Ask Me Anything: Book Edition

I’m back with more of your pressing questions! This time, the theme is books (my books, other folks’ books) with three unrelated bonus questions thrown in at the end (for kicks). Here we go, again!

This is an impossible question to answer and there’s always recency bias at work here—i.e., whatever I just did is what I like best. But mostly, my favorite characters are my lead characters. That’s why I choose to write the story about them. Special shout out to Sonya from Poster Girl, who spends the book deprogramming after a lifetime of brainwashing, and Antigone from Arch-Conspirator, because Antigone in the original Greek tragedy is ridiculously compelling and I loved getting inside her head. And of course, I do love Tris, and always will.

But, having said that: LET ME TELL YOU about Theren in Seek the Traitor’s Son. Is he a hottie? Yes. Does he subvert some gender norms by being preternaturally emotionally sensitive? YES! Do I miss him when I’m not writing about him? Yes!! God I cannot wait for this book to come out. (In May!)

It has felt the same writing YA vs. writing adult, probably because my protagonists have been aging alongside me. Don’t get me wrong—many things are different. The characters’ central concerns, the themes of the books, the pacing…they changed as a natural byproduct of the age category changing. But the way I am in relationship to the work is the same. I am always earnestly trying to explore a character’s psyche and their relationship to the world I’ve built around them. I am always doing my best.

That said, the thing that was hardest to get my head around is that there’s simply more time in an adult character’s life and you have to decide what to do with it. They have a childhood, yes, but what about after that? Did they get married? Have kids? Have a whole other career? Have a series of tragedies, triumphs? What did they do with that post-school, post-childhood time? When you write adult works, you have to decide all that stuff. I know that sounds obvious, but it was a bit of a mental adjustment, which is probably why Sloane’s twenties (Chosen Ones) feel a little less developed than Sonya’s twenties (Poster Girl) and like, just wait for Elegy’s twenties (Seek the Traitor’s Son).

Seek the Traitor’s Son! But just because it was a “side project” and I was delighted to explore it through many, many, many drafts. I started writing it in 2019 and it comes out this year. See my post about it here.

I do have an idea for a third book in the series, and I intend to write it at some point in the future. But I have four books coming out before 2028, so it’ll be a little while before I’ll have time to dedicate myself to it.

No plans to do a Divergent sequel, no! However, there is a Deluxe Limited Edition coming out April 21st with bonus exclusive content…

I don’t know, 107? I have an anxiety disorder; there’s no shortage of fears over here.

The whole gang in Chosen Ones made me laugh a lot. Also Niko from When Among Crows.

No, the Erudite Headquarters scenes in the book take place in the row of buildings across Michigan Avenue from the Bean, so it’s not what I envisioned— but I loved it in the movie anyway. A movie is a different medium; it’s okay for it to be more visually dynamic than a book, and the UChicago library is gorgeous.

As for Chicago in Divergent, I didn’t live in the city when I wrote it and I think you can tell, because I mostly highlight tourist locations (the Bean, the Sears Tower, etc.). I moved to Chicago shortly after writing Divergent and have lived there ever since, and the books I’ve set there after that move (Chosen Ones, When Among Crows) reflect that deeper familiarity. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and our downtown, though stunning, is not where we spend most of our time (or even much of our time), so it’s the neighborhoods that inspire my newer Chicago-based work, not the Loop.

My favorite one is Divergent and my favorite character is Tris. I don’t think this will be surprising to anyone!

I will admit the idea of brainstorming a character is a little strange to me; I just don’t think about it that way. But there’s always a starting point with a character. For Tris, it was a voice— there was this quote from the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus, My will is mine/I will not make it soft for you, that was just stuck in my mind and I wanted to write a character who felt like that quote. That was Tris’s starting point, and I did no other brainstorming, I just put her in the situation I knew she was in (in Abnegation, about to choose Dauntless) and let my instincts guide me from there.

I know very little about my characters when I start writing; I learn about them as they move through the story. For a more recent example, for Theren in Seek the Traitor’s Son, I knew that he’d been through trauma but wasn’t aware of the extent of it himself, even though other people around him could see it very clearly—that tension of what he knew vs. what other people knew about him was an interesting jumping off point for a character. In Divergent, most of the side characters appeared simply because I needed them to fulfill a particular role— Tris’s friend, Tris’s enemy, Tris’s betrayer—and they grew personalities as I figured out who had the best chemistry with her and who brought a much-needed alternate viewpoint to the story.

Like to re-experience the magic? I’m assuming yes, and the answer that came to mind immediately is Gideon the Ninth. (and Harrow, the sequel)

Picking a favorite book is like picking a favorite square of my favorite chocolate bar. Like…why?! If it’s a different type of chocolate, sure, I’ll have opinions. But among a selection of my favorites, one square does not stand out above the rest.

I’ve actually had a rough month, reading-wise. Read more than one thing I didn’t enjoy, DNFed something (which I generally don’t do). A recent highlight was The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel, out in mid-February. It’s a novella, and it’s about a group of people on Mars traveling to see Mars’ first rain—but it’s also a series of stories with a frame narrator, like The Canterbury Tales. Very thoughtful and beautiful.

I play video games. I’m doing a second playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 right now, immediately after the first playthrough (I missed so so much in Acts 1 and 2!). I tackled the Horizon games earlier this year (Zero Dawn and Forbidden West), they were incredible.

I also exercise a lot (weight lifting, swimming, running), watch professional tennis (I do not play tennis), and…read.

I did! I started over last year, when I’d forgotten enough of the story to feel like I was rediscovering it, and I finished it a couple months later. It was awesome, and my Igni was potent by the end. Top 5 games of all time, for sure.

My dearest darling Avi is fourteen years old and she is a Havanese. She is losing her sight and her hearing and has very few teeth, but she is otherwise in great shape, like the kind of shape where the vet seems vaguely impressed. We’re very proud of her.

<3

V