No. 27: A Lot Going On At the Moment

Peek Behind the Curtain of New Novel, Coven, and More

I know I promised you Part 2 of my past adventures in Hollywood this week, but that’ll come next diary instead, because we have some important updates first.

It’s been a big week in Soman Land, a fictional kingdom full of sparkles and angst, but also a kingdom with a portal into real life.

All of you have been patiently waiting for more news on New Novel, the one I’ve been working on like a dog for two years and is turning me rabid, little by little, but we’re not quiiiiiite ready to announce that one. Announcements usually mean the train has left the station and it’s all systems go, and in this case, we have a few more systems-checks before I’m ready to drop the bomb on what the book’s about. Because when I do, everyone will have… questions.

For right now, then, it stays Untitled Global Political Espionage Sexy Soap Opera Thriller — which might be the best title of all.

OH! I also started doodling with a cover concept for New Novel that I love and am hoping makes the distance. Most of the time, I don’t have a concrete idea for a cover and leave it 100% to the artist. That’s how the first School for Good and Evil happened, with the incomparable Iacopo Bruno creating the logo for the series, plus planting that visual switch between Sophie and Agatha onto the wrong sides of the castle.

Iacopo Bruno’s original sketch.

And then in the case of Beasts & Beauty, Julia Iredale presented 6 rough sketches of ideas — and #5 immediately jolted me, a green spooky vision of a wolf about to eat a girl. It was so brilliant, so perfect, that I remember calling my editor Toni and saying: It has to be this one. Just like this, I insisted. No edits. Don’t touch it! Except this was Julia’s sketch, meaning in no way was it even close to final, only to me it was final, which is why you leave it to one of the world’s most legendary editors to commune with one of the world’s best artists and resolve that delicate dance. (If an editor ever called me and told me they wanted to publish my first draft, I’d set the phone on fire.) But in the end, Julia made only a couple small changes. Otherwise Beasts & Beauty’s cover is her first rendering — and would go on to win multiple awards and even be displayed in a national gallery exhibition.

First, and final draft of Beasts & Beauty by Julia Iredale.

For the Rise & Fall duology, I wanted something a little more manga in style, because there was something very anime and elevated about the relationship between Rhian and Rafal, plus I also wanted the books to stand apart from the other six volumes of the series. So we hired visionary artist Raide and in the case of both covers, she had a vision for the poses of the twin brothers and nailed them in a couple of drafts.

Rise of the School for Good & Evil, cover by Raide.

A few times, I’ve had my own ideas for the cover, which I usually illustrate with stick figures, since I can’t draw to save my life.

Specifically, for Book 5, A Crystal of Time, I knew I wanted a crystal ball that would have half the characters upside down, everything aglow in fluorescing stalactites, which ended up requiring a fifth and sixth color during printing. I remember huddling over a lightboard multiple times with Toni and Amy Ryan, the designer of my first nine books, assessing the cover jacket proofs that came in, all of us determined to get those neons to pop the right way, since they weren’t traditional hues.

For New Novel, I also have a clear idea of a cover, but team feedback will soon tell me if it’s viable.

And then there’s Coven — which I can now actually talk about, given we revealed its existence last week!

It’s my surprise book for 2025, and yes, I delighted in keeping it a secret, because I, like many of you, am a Swiftie, and we all know Swifties love a good surprise announcement.

A bit more about the book. It’s a graphic novel, horror / murder mystery about three witches (named Hester, Anadil, and Dot), who are dispatched to a new world called Red Isle to solve the sinister case of the Face Killer — whose victims’ faces vanish before they drop dead.

Yes, it’s as goth and trippy and unhinged as it sounds, and it’s my first graphic novel, 270+ full-color pages, illustrated by Joel Gennari, and it will be out in both paperback and hardcover on April 1, 2025, with the UK release to follow 10 days later. We’ve been working on it since 2020; graphic novels are just very, very slow, because of how immersive and intensive the illustration process is, and in many ways, it’s more an artist’s medium than an author’s.

Some other fun facts about Coven —

I signed the contract for it back in 2019, when I had a completely different idea for my first graphic novel. I wanted it to be called FEAST, about a 5-star magical restaurant called Beauty & The Feast, where all the famous fairy tale characters from the Endless Woods would dine during their latest adventures. The novel would follow all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans at this luxury establishment, full of magic and mischief and wonderful food (mermaid-mist mushrooms, anyone?). I worked on it for a year before I realized that an enchanted restaurant just didn’t give enough variance in the visual canvas for a fully graphic experience and it would be better as a prose novella or something else.

So what to do with this graphic novel contract, then? I waited months for a story to come. And then it did: a red-drenched, unsettling, gothic murder case, pursued by a vigilante detective… But it just seemed too dark and weird and horror for young readers. Unless. Unless! The detective wasn’t one – but three. Three witches who worked as a coven outside the usual moral lines of Good and Evil. And didn’t I know how to write witches like that?

A few other thoughts for the week:

• One of my favorite Substacks is M.L. Rio’s Discursions, also a diary of her novel writing, and she gives commits as much to it as she does her wonderful books. Her latest entry is a harrowing examination of her ‘method writing’ process, which is the complete opposite of how I write. She sinks so deep into the creative space where she risks almost not coming out. On the other hand, I experience writing like a dreamscape, where I’m lucid dreaming and conjuring onto the page and as soon as I “wake up” for the day or snap out of it, it’s gone, all the memories and feelings of what I wrote until I look at it the next day.

• You want a good example of writing matching form? Read the lyrics for “Apple” by Charli xcx, which seem absolutely inane… and then listen to the song to feel all the levels.  (Also try not to get it stuck in your head.)

• My friends all know I was rooting for Joe Biden to stay in the race. Yes, yes, I know I was the only one. But there was something remarkable about the way he stood up to the pressure for 3 weeks, just taking every knife, even from his closest friends, and refusing to bend. Against Trump, who is running on toughness alone, I could think of nothing tougher than withstanding the onslaught and refusing to go down. This is the problem with being a fantasy author. We long for the best story, sometimes, rather than the right one.

Next week, we’re back to Hollywood, for more war stories, including a world where Rupaul (!!!) might have ended up playing the School Master in The School for Good and Evil.

Until next week…