Worldbuilding, Tension, and A Healthy Editorial Relationship with Lani Forbes and Samantha Wekstein

This week we speak with author and teacher Lani Forbes about her YA fantasy novel, The Seventh Sun, and her agent, Samantha Wekstein at Thompson Literary Agency. Samantha represents a wide range of authors from picture books up through adult. We talk about how they knew they were the right fit--how they work together on edits--and how Samantha actually stayed up all night to read this book by the offer deadline. (#Dedication.) Then the main part of the episode—worldbuilding! 9:48: How Lani approaches worldbuilding 14:03: Common worldbuilding problems Samantha sees in her submission pile 14:56: How to get the reader into your world without info dumps 17:23: The part of querying that’s hardest on fantasy writers—and what to do about it 19:56: Strong female characters versus the Strong Female Character trope 27:02: Lani’s method for adding tension 33:06 Their editorial process working together as author and agent, and what authors should look for in this relationship 43:53: The mistakes Lani made along the way (even successful published authors make them) You can find Lani's work here: https://bookshop.org/books/the-seventh-sun-9781982546090/9781982546090 and https://laniforbes.com/ You can find Samantha at @SWekstein on Twitter, and at https://manuscriptacademy.com/samantha-wekstein