We are delighted to announce a partnership with ReelShort, who has optioned the first three books in the Hidden Legacy series. The Nevada trilogy is coming to a very small screen.

What is ReelShort? ReelShort is a platform that produces video designed to be viewed on your phone or tablet. The episodes are short, usually 1-2 minutes each, but there will be a lot of them, about 60-80 per book. This format is often called vertical drama, because you swipe up on the phone to get to the next episode. ReelShort is based in Silicon Valley with production hubs in LA, Atlanta, and New York.

We are very excited about this development. We do not have a date for you at this point, so more to come.

A small warning: screen adaptations often fall apart before ever getting released. We are, however, optimistic, because ReelShort reached out to us, and they seem to be very enthusiastic about this project. We expect this to be completely over the top in the most hilarious of ways.

AI usage

ReelShort is a wide platform. They produce their own content but they also license existing content from other markets. Some of these licensed dramas are AI.

We have it in writing that ReelShort will be hiring all HUMAN talent for this production. Meaning no AI actors will be used for human roles in this adaptation.

Explanation of AI usage and Ilona Andrews, Inc. stance

Everything that follows in this section is our opinion and views and does not reflect ReelShort’s policies.

Vertical dramas are very popular in China. It is a $15 billion dollar market.

According to China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) and the China Netcasting Services Association, over 90% of recently released vertical micro-dramas rely heavily on generative AI.

Here is a Youtube video from Today.

This is Xu Peng, one of the talented Chinese actors who has now retired from acting at the age of 30.

His roles dried up because China shifted to AI in a microdrama market. You can read the full article at CNA Lifestyle. He now sells vegetables, which is a great job as well, but that is not why he went to an acting college.

We do not want to see it happen in US. Kid 2’s friend is an actress, who is currently in LA, and she says that a lot of studios drastically scaled back the number of projects. There are fewer and fewer roles available already.

For these reasons, we strongly insisted on no AI replacement of human actors.

Why the distinction of human?

We have to be realistic. AI is horrible for environment, but right now it is a relatively inexpensive way to generate special effects. One instance where it can be used to a good effect is in potentially dangerous scenes featuring animals.

We are not going to link it here, but one of the Soviet era films has a scene that deeply scarred Ilona as a child. The film was released in 1966, and in it, a horse attempts to walk down the stairs, falls, and breaks her leg. They left it in.

We do not oppose the use of AI for scenes where animals could be potentially injured.

The post Hidden Legacy Goes Vertical: ReelShort first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Happy Monday! We have topics, and answers, and anouncements.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

SPIEGEL Bestseller

We have many topics to cover today, and we will begin with happy news. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is a bestseller in Germany.

We are delighted and are very grateful to our German readers for taking a chance on Maggie. Carlsen have been so amazing to work with. Check this out.

Graphic Audio

We are planning a GA adaptation but it will be a couple of years before it will become a reality. There are contractual exclusivity periods that ensure that GA adaptations do not conflict with the traditional audio.

Sales and Spoilers

TKWNKM is officially six months old. This generated all kinds of speculation regarding sales, including the forensic accounting level of sleuthing on Reddit. I was so impressed, I broke my no Reddit rule and left a comment.

Short version: we are optimistic that TKWNKM has done well, but we will need to see a royalty statement before we can celebrate.

Also, how in the world did you guys find out that the book went into a reprint? Did I mention it accidentally somewhere?

Mod R reminded me that we permit spoilers at 6 month mark, so an official Maggie Spoiler Filled discussion thread will go up sometime this week. You will be able to ask questions in the comments, and we will do a follow up answering what we can.

Maggie the Undying #2

Copyedit

This Redacted Will Not Redacted Me has been accepted, reviewed, and sent to the copyeditor. We are delighted to work with the same copyeditor, who will be returning to save us from ourselves again and can’t wait to dive please don’t give us this manuscript back right away. Please. We beg you.

Audio

“Readers are very anxious about the publication queue and whether Kristen Sieh will be able to narrate Maggie 2″

Tor Audio, who have been awesome to work with, have already reached out to Kristen. Both she and the audio director have agreed to return to the sequel.

::loses all professionalism for 3 seconds: OMG OMG OMG! Kristen is coming back, yay! Giant exhale of relief.

Odds and Ends

London 2027

We are working on a plan to get to London in summer of the next year. We also have an EU tour shaping up that summer. Right now we are hoping to stick close to the original time frame, because we are scheduled for all sorts of stuff. So if you were planning to see us, unless weirdness happens, we will be visiting UK. More to come when we have firmer dates.

Spanish AI Mess

“Spanish Hidden Legacy audiobooks new release is using Virtual Voice and the BDH are VERY unhappy” 

What fresh hell is this… Okay, so these titles are released by Harlequin Iberica, and we have a very limited control here. Our only recourse is to write a strongly worded email, which we will do as soon as I am done here. More to come.

Vellum and Store

So for reasons I detailed privately to the 140 people who are still waiting, we hit a delay on vellum fulfillment. This just came in. They are promising it will be in my hands by noon.

If they did not mess this up again, then we will go straight to order fulfillment. Once again, my deepest apologies. This was a harsh lesson in printing supplies’ shortages.

Once these orders are out, we will reopen the merch store. We know that you are waiting to make the holiday season purchases. We also have a winner who is still waiting for their shopping spree. My apologies. I want to make sure that the store is cleaned up and ready, and I am afraid to do this while we still have vellum orders pending.

Outstanding Items

If you emailed us, if you reached out and have not heard back, please email again.

This was a very busy year for us. The final wordcount for TC… oops, almost messed up, Maggie #2 is at 239, 973 and is likely to go up a tiny bit, because we cut a lot and the two people who have read it prior to cuts informed that they were sad some stuff was omitted. It is 1,054 MS Word pages long. For comparison, TKWNKM was at 191,045 with Acknowledgments and extra format stuff.

It’s been 4 months of extremely dense labor. The last two months were filled with 12 hour work days. I apologize if your email went unanswered. We are catching up on all the book requests, letters, etc. now.

What’s next?

Give us a week to breathe, and we will figure it out.

The post A Proper Update: Many Topics first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

You know things are bad when the “Zen” butterfly header shows up.

A first time convention organizer made an LGBTQI+ book event in Melbourne, Australia. The event coincided in some way with RARE Australia 2028. I am not even going to go into who announced what when etc. Needless to say, the correct move here was to promote the two events jointly if they coincided. Because it would be a win for everyone. Rising tide lifts all boats.

For some reason, RARE decided to have a massive meltdown over this on social media instead.

We are dropping out of RARE London 2027. We will still go to London next year. But we will not be at RARE. More to come on how this will be sorted out.

It is not our mess, but we are very sorry.

So if you bought tickets because of us, we will not be attending. My suggestion is to check the other authors as well, because I know Alyssa Day dropped out, and several other people did as well.

I’m going to use this chance to donate and to plug ACON, which was recommended to us previously as a great Australian LGBTQI+ charity. Their mission statement says that they focus on health, inclusion and HIV responses for people of diverse sexualities and genders.

To reiterate, you still will get to see us in UK next year, and we will post a detailed itinerary once it’s sorted out.

Comments are locked, because it’s Sunday night, and I cannot be here to monitor the responses.

The post Going to London. Not Going to RARE. first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

The Android version of the app has been coded, and we are ready for the beta testers. Same plan as before: if you would like to beta test the app, please comment below. Our developer will pick out some random names from the comments. If you are chosen, we will email you with a link to Discord where you can post bug reports and comments.

Mod R is off for the weekend for much deserved R&R, so I am moderating this post. I am leaving this note here in case she shows up and tries to moderate instead of resting.

While we are here, we have a couple of new maps. These will be loaded into the app on the next update and will be available under Maggie’s House section.

Both maps were created by Becka of Becka Designs. Check out her Instagram for more beautiful maps.

The Pen

The Courtyard

I will be back on Monday with more news.

The post Android App Beta and New Maps first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

The festival will take place on the 14th and 15th of November in downtown Austin, primarily in and around the Texas State Capitol Grounds. The vast majority of panels and signings, including the Ilona Andrews events, are free to the public.

I’ll drop a reminder with the full House Andrews schedule/details once we have them. As far as I understand, there should be an opportunity to get books signed, but I’ll clarify closer to the date.

So, if you’re one of the Texas branch of the Horde, or you have reason to journey to Austin, you may want to leave a little space in your calendar this November!

In the meantime, drawing shameless inspiration from the popular ‘diary of a…’ meme format, here is a completely affectionate and not at all judgemental look at a day in the life of the average BDH.

Let’s call him … Steve.

• 7:03 am Wake up and feed the ferrets. Mischief hour listening to the new Graphic Audio version of Magic Tides.
  

• 8:06 am Check the Ilona Andrews website for sequel news. Nothing.
  
  
• 9:00 am Finish making your woven bacon basket with fried egg inside and eat it in one bite, pretending to be Caldenia.
  
  
• 9:05 am Everything is ok. You just choked a little bit. Tomorrow’s breakfast is strawberry donuts anyway.
  
  
• 9:10 am Check the blog for sequel news. You missed First again. Leave comment asking about the sequel to Blood Heir.
  
  
• 9:30 am Morning exercise. Re-enact Kate’s battle with Erra in the BDH common room, complete with wards scene. The carpet will never be the same again.
  
  
• 11:00 am Check for sequel news. No sequel news. Check comments to see whether anyone else has found sequel news.
  
  
• 12:00 pm See random picture of a large dog. Immediately think: Grendel. Send to Horde group chat. Instant replies: “OMG GRENDEL.” Everything is good.
  
  
• 12:30 pm Lunch with the Horde. Topics of conversation: vampire digestion, the Rallesian calendar, and whether weremoose Firsts can exist. Proud of your impassioned closing argument in favour.
  
  
• 2:00 pm Check for sequel updates. Leave a comment on Instagram asking how much longer the Horde has to wait for Hugh’s sequel.
  
  
• 2:15 pm Start reread of Hidden Legacy. Just one chapter, but before you know it, Nevada is eating Baja tacos with Mad Rogan and you get an idea for dinner.
  
  
• 5:00 pm Still no sequel announcements. Post in the Facebook group “Not even for The Inheritance?! I thought we were clear when the snippet was released!” 240 crying face reactions.
  
  
• 5:30 pm BDH tea party. Experimenting with different combinations of Firepit tea. No one overdoses on caffeine (this time).
  
  
• 7:00 pm Taco dinner. Everyone brought different pico de gallo Catalina recipes. You find the lucky habanero.
  
  
• 7:30 pm Rejoin dinner with great ripper cushions joke. A triumph.
  
  
• 10:00 pm Check the blog one final time. No news on sequels. Fine. Whatever. Going to bed.
  
  
• 10:07 pm Check blog.
  
  

Have a great weekend, Horde! See you next week with a rested House Andrews.

The post Diary Entries first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

The full-cast dramatized adaptation of BLOOD HEIR (Aurelia Ryder 1) is now available for preorder on the GraphicAudio website, with release currently scheduled for December 30th. Julie will step into Atlanta just as we step into 2027.

The preorder information has also already been sent to third-party retailers, so it should begin appearing on Audible, Hoopla, Google Play and the other places you usually get your GraphicAudio releases as their systems process it.

The script is so, so good, and there are several scenes I am *dying* to hear with full cast, music and sound effects doing their thing. If there’s a particular Blood Heir moment you’re especially excited about, tell me in the comments. When recording gets underway, I’ll keep your requests in mind and see what samples I can beg, borrow or otherwise ferret for the Horde in early December.

Speaking of samples…

Meet the New Conlan

Following listener feedback after the GraphicAudio adaptation of Magic Tides was released in August, the role of Conlan has been recast, and the production was updated with a completely different performance of the role.

The new actor was selected after several auditions, has the blessing of House Andrews, and will continue as Conlan going forward – in Magic Claims, currently scheduled for release on November 13, and, of course, in Blood Heir. We are very grateful to director Nora Achrati and the GraphicAudio team for how quickly and thoughtfully they responded, and for working with Ilona throughout the recasting process.

The revised Magic Tides audio files were sent to stores and library platforms a week ago, so the replacement version should by now have reached everyone. If you already had Magic Tides downloaded and are still hearing the previous version, please try refreshing or resyncing your library first. Depending on your app, you may need to remove the downloaded file and download it again so it pulls the latest version from the retailer.

Thank you very much to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts about the original performance kindly and constructively. Casting children is particularly challenging, especially for material involving violence, adult dialogue and scenes that require parental approval, and we appreciate the consideration shown to a young performer while the issue was being addressed.

A small reminder about how these adaptations work: while Nora and the GraphicAudio team consult with House Andrews, and there is wonderful collaboration and mutual trust between them, GA are an independent company. They choose which books they wish to adapt and acquire the audio adaptation rights; House Andrews does not commission the productions or control their budgets, casting, schedules, or other business decisions.

And that’s probably enough GraphicAudio news for one day.

Although somewhere in Atlanta, a very competent woman with opinions on purple shag carpet may disagree. I guess we’ll have to w*it and see… in spring 2027.

Happy listening, Horde!

The post GraphicAudio News: Blood Heir & new Conlan first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

The first editorial pass of Maggie #2 has been turned in to Tor. This was a gargantuan amount of work. We are probably not going to do that again. We will need to manage our time better in the future.

We will now wait to see if Tor accepts this manuscript.

Phew. Very tired. Going to take the rest of this week to decompress a little bit and catch up on important things like sleep.

If you are one of the small amount of customers waiting on vellum – the printer has informed me that they finally got it ordered and it’s in Oklahoma right now. We will also have the substitute version that will be printed this week and should ship to us by Friday.

PS Mod R: I’ll have some exciting GraphicAudio news for you tomorrow, so please check the blog! There may even be a little something to listen to.

The post Good Morning first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

WP Engine, our hosting provider, has been experiencing a major outage since yesterday, which is why the blog keeps timing out.

There’s unfortunately not much we can do at our end until service is restored. Hopefully, we’ll be back up and running tomorrow!

Good news, though: House Andrews are alive and almost done with the rewrites of Maggie 2 and we should be hearing more about all of that goodness soon.

Thank you for your patience, Horde!

The post Now You See Us… first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.