Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my 2026 projects. It feels both very far away and also like it’s basically tomorrow. Before the End is one of the big projects I’ve been focusing on. I talked about it with my husband last night. We were just sitting there, bouncing ideas back and forth, pulling at threads, seeing what snagged. And the thing that keeps making me laugh is how absolutely bonkers this story wants to be. It’s speculative fiction, but not in a neat, prestige way. More like off-the-wall, surreal, slightly unhinged, “you wouldn’t see this coming from a mile away” territory. I don’t even know yet if the central idea is going to work. It might not. But that’s kind of the fun part. I’m still refining it, still poking at it, still letting it breathe.

I’m genuinely excited about one particular aspect. One of the main characters shares the same cultural background as my husband. This connection is honestly such a gift. Built-in cultural sounding board. No formal cultural reader required, just real conversations, real nuance, real lived experience. That alone has already shaped the character in ways I wouldn’t have landed on by myself.

And even with how strange the story is getting, the characters themselves feel grounded to me. That’s always been my thing. I’m not really interested in billionaire bad boys or hyper-privileged people who are secretly misunderstood. No shade, it’s just not where my brain goes. I like writing about normal people. Working class, middle class, upper middle class. People who feel real and familiar, even when the circumstances around them are not. Even in Paper Fame, where Devon is wealthy, the story itself isn’t about aspirational luxury. It’s about people and power and mess. So yeah. After last night, I feel like I finally have a clearer sense of who these Before the End characters are, at least emotionally. And that makes me excited to actually start, even if the story itself is still a little feral.