Libro.fm Podcast – Episode 17: “Interview with V.E. Schwab”

On today’s episode, we speak with author V.E. Schwab about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue coming to paperback, the forthcoming addition to the Shades of Magic series, fan art, book tours, and more!

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About our guest

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Audiobooks by V.E. Schwab

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The audiobooks we discussed

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Full transcription

Karen Farmer:

Hi, welcome to the Libro.fm Podcast, the monthly series where we talk to authors, narrators, booksellers, and more. I’m Karen.

Craig Silva

And I’m Craig. On today’s episode, we sat down with V.E. Schwab, author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Darker Shade of Magic Series, and tons of other novels you should go read immediately. Well, not immediately please stay and listen to the podcast, but right after that go listen and read these books.

Karen Farmer:

Yes, stop telling people to turn off our podcast, Craig. We want them to listen to this. Craig, so as mentioned in many previous episodes of this podcast-

Craig Silva

Many.

Karen Farmer:

I know this, all of our listeners know this. You were particularly enthusiastic about this episode. I think you might be the biggest V.E. Schwab fan in the world. How was your experience with this interview? Anything you’d like to share?

Craig Silva

It was great. I know I say this every episode, but this really was one of my favorites, which should come as no surprise to anyone that’s listened to this before. I have an embarrassing amount of V.E. Schwab books on my shelf, including many variations of each one. I think I texted you over the weekend to be like, “Did I need these new paperback editions of Darker Shade?”

Karen Farmer:

Yeah, yeah, you did.

Craig Silva

No.

Karen Farmer:

You did.

Craig Silva

But did I buy them? Yes, yes I did. So now those have joined their friends on my shelf. But no, this was like a dream come true type of episode for me. It was surreal to get to meet Victoria and get to ask all the questions I’ve had for a long time. So it was lovely.

Karen Farmer:

I’m so glad to hear that. I’m glad that this exceeded your expectations. I had a great time too. I obviously did not know as much about this author as you did, but everyone is about to hear this. There was no question in which the response from this author was not surprising or interesting or humorous in a fun way. Even the first question, how is your day going? Had a very interesting answer.

Craig Silva

Oh yeah. So this isn’t on the episode because we hadn’t started recording yet, but the TL;DR of it, she was like, “Is there dirt on my face? I just had to bury a chicken.” Because she was like minding her parents’ farm or something like that. And sadly a chicken had passed away. So-

Karen Farmer:

Indeed, indeed.

Craig Silva

It was a very fun way to start the interview. We were like, “Oh no. Are you okay?”

Karen Farmer:

What is going on? Awesome. Well, thank you all for listening. If you haven’t followed the podcast yet, please do. If you are a follower, thank you so much. We would love it if you could rate and review the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And again, if you are not a Libro.fm member currently, you can use our promo code LIBROPODCAST to sign up and you’ll get two audiobooks for the price of one.

Craig Silva

And we hope you enjoy the interview and stay tuned after to hear what Karen and I are reading and other general silly banter I’m sure. Welcome to the podcast, Victoria. We could not be more excited to get the opportunity to sit down with you today. We have been so excited for this interview. We have a million questions.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m so excited to be here. I could talk about books all day long.

Karen Farmer:

Well, you’re in the right place. Craig and I are big fans. You have a lot of fans at Librofm. We know our listeners are going to be thrilled about this episode. So to kick things off, we were wondering if you could introduce yourself to our listeners.

V.E. Schwab:

Sure. I’m V.E. Schwab. My real name is Victoria Elizabeth, named for multiple queens because my mom is as English as they come. Funnily enough, I had no name for the first three weeks that I was alive because my parents thought they would just live with me. So I have earned the name Victoria Elizabeth by virtue of being an only child and extremely high maintenance I suppose. I’m the author of more than 20 novels, kind of spanning the fantasy genre. I like to say I write fantasy for people who think they don’t like fantasy.

I’ve written for children, teens, adults, and anyone who likes reading anything. I’m not really a big fan of the categorical system when it comes to readership. I think of them more like puzzles or games. There tends to be a lower age limit, but no upper age threshold. I write about the lines between things, good and evil, hero and villain, life and death, human and monster. Most recently I have written The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Gallant and Shades of Magic and Villains. So yeah, I’ve written a lot of novels. I feel very old every time I talk about it.

Craig Silva

I love that you write fantasy for people who think they don’t like fantasy, especially Addie LaRue, I feel like falls into that category perfectly. I am a fantasy person and when I recommend that book to people, they’re like, “I don’t really like fantasy.” They would come back two weeks later and be like, “Oh my God, that was my favorite book I read this year.” So I think it falls into that category perfectly.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m tricky like that. Yeah, I think because I didn’t feel like a big fantasy reader growing up. It felt kind of exclusionary in a lot of ways, like you had to prove that you were a big enough fan, and I found that kind of off-putting as a young, much more insecure reader. And so I try and write work that feels more accessible and intuitive perhaps and also tends to almost always have a departure from reality instead of being Tolkienesque where the only way you’re going to access the world is through the pages of that book. I’m much more a fan of the CS Lewis model of there being a threshold that you as the human can cross.

Karen Farmer:

This is setting me up perfectly as we dive into our questions. We wanted to congratulate you on the paperback release of Addie LaRue, which I think is coming up in a couple of weeks here. Is that right?

V.E. Schwab:

April 11th. Yeah.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. How does that process work? I’m sure you have gotten asked this a lot, but what does this really mean when it’s rerelease time coming out in a new format?

V.E. Schwab:

Well, standard release window when a book comes out in hardcover is 12 months to paperback. The paperback gets pushed out if the hardcover is successful enough to merit the paperback not coming out yet because obviously a paperback comes out at a lower price point, which is great for accessibility purposes, but also it usually means not the discontinuation necessarily of the hardcover, but the phasing out of the hardcover. Addie LaRue has been in hardback for two and a half years, which is a testament to the readership support of the book. I am obviously really excited for it to be coming out in paperback because of that price point marker, because I’m also a person who owns very few books in hardcover. I tend to read in either paperback or audio. And so I really like it just because I think I’m much more likely as a human to pick up a paperback.

So I’m hoping that we get to reach even more readers. It’s also deeply exciting for me personally because the hardcover of Addie LaRue came out in October of 2020, and so I didn’t get to do anything. I did a lot, don’t get me wrong. I did a full month of virtual touring. But the thing about virtual touring is I can’t see any of the readers. I can’t engage with the audience really in any way. And so this upcoming tour for the paperback, which is two and a half weeks long, I think the tour is the first time I’m actually getting to see Addie LaRue fans in the United States in person. And so it does in many ways, feel like more of an event for me than a paperback release normally would be.

Karen Farmer:

I love that. That was kind of what was at the heart of my question because we looked back and we’re like, “What was the release date of the hardback?” And I saw October, 2020 and went, “Oh, that was not a fun time.

V.E. Schwab:

Obviously it’s a small sadness among much larger devastation, but it was a really surreal time period because this book is my 20th novel. I love it when people think it’s my debut. I’m like, “Oh, sweet summer children.” It’s my 20th novel and it was really going to be the culmination of so many things I had worked for in terms of, I started out very, very small. I didn’t get a whole lot of publisher support early on in my career before Tor Books, my home, now my publisher. And I worked so hard for so long to get a foot in the door. And then all of these things that were set up for Addie LaRue, I mean headlining book festivals that have never even let me in the door previously.

All of these touring and opportunities and parties, every day I woke up to a new one being canceled because it was March and April and May, and I kind of had to make peace with a lot of it, and I had to really remind myself as an author that books don’t have an expiration date. Stories don’t expire, that the way a story enters the world doesn’t define the way that it takes up space in the world. I obviously had no idea that Addie was going to resonate the way it did, which is of course very funny considering it’s a novel about living in an uncertain time where all you can do is be mindful and present and take each day as it comes and have hope turned out to be a really important theme for a lot of people during the pandemic.

Craig Silva

It’s a testament to how well it did resonate with everyone that it did so well, even without the huge marketing push of you traveling around and doing interviews, all that stuff. But-

V.E. Schwab:

It was astonishing, especially because my novels tend to have this very slow window, which I love. I was prepared for it. My novels tend to reach their audience over the course of five to seven years. I just am not a big out the gate audience. Vicious, my first adult novel really sold the same number of copies every six months for about seven years. And A Darker Shade of Magic was never a bestseller. I didn’t hit the New York Times until Gathering of Shadows. It was just for one week. They’ve been really slow and steady and I had braced myself that Addie would probably be five to 10 years for anyone to even start recommending.

Karen Farmer:

Wow. Well surprise.

V.E. Schwab:

Exactly.

Craig Silva

So you just mentioned a bunch of your books that, like you said, span different kinds of age groups, so you know, write for YA and middle grade and adult novels. And I’d love to know if your approach, depending on what audience you’re writing for changes.

V.E. Schwab:

Not at all. What’s really interesting, I think the only way I can convey what changes is that I am always writing for a version of myself. I don’t know, I was a really weird kid and a weird teenager and I’m a pretty weird adult now, and so I don’t really know what other kids and teens and adults are like. And so instead of trying to guess what anybody else wants to see, I just only know how to hold up a mirror to the very specific kind of weird that I was and am. And I thought that would always be a very narrowing thing to do. But it turns out there’s universality and specificity. The more specific I made that window, that lens, the more people saw themselves in it. But no, when I’m writing middle grade, I am writing for 10-year-old me. And when I’m writing my YA novels, I’m writing for 17-year-old me.

And when I’m writing my adult novels, I’m writing for 25 or 30 or now 35 year old me. And of course I’ve changed. And so that’s really the only way that I know how to think about the changes I make to my stories is that I needed and wanted different things at 10 and 17 and 25 and 35. And I also think it’s an interesting kind of psychological experiment because I think it’s a good reminder that as authors, we are not static. The books we create become static entities, become time capsules of a very specific point in our lives, but we continue to grow and change and morph as creators. And so it’s a lot harder in that way to write the middle grade and YA, because I’m going back to a time period I’m not anymore.

Whereas the adult novels, I mean Vicious was written for 25-year-old me and it is very much who I was at 25. Vengeful was written at 30 and is a very different book and the difference between 25 and 30. And then Addie is a really strange one because I conceived of it when I was 23 and finished when I was 33. And I don’t think I could have or should have written the novel before when I did. And it wasn’t until I was at Henry Strauss’s page, one of the characters in the book, at 29 that I really sat down to write this book. And I feel like I had a very specific perspective at 29 and 30 that I wouldn’t have had at 20 or 25.

Craig Silva

When you’re writing a fourth book, let’s just say, which we have a question about later, and you wrote the first one of that just kind of a while ago and you were just talking about how you’re writing changes and you’re evolving as a person and whatever, how is it revisiting those worlds and jumping back in when so many years have passed since the first and the fourth?

V.E. Schwab:

I think it’s the time you really become aware of the difference between writing and publishing, which is to say that in my writing Heart of Hearts, it’s like coming home. I get to return to these characters that I love and know in this world that I love and know as a publishing exercise. It’s absolutely terrifying because readers become emotionally entrenched in a novel and they feel entitled to a specific version of that story. And there’s always this risk when you continue a series or start a new chapter in a series that you’re in some way going to let them down. And the worst thing you can do as an author is be paralyzed by that fear. I think one of the ways I’ve tried to avoid that, I’m a very deeply anxious and neurotic person. I’m sure that will come out and be very apparent throughout this entire thing and anyone who follows me online-

Craig Silva

So far so good.

V.E. Schwab:

… knows that, but I get in my own way really easily. I am very good at turning success into dread. Even the success of the Addie LaRue hardcover turned to dread in my heart of what if the paperback doesn’t perform well? Everything turns to dread very easily. It kind of curdles inside me if I let it. And so the way that I found to cope with that, whether it be a continuation of a series or something new, is I want to do everything in my power to never do the same thing twice. I do that because as a creative I would get bored, but also because as a business person and a storyteller professionally, I don’t want my readers to be able to compare apples to apples across my work. I don’t want them to be able to create a, “This is better than this.” I want them to create a mental space where this is different than this.

That’s why all of my books are written to a slightly different person, to a slightly different version of me. The risk there, of course, is it’s terrible business because of course if you write something and it’s very successful, you should obviously just do that in perpetuity and there will be an audience, but I don’t think that would be a very exciting or enjoyable way to write and to live. And so with a series like Shades of Magic and Threads of Power, every single book in the original trilogy, I set myself a different goal. I didn’t want it to feel like book one, book two, book three in a trilogy.

I wanted each book to have its own arc and its own substance and its own challenge. So I kind of had to continue that where book four, five and six now I’m like, “You got to try something completely different. You have to set…” And maybe it’s different in ways that won’t be hugely apparent to readers, but it was very apparent to me. I set different structural challenges, I set different narrative challenges. I set different kind of character arcs so that hopefully each book in the series is performing in its own way.

Karen Farmer:

I’m so excited to read the next one.

V.E. Schwab:

But it’s also sheer self preservation, which is like I really dread, I think the thing I lie awake at night and fear hearing most is the phrase “her last book was better.” And I push myself so hard and knowing that there’s no such thing as a book for everyone and knowing that for everyone who loves Addie, there’s someone who hates it. For everyone who loves Shades, there’s someone who hates… You can’t write with the people who won’t like it in mind. You have to write knowing that for someone it will be the dead center. And the beautiful thing about books is there are so many of them, and just because someone doesn’t find themselves or need one of mine that means they haven’t been found yet, it’s out there somewhere. I can’t write hoping to catch them. I can write hoping to catch my person, hoping to catch the person for whom it is essential. Yeah. But I think I try to make sure I’m just doing something completely different every single time.

Karen Farmer:

You mentioned the very strong emotional connection that people have with your work and an anchor for that in my mind was with the audiobook. So of course I’m bringing this to an audiobook question, but one of our first interviews we did on this podcast was actually with Julia Whelan.

We were thrilled to talk to her and we asked her for an example of her process and something that she was particularly proud of, and she used Addie LaRue as her example.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m honored.

Karen Farmer:

The way she spoke about it was fascinating, particularly how she thought about Addie’s voice changing over time and how that was represented, even if the timeline was jumping around being very cognizant of “I’m this Addie now, so I sound this way.” That’s stayed with Craig and with me for a long time. And so we were thrilled to talk to you about the audiobook process. Also, given that you mentioned you’re a big audio listener, so-

V.E. Schwab:

Huge. Yeah.

Karen Farmer:

… what was that like for you? What was your involvement?

V.E. Schwab:

This was a very blessed process in that Julia is one of my absolute all-time favorite audiobook narrators. The conversations for Addie began very early and I put forward her name and her name only. I asked for it two years in advance of release. And I was told like, “She’s so busy, she’s so busy, I just don’t know.” And they were like, “Can you create a short list?” And I was like, “I just want it to be her. I know that Julia will do deference to this.” And the fact is, as an audiobook reader, I know that the narrator makes or breaks it. I know how important it is and how extraordinary Julia’s talent is. And I knew. I was so excited when I got the message that she was like, “I’ll drop everything. I’ll do it.” And I was like, “Yes. So excited.” And then what was wonderful is Julia’s such a consummate professional.

We had multiple conversations both in person and over Zoom and over phone about that, about how she was going to approach Addie’s voice. Addie’s story is told in multiple chronologies, but I plan in order from the end backwards and then write out of order. So we were talking about sequence and how to handle her narration over history and she’s just brilliant. Julia takes the novel to such a different level. A good narrator makes a book three-dimensional, makes the story come to life in your head.

And it’s so interesting because I am the kind of writer who deeply believes that what I’m doing is playing a movie in my head and then transcribing it on paper so that the same movie plays in your head down to the score and the color palette and things like that. Julia is the kind of audiobook narrator who truly makes that happen, who brings it to life in that way. But yeah, the concept of Addie specifically as a voice that would become slightly less French as she lived in the world and slightly more modern as she lived in the world. Those are the small details. She brought that to me where she’s like, “Here’s what I think she would do and how this would sound.” And yeah, it was just a gift. Julia just made everything easy.

Karen Farmer:

That’s incredible to hear about from your perspective as well. And after we talked to Julia, I went back and re-listened to it and just blew me away again. It did feel incredibly cinematic hearing that in her voice. Your words, in her voice.

V.E. Schwab:

It was a dream partnership. I feel very, very, very fortunate because there are just a handful of audiobook narrators in the world who have their own fandom, who are going to bring an audience because it’s their name doing the work. And so it was really nice to be able to handle a little bit of that workload over to somebody else because instead of my name being the selling point, I was like, “Can it be your name now? Great. Your name is going to be the selling point.” It took a little bit of the pressure off, but no, it was a gift. It was an absolute gift.

Karen Farmer:

I just love, you’re like, “Come on, Julia. You’re going on the journey now.”

Craig Silva

Her name is a selling point. Sometimes if I’m just poking around on Libro and I see that she’s the narrator, I could know nothing about the book. And I’m like, “Okay, well, if Julia reads it.”

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m trying to think of who’s the Stephen King narrator that I just automatically gravitate towards. There’s like there’s a couple narrators in the world that I just, if I see that they’re narrating, it’s Will something Patton, I think.

Craig Silva

No, I think we’ve actually spoken with him before, not on the podcast, but [inaudible 00:21:8]-

V.E. Schwab:

He’s one of those narrators that I just love. I just absolutely love. There’s something about the cadence, the melodrama also, I listened to the Dorothy Dunnett books, which had just brilliant narrators attached to that and things like that, which will just transport you back in time or in space to other places. It’s just powerful audiobook narration.

As a creator, I am so drawn to audiobooks specifically for memoir and autobiography because I think-

Karen Farmer:

Me Too.

V.E. Schwab:

… those are almost always read by the writer of the work. And I think it’s one of the great craft exercises for writers to think of them as almost like capsules of character. It’s a great way to distill character into one’s space and to think about character in that way. So I would say I listen to more memoir and autobiography in non-fiction than anything else, mostly just for my attention span. I’m really good at listening to those without having any level of distraction, whereas a high fantasy is a lot harder for me to hold onto. I kind of with a high fantasy need to…I’ll have it in both the material form and the audio so that I can swatch back and forth depending on,” I need to go run some errands, so it’ll come with me in audio. I’m sitting in bed that night, here’s the chapter I’m up to,” and I’ll switch to paper.

Craig Silva

Full same.

V.E. Schwab:

Same here. I find myself with high fantasy or something with a complex world. I have to start it in print. And then once I’ve kind of gotten myself there, I’m like, “Now, I can switch to the audio.”

Karen Farmer:

Exactly. Exactly.

Craig Silva

100%. So you mentioned that you didn’t get to go on tour initially, but you are now, and that you’re so excited to be talking to Addie fans in the community. And one thing that when I think of your community that I think of is your social media presence. You tend to share a lot of fan art that your fans are making, and I don’t see that with a ton of other authors where they’re sharing that, or at least not to the level that you are. And I’m just wondering, with everything you have going on and writing and listening to a million books and all that, one, how do you find the time? And two, why do you find that to be an important part of your kind of presence there?

V.E. Schwab:

I think it’s a gift. I don’t think there are a few greater pieces of respect paid to an author than a piece of fan art. It’s art meeting art. I also think that if I’ve done my job well, the character looks relatively the same no matter which artist is rendering it. So I think that’s very cool. As a craft perspective, Kell Maresh from Shades of Magic almost always looks exactly like Kell Maresh.

Craig Silva

He has a very specific look.

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah, Addie has a little bit more flex, but I kind of love that for her because the whole concept of Addie is that she can only be interpreted, never actually rendered. And so I love it. I just think it’s a gift. I’m also, it’s really easy. It’s like it’s a thing I can lie in bed at night and search. I don’t ego surf. I’m like, “I will never Google myself. I am not crazy. I don’t need that.” I’m already my worst critic. I don’t need to see what other people say about me personally. And so it’s really the only version of ego surfing I do, and it’s a fairly docile one, but I just think it’s a gift and I want to pay respect to it. It’s also a luxury. I have not had fan art my whole career. This is a really beautiful thing.

It gives me an excuse to post a quote. It gives me a beautiful attribute to post with and hopefully redirect some traffic towards these wonderful artists who have given me something. So to me, it feels symbiotic. It feels like they’re bringing new readers to my work through their art. The least I can do is bring new eyes to their art through my work. So I just love it. I’m very appreciative of it, and I want people to know that, and I think it’s better than just having a dedicated fan art account. I want to post it to my stuff.

Craig Silva

Yeah, I love that. One last question about artwork. So I have a bunch of your books, I’ll just say on my shelf, and they all tend to have, or not all, but most tend to have a very similar look even across different categories. Black, red and white and they have a look…look very pretty on a shelf next to each other. So I was really excited when Fragile Threads of Power was announced and released. You can see where I’m going with this question, and it was very different. It almost has a cyber punky feel to it or something like, it’s like neon and it feels very different.

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

Craig Silva

And my question is just I guess why the change, especially with it being part of a series.

V.E. Schwab:

So there’s a few reasons. I feel like my covers have almost always been at the forefront of style. They’ve really been the trendsetters, not the trend followers. The fact is, I love my black, white, and red. It’s based on me. You can see them, we’re doing this on video. I am pale, I have red glasses and red hair and I wear all black. But from a business perspective, the fact is that the Darker Shade of Magic books were the ones that started the color theme. A lot of my other books kind of tacked on after my other publishers tacked onto it. But the Shades of Magic books started the black, red and white color theme, and that was eight years ago, and they were the forefront of that style. In the eight years since, a huge number of fantasy novels have come out in the black, red and white color palette in my palette and in my style to the point where I don’t think the cover for Threads would’ve felt really standout or really special.

The other part of that is that I want to capture new readers as well. Certainly don’t want to alienate anyone. Let’s also not pretend that as the author, I have the entirety of control over covers, this is a business. So it’s about how do we bring in new readers. There’s also a content aspect to that, which is that the reason that the first series is black, red, and white is because this is how Kell, the main character Kell and Lila see their worlds. There’s only four of them. The new main character in the Fragile Threads of Power Book, there’s actually a new main character for each of the books, four, five, and six. But the new main character of four sees all of the threads that make up the world the way Alucard Emery does. It is a cacophony of color. It is brought up again and again and again in the story that she is overwhelmed by the vibrancy and intensity of the world around her.

So it doesn’t make sense for her to be rendered in red, black and white. She doesn’t see the world this way. She sees the world in absolute electric vivid color. So is it a departure? Yes. Do I completely understand why some readers would be adverse to a departure. Of course I do. But it’s also been eight years. I was really fortunate to have no rebranding happen within the trilogy. So many books get rebranded, mid-trilogy, mid-series. And I mean, the fact is, I think this is the next chapter. I also think probably, look, I have written 22 books now. I’m not sure that I would only ever get to have the red, black, and white color motif for all the books. If you look at Neil Gaiman or Stephen King or Aaron Morganson, many editions of their books come out. So I anticipate, I hope over the next few years that many additions of my books will exist.

And some of them will be red, black, and white, and some of them won’t. Addie was black and gold, and then it was blue and gold, and it was also red and gold. So there’s been diversity within the color palette. I just think it probably was naive of me to think I could only ever exist in this very specific color palette. But I hope people give it a chance because one, I think that in the finished product, it’s going to look so freaking cool. I think it’s going to the bells and whistles that Tor puts into my books these days, it’s going to look amazing. But it is also, I think for them a really important marker, that it’s a new arc. And this is not only books four, five and six, it’s also books one, two, and three of a new arc.

Craig Silva

I don’t think anyone that’s read the first three is going to be like, “Wait, the cover’s not black. I’m not reading this.” So I think the fan base of Darker Shade, myself included, will be there regardless of the color of the cover for sure.

V.E. Schwab:

It’s also to just to be very transparent about it as well, one of the goals of a rebrand is to attract the readers who didn’t come the first time. And so by necessity, you don’t of course want to alienate your existing fan base. It’s the last thing I ever want to do because I owe them everything and I love them. And we are a symbiotic relationship. But a rebrand is designed to broaden the appeal and Shades, I don’t feel, and by extension Threads has reached the full potential of its audience yet. And so the goal is, okay, shades has sold a million copies. That’s amazing.

Addie‘s sold 2 million. So how can we actually bring in some of the people who didn’t come to me with those white covers? Can we see if we can attract them with a different vibe? Because that’s all it is, right? A cover vibe. I’m not in control of any of this. I’m in control of the content on the inside. I just want us to be able to do everything that we can to make sure that as many people as possible pick it up so that I can get them to the content on the inside.

Craig Silva

With this being kind of like a new story. I know I’ve seen some of the little quotes that have been shared and all that, so I know a lot of the older characters will be in it, but does someone need to have read the first three to pick this book up? Or is it?

V.E. Schwab:

No, I’ve done my utmost. Here’s what I’ll say. Of course you will be able to pick it up at book four if you want to start there. Do I hope that you start it at Shades of Magic? Yeah. I think you’ll always gain more. You’ll always pick up more the same way you would when you see a movie and then you go back and watch it a second time and you’re like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t notice X, Y, Z.” You should be able to read the fragile threads of power without any previous context. That’s the idea. But of course, I think you’ll miss some of the inside jokes. I think you’ll miss some of the emotional substance to some of the older characters, just because I worked really hard to make these characters really interesting. Seven years later, there’s a lot that happens to them. But from a craft perspective, I have done my utmost so that you can start at Fragile Threads of Power.

Karen Farmer:

So thinking about how this series has evolved, then I have a question about the content on the inside as you called it.

V.E. Schwab:

Yes. The content on the inside, the part that I am in control of the part that I get to be the tiny god of. Yes.

Karen Farmer:

Yes. One of the things that I love most about your work is the importance of representation. That is such a hallmark of everything you do. And I read a quote of yours in another interview that you did where you called books an Engine of Empathy. And I love that quote so much, and I think it is just the perfect way to describe what your work does. So as you’ve talked about your work evolving and writing to you at different ages, how has the role of representation in your books changed over time?

V.E. Schwab:

Oh, man. The best thing about starting a publishing industry, starting a publishing career before you come out is that you can literally see my evolution as a human behind the work. So my first novel came out when I was 23. I didn’t come out until I was 27, and I wasn’t in the closet. It was opaque. I didn’t realize there was a closet. I was like, “Wow, I keep dating guys and I’m just not enjoying that at all. I just must be picking the wrong guys over.” And I truly would just fall in love with girls over and over again, try and kiss boys, be like, “Ew,” and then be like, “Must be me.”

So that’s to say that a lot of the representation is subtextual for a very long time. And then you can see a shift to text as I am like, “Oh wait.” And the thing is, I am a continually evolving person. It has taken me, I have been on this earth 35 and a half years. I am still figuring out my relationship to gender, though I think I’ve pretty much figured it out from sexuality. These are separate things. I was not raised in an environment where I knew that these were separate things. I went to an all girls southern preparatory school in Nashville, like-

Karen Farmer:

Me too.

V.E. Schwab:

It wasn’t going to be on the docket. This is all to say it’s become a more at the issue for me. And yet it’s become less of an Issue with a capital I because as somebody who didn’t come out in their teens, what I personally don’t actually need is a coming out story.

I’m so grateful that they exist. They’re so important. But as an adult, what I need is a queer existence story. I need queer characters to take up space in the story without their identity being the plot. I get so frustrated when the only time characters get to be leads is when it’s about their queerness. I get so frustrated when the only time their sexuality and gender identity are important is when it’s important to the plot. And so what I’m always trying to do now, what I’m trying to do now, I should not say always. What I’m trying to do now is make sure that my characters simply take up space. Sometimes it is part of the plot as with Alucard and Rhy in shades of magic and continuing into Threads of Power. My OTP, what I would argue is the only true romantic relationship I have ever written.

It’s important. It’s there. In Addie LaRue, the queerness is so present and so unstated. We do not talk about it in terms of a plot point because it’s not a plot point. But it’s so deeply important that Addie sleeps with women. It’s so deeply important that Henry’s ex is a boy. They have a conversation point between the fact that Henry’s ex is gay and Henry’s bisexual. And there’s a conflict with between them because of this, but also there’s found family and community. It is deeply important to me in Addie LaRue that Henry, Robbie and Bea are all because for all that we’re tokenized, we tend to not come in ones. We tend to travel in groups. So I wanted to have a group. My next standalone novel, which I’m not allowed to say the title of, is…I just keep calling it my Toxic Lesbian Vampires.

It’s about three women over the course of history and is just so much about hunger, rage, and queerness and the way in which-

Craig Silva

Sold.

V.E. Schwab:

And I’m so excited. But again, I guess this will be like 36 year old me, 37 year old me when it comes out. And I feel like it’s so indicative of how far I’ve come from, let’s say 27 to 37, 27 being a Darker Shade of Magic when we’re just starting to see the undercurrents of subtext becoming text for me with characters on page with Lila Bard, which was me really trying to process my relationship to sexuality and gender, to what will be 37 year old me. And these voracious, insatiable, rage filled women that are very much aesthetically inspired by Florence and the Machine’s new era and all of these things and are just violent and hungry. And I love it. So I think this is to say I’m continuing to evolve and my characters and stories can continue to evolve based on my needs as a creator and as a human.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Thank you so much for that. I have chills-

V.E. Schwab:

It was so [inaudible 00:36:20].

Karen Farmer:

Beautiful.

V.E. Schwab:

Just wind me up and set me off.

Karen Farmer:

I love it.

Craig Silva

So we recently spoke with TJ Klune. That was our previous episode before this one. And we had a question or a conversation around place as character because that’s so important to his work with the tea shop and Whispering Door or the Orphanage and Cerulean Sea and all that. And I actually see that a lot in your books too, whether it’s the fixed point of the tavern in Darker Shade or it’s the house in Gallant, so on and so on. And I would just love to know what you think about place as character in your work.

V.E. Schwab:

Always. So I work from the setting backwards. Because I write primarily about outsiders, I need to understand insiders. And in order to understand insiders, I need to understand the place that they feel they fit so cleanly into. So all of my stories start with setting. I think that when it’s done well, setting should be a primary character in the novel, it should be just as important as any one of the people moving through it.

I also have this massive pet peeve as a reader and a writer when characters don’t feel intrinsic to their setting. When characters feel like they’re floating on top of space instead of being born out of it. Because the fact is, we are a product of our settings. Whether we rebel against it or embrace it, we are so deeply formed as people based on where we’re born, where we’re raised, where we choose to be. We can be born into a place and feel so othered and we can be born out of a place and make it our home. From my very first novel, the Near Witch, which I wrote way back when I was 21, it’s about a village. It’s about small town culture, about this little isolated village. The Archived, my second novel is about a library of the dead. It’s entirely set in a hotel.

My characters are almost always stuck somewhere or anchored somewhere. And so yeah, I would say that it’s kind of one of my big tent pole motifs in my work is that place is person.

Craig Silva

Yeah, it’s one of my favorite things about Darker Shade is that the different, here we go, the different Antari that live in different places really represent their London very well, even though they are crossing between, no spoilers for this seven year old book, but they’re crossing between, but they’re still very, like Lila’s, very gritty and gray and whatever, and tough from that.

V.E. Schwab:

But it goes even deeper, right? Because the entire premise of the Shades of Magic series is that I wanted to write about multiple worlds, but I didn’t want to write about multiple geographies. I wanted to write about one world shaped four ways by its relationship to magic. One world that has forgotten it, one world that has embraced it, one world that has tried to enslave it and one world in which it consumed everything. Anyway, that’s to say yes, setting is essential.

Craig Silva

Thank you. So our last question before we get into, we have a hopefully fun section where we ask sillier lightning round type of questions. You’ve kind kind of already alluded to this question a little bit. So we can probably go through this quickly. So you recently had the cover reveal for Fragile Threads, and you’ve been giving little hints around what to expect from that, but one, what should we expect from that? And then two, you kind of already mentioned it with the unnamed toxic vampire book, but what else should fans be expecting from you in the next X amount of months or years?

V.E. Schwab:

It’s so hard for me. The Toxic Lesbian Vampires has a title and I love it so much. And so it always is almost just on the tip of my tongue, but it hasn’t been announced yet.

Craig Silva

We’ll bleep it out if you mess up.

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah, but I feel like I should say it and then you can just make it one long sound.

Craig Silva

The fans will be like, “No!”

V.E. Schwab:

Oh, exactly. So in the Fragile Threads of Power, it’s actually been, the hardest thing about it is I’ve only posted excerpts from the known characters. I’ve done this on purpose. I have only posted excerpts from characters from Shades of Magic in part because that’s where the fandom is. I want to give you a glimpse of Kell and Lila and Rhy and Alucard, but it’s really hard not to post anything of the new characters.

I will probably start failing that soon. So Fragile Threads of Power will be coming out in October or this fall. I believe it’s October 3rd, but I’m really, really terrible at this point at any day. So Fragile Threads of Power. And then what I’m hoping to do is basically alternate between Threads of Power books and other books for my own sanity. So I would say that the safe assumption will be a Fragile Threads of Power every two years. They’re really long. Fragile Threads of Power is, I think they’re going to format it so it looks like 700 pages, but it’s like 200,000 words. So it’s the longest one I’ve ever written. It’s I swear not me trying to overwrite, it’s just so much story because I’m also covering the seven years between.

So I think two years is probably the thing I can do for that. But what I can do is make it interstitial, so it’ll go Fragile Threads of Power 1, toxic lesbian vampires, Fragile Threads of Power 2, Victorious, which is the third villain’s book, Fragile Threads of Power 3. That’s my goal for the next four years on that side. I’m obviously doing a lot of TV and film hopefully. I am the person who’s a popcorn optimist. I’m like, “I believe something’s real when I can sit down with a bucket of popcorn and watch it.”

Karen Farmer:

I love it.

V.E. Schwab:

Until then, it’s not real. People will do a film option and they’ll be like, “My book’s becoming a movie.” And I’m like, “It’s probably not,” because I’ve been there and I’m not trying to shit on their dreams. I’m shitting on my own, which is to say I have had something fall apart so many times.

Craig Silva

Every author we ask about, “Oh, I heard you were being optioned.” They were like, “Yeah, we’ll see.” That’s like it.

V.E. Schwab:

Truly. I had a TV show happen over on Netflix and an adaptation of a short story that I wrote. I was at the premiere and I still was like, “I don’t really know.” And ,my agent was there with me and she’s like, “I don’t know what else you need.” And I was like, “I don’t know.” It’s like until it happens, it doesn’t happen for me. I’m not in control, so I don’t trust it. And I’ve seen now how many doors there are to go through. But that’s to say, fingers crossed that Addie LaRue will start casting pretty soon for film. I’ve read the scripts, they’re amazing. I would not say that if I didn’t actually feel that way, I would just be like, “I guess we’ll see.” But yeah, so I’m working on stuff, but really on the book front, that’s kind of like the big goal because the Toxic Lesbian Vampires is a standalone.

I’m hoping it will sit in that same space as Addie. I like to call it her spiritual sister. Addie‘s the optimistic sister, obviously in this case. But I think it’s really nice creatively, I know people get frustrated because there’s a fandom for each book and they want Villains or they want Shades of Magic. But I also have to be able to live with myself creatively and sanity wise. And the Threads of Power books are quite fraught for me. I had a stress dream the other night where everyone went online and rated Threads of Power one star, but when I went to read all the one star reviews, it was just all of my own insecurities. It was just-

Karen Farmer:

My gosh.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m that person. So I would really like to give myself an outlet that isn’t something that fraught, which is why you end up seeing these standalone novels from me. So yeah, it’s like the next five or six years sorted for me. And I also have a graphic novel I’m working on, which is about inspiration as a parasite that I’m really excited about.

Karen Farmer:

Very cool.

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah.

Craig Silva

This all is so exciting for me, especially The Victorious, because I had originally read that that was coming out and I was very excited. Because I love that series. And then I read somewhere that actually it’s just going to be a duology. And I felt like-

V.E. Schwab:

No, no, no.

Craig Silva

Yeah. So it’s great to hear straight from you that that’s not the case. I literally had a question about it.

V.E. Schwab:

Come to the source because I feel like the number of rumors about my books that get propagated, I think it’s because I only exist on Instagram. So I feel like these propagations happen on other sites and I’m not there to be like, “I swear it’s real.”

Craig Silva

Information is a parasite.

V.E. Schwab:

Bury the good word. But at the same time, be a popcorn optimist. Don’t trust it until it’s real.

Karen Farmer:

Until you see the credits roll. It hasn’t happened.

V.E. Schwab:

Exactly. Exactly.

Craig Silva

I’ll believe it when the book’s in my hand.

V.E. Schwab:

Exactly.

Craig Silva

So thank you so much for talking so much about your work and process and exciting things.

V.E. Schwab:

You’re so welcome.

Craig Silva

Our next set of questions are lightning around questions and are meant to be a little bit silly. So no need to overthink them.

Karen Farmer:

They’re very ridiculous.

Craig Silva

Yeah. So Karen, why don’t you kick us off.

Karen Farmer:

All right. My first question for you, Victoria, is who was your childhood best friend and what were they like?

V.E. Schwab:

Oh my God, I didn’t have any. I’m sure I did. I’m sure they were imaginary though, is the thing. You have to understand. I was an only child and my family moved around a lot, so I was not good at making friends. I said that jokingly, but I probably didn’t have very many childhood friends. I had pets and I’m pretty sure I feel like people will be like, “Well, you’re just self-deprecating.” No, I definitely tied a babysitter to a chair and she got scared enough that she locked herself out of the house until my parents [inaudible 00:45:49] and I couldn’t ride the bus for the rest of the year because everybody knew about this incident. I was not very good at making friends as a child. So I [inaudible 00:45:57] feel-

Craig Silva

That is a weird way to make a friend, I’d say. Yeah, that’s not my-

V.E. Schwab:

So I know you thought there was going to be a lightning round, not a therapy session, but just to say, I’m better at making friends now, I swear.

Craig Silva

So you travel around a lot going to events, and you’re meeting fans, and I’m sure some of them super fan on you a little bit. Have you ever been that super fan? Have you ever met another author where you felt like a little starstruck?

V.E. Schwab:

Okay, so yes. And now it’s become this very long running joke. But for Neil Gaiman, who was one of my biggest influences growing up the year my first novel came out, The Near Witch in 2011, we ended up at the same conference and I had probably 1,000 followers on Twitter, but I told them all how excited I was because I wrote a piece, you can still find it online, called To the Planet From the Spec, which was this idea that he was my planet. And I just felt like this tiny piece of mass orbiting, hoping one day to have a gravitational force. And all of my five fans decided to just ping him all weekend on Twitter and be like, she’s such a big fan, you should hug her. And he kept being like, “I don’t know who this person is. I have not seen her.”

So I couldn’t go to his signing. And then he finally added one more signing on the last day. And I waited two and a half hours in line to get him to sign my books. And I thought I was going to chicken out saying anything. But at the last minute as he’s signing my books, I said, “So I’m the one whose readers online have been [inaudible 00:47:27].” And he just dropped the pen. And he looked at me and he spread his arms and he [inaudible 00:47:31], and he just gave me this big hug. And I thought, “That’s the end of it. I can just die now and be happy.” And then almost every single year for the next seven or eight years, he would give me a hug. We would run into each other at something and he would invite me backstage. I would see him from across the room, and they’d be like two years later, he should have no idea who he was and he would just spread his arms and give me a hug.

And he’s become kind of a mentor figure and a really wonderful, generous human. But I still remember standing in his kitchen one day and he was making me a cup of tea. And I was like, “Who am I?” And then he was like, “Do you want to see some of this…” It was me. I just want to set the scene here because I am not that cool. Me and Ian Rankin standing in Neil Gaiman’s kitchen and Neil, as he is making a cup of tea, is like, “Would you like to see the cut from this show I’m working on?” And it was for Good Omens. And I’m sitting on his living room floor eating take out Indian food with a cup of tea watching the part of Good Omens where they travel through history together. And I was just like, “What is this? My life is awesome.”

Craig Silva

And you-

V.E. Schwab:

Am I. And then he-

Craig Silva

You didn’t even have to tie him to a chair either. It’s crazy.

V.E. Schwab:

I didn’t even have to tie him to a chair. He was very, very generous enough to blurb Addie. And it was like one of the best days of my life.

Craig Silva

That’s amazing.

V.E. Schwab:

But I still am convinced he doesn’t know who I am. I just, again, with the popcorn optimism I-

Craig Silva

The red glasses

V.E. Schwab:

Every time I’m like, “He doesn’t remember me.”

Karen Farmer:

Oh my gosh, that made my face hurt smiling [inaudible 00:48:58]-

Craig Silva

Quick follow up. Favorite Neil Gaiman book?

V.E. Schwab:

Ooh. It’s a contentious one for me. Neverwhere.

Craig Silva

Yeah, same. Same. I was hoping that’s what you would say. That’s my favorite [inaudible 00:49:07].

V.E. Schwab:

No, it’s my favorite. I will say like Neverwhere and the ones I have signed are Neverwhere and Graveyard Book, because those are the two-

Craig Silva

Both amazing, loved [inaudible 00:49:17].

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah. Just defines everything for me. I have Ocean at the End of the Lane as well, signed. But Graveyard Book and Neverwhere could pretty much define me as a person.

Craig Silva

Yeah, there’s a lot of…Cassidy Blake gives me very Graveyard Book vibe in the best way.

V.E. Schwab:

Also from an audiobook recommendation perspective. Neil’s reading of Neverwhere is just one of the best.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, [inaudible 00:49:41].

Craig Silva

A lot of authors don’t read their own fiction, but he just crushes it. I think we’ve mentioned it on the podcast-

V.E. Schwab:

He’s a performer.

Craig Silva

… multiple times. It’s a beautiful reading.

V.E. Schwab:

He’s a performer. I think he’s read at this point, he’s read most of his. And I will specifically listen to anything. This is where it gets a little weird. His accent is very much like my mom’s accent. They’re from the same region. And my mom would read me stories as a child, and so I feel like there’s something almost like that feeling you get when somebody runs their fingers through your hair. Like that soothing. When I listen to his narration, it’s like a family thing. I just feel like someone’s reading me a quiet bedtime story.

Craig Silva

I love that.

Karen Farmer:

I love that. Do you celebrate your birthday? And if so, how do you celebrate it?

V.E. Schwab:

Oh my God, you guys, I’m going to sound like just a weird asshole after this interview. I hate my birthday. I hate any date to which a huge amount of pressure is assigned. I can have an incredibly magical Tuesday, but I feel like fraught days are so difficult for me. Anything where they become blown out of…or where we assign a greater value to them. So I try, and this is thanks to Addie in a lot of ways because Addie and I are very different people, but the writing of her is kind of an education and optimism.

I try very hard to just stop and take in really beautiful moments in my mundane Wednesdays.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

V.E. Schwab:

Rather than put a huge amount of pressure on, I think as well. Again, I’m an only child. I love my parents. I’m very close with them, but what’s a birthday party is probably going to be either me at home in Scotland with a couple friends or me with my parents and I’m like, “We are going to do that anytime I visit.” And so it’s usually just a very chill affair and I just try and make it a good day.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

Craig Silva

That’s all you can do. Out of all your characters from any of your 20 plus books, who would you most like to spend a day with and who would you least like to spend a day with?

V.E. Schwab:

I would really like to spend a day with Alucard Emory from Shades of Magic. Because I feel like he knows how to have a good time. We would get on really well. I think Alucard is the chill version of Rhy. Rhy I think you would be a little bit too much like “Is that cocaine in the bathroom?” Kind of vibe and I feel-

Craig Silva

Yeah. So you get into trouble somewhere. Yeah, for sure.

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah, I feel like whereas Alucard just knows where the good wine is and will take you on a tour. Yeah. I would like to spend time with Alucard Emory. I would very much not like to spend time with Victor Vale, which is funny, from Vicious, because Victor Vale, before Henry Strauss, was the only autobiographical character I had ever written. And I have both men and it tells you, I’m still trying to figure out the rest of this identity. But Victor, I don’t think anyone wants to spend time with Victor Vale.

Craig Silva

I would more than Eli personally. But-

V.E. Schwab:

Nobody wants to spend time with Eli. And really the right answer is Eli. Pretty much don’t want to spend time with any of the powered people from Villains.

Karen Farmer:

Yeah. Well, you kind of already answered my last lightning round question. I was going to ask you what’s the strangest dream you’ve had recently and your dream about Goodreads?

V.E. Schwab:

But you know what, that wasn’t even strange. So here’s the thing. This is just, I should really learn to be less honest probably in podcast form. When I started taking anti-anxiety meds eight years ago, I started remembering every single dream I have and before I started taking anti-anxiety meds, SSRIs, I would probably remember two or three dreams a year. I had no dream memory. Now it’s every single night when I wake up I remember at least one of them and they’re all so weird. But what I will say is probably once or twice a year, I have one that is so incredibly detailed that I feel like was a movie. It has a plot, it has twists, it has a subplot, it has a cast. And the weirdest part is I’m not always in it. I have dreams where I am simply, I am the camera lens almost.

Karen Farmer:

That’s incredible.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m like a ghost. I have a lot of dreams where I am not actually a participant, but I’m like haunting the dream.

Karen Farmer:

That is fascinating. I love dreams. I love a good dream. Thank you for sharing.

V.E. Schwab:

Yeah.

Craig Silva

Our last question before we say goodbye is this thing we do, Instagram story time, where we comb through your feed and find a photo that we want to know more about. For this one, it is, since we’ve just spent an hour talking about how busy you are and all the six books you’re writing and touring, et cetera, we found an Instagram post where I think it was just kind of a scrolling video of Goodreads where you said you read 159 books and our question is, how the hell do you have the time for this?

Karen Farmer:

How do you do this?

Craig Silva

Yes.

V.E. Schwab:

Here’s what I’ll say because it is a form of productive procrastination because writing a novel takes so long and there is very little sense of gratification along the way. There’s very little closure along the way. Reading a novel can take me two to three days and I can get a sense of closure. I did a thing, I started a thing, I did the thing, I finished the thing. So I have a whole craft answer for that about how I know it’s contentious. I don’t feel like you can be the best version of yourself as a writer unless you’re also a reader. Now reader can mean listener, can mean consumer of movies as whatever consumer of story, but that you have to be a compulsive consumer of story to be a creator of story and be good. I pride myself on not reading only in the genre that I write.

I specifically read outside the genre I write. I like to call it creative cross-pollination. I read as many poetry books as I do history books as I do fiction. But that’s like the craft answer. The why am I such a compulsive reader answer is because it gives me that tiny, tiny endorphin of you did a thing, of checking a box. Yeah. Also, I get very anxious about the number of books coming out each week and I follow Liberty, who is an [inaudible 00:56:06], and every time, every Tuesday Liberty posts all the books that came out that week.

Karen Farmer:

I know.

V.E. Schwab:

And I’m just like, the existential crisis is a continuous force in my life.

Karen Farmer:

Well, Victoria Liberty also has a Tuesday newsletter now that [inaudible 00:56:20]-

V.E. Schwab:

Oh no, I have it-

Karen Farmer:

On the newsletter.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m on her Patreon. I get that newsletter.

Karen Farmer:

Me too.

V.E. Schwab:

It is so upsetting to me because I just keep thinking like, “Oh no.” Like I’m slowly sinking into the quicksand that is my life and I just want to read books. And also I’ve been sick and I haven’t been able to really focus. So I lost a month. Now I’m behind schedule. And I’m like, “Oh my God, am I not even going to make my 100 books a year?” I’ve made 100 books a year plus the last eight years, and now I’m only at like 28.

Karen Farmer:

You’re going to get there.

V.E. Schwab:

I’m so stressed out.

Craig Silva

Only 28.

Karen Farmer:

There’s 28 [inaudible 00:56:57]-

V.E. Schwab:

I also picked four really long books in a row. And I’m like, “Why?” They were all 600 plus pages. I need to go read some chat books.

Craig Silva

Yeah.

Karen Farmer:

It’s poetry time now. Yeah.

Craig Silva

The books I read slowly get shorter and shorter as we meet up into [inaudible 00:57:12] yeah.

V.E. Schwab:

As the year goes on.

Craig Silva

In January I’m only reading poetry. Sorry, in December.

V.E. Schwab:

Cool.

Karen Farmer:

Well, with that being said, the very last question, we promise, and you knew this was coming. We talked about this at the beginning. Do you have any recommendations for the two of us or for our listeners?

V.E. Schwab:

I do. In the vein of beautiful fantasy, for people who don’t think they like fantasy, Margaret Owens’ Little Thieves came out in 2021, I believe. May have been 2022. I read it in 2022. A young woman has two godparents, Fortune and Death, and tries to make her way through the world and things go wrong. It is stunning. The sequel I just read is Painted Devils. I think it comes out in one or two months. Margaret Owens’s writing is incredible. The audiobook for Little Thieves is divine.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

Craig Silva

Perfect. Well, we are just at time and just wanted to say thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us and answer all of our questions and silly little things about birthdays and all that stuff. So-

V.E. Schwab:

Thank you.

Craig Silva

… thank you so much for taking the time and congratulations again on the paperback release coming out soon.

V.E. Schwab:

Thank you for having me.

Karen Farmer:

Cool. Bye Victoria.

V.E. Schwab:

Bye.

Craig Silva

Goodbye. Well, thank you for listening to that interview, everyone. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, but I somehow doubt that because that was very special for me. It was so awesome to get to meet Victoria and ask all the questions that I’ve had burning in my brain for many, many years. What about you, Karen?

Karen Farmer:

I loved it as well and for the obvious reasons. She was amazing. It was so great to learn more about her work and also just her life. She was a very good sport with all of our wacky questions. But also it was really fun to just see how happy that made you. I wish you all could see this. Craig was just smiling the entire time.

Craig Silva

I’m so glad they can’t see it. It was embarrassing.

Karen Farmer:

You did great too.

Craig Silva

How did I do holding it together with the fanboy stuff?

Karen Farmer:

Oh yeah. You covered it very well. You seemed very calm and cool and collected.

Craig Silva

I don’t believe you. Your face is telling me that’s not true.

Karen Farmer:

You were great. You crushed it. Well, as always, I have the most important of questions for you. Surprise, it’s what are you reading right now?

Craig Silva

Oh, so glad you asked. Actually, I’m not reading either of these. I just finished both of them. So two things. One, on this podcast you probably heard us talk about the Fragile Threads of Power, which is the first book in a new trilogy coming out that is set in the Darker Shade of Magic universe. And although it’s book one in a new trilogy for fans of Darker Shade, it’s very much book four in my estimation. It comes out in September and I was blessed by the fantasy gods to have received an arc of it and it was the best day of my life when that came through. It is the longest one in the series at like 700 something pages and I have read it twice fully through already. For fans of this series, you will not be disappointed. And if I can say that, you could pick this one up and have it be the first one that you read, but I think you will get way more out of it if you have read the previous three.

All of your favorite characters make not just appearances. They’re main characters of this book. So if you miss Lila and Kell and Alucard and all these friends, then pick this book up as fast as you can. I’ll not say more about it because I am too afraid of spoilery things that will come out of my mouth, but five stars, go buy it. The other book that I just finished yesterday is Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda. This has been on my list forever. The cover is gorgeous and also I’m just like a sucker for anything vampire related as I know you know Karen. This book is described by the New York Times Book Review as one of the most original vampire novels in ages.

And I saw that and I was like, “That is quite the statement.” And then I read it and I read it in literally a day because it’s one, very good and very page turney. But also it’s relatively short too, so you can really rip through it. I highly suggest this book, it’s very, very, very good. It is about so much.

So she is half Japanese and then half Malaysian English. So there is this coming to terms with her kind of history and where she comes from and her kind of heritage. There’s this thing of this internal struggle between her kind of vampire self and human self. And she wants to connect with her heritage through food, but she is a vampire. So she cannot eat food, can only drink blood, which if you’ve heard of vampires, you might know. So there’s a lot of-

Karen Farmer:

spoiler.

Craig Silva

Yeah, spoiler. There’s a lot of like, she’s watching YouTube videos of people “What I ate in a day,” and living vicariously. And also it’s very drenched in art. So she’s an artist and she’s doing an artist internship and her dad was an artist and it’s great. Highly suggest-

Karen Farmer:

It sounds-

Craig Silva

Go pick it up.

Karen Farmer:

Dying to read this book. I cannot wait.

Craig Silva

I will mail it to you.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Craig Silva

I know you love a mail.

Karen Farmer:

I do. I love mail. I love books. What could go wrong?

Craig Silva

Yes. What are you reading right now, Karen?

Karen Farmer:

Well, I’d love to tell you. So I just finished Pageboy, which came out I believe last week, maybe two weeks ago. This is Elliot Page’s new memoir and it is amazing. Absolutely could not put it down. I can’t say enough good things, so definitely check that one out. I will also say that though I purchased a paper copy, I put it down and ended up listening to this on audio because Elliot narrates the book and he does an incredible job. So I got to say audio I think might be the way to go with this one just so you can hear it in his own own voice. I then started the newer Casey McQuiston book, I Kissed Shara Wheeler. Which I had heard a ton of good things about. And I believe I’ve talked about my Casey McQuiston love on this podcast before. I just love everything that she’s ever written. So I was very excited to grab this and I’m about halfway through.

Craig Silva

How’s it working out?

Karen Farmer:

Haven’t finished yet. It’s so good. It’s so good. It’s also a beautiful book. The inside of the cover has this gorgeous pattern on it. It’s just beautifully crafted. It’s cool too, because there are mixed media moments inside where there’ll be a printout from somebody’s notebook or a memo that somebody found on the floor and it looks like it’s been photocopied into the book, which I’m always a sucker for. So yeah, huge hit. I Kissed Shara Wheeler.

Craig Silva

Should I pick this up?

Karen Farmer:

Absolutely.

Craig Silva

I’ve read other stuff by Casey before and really enjoyed it. So I think I’m due for, after reading a lot of high fantasy and horror. I think I’m due for a… Is it fluffy or is it like I’m not, I’m looking for fluffy, enjoyable. I’m not looking for anything hard.

Karen Farmer:

I wouldn’t say it’s fluffy, but I would say it is delightful.

Craig Silva

I like delightful. I want to be delighted.

Karen Farmer:

Yeah, exactly. And Casey’s other books that I’ve read are for adults and this one is YA. So it’s a great summer read.

Craig Silva

All right everyone, thank you so much for listening to our silly banter as promised in the intro. If you follow the podcast, thank you. Please rate and review it. If you do not, please follow it so you can hear more of this silly banter in the future.

Karen Farmer:

Yes, and if you don’t have a Libro.fm membership, you can use our promo code LIBROPODCAST and you’ll get two audiobooks for your first month of membership instead of just one. And as always, thanks for listening.