Read V.E. Schwab's ‘Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil' Annotated Excerpt

Cosmopolitan

3 days ago

Welcome to The Scroll, a new column that checks in with your favorite writers, asking them to exclusively reveal and annotate the best moments from their brand new books. We also get them to dish on their writing process and divulge a few plot secrets along the way.
This round we chatted with V.E. Schwab, author of the iconic Villians series and The Secret Life of Addie LaRue. The author is changing what we thought we knew about our favorite creatures starting with a different kind of vampire story in her new novel Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Here, she shares an exclusive excerpt and talks about the power of writing hungry and vulnerable villains.
I like to write fantasy that has a single point of departure, because you essentially start with both feet on the ground in a known place and then move from there. And I think I approach tropes the same way.
My vampires do age, just on the inside instead of the outside. They wither and they decay morally, existentially, romantically until all that's left is the urge to hunt. 'The heart dies last' is part of that. The last piece to go for the vampire is also what was sustaining them emotionally.
Sabine is a character that definitely strikes a very specific note. She is like, 'Kill first; ask questions later.' I think it's really important—especially when dealing with a villain—to show you that behind the curtain, there are still fears. It's showing you both her strength and her weaknesses. She is learning that she has something to be afraid of, but there is no moment where she is afraid.
'The heart burns last' is a lot of foreshadowing for every character in that scene, some in very, very literal ways and some in metaphorical ways. For an immortal, the passion, the hunger, the need, the desire is what keeps you going. It's the idea that once it's gone, there's nothing keeping you going.
If you look at the three women at the heart of this story, hunger means a variety of things. The hunger to be free from the constraints of your life as it's been determined, the hunger to be recognized as a whole person, the hunger for rights, the hunger to be witnessed by somebody for what and who you really are. Sabine is driven by her hunger, in the literal sense, long before she's a vampire.
Hunger is an insatiable thing. Hunger is like a moving goal post in life. We hunger for success and we hunger for recognition. We hunger for revenge, we hunger for everything. Hunger is at the heart of this book, in the traditional sense, because they're vampires. But there's also a really strong existential threat as there is with everything in this book. Each of the three women learn that, actually, no matter how much they feed, they will never feel satiated.
At the end of the day, I am a fiction writer. I'm a fantasy writer. So I'm sure I got something wrong. Despite all of the research that I did, it's just inevitable. I am not a non-fiction historian, so I'm here for the vibes, right?
I think I was so excited to look at three really distinct time periods and places, not only through the lens of history, but through the lens of queer history and closeting specifically. Queer people have always existed. It's not like we grew out of the soil a decade ago. These three women have such different historical contexts for their own identity and how they process it. I really wanted to talk about gay trauma and talk about queer joy. I really appreciate the need for both.
I spent the first 15 years of my career not writing lesbian villains for that reason. But that's so reductive when we break it down because what we're saying is that queer people and queer characters don't deserve the same complexity and nuance as their straight counterparts. I write villains. That's what I do for a living. They're all messy, all accountable in different ways. These three women have moments where they are villainous and moments where they are heroic and moments where they are everything in between. I wanted to write somebody who made me feel seen.
BOOK COVER: Courtesy of Tor Books. Excerpt and Annotations: Used with permission from Tor Books, an imprint of Tor Publishing Group, a trade division of Macmillan Publishers. Copyright © 2025 V. E. Schwab.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab will be released on June 10, 2025. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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