1 Author, 7 Questions: Alyssa Villaire
The Glittering Edge is the book you need if you want more Practical Magic energy in your life, and it had one of the most vicious cliff-hanger endings of last year! Good news though! The sequel, The Neon Sky, is on shelves NOW! We got to sit down with Alyssa Villaire to talk her writing process for The Glittering Edge, that criminal (read: wonderful) cliffhanger, and what The Neon Sky will bring. Don’t worry, no spoilers!!
What was your initial inspiration for The Glittering Edge and The Neon Sky?
Around the time the pandemic hit, the world felt uncertain for all of us. As I was rotting away in my apartment, I began to long for the stories I loved while growing up in small-town Indiana: cozy supernatural fantasies like Practical Magic, Charmed, The Chimney Witches by Victoria Whitehead, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and The Mediator series by Meg Cabot. Then it hit me: what if I wrote a supernatural fantasy set in small-town Indiana? The town would be fictional, but it would be inspired by the places where I grew up. It was my way of paying homage to my home state and to the stories that set my imagination on fire when I was a teenager. That’s how The Glittering Edge and The Neon Sky were born!
Can you describe your writing process? Are you more of a pre-plotter or do you let the plot develop as you write?
I used to be a pantser—someone who sits down to write every day and goes wherever the story takes them. But since being a pantser involves without an outline, finishing drafts took a VERY long time! Once I began working on The Neon Sky, I was on tight deadlines, and I didn’t have the time to write ten drafts to figure out the story (The Glittering Edge had about thirteen drafts total before I was happy with it, and that was before copyedits!). So I wrote a detailed outline for The Neon Sky before I drafted a single word of prose. That process flipped a switch in my brain. Now, I can’t write books without an outline! But my outlines are almost like zero drafts. They’re long, sometimes thirty or forty pages, and they include detailed descriptions of every scene. My way of outlining feels almost like drafting, so I really enjoy that process.
Your book is set in modern-day Indiana, but with a lot of magic and fantasy elements! What was it like weaving fantasy into a contemporary setting?
It felt very natural! I think small towns lend themselves to fantasy and speculative stories because they’re simultaneously familiar and scary. I remember walking my neighborhood at night when I was a teenager, and the houses and surrounding woods looked so different in the dark that I felt as if I’d crossed into another world. When the streets are quiet and nobody is around, it’s easy to imagine monsters, fae, or witch covens hiding in plain sight. I drew on this sense of the occult and the unknown when I was writing the Idlewood Duology.
The Glittering Edge has a lot of complicated character dynamics! We have two boys who hate each other (and whose families hate each other), and a girl caught in between, a burgeoning romance, and a love curse. What was it like balancing the relationships between our three main characters, Penny, Alonso, and Corey?
The relationships between Penny, Corey, and Alonso incorporate one of my all-time favorite tropes: found family. In book one, the trio comes together and learns the assumptions they’ve made about each other were way off. And in book two, I wanted to challenge the relationships they’d formed, whether they were bonds of romance or friendship. I treated it as an experiment: I already knew these characters very well, so what would happen if I pushed each of them to their limits? How would they treat each other? How would their own trauma and insecurities impact their relationships over the long term, and would they be able to overcome it—or would they lose each other? The Neon Sky seeks to answer those questions!
Not to give anything away for those who haven’t read book one yet, but it ends with a MAJOR cliffhanger! Did you always know you were going to end The Glittering Edge that way? And can you give us a little hint what fans can expect in book 2 (no spoilers of course)!
I’ve gotten SO many messages from readers about that cliffhanger! Believe it or not, the ending of The Glittering Edge came as a surprise to me while I was working on it. I never thought I was the kind of writer who would torture readers with an open ending, but I was planning The Neon Sky while I was finishing The Glittering Edge, and I wanted to give some hints about the plot of book two while still leaving readers with a satisfying ending for book one. I felt that a cliffhanger was the best way to do that.
Without giving away too much, I can say that the character you meet at the end of The Glittering Edge is the main villain in The Neon Sky, so buckle up for some evil shenanigans!
What are some books you’ve been reading recently or would recommend?
I’m currently reading Autumn Krause’s next book, The Gods Will Sing Our Song, and I’m absolutely loving it! It’s a historical fantasy that comes out in September, and it weaves Japanese folklore with a dark time in the history of the United States: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. I’d definitely recommend adding it to your TBR!
I also recently read Queen of Faces by Petra Lord, and that book was a WILD ride. The story is set in a world where the rich swap designer bodies like clothes. It follows a teenage girl who is forced to infiltrate a magic school and become an assassin to escape her dying male body. If you love high fantasy with super unique world-building, this one is for you!
What are you working on now? Any exciting ideas you can share?
There’s nothing concrete I can share yet, but I can say that I’m working on a high fantasy book after focusing on contemporary fantasy for a few years! I’m having a great time with it, and I hope I can share more about this story (and a new trio of protagonists) soon.
“A brilliant combination of deadly secrets and curses, twisty romance and fast paced surprises … everything I want in a paranormal romance!” —Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Rumors are the lifeblood of Idlewood, Indiana. The locals whisper that the De Lucas are witches, and that decades prior they cursed the wealthy Barrion family as revenge for a love gone tragically wrong: now, if a Barrion falls in love with you, you’ll die. If this isn’t reason enough for wallflower Penny Emberly to stay away from both families, she doesn’t know what is. But when Penny’s mom is in an accident that leaves her on the brink of death, Penny can’t ignore the rumors anymore—because the Barrion curse is real. And her mom is its latest victim.
In order to save her mom’s life, Penny must bring together two bitter enemies on either side of the feud and work with them to break the curse. For star quarterback Corey Barrion, doing so would mean finally saving his family from the magic that killed his mom. And for misfit witch Alonso De Luca, it would mean convincing everyone in Idlewood—especially Penny—that he isn’t the villain they believe him to be.
But as the trio navigates Alonso’s unpredictable magic, the tangled web of Barrion-De Luca history, and an increasingly chaotic group chat, it soon becomes clear that the curse is not what they expected. Did a De Luca really curse the Barrions in a fit of jealousy, or is something even more sinister afoot? Penny will have to conquer her anxiety, wrestle with her budding feelings for Alonso, and delve into dangerous, forbidden magic to find the truth and save her mom—even if it means putting her own life at risk.
The sequel, THE NEON SKY, will be published in 2026 and is available for preorder now!
For Fans of:
- Slow-burn romance
- Found family
- Small town angst
- He falls first
- Misunderstood heroes
For fans of Stephanie Garber and Maggie Stiefvater comes the bewitching sequel to The Glittering Edge, where magic is real, witches make irresistible boyfriends, and keeping secrets is dangerous—but not as dangerous as the truth.
Penny Emberly didn’t expect to fall head over heels for Alonso De Luca last summer—or to discover that he’s a witch. Together with their friend Corey Barrion, they managed to save her mother from a deadly spell. Now autumn has arrived, and Penny believes they can take on anything.
But darkness is descending on the small town of Idlewood. Corey is desperate to undo the bloody legacy that made his family rich. The price, however, is steep: to unravel the magical bargain made by his grandfather, Corey must take a life.
As Corey wrestles with an impossible choice, Alonso begins to change. The more he pushes the limits of his magic, the more volatile, violent, and possessive he becomes. When tragedy strikes one of their classmates, the trio is forced to confront a terrifying question: is Alonso being consumed by something that’s bent on the destruction of everyone around him—especially Penny and Corey?
As supernatural forces drive them apart, Penny, Corey, and Alonso must decide what they’re willing to sacrifice before more blood is spilled—even if it means losing each other.