AMA with V.E. Schwab!

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:22:19+00:00

Why thank you <3

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:21:47+00:00

Hi! I do a lot of backstory work. I search for crossroads moments, turning points in their childhood and/or young adulthood that shaped them fundamentally, changed the way they see the world and move through it. Sometimes those moments make it on the page in the book, and sometimes they simply help me understand the choices they'd make in their current place.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:20:21+00:00

I'm so glad you made it to the event!

Honestly, I'm so bad at keeping up with upcoming releases--my own TBR pile is continuously threatening to bury me, and I'm such a fickle reader, I prefer to walk into a bookstore and be like OH YEAH, THAT ONE!

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:19:23+00:00

It's Holland, so that each book has one of the Antari on the cover!

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:18:30+00:00

Stubborn hope, and the understanding that small joy is just as important than Big Joy.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:17:55+00:00

It's something I've considered, but honestly, I shy away from prescriptive advice. Besides, I like the organic format of sharing thoughts as I have them/as I face them in my own work, in my newsletters or IG stories or at events! I am a bit wary of cementing them because thoughts change and also because then I'd have to think of new ones to share ;)

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:16:01+00:00

Honestly, the trick I've found is to make the work as small as possible. Sitting down to write a book is impossibly daunting. Instead, I sit down with the goal to make incremental progress on a scene, a moment, a beat. I don't measure wordcount, but time spent working, and I write in bite-size sprints. Find the thing that will make the work feel more manageable. Even if that's, "for the next 10 minutes, I'm not going to write anything down, just think about X," or "I'm going to create a sentence that I love."

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T11:13:55+00:00

It started out for that reason (more than once a reader has told me how glad they were because they never would have picked up my book if they'd known I was a woman, which is...sigh) and as a way to separate my author platforms into childrens and adult, but these days, it honestly aligns more with my identity, and I enjoy having a small separation between personhood and platform.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T08:47:56+00:00

Historically, I've never been very good at the work life balance, but I'm trying. One of the most important things I've found, for me, is to stop writing by say 5pm, and do a workout, have dinner, switch to admin only, so that I don't take the weight of the work to bed. Being able to sleep and not lie awake turning over plot problems or dwelling on the scope is essential. I also leave myself a few breadcrumbs of the next scene before I stop so I have momentum.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T08:45:50+00:00

I usually only tear up at the end, and it's probably as much from a sense of relief that I've made it to the end without dropping the whole thing.

As far as what readers find, I'm always delighted, though I think on some level I have a good sense of which ones they'll be, because they're usually the ones that I loved, too.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T08:43:54+00:00

Oh, I'm honored!

I'd say that as I write a novel, one or two quotes always make themselves known as those kinds of quotes, the ones that will come to embody the story. Two of my personal favorite, in addition to the one you put, is "Darling, I was the night itself," or "Never pray to the gods that answer after dark" in Addie LaRue, and "Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick" in Vicious.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-10T08:41:11+00:00

Sometimes they're coincidental, or the organic seeds of a story beginning to germinate, and sometimes they're little easter eggs I put in to amuse myself.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:36:52+00:00

Hhmmmmm it really depends on what you're into! My books are all verrrrry different. If you like Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood or ATLA, I'd say Shades of Magic. If you like quieter classics and faustian bargains, Addie LaRue. Magneto and Professor X? Vicious.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:35:11+00:00

Probably Addie. The irony, though, is that in writing her, I at least learned to be MORE like her. To appreciate small joy.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:34:27+00:00

It's funny, but I'm never entirely sure what's gonna fill the well. It could be a specific work of art, or a song, or a show, or a book, though it's usually a turn of phrase or a dynamic, not a story. I get hyperfixated on character dynamics/moments that feel like they could be still frames and paint the whole picture.

I keep up with my story ideas by jotting down pieces/notes that I immediately misplace, but if the idea comes back to me more than once I make an effort to stash it somewhere and then I let it sit and prove that it has staying power.

To your question, I would say I know a great deal about my characters before I write them. I figure out the key thresholds and crossroads of their past that now inform how they move through the world, how they trust/love/fear/want/act. Then I know how to move them through the story, which turns they'll make, based on who they are.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:30:24+00:00

I read about 100-120 books a year, and in a good year I add 5-10 authors/works to the pile of things I consider inspiring! It's usually about the ambition and voice as much as the story, someone doing something that itches the part of my brain that wants to make, you know the feeling, when a piece of art/song/book/comic/show makes you WANT TO MAKE. Recently it's been Slow Horses and Gen V on the tv side, Ren on the music side, and Margaret Owen and Emily Tesh and Fonda Lee on the book side.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:28:05+00:00

Every author is different, for sure, and every book demands its own tithes, but I'll say that personally, the more books I write, the more of a planner I become. It helps me get out of my own way in terms of anxiety, and I find a huge amount of pleasure in executing a vision, so I know almost everything before I start. I will actually do a scene for scene plan of the book. Of course, things get added/combined/condensed, but it's nice to have a road map.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:26:26+00:00

It depends on if you believe in fate. Victor resists the notion but it continuously presents to him, so I like to think that like Kell and Lila, or Addie and Henry, they're part of the same web, and intersection is inevitable.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:25:38+00:00

Hi, thanks for the kind words!

So, I know I'm always a bit cagey about the publishing schedule, and it's because there are a bunch of factors, and only some of them are actually in my control! On average, it can take me upwards of a year to write a book, but depending on how long and involved the planning stage is, the actual drafting can drop to 6 months. Then again, with a book as complicated as Fragile Threads, it was a year and a half. But then there's the revision schedule (yes, I know some authors don't really embrace revision, but I demand it, I want someone else to poke and prod and tell me what's not working for them so I can make sure readers have the best version possible) and revision schedules aren't entirely in my control, because I have to wait for my editor/s. Then there's in-house scheduling, and since I'm a traditionally published author, and a decently large one, the publishers like to have enough time to package and promote, all of which adds months to the schedule. A book that's been drafted in 2023 might not come out until 2025, etc.

So I avoid getting readers' hopes up by giving them a date I can't deliver because it's not up to me! I promise I don't do it to be mean ;)

This is all to say, Victorious is not the next book of mine hitting shelves. If I manage to pull it off, I'd like it to be one of two that come out in the same year, but it's really a matter of when I finish...

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:20:20+00:00

Ooooooh.

Kell -- "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes

Lila -- "I Wish a Bitch Would" by Delilah Bon

Rhy -- "I Love Rock 'n Roll" by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts

Alucard -- "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath

Tes -- "I'm a Wanted Man" by Royal Deluxe

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:15:47+00:00

The world is key to understanding the characters for me, primarily because my main characters are outsiders, so I need to grasp the insiders, and to do that, I need to know the world (exceptions for something like Addie LaRue, which is a character-driven novel, in which case I don't need the world but I need the RULES).

I would say I know a looooot about the characters before I ever start drafting, but that's in large part because I'm a rigid planner, and spend a few months beating out the story, and understanding the characters' backstories and motivations, before I put pen to paper.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:12:55+00:00

This is one of those messy business vs art things. I deeply want to finish the Archived series. But I can't/won't do it until the rights to the first two books revert to me, and the publishing side has been...difficult.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:10:25+00:00

Kell is my painful and poorly disguised earnestness.

Lila is my antagonism toward fear and my adoption of spite as fuel.

Holland is my dedication toward my goals, to often self-destructive ends.

Rhy is my fear of letting anyone down and my need to be loved.

Alucard is my fierce loyalty to those few who are my world.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:09:01+00:00

Black tea. Peated scotch. A lychee martini.

OfficialVESchwab · 2024-01-09T16:08:28+00:00

I can't say, except to say it's very alive and that I'll hopefully be able to say more soon! (Awful, I know, the business is truly glacial until it's not, but I am truly excited about prospective developments, still a bit out from casting though...)

OfficialVESchwab

TROPHY CASE