We chat with author Claire Winn about City of Vicious Night, the sequel to her debut novel City of Shattered Light, writing challenges, book recommendations, and more! PLUS we also have an excerpt for you to read at the end of the interview!
Hi, Claire! Welcome back to The Nerd Daily! How has the last 18 months been for you?
Hey, thanks for having me back! After City of Shattered Light released, I had bit of a break before City of Vicious Night edits began. I hadn’t estimated just how much work would come between the book deal and release, so debut year was a whirlwind of adventures, opportunities, and new friends. In 2022, I took some time away from the publishing industry to reconnect with what made me start writing in the first place—it helped immensely to rediscover fulfillment outside of an industry that can easily consume my life if I let it. So I’m finishing up some new things and have others I’m excited to work on!
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had stories and characters in my head. That creativity has manifested in different ways—theatre, digital art, sculpture, and finally writing books. I previously wanted to create a graphic novel series, but drawing and prose are two separate skills, and I decided to focus on writing stories longform. Also, I played a lot of video games as a teenager, and wanting to see more angry and complex female characters fueled my desire to create stories.
I kicked around ideas for my first book all throughout college as a form of escapism, but it wasn’t until taking a writing class my senior year that I decided to push myself to turn them into something readable. That eventually became my first finished manuscript, which I revised and queried. When that book wasn’t picked up by agents, I wrote a weird sci-fi book that eventually got me my agent and my first book deal.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
I remember binging Nancy Drew books as a seven-year-old, but the book that made me want to become an author was probably Eragon (which I read as a teen, even though I wouldn’t start writing in earnest until years later). This book was the first epic fantasy I ever read, and I was obsessed—it gave me the itch to create sprawling fantasy worlds. A few years later, Tithe by Holly Black was my gateway to darker and more mature sci-fi and fantasy, and I’d never read anything like it.
Currently, I can’t stop thinking about Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo, which I read recently and loved even more than Ninth House—that series is quickly becoming an all-time favorite. I’m a sucker for angry girls who break all the rules, and the way the series delves into history, lore, and the occult is so immersive and thrilling.
City of Vicious Night is the second installment in your Requiem Dark series and the sequel to City of Shattered Light! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Hm, informally? Be gay, lead crime syndicate.
What can readers expect?
A deeper look at the same characters and their world. City of Vicious Night tests the main squad and their relationships to each other, while unraveling some of the mysteries about Requiem’s history and what makes the city tick. I feel that the first book laid the foundation, and I got to do a lot more in this book.
This is also the conclusion to the duology, so expect a solid, satisfying ending (with a bit of room left for extra adventures!).
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring further in the sequel?
Absolutely—so many pieces of City of Vicious Night are conclusions to threads I placed in the first book. I loved writing the continuation of Ty’s story (and the grittiness of his character arc), the culmination of Riven & Asa’s romance, the complicated lore of Requiem, and more unhinged banter among the main team. This is even more of a found-family book than the first, since I had the chance to grow the relationships established in the first book and test the characters’ bonds through higher-stakes conflicts.
I really loved getting to explore Kaya more as a character, too. She was removed from the action for most of the first book, and in this book she’s truly a member of the team. There’s another unlikely team member in there, too 😊
Did you face any challenges whilst writing the sequel? How did you overcome them?
One hurdle was that I grew as a writer in the years between finishing the first draft of CoSL, getting agented, and signing a book deal. I wrote the first draft of CoVN after finishing final developmental edits for CoSL, and the draft was done just before the ARCs of CoSL went out (so I wouldn’t be too heavily swayed by reader opinions or criticisms of the first book). In going back and reading the first book for consistency, I noticed a few scenes and plot elements I’d do a little differently today. I think the second book maintains consistency in all the character and world elements while making everything feel a little deeper, though!
I also struggled a little with knowing the sequel might not happen—the first book was acquired at the start of the pandemic, when publishing was just starting to grind to a halt, so the sequel was only an option book. I wrote it knowing nobody else might ever read it, but this also worked in my favor because I wasn’t drowning in deadlines at the same time I was learning to market a book. I think it all worked out for the best—my new editor has loved CoVN, and my publisher offered three days after my agent sent the pitch package.
You’ve mentioned you have a playlist for each book! What’s on the playlist for Vicious Night?
It’s pretty strongly intertwined with the first book’s playlist! A few songs that stand out are Blow by Eva Under Fire, Rather Die by Barns Courtney, Prognosis by Blue Stahli, Boys Wanna Be Her (Brooklyn Fire Retouch) by Peaches, Blind by Saint Asonia, Capture by Daniel Deluxe, Desperado by Rihanna, and Generate by Eric Prydz.
Also, the game Cyberpunk 2077 dropped just as I’d finished final developmental edits for CoSL in 2020, so I used its soundtrack to inspire the drafting process for CoVN (try Kill the Messenger or Streetfighters).
What’s next for you?
Currently I’m wrapping up edits on the spinoff novella One Last Midnight, which is technically book 2.5 in the Requiem Dark series. It’s two lower-stakes stories set eight months after City of Vicious Night: one following bounty hunter Morphett Slade as she pursues personal vengeance, and the other following Asa’s sister Kaya as she struggles with the future of the crew (and new secrets about her and her sister’s past). There’s also a dorky interlude told solely through the team’s DMs, emojis, and photo alt-text, which was my first time writing something with virtually no narrative filter—and I love how it turned out. The whole novella is a send-off for the team as they settle into new roles and adventures.
After that’s wrapped, I have a few ideas simmering—dark fantasy, dystopian sci-fantasy, and potentially a weird horror-comedy concept. I’ve made a bit of progress on each, and I hope you’ll get to read all of them one day!
Lastly, are there any 2023 releases our readers should look out for?
- The Kingdom of Without by Andrea Tang – another cyberpunk heist book! I love Andrea’s writing and am excited for everything about this concept.
- Mindbreaker by Kate Dylan – the companion novel to Mindwalker, one of my fave YA sci-fi books ever! I read an early draft of this book and am so hyped to see how it’s changed.
- Thick as Thieves by M.J. Kuhn – even more heist recs, with an ensemble cast of criminals!
- Bleeding Heart by Brittany M. Willows – anime-esque action and queer dorky characters? Yeah.
- A Song of Salvation by Alechia Dow – a super-fun YA space opera that comps to the Fifth Element and builds on Dow’s sci-fi universe.
Chapter 1
AFTERSHOCK
Hunters watched from the balconies like vultures.
Asa kept her gaze low as she and Riven cut through the dirty alley. The headhunters aimed scanners down at them, searching for any faces matching posted bounties. Every scavenger on Requiem was looking for a quick payout, but Asa didn’t intend to be an easy target.
Especially not with a bounty as large as hers.
“Keep moving.” Riven sauntered past the broken windows and flashing neon like she owned the whole city.
“Are they still watching us?” Asa adjusted her scrambler—a thin wire across her cheekbones to disrupt facial recognition tech.
“Only one. But I think he’s just a creep. Might have to shoot that smirk off his face.” Riven’s hands hovered near the oldtech Smith & Wesson revolvers holstered at her hips, a pair of firecrackers waiting to be lit. Sweat and sleepless nights had smeared her gunpowder-black eyeliner into scorch marks.
Riven was no stranger to street brawls, but Asa had grown up on Cortellion, where her list of potential career paths had never included criminal-for-hire.
“Much as I’d love to see that, the last thing we need is to draw more attention.” Even the stunner at Asa’s hip felt dangerous. Four months on Boomslang’s crew, and she hadn’t quite adjusted to the hot whisper of death at her back.
But she’d chosen this life, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to earn her place.
“Hey, slowpokes.” Kaya’s chipper voice came through the comm. “Where are you?”
“On our way,” Asa told her sister. “We’ve got the passcode. Heading in soon.”
“Took you long enough.” Samir’s voice. “The two of you probably spent as much time canoodling as conning.”
Heat shot through Asa’s cheeks. Conning underworld smugglers in the roughest part of the roughest city in Alpha Centauri wasn’t her ideal night out with Riven, but they made a good team. Even if sometimes she found it hard to concentrate.
“Sounds like you’re jealous of my ability to multitask,” Riven said into the comm, her eyes glittering. An ad screen silhouetted Riven’s silver-blonde braid streaked with magenta, the confident sway of her hips. “Need to blow off steam somehow.”
The flutter in Asa’s stomach almost distracted her from her pounding heart. “We haven’t! We’ve been . . . focused,” she blurted, grateful the dim light hid the blush creeping across her cheeks.
“Killjoy,” Riven muttered.
“Well, we’re already landing Boomslang at the pickup point.” Diego’s voice was fast and rasping. “Though Samir seems to have forgotten where the cabin-pressure release is.”
“Cut me some slack. This thing’s a relic with no auto-nav.” Samir was learning to pilot Riven’s ship, since it was good to have more than one person who could fly them out in a pinch.
“Blue switch,” Riven said. “Left of the main control panel.”
Shouts and frantic scuffling resounded from the alley behind them—the headhunters must’ve found a target. Asa picked up her pace, trying to fade into the maze of streets.
Even in the underground sector, Requiem was a fever dream of refracted neon and electric sweat, where the bass pulsed like a cybernetic heartbeat beneath Asa’s boots. The aircon chill was a far cry from the surface’s scorching heat during the 154-hour day cycle. Holoscreen ads hounded passersby, flashing images of caffeine-vapors and virtual experiences. Things that only a few months ago, Asa could’ve afforded by the dozen, without a second thought.
It had been her face on the holoscreens then, the successor to the galaxy’s biggest tech corporation. The girl with the petal-red lips and the media-darling smile. But now she was a fugitive, and she’d done her best to wipe her profile for targeted ads. Since escaping her father, Asa was mastering the art of lying low.
The sooner they finished this job, the better.
“Is this the place?” Riven said.
As promised, the entrance to the fighting pits was marked with a stylized cobra, washing the door and its guard in red light. The guard’s mottled-blue sclerae peered from the shadows, the mark of a glitch addict.
“Looks like it.” Asa was suddenly conscious of their clubwear—bodices to mimic the candy girls who worked at Grindhouse nightclub. Asa’s clung to her torso above her baggy mechanist pants. The outfits had been useful for getting backstage and conning one of the arena mechanists for the passcodes—even if Riven had still needed to break two of the man’s fingers—but now they might just draw extra attention.
Riven didn’t flinch as the guard sized her up. She radiated cool, like the first droplets before a thunderstorm, as she casually thumbed the grips of her holstered revolvers. Asa tapped the passcodes into the panel next to the door. When it lit up, the guard waved them forward, and they moved through the gaudy lobby and stepped into the elevator. Riven hit an unlabeled button, and the elevator lurched, then plunged. Numbers flashed overhead. Asa could already feel the bass from the lower levels, a steady thump growing louder as they descended. A sour metallic taste bloomed on the back of her tongue. She’d never get used to the rush. But it helped to pretend her fear was only excitement.
“Ready to break some skulls?” Asa said.
“Rare for you to be the one leading us into trouble.” Riven’s grin was deadly. “I kind of like it.” She gripped Asa’s waist, and Asa leaned in, if only to brush their lips for a moment. But Riven kissed her fast, hard, the way Riven did everything.
Asa gasped as Riven’s fingers tangled in her already-messy hair, and Riven’s tongue slipped between her lips. She found herself pulling Riven closer, deeper, the kiss burning wild as her racing heart. Sparks fell as the lights flickered, strobing in time with her rising pulse.
In times like this, Asa wouldn’t trade life in Riven’s crew for anything.
Riven pulled away, a flush staining her pale, freckled cheeks. “For luck.”
“Right,” Asa said, remembering the job. “We’ll need it.”
A gagging noise came over the comm. “I cannot believe you just forced us all to listen to you sucking face.”
Kaya’s voice. Asa realized she hadn’t switched off her comm.
“Can’t argue. That was pretty gross,” Samir said.
“We were not,” Asa lied.
“If sucking face is a colloquialism for heated kissing, they absolutely were,” Galateo tattled from the tiny drone attached to Riven’s wristlet.
Asa groaned. She’d built Galateo a new set of drones, but his factory-reset version still had a habit of talking out of turn. Even without his old memories, the AI was quickly learning how to get on their nerves.
Riven clicked her tongue. “Get over it.”
“You’d better watch it, Hawthorne,” Kaya said. “If you’re not careful with my sister, I’ll break your face.”
“Kaya,” Asa hissed, mortified.
Riven grinned. “Come and try it, mech-head.”
“Push me and I might.” On Asa’s wristlet screen, a vidclip appeared in their shared comm channel: Kaya smirking and throwing a punch, then a digital crack spiderwebbing across the screen. Her hair was cropped to her earlobes and mermaid blue—after the surgery, it had grown in white, and now she picked a different color every few weeks, undecided on permanent color grafts like Riven’s.
“Kaya’s tough now, eh? They grow up so fast.” Samir mock-sniffled. “Seems like just yesterday you were only a brain in a jar.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Everyone. We’re moving in, so drop it,” Asa said, grateful the elevator was grinding to a stop. She turned to Riven. “That means you too.”
“All right, fine.” Riven’s hand squeezed hers. “I’ll be on my best behavior tonight.” When Asa raised her eyebrows, she added, “Nothing reckless. I promise.”
With a soft chirp, the doors slid open.
Asa sucked in a breath as the discordance of the fighting pits crashed over her. Graffiti stained the black-lit walls in violent color, covering old scorch marks and scratches. The crowds were a riot of exposed skin, glowing cybernetics, and holograms. At the arena’s center, harsh spotlights glinted off a pair of modded mechs slugging it out, and jeering erupted from the stands. Asa could barely breathe over the bass rocking through her bones.
Another job, another den of degenerates.
Asa squared her shoulders and slid through the lines at the betting terminals, the flashing leaderboards. Near the top of the screens, she glimpsed the name of the mech they were after. Halcyon Vengeance.
They were just in time for the final match. According to the Duchess’s tip, that mech would be targeted by a hacker tonight, forcing it to throw this match—and losing one of the
Duchess’s allies a lot of money. If Asa could get Kaya in, her sister could stop the hacker and forward the evidence to Diego. Simple enough.
Now to get to the mechanic bay, where Vengeance was probably being prepped for its next match.
Asa followed Riven toward the back hall, circling the lowest tier of the room where the penultimate fight was happening—the crowd cursing and roaring as a mech with a beetle-blue exoskeleton and tank treads rammed another mech outfitted like an armory on legs. A volley of fist-sized slug bullets hurled from the taller mech’s arm gun. As its opponent wheeled backward, two slugs crashed against the holo-barrier covering the audience. Asa winced. She didn’t trust any safety measures in a place like this.
“We’ve got a guard,” Riven said. Sure enough, their corridor was blocked by a three-eyed bouncer. “Just like we practiced, huh?”
“Got it,” Asa said.
“Where you going, tarts?” the guard said as they approached.
He pointed to the side corridor. “Restrooms are that way. Also . . .” His cybernetic third eye slid over Riven, likely some kind of scan-tech. Asa’s skin prickled, but his wandering attention made it easier to move into position near his shoulder. “Nice outfit.”
“You’re welcome.” Riven crossed her arms over her chest. “Also, eat shit.”
His whole body seized as Asa’s stunner prodded him in the back of the neck. She had to bite her lip to stop from apologizing. But it felt good to drop him.
Riven caught him in a choke hold and hauled him the other way. “Your cue,” she grunted.
Asa nodded, her pulse rising. The worst part of any job was letting Riven go. Playing their parts alone.
Asa ran down the concrete steps into the garage area, a maze of workbenches and maintenance scaffolds with a tunnel extending to the pits. Some of the mechs’ mod-jobs were impressive—armored security speeders had been amalgamated into hulking tanks, others’ spidery frames had been upgraded with cloaking tech. Among the mechs, it was easy to pick out her target.
Halcyon Vengeance had clearly been a combat mech before it’d been stolen and repurposed for pit fighting. Asa immediately recognized its sleek, dancer-like silhouette. One of her father’s designs. The white-and-gold logo of Almeida Industries, which would’ve covered its chest, had been sanded off and slapped over with a decal of a furious, hollow-eyed mask.
She approached the twelve-foot-tall mech and carefully set a hand on its red hull. Boomslang’s crew had been called on this job because it involved dealing with Cortellion tech, but Asa hadn’t realized it would be something of her father’s. She wheeled over a rolling stepladder, pulled her tool kit out of her cargo belt, and began prying open the circuit board cover on the mech’s shoulder.
“Hey. Don’t recognize you. Have we met?” Another mechanist waited on the ground, their gaze hidden behind mirrored goggles.
“Oh. Naith sent me for emergency maintenance,” she lied, dropping the name of the mechanist they’d conned. She flashed his keycard. “Vengeance’s main gun almost overheated in the last match. I’m just installing a quick patch.”
The other mechanist stared at her a second too long. “Well, you’d better make it fast. That thing’s on next.”
Asa kept her face blank even as her heart thudded. She opened the shoulder hatch and found the main control panel—the seductive glow of screens and keypads, of hidden data and locks to be broken. Like home.
“All right,” she whispered into the comm. “Hooking you up, Kaya.” She plugged in the transmitter. An easy, familiar point Kaya could link to and load in.
“Great,” Samir said. “The three of us are in the lobby. Let me know if you need backup.”
After a moment, Kaya’s voice came through. “I’m in. You sure this is the right mech? There’s nothing else in here. No hacker, no malware.”
“Bria definitely said Halcyon Vengeance.” Asa snapped the panel shut again. Distinctive name and model. Unmistakable. Kaya’s breath caught. “Well, that’s weird.”
“Weird?”
“It’s . . . I don’t know. This thing has more processing power than a mech should. And—oh. There is something in here.”
Asa glanced at the holoscreen broadcasting the fight over the garage door. The blue mech lay on its back, sparking and inert, as the crowd booed. After the cleanup crews, Vengeance would be up next. “We don’t have much time, Kay. Lock them out and send us tracking data.”
“I . . . I don’t know if I—” A sharp gasp.
“What is it?” Asa said. “What’s wrong?”
The mech shuddered to life, and Asa lost her balance. She stumbled off the ladder, landing in a sloppy crouch.
When she got back to her feet, there was a blade against her throat.
“Move,” came a voice through Vengeance’s internal speaker, smooth and brassy and unfamiliar. “Now. Into the ring.” The blade extended from the mech’s forearm.
“Kaya?” Asa said. “What’s going on?”
Kaya didn’t respond, but the mech’s voice did. “I said move.”
Asa’s pulse stuck in her throat. This wasn’t Kaya. Memories flashed of Banshee—the rogue Etri mind escaped from her father’s lab—trapping them within a nightclub, every circuit under his control. Whether the mech was being puppeted by the arena hacker or something else entirely, it was impossible to tell. But she wasn’t about to call their bluff.
Asa held up her hands and walked toward the garage tunnel and the muffled roar of the crowd.
“What are you doing?” the other mechanist said, standing in their way. “This doesn’t look like a—”
Vengeance shoved him aside with one massive fist.
“Asa,” came Riven’s voice through her comm. “I took care of our guy. He’s on, uh, extended bathroom break. But did you hear more from Kaya? Is she okay?”
Asa couldn’t risk responding. The mech’s serrated blade guided her.
“What are you after?” she murmured, hoping whoever was in control could hear her.
“You’ll know soon enough, Miss Almeida.”
A fresh spike of fear shot through her as her feet met gravel and she stepped into the scalding spotlights. Around her, the crowd’s roars turned to scandalized murmurs.
Was the hacker aligned with her father? Had he given her a head start, only to send the star-system’s best hackers after her when the time was right?
You’ll never be free of his shadow, a deep-buried voice whispered. Never have been.
Never safe.
“Looks like Vengeance has brought something extra to the show tonight!” The announcer’s voice boomed over the speakers, but there was a whiff of hesitation there. “An unexpected surp—”
His voice cut to a whine of microphone feedback. The music’s pulsing bass went silent.
“Hello, Requiem,” the mech’s voice said over the speakers. “I’ve brought you a traitor.”
The spotlights plunged into darkness. The holoscreens surrounding the ring all lit up with the same image—a face made of red wire frames, with Xs for eyes and a sharp-toothed grin that looked scrawled from neon.
“I’m sure you all remember the destruction that racked this city four months ago,” it continued. “The creature everyone named Banshee. Corrupted and created by a man named Luca Almeida. And do you know who brought it here?”
It felt like icicles had rammed through Asa’s chest. The blade nudged the base of her spine, urging her to the center of the arena.
“Both Almeida’s daughters have been hiding in this city ever since. Complicit in their father’s crimes, unwilling to atone for the damage he caused.”
Kaya was still dead silent. Nobody was coming to save her. Unless Asa could re-expose the mech’s control board, her stunner would be useless.
She raised her palms. “Let’s talk,” she said softly, turning toward the mech. “Banshee wasn’t our fault. We tried to—”
Vengeance ignored her. “And a crew calling themselves the Boomslang Faction has been harboring them—under the protection of your Duchess. Shameful.”
Murmurs erupted through the crowd. Confusion, and some cries to get on with it! They’d be just as happy watching her die as a mech.
“Here’s another secret,” Vengeance continued. “Almeida never left this place. Even now, your people are being taken and harvested. And if we want to destroy his work, it starts with her.”
Asa couldn’t move. Harvested. Something the hacker believed was her fault? This wasn’t a hunter after her bounty—this was an execution.
The mech’s chest cannon stared down at her, molten lights churning beneath it.
“You can call me Redline,” the mech said. “And while this girl is his heir—I am his antithesis.”
