Stacia Stark

I haven't read them yet, but they're, like, on the list.

But I think it was nice the way they gave a good nod to the Kiwi series.

Can you give a quick elevator pitch for the book for the audience?

Sure.

So We Who Will Die is a Roman-inspired romanticie.

pitched as Gladiator meets Vampire Diaries.

It follows my heroine, Arvel, and six years before the book begins, she's lost pretty much everything that's ever mattered to her.

She's just got her brothers who she's looking after.

And so when a vampire shows up at her door and blackmails her with one of her brother's lives, she's really just got no choice but to kind of do what he wants.

And what he wants her to do is enter the Sundering, which is these gladiator games, to get close enough to kill the emperor.

You know, that actually came from a vow.

So originally, you know, I had the sigil marked, which was me just really wanting... I really love the idea of people being able to see at a glance, like, how powerful people are and, like, what that does to a society.

And then I knew... I'd never written vampires before and there was always in the back of my mind that I'd like to play with that, you know.

But...

with our Val, her mum's an addict, so with vampires, you kind of get to, you know, as authors, we really just like to give characters big wounds and then continually sprinkle salt all over them, right?

So any way that you can take those wounds and,

and do that.

With the vampires we see, you know, there's the blood addiction.

We've got the people who are addicted to vampire blood.

We've got the longing for the sun and sun madness.