#night world

[moonlightreal]

How can we help?

I dunno about y’all but I’m very keen to live in a world where LJ Smith has some good things happen to her for a change, and we get to read Strange Fate. So is there anything we can do to make those things happen?

First, Strange Fate.

The only thing I can think to do is spread the word. Post on your socials, drop the news into the off topic channel of any remotely bookish discords you may be in. “Anybody read these books back when? The author reappeared!” Tell random YA readers you know. There are a bunch of people who liked the Night World books but haven’t thought of them in years, and a bunch of people who remember them and do the Strange Fate deepdive periodically, and those are the people who’d like to know that things are moving again.

I just wish we knew how fast things were moving! Spreading the word is a bit suboptimal when the word is, “Strange Fate is coming… sometime in the next few years, really this time!” But still, folks will want to know. Alas, fan enthusiasm cannot grease the slow wheels of publishing!

I think there will be a time for telling the publisher how very excited we are, but I’m not sure that time is yet. And if things don’t work out with publishers, there may be a time when we can kick in to a Kickstarter, but that time is also not yet.

Second, Ms. Smith.

This lady fought her way through some serious slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to finish the book we want to read. She deserves some good stuff to happen in her life and we can deliver some of that good stuff!

Ms. Smith would like to have action on the website. Importantly: emails do not go directly to Ms. Smith, she has her “staff writer” Jesa who seems to be both assistant and friend handling correspondence. Which is good! Dealing with a whole entire fanbase of delighted but very impatient people might be a bit too much for Ms. Smith who is still having medical issues, she needs a buffer and I’m really glad she has one. So say nice things to Jesa!

-Send questions for Ask LJ. I tried to think of questions that I really am curious about, that would also be fun for Ms. Smith to answer. One was what kind of anime she’s into, and I'm super curious to know if we have the same taste.

-Send fun stories. Did anything really wacky ever happen because you’re a Night World fan? Ever had a funny conversation with another fan in the wild? Did you roleplay or cosplay as your favorite character? This series has been part of our lives for ages—probably not a super big part, I mean there’s lots of fandoms, but if you’re here now it’s been a part for a long time.

-Send fanart. Jesa reports that Ms. Smith loves to see fanart! Also while I know we all have lots of opinions on AI pictures, Ms. Smith likes them and if you can wrangle a prompt to make a scene from one of the books she’d probably get a kick out of it. Or if you can draw, think of it as giving her some better art!

-Do not send fanfiction or story ideas. This is a bummer for those of us who happen to have the written word as our medium, but there are tangled legal and copyright things that make it VERY BAD for official authors to read any fanwork of their own stories. Ms. Smith wants to interact with her fans, so we need to make sure we’re fans who are safe to interact with!

And be nice, and be patient.

[gameraboy2]

Night World (1932)

[doitsushine92]

reading secret vampire again after years and oh my god ash was such a menace. a next level hater. he didn't even have anything to gain from fucking with james and poppy, just doing it for the love of the game

[ljsmiths-thenightworld]

Any other Night World historians out there know what the prize gold-plated flower looks like? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it, and doing a search now didn’t come across it.

[katrinahays]

here is a list of books I love that everyone should read.

-The folk of the air series by Holly black (cruel prince, wicked king, etc).

-Six of crows duoligy/king of scars by Leigh Bardugo duoligy.

-Witch haven duoligy by Sasha Payton Smith.

-Nightworld series by L. J. Smith (unfinished series).

-The things she's seen by Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina.

-Nimona by N. D. Stevenson.

-Lore by Alexandra Bracken.

-Shamaborn series by Lori M. Lee.

-The secret circle series by L. J. Smith.

-Entertwined by Heather Dixon.

-The Guardians series by William Joyce.

-The Forbidden Game by L. J. Smith.

-King Nyx by Kirsten Bakis

-Any books by Flame Tree (mythology/history!!!).

I love all of these books so much, no matter what people say. if anyone wants to know about them, just lmk!

[darklinaforever]

L.J Smith, I'm still waiting for the final volume of Nightworld (which she's apparently still working on, so all hope is not lost) and her Evensong fanfiction from TVD books, because I need Bamon book endgame... (even if on the other hand I haven't found any news on this subject...)

[incorrect-night-world-quotes]

Delos: What does it mean when someone says they're pescatarian and vegan?

Poppy: Land animals are innocent of crimes but The Fish have Sinned.

[yibeimolihuacha]

Shoutout to my biggest book!crush from my teenage years Ash Redfern.

I believe, you are the reason I ocassionaly read dramione fanfiction even though I haven't read a single hp book.

I still love you, babe

And I still love your wife

[bivicennial]

One of the little bits of worldbuilding lore I really appreciate in the NW is how both vampires and witches have very distinct cultures around raising children.

Like, Thea and Blaise lose their parents and are immediately taken in by an increasingly long list of relatives, because witches (especially Harman witches) do not let their children be abandoned. It's a very village-centric society. Everybody pitches in to make sure the kids are looked after and cared for, all 90s matriarchal commune style. Even when Blaise is actively causing like, mayhem and destruction, the Crone of All Witches decides to take her granddaughters on full time despite being ninety years old and running half the goddamn Night World.

Comparatively, the vampires have a very... aloof style of parenting. It's quite business-like, and focused mostly on monetary support rather than emotional care. Vampire kids are expected to teach themselves most of their survival skills basically on the streets. Darwinist, y'know? Because vampire children are given a lot of what humans (and witches, it seems) would consider very adult freedoms, and are treated as functional members of Night World society quite young. It seems to be expected that most vampire kids who aren't kept in an enclave will learn how to defend themselves or they'll get fucked up. And if they can't defend themselves, well. Weakness gets culled, and all that.

There's a lot of examples of it, too. Vampiric parenting is pretty consistent across the books. James's parents support him financially, but he lives in an apartment by himself at the age of, what, sixteen? Probably younger, considering he was living there for a while by the time Secret Vampire starts. And Ash doesn't seem to have any consistency in his life, but he does spend all his time partying in Las Vegas, while it's implied both his parents are living on the east coast in an enclave. He goes to fetch his sisters when his father tells him to, but he never gives the impression that he especially likes his father, and in fact suggests that if Quinn hadn't been around when his father called, he might have ignored him. There doesn't seem to be much love lost there. And we don't even have to get into Delos's relationship with his father, the guy who treats him like a living weapon at best.

Actually, the closest thing to a loving, functional parental vampire relationship seems to be Jez and Bracken, and they only have like one scene together. Even then, he let her run around San Francisco without supervision from the age of five onward, and that's never treated as being especially outside of the norm. He makes sure she has a place to stay and goes to school, but he doesn't seem to keep track of her daily activities at all, or he does and doesn't care what she gets into so long as he doesn't personally have to deal with it.

And unlike the witches, there doesn't seem to be as big of a push to take on extra kids. That's Morgead's whole thing, that he's got a bone to pick with all the elder vampires that just ignored him when he was abandoned by his mom. Even if they do take in the kids without parents (like Bracken does), vampire parents don't provide much attention anyway. With Thea, she sees a whole future surrounded by other witches and continuing her education under the tutelage of her family. She was eighteen and would have continued to be monitored and cared for for years. Whereas Ash got attacked at the age of twelve, killed a much bigger vampire, and every single person who could have watched out for him was like "yep he's good give him a credit card and let him go do whatever" and he just does.

Honestly, I could talk about each of the characters' childhoods in depth individually, but maybe I'll have to save that for later. Or fanfics or something.

[backlistbacklog]

Season 15 LJ Smith pt5 Night World pt2

[couldtheycatchkira]

[moonlightreal]

How close is Strange Fate?

So where in the process of publication is Strange Fate? How confident can we be that we’ll really see it and can we make a ballpark guess at how long it could take?

And bonus question, how do we all sign up to get ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) from whatever publisher picks it up?

With these questions in my mind I set about my googling…

TLDR: it is far. Not close.

Thanks to my awesome comrade in the quest, @ljsmiths-thenightworld asking Ms. Smith, we know the books are finished. Really, actually finished. Or at least they SAY… and they’ve said it before… no. I’m gonna have faith, they’re really finished!

The manuscripts are with the literary agent who as far as I can tell does a whole bunch of things. He edits the book, makes recommendations how the book should be changed to better suit the market, and gets it shipshape to be presented to publishers. This seems to be the step Strange Fate is in now.

But it might also be in the next step: shopping the book around to the editors who work for different publishing companies. As the publisher for the rest of the series, Simon & Schuster has “right of first refusal” aka “dibs.” If S&S doesn’t want it, Ms. Smith’s agent should(?) be free to approach other publishers or self publish. Assuming she doesn’t have some kind of contract with S&S that is still valid after twenty years.

Google tells me it is possible for a publisher to buy the rights but never release the book, but that is not done very often because there would be no monetary gain for the publisher in it. It seems unlikely that any publisher would do this with Strange Fate.

If (strange) fate favors us, a publisher will want the book and there will be a contract drawn up. Another round of major edits might happen here since the publisher also has ideas about what kind of book they want to print and Ms. Smith will have to do rewrites to accommodate this.

This step is a bit worrying since the Night World books are so very nineties and if Strange Fate comes out vibing 2024 it’d be kind of a shame. Also Strange Fate is two books now, we don’t know how long they are but there might be a lot to re-edit.

Once a publisher buys the book they have to get the book print-shipshape, plan the release, design the cover, and pitch the book to bookstores to sell. They also have to print the physical books, starting with the Advance Reader Copies and then do a final edit for typos. Then there’s marketing. I wonder if S&S might do a new edition of the whole series as a way to build up hype, find new readers and remind everybody else what they’re getting-- but that would really stretch the timeline so let’s hope they don’t.

And at last the book will appear. The internet tells me “12 to 24 months or even longer” from the publishing contract to the release date. So when are we looking at seeing Strange Fate? Not anytime soon!

I’m thinking LJ Smith maybe should have waited until she had a publisher on the hook before she returned to public life and gave us this exciting news. It could be a long wait, and if I’m reading my results of googling right it could all still fall apart. If no publisher wants the book we’re all in the soup!

But LJ Smith and her team know much more about the situation than I do and they are confidant enough that things will go well that they decided now was a good time to appear on the internet and start some buzz. So maybe I should shake off my pessimism and trust that Ms. Smith’s team knows what they’re doing!

Oh, and those Advance Reader Copies? Here’s a nice blog post about how to get them. There doesn’t seem to be a really surefire way and your chances are better if you have a book blog, write a lot of reviews, or are some kind of influencer. And much as I love our tumblrs, I don’t think we count lol! So we’ve got 12-24 months to do lots of favors for some influencers so we can call them in at the right moment!

Another thing I was thinking of: contact Simon and Schuster and ask about Strange Fate. Say you’re excited about it. If they keep records of the subject of every call, at least they’d know a nonzero number of people are interested. I called the “Mail Toll Free Line” years ago when asking about Strange Fate. (I assume it’s supposed to be ‘main’ and that typo has been there since, what, 2017?)

So the results of my googling say we’re at least a year or two out from reading Strange Fate. What gloomy news! But the light in the darkness is that we’re still closer to Strange Fate than we’ve ever been. The books exist. If things fall through with the fist publisher, there are other publishers. There’s self-publishing. If LJ Smith isn’t able to manage it, her heirs might, much as we hope it doesn't come to that. If the books become lost media, at least they’re out there to be found.

[gameraboy2]

Night World (1932)

[iwishyouweretheonewhogotaway]

[ljsmiths-thenightworld]

A New Website?!

Hello, night world! There’s been a lot of development in the last month with L.J. I didn’t immediately get to post about it, because I was sick and wanted to check it over more before doing so but I’m fairly confident it’s real so I’m here to share the update!

LJ is active currently! Shes’s made a new website, with a current photo of her in a blog post to better sooth the worries of if it’s her or not as well.

Her new website is theljsmith.com (her original is LJaneSmith.net)

I also emailed her account, which I learned she has an admin team now for one. I asked a bunch of questions and between her account and the replies I will sum up the important parts below:

Strange Fate is fully written!!!

It’s so big it became 2 books in general, as well as Lullaby which originally was split from it as well. All 3 appear to be finished, and are currently with her agent.

The names for Strange Fate are now Strange Fate: Mystic and Strange Fate: Apocalypse. LJ also does have a news letter as well, which you can sign up for to keep up with Strange Fate as well as the Strange Fate contest that is coming up in January!

She also no longer has access to the original website, but if she manages to get this going again she will post on it to direct original fans to the new site.

How are all you incredibly patient people feeling about this news?