Author Interview: AJ Whitney

Sovereign is out on February 28th!

Feb 24, 2025

Today we’ve got an author interview with AJ Whitney. Her debut novel, a young adult dystopian thriller will be out on February 28th from Blue Handle Publishing.

Sovereign has
🍁 diversity, equity, and inclusion themes
🍁 dystopian folk horror
🍁 cults
🍁 found family
🍁 ancient secrets
🍁 mysterious gods
🍁 strong female characters
🍁 twist endings

Number 332 is living to be sacrificed.
A teen with no name and nine other Orphans will be left in the Fields as gifts, and the town will be blessed with decades of bountiful harvests - just as they have for the past three centuries.
But after so long, even the town Elders begin to question the decennial Sending and the very existence of the gods they worship.
What will happen to the isolated little village if they stop believing? 332 could have a life of her own, one not promised to the unknown Sovereign.
And yet, maybe the legends are true after all. Maybe the scrawled message that sealed 332’s fate along with the hundreds of others who came before her is still to be heeded.
Every 10 years.

Thank you to AJ for taking the time to do this interview with us!

Sovereign is the first book in a trilogy. Did you always know this would be a series, or was it something that happened during the process?

I didn’t set out to write a series at first. Sovereign ends on an enormous cliffhanger, and there was some part of me (and still is a little bit!) that wanted to leave it up to the reader’s imagination. It brought to mind my experience reading The Giver when I was young and wondering what in the world really became of Jonas at the end. Of course, she does eventually tell you by the end of the series.

Alas, my publisher felt, probably rightly, that the ending set up a sequel so well that there should be additional books, and we settled on a trilogy. At first I was a little worried I wouldn’t have two more books’ worth of interesting events left for these characters, but I proved myself wrong there! If this trilogy does well, I even have some concepts for a prequel series outlined already.

Oh wow, sounds like you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you! I’m definitely intrigued by this cliffhanger and curious to see what it is.

When did you first come up with the idea for the series?

In the spring of 2019, I had this insane dream about a lone woman working in a cornfield when a truck busted through the fence and barrelled into the field, flattening everything in sight. When she opened the door, the truck was empty. Cut to my persona in the dream as a child wearing burlap and sneaking into a dusty town meeting to spy on people discussing whether orphans are or are not real people. In that meeting, it was decided that the orphans would not be sacrificed to the gods and would become officially human. I got to wear a real, soft dress that didn’t scratch my skin. But before long, supernatural things started to happen. I won’t share the rest for fear of spoiling the book for you, but the dream eventually returned to the original woman, and it became clear that these were not two separate dreams but the same one, connected in a way I would never have expected even from my own subconscious. I wrote down everything I could remember about the characters and events and tried to write the story immediately, but it was legitimately terrible. It wasn’t until a year later that I sat down at my dining room table and wrote the bare bones of the story that would become Sovereign, the same week the world began to shut down for the COVID pandemic.

Wow, that’s quite a dream! Making a note to move this to the top of my “to get” list next time I’m buying books.

Do you have a favourite line you'd like to share?

“To be companionless when the darkness of night descends – the idea fills me with terror.”

“Come on, boys; you have no idea what I can do!”

I love that! Very ominous.

Who would you recommend Sovereign to?

Fans of The Hunger Games, The Grace Year, Divergent, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Giver will love Sovereign!

It’s a great book for younger teens, ages 12-15, or even a more mature 10- or 11-year-old. It’s perfect for fans of YA (young adult) dystopia and folk horror, no matter what age, provided there’s an understanding that the teen characters have lived very isolated lives without any expectation of ever becoming adults. As a result, they’re sheltered and childlike. Why would you need to learn to become more mature and adultlike if you’ll never get to be an adult? The characters progress considerably in the next two books, but that level of maturity wouldn’t make sense for how the Orphans in Sovereign have been raised up to this point in their lives. There is some violence, as with any dystopian story, but nothing over-the-top, gory, or detailed.

There should be a big audience out there waiting to find your book then. It reminds me a little of The Night Creatures trilogy as well, actually, which was one of my faves as a teen.

Do you know what your next project will be?

After Sovereign launches, I’ll be finishing up the third book in this trilogy. I already have the first draft written, but there’s plenty more work to be done! After that, I have two new projects I’ll be working on.

With a working title of Never Say Neverland, the first is an upper YA horror retelling of Peter Pan and Wendy. What if Peter Pan only thought he was a child who couldn’t grow old? After surviving an abusive childhood, adult Peter is left with significant trauma that shattered his psyche and left him with psychopathic tendencies. On a mission to “rescue” young boys whose mothers Peter perceives to have treated them poorly, he murders the mothers and kidnaps the children, who the London papers have nicknamed “The Lost Boys.” One day Peter sees John and Michael Darling receive a scolding from their mother in the park. He stalks the family and breaks into the home when Mr. Darling is out late one night. He takes care of Mrs. Darling and makes his way to the nursery, where John and Michael are sleeping. Unfortunately, Peter is surprised by the entrance of an older sister he wasn’t expecting. Not knowing what to do with a pre-adolescent girl, he abducts her as well, and she wakes up chained in a rural basement, where she hallucinates Neverland as a way of coping with her horrifying circumstances while she awaits rescue from the hook-handed London detective investigating the case. My 16-year-old is beyond excited about this one!

The second project, titled Indescribable Beauty, is the story of a 15-year-old girl born into the (fictional) fundamentalist cult known as the Church of Indescribable Beauty. She has never been like the other girls and struggles to maintain the order and meekness her church expects of its female members. She hikes up her dress and runs, skins her knees, plays with animals, and can often be found in the barns where women certainly do not belong unless they’re milking the cows. But her biggest sin? She has secretly learned to read, and her best friend, a boy a couple of years older, sneaks her books in their secret hideout throughout their childhood. At 15, the heroine “becomes a woman” and is forced to marry the man to whom she’s been betrothed since she was a toddler. He also happens to be the same best friend who has enabled her dangerous habits her whole life. As she grows older, her “indecent” proclivities cause more and more trouble, and she must decide whether to stay with her husband and children and toe the line or leave behind the only people she’s ever loved to escape the dangers of living an unconventional life in a highly conventional society.

As a huge fan of Peter Pan, traumatised characters, and thrillers… I think I need that book ASAP. These both sound like incredibly interesting reads, I hope we get to see them finished in the future!

Have you always wanted to be an author? What inspired you to start?

Yes! I have always, always wanted to be an author. As the story goes, I taught myself to read when I was three, and I’ve had my nose in a book ever since. I started reading 300-page novels in about second grade, and that’s about the first time I remember really thinking about wanting to write. Unfortunately, I never felt like I had any great ideas. I would start to write a story and then quit. When I re-read my work, I hated every last word. I didn’t pursue English or writing in college because I felt that I suffered from a lack of creativity, and though I was a phenomenal writer, according to every teacher ever, how could you make it as a writer if you don’t have any ideas of things to write? So I became a school counsellor instead. I didn’t have my first great book idea until I was 35, and since then, the ideas just won’t stop flowing! It’s never too late to achieve your dreams.

That’s a very encouraging history! It’s always reassuring to remember that not everyone starts out as soon as they finish school. Sounds like you’re really on a roll now, and definitely glad you didn’t give up!

How long have you been writing?

I have been writing ever since I can remember being able to form the letters. It became more intense after I read Harriet the Spy in fourth grade and wanted to write down every detail of everything I ever saw or heard in a massive collection of notebooks!

I started writing stories in middle school, and my high school teachers loved my work so much they told me I should try to get published. But alas, imposter syndrome had a hold on me. After high school came college, then marriage, kids, and grad school. I started writing again when the idea for Sovereign hit me, and once I finally came to terms with the fact that I might actually be good at this, I’ve written pretty much every day.

They do say writing every day is the trick to success!

How much does your own life influence your work?

My life experiences have a huge influence on my work. My life has been fraught with challenges and trauma, but those things are incredible fuel for art! Sovereign has become somewhat of an allegory for my childhood trauma. The main character, Number 332, is my younger self in a lot of ways. She’s an outspoken, sarcastic tom-boy who’s, quite frankly, a little bit feral. Even at 40 years old, that still describes me!

Indescribable Beauty is reminiscent of the religious trauma I’ve experienced throughout my life. Women should be seen and not heard. Be meek, be humble, do what you’re told. Definitely don’t have any leadership skills, and never be friends with men you aren’t married to. For decades, I was regarded with suspicion and anger in Evangelical churches because I just don’t quite fit the mould of what a woman “should be.” I’ve somehow always managed to be too much and not enough at the same time, but I’ve never stopped trying to be as authentically me as I possibly can.

Never Say Neverland is just for fun. No serial killers in my life that I know of! But whatever I’m going through at any particular time seems to creep into my writing in one way or another. My characters tend to have philosophical conversations and ethical dilemmas that reflect whatever I’m feeling most passionate about at any given time.

Trauma can be incredible fuel for artists! It’s not fun or positive on any level, but at least we can turn it into something useful at times! I’m glad you’re in a better place now and are able to use these things to create. And there’s some added importance in it, especially in the subjects and themes in these stories. They’re entertaining, sure, but they’re also thought-provoking and raise issues people need to recognise more.

What made you decide to publish with an indie publisher?

Am I allowed to say they got to me first? LOL! It’s a pretty interesting story, actually. I started letting friends read the book in the fall of 2022, and a librarian friend of mine, who obviously knows books, told me I should try to get it published. I literally just googled “How to get your book published” and started sending the manuscript to anyone accepting open submissions. I had no idea what I was doing! Within a few weeks, I got a hybrid publishing offer and discovered that this is actually a thing that exists. They would publish my book and own the rights to it, but I would pay a portion of the up-front costs to minimize their financial liability. This type of publishing is heavily vilified in the author community, which I also found out sooner rather than later.

Because I still didn’t know what I was doing and really didn’t have any money to put toward this kind of offer, I asked for an extension, which they kindly gave me. Then I started a Kickstarter campaign and all these social media accounts to help promote it. If you didn’t know, Kickstarters are actually a lot of work and difficult to get off the ground! But through the exposure I was getting on social media, I ended up connecting with someone on TikTok who asked me questions about my book. She asked if she could give my number to a friend of hers who worked for a publishing company, and I, of course, said yes.

This friend called me that evening and asked about my publishing offer and my book. He walked me through a lot of things I really didn’t understand. He took a look at the company that had offered me the hybrid contract and said it was one of the better hybrid offers he’s seen, but that I may be able to self-publish for less. Then he offered to take a look at my manuscript and give me an opinion. When I heard back from him weeks later, he said, “Your book is way too good for a hybrid deal. You need to start looking for an agent.” He also asked if he could run my manuscript by the rest of his team and see if they would be interested in publishing. A month or so later, while I was querying literary agents, he came back to me with an offer.

There’s a lot of pros and cons to all the different ways to publish. With self-publishing, you have to save up your pennies and be prepared to spend thousands of dollars and immeasurable hours of labour putting out a good enough product for people to want to read it. With hybrid, you carry some of the financial risks, but you still have a publishing team behind you. However, without as much risk on the publisher’s behalf, some would argue that they have less motivation to ensure your book is a success once they put it out. Others would say it’s all a scam, and don’t go anywhere near a hybrid publisher. Indie publishers have a dedicated professional team, but they may not be able to offer you an advance or have the budget to do tons of marketing for you. You also retain a lot more creative control and tend to have fewer of those gatekeeping rules to follow. And the big guys have the money and tons of professionals to work on your book but put most of their effort into the established big names and give you almost no control over the final product.

For me, indie publishing has turned out pretty great so far. There’s no such thing as a perfect process or a perfect publisher because it’s all a human system, but if I could do it all over, I don’t think I’d change anything.

Wow, what a journey! Sounds like you hit a few lucky spots along the way. I’m so glad it all worked out in the end! And there definitely are pros and cons to every type of publishing, it often just depends on what works best for the individual. Thanks for that insight!

Who was your biggest influence as an author?

I have read almost everything I could get my hands on since preschool, so I suspect my influences are vast. However, if I had to pick an author I most want to be like, it would be the legendary Lois Lowry, who wrote many of the books that touched me most in my childhood and teen years and who mentored countless authors and just generally made the writing community better.

I must admit, I haven’t heard of this author or any of her books, but after looking her up, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out.

If you could recommend one book aside from your own, what would it be?

The Thief of Always by Clive Barker is my favourite book of all time, and I think everyone should read it at least once – though I guarantee it’ll be hard not to pick it up a second, third, and fourth time! I still have my first copy that I got from my local used bookstore when I was 10, even though it’s falling apart. It’s an incredible fantasy horror – light on the horror – intended for middle grades, but everyone from age 9 and up will love this book!

That looks like a pretty fun book, I’ll be keeping an eye out for that one too!

What advice would you give to other writers? Is there anything you wish someone had told you?

Read. Read anything and everything you can get your hands on, and pay attention to how other authors write.
Write constantly. You don’t have to publish it. Write in a journal, write song lyrics or poems, write letters and emails. Just write. The more you write, the better you’ll get, especially if you’re also following Tip #1.
Research. Take classes. Get your MFA. Read blogs and watch TikToks. Do whatever you can to learn more about writing and publishing. Don’t rush the steps until you’re confident that you know what all of them are and can do them well! For example, make sure you understand how to query and write a good query letter before you start sending things out to agents. Otherwise, you risk looking as dumb as I probably did when I first started!
Connect with others in the industry. Make friends on social media, join an authors-only discord server, or get involved in a critique group. We need each other!
If you’re self-publishing, save up your money and invest in a team of professionals to help with editing, cover design, editing, marketing/publicity, and editing. Did I mention editing? It doesn’t matter how great you are at writing, everyone needs an editor!
Learn how to listen to, accept, and incorporate feedback. We have all these wonderful, beautiful ideas in our heads, and our job is to write them down in such a way that our readers can see the same thing. But how do you know if they can see it when you’re the only one who’s ever read your writing? You have to let other people read it and give you brutally honest opinions, even when they’re hard to hear. Sure, it may hurt your feelings, but if you wait a few days or months, you can come back to that feedback and see the truth of it. And then you’ll have a better book! If you take every criticism personally, and can’t incorporate feedback, you’re not going to write a book that readers will understand and enjoy.

Yes, yes, and yes! (and the same again!)

Anything else you would like to add?

Sovereign has been an incredible labour of love, and I couldn’t have turned this into a real book without my friends and family, many of whom also alpha and beta read for me (and only a few against their will!), and the amazing team at Blue Handle Publishing. The book comes out on Feb 28, and I could not be more excited, and maybe also terrified, to share it with the world!

Thanks so much to AJ for joining us today, and for answering our questions! It’s been great to have you here and learn more about your book!

About the Author

AJ Whitney is a Kansas City author and high school counsellor. The author of the Sovereign series, AJ loves to write just about any kind of speculative fiction, from thrillers and horror to fantasy and everything in between. When reading one of her books, expect a page-turner with twists, cliffhangers, and dark surprises. She prides herself in being a little eccentric and strongly believes in teaching teens to own their weird.

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