stopping me from sneaking a peak at Freddy Krueger invading the dreams of Nancy and her circle of friends.

Everybody’s got their favorite moment from this film. Watching Johnny Depp get sucked into his bed and then regurgitated in a geyser of blood, or Freddy’s tongue slipping out from the telephone, or perhaps his gloved hand rising up from the bathtub as Nancy drifts off to sleep…

For me, though, there’s one scene in particular that has seared its way into my subconsciousness. It’s the moment when Nancy dozes off in class, quickly slipping into dreamland, only to discover the corpse of her closest pal Tina standing in the hallway.

She’s in a body bag.

Not just any kind of body bag, though… For some perverse reason, Craven crams Tina’s corpse into a carrier made from some kind of transparent plastic material better suited for a construction site… not the removal of a dead body. In my horror film/true crime mind, body bags are always an industrial black. In any other movie, the camera catches one last glimpse of the deceased before the coroner zzzzzzips up the bag, concealing the corpse for the rest of the film. Not this one. Tina’s body bag isn’t opaque at all. Nancy—and therefor the audience—can see right through to Tina, dead, eviscerated and bleeding, shrink-wrapped within her own cellophane container. The plastic is frosted just enough that her features are blurred. Her breath—how can she still be breathing?!—fogs over the other side of her Saran Wrap sarcophagus, along with all her dribbling bodily fluids.

Tina reaches her bloodied hand out to her friend, but it’s trapped behind this plastic barrier. She calls out for Nancy before her body bag is dragged down the hall by her feet…

And years’ worth of childhood trauma was born.

Every time I see a clear plastic tarp these days, I can’t help but think of the barrier between me and whatever rests on the other side. It’s so thin. You can see through it—and yet, no oxygen can pass. No dust particles. Nothing is breaking through that sheeting.

In the strangest of ways, these transparent tarpaulins remind me of the barrier between the living and dead. The veil seems so exceedingly slim, there and somehow not there at the same time. All you have to do is poke your finger and… break on through to the other side. 

When I was writing my new novel GHOST EATERS, which is all about a haunted drug slowly insinuating itself through a small group of friends, I found myself focusing on my favorite ghost story tropes and seeing if there was a new spin to put on them. How could I recalibrate the gothic sensibilities of our favorite haunted housers and come up with something different, if not entirely new? When it came to ghosts—actual spooooky ghosts—I kept obsessing over the essentials: a bedsheet with two holes cut out for the eyes. It’s so simple and yet has so much supernatural tonnage to it. The sheet is what gives definition to the apparition. Without it, the ghost itself is invisible. You need the sheet to see the spirit… but even then, you’re not looking at the ghost, but the receptacle that encases it. Cloaks it. It’s all gift wrap and no gift.

So… what if the sheet were transparent? What if we could see behind the paranormal curtain? Is there a chance to peer beyond the veil by simply changing the outer covering?

My book has so many ghosts in it. Like, too many. In my afterlife, I posit that what ghosts want most is definition. Parameters to cozy up in. That means a house to haunt.

That means a sheet.

Without these quaint containers, these spirits are untethered. Unmoored. They wander. All they’re after is a roof over their head, a house to haunt. They just want a sheet to wrap themselves up in and define themselves by. How else are we going to see them? But in lieu of bedsheets, I gave my ghosts tarps. Clear plastic tarps. This simple shift permits my protagonist to see directly through the veil and peer into what’s waiting for us all on the other side…

It’s not pretty. But it suggests that we’re so focused on the surface of these spirits and not, you know, what’s on the inside. All we see is the sheet. Not the ghost itself.

Clear plastic changes all that. It allows us to look even further.

Who knows? Maybe clear plastic tarps will be all the rage for ghosts this season. Don’t be so surprised if the next apparition you encounter is sporting their own polyethylene sheet…

***

Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, children’s books, and for film/TV. His most recent horror novels include Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, and The Remaking. You can find him at www.claymcleodchapman.com. 

Entering adulthood is like stepping into a dark room in a haunted house. Or that’s what it was like for me. As an undergraduate student living on my own for the first time, I stared mortality in the face. After not taking care of myself for several months, subsisting on boxes of mac and cheese alone, my body welcomed an illness that refused to leave—and no doctors could tell me what was wrong, why I kept dropping pounds, or why a fever kept ebbing and flowing, again and over, over several months. It was just a virus, they said.

During this nebulous time, I had my first panic attack. I was watching Buffy, second season, a show I’d seen a hundred times before—and suddenly, I went weak all over, my heart pounding and palpating. That was the first time I went to the ER, and as I explained my shitty college lifestyle to an overtired doctor, I realized that fear—anxiety—could affect the body. It could make me feel so scared I thought I was dying.

Over the next years, I collected a series of phobias like new hobbies. After moving to Oregon, I developed a fear of flying that made it difficult to get home to see my family. After a bad car accident, I acquired a phobia of driving. I grew frightened of medications; food I didn’t prepare myself; storms, crowded places. As I gave into them, they changed my life—for the worst.

This isn’t about those phobias, which I overcame with years of exposure therapy and medication. These days I can climb onto a plane; drive; enter the world without worrying that a satellite might fall from the sky and kill me. But one persistent fear stuck around: the fear of fear.

After so many panic attacks and nights wasted in a shaking ball on the floor, losing control of myself became my greatest fear. I hated every reminiscent sensation: dizziness, tiredness, a tremor. But how does one expose oneself to fear?

I didn’t know the answer until I met my current spouse. He was a horror aficionado, and when he begged me to watch some of his favorite movies, I agreed—as long as it was daytime. He put on Hellraiser. I made it through. Next was Nightmare on Elm Street. That one was more difficult; there was no happy ending, no monster defeat to wrap things up neatly. The unsettled feelings remained a little longer, and that was okay. It didn’t last forever.

From there, I watched every classic horror film I could convince my friends to consume. I’m most frightened of ghost stories, but I stay up several nights a year turning the pages of some haunting book like Sarah Gailey’s Just Like Home or Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

People often ask me what drew me to writing horror after mainly exploring sci-fi and fantasy. Fear is powerful; it has such a hold on us, both when we wake and when we sleep. It dictates what we do every day—and more so, what we refuse to do. To watch, to read, to write horror is to stare fear in its face—and to understand that it’s nothing more than shadows.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam is the author of Glorious Fiends, out now through Underland Press. Her short story collection, Where You Linger, came out earlier this year from Vernacular Press. Her Nebula-nominated fiction has appeared in over 90 publications such as LeVar Burton Reads. Find out more about her at BonnieJoStufflebeam.com.

Glorious Fiends: Underland

Where You Linger: Vernacular

For the last Supersoldier left in the Galaxy, it’s kill or be killed…

Despite the genetic enhancements inherited from her father, Victoria Anetti never wanted to be a supersoldier. She’d rather spend her life fixing starships, free from family expectations.

Then her father and his comrades vanish on a mission to find a lost warship, leaving her the last supersoldier left alive.

Now she must flee from planet to planet in order to evade government agents—like her estranged mother—who want to use her as a pawn in a simmering interstellar conflict.

To escape yet another capture attempt, Victoria reluctantly joins her uncle’s salvage crew who are attempting to complete her father’s mission. But when clues surface that her father might be alive, Victoria must choose whether to disappear again to avoid sparking another war, or embrace her supersoldier legacy to save the only family she has left.

***

One of the best things about writing a trilogy is that it gives your characters much more room to grow, and you as the author grow right along with them. I wrote the ROBBER BARRONS trilogy during one of the biggest times of upheaval in my life, and by the end I had changed just as much as my main protagonist, Victoria. Here’s the five most important lessons Victoria and I learned during ROBBER BARRONS.

Planning is important. So is rolling with the changes.

One of the great debates between writers is whether you’re a plotter or a pantser. Do you outline your manuscript, use beat sheets, and plan all your turning points for impeccable pacing? Or do you write with only a vague idea of characters and plot, discovering the story as you go?

I’m a Capricorn, so of course I’m a planner. This came in handy when I was a mentee in Pitch Wars and had to revise at least half of my manuscript. (For the Xth time.) My tendency to outline paid off while writing the second and third books of the trilogy, since I knew the plots worked right away and could focus on my shortcomings: descriptions and feelings. I also planned out a schedule for when I’d write and revise books two and three, putting me on schedule for a Fall 2020 release.

Ahem. I’m sure you’ve already noticed it’s now Fall 2022.

Like I said. Planning is one of my greatest strengths. But I didn’t plan for how much pregnancy and a newborn would fry my brain. Nobody predicted COVID-19, which completely wiped my ability to be creative for at least a year. I had to give myself a lot of grace and accept that these books weren’t coming out when I originally planned.

When I finally started writing again, I felt invigorated. I made playlists for the sequels, because that’s how I motivate myself. I dove into the characters again. If I’d forced myself to push through, I don’t think I would have ever gotten back into the groove.

Similarly, Victoria spent her whole life planning to work on her uncle’s starship, the Robber Barron. She didn’t plan on having a messy breakup with the ship’s systems analyst. She didn’t plan her mother defecting to the enemy. She didn’t plan on becoming the last of the Mahjin. And she certainly didn’t plan on her uncle saving her ass and offering her refuge on his ship. At first, Victoria feels like she has no other option but to say yes. Then she realizes—flying on her uncle’s ship is what she always wanted.

And then everything goes sideways when she realizes her father might still be alive—and her mother might be responsible for his disappearance. Her plans once again fall by the wayside, and she has to adjust her worldview all over again.

The past is the greatest teacher.  

Victoria’s parents mean well. But wow, do they make bad decisions. (Victoria takes after them in this way.) It was important to me that all of Victoria’s parental figures be presented as real people, not just shadowy caricatures who don’t take part in the story by either staying behind or dying. You don’t stop growing as a person when you become a parent, or even when you reach a certain age, so why should fictional characters? I also wanted to show Victoria learning from her elders. As a history major, I know that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Only when Victoria realizes she’s falling into the same traps as her family does she break free of that messy cycle.

Ironically, I wanted to tell a generational story before I became a parent. When I wrote the second and third books, that desire became even stronger. When my son was an infant, I wanted to do everything and make every decision with him in mind. I soon realized I was losing myself in the process, and while my son is the most important person in my life, I was an individual first. Victoria’s parents weren’t done growing once their daughter was born, and neither am I.

Sequels suck, but are also amazing.

Trilogies seem to be the bread and butter of science fiction, and I certainly had ideas for future stories when I wrote the first book. When Aethon Books offered me a deal for a trilogy, I was ecstatic, but also terrified. What if I couldn’t write books on contract? What if my ideas for what happened next were terrible? What if I was never able to write again? (The global pandemic and newborn brain made these thoughts fester even more.)

Writing a sequel was as hard as I envisioned, but it was also amazing to jump into a world with characters I already knew and start writing. I could really focus on the plot, expanding other areas of the galaxy I only mentioned previously, and introduce new characters. I definitely understand the appeal of writing a series and hope to someday return to this universe with new books.

Victoria has what appears to be a definitive ending in book one. But those events aren’t as resolved as she thought she was. When confronted with someone from her recent past, she is forced to go on yet another mission with the crew of the Robber Barron. And those events propel her to confront her destiny as a Mahjin once and for all.

She ends the trilogy in an unexpected, but good, place. One with (hopefully) lots more adventures ahead of her.

If it’s not enjoyable, try something new.

Writing is hard, but it should be fun. That seems self-explanatory, but even with self-imposed deadlines, it can be draining to force yourself to sit in front of a keyboard every night after working a full-time job and putting your very energetic toddler to bed. I had to learn to enjoy the entire writing process—yes, even the dreaded drafting. For me, that meant crafting playlists and listening to them on repeat while writing, imagining scenes in my head based on my favorite music cues, and incorporating my favorite tropes and scenarios. (Book Three has forced proximity, a fancy gala, and there’s only one bed. I’m not sorry about it.) All of this turned drafting, which was previously a slog for me, into something I actually looked forward to.

When the story begins, Victoria is set in her ways. She intends to stay on the run for as long as possible. But when she’s almost captured in the first scene, she realizes something must change. As the novel progresses, she takes drastic action to reach out to her mother and stop their never-ending conflict. Even when faced with only seemingly bad choices, Victoria can still take charge of her own destiny. And, eventually, things start to get better for her, and everyone around her.

Find your people and stick with them.

There’s a reason why so many writers recommend finding a group of peers to rely on throughout your career. Writing is such a solitary action—but it doesn’t have to be. During Pitch Wars, I became good friends with a group of fellow mentees, and we continue to talk via Slack to this day. We even have a channel devoted to drafting and writing sprints. I wrote most of Book Three while providing updates in that channel, and it was an amazing motivator. We all write different genres and are at different stages of our careers, but they remain some of my biggest cheerleaders, and I can only hope I return the favor for them. I can’t imagine publishing this trilogy without them in my corner.

ROBBER BARRONS is a story about family. Victoria’s uncle is not related to her by blood, but she’s just as close to him as her father—if not closer. Her aunt isn’t married to her uncle, but Victoria has always called her aunt. She’s always felt at home the Robber Barron, much more than with her fellow supersoldiers. She loves her father, but the life he wants for her isn’t the life she wants. And she certainly doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps and be an intelligence agent. But branching out from family traditions doesn’t mean you have to stop being a part of one. You can be part of more than one family—found and blood. Without both, Victoria wouldn’t be who she is.

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Nanci Schwartz is an instructional writer by day, a science fiction author by night, and a mom 24/7. Her debut novel ROBBER BARRONS (September 13, 2022) is the first installment of a forthcoming trilogy from Aethon Books. In her small amounts of free time, she can be found gallivanting around Disney World, flailing about her favorite space opera movie franchise, or taking refuge from the heat in her pool. She lives near the Most Magical Place on Earth with her husband, son, dog, and cat.

Nanci Schwartz: Twitter

Robber Barons: Amazon