Ask the Author: M.L. Brennan

“I'm answering questions about writing, the American Vampire/Generation V book series, and whatever else you might come up with!” M.L. Brennan

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I just finished Dark Ascension and i was wondering what you have in store for us next, will Fort evolve a bit more ?

M.L. Brennan Hi Paterne! First, I'm delighted that you checked out Dark Ascension, and I hope that you enjoyed it.

(quick note -- what follows contains spoilers for all four books in the series)

In terms of Fort's physiological journey, where he was at the end of Dark Ascension was as far as he was going to go for the remainder of the series. His mother was gone, and so were both of his host parents, and he now needed to feed independently. In terms of strength and speed -- that's as far as he was going. I had two more books planned and broadly outlined, and there weren't going to be any more large physical breakthroughs like the ones that happened in Generation V, Tainted Blood, or Dark Ascension.

What was planned was more of an emotional evolution for him. The end of Dark Ascension is really the pinnacle of Fort's idealism -- what was going to come in the next two books would really challenge that. To borrow momentarily from the musical Hamilton, "Winning was easy, young man, governing is harder."

Thanks for the fantastic question, and for checking out the series!

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Hi, I'm loving your vampire series, but the end is rapidly approaching and I'm wondering if there are any more books in the works? Or maybe a spin-off regarding Suzumi? Inquiring minds want to know!

M.L. Brennan Hi Cynthia! I'm so glad that you've enjoyed the series, and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. There are no current plans at Roc to continue the series. Because I don’t have contracts for either Book Five or Six, I have not written them. For now, I’m currently working on other projects. For a more detailed explanation, please check out my website: https://mlbrennan.com/2015/09/10/ques...

I am working on other projects right now, which I'm really excited about, and hopefully I'll have news to share in the future. Regarding spin-offs -- I probably wouldn't spin off Suzume herself, just because she and Fort are really important in the way that they balance each other, but I do have some thoughts on giving a series to another member of the kitsune clan. Who it is would be a surprise! :) Thanks again for your interest, and for the question!

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Please tell me book 5 is coming out soon?

M.L. Brennan Hi Christine! I'm so glad that you've enjoyed the series, and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. There are no current plans at Roc to continue the series. Because I don’t have contracts for either Book Five or Six, I have not written them. For now, I’m currently working on other projects. For a more detailed explanation, please check out my website: https://mlbrennan.com/2015/09/10/ques...

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What books are on your summer reading list this year?

M.L. Brennan My to-read pile is so huge that it has now scored its own little bookshelf in my dining room (I have bookshelves in every room in my house except the bathroom, which is hallowed ground), but here are a few of the ones that I am really excited about picking up soon:

The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
Nevernight by Jay Kristoff
The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
Wanderlust by Ann Aguire

As you can see, this is a bit of a mix, which is how I like it. We've got space opera, fantasy, non-fiction, and one massive piece of literary fiction. It also has a mix of things from authors I've read before and loved (Kameron Hurley and Lauren Hillenbrand) entries in ongoing series (Ann Aguire and Lois McMaster Bujold), books with huge reputation that I've never read before and would like to tick off my bucket list (Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished opus), and books that I saw on the bookstore shelf and just had to grab despite not knowing anything about them other than the cover description (Jay Kristoff & Dean King).

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What are you currently working on? Asked 3/12/17

M.L. Brennan I actually have two short stories coming out in two really fun new anthologies from Ragnarok Publications -- one is a story about the pilot of a giant mech in MECH: AGE OF STEEL (out in April 2017), and the other is about a hedge witch who is a volunteer nurse in WWI in HATH NO FURY (out in August 2017).

Have you thought about self-pubbing the series? A lot of authors do that now when a publisher drops the series.

M.L. Brennan Thanks for the question, Rachel, and I'm so glad that you've enjoyed the series! I currently have no plans to self-pub the series. I know some authors who have chosen to go in this route, and completely support their choice, but it does not make financial sense for me to take this path. Currently I am working on other projects, and hopefully will have new work on bookshelves at some point in the future. However, I have all of my notes on 5 and 6, and if I ever got a contract from a publisher for those books, I would be more than happy to write and release them.

I know that this isn't what people want to hear, and I get this question a lot, but writing a book takes me anywhere from six months to a year. In the meantime, I need to eat and pay my bills. To self-publish a book would mean to do all of the writing, then hire and pay an editor out of my pocket (because if the original manuscripts of the GenV books were published, they wouldn't have been nearly as good as they were after I'd worked with my editor's notes), then a copy-editor, then a cover artist. I'd be in the hole for a lot of money to make that book look even half as professional as it would working with a publishing house. Then I'd have to be begging for blog reviews, possibly paying for advertising, and spending a lot of time shilling myself on social media, because I'd have to sell copies in order to try to even break even, much less make a profit -- that's practically a full-time job in itself, and one that I don't want to do, because it means less time actually getting to write. In addition, my potential audience would be significantly less than it is -- no people finding the book on a bookstore shelf, or hearing about it through Roc advertising.

Working through a traditional publisher meant that on the day that the GenV books went on sale, I had advance money in my pocket. If I'd never sold a single copy, I'd still have come out ahead. If I self-published and sold 500 copies, I might still be chipping away at debt. While I respect those who go the self-publishing route, it is not for me.

And before anyone asks, no, I am also not interested in attempting crowd-funding at this particular time.

For another perspective on this, I encourage people to read an amazing Facebook post written by one of my favorite urban fantasy writers, Rob Thurman (her Cal Leandros was a huge influence on how I wrote the first GenV book): https://www.facebook.com/Thurmanuclea...

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When is the 5th book of Generation V coming out, Ma'am?

M.L. Brennan I'm so glad that you've enjoyed the series, and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. There are no current plans at Roc to continue the series. Because I don’t have contracts for either Book Five or Six, I have not written them. For now, I’m currently working on other projects. For a more detailed explanation, please check out my website: https://mlbrennan.com/2015/09/10/ques....

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Will there be a fifth Generation V book?

M.L. Brennan Hi Mega! At the present time my publisher has not contracted me for the final two planned Generation V books, so at this time I am not working on the fifth Generation V book. This doesn't mean that the series is decisively ended, but it does mean that I'm concentrating on other projects. I'm currently working on a new series, but unfortunately it's too early to give any details. As soon as I have news that I can share, I'll put it up on my blog.

But I'll be back in print in January 2017, in the anthology MECH: Age of Steel, which was Kickstarter funded and will be put out from Ragnarok Press. I'm extremely excited about this project, as my story will be featured alongside such great writers as Jason Hough, Martha Wells, Gini Koch, Kevin J. Anderson, and Anton Strout! I will also be contributing to another anthology from Ragnarok called HELL HATH NO FURY. This anthology will also be funded through Kickstarter this summer.

Thanks so much for the question, and hopefully I'll have more news soon!

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What are you currently working on? If I remember correctly, there wont be any more Generation V books? Asked 7-14-16

M.L. Brennan Hi Adam! I'm currently working on a new series, but unfortunately it's too early to give any details. As soon as I have news that I can share, I'll put it up on my blog.

But I'll be back in print in January 2017, in the anthology MECH: Age of Steel, which was Kickstarter funded and will be put out from Ragnarok Press. I'm extremely excited about this project, as my story will be featured alongside such great writers as Jason Hough, Martha Wells, Gini Koch, Kevin J. Anderson, and Anton Strout! I will also be contributing to another anthology from Ragnarok called HELL HATH NO FURY. This anthology will also be funded through Kickstarter this summer.

Thanks so much for the question, and hopefully I'll have more news soon!

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So the Generation V series got cancelled and you aren't wiling to do Independent publishing to finish the series. That sucks! Moving on. What are you currently writing and when can we expect to see it? Asked 5-1-16

M.L. Brennan I'm currently working on a new series, but unfortunately it's too early to give any details. As soon as I have news that I can share, I'll put it up on my blog.

But I also got the opportunity to contribute a short story to a mech anthology being put out by Ragnarok Press. The anthology is currently being funded on Kickstarter, and is now only $1,000 away from its goal! The Kickstarter ends on May 13, 2016, and the details can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/.... I'm extremely excited about this project, as my story will be featured alongside such great writers as Jason Hough, Martha Wells, Gini Koch, Kevin J. Anderson, and Anton Strout!

Thanks so much for the question, and hopefully I'll have more news soon!

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Would you happen to know when the fifth book of the series will be released? I'm addicted.

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[This is a question that I’ve gotten a lot. Up until now, every time a Generation V book debuted, I already had a scheduled release date for the next book ready to be announced. Iron Night and Tainted Blood even came out in the same year!

When I originally sold this series to Roc, I had a completed draft of Generation V, and I signed a contract for a trilogy. By signing me for a trilogy, Roc was showing a commitment to my concept and giving me a chance to build up an audience – after all, this was my debut, and they had no way of knowing if I could sell a single book. If I think of urban fantasy as a genre, one of the things that really differentiates it from other types of fantasy is its feature of very long-running series. Think of the Mercy Thompson series, the Dresden Files, the Cal Leandros series, etc. Roc was hoping that my series could be one of those as well (and, let’s be honest, I was as well). The trilogy was intended as a test – neither Roc or I ever had any intention of Fort Scott’s story being tied up neatly by the end of the third book, and I designed my plotlines and my plans accordingly. (I actually plotted out six books)

What became apparent very quickly was that this series just wasn’t catching fire like Roc had hoped. There were lots of reasons for this – urban fantasy is a crowded marketplace with a lot of fantastic voices, vampires are so overplayed and sexualized that I think that 90% of potential fans went screaming in the other direction as soon as they even heard the word “vampire”, a lot of people picked up the first book expecting a paranormal romance and were pretty disappointed, a male lead who isn’t an alpha male who punches things a lot is a lot harder sell than I ever would’ve expected, the marketing and covers were a little disjointed, I’m not exactly a natural marketer, and probably a hundred other reasons. If Roc had had to make a decision about continuing the series or not in the months after Generation V came out, I can tell you with confidence that it wouldn’t have happened at all.

So there was a very sluggish sales start to the series. Generation V as a novel had a mixed reception – there were a lot of readers who were pleasantly surprised (and it got some incredible support from bloggers and reviewers who went on to be tireless cheerleaders of my quirky little series) and a bunch of others who were completely confused at what they’d just read. Thinking back, there were two main reactions: “This wasn’t the romance I was expecting, Fort is a doormat, and I hate this series,” and “I had to hear from five different friends that I needed to read this, and I expected this to be a disaster, but I loved it.” Believe me, that wasn’t quite the reception that Roc was hoping for.

Initial sales for Iron Night were a lot stronger than Generation V’s had been, but still not enough – I was told around that time that it wasn’t likely that there would be a fourth book. I was writing Tainted Blood at that time, so I made some adjustments accordingly – in my original plan, Madeline died at the conclusion of the third book, and the fourth book would be the immediate fallout from that event, but I just didn’t like the idea of potentially ending the series with an event that would never have its necessary payoff. I moved elements around until I had a book that I thought readers could be okay with if this was the end of the series. I had intended for Fort and Suze’s relationship to change in the third book, and that was something that readers had been very focused on in their feedback to me, so I hoped that it would be enough of a payoff.

What ended up happening was unexpected – the people watching the sales numbers began to feel optimistic about the series. Iron Night didn’t have a wave of initial sales, but the sales for Generation V perked up when the second book came out, and, for the first time, there began to be a lot of e-book sales in the series. There were apparently some discussions at the publisher, and what they ultimately felt was that there was a chance that the third book (which was at that point rumbling toward publication, as I’d already handed off the completed manuscript) could be the breakthrough moment that they’d been hoping for. And if that happened, they wanted the fourth book to be ready to go. So I was offered a contract to write a fourth book for the series – but only the fourth book, because Roc was very well aware that it might NOT result in the series hooking into the big sales that had been passing it by, and they didn’t want to be committed to a lot more books in a mid to low selling series.

I thought a lot about writing the fourth book. For one thing, it came with a pay cut – for reasons that I think are pretty reasonable from their end of things, Roc was not offering me as much money to write Dark Ascension as they had paid me to write each of the first three books. An industry professional who I respect very much advised me not to accept the contact and to put my efforts toward a new series instead. Ultimately, I did take the contract. Part of it was optimism – that bit of hoping against hope (and all previous evidence) that the series would actually start doing well. Mostly, though, I knew that the fourth book was when I was finally going to get to pull the trigger on a lot of key events that I’d been building toward – Madeline’s death, Fort’s transition, the first feeding on human blood, Fort’s first major loss, and the coup. I wanted to write it, and I really wanted all of the people who’d hung in there, read the series, talked about the series, and showed so much support to be able to see what happens (at least a little of it).

That’s why I signed the contract and wrote the book, so that’s why Dark Ascension exists at all. And I’m really proud of it, and pleased with it, even though it’s pretty clear at this point that there were a lot of readers who were really not okay with the sharp left that I took the series on. (for the record – yes, that was intentional. The first three books always had a murder mystery as the primary element with other plotlines brewing in the background, the second three were going to flip that ratio around and be much more about politics and factions, with a particular inciting incident going on in the background – in this case, the succubi. For one thing, I was getting tired of how formulaic it was getting, for another, that wasn’t who Fort was anymore – the problems had gotten bigger, and removing Madeline from the equation needed to destabilize everything – no more end scene where Mommy sorted everyone into their corners and tied up loose threads)
In terms of sales – Tainted Blood was the best that the series ever did. The best preorders, initial book sales, and initial e-book sales. You guys, the fans, you did everything you could, and I’m so incredibly grateful.

And then came the flatline. Because, unfortunately, this series never tapped in to the major urban fantasy market. Again, there are a hundred possible reasons for that. But when Dark Ascension came out, it had a good first week (again, you guys were so great with pre-orders and with buying in the first week), but it was an almost identical week as Tainted Blood. The series just hasn’t expanded, and Roc just isn’t going to continue a series with this level of readership. When I talk with authors who have been in the business ten or twenty years longer than I have, they say that things used to be different. Series were given longer to build audiences. There were series that were continued even when they didn’t have huge numbers. More publicity was given to the smaller authors and series. Would the Generation V series have been continued under those conditions? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.

This has been a very long way of answering what was a very simple question. I think part of that is because I hate to say “no” to that question. I had a lot of confidence in what I had planned for the fifth and sixth books, and I was excited about where things were going. There’s also a real feeling of disappointment to all of this – there’s a large part of me that feels like I failed. Now, I keep reminding myself that I didn’t – after all, I published four books with a major publisher! The books actually did sell copies! But it’s hard to shake that feeling, and it’s been a bit of a sad month for me.

Here’s the bottom line – I don’t have contracts for the remaining two books in the series. I have all of my notes and plans written down, but the books aren’t written, and without a contract in hand I am not going to write them. It would take me about six months to write each of the books, and that’s six months that I’m probably a lot better off devoting to a new series that had a chance of getting published. I’m actually working on a new series right now, which I’m very optimistic about.

Dark Ascension is, at the present time, probably going to be the final book for Fort Scott. It’s not where I had wanted to end the series, but if I had to end it early, it’s probably the best possible stopping point. It is, without a doubt, pretty sad. But I’m going to do the best thing I can, which is to move forward. After all, if I write something later that is a hit, and the Generation V series suddenly gets more attention, I can pick my old notes back up and write the last two books. This isn’t like Firefly – in a book, Nathan Fillion will always fit into his tight pants. Fort will always be waiting right where I left him – standing at the edge of a brave new world of idealism and individual voices that is, I assure you, about to go disastrously wrong. (hide spoiler)]

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The ritualistic murders you wrote about in your second book were haunting. Did you come up with those on your own or was there a certain source you used to help you. And don't worry, I have no plans of murdering anyone. Thank you!

M.L. Brennan This question coincides perfectly with the launch of my new nation-wide campaign: Just Say No... To Ritualistic Murders.

The idea that killing someone in a ritualistic way in order to get some kind of magic going is certainly nothing new in fantasy, and years of watching shows like X-Files and Supernatural certainly gave me a lot of visual samples. I've also seen a few seasons of Dexter, and that certainly also played a part. So the visual aspect was there, but I've also always been interested in accounts of the Druids -- both historical fantasy as well as articles about what we actually know about what went on, and so I've seen some interesting accounts, theories, and stories that were based on ritualized murder. Plus at one point when I was living in Pittsburgh the bog mummies exhibit came to the local natural history museum, so it's possible that I've been within a foot (plus glass case and velvet rope) of a victim of ritualized murder.

So all these things were kind of sloshing around in the back of my brain when I was coming up with the basic plot elements of Iron Night. A lot of things came together really well there -- I'd established that the magic system of the witches was being used to address the fertility issues of the Ad-hene back in Generation V, and it was a great chance to push that to a natural tension point. And once I had that, then I just had to plan my ritualistic murder.

I won't get into too many of the details -- not for spoiler reasons, but mostly because my editor had me tone things way back from what was initially there (I'll give a hint -- there used to be consumption as part of the ritual) -- but I took a pretty methodical approach to it. Since increased fertility was the purpose of the ritual, I knew that I wanted the victims to be young. I chose to make the victims male simply because I thought that horribly mutilating young women was a bit cliche, and that also gave me a rather obvious choice of appendage to have removed. The idea of immersion is a classic one -- I credit that portion of the ritual to stories about Elizabeth Bathory. I ended up including hand removal because it gave me a good detail for the scene where Fort discovers Gage's body.

One of the funny things about when you're building one of these scenes is that at no point did I actually ever creep myself out. It was just a bit of a problem-solving puzzle. It was only months after I'd written it that my editor asked me to tone things back, and I was rather sulky about it at the time. Then months after that the first advanced copies went out and I utterly horrified a few bloggers that I'm friendly with -- I remember my first reaction being "What? What are you upset about?"

So I guess the whole lesson about the situation is that A) I'm so glad that that part of the book had such a lasting impression with you!, and B) I lose all perspective on anything when I'm in the middle of writing something.

Thanks for the awesome question!

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Do you have anything planned after you have completed the American Vampire series? Any chance at writing a spin off novel featuring a certain, mischievous Kitsune?

M.L. Brennan I'd love to write more in this world, and right now I have the Generation V books planned out to at least a sixth installment, but a lot of what happens next depends on how sales do after Tainted Blood comes out in November. Urban fantasy is a very crowded field right now, and I know that my publisher is being very cautious about new UF series.

As far as a spin off novel or series -- I like the kitsune quite a lot, and I'd love to explore them further. Suzume's story is too closely entwined in the primary events of the current series, but I wouldn't mind exploring the lives of some of her interesting cousins, or possibly even Atsuko someday.

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How do you get inspired to write?

M.L. Brennan Inspiration is a funny thing. Sometimes you just wake up in the morning and you know that it's going to be a good writing day. Other times physical exercise can help -- take a nice walk and you suddenly feel ready to write. It can be a seasonal thing as well - I really enjoy writing on warm sunny days when I can open the window and let a breeze come through the room.

That being said, one of the most important things that I have learned is that it's important to not just wait until you get inspired to write. Writing is like a muscle, and if you exercise it enough, you don't have to wait for the days of inspiration to roll around to get words on the page. The more you write, the easier it gets -- you'll still have those days where everything is perfect and the words absolutely flow, but at the same time you'll also be able to sit down and write even when the words are more stubborn.

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What are you currently working on?

M.L. Brennan Right now I'm working on the fourth Fortitude Scott book. I have all the pieces of what I want to occur in the book, and now I'm pulling elements together and making an outline.

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