It’s a contemporary retelling of the Russian folktale of Vasilissa the Beautiful, complete with a modern, outrageously weird Baba Yaga in a Brooklyn that’s losing more and more hours to night. LP: Sarah Porter’s Vassa in the Night is easily the most confounding, beautiful, and thoroughly bizarre YA book I’ve read in a very long time. There’s a great photo of me half-twisted away from the drop, clinging to the bench like a freaked-out cat. I’m not a hiker by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m terrified of heights, but I wanted to see/smell/taste the view firsthand, so I ending up sitting with him on a random, flimsy little bench that literally hangs over the cliff’s edge, huffing the air with my mouth open the way I sometimes do when I’m trying to memorize the palate of a place (it looks as normal as it sounds). LP: I revisited Montenegro with my family to refresh my memory before I wrote Wicked Like a Wildfire, and since my dad is the human equivalent of a mountain goat, he took me “hiking” near one of the peaks featured in the story. I think it’s helpful to condition yourself to get in the writing zone, and for me, smelling sandalwood really does the trick.ī+C: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done in the name of book research?

(To those who write at standing desks, bravo, and how do you do it?! Seriously, how?) But I prefer to write at night time, in bed, and most of my writing is done propped up with pillows while burning way too much incense. LP: Since I juggle various jobs, including agenting and ghostwriting along with my own writing, I’ve trained myself to write anytime/anywhere I can sit down if I’m on a deadline.

Lana Popović: Witchy twins unravel a family curse.ī+C: Where/when do you do your best writing?

Wicked like a wildfire by lana popović