Victoria Aveyard Spills 'Red Queen' Secrets + Her New Adult Fantasy | Booked, Blonde & Busy w/ Olivia Ponton

So you love Orlando Bloom. Love. And Hawkeyes in general. Speculum in Doctor said, what do you do? I said, I write books. He goes, what kind of books? Elevator pitch one. I was a weirdo. Okay. And I figured out how to monetize that. And it works. It works. For now it works. Like, do you have to almost act like the plot twist isn't happening? Because you almost have to convince yourself that these characters are. Oh. I know everything. I'm gone. Hi, angels. Welcome back to another episode of Booked Blonde and Busy. Today I am so beyond excited to have Miss Victoria Aviardi here. As you guys know, I've never reread a book ever besides Red Queen. Okay. It was very specifically in Hawaii. I was like, I needed a book that was going to hit home. And I knew I was going to be like, mind f***ed by, for lack of better terms. And so I brought this book. Because I remember finishing it and just sitting there in my apartment being like, what? Yes. Just happened. Okay, wait. Positively quick before we go on to this. I want to talk about our beverage of the day. Oh. Because I want to do something red. Because obviously Red Queen. So this is just like a raspberry strawberry smoothie. And we can't do a Negroni because it's 10 o'clock in the morning. So I'm sorry to disappoint. But here we are. Taste test? Oh, I already tasted it. It's good. It's good. Me too. But I don't know what this white stuff is. Coconut? We'll cut that. Don't. Don't. Don't tell people that. Okay. So for people who haven't read Red Queen or if you haven't read it in a bit of time, we're going to give a little synopsis. I can tell you right now. I can pitch Red Queen in my sleep. I did it once in the middle of a gynecological appointment. Speculum in. Doctor said, what do you do? Elevator pitch one. And I looked him dead in the eye. I was like, oh, I wrote this book called Red Queen. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes, oh my God, I've seen that on the shelf. You're all done. Oh, I can't imagine that one. Yeah. Okay. Now you do the elevator pitch. Okay. Red Queen is about a girl in a world divided by those who have superhuman powers and those who do not. And she discovers that somehow she has superhuman powers even though she shouldn't. And she gets pulled into the world of the superpowered elite where she is now torn between two half brothers who happen to be the princes of the kingdom because of course they are. They have to be, you know? And at the same time, a rebellion of the underclass is brewing. And she also gets pulled into that as sort of their spy or their man on the inside. And she's trying to navigate all of these things while also navigating being a person she never thought she was and growing into who she's going to become. Wow. And all those mistakes that she makes along the way. That's a great elevator pitch. I've had a long time. I'm sold. To put it together. That's the thing though. This film school background, I had to take pitching classes. I had to learn how to pitch. That's a class? Mm-hmm. Okay. Before we get into that, fill me in on the process of Red Queen because I know it started during – while you were at film school. Yeah. Very cinematic. Yes. So that's where my background is and where I always – I always – I'm a very visual writer. I picture it in my head very, very vividly when I'm writing and sort of my job or what I'm always attempting to do. Is to somehow transfer what I see into your head. That's always what I'm trying to do. And I see it down to like the shots, the cinematography, the music cues. Like that's how intense it is for me. I can watch scenes in my head like a movie if I want to. That's – wait. That's crazy. By the way, I don't have that ability. It's really strange. I can put on a song and be like, okay, I'm going to think of this scene and I just watch it in my head as I walk. But yeah. So film school, I went to study screenwriting. I moved from a small town in Massachusetts to Los Angeles. That was a huge culture shock in a really good way. It was a really good exposure to like the bigger world and different people. And then also the great thing about USC where I went, yes, very specific film school education like BFA. But it's also a massive university with a ton of different facets of student life and like a great football team, a big like Greek community, lots of different people. And so I feel like I got a full college experience while also getting a really, really intense sort of film liberal arts degree at the same time. And I gravitated towards writing films because I loved movies. I also grew up loving books. But books were so intimidating. The idea of writing a book, something that long, that many words, I just didn't understand how to do it. And while the film industry is also pretty inscrutable, you still sort of know, okay, you go to film school, you go to Los Angeles, you become an assistant. There's some sort of pathway. Not necessarily to success, but you can actually see the steps if you can make the steps. Whereas with books, it seemed just like, ah, people who write books, like that's just not something that I have access to. So I went into film school, learned how to write from a screenplay perspective, learned storytelling that way. And then my senior year of college, I was interning over at Fox and they had like an incubator, a writer incubator. And my – What is a writing incubator? They basically had a paddock of writers, of screenwriters. And one side of the room was comedy and one side was action adventure. And Fox, this was a great idea and I wish they still did it, but they were essentially paying, I think it was eight on either side, eight professional screenwriters to come up with original ideas and write screenplays. And the ones they wanted to, you know, fast track into production, they would. And it never really panned out, but it was a great – it was almost like a patron situation where they were allowing people to live and work and have the money to do that. Yeah. And be creative at the same time. Yes, exactly. And so it was a really cool idea. So that's what you were doing? I was the assistant's intern. Love. And I was the only one who knew how to use Photoshop, so I made all the pitch decks. But I know. And then I got the job because I loved Game of Thrones so much and we just like talked about Song of Ice and Fire. I'm watching Game of Thrones for the first time right now. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. It's actually really funny that you bring that up because I was talking about Tempest this morning and I was weirdly – I was weirdly enough thinking that like Game of Thrones dynamic was very relevant in the book because of all the different characters and like the different kind of – Yes. The islands and I felt like that was kind of like the Seven Kingdoms in my head. I thought it was a coincidence because I'm watching it right now. No, I'm a huge, huge fan and I will also say the reason I got into Song of Ice and Fire was in college I had a class on TV writing and the professor was like, hey, guys, my friend George has a TV show coming out next year on HBO. I think some of you guys will like it. And one other guy in the class leaned over to me and he's like, I know what show he's talking about. It's called Game of Thrones. It's about – it's based on these books. You would love them, Victoria. And so I was like, okay. And it wasn't out yet or it wasn't out? It wasn't out yet. And the professor was just like my friend George who is George R.R. Martin. Yeah. And so I ripped through all the books that were out at that time and so he – so George R.R. Martin is also a screenwriter. Like that's his writing background. And so his books are written – From like a screen. Yeah. My aspiration is to write in a similar way. But the way that his books are written, you're covering the last page of the chapter. Because if your eye goes to the last page of the chapter, that moment, you're going to realize something crazy has just happened and you're actually going to spoil the ending if you don't read it at the exact moment you get there. And so when I wrote Red Queen or when I write any book that I write now, I try and do that where the end of the chapter is another crazy hook that keeps you going. That's why I think you're a great reader. Because I think you – You need – sometimes when there's nothing – like nothing happens at the end of the chapter, I'm like – No. You need to be pushing momentum. Yeah. I'm like I need a reason to flip the next page and not just be like, okay, it's 11 p.m. at night. I should probably go to sleep now. Like you have to end it on that. To feel like you've hit a lull in the books. Even when you need those moments of lull, like even the quiet moments between characters, there still has to be some sort of pace and momentum. Yeah. And at least for me, thing that is pulling you through the work. And that's very screenwriting based. But yeah, back to how did I start writing Red Queen, I was in that – I was interning and the producer had me reading the Amazon self-published list because at that time it was 2012. Fifty Shades of Grey had just gone to auction and we were all watching that auction happen like live on deadline, like refreshing the auction update. Wow. Wool had just happened for Hugh Howey and he was like, okay, the Amazon self-published list, there's going to be more jewels in there that we're going to find. And so I started reading it and I realized, wait a second. I was so intimidated out of prose writing, so intimidated out of novel writing. Now I understand storytelling from a screenwriting perspective and I'm realizing it's actually not that different. The formats are different, but the bones are the same. And so it brought me back in thinking, wait, I can actually like – I have skill and training and I know how to do this now. And that was the first moment where my brain kind of clicked over to you could also write books, not just screenplays. And – So it started as a screenplay. Not really. Not really. Okay. So I actually had a – I had a professor who our very first day of film school said, unless you're writing something that could be made for under $10 million, a horror, a comedy, something small and contained, write the book instead. Food deserves Pepsi. grab a pepsi zero sugar today okay i want to go into the world building of red queen okay because like we were talking about earlier with the pacing you do a great job of curating this magical world obviously we have the red bloods versus the silver bloods and i just i had such a perfect vision of the beginning first like three chapters of what she was going through i i really felt like i was there and i feel like that's an ability that not a lot of people have explain how you kind of got into the idea of like red versus silver yeah because it kind of almost feels like modern day society yes a little bit like new york la versus like a lot of the other stuff that's going on in the world and i feel like do you see the the tiktoks ever of during like the met gala and it's like from district 12 yeah i feel like it kind of gave that same emotion or feeling so explain that yes and just in to place this in time like red queen when i wrote it i was very much in the shadow of the hunger games and those books came out when i was in college we went to go see the movies it was the biggest thing in the world divergent was happening at the same time and when i first pitched the idea of writing red queen to the manager who i wasn't signed by but i was working with i said i wanted to be the next big thing like hunger games is done divergent is i want this to be the next one and i took that big ass swing i wrote a check that my ass had to cash but i had to write the book and so i was absolutely in conversation with those sort of watershed stories so for hunger games but also a little bit x-men and then when you boil down x-men x-men is also very much about people who are different people who are oppressed people who are misunderstood for what they are bored as and so all of that kind of amalgamated in there i was also graduating college in 2012 into a recession with a film school degree and a lot of college loans so that was a lot of that desperation and fear and pressure went into those books it was also um occupy wall street was happening we were having all these conversations about wealth disparity in the united states that have only become more relevant and so it's actually quite strange to have written a dystopian novel that was relevant 10 11 years ago that is now more relevant and kind of you know you would hope things like that art like that would be more relevant and so i was like oh my god i'm so That would kind of pump the brakes on things getting worse. And yet here we are. Here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Here we are. As far as world building, I love – that's my favorite part. And I get into the nitty gritty, you know, the economics and the trade routes and maps and all of that. But my challenge is when to pull back because I feel like it's very easy to overwhelm a reader, especially in the beginning of a book. And I want the approach almost to have – it's the frog in the pot. I want to increase the temperature of the water so slowly you don't know you're being boiled. And then 100 pages in, when things click and you understand the world, you realize, wait a second. I didn't understand all this information you were giving to me, but I internalized it and now I'm in it and I get it. Fantasy is a really interesting balance of real and unreal and ordinary and extraordinary. And the thing we're always trying to do is to make you believe it, to make you believe that these people exist, that this world exists, because that gives everything stakes. Intentionally. Intentionally. Because then you're invested because you believe it. We've all read books where we're like, I don't really buy this. I had a professor who gave us some advice on writing genre and she said you can get an audience to believe one unbelievable thing. And everything else, to the best of your ability, has to kind of make sense with that thing. So when you have a book that you read and you're like, okay, I accept it. The dragons exist. And then three books in or 300 pages in, they throw in also time travel and you're like, wait a second. That's too many things. But if it's under the umbrella of like everyone has a superhuman power or these people have superhuman powers, you have more room to move within the suspension of disbelief. And with Silver. Yeah. Okay. I understand what you're putting down. Yes. So when I say, you know, it's a dystopian future and some people have evolved to have superpowers, you're like, great, got it. I'm with you on that. Okay. And so the original version of Red Queen, the first draft, ended with Shade popping up having time travel powers, not teleportation. And up until that moment, my agent who was reading it at the time but hadn't signed me was like, everything's great. We got to fix that ending. Why? Because she was right. The time travel was too much. Okay. Yeah. And originally I had this idea of Mare at the end of the first book gets switched with her future self. And it was like, no, that's too far. That's too far. And we all hit those moments of like too far, too much. So with world building, you want to ease the reader into it. Mm-hmm. As much as I love an info dump, and I'm like, I will talk about where the coins are coming from. Well, I feel like that's a huge part within the first few chapters. We obviously are introduced to her. She is like this ball of fire kind of. And she sneaks out and she meets this guy who's kind of like this golden retriever boy and he throws her the coins. Was there a thought process of how they were introduced to themselves? Like that I felt she didn't know who he was. And I guess he didn't know. They didn't know each other. But then it became this thing where he was so infatuated by her that he had to find out who she was. Like how did that kind of evolve? So much of my work is what we call pastiche. So it's tropes, but also patchwork of other things. Like I'm pulling on all the stuff that has inspired me or sort of existed in my head my whole life. And Mare and Cal, especially their meet cute, it's reverse Aladdin the whole time. I'm just thinking she's Aladdin, he's Princess Jasmine. Right? Right. Yeah. Guys, I never thought about it like that. Aladdin has inspired so much of Mare. What? She's a street rat. Yeah. She's a thief. Wow. Yeah. We love it. I never, wow, that never even crossed my mind. Wow. But when you do put it like that. I know. There's this really cool website. It's called TV Tropes. And it will break down every single piece of media you've ever seen into the tropes that it uses. And then you can, it's like Wikipedia for tropes. And then you can click on that trope and it'll give you every other piece of media. It uses that trope. It's really fun. It's going to be my favorite game. You can go down a rabbit hole on TV Tropes. But that was another like film school thing that we all knew about. And then I took over into publishing. I was like, you guys know about this website? Yeah. Let me teach you something. But it's a good way of figuring out like has someone else done this the exact same way before? How do I put my spin on it? And I love writing with tropes because they create an expectation in the reader. And one of my favorite things to do is to subvert your expectations. And that's how I create my misdirects and my twists is I give you something. Something that you are already filling in the blanks on and you think is going to go one way. And then it's very easy for me to be like, you thought he was the nice prince? You're so wrong. And that was my thing of like, well, okay. In my opinion, her and Cal, obviously they're like, you know, he brings her part of their world. All that is happening. Obviously, we have the whole other storyline. But then like they kind of dwindle and then Maven comes in. Why was like, I guess just like walk me through that middle part. Part of the book, like when you were like, okay, I need to bring Cal down and they need to like kind of remove themselves. So then Maven can come in and like scoop in and like save the day. You can always. So I love structure. I love story structure and writing, knowing my act one, my act two, my act three. Act two, I know the least. Act two is where the story really pulls itself together for me. So the beginning and the end, I really know. And the end of act two is usually the lowest point for the character. And so I know what that turning point is going to be. As well. And also the middle of the story is also usually a big hinge point as well. I fill in the blanks from knowing those pieces. And so you can look at it from a bird's eye view and say, I need this to happen from these characters. I need this person to come in. I need this thing to happen. But then naturally when you're actually like in the meat of it, things kind of change. And some voices are louder than others. And some characters surprise you. And so characters like Maven or then later on in the books, Evangeline, were so suddenly loud. And I saw. I saw them so much more clearly. Cal is actually one of my more difficult characters to write because he is the only one with, I mean, as far as all of the characters go, a somewhat sound moral compass. And those characters are really hard to make interesting in comparison to the morally gray, the villains, the antagonists. Oh, because it's just they're so like by the book. They're so by the book. But there's also a level of wish fulfillment, I think, in the morally gray characters. Because we all have those moments where we wish we could flip the switch and just be like, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to do what suits me. It suits me best instead of what I'm being told to do. Whereas those capital G sort of good characters, they're predictable. So that makes them boring. So you have to work really hard to make them not boring. Because I think about maybe this is like a guilty pleasure, but sometimes when I'm reading and I'm reading those like morally gray characters, I feel like I can almost like live my like morally gray self through them. It's an id. There's a moment like writing Evangeline for me was I can get all my books out. That's actually funny. I feel like I would really strive off of that. Yeah. We just have a little like sometimes I'll go to a rage room and like hit a bunch of plates. That's like my version of writing. By the way. Okay. I want to talk about the plot twist. Okay. Always planned from the beginning. Really? It was coming. It was my carrot scene. So I know a lot of writers, they won't write linearly. I have to write a linear story because I'm tracking the characters and they're developing as the story is going. I look at my story as the maze and the characters are the raft. And I'm tracking how they run the maze. You knew it from the beginning? I knew it from the beginning. Wait. So then how do you write? Do you write? with – like do you have to almost act like the plot twist isn't happening because you almost have to convince yourself that these characters are – Oh. I know everything. I'm God. But what's interesting is I was really trying to thread a needle of the best twists aren't the ones that come completely out of left field. The best twists are the ones when they happen and you sit back and think, how did I not see this coming? Because then you look back and you see the breadcrumbs. Honestly, with him, like I remember thinking that it wasn't completely left field. Like we had no context to it. But I was like, oh, well, I guess it was kind of weird that Cal did dwindle off and then Maven came and kind of saved the day. And all of a sudden he was so kind to her and so sweet. And there were characters that we ignored who were kind of trying to warn her. Like who? Like Julian's like he's his mother's son. And she's like, well, you're prejudiced. Yeah. Right. Yes. So in my opinion, those are the best twists because those are the twists that actually require you to get one over on the reader. When you're actually tricking the reader versus, oh, and then a meteor hit. And there's no groundwork for that whatsoever. Obviously, they could never see it coming. I love when it's almost like a dance and I'm just staying one step ahead of you. But what's interesting about the Red Queen twist is I hear such a spectrum from readers and there's readers like you are like, I never saw it. I never saw it coming. Or I was taken so aback when it happened. And then I have readers who say, I knew it from the very beginning. And so it's like – How would you know that from the beginning? It goes back and forth. But that's – it's also like, you know, the people who say, oh, I knew Bruce Willis was dead. Yeah. It makes sense. No, you didn't. Yeah. But to be fair, you know, I telegraphed it. And some people picked up on it and some people didn't. I come from a family where we're always trying to find the twists in movies. My dad especially. And so that was – I'm the opposite. I'm like, let it go. Let it go. But you're – it's evidence of everybody reads a book differently. Art is completely subjective. Everybody has a different experience of the same thing. And there's no way to make everyone have a completely universal experience. Yeah. And that's always a learning curve for writers, for artists, for anybody that you can't control how it lands. Wow. Yeah, that would be pretty – I feel like this is a part of my soul. Please get it the way that I meant to say it. It did me. I mean that I was always trying to kind of escalate and I think that's still the best twist I've written. And even while I was writing that first draft at a coffee table at my parents' house and I thought no one's going to read this. But I was like, well, if someone does, this moment is really going to be cool and I hope I get to see that one day. Well, you get to see it every day. People film themselves reading that chapter now and I just – I should have. I – if I knew it was coming, I would have. Right. But I remember just sitting there and being like, what? Yeah. What do you mean? What do you mean? Okay. Then similarly with that. When did you realize like, oh my God, this book is actually doing something. It's actually affecting people. It's interesting because it was my first book and in hindsight now with the experience I have, I can see all of the signposts that were signaling your publisher is taking this really seriously and this book, they're going to do everything they can to make it a big deal. I had a lot of experiences then which I just kind of thought, oh, that's – this is what writing a book is. I'm going on a book tour. Of course. That's what the movies say. And then later on you learn like that doesn't happen for everybody. This experience does not happen the same way for everybody. You being able to immediately not work and just work on books because of the book deal. Very, very unique and lucky. So it was almost like it was normal, quote normal, until maybe the third or fourth book. Because I was just so in it. As soon as you write that first one, you're on the book a year schedule and it's just brutal. And you're on the event circuit. I will say the best thing I did was make friends with other writers because it's the only way you sort of understand the industry is having authors who are more veteran and who have different experiences than you. Like you guys can kind of compare notes. And that was a lot of figuring out, oh, wait, this thing that's happening is actually not how this should be happening. Or what do you mean they told you they don't do that? They're doing that for me. And so we don't have a union. But like some things. As close as it is. Having friends. Having friends in the industry. Making friends with other writers and colleagues. It's also such a weird experience. And it's really hard to talk to other people about it unless they're already going through it. Especially because it's such a dream job. But it is a job. And so we have this pressure to like not complain, to be humble, to never let them see you sweat, and to always be super, super grateful for what we're doing, which we are. But that doesn't mean there aren't parts of it that aren't difficult or frustrating or things that go wrong. That we want to be able to vent about. So it's really important to have a group chat. Needless to say, the group chat is nice. Everything that you're saying, I can like completely relate to that. I'm sure. In my life. Because it's like, again, I have the best job in the world. I wouldn't trade it for anything. But it's still a job. Yes. There's still hard parts. Yes. And there's still, you know, the overnight flights that you have to take. And you land at 7 a.m. And then you're here. And then you're there. And it's like, it's incredible. I wouldn't change it for the world. But similarly to you, I'm so grateful that I have like a community of people that I can talk to about this. Right. Because if I call my sister and rant to her, she'll be like, girl. No. Read the room. I'm like, okay. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi. Zero sugar today. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So, I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out, that's very illegal. So, there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. See terms. Now, we're going to go into the second act, which is talking about Tempest, which is your new official first adult fantasy novel. I want you to give me the elevator pitch for this. Ooh, okay. So, I'm still stress testing that one. You got Red Queen, which I am 11 years into, so it's really polished and really, really good. Okay. So, Tempest is about… A fallen noblewoman in a world inspired by the fall of piracy in the Caribbean. And she's given a choice by the returning conquering empire between execution for colluding with pirates or helping them track down the last great pirate captain who is mounting a rebellion. And he also happens to be the only man she's ever loved. And we tell that story from both ends of the timeline. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, this book… This book obviously is a first. Mm-hmm. In a lot of ways. Yeah. In a lot of ways. What do you think was the hardest first that you discovered while writing? The dual timeline was tough, especially once I realized I had accidentally written two books instead of one. That was really dumb. That was another question. How did you decide… Like, was the… So, okay. I'm picturing, like, two books right here. Yeah. Did you just, like, cut it right in half or did you have to change the ending? A little bit. And I had to… Because cutting it in half… Again, I like structure. I did want to cut it at where the natural midpoint was, but I didn't want the first book to feel like it was missing anything. I didn't want a reader to read it and without knowing there was a second book think, I'm very… I'm not satisfied by this. There was no arc. There was no curve. There was no closure to whatever was going on here. And it didn't break in a natural place. I didn't want it to feel like we were leaving off in the middle of a conversation. Yeah. Especially for one of the timelines. So, there was some restructuring and then also, just in general, this had a much more intense edit process than I've had with my previous books. And my editor really pushed me in a way that, while being in the moment, very frustrating, made the book so much better. It gave me so much more time and room. But when I turned in that first draft of Tempest, which was 300,000 words, so double what it should have been, strangely, one of the first things my editor said and my other editor in the UK, they both came back and were like, we actually want… We want more. And for a book this long, that's not usually the note. And then we got into the conversation, well, how do we do that? Because they said, I want you to have more time with these characters and have let the scenes really breathe versus, like, the breakneck pace that you have to keep to even get to where you are in the story. We also started talking about the production side. So, the physical aspect of printing a book that long, things get very, very dangerous. Like, the glue on the binding of the book won't hold that many pages sometimes. And you're worried about it falling apart. Yeah. You're worried about how thick it is on the shelf because you want to be able to have three of them facing out. And if they're too big to stack three, they won't shelve them. It's things like that where you're like, wow, I've never even think of that. And we also had, you know, hey, we can't spray the edges of a book that's longer than 180,000 words. And I'm thinking, I can't make the book better, flesh it out, add more, and then cut 100,000 words and then not even get it to where it needs to be for sprayed edges. So, it was a really easy decision once we had all of that. of that information from the production side and then from the editorial side. And then it was the question of, okay, because it's a dual timeline, each chapter flips between before something and after something, and we're braiding those two things together. When it's one book, you can really do that. When it's two books, you've got to be more deliberate. And I wanted the beats to echo each other. I wanted those moments where a chapter ends and they're in this place 10 years ago, and the next chapter starts and they're in that same place again 10 years later. And we have those cool crossovers. Again, I see it in my head. If there was ever an adaptation, you know, they step through the doorway and they're 10 years older and we're having the same conversation again or the same frustration or something is echoing. I really love that idea. So that took a lot of work. A lot of people say, oh, was it so different writing adult versus YA? Not really. The biggest difference I see between my adult writing and my YA writing is the character themselves, quite obviously. Like, she is an adult. And in young adult books… In young adult books, you're always going on a journey of self-discovery, of figuring out who you are and choosing who you're going to be. The really cool thing about writing an adult and writing Kat is she knows who she is. She's very confident with it. You can tell that by her… And I loved having that, being able to juxtapose her and her earlier timeline to who she becomes and seeing how she changes and contrasting those two people. And then also seeing her really accept her choices and survive with them and take them on. As opposed to being in the process of changing things for herself, she becomes who she is very quickly. I mean, yeah. Yeah. So clearly this book was written in 2012. Yeah. This book over the past, what, year and a half? Yes. So I sold that book on proposal. So Red Queen, I wrote the manuscript first. That book I wrote the first, I want to say like three or four chapters. Okay. I'm trying to figure out how it is now. It might be the first five. It might be the first five chapters. Okay. And then also had a big proposal, like a synopsis of the story, the world, and also some sort of like essentially a Pinterest board. Kind of give everybody the vibe. You have to. Yes. You have to do that a little bit. And sold it on proposal. And that's kind of interesting because, you know, people can project what they think the book is going to be versus what it actually is once you write it. Wow. So I sold it in June of 2024. Okay. Yeah. So that's a what? 12 years. So clearly these are your like YA readers. And now when you had that come out, that was, you know, 14 years ago. And now these people have clearly grown up. And now they're coming into this. Do you think that plays a role by any way? Do you think you cater to them specifically as readers? So I've had the really, really amazing experience of growing up with my readers. I was 21 when I wrote the first – 21, 22 when I wrote the first draft of Red Queen. So I was not terribly separated from an actual young adult when I wrote those books. And I have readers now who I see at events who say, you know, I read Red Queen when I was in middle school. And now I'm a lawyer. And now I'm a nurse. And now I'm a doctor. And I think, okay, I got another gray hair. But also it is cool because I have grown up with you. I have advanced with you. The story I wanted to tell next is a story for you as you are right now. And for me as I am right now. I do think because a lot of people think once you go into adult, you're not going back to YA, it really is what the story demands to be. And the next story that is demanding to be written is a YA book in my head. But I'm preparing for the business side and being told, well, YA is kind of shrinking right now. My agent has already said prepare for questions about can we age up the character from 18 to 19 or from 17 to 19. I know. And she's like not even in terms of, you know, content. Literally just the age of the character so that they can sell it as adult. Adult versus YA. And I am kind of scared of that shrinking and that idea that the industry is kind of abandoning teen readers because 10 years from now. I'm here, guys. Don't stop, please. I think, you know, you're building these runways. And if you abandon middle grade readers, if you abandon teen readers, you're not going to have adult readers. It's very strange. I'm curious to see how that looks. I know. I do think I would hope the way things happen is pendulums swing. Mm-hmm. I hope it's going to start turning because I do see a lot of readers saying where are the books for teenagers or where are the books that were like the YA heyday of the past. And now there's a glut in this – in one space. So people are naturally supply and demand going to the other space. I'm hoping to catch that trend. Okay. Pirates of the Caribbean. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Did Jack Sparrow influence this book at all? Or did any character? All of them. My pitch for Cat, the main character, is that I think it's going to be a lot of people who are going to like it. My pitch for Cat, the main character of Tempest is she's Elizabeth Swann if she was a stone-cold bitch. That's a great way of putting it. And I say that in the most complimentary way possible. That is – yeah. Yeah. But there's definitely shades of Norrington. I quite liked the pirate – the Navy captain who – you know, like he's the antagonist but he's not really. And I get where he's coming from. And I think in the original – we're going to go back. The original Pirates of the Caribbean fandom, there's a lot of love. There's a lot of love for William Norrington, James Norrington. I was in the fan fiction spaces in those days. I think we can tell. And I was an Orlando Bloom girl, so. Really? Of course. Of course. It was 2003. I was 13 years old, Orlando Bloom. I was one years old. Oh, my God. I was one. I wish you could have lived through the heyday of the Orlando Bloom dominance. Did he really dominate the industry? Yes. Legolas. We had Pirates of the Caribbean. And then it was – we went through this wave of like – if Orlando Bloom's in the movie, we're going. Like Kingdom of Heaven. Wow. You loved him? The director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven. I'm going to tell you something. So a friend of mine and I – it was at her house. It was not at my house. She had a shrine that we both added to. You know what? But who didn't? Who didn't have a shrine? We had our action figures. We spent New Year's Eve not going to parties, but with our little Lord of the Rings action figures. Oh, my God. Listen. Oh, my God. Here's the advice I give because I get asked, you know, what's your advice for teenagers? And I say, what makes you weird now will make you successful later. I strongly agree with that. I was a weirdo. Okay. And it works. It works. For now, it works. I feel like with people in my life, I definitely had some weird interests as a child. And then I meet people who have similar interests. Yes. Or – Or maybe I didn't fully gauge in the interest because I knew it would – you know, people at school already – I was a prime person to bully. So I didn't like outwardly go and talk about my weirdo interest. Yeah, we clamped down on our geekiness. Yeah. But then now I meet people who have similar interests. And I was like, so I wasn't a weirdo. Everyone else was. Well, you have those things that you say in conversation. And then you're like – you give them the hint and see if they pick up on it. That's always fun. And sometimes they do. When you realize, wait a second, you also like the same thing. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. But Pirates of the Caribbean, I just will always – I will never, ever be able to forget the feeling that I felt when I saw that movie for the first time in theaters. And at the time, everybody went into that movie, even me as a 13-year-old, thinking this can't be good. It's based on a ride at Disney and then suddenly it was getting a blockbuster like treatment. It was the time when you just went to the movies every weekend with your family. That was what my family did. And then you go in, lights go down. Two hours later – Two hours later, you're clawed to the seat like, I just went on a pirate adventure. I was on The Black Pearl. I fought Captain Barbossa. And the – you know, you have the moment where he looks at the compass, bring me that horizon, da-da-da-da-da-da. This credits come up and you go, I want to feel that feeling for the rest of my life. And every book I write, I'm chasing that feeling for you. I'm chasing putting you in that space where you think, what just happened to me? And you have to kind of collect that. You have to collect the pieces and get your life together again. And then hopefully you look back with like something new that you've brought out of it, some perspective, some difference. But I always want to have that moment where I'm putting you on the roller coaster and you're mine for the next two hours or however many hours it takes you to read the book. Like you're in my world and you're seeing through my eyes. And I love those movies where you just do it. And it's a very rare experience. The Pirates of the Caribbean I think was the sharpest because it was unexpected. Some movies you go in and you're like, this is going to be good. Yeah. I know this is going to be good. Or I am already invested. I am already invested in some way. And that was one of the last ones where, yeah, there was IP it was based on. Yeah. But it was very light. Yeah. And they really took a swing with those movies. Wow. And then suddenly they were phenomenal. Love. When you're writing, when you're writing, do you have like a list of men that you're visioning for each characters or is it because obviously cinematic? So for Red Queen, I didn't. And then when I wrote my next trilogy, Realm Breaker, I did. Okay. Just to help in terms of I was struggling because readers would ask, who's your fan cast? And I'd be like, I don't know. And so going into the next one, I'm like, I got to have a fan cast. I got to have this cooked. And then with this one, not so much again. I think it's just harder to have a certain person in your head, especially for the process of like that express purpose of just being able to tell someone. I want, I do want readers to have their own images of everybody. And. I, I know what it's like to read a book and have that image of someone in your head and then say the movie gets cast and you're like, well, that's not how I pictured them and if Eventually you warm up to it, but I never want to have that much control over you in that moment. I agree. It's more about taking you through the momentum of the story versus making sure you're picturing Chris Hemsworth at every moment. There's shades of many people, I will say. I did get asked, you know, who would you cast? And the only person who came very sharply to me, and this was an impossible cast because she's now too old to play the younger part, but it was Emily Blunt for Cat. Probably my favorite female actress. Really amazing. And I think she's got such a cool – she's quiet but very stern and very strong at the same time. And then also another one I thought of was Sophie Turner, especially because as Sansa Stark, I think the journey she went on that character, she does it very, very well. Yeah. Okay. Last question. Big question. Power. We're going to talk about power. Because obviously in Tempest, she has power. She loses power. She's figuring out how to gain it back. Power is something as women we kind of have to take and we have to choose that we're going to take it because if we're going to wait on someone else to give it to us, we're never getting it. Yeah. And we also have to exercise power within the bonds of a world that's not built for us. So sometimes you have to figure out really creative ways to be powerful. It was actually a huge calculation of mine in all of my work because I started writing Red Queen War People quite literally. And I was like, okay, I'm going to write a story about a woman who actually has superhuman powers. And the women are very physically strong. Like they can kick your ass. And as my career has progressed, I'm writing women who maybe don't have superhuman powers but are still physically very strong. And now in Tempest, I've gotten to the point where it's like physical strength is not a factor for her. She is very much a woman in the bonds of the world that she is part of. And that's not going to be something that naturally she would be a part of. How do you still write a strong female character? Because for a lot of audiences, when you hear strong female character, you think physically strong. Yeah. You think Arya Stark. I'm thinking I want to show the full spectrum. Arya Stark to Sansa Stark. How do we get between those two characters? And so while it's really, really gratifying to write a character like Mare who can electrocute someone, one woman has not wanted to be like zap to someone all the time, every day. I can give you a list. But then to write a woman who does not have that in her arsenal, who has no arsenal except for what's up here, it's difficult, but it's much more interesting to me. And I really have to work hard to make her still formidable in a world where she's not physically a threat. Wow. Yeah. So it was a challenge. And you're also bouncing against the sort of wish fulfillment that we all have when we read a book where we want to feel powerful. We want to feel in control. We want to kind of feel like we're in control. We want to kind of project ourselves a little bit into that role and who wouldn't want to be the warrior, the queen, the superhuman. The like ingrained power that you already have. So you have to still make it interesting to be a woman who doesn't have any of those things, but still feels like someone you want to be. That first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level. Suddenly the laughs get louder. The stories keep flowing and the food tastes better because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi zero sugar today. We're playing truth or drink with Victoria. Okay. Name a book talk author that you've actually never read truth or drink. Oh no. That's quite a lot of book. I'm trying to think who's like, a book talk author. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. You don't have to. Okay. Who do you think Mare should have ended up with? It makes it clear in Broken Throne. Well, it's Cal. Like guys. Holden boy. Herself. Say one nice thing about a book that you've hated. Beautiful cover. Simple. Honestly. That can apply to a lot of books. Mine too. Okay. Oh, tell us what your next book is about. Oh, so Beyond Tempest. The YA duology that I really want to write is somewhat Mary Queen of Scots inspired and there are dragons. Bringing in the magical. Yes. Okay. Name a Bravo housewife that you relate to the most to. That I relate the most to. Oh, how much time do we have? I don't know. Okay. And the way that Sutton gets super awkward and anxious. I can see myself in Sutton from Beverly Hills. I really saw myself in – we're going deep. So Real Housewives of Dallas, Dr. Tiffany. And Tiffany was really made fun of and ganged up on by the other women and she was a very smart, like very successful doctor and these other women really – you could tell were threatened by that and kind of came after her. And she said in a lot of her interviews like, I felt like that nerdy kid in class again being ganged up on by the cool girls. And I was like – Yeah. I see you, Tiffany. I relate to this. So yeah. So second tier like canceled housewife. Her. Niche. Not her second tier canceled housewife. Her show was second tier and canceled. Because they were so mean to her and kind of racist. What was the thing that you Googled the most during the writing process of Tempest? Oh, I had open at all times a window with a cross section of a ship. So I could see every room of a ship and I found one that was very similar to the one of the ship I needed to be on like a third rate ship of the line. Yeah. This many cannons, this many masts. This was essentially in my head the covenant and I could say, okay, they're in this room. She has to go down. Yeah. And so it had also labeling of every single part of the ship. And so I knew, you know, this is the taff rail. This is the mizzen mast. This is what that's called. Yeah. And I just had that to refer to all the time. But I had so many research tabs and books and things open all the time. Wow. I got to go on a research trip to the Bahamas. I saw that. That's a great research trip, by the way. Name a character from your own book that you would never be friends with in real life. Oh, you know, I have to love something about all of them, I guess. And I guess there's a really creepy priest in the Realm Breaker books called Ronan. And at some point he like rips out his own eyes. Yeah. Definitely not. So weird. Too much. Too much. You're doing too much. Too much. Enough. Do your best pirate voice. Drink. I would drink two TBH. Okay. The end. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for watching this week's episode with Miss Victoria. Please let me know what you think about this. I have personally been excited for this episode for seriously way too long. Ever since I finished it for the first time, I was like, I need to know why. And if you have any thoughts, comments, questions, or questions, please let me know. And if you have any questions, concerns, let me know and we'll answer them. Love you guys. Bye.