"Eventually, the character walks into my brain almost fully formed"

Bestselling author Alex Segura on conjuring a sequel that stands on its own, trusting the process, and his new comic-book crime novel, ALTER EGO

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order Alex’s slick new mystery, out now.

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Me: Big congrats on ALTER EGO!

Alex: Thank you!!

How are you feeling post-pub??

You know, I'm feeling tired - but also really happy? I tried to go into the book tour focused on it being a celebration of the book, rather than a thing where I had to connect and make stuff happen. And that really helped. I got to meet a lot of people who liked or were excited about the book and I got to travel, so that was nice. It felt like the response exceeded my expectations, which as you know isn't always the case with book launches. It felt like the buzz was real.

That's fantastic! And such a good attitude for what can be a stressful period. I want to hear what helped you let go of the metric-watching stress, but first, for the uninitiated: Can you share a little about ALTER EGO?

Of course! So, ALTER EGO is what we're calling a "standalone sequel" to SECRET IDENTITY, my 1970s comic book murder mystery (which won the LA Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller). It's set in the modern day and follows a new protagonist, Annie Bustamante, an acclaimed filmmaker who, once upon a time, worked in comics as an artist. She's since left the industry but finds herself between film projects. So, while watching her pre-teen daughter, she's started pecking away at a comic book based on an obscure superhero that has fallen out of print and out of the public eye - THE LEGENDARY LYNX. Annie feels a great sense of identification with the character, because she recognized early on that at least one of those old comics were written by a Cuban-American woman (like her), Carmen Valdez.

Annie's surprised when she gets an email, though, from a company claiming to own the character and wanting Annie to relaunch the series as part of a big, multimedia/multi-platform initiative that includes TV, video games, and more. At first blush, it seems like a dream come true. But as she gets further and further into the project - which includes collaborating with a disgraced film director - she realizes that there might be dark forces desperate to keep the truth about who actually owns and created the Lynx a secret - and might even be willing to kill to keep it under wraps.

This book is such a fun look into the comic book world (about which I knew nothing going into it)! Tell me more about it being a "standalone sequel"—did you always know you were going to write this next, or did it stem from SECRET IDENTITY's success...?