Industry News

The Clarion Workshop in San Diego CA has announced the instructors for its 2025 session: Elizabeth Bear, Premee Mohamed, Cadwell Turnbull, Annalee Newitz, Jedediah Berry, and GennaRose Nethercott. Jac Jemc is faculty director.

The workshop will be held June 29, 2025 – August 9, 2025 at UC San Diego. Applications for the workshop opened on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025.

While you are here, please take a

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Nominations are now open for the 2025 Dragon Awards, presented by Dragon Con. “There is no qualification for submitting nominations or voting – no convention fees or other memberships are needed.” Voting closes July 19, 2025.

For last year’s winners, see our prior post. For more information about nominations and to vote, see the official Dragon Awards page.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with

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Winners for the 2024 Kitschies, awarded for “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic,” have been announced.

The Red Tentacle (Novel)

• WINNER: Julia, Sandra Newman (Granta)

• Infinity Gate, M.R. Carey (Orbit)
• In Ascension, Martin MacInnes (Atlantic)
• Jungle House, Julianne Pachico (Serpent’s Tail)
• The Premonition, Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda (Faber & Faber)

The Golden Tentacle

...Read More

by Libby Schultz

The future of digital currencies offers science fiction writers a unique opportunity to enhance their worlds. As a fintech founder and entrepreneur in the crypto industry, I navigate these topics daily alongside regulators, innovators, and organizations. Related challenges impact every level of society, from the people struggling to make ends meet, to the rarified oligarchs.

Here are five ways to explore how digital currencies create and solve problems in your fictional universe. Please note that my words are intended solely for worldbuilding and are not legal or financial advice.

Gold Makes the Rules

Those in power rule, and in modern societies, whoever has the gold has the power. Digital gold is no exception. The powerful create systems of governance to keep that power, operating from ideals and values that vary as much as their methods.

So how can this be used to enhance a story?

When starting off, it helps to establish the goals of the governing system, then decide how digital currencies might be used to create rules, incentives, and punishments. Identify conflicts that might naturally arise between the people in control, those fighting to take control, and those being controlled, along with everyone else who might be dragged along for the ride.

The United States controls the flow of money through its reserve currency, influencing global trade and alliances. While it’s important to protect a nation and its citizens, red tape often exists to make intermediaries rich. Decentralized currencies disrupt these fiefdoms, allowing people to coordinate and move money from anywhere in the world through a borderless peer-to-peer system. 

Some digital currencies are used to hedge against inflation and currency debasing, but a pure independent system does not exist. Furthermore, dollars are usually needed for rent, food, property, and tax, and the US controls who can convert digital currencies into dollars. It can also punish bad actors who never touch dollars with fines, arrests, asset seizure, and imprisonment. Since people often fight through money, a battle between opposing monetary systems can season conflicts between people, factions, and nations in your story.

The Consequences of a Public Ledger

Many blockchain ledgers are public and permanent. This is great for transparency and proving where money is—no one could pretend they were rich by renting a fancy car, for example—but now think about how an autocratic surveillance state might use them to monitor their citizens. Public records would report every move as citizens spy and gossip about each other’s spending habits and compete for the most “correct” financial trail. Someone might try to hide by coercing another person to transact on their behalf.

There is also plenty of inspiration from real-world events. Tech-savvy people track and critique how money is spent from ICOs. Internet bots publish the trading activity of whale crypto investors. Permanent ledgers can uncover crime from a single connection, as was the case for a now infamous hacker Jimmy Zhong. He walked free for nearly a decade until a single transaction helped the IRS trace him to a Silk Road hack, uncovering 51,680 BTC (~$3.4 billion at the time).

The Key Is in the Hand of the Beholder

There’s an industry proverb: “not your keys, not your crypto,” which references a feature of many digital currencies called the private key. A private key authorizes actions such as voting, moving currency, or signing a contract. For purposes of worldbuilding, the key can be a digital signature for whatever the writer imagines. It could control currency, security, vehicles, voting rights, declare wedding vows, or even be a signal of identity. Additionally, the key could be digital, physical, or anything in between.

Unlike a bank, which moves money on behalf of a client, a private key holder acts on their own behalf at all times. This safeguards them from a bank run, government asset seizure, and mishandling of funds, such as when FTX used billions of dollars in customer funds to fund its sister company Alameda Research. 

However, there’s no protection from mistakes or misfortune. Money phished, hacked, or sent to the wrong place? Lost the key? Too bad, it’s gone forever. This also means that institutions and criminals will come for you directly. Getting kidnapped for ransom or blackmailed is nothing new, but with private keys, once someone steals a key, they control everything it touches. The more powerful the key, the more its holder becomes a target.

When worldbuilding, consider what access keys should have, how people and institutions might be forced to surrender a key, and how they might protect themselves.

Not all digital currencies use private keys, though. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is controlled by a governing organization and may have complete surveillance and control over the currency. Due to how CBDCs are presented, people sometimes can’t tell the difference. Some fun plot ideas might include a government that pretends to let its citizens have control, only to later reveal that it controlled everything all along, or a criminal organization that creates fake digital currency under the guise of helping the poor.

Integrate the Familiar with the New

Just as it helps to learn about the trials of space exploration when writing a futuristic space opera, digital currencies can be more deeply explored by studying the history of money. Digital currencies inspire familiar virtues and vices, such as greed, avarice, scams, taxation, and philanthropy. This common thread can be used to make the story more relatable and timeless.

For example, a common crypto scam involves a fake token posing as a real token in order to steal money. The scammers convince unsuspecting victims to buy it, perhaps selling it at an attractive discount. This is quite similar to how people made fake gold, and later, counterfeit bills. Though the method is different, counterfeiting is still possible in your crypto-driven world.

Tie It into Your World

In some cases, a heuristic approach is easier than deciding on what technology to include. Here are some questions to help you explore:

• What kind of government is in power, and what are their goals? How might digital currencies enforce its rules?
• What might characters need digital currencies for? Is there anything they can’t buy?
• How does the government enforce and protect its monetary system? How do people protect themselves and their assets?
• Are monetary records public? Why or why not?
• What are legitimate (and illegitimate) ways people acquire money?
• What happens if someone doesn’t have money?

It probably seems strange that something created out of thin air is worth trillions, but it’s been a long time since the dollar and other nations fully collateralized their currencies. Even when this was the case, shiny metal couldn’t feed a starving person, give shelter or protection, unless someone believed it had value. Like religion, money is a shared experience that’s as real as we believe it to be. In 2010, 10,000 BTC bought two pizzas, and now belief makes those same tokens worth over half a billion dollars. Even fictitious monetary concepts, such as in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, can be a foundation for culture and beliefs. 

Though it might appear dry on the surface, money can be a window into intrigue and character motivation. By exploring economics and financial systems, you will learn why digital currencies exist and get a glimpse into a future that could spark your next big idea.  

Have fun, take risks, and find those great narrative returns.

Libby Schultz is a fintech founder, technologist, CEO, educator, and thought leader in the crypto and gaming space. Her professional writing career spans over a decade in Web3 and gaming. Her 2024 5-star debut novel and BookLife Editor’s Pick, Win Condition, is a science fiction cautionary tale about crypto and gaming, inspired by her work in both industries. She studied data science at Carnegie Mellon and is a crypto subject matter expert for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. When not living as a digital nomad, she trains as a circus performer and studies everything about Shiba Inus. You can get her book and find out more about her at https://lib.life/.

The post Enriching Characters and Sociopolitics with Digital Currencies appeared first on SFWA.

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the addition of Poetry and Comics categories to the Nebula Awards.

Award eligibility begins in January 2025, and the first awards for the new categories will be presented at the 2026 Nebula Awards Ceremony.

In other news, SFWA is hiring for a full time position of Office Assistant, and a contract position of Nebula Awards Project Manager. They’re also looking ...Read More

The Washington Post included numerous genre works on their Best of the Year lists.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy list featured 11 titles chosen by their critic Charlie Jane Anders:

• The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt)
• Metal From Heaven, August Clarke (Erewhon)
• Annie Bot, Sierra Greer (Mariner)
• The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)
• The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tor.com)
• The Tusks

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Winners for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced.

The winner in the fiction category is James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), who sometimes writes SF. (See his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.)

Winners were honored at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 20, 2024.

For more information, including the complete lists of winners, see the National Book Foundation site.

While you are here, please

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Edmonton (AKA ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ / Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Canada has announced a bid to host the 88th World Science Fiction Convention in 2030.

Northern Alberta Science Fiction Society chair Mike Johnson said, “Edmonton is one of Canada’s youngest and fastest-growing cities. It’s bubbling with ideas, creativity, diversity, and a can-do attitude. It has an energy that I think science fiction fans from around the globe will find themselves aligned with.”

The committee “has ...Read More

Hachette Book Group has announced its purchase of Sterling Publishing from Barnes & Noble.

Sterling Publishing includes the imprints Union Square & Co., Union Square Kids, Boxer Books, Puzzlewright Press, plus stationery brands. Sterling’s output includes various genre books and gift editions of classic works.

B&N CEO James Daunt cited Union Square’s recent expansion and its need for more resources as a publisher. “Union Square has [outgrown] the infrastructure of ...Read More

by Jeremy Zentner

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a rolling series, Writing from History, in which creators share professional insights related to the work of using historical elements in fictional prose.

Fifty million dead, continents in ashes, and the emergence of a global struggle between two superpowers: World War II changed the path of history forever. It’s only natural that it would be a hot topic for historical fiction, especially the niche genre of alt-history. However, there are many approaches to writing alternate realities for World War II and its aftermath. Writers might benefit from exploring existing work in this subgenre when crafting their own.

Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) is probably the most well-known alt-history involving World War II. It’s also a work that explores the concept of alt-history within the narrative itself. In this timeline, Axis powers conquered the world, splitting the United States between Germany and Japan. Within the American Underground is a subversive book that tells the tale of the Allies winning the war, though not the same way as in our timeline. This provides a layer of irony for readers of Dick’s novel. The Man in the High Castle focuses on slice-of-life vignettes involving characters sometimes pretending to be someone they’re not, amid major plot intrigues like Germany’s plans to annihilate Japan. By the end, facades are lifted, exposing people to harsh realities in an unstable world. Dick’s approach requires a certain amount of narrative ambition, because it goes well beyond the scope of historical knowledge and hints at a larger, more psychedelic approach to the multiverse. 

Some writers have drawn from Dick’s example to blend other science-fiction aesthetics with alt-history. Like Dick’s novel, Peter Tieyaras’s The United States of Japan involves a contraband story that imagines a world without fascism, in a US divided between Germany and Japan; only, instead of a book, a video game is the forbidden medium. The narrative priorities are different, though. This novel depicts a 1980s Japanese pop culture that rebels against the status quo, so we get more of a pulpy escapade that follows investigative tropes and uses oodles of cyberpunk technology. Tieyaras was clearly inspired by Dick, but his writing is  also reminiscent of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). The result is a work that honors its predecessors by creating a new world in the long shadow of genre classics.

Writers do not have to reach for dramatic science-fictional elements to create a thrilling alt-history novel, though. In Robert Harris’s Fatherland, a Kripo officer, Xavier March, investigates a plot that unravels the most horrendous cover-up of all time: the Holocaust. In a 1960s world where the Nazis dominate Europe, an aging Hitler wishes to open friendlier relations with the US and perhaps enlist US support against the Soviet Union. This is a pulpy novel that doesn’t dwell too much on hidden philosophies or fantastical technology. All that’s needed is a sure hand with police-procedurals and mystery plotting; the tragic horror of uncovering atrocity will provide the bulk of the narrative’s alt-history weight.

A writer might also choose a more intimate approach, as many authors with closer cultural ties to World War II atrocities have done. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007) is another investigative story, but Michael Chabon’s book is more interested in questions of ethnic destiny and survival on a philosophical level. In this world, the US takes in Jewish refugees before the end of World War II, and Germany is defeated by 1946 instead of 1945. The state of Israel is later defeated in the Arab-Israeli War, pushing the rest of the Jewish population to Sitka, Alaska, where the US government offers a lease on federal territory until the early 2000s. The story progresses with one of the top Yiddish detectives investigating a murder that is eventually connected to a terrorist plot. Our protagonist finds himself without a homeland, as do his people, but a counterfactual like this one serves to highlight ongoing resilience across timelines, a key theme for many writers of alt-history. 

Harry Turtledove, the master of alt-history to many, also framed work around Jewish characters, but within a more expansive career in the sub-genre. From writing about the American Civil War to the Byzantium, Turtledove’s range of historical what-ifs allowed him to craft a broad counterfactual lore. For some writers, the intricacy of their alt-history worlds is a strong part of market appeal. Still, Turtledove’s In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003) is more of a family drama, which studies the impact of Jewish parents disclosing to their 10-year-old daughter the truth about their secret heritage, in a Nazi-dominated world. By the end, there is a major political shift in Germany that takes inspiration from Soviet history, especially the events that led to the collapse of the USSR. This approach allows Turtledove to write unique alt-history plots using a variety of historical events as source material. 

Another family drama is Philip Roth’s coming-of-age story, The Plot Against America (2004). Roth is a titan in the literary world and brings his own experiences of antisemitism in America to the work. Narrated as a faux autobiography, The Plot Against America describes how Charles Lindbergh (a suspected antisemite in real life) runs against FDR’s third presidential term on an anti-war platform. When elected, Lindbergh begins to disenfranchise the Jewish population by implementing gentrification and youth work programs. For this novel, Roth documented historical accounts of antisemitism in the thirties and forties through research and personal exposure. One scene, involving our narrator encountering a pro-Nazi German-American group at a beer hall, draws from a childhood account. Crafting stories like this takes a certain degree of personal authority, more than the average commercial fiction, but doing so can bring forgotten and undesirable social histories to light.

Even if writing about World War II is not your preferred counterfactual, studying the range of stories available within alt-history might inspire you to tackle your own historical era. The goal is always to match the form of your story with your aims as a storyteller. Whether you focus on the historiography of another timeline, individual reactions to extreme circumstances, or flawed characters in a gritty whodunnit, the possibilities for crafting a distinct tale are endless.

Jeremy Zentner is a librarian and a sci-fi addict. He has published short stories in sci-fi and supernatural fiction and was a finalist for the STBF Illinois Author Project. He lives in rural Illinois, USA.

The post The Many Alt-Histories of World War II appeared first on SFWA.

Auction house Christie’s has announced their “first sale dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy,” with bidding open from November 28, 2024 to December 12, 2024.

The auction “will explore the extraordinary history of the genres through the books, objects and artworks that continue to inspire new generations of readers and viewers.”

Highlights include The Dune Bible, “an extraordinary artefact from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune project (estimate: £250,000-350,000);” an “exquisite ...Read More

The winner, finalists, and honorable mentions for the 2024 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced.

The winner is “A Shrine by the Sea” by Syed Zain Haroon. Finalists are “The Shopkeeper’s Remedy” by Manahil Bandukwala and “The 11th Wish” by Raazia Sajid. Honorable mentions are “On the Moonglow Road” by Ramsha Farooq Raja and “Hexes on Exes” by Zuha Siddiqui.

The Salam Award, “a short story award to ...Read More

The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year” with three fiction and three non-fiction titles.

The fiction shortlist includes James by occasional SF writer Percival Everett (Knopf). The non-fiction list includes Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of ...Read More

James by Percival Everett (Knopf) is the winner of the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024, and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books) is the winner for Children’s Book of the Year.

Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner was announced on November 15, 2024.

For more, see the Barnes and Noble website.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

MILESTONES

ROY GRAHAM, K ARSE­NAULT RIVERA, and SASCHA STRONACH are now represent­ed by Arley Sorg of kt literary.

LAURA BLACKWELL is now represented by Jake Lovell of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

AWARDS

JOHN HORNOR JACOBS received the Heasley Prize for Fiction, presented October 22, 2024 at his alma mater, Lyon College in AR.

BOOKS SOLD

TIM LEBBON sold folk horror novel Secret Lives of the Dead to Cath Trechman ...Read More

Author, actor, critic, and filmmaker Tim Sullivan, 76, died November 10, 2024 in hospice care in Newport News VA.

Timothy Robert Sullivan was born June 9, 1948 in Bangor ME. He studied literature and got his degree at Florida Atlantic University, and spent time in Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Southern California.

He began publishing SF with “Tachyon Rage” in 1977 (as Timothy Robert Sullivan). “Zeke” (1981) was a Nebula Awards ...Read More

Time magazine has released a list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. Works of genre interest include:

• Ghostroots, ’Pemi Aguda (Norton)
• The Book Censor’s Library, Bothayna Al-Essa (Restless)
• Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
• Your Utopia, Bora Chung (Algonquin)
• You Glow in the Dark, Liliana Colanzi (New Directions)
• A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enríquez (Hogarth)
• James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)
• The Bright

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Author Bruce Boston, 81, died November 11, 2024. He was best known as a poet, but was also a prolific prose writer. He was the recipient of the first Grand Master award presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) in 1999.

Bruce David Boston was born July 16, 1943 in Chicago IL and grew up in Southern California. He moved to the Bay Area in 1961 and attended UC ...Read More

The winners of the second Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Awards, honoring the best in Chinese SF writing, were announced on November 9, 2024.

Sci-Fi Master Achievement

• Han Song

Sci-Fi Promoter Achievement

• San Feng

Sci-Fi Educator Achievement

• Li Guangyi

Sci-Fi Publisher Achievement

• Yang Feng

Sci-Fi Translator Achievement

• Li Keqin

Sci-Fi Academy Award

• Yan Feng

Marco Polo Award

• Francesco Verso

Best Novel

• Once Upon a Time in Nanjing, Tianrui Shuofu

Best

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A.D. Sui is a Ukrainian-born, queer, disabled science fiction writer, and the author of THE DRAGONFLY GAMBIT and the forthcoming Erewhon novel, THE IRON GARDEN SUTRA (2026). She is a failed academic, retired fencer, and coffee enthusiast. Her short fiction has appeared in Augur, Fusion Fragment, HavenSpec, and other venues. When not wrangling her two dogs you can find her on every social media platform as @thesuiway – https://thesuiway.ca/

Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the owner of Space Cowboy Books bookstore and publishing house, producer of Simultaneous Times Podcast (2023 Laureate Award Winner, BSFA, Ignyte, and British Fantasy Award Finalist), and editor of the SFPA’s Star*Line magazine. He is also the deputy editor-in-chief of Worlds of IF & Galaxy magazines. In 2024 he won the Laureate Award for Best Editor. He has written many books of poetry and science fiction. https://spacecowboybooks.com/

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JPG – The Dragonfly Gambit has all of the elements of space opera: a big story, politics, empire, worldbuilding, etc., but unlike most modern space operas the book is short – how did you manage to create such a large-scale story in so few words, and what are your feelings on space opera as a sub-genre?

A.D. S – First, thank you so much! I want to say that space opera has a long-running tradition of glorifying empires. They’re almost the natural default government system in far-future science fiction, which positions them as a sort of inevitability. But historically, we know this isn’t true. Empires fall all the time. That’s the whole point. So, I really wanted to focus on a time of an empire falling.

As far as the structure goes, I can’t remember who said it, it might have been one of my agency siblings, but in a novel, each scene fights for its right to exist. In a short story, every sentence does. A novella is somewhere in between, so my editing wasn’t as ruthless as it would have been for a short story, but I was definitely focusing on each sentence delivering either character development or new information, and preferably both. Also, as much as it is a space opera, it also has *one* location where most of the action takes place. So, I could really go into a lot of detail about the world/order of things by describing this one place instead of jumping between locations.  

JPG – One of the themes in the book is sacrifice and martyrdom, sacrifice being an arcane tradition to the culture in the book – can you speak about the nature of sacrifice and weighing individual characters against large-scale problems?

A.D. S – It’s a bit of a pipe dream to think that one person can shift the tides of history. I don’t think anyone is that special. It’s one of the reasons why, as a genre, science fiction and fantasy are moving away from, or challenging, the Chosen One narrative. But how often do you see a disabled protagonist who is a woman, in her thirties, and by every marker, a failure, be The Chosen One? That was fun to write, and yes, very self-indulgent. 

Now, sacrifice and martyrdom were two themes that felt natural when having a conversation about militaries. Martyrdom is baked into military culture, you can’t escape it. Historically, militaries uphold and immortalize those who lose their lives in combat. We label these people as heroes while simultaneously treating them terribly while they’re still alive or if they remained alive (see the utter lack of any decent veterans’ services). It’s easier to herald someone as a hero than to actually treat them as such. There is a tension in there between the shine of heroism, and the loss of life and the absolute meaninglessness of it while it’s still there. 

JPG – Many of the characters are fighter pilots, and there some epic dog fights in the novella. Can you speak about writing action scenes in space?

A.D. S – Oh, so much fun! I am notoriously not great when it comes to writing action scenes and things get even trickier in space. Where is up in space? Who knows, not me. There was a lot of ‘paperclip flying over my laptop’ involved in developing those. 

Fun fact: since there is no air resistance in space those fighters don’t need to be aerodynamic at all. They can just be cubes. That’s a fun thought! 

JPG – The book is written in a casual tone which emphasizes the confidence of the protagonist, Nez. Can you speak about her self-assuredness amidst disability and being ostracized? 

A.D. S – That’s my Eastern European sense of humor coming through. The logic behind gallows humor goes as such: if you can laugh about it, then it’s not so bad, and Nez has had a lot of bad stuff happen to her and a lot of people treat her poorly. In many ways, it’s a wall she places between herself and everyone else. A few times during the story you see the cracks form and you peek inside and see how these insults get to her, how difficult it is for her to execute her plan, how much her disability frustrates her even as she believes herself capable. But to the outside observer she’s calm and confident. It’s all a ruse, one she keeps up until the very end. 

JPG – Similarly, the antagonist, Rezal, masks weakness with bravado – can you speak about this choice and how she counterbalances Nez?

A.D. S – Rezal is an interesting character because she has just as much to lose as Nez if she is found out, but where Nez can use the image of the “poor, disabled woman” to her advantage to get people to underestimate her, Rezal can’t. Her whole persona is built around the image of perfection and indestructibility. One of the games that Nez and Rezal are playing is the assessment of how capable each one is. Each one knows the other’s secret and tries to force their hand to reveal it. 

JPG – Even though most of the story takes place on a spaceship, the decadence of power is vividly described, as are the unnecessary accouttrements of power. Tell us about using setting to explore power dynamics.

A.D. S – So many of the visual elements in Rezal’s living quarters are inspired by Russian aristocracy. I’m Ukrainian, so we’ve been fed this idea of the “superior Russian culture” for a very long time. Progress was positioned as gold-framed oil portraits and heavy, long, dining room tables. Carpets and applique wallpaper. This comes up several times in Rezal’s and Nez’s conversations about what progress is and what the colonies were before the Rule. Nez, and her people are positioned as “uncivilized” before the Rule and suggested that they should be grateful to assimilate into a prosperous empire.
We also see that this decadence of décor does nothing to stop the ultimate fall. From her “shithole” apartment and then her equally unimpressive quarters aboard the mothership, Nez manages to achieve her goal, even if she never improves her “status”. The shiny things mean nothing to her, same as the “Great Russian Culture” means nothing to me. 

JPG – One aspect of the characters that stuck out to me is the tenderness between adversaries, how did you use this to heighten the drama of the story?

A.D. S – I’ve heard a number of times now that Dragonfly is an enemies-to-lovers story, and it’s not! There is no love there. There are many people who have complicated and mainly negative feelings towards one another. They also have sex.
The moments of tenderness serve a purpose. I didn’t want to write characters that were all bad, comedically bad even. Plenty of terrible people in history had soft spots for family members, for their pets. I wanted to highlight that, specifically in Rezal. There is no redemption for her, she is borderline evil, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want connection. That’s the most awful part of it, I think, that people who commit horrible atrocities are also people who want to be loved and cared for. Those two drives don’t cancel out one another. They co-exist, and that’s why we should always be careful. It’s not the comedically evil people that are the most dangerous. 

JPG – In relation to the previous question, tell us about using sexuality as a weapon, seduction versus betrayal, and how the corruption of power plays into this while personal feelings are also on the line.

A.D. S – I think at some point Rezal buys into the idea that Nez is into her, and Nez really *is* into Rezal. But this is more of a “game recognizes game” scenario than genuine affection. It’s all part of them trying to get the other to slip, just another technique. I also think sex is a great opportunity to demonstrate the ways in which power might shift even if for a moment. 

*shout out to my editor, dave, who didn’t edit the sex scene in the book because if he did I would have shriveled up and never written anything ever again. 

JPG – In some ways this book is about revenge, but it didn’t feel like the classic revenge tale – how did you navigate this trope while keeping it fresh?

A.D. S – I never thought of Dragonfly as a revenge story. To me, it’s a redemption story of how Nez figures out what she stands for and how far she’s willing to go for her convictions. Shay rightfully calls her out on her moral high ground early in the book. Even given the circumstances, she had participated in the very structure she is attempting to bring down. She even wanted to thrive within its parameters without challenging them. That’s a fact. She has to reckon with that before she can move ahead.
Shamefully, I hadn’t read that many classic revenge stories, so I am largely unfamiliar with the tropes!

JPG – What’s next for you, and what are you currently working on?

A.D. S – I recently announced that I’ll be having not one, but two whole books coming from Erewhon. So, I’m currently in editing land, trying to keep my search history from placing me on a watch list. (shameless plug) I’d encourage anyone curious about what’s coming up to subscribe to my newsletter, Facts for Fiction [https://thesuiway.beehiiv.com/subscribe].