We chat to author K. Eason about her new release How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge, which is the sequel to How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, writing, book recommendations, and much more!
Hello! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself!
Partner, writer, teacher, gamer, knitter, kitchen witch, friend of cats. Chaotic Good with Neutral tendencies. Closet drow. Wannabe Bene Gesserit. Dragon fangirl.
With the current state of the world, what are you doing to cope with the changes we’ve had to make with our day-to-day?
I’m spending more time in the kitchen, because that feels like doing something productive, which I then get to eat. This summer, there was a lot of fresh whipped cream. I bought a tiny ice cream maker so I could experiment with flavors. This autumn, there will be a lot of pumpkin and sweet potato things. (Not pumpkin spice, necessarily, but that’s fine, too). Also I’ve been playing a lot of D&D over Zoom, which has been great because one of my groups would never get to play together in meatspace. We haven’t missed a single session since March.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I don’t know that I did discover it. Discovery implies a time when I didn’t love it, and I can’t remember not wanting to make up stories. Note I don’t say write here, because I think my first foray into story creation was crayon drawings of a dog doing dog-things. Probably interacting with a crayon-drawn girl.
How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge, the sequel to How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, releases on October 27th! For those who haven’t read Rory Thorne, what are they missing out on?
I pitched this as “Princess Leia meets Princess Bride,” which yes, but it’s really about how little acts of agency (and rebellion, because sometimes those are the same) can effect big changes. Less meta, more specific: Rory, a princess blessed (and cursed) by fairies at her birth, is betrothed to a prince in a distant space station. Upon arrival, Rory runs afoul of her evil stepfather’s political machinations and has to rescue herself and the prince with her wits, her friends, and a little arithmancy.
If you could only describe How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge in five words, what would they be?
When happily ever after isn’t.
Now tell us a little more! What can readers expect?
This book is definitely more Princess Leia then Princess Bride; there are space battles and aliens; it’s a lot darker. The story picks up a couple years after the end of the first book. Rory’s gone off to be a normal citizen and work as a salvager in the raggedy ends of space. She finds a dead ship running a false ID and carrying a sentient super-weapon, and realizes that a) the politics she’s been trying to avoid have been happening even though she was ignoring them and b) they are going to impact her anyway. Possibly literally. (Did I mention space battles?)
What inspired you to write this duology?
There’s no single inspiration; the first book was meant to be a short story, but when I hit the end of chapter one, I realized I had a novel on my hands. Then, after playing in the fairy tale tropes, I realized I’d left one unchallenged: the happily ever after part. So that’s where Revenge came from.
What challenges did you face while writing and how did you overcome them?
The hardest part of Revenge was trying to strike a balance between the tone of the first book and the darker themes in this one.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on a book set in the same world as the Rory and Revenge, except way up the timeline, where the effects of Rory’s choices in Rory and Revenge are still echoing. Though it’s more of a buddy-cop noir procedural, it’s still got arithmancy and political convolutions. It’s also stylistically different. No narrator.
Lastly, are you currently reading anything, and do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
I am rereading Harrow the Ninth at the moment, because it deserved more than one reading (necromancers in space!), with The Secret Chapter queued up next. Suggestions to read, in no particular order… Gideon the Ninth, The Vanished Queen, A Memory of Empire, The Broken Earth trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries, Cyteen, Mexican Gothic, all the Eric Carter books, Planetside and Spaceside, I can do this all day so I will stop now…
You can find K. Eason on Twitter and at her website.
