The short version? I was working a terrible phone customer service job when NaNoWriMo rolled around and was joking with a friend that I was going to write a bad book only for me, and that it was going to be Fifty Shades of Labyrinth.

The long version? Wintersong contains absolutely everything I loved and reveled in; it is the most self-indulgent book I’ve written in my life. It draws a lot on gothic tropes, life-death-rebirth stories, classical music, and what it means to be an artist.

No.

Of course, never say never, but at the moment I don’t have any plans to write another book set in this world. I don’t know what I would say, and I feel I left my characters in the right places. I do, however, invite y’all to write fanfic if you want more! I used to write fanfiction for books I wanted more from all the time as a kid.

I wrote a longer answer about it on Tumblr, but from a plot perspective, I knew I had to maintain balance. A life for a life. No choice can be made without cost. If the Goblin King were to walk free, then another must take his place.

But the harder question I had to answer was how to make this right. How to make it a “happy ending” for all parties involved. I’ve always known that Josef would become the next Goblin King; I knew that he would find peace and a sense of self Underground. As with Liesl, the romance was never the “point” with either his or his sister’s story—it was always about coming to a better understanding of the self.