on new names, old dreams, and way I want my stories to make you feel
Hello! I have some news!
Actually, I have a lot of news. We need to backtrack a little, because I haven’t posted on here in *checks notes* erm, well, never mind. But I sold another book, since I last wrote a Substack. A trilogy, actually, in a frankly life-changing deal, to publishers all around the world. It’s called Silvercloak, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted to write since I could hold a pen.
This fantasy world is one of my proudest achievements, and I’m so excited to open its doors in summer 2025. It’s dark and seductive and dangerous, it’s magical and fast-paced, it’s wands and cloaks and rare powers, it’s ancient lore and a vast map, it’s morally grey characters and extremely angsty romance, it’s fallowwolves and enchanted gamehouses and spellbooks and dragons and libraries and corrupted power. It’s built upon pleasure and pain and a love that could unmake all of reality. I love it.
And (here’s the thing I came here to tell you) . . . I’ll be writing it under a new pen name!
I’ve wanted to write as L.K. Steven for many years—I actually wrote and subbed multiple fantasy projects under this name between 2020-2022—and the time finally felt right to make the leap. There are several reasons for this, stuff about reader expectations and complicated backlists and a general desire for androgyny, but above all else, I just wanted to. It felt right. This name feels right. It feels like me.
I’ll still be publishing my young adult work as Laura Steven, including Our Infinite Fates and everything that comes after. I feel more excited about and proud of that strand of my writing than ever. But L.K. Steven marks a huge new beginning for me; a new *brand*, for lack of a better word.
Let me explain.
**
The goals I used to have for my career were largely quantitative. I’ve always found comfort in numerical evidence; tangible proof that I’m good.
I gravitate towards hobbies that provide me constant such feedback: running, which tells me my paces and distances and heart rates with cold detachment; chess, whose governing body slaps you with a new rating after every win, loss or draw.
And so it makes sense that I’d crave similar validation for my writing. Earning a major advance. Selling a certain number of copies. A particular rating average on Goodreads. Results I can track on graphs, plot on charts, and analyse as though the key to happiness is tucked somewhere inside.
These are all things I wanted, until I sat down last summer and thought about how I wanted my readers to feel when they picked up one of my books. The answer came to me with such startling clarity and immediacy that it had to have been there all along, waiting for me to finally call upon it.
The very precise feeling I want to evoke when I publish a new book is the same way I felt as a child whenever there was a new Pokémon game released. The fluttering in my belly when I loaded up the cartridge in my Gameboy, and saw the Gamefreak intro graphics darting across the screen, and heard that iconic music, and answered the Professor when he asked what my name was—because a new adventure awaited.
I used to feel dizzy with anticipation. I was returning to a world that felt as real to me as my own, and at that moment, it really and truly felt like anything could happen.
I have felt like this about other franchises, too, but that level of pure joy and obsession are fairly rare for me. The new Harry Potter book publishing each summer was a defining part of my childhood. I was always on holiday in Spain when it came out, and my parents would take me to a little English bookshop early each release day, and I’d walk out physically trembling with excitement. I still go to the same bookshop every year, chasing that feeling.
As an adult, I felt it whenever new episodes of Game of Thrones dropped. It’s hard to put into words, the sensation of passing through a doorway into another world with millions of other human beings, having no idea what’s about to happen and feeling almost sick with the anticipation of it, but I live for those moments. I’ve never felt so tense or so alive during a TV show as I did during the Battle of Winterfell.
I felt it for every movie in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I felt it for Rings of Power. I feel it whenever I start up a new map in Sid Meier’s Civilization V, or create a new farm in Stardew Valley. I’d imagine I’ll also feel it if we ever get the third book in The Name of the Wind trilogy. (Come through, Pat. We’re rooting for you.)
In any case, reflecting on this feeling has been transformative in terms of recalibrating how I view my own success. This is the way I want readers to feel when there’s a new L.K. Steven book—kind of dizzy with anticipation, and temporarily detached from the real world in some fundamental way. The bestseller lists and the royalties and the review ratings won’t matter as long, as I can create this feeling for someone, or many someones.
Of course, most of the worlds I’ve described above are huge franchises, and there’s no denying that a big part of why I get that feeling is a sense of communal experience. Many people reading the same thing at once, exchanging theories, poring over every line and feeling immediately bereft upon finishing. The collective grief, the beginning of the agonising wait for The Next One.
But maybe, in order to create That Feeling, I don’t necessarily need millions of readers; I just need readers who love the world and the characters like I do. A core of obsessive little freaks, in the same way I am an obsessive little freak.
So how do I make readers obsessed?
**
Over the last few months, I’ve really drilled down into what, for me, are the building blocks of That Feeling.
This is what I want every L.K. Steven book (god, typing those initials will never get old) to have:
Epic worldbuilding. Fantasy is the only genre that does this to me. I don’t know why; I was recently asked this in an interview, and sort of moronically muttered “because dragons are cool.” That’s not it, obviously, and nor is the over simplified idea of escapism. I’ll probably never be able to put my love for fantasy into words, never be able to explain why it makes my heart pound and my fingers tingle. In any case, L.K. Steven (!!!) books will always take readers somewhere else. Somewhere new and exciting, rich and vivid and completely unique.
Iconic characters . . . who could die at any moment. My absolute favourite thing as a fan is genuinely not knowing who is going to make it out of this book/season/movie alive. When Ned Stark is executed in GoT, you realise all bets are off. GRRM can and will kill anyone. That sort of tension is god tier. That’s what makes me feel almost feral with desperation for the next book, the next season. Who lives? Who dies? I am not afraid to kill your darlings.
Distinctive voice. The sense that no other writer alive could tell this story the way I’m telling it. A quirk of cadence, a kind of whimsical wit. (I actually think you can find this in all my books regardless of genre—voice is the thing I’ve always had, long before I learned how to properly construct a story, long before I ever started to think about the crude notion of author branding. During my journalism degree, I used to get constantly told off for having such a distinctive voice. I was supposed to be plain, impartial. Ha.)
Love at its core. Every plot beat, every character arc, every emotional journey, has to have its roots planted in love. Even if I wrote the most grim-dark fantasy of all-time, it would still be about love in all its forms.
The first two I am not currently known for. Hence the pivot to L.K., and this long-winded setting of new expectations.
The third I will always carry with me; I couldn’t put it down even if I wanted to.
And the fourth is essential to who I am as a person.
There’s other stuff too, of course. I recently exchanged a series of lengthy voice notes with a writing friend, Gillian McAllister, about big twists. We both write a lot of them, and they’re so hard to execute, because if you want them to properly smack a reader around the face, they cannot feel contrived. They can’t just be a kind of narrative sleight of hand, executed with deliberate obfuscation, a protagonist unnecessarily concealing information from the reader. A great twist has to be earned, and unique, and so ingrained with the emotional stakes that the story couldn’t really exist without it.
Our Infinite Fates has a stonker of a reveal. So will my L.K. Steven books.
Easter eggs, too. I adore poring over books trying to figure out where the tricksy foreshadowing is. I adore watching fan theories on TikTok, even for series I don’t read. When JKR announced ahead of The Order of the Phoenix that a major character would die, I reread the first four books several times with a literal notebook, trying to find clues. I want to write books so intricately plotted that they allow for such an astonishing level of neurosis.
I want my books to be dark and dangerous, campy and elevated, sexy and rich. Funny and hopeful and absolutely heartbreaking.
There’s so much other stuff, but those four pillars are the ones I keep coming back to. New worlds, iconic characters, distinctive voice, love at its very core.
That’s what the name L.K. Steven means to me, and I hope you’ll come along on this journey with me.
x
