Maggie and Tor Questions

Look at the size of this question list.

When is the release date for the first book?

Tentative release is first quarter of 2026.

Why so long?

For a number of marketing and editorial reasons. Everyone wants this book to be the best it can be.  Editing will take a little longer because this is the first book in what will be at least a duology, and we need to make sure that we establish direction.

But also, Tor is being very considerate of the BDH. They know that we have self-published projects that we promised to deliver so they are giving us a very generous timeline.

Does 2026 mean all 3 books are coming out that year? Yay, book binge!

No, it just means the first book is scheduled for 2026.

Will it be longer than the average Kate Daniels novel?

Yes.  We have not been given a word limit.  Right now, the book is the size of 2 Magic Bites put together.

If the title of book 1 is Maggie the Undying, what is the series called? Will all the books have character names titles? A titling theme like your other series?

Also

I have a question about the title. While I love it, it seems to me it’s unusual to have such a title for a fantasy book. I personally love the contrast of a down-to-earth name like Maggie with the epicness and mystery of the undying part. Was this something you had to fight for? Or did they readily accept it?

Before publication, all titles are working titles. Everything is subject to change. This is our internal pet name for this project. We are very attached for it precisely for the reason you listed. The down to earth Maggie who is mysteriously Undying.

Honestly, we have yet to fight for anything with Tor. It’s early yet, so I am sure at some point we will be calling our agent to complain, but not so far. The editorial is amazing. Okay, so when you are an aspiring author, you base the idea of the editorial process on fiction: movies, TV, books. You imagine these deep conversations about the characters and plotting, and your editor remembers all of the character names and their motivations.

In reality, commercial fiction turned out to be a little bit more like a conveyer belt.  The editor reads the book, and you have their attention for a little while after the editorial letter, but they are quickly moving on to other projects. You basically have this one moment, the initial editor input, to make your adjustments and that’s probably that. You don’t generally call your editor to chat about plots and character arcs.

Working with Stephanie Stein has been like movie editing. It was so welcome and unexpected, that we actually called our agent after the second editorial session to gush.

Looking forward to the contests a few years from now to name books 2 and 3. Maggie the Unyielding, perhaps…?

Perhaps. Who knows?

Related (I think anyway): Will Maggie the protagonist of all 3 books?

Possibly. We know that there will be at least one duology. These books are going to be very thick. Maggie will be the protagonist; however, we are planning on a number of bonus scenes from other characters’ points of view.

What is a pre-empt deal?

Typically, unless contractually obligated – and you will find that under the Right of First Refusal – when a book is being shopped, it goes to several publishing houses at once. Sometimes nobody wants it. Sometimes multiple people want it, and then it goes to auction, where publishers bid against each other.

Pre-empt is what happens when the publisher sees a book, grabs it, and yells, “Mine! Hands off!” They accomplish it by offering the author and agent a chunk of money large enough to keep the book from going to auction.

So I read seven figures and think woooooooow, could you put that number in perspective for us? How does it compare to your other traditionally published series, and also what does that mean for other other going projects?

Since I try not to lie to BDH, this is our largest deal to date but not our first 7 figure deal. But let’s put it in perspective.

• 15% goes to the agent
• 32-35% goes to the government. The tax bracket at that level is 40%, but there are tax-deductible business expenses, etc.
• The rest is broken down over the period of three years and contingent on delivery and publication.

So, while the number is impressive, in practice it’s a little smaller.  And we are a business with several employees, many contractors, and all of the associated business expenses. But that said, we are so incredibly grateful and fortunate.

Did Maggie appear anywhere else as an Easter Egg character?

No.

Do you need to change the plot for the trad pub edits?

Yes. The plot changes following all editorial feedback for every traditionally or self-published published book. It is very rare when an editor looks at the manuscript and says, “It’s perfect, don’t touch it.” Sometimes these plot alterations are significant and sometimes they are minor.

For this book, they wanted more. More world, more characters, more banter, more… just more. We are very happy to oblige.  They will rue the day they said, “Write a thick book.”

Will it really be 3 volumes?

We don’t know.  The first volume is massive right now. The problem with the original draft was trying to fit the story into the typical 95K length and UF/paranormal structure. It was like trying to stuff one of those oversized comforters into a grocery shopping bag. It went in, but it was so twisted and wrinkled, it didn’t even make sense.  We remember being very frustrated with it.

We were able to unpack a bunch of subplots that were previously only mentioned in passing. People got more page time. I think we might cut stuff in the last third, because all of it was summarizing those subplots and they are now their own little branches of this tree. So, we don’t know.

Did you want to make Maggie a series?  Or does it ever happen that the publisher reads your manuscript and says oh I love this so much and now I want a series? (And as an author do you wish you had more single books vs series?).

That’s unique to each book. Some stories are very clearly standalone books, and some are impossible to stuff into a single book. Maggie will be as long as her story takes.  We are planning on an oversized duology for now.

Do you worry about the BDH sanity? Like, do you think we are amazing but also do you sometimes worry about us?

Yes, you are a little scary. I mean, we thought we plugged all the holes with this deal. It was securely hidden. You found it anyway.

What was the original intent for the announcement?

To wait until the cover was made and give us more breathing room to write in obscurity. However, as we said above, BDH is scary and scarily efficient at finding out book news.

Do agreements with publishers say if you can or can’t work with another publisher at the same time, or maybe they have right to first refusal? I could see it being easier if you used different pen names for each publisher, but did Ace give you flack for working with Avon or vice versa, or is that not uncommon in the publishing world?

This is very much on case-by-case basis. A lot of it is contractually driven.  Most contracts specify some kind of exclusivity, and it makes sense.  If the publisher injects a lot of money into a book, they want to protect their investment.

On a personal level, Ace and Avon were very lovely.  There was no friction, they shared us at NY Comicon, and we have a picture of our two editors together somewhere. Kate and Hidden Legacy are technically in different genres. Ace doesn’t publish romance and even if we had stayed with them for Hidden Legacy, it would have come out through Berkley.

We have completed all of our contractual obligations so we were completely free when this deal was made.

Congratulations! Wow. I read so many SFF authors from Tor, so I know you’ll be in excellent hands. This reminded of your “How We Got Published Story,” where you said that you submitted Kate manuscript to Tor and editor Liz Gorinsky really liked it. But it didn’t work out and instead Ace bought the series. Time is a funny thing. Now you’re at Tor almost two decades later. Full circle. 🙂

Indeed. But a lot has changed in 17 years.  This is a different Tor.

I see that the announcement says romantasy, so for sure we’re getting some romance? Is it going to be more of a slow burn like Kate Daniels or a slightly faster slow burn like Hidden Legacy?

It is not a high heat romantasy like Fourth Wing or ACOTAR.  Our protagonist is in her mid-twenties, she is astute and aware of people trying to use her, and there is a lot of danger and intrigue. There are multiple love interests, so yes there is romance, yes there are hot moments, but they are not jumping into bed right away. As Maggie says, “I wouldn’t trust these bastards to pass me the salt at lunch.”

Here is one romantic interest for you to enjoy. Snippet has been edited for spoilers. Lute is a friend, not a romantic interest.

Dear BDH, further explanations must wait until the first quarter of 2026.

Why are the French and German rights reserved to NYLA while Tor is the contact for all other translations?

Because our agent is a publishing world shark. When Nancy enters the room with publishers, her boss music starts playing.  It sounds like this:

 So, no more urban fantasy?

Well, you do want Blood Heir 2 and Iron and Magic 2, and Innkeeper… 6? I guess Innkeeper is more SF. We plan to deliver.

You previously wrote that you finished the first Maggie novel quite a while ago. Does that mean books 2 and 3 are already being worked on? I hope so because two years between releases seems interminable!

 No, we are instead making the first book very long…  Honestly, we are aiming for a quicker than 2 years turn around between the releases.

What’s the editing process like for a brand new publisher and editor? Do you feel like you have a lot of freedom? Is it awkward working with a new editor since you’re not used to each other’s styles yet?

We covered that above in some detail. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have worked with some of the best editors in the business.  Anne Sowards has an incredible eye for detail and an uncanny way of reading the manuscript as an editor and a reader at the same time. Erika Tsang is spectacular at steering relationships and finding way to ratchet romantic tension but still keep a ridiculous level of action going. We have learned a great deal from both of them.

Stephanie Stein is amazing.  It wasn’t awkward at all.  We had this zoom where we just sat and pulled the book apart, trying to find the better direction and it was very easy and low pressure.

 Do you think we’ll still get self-published work between the Maggie releases?

That’s part of the reason for 2026 release date.

 I believe at this point you’ve worked with three of the “big five”? That is absolutely amazing!

Yes. Hopefully we’ll stay with Tor for a bit.

What was the most exciting thing about the entire process of bringing Maggie to life, from when you both first came up with the idea all the way to today’s lovely announcement?  How did you handle it, and move past it to focus on the next steps without losing the euphoria?

This is a ridiculously grabby project. It’s not the matter of euphoria, it’s more like it consumes you. And it doesn’t matter if you take a break, coming back to it is like falling down the rabbit hole. You are gone.

The most exciting thing… Well, obviously finding the publisher, editor, and marketing team that loved it. We did have to pivot sharply because before we sold it, it was this little book. After we sold it, it was a whole different thing.  We had a zoom, and Ilona was worried that if there was a long delay, we would miss out on isekai trend, and Devi Pillai, our publisher, looked at us and said, “We are not concerned about trends for this book.”

That was terribly exciting.

But we are writers at a core.  Today we figured out how to fit two pieces of the narrative together and it was so exciting, we dropped what we were doing to discuss it. We were putting together garage shelves. Dropping heavy garage shelves is not always advisable. We were legendary titans (according to Tor) for whole 5 minutes.  The rest of yesterday we were frustrated writers who realized that the garage is dirty and filled with spiders, and cleaning it is the matter of life and death and must be done immediately.

Snippet? 🥹 The three-chapter expert disappeared so it would be cool to have something new.

See above.  

Why a preempt and Tor? From what I googled, authors have to be super sure about the preempt publisher because they forego the chance to go to auction.

You are right. In this case, Tor’s team understood the book.  They read it in less than 24 hours and they knew exactly what it was and how to make it better.  That was a huge factor.

 How long did it take to get a publisher once you went on sub?

24 hours. Yes, we have sat on this for months.

Am I right to assume that this is the hoped for new reader foundation book (I can’t remember what you called it, the book to bring in new readers)?

Anchor series, and we will see.  This maybe the thing we will be famous for but even if it’s not, just the opportunity to get this book out there is so worth all of the work

 Did anyone spot the line underneath where it said something like tv rights? Did I misunderstand?

We have a film agent, guys. He is awesome, his name is Sean, and he is working hard on our behalf.  But Hollywood is fickle and getting a screen adaptation is a very long shot.

 Do you already have the ideas for where the 3 books are going? Did Tor want to know if that’s already in your head?

Yes.

If a subscription box approached you/Tor to make this one of their monthly books, would you be interested in it?

That is up to Tor. We will say that the cost might be high, because the book is thick enough to be used as a weapon.

Will the series come to US/ Will you find publicity in the states for the series?

This is Tor, the US publisher.  Not Tor UK, the UK publisher. So, it’s the other way around: the books are coming out in US and we are selling the foreign rights.

Why wait until 2026 when the first book is already finished?

Three reasons:

• We are still working on the draft, editing and expanding
• We have a lot of side projects we must complete for the BDH
• Tor would like to do a full round of publicity for this book, which means they want to give the critics and reviewers several months to read it. A lot of review sites have long queues.

 I am a little scared. Both Game of Thrones and Outlander are very violent, and due to all the awful rape scenes, etc, I have not been able to stand either one of them. Will this series be dark? I am used to your funny and not quite but very lighthearted series. I am just looking out for my mental health.

In real life, rape is a major traumatic event.  Its impact is so terrible that even reading about it makes people deeply uncomfortable. From the creative point of view, it would hit the narrative like a meteorite, shattering the plot and setting everything on fire. There must be very valid reasons for it to be in the story. You have a 30-book long body of our work to review. How many times have you seen graphic sexual assault on the page?

That doesn’t mean that we are pretending that sexual assault doesn’t happen.  It is acknowledged, and it happened to some characters in the past. Its ramifications are apparent. However, it is not something we plan to portray in detail.

Rellas is a high-contrast high-saturation kind of world. There are splashes of shocking violence, moments of vivid beauty, and even cozy times. It is R rated. It is more violent than Innkeeper and it tackles heavy themes on occasion because villains must villain, but if you can stomach Kate Daniels, you will likely be fine.

Is this grimdark?

No. Grimdark tends toward a depressing tone overall.  Maggie is hopeful.  The world is messed up – otherwise it wouldn’t need someone to save it – but it is definitely a ray of light kind of story.

Is this the comp Ilona and Gordon used or is this direction with Outlander and GRRM something from publisher’s side?

That actually comes from Jeaniene Frost.  The deal announcement was originally tailored to people in publishing, not the general public. We included it because that specific deal announcement was posted by a Spanish agent and that’s what kind of torpedoed our can’t confirm or deny position.

If you are familiar with Asian entertainment, specifically anime, donghua, manga, manhwa, and dramas, you know that isekai or portal fantasy is an established genre. But in Western publishing, that is not the case. We needed to quickly explain what the book is about. It is about a woman who is transported into a different world, like in Outlander, and the world is a medieval fantasy, like Westeros.  These are frames of commercial relevance.

If we had a closer-matching popular fantasy franchise out there that would have worked, we would have used it. But we don’t, so there it is. When you are pitching, you want to compare your work to something so popular that everyone knows what it is.

Omg, so is Maggie basically what would happen if one of the BDH got dropped in the middle of Blood Heir, but DnD style?

Yes.  It is not DnD.  There are no elves and dwarves running around. We really aimed for a whole different world, but yes. You have it exactly.

Is Maggie inspired by the BDH?

In part.  Maggie is inspired by fandoms. By the act of liking a fictional world so much that it becomes a part of your life and you wish it could be real, so you could go into it and fix all the things. But then of course, once it is real, you have to survive in it.

 Do I remember correctly, when some early Maggie was posted, Ilona was worried that it might not be commercially viable? Yielding lots of BDH vows to purchase anything HA might offer? Or was that the dragon girl snippets? Did the support from the BDH help Tor decide to dive in? Although, honestly, they’d be nuts not to

Ilona is still worried that it is not commercially viable. This is a sore subject in the Andrews Household.  Moving on.

How do you anticipate this changing your plans for your other series?

Mostly, not at all.  Some things might take a little longer to finish, but overall, Tor made no effort to restrain us from publishing continuations and conclusions of our existing series. They were incredibly understanding.

I don’t consider Tor for fantasy/romance. Actually tbh I associated with Robert Jordan’s many descriptions of arms under “bosoms” and braid tugging (oh the 1990s/2000s were dire for fantasy with romantic, er, elements

Times are a-changing. We have an article for you. Tor has branched out.

 I’m really interested in the genesis of the project from secret passion project, to possible new anchor series, to possibly only 1-2 books, to a 3 book contract. Sounds like Tor was super excited to snap this up (as they should be!)!

 This was a first for us. It happened very fast, and yes, Tor did snap this up. But for us, it is still a small, quiet, passion project.

With it being a 3 book contract, is this a firm 3 and done trilogy or will there be the possibility of continuing?

Also

Will there be hardcovers and paperbacks?/ Will there be ebook?/ Will there be audio?

It is so early in the game. We don’t know yet. But we would expect hardcovers, paperbacks/trade, ebook, and audio.

How do you think Maggie fans will be different to the other Kate fandom and the Innkeeper fandom?

They would be more… sensible?

 Will there be a Luisa Preissler cover for it?

We do not know yet.  We don’t know what direction the cover will take or who will be doing it. Although it would be very fun to see the cast of characters through the lens of Luisa’s creativity.

As a huge fan of transmigration stories, I still find it surreal that HA has written a transmigrated-into-a-novel-world story, and that such a renowned US publisher was smart but also adventurous enough to invest in it.

We are so glad.

Will there be a truck-kun?

Okay, this one is hilarious. For those of you who are not fans of isekai, a disproportionate number of heroes and heroines end up in a different world after a fatal accident with a truck. It’s more of a meme – Ilona actually has seen a bus to be the culprit more frequently. But no, there is no truck-kun.

 Is “Maggie” a fantasy romance (plot & romance get equal focus) or a fantasy with romantic elements (the romance thread is secondary to the main plot development)?

Maggie is a fantasy with romantic elements. Plot and romance are heavily intertwined, but it is not a genre romance. It is intrigue and subtle manipulation of events and royal politics, and dazzling sword fights. And romance.

This concludes the Q&A.

We wanted to talk a little bit about the sudden explosion of this announcement. One of the reasons why we were really happy that Tor wanted to delay the big reveal was because we are very swamped with work. We are working on this manuscript as we speak. The announcement had gone so wide, our realtor emailed it to us.

So we ask for your patience while we navigate this new landscape and get used to it.