Mia V. Moss is joining us today to talk about their novel, The Heresy of Thieves. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Vael stole magic from the gods for Her people and put an end to centuries of unrest. Now magic is gone, and the battle for the Witchlands’s soul begins
After a millennium of prosperity and magic, one catastrophic night undoes the realm of Yvaelen. Magic has fallen, and prayers to Vael the Giver go unanswered.
Jal Riago knows when it’s time to move on from a con. She can’t maintain her false refugee heiress story forever, and her benefactors grow weary of playing host. Just when she’s about to confess and cut ties, a deadly raid sets Jal’s life on a collision course with a powerful entity reckoning with its own madness.
The young, steadfast King Thealys Vorrine inherited the throne of Dynestra after her parents’ deaths at Spellfall. But sparks of unrest flare all too quickly into the unpredictable wildfire of rebellion, and King Vorrine must forge headlong into unknown territory.
Royal knight and notorious rake Ember Carrado is trying his best to get fired. Instead, when he’s paired with a judgmental paladin and sent on a mission to hunt down a rampaging mythical beast, he finds himself face-to-face with the past he’s been running from since Spellfall.
Beacon Wylda Lorcanthas wields a sharp tongue and the second-highest office in the Church of Vael. When the head of the Faith dies, Wylda must seek out a biddable successor. Unfortunately, the clergy’s clear favorite is a charismatic priest who promises the restoration of magic-for those willing to partake of a bloody cost.
The dark betrayal behind Spellfall, and the very fabric of Yvaelen’s faith, will be hidden no longer. What began with a thief’s touch will end with a reckoning. And salvation for some may be a waking nightmare for others.
What’s Mia’s favorite bit?
The making of my book began decades ago in 2001 and progressed in fits and starts, but the first full draft was not completed until 2019. Major revisions and subsequent drafts happened much more quickly, between 2020 and 2022. During that time, of course, the COVID pandemic was raging and life as we all knew it was drastically in flux.
As I began coloring in the lines and expanding the broader background world of Yvaelen in my book, it began to take shape as a meditation and reflection of those changes happening around me in real life. Amongst all the fear, the sorrow, the anger, the feelings of helpless despair, bright lights continued to shine in so many small ways.
A pie maker in my town worked with a local restaurant to use their walk-up window to sell pies out of safely. Neighbors rigged up pulley basket systems between apartment buildings to share cocktail kits from a safe distance. DJs, no longer able to access the dance crowds at music venues, livestreamed their sets for us party people at home. We dressed up for awards ceremonies held over Zoom. When things were dark and dire and everything was changing in so many ways for the worse, we found ways to make room for joy and creative community, too.
And I realized, as we lived it, that these small but crucial moments were often missing from a lot of the fictional depictions of traumatic social upheaval. We are repeatedly shown bleak fables of lone survivors, cannibalism of the masses, and joyless wastelands.
So, one of my favorite bits about The Heresy of Thieves was envisioning all of the little ways in which the characters living their lives creatively coped with the sudden loss of magic. The ability to transform materials into whatever their imaginations could hold in-depth lead to a thousand years of a wildly creative, expressive culture. It’s safe to say that people of the Witchlands have a strong aversion to staying static or holding back in their art.
When magic falls, it is not only destructive to technology and civic infrastructure, but to those cultural and personal identities that they so cherish. In Spellfall’s aftermath, the Yvaelese people must find ways to protect their values and work out brand new means of self-expression, which was so much fun for me to think about and expand on.
From the baker who manages to find mundane ways to make a masterful feat of patisserie for a posh birthday party, to the magic-based hair stylists who quickly pivot to manual wig-making. Adding in small details throughout the book about how these characters faced the loss of magic and kept going was my love letter to all of the beautiful, brilliant people in our world who saw a collapse of their daily order to life and said,“This sucks, but I bet we could still have a great party tonight.”
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BIO:
Mia V. Moss is a science fiction & fantasy author from the Pacific Northwest, now based in Oakland, CA. They are the author of the undersea sci-fi noir novella, MAI TAIS FOR THE LOST, and its forthcoming sequel, YACHT ROCK ELEGY. Their short stories have been featured in Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse, Galactic Stew, and elsewhere. THE HERESY OF THIEVES is their debut full-length novel and is out now from Dark Matter Ink.
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