Announcing My Adult Debut: NOW COMES THE MIST!!!
I have such happy news to share today! I’ve got a two-book deal that will mark my entry into writing for the adult market!
Over the past five years, you may have seen me mentioning “Dark Book.” I always had other manuscripts to prioritize, but this 400-page passion project had my whole heart and soul and I chipped away at it every chance I got. In 2022, my proud agent was about to take it on submission when a well-known and beloved author announced a retelling of the same exact story, led by the same exact minor character.
This prompted Tamar and me to ultimately seek a different path for my novel, and I’m pleased to say that we’ve found a great one!
My adult duology begins with NOW COMES THE MIST, a dark and sexy Gothic romance that retells Bram Stoker’s Dracula from the perspective of a Lucy Westenra with Asian heritage. A woman entranced by death gives up her soul for eternity . . . think trailing dresses, carriages on cobblestone streets, longing and lamplight, hands meeting in the shadows, dark dreams blooming in the silvery mist.
It’s passionate, bloody, ferocious, and full of yearning, and it is my favorite thing that I have ever written. The book is out on October 1, 2024.
Just look at this gorgeous cover my publisher gave me!
MIST will not only be my first book for the adult market, but it will also be my first venture into the thrilling world of indie publishing!
Last summer, Tamar sold the book to Podium Audio, a digital-first indie publisher perhaps best known for discovering THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir and turning it into one of the most successful audiobooks in history. Podium has a reputation for very high-quality audio and e-books, and we got lucky because my two-book deal was struck just as they were making major moves to expand into print retail distribution.
So not only will MIST be available as both audiobook and e-book, but it will also be one of Podium’s first titles to be sold in print, specifically paperback!
My friend told me that she saw it on Kindle Unlimited yesterday, which is amazing and exactly what we were angling for with this different path for MIST. Not every book gets to be included in KU, so I’m hopefully going to reach a lot of new readers there!
The audiobook and e-book are available to preorder now, and the print version will be ready for preorder soon, so sit tight and subscribe to my newsletter to be notified ASAP if you’re interested in a physical copy!
There are a lot of interesting parallels between MIST and my debut novel, FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS, not only in theme, but also conception. I was thirteen when I first got the idea for FOTL, and nineteen — the same age as Lucy Westenra — when I first envisioned writing a story about her. Retelling a story is like building new castles in someone else’s sandbox, so I am always more interested in the minor characters because there is greater freedom and room for exploration with them.
I was immediately drawn to Lucy after seeing Frank Wildhorn’s “Dracula, The Musical” on Broadway in 2004. The show . . . didn’t do as great in the U.S. as in other parts of the world, like Japan (where the role of Dracula has been played by a woman!). But I loved the music, and the best songs — the showstoppers, in my opinion — were reserved for the minor characters. I like “The Master’s Song,” a delightfully creepy waltz sung by Renfield, a patient in an asylum who forges a connection with Dracula.
My favorite song, however, is “The Mist.” I fell in love with the eerie music box melody and Lucy’s opening lyrics: “My soul was floating above a moonlit sea / At the same time, I was drowning yet felt somehow free.” The song has stuck with me for twenty years, as a girl who loves me some dark sketchy monster man romance (paging Beauty and the Beast, Hades and Persephone, and Phantom and Christine!). There’s also a great Lucy/Dracula duet (“Life After Life”), but “The Mist” has had my heart since day one.
If you haven’t seen my book trailer yet, you can watch it here and listen to a clip sung by Lauren Kennedy as Lucy. (Kelli O’Hara, one of my favorite musical theater stars ever since the gorgeous “Light in the Piazza,” played Lucy on the Broadway stage.)
Lucy has yet another great song that you can listen to in the German production of “Dracula, The Musical,” performed in Graz, which is on YouTube. It’s called “The Invitation” (or “Die Einladung”). Lucy is alone in her room, torn between wanting to retain what’s left of her soul and also yearning for the freedom Dracula can give her, until at last she throws open her windows with wild abandon and welcomes him in. It gave me chills and serves as major inspiration for my book!
As you can see, MIST has been forming roots for a long time. But it didn’t blossom until 2016, when two friends and I were having a fun conversation on Twitter. We are all BIPOC women and all fans of Dracula, and we were thirsting (pun intended) over some of the actors who had played this iconic role in film and TV. “The three of us could be Dracula’s Brides of Color,” I joked. One of my friends responded by creating the hashtag #BOC, and then a lot of other people jumped in on the discussion with their own funny anecdotes and ideas.
That chat, as lighthearted as it was, got the wheels turning in my head. What would it be like if Dracula’s brides were primarily women of color? After all, BIPOC most certainly existed in Victorian London. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to explore vampirism as a type of colonization? And how might being a vampire affect BIPOC differently?
I enjoy and respect Bram Stoker’s novel, but I have always wanted more for some of the characters in it, particularly Lucy Westenra, who was Dracula’s first victim on English soil and the best friend of Mina Murray. Mina is much better known because every adaptation insists on portraying her as Dracula’s love interest (for which we likely have Francis Ford Coppola to thank, as this romance does not exist in Stoker’s novel).
It has never sat well with me that beautiful, vivacious Lucy, who has three men vying for her hand in marriage, was forced to succumb to vampirism as punishment for being too sexy. She has a line of dialogue in Stoker’s novel where she jokingly contemplates marrying all three of her suitors at once, so as not to hurt or reject any of them, and that has always been misinterpreted and blown out of proportion, in my opinion, as “proof” of her promiscuity and desire for bigamy.
Something else that has always bothered me is that even though Lucy is dark-haired in the original novel, every single adaptation — whether on TV, film, or the stage — invariably casts her as a blonde or a redhead, as though only a light-haired, unmistakably white woman could be attractive enough to tempt three suitors and Dracula himself. (And it may also have to do with distinguishing her from Mina both in appearance and personality, i.e. brunette = serious, dreamy, and romantic, while blonde or redhead = sexy, unattainable, and alluring.) Anyway, this made the idea of a Lucy of color, specifically an Asian Lucy, even more compelling to me because then I could play with the angle of exoticism. I could lean into her sexiness and desirability, but with this whole new interesting and unique framework.
In 2017, I began to prep in earnest and do research on everything pertaining to Dracula, though I couldn’t start drafting MIST until 2019 because I was so busy with other books. I kept my pet project a closely guarded secret because I was worried that someone else would get to it before I had time to (a well-founded fear, as it turns out!) and also because — even in its earliest and most nebulous form — Lucy’s story somehow already meant a great deal to me.
Step one was to read the source material over and over and over until I knew it like the back of my hand. I am a fussy and meticulous writer, and intimately studying Stoker’s original story gave me more confidence and a sturdy foundation on which to build my own ideas. I charted every bite Dracula inflicted on Lucy, mapped out the characters’ journeys by boat and train and carriage, and took notes on tiny fun details to include that probably no one but other avid Dracula fans will get.
I also did a deep dive into Bram Stoker’s life to understand his inspirations and was fascinated by what I learned, especially the idea that a stage actor — and Stoker’s alleged lover, according to some sources — may have informed the character of Dracula. I read dissertations from Dracula scholars on how the Victorian era shaped the women in the book and their attitudes toward motherhood, and articles on the supposed link between repressed female sexuality and sleepwalking, both of which affect Lucy.
Over the next few years, as I slowly drafted the manuscript, I also:
Educated myself on the origin of the vampire myth, especially how it is rooted in the persecution of certain peoples and religions
Studied the footnotes of The New Annotated Dracula, which was a wealth of information that included Van Helsing’s train timetables and Victorian customs
Watched documentaries on everything from:
Turn-of-the-century serial killers
Alleged royal vampires in Europe (one of them had a portrait with the original head inexplicably scratched off and repainted, according to X-ray evidence — so creepy and intriguing! Or maybe they just didn’t like their hair? WHO CAN SAY)
How castles and dungeons were built in the Middle Ages
The beginnings of insidious French occupation in Vietnam and the 1787 Treaty of Versailles
Death superstitions and customs throughout the ages (so many interesting ones, including scrambling a corpse’s bones or burying bodies with a bell — just in case, y’know, they weren’t dead yet and needed to ring for help)
Black American cowboys and their role in shaping the American West, especially around the time of the U.S. Civil War
A family who claims to have been cursed by Vlad the Impaler centuries ago and cannot hike, even today, to his castle ruins without some misfortune befalling them! (One of the travelers in their group allegedly fell down the mountain and broke a leg — their version of Vlad is ultra-petty)
Anyway, all of this led to NOW COMES THE MIST, a book of which I am deeply, devotedly, and wholeheartedly proud.
You will meet my Lucy in all of her infinite darkness, melancholy, and yearning hidden beneath the guise of a flirtatious socialite, along with a cast of characters I loved writing, including my shrewd, handsome, and Asian Dr. Van Helsing and my cheerful and courageous Quincey Morris, a Black American cowboy whose fate brings him from the Wild West to an even wilder Victorian England.
MIST follows Lucy’s transformation from vain society girl to vampire, and then the sequel takes her on a journey from the glittering lights of Paris to the snowy Carpathian Mountains, where her destiny comes full circle. And Jonathan Harker fans, I hope you will like what I’ve got planned for him in Book 2, because I have never been satisfied by his portrayal in any retelling or adaptation, either.
Like I said, I could only work on MIST in sporadic bursts over the years because of all the other books I’ve had under contract. But I was always thinking about it, and every time I got to tinker with it, I had this almost unbearable feeling of hope and joy and excitement and rightness — very similar to the sensation I had when I was working on FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS. I kept having this premonition, deep in my bones, that I had something special on my hands.
I do not think it’s a coincidence that FOTL and MIST feel like they’ve been woven from the same part of my soul, or that Xifeng and Lucy are my two favorite characters that I have ever written. I love an antiheroine. I love complicated women who go against the grain, who are brash and bold and brave, who are mouthy and fiery and often screw up, who are full of fathomless yearning and burning ambition, who are the farthest thing from perfect, and who make really, really bad decisions sometimes.
Writing this for an adult audience has been incredibly fun and freeing because I got to explore it all: the steamy and sexy, and the bloody and dark.
I am so grateful to Tamar, who is always keeping her ear to the ground for me and who made this all happen; to my editor and romantasy expert Melissa for helping my book’s central “romance” shine; and to Annie, Nicole, Cass, and the whole Podium team for being so supportive and enthusiastic about these books. A huge thank-you to Dhonielle Clayton, who gave me some brilliant advice on an hours-long brainstorming call (and gentle sympathy on another), and to Erin Bowman, whose savvy graphic designer eye helped immensely with MIST’s cover direction.
I have always wanted to be a hybrid author, as someone who respects every publishing path and fully believes that diversifying is the key to staying alive in this career for many of us. MIST and its sequel will be my eighth and ninth books published, and I am so happy and eager to be reaching a brand-new readership and getting to see where this fresh and exciting venture takes me!
I can’t wait to share NOW COMES THE MIST with all of you on October 1, 2024!
In the meantime, here are some links you might find helpful:
Preorder the book here. It will be available in e-book, audiobook, and print!
Watch the book trailer and listen to a snippet of “The Mist” on Instagram.
Here is NOW COMES THE MIST’s page on my website. Check back for news!
Until next time!
XO,
Julie
This is so exciting, Julie!!!
That cover is stunning, and NOW COMES THE MIST sounds absolutely enthralling. Can't wait!