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Thank you for stopping by my website. Please follow the links to view my author bio, contact information, and books.
Today's Document
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
noise dept.
RMH
🪼

oozey mess
Xuebing Du
Misplaced Lens Cap

izzy's playlists!
sheepfilms
cherry valley forever
Three Goblin Art
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
Stranger Things

pixel skylines

JVL

#extradirty
Claire Keane
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@avasreid
Welcome!
Thank you for stopping by my website. Please follow the links to view my author bio, contact information, and books.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
hey! I love your friendship with Allison Saft — how did you become friends? And, what’s your favorite part about her writing?
we actually (through an incredibly fortuitous and wild coincidence) live down the hall from each other!
and there's so much to love about allison's writing (the incredible prose, the detailed atmosphere, the rich themes), but my favorite part is definitely how thoughtfully drawn all her characters are. i know how much time and consideration she takes in creating nuanced, complex characters in each of her books. and i am SO excited for you all to meet wes and margaret in a far wilder magic next march - they are two of my favorite YA protagonists of all time. :)
hi i don’t want to bother you so no pressure to answer but i was curious- in TWATW, was the system that kesvi uses for fatherhood (the fuck + ditch technique lol) based on any real life cultural practice, or was there any other reason you picked it? it just interested me bc i don’t think i’ve ever seen it before in fantasy and it was one of the most helpful worldbuilding details to me. thanks! :)
it's funny, i was just talking to my partner about this - and no, it wasn't based on any real-world cultural practice! as soon as i decided i wanted the village to be matriarchal, i really considered how that might change basic family structure. and i wanted évike and gáspár's worlds to feel very different!
“Medea”, 1868, William Wetmore Story.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
do you have any tips for writing while working full time?
tbh, i think the only thing there is to do is just to be fiercely protective over your writing time. i might not be the best person to ask because i did a ton of my writing at my work desk when i was supposed to be filling out spreadsheets, oops. carve out whatever moment you can to work and be gentle with yourself if you need to take a break from it for a little while.
Hey Ava! I loved TWATW but missed out on the preorder campaign- will there be any future opportunities to read the bonus content, namely the folklore tales and extra epilogue/short story? Thanks and take care.
yes! the stories will either be:
a) included as bonus material in the paperback (depending on what my publisher thinks), b) part of a paperback preorder incentive (depending on whether or not i have the wherewithal to organize another preorder campaign, lol), or c) eventually just put up here on my site!
i'll keep you updated here/on my IG!
how did your college experience influence your writing?
i studied political science with a particular emphasis on religion, identity, ethnic nationalism, and state-building, so those themes are probably always going to crop up in my writing. at the same time, though, i want to be transparent and say that i've had to do a lot of un-learning in terms of what i was taught in college. if you study political science at a place like columbia, you're certainly going to be inculcated with a particular ideology, perhaps unconsciously to some degree. i'm a marxist, so that ideology is pretty incompatible with what i personally believe now, and the heuristic i use for understanding politics. i learned a lot of useful things in undergrad, but i also learned that it's important to question the dominant narratives, and to remember that those narratives are written with ulterior motives in mind.
This is such a weird question, but I feel like you might understand. I’m 24, i graduated college a few years ago and I work as a campaign manager for a state senate candidate. in the past year I finished work on a novel I’ve been writing for a long time. I felt really happy with it, so I did some querying and — somehow!! — received a few offers of representation. I’m absolutely ecstatic, I’ve wanted to be an author as long as I can remember. But… I have a career too (or the start of it!). I’m nervous about how publishing could impact my career - I certainly won’t be able to make enough money to write full time, and I am happy in my current job and I’d love to keep working in politics. So my question is this: how do you navigate your writer-world with other parts of your life? Does it ever get awkward? Like, what if my boss/cousin/college advisor want to support me and read my book and I have to live with the knowledge that they’ve read the sex scene I wrote? Help!
i left my day job when i sold TWATW, so i haven't been in EXACTLY the same boat, but i have definitely had to deal with trying to navigate the gulf between "author-me" and "regular-me."
first off, i wouldn't worry about it impacting your career in any negative way. if you want to keep working, keep working - almost every writer i know has a day job! people might be a bit weird about it, but stand your ground and put up boundaries. it's okay to ask people not to discuss it. it's okay not to talk about it with non-writerly people. it's okay to use a pen name if that's what makes you the most comfortable.
i decided when i sold my book i wanted to make sure there was as big a separation as possible between me as an author and me as a person. i asked my family not to discuss my book with me or try to get involved in the publication process (not always easy with an overbearing jewish family, lol, but i try). think about it like any other job: if you were an attorney, you wouldn't want to talk about the ins and outs of your cases during every family gathering, right? you deserve that same basic decency, respect, and privacy, and it's completely okay to ask for it.
fwiw, in my experience, for the most part people have been very cool about it. my family has read the book, my partner's friends have read the book, and i've never once been awkwardly interrogated about the sex scenes!
i know you've mentioned getting agented through pitch wars, but i was wondering if you could speak to your experience with querying at all? what did you queries look like/do you have any advice?
i can't find my actual query for TWATW (i'm sure it's somewhere in the depths of my inbox that i don't want to plumb), but it was extremely similar to the actual official jacket copy! my agent used most of my query in her pitch, and then that pitch became the description that my publisher used, as well.
obviously, you have a bit more room with your jacket copy than with your query, but fundamentally they're doing a very similar job, which is to hook the person reading it and to make them compelled enough to continue with the story. the most important elements are probably the hook (the first sentence) and the stakes (the last sentence). "in order to [x], [character] must [y]."
i think it's far more helpful to read concrete examples than to be given abstract advice, so i'd recommend checking out some of the success stories on querytracker. my favorite querying resource, though, is my friend victoria lee's dissection of their successful query for the fever king. they do a great job of peeling apart all the important elements of a query letter, so i'd recommend giving that a read!
i did query my second agent more traditionally, though i queried with an unpublished book so i can't share my query for that one, sorry! i hope this was somewhat helpful?

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Hi!! I just finished TWATW and I just.....thank you. I so rarely feel ~represented~ by fantasy books as a Jewish woman. This book is so special to me. <3
this makes me so happy to hear! that was definitely one of my goals when writing TWATW and i'm glad i achieved it for at least one person. :')
Hello! I’m currently reading TWATW and am loving it. I have a question about Gaspar - I know he’s brown because his mother was from Merzan. Is Merzan based off a country or culture in our world?
The empire of Merzan is inspired by the (early) Ottoman Empire. Contemporary Turkish identity, however, is quite complex and political which is why I’ve never gone into detail about this; what I think is important is that he is marginalized in his country of birth, viewed as a saboteur and an outsider, and yes visibly darker-skinned than most Régyar. However people want to interpret beyond that is up to them.
Hey Ava!! I just finished TWatW last night and WOW. I do have once question though -- Évike not utilizing the name of God is a deliberate choice, right? Mirroring/inverting how she did kill the turul? Or am I totally off 😂 anyways, thanks!
spoilers below:
How much are you able to read for fun when writing and revising? I feel like I might read too much and it eats into my writing time haha
hm, i don't tend to read AS much when i'm writing/revising, but i definitely do read some! there are certain books i write that are very much informed by what i'm reading at a given time, which isn't a bad thing at all. we're all influenced by other media to a greater or lesser degree...i don't think it's much to worry about, honestly.
Hello!! What has been your favourite book to write so far? I’m currently reading TWATW and I’m so in love with it already
thank you so much! i'm so glad you're enjoying. :)
and by far my favorite book to write so far has been my second, unannounced adult book. it's funny because it contains by far the "darkest" content of anything i've written thus far (it's a horror novel), but i had a great experience writing it. i turned in my final revision for TWATW and then immediately after the idea for this book grabbed hold of me and i wrote it in about a month. it was one of those stories that just flowed out of me. it was kind of wild looking back on it - like, i turned in my revision for TWATW on the first day of january and i had a 90k first draft of book 2 by the beginning of february. i'm a fast drafter and that's pretty good even for me, haha.
i'm really, really looking forward to being able to talk about it more - i know authors aren't supposed to play favorites but in some sense i do think it's my favorite book i've written.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
hi, ava! could you share some tips on how to keep writing while in a writing slump/ without having any idea what happens next? i’m on a tight deadline and i’m really scared i won’t turn my project in on time, lol. 🥲 sad times. anyway, thank you for your time and i hope you have a wonderful day! sending positive vibes your way 💕
i'm sorry about your writing slump! it must be especially difficult when you're on deadline.
for me, i try and remember why i'm writing the story in the first place. why does this book matter? why am i the one to tell it? if there are certain scenes that you really love, re-read those and try to find the reason why you love them.
i'm also a big proponent of music-listening! i don't know if this is part of your process at all, but whenever i'm stuck and i need to brainstorm, i go for a walk and listen to my book playlist. listening to music helps me visualize scenes that feel exciting and cinematic.
i hope this helps a bit - and good luck with your deadline!
Bridge of Sighs, Cambridge, England