Ava Reid

we actually (through an incredibly fortuitous and wild coincidence) live down the hall from each other!

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 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.

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!

spoilers below:

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 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.