Happy Book Birthday to The Aftermyth, written by nationally and internationally bestselling author Tracy Wolff and published by Simon & Schuster. As a longtime lover of Greek mythology (from D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths to the Percy Jackson series) as well as of middle grade novels in general, I requested a review copy of The Aftermyth and couldn’t sleep until I finished it. I’m thrilled to report that it’s a delightfully fresh take on the dark mythological academia trope: don’t let the snakes put you off, because you’ll also discover glitter galore, a host of intriguing characters, and tricky relationships within these gripping pages. Now for a plot summary, straight from Tracy’s website:
What’s your myth?
Penelope Weaver has spent her whole life preparing to attend Anaximander’s Academy, where students learn how to bring to life the stories of Greek mythology as well as discover the Greek god whose principles they most embody. Penelope knows she’s an Athena—all smart, practical, and rule-following girls who take part in stories that matter are Athenas.
But when Penelope and her twin brother Paris arrive at Anaximander’s, it appears fate has other plans. Penelope isn’t placed with Athena but with students who are anything but practical and who prefer parties to rules. And that’s just the beginning. She’s given the world’s worst muse, her assigned tasks feel impossible, and the magic of Anaximander’s is overwhelming. Not to mention, there are two very different boys making her new life even more confusing.
But as things go from bad to dangerously worse, one thing becomes clear: in a world where everything is fated to happen a certain way, some stories need to be rewritten. As the world around her shifts and cracks, Penelope is asked to forget everything she thought she knew to help create a better story…even if that changes every plan and breaks every rule.
Laura: Tracy, welcome to Writers’ Rumpus! I’m thrilled to be able to interview you on launch day for The Aftermyth, the start of an exciting new series for middle grade readers. I’m totally awestruck that you’re a nationally and internationally bestselling author of young adult novels, and am pleased to share that after consuming The Aftermyth ARC, I immediately ordered (and enjoyed) your phenomenally popular CRAVE series. Who (or what) is your creative muse for this, your first middle grade novel?
Tracy: First of all, I want to say thank you so much for having me! I’m so, so excited to be here. 😊
Oh, I think my muse might wear a black pleather jacket and be slightly addicted to caffeine … which is an inside joke from The Aftermyth, but also true. On a more serious note, I’ve wanted to write a middle grade novel for years, partly because I adore reading middle grade novels—I’ve read hundreds of them with my boys as they were growing up—and partly because, as an English teacher, this age has always intrigued me. When kids first go to school and learn to read, story time is one of their favorite times of the day. Yet by the time I got them in my high school and college lit classes, many of those same students hated reading. I always wondered what happened during the middle grade years to turn so many kids against reading so completely? The Aftermyth is my attempt to grab some of those readers before they learn to hate reading and show them just how fun story time can be even as they get older and there are so many other things competing for their attention. I’m so lucky to be writing The Aftermyth series for Simon and Schuster. They are incredible partners in this quest, and are just as passionate as I am about turning kids into lifelong readers.
Also, thank you so much for reading the ARC of The Aftermyth—I really hope you enjoyed it! And thanks for giving the Crave series a try as well.
Laura: I was tickled by your clever chapter titles (like Sparkles Speak Louder than Words and Great Gumballs of Fire), and am curious if they helped drive your plot or came afterward? In essence, what I really want to know is this: how did you devise the plot for The Aftermyth, and was it the same or a different process as with your YA novels?
Tracy: Thank you—the chapter titles make me so happy, and I love, love, love that you enjoyed them! Sometimes they come to me when I’m writing the chapter and I jot them at the top, while other chapters don’t get named until the book is done. It’s kind of tradition at this point for the final chapter titles to be the last thing I do on a book before copyedits.
As for how I plotted The Aftermyth, I am so incredibly lucky to be working with Kara Sargent, who is one of the absolute best editors in the business. When we first decided to partner on a Greek mythology series, we both had some ideas we brought to the table. Then we spent a few months meeting once a week via zoom, bouncing more ideas off each other until we had a basic idea for the series, and the first book, that we both loved. From there, I created Penelope, Fifi, Kyrian, and all the other characters as I began thinking about how the world works.
Creating characters is one of my favorite things in the whole world to do—I love bringing them to life in my books, and the best compliment I can get is when a reader tells me my characters feel like real people. World-building is always more of a struggle for me. I love doing it, but it doesn’t come instinctively, the way character building does. So once I had the characters for The Aftermyth, I worked on plotting the story out and building the world at the same time, so the two went hand in hand. I always try to create a story that can only be told by a particular set of characters in a particular world, which means that, for me, creating the characters, world, and plot often happen simultaneously.
Laura: Thank you for sharing a window into your writing process. I’m definitely team Aphrodite for their warmth, compassion, inclusion, and positivity. I liked how you portrayed main character Penelope/Ellie’s gradual perspective shift away from Athena-all-the-way. While she grows to fully embrace her Aphrodite teammates, it hasn’t changed her highly intelligent, questioning, studying nature or love of the color blue. How did you develop the main and minor characters for this novel?
Tracy: Yay! Thank you! I am totally team Aphrodite all the way, as well! I love the hall and all of the characters I created to go along with it.
As I mentioned above, creating characters is my absolute favorite thing to do—not just the core group, but all kinds of fun side characters as well. I’m lucky in that characters usually come pretty easily to me. Often, as I start thinking about a story idea, the main character will kind of show up in my head and start talking to me. Once that happens, everything else starts falling into place. For me, Ellie is such a fun character to write because there is a lot of my best friend (and college roommate) in her, just like there is a lot of me in her roommate Fifi. I didn’t deliberately set out to write about the two of us and our dynamic, but as I got to know the world and the characters it just kind of fell into place. But I have to say, my bestie and I are as different as Penelope and Fifi are, and it was SO MUCH FUN imagining our dynamic from her point of view and exaggerating it a little bit for humor and adventure.
As for the side characters, they tend to come to me when I need them. For example, I knew I wanted each student to have a muse. But I had no idea who was going to show up in Penelope and Fifi’s room until Frankie came in through the window. Then I was like, oh, yay! This is going to be a ridiculous amount of fun 😊
Laura: How would you describe your setting for this novel? Is this the same type of setting you use for your YA novels like the CRAVE series?
Tracy: Absolutely. I love to set my fantasy books in the real world, but with a twist. I love reading books about other worlds and realms, but for me there is something super intriguing about the idea that the hot boy next door is a vampire. Or that a boarding school in the mountains can only be reached by eating a magic donut hole and crossing a charmed/cursed bridge like Anaximander’s Academy in The Aftermyth.
Laura: The Aftermyth is wonderfully set up as a series starter. I appreciated how you resolved many issues, but I’m left with a few burning questions. Chief among them are these: 1) Who is the Hades boy Kyrian? Why does he only attend Anaximander Academy half time, and why don’t Dr. Themis or the other Academy staff notice or care? 2) Will Penelope repair her relationship with her twin Paris, as well as with her parents (all rigid Athenas)? 3) Will a certain goddess be revealed? I don’t know what you’re at liberty to share about Book 2 (or the rest of the series), but please share what you can! Has Book 2 already been written or is it still in process, and does it have a target release date?
Tracy: The Aftermyth is definitely the first book in a series—we’re planning to take Penelope and her friends through their six years at Anaximander’s Academy. Kyrian is one of my favorite characters and you’ll definitely find out more about him as the series goes on, including why we only see him half the time. But for now, anything I say on that would be a major spoiler! 😊 Book two deals a lot with Penelope and Paris’s relationship, so you’ll definitely get to see more family dynamics soon. I’m in the middle of writing Book two right now—it’s scheduled for release in February 2027. As for a certain goddess … much will be revealed in the upcoming books, and not just about her …
Laura: Six books! How exciting! As a phenomenally prolific and successful author, what advice can you give to other writers of MG and YA?
Tracy: You are very kind—thank you for that lovely description. The best piece of advice I can give other writers is something I wish I’d realized when I first got published. And that’s that a publishing career is a marathon, not a sprint. When my first book came out, I kind of went into hyperactive mode, writing as much as I could as fast as I could, and I lived and died by the success or failure of each of those early books. But this business isn’t just one straight line to the top. It’s filled with ups and downs, peaks and valleys (some higher and lower than others). Some of your books will be super popular and others will just do okay, while others still might not perform well at all. But that’s okay. As long as you look at your career over time (my first book was published in 2007, so I’ve been at this nearly twenty years) and feel good about it, then you’re doing great. And if, after ten or twelve or even eighteen years, you still get up in the morning wanting to tell a kick butt story, then I think that’s the best measure of success you can have.
Laura: Thank you for sharing your hard-earned wisdom! Can you share one thing readers would be surprised to learn about you?
Tracy: I am a huge One Direction fan and I used to write One Direction fanfic on Archive of Our Own! 😊
Laura: How cool! What’s next for you? How can our Writers’ Rumpus readers reach you?
Tracy: I am currently working on the second Aftermyth book, as well as an adult romantasy novel, and a fantasy YA, too. Readers can reach me at my website, Tracywolffauthor.com or they can drop me a message on my Instagram, tracywolffbooks.
Thanks so much for having me! It’s been a blast! xoxo
Laura: Tracy, the honor was all mine. You’re an inspiration to writers everywhere, and I look forward to reading the next 5 books in this middle grade series, as well as your other novels.
I can’t resist including your impressive and super fun bio:
Tracy Wolff is the #1 New York Times, #1 internationally, #1 Wall Street Journal, and USA TODAY bestselling author of the Crave series as well as many other novels. A lover of mythology, vampires, and getting lost in a great book, she’s spent her whole life asking “what if” and “what happens next”—questions being a writer has helped her answer again and again. At six, she wrote her first short story—something with a rainbow, a unicorn, and a shapeshifting prince—and at seven, she forayed into the wonderful world of middle grade literature with her first Judy Blume novel. A one-time English professor, she now devotes all her time to writing fun, action-packed, romantic stories with fantastical worlds and characters who leap off the page. She has written all her seventy-plus novels from her home in Austin, Texas, which she shares with her partner, her sons, and their three adorable dogs.
Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: details about The Aftermyth GIVEAWAY of the cool and collectable special edition hardcover with painted edges! To enter the giveaway (U.S. addresses only), please leave a comment below. If you share this post through social media, mention it in your comment to receive a second entry. The winner will be notified on February 9th, so make sure you check back to see if you won!
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