We chat with author Margaret Owen about her latest release Painted Devils, which follows scrappy former maid and jewel thief must outwit gods, injustice, and her own past in this sequel to Little Thieves.
Hi, Margaret! Welcome back! We last spoke a few years ago for the release of The Faithless Hawk. What have you been up to since then?
Oh, this and that, writing two books and editing an anthology, riding out the pandemic in monastic solitude with my cats, playing Animal Crossing through the January 6th insurrection, pretty standard stuff! What a time to be alive! The best part is that two out of those three books, Painted Devils and The Grimoire of Grave Fates, are both releasing within the same three weeks, which feels like rounding the final lap of a marathon. (I’m pretty sure that’s how marathons work. I may be confusing it with NASCAR.)
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I liked reading already as a kid, but when I was about 7, my grandmother handed me my first Nancy Drew book, The Whispering Statue. It was a above my reading level, but that’s probably why I liked it so much! I went through as many Nancy Drew and horse-related books as I could get, and then when my classroom volunteer was assigned to sit down with kids and transcribe their stories to be printed out so they could “illustrate” them, I dictated many, many unauthorized sequels to Black Beauty. It was all downhill from there.
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!
Someone in my early life thought it would be hilarious to give me a picture book called Molly Goes Hiking. I remember sitting on the couch and reading that! The book that made me want to become an author was Dragon’s Milk by Susan Fletcher, because she was a local author who did a school visit, and meeting her was when I actually realized authors were real people and not in the same vein as Santa Claus. I will probably never stop turning Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik around in my head. That book is a master class in so many areas it’s simply outrageous.
Painted Devils is the latest installment in your Little Thieves series and it’s out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Scams, both financial and psychological!
What can readers expect from the sequel?
Oh man. So much. Perhaps too much. For folks who are new to the series, the main character, Vanja, is like the Venn Diagram overlap between Anna Delvey/Anna Sorokin, and the Horrible Goose from Untitled Goose Game, but living in a world riddled in folklore and fairytale nonsense. This book finds Vanja getting drunk and accidentally starting a cult, only for the boyfriend she kind of ghosted to show up to investigate the cult… at which point the god Vanja invented actually manifests, and claims her ex(?) for a virgin sacrifice. So the plot, on its surface, concerns them figuring out how to get him out of that and where this god actually came from. And on a deeper level, since they’re teens navigating their first serious relationship, it’s about figuring out what you want in both emotional and physical intimacy, especially when it feels like both of those are being measured and scrutinized by others.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
There’s a character, Brunne the Huntress, who is a regional god that leads the local Wild Hunt. She is basically an apex jock with biceps like watermelons and a giant horse that acts like a golden retriever. I had an unreasonable amount of fun writing her.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced whilst writing the sequel and how you were able to overcome them?
Trying to keep this book short! Brevity has never been my strongest suit, haha, and I set myself up for disaster with the alternative sacrifice Vanja is pursuing to try to spare her boyfriend, along with all the other ongoing subplots, and the little bit of setup for Book 3. But it was a good challenge to keep all those plates spinning!
What’s next for you? Can we get a little teaser of perhaps the third installment? 😉
I am hard at work on Book 3 for sure! I think the little bit of info I can give away now is that it starts when members of the seven royal houses of the empire start turning up dead… with Vanja’s red penny calling card on the body. There’s an inordinate amount of murder in this book, honestly. I had to make a calendar to keep it all straight. Don’t get attached to anyone.
Lastly, are there any 2023 book releases our readers should look out for?
I’m going to actually plug our upcoming anthology here, The Grimoire of Grave Fates, out June 6th! It’s a murder mystery (are we sensing a theme here?) set in a magical boarding school, where a much-reviled professor has just turned up dead, and every chapter is told from the perspective of a different student who is connected to the murder in some way—as an investigator, a witness, or a suspect. The contributors really knocked this out of the park with their brilliance and imagination, and Hanna Alkaf and I are so honored to have edited the book.
