Exclusive Interview
‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Author Casey McQuiston Shares Update on Their Next Book
What To Know
- Casey McQuiston is working on their fifth novel.
- McQuiston reveals the genre, how it’s different from their past books, and more.
- McQuiston shares how screenwriting Red, White, and Royal Wedding has impacted their novel writing.
Casey McQuiston may have spent quite a bit of the past year expanding the Red, White, & Royal Blue universe — in movie and book form — but they’re also working on their fifth novel. Dubbed “CMQ5” by fans, McQuiston’s upcoming book isn’t quite like anything they’ve written before.
At BookCon on April 19, McQuiston revealed that the book is a sapphic, adult romantic comedy with a fantastical twist. “I can’t really give a lot of plot info, but it’s definitely got a lot of fantasy elements, but it’s sort of contemporary at the same time,” they told Swooon. “I feel like book lovers, people who just love books and reading, are really gonna love the premise of it.”
Last summer, McQuiston teased on social media that they were working on a project about “hot lady knights,” which got a big reaction from fans in their Instagram comments. Since then, they’ve turned in the first draft, confirming that “the love interest [in CMQ5] is a hot lady knight, and she has a big sword and a traumatic backstory and a heart of gold.”
“I turned in a first draft of it right before the holidays, and then we went into production on [Red, White & Royal Wedding], and then I was working on this other thing, and I’m just now getting back to it, just trying to finish it and revise it and everything,” McQuiston continued. “Of course, books take a million drafts to be done, but yeah.”
Though their 2021 novel One Last Stop has some magical elements, CMQ5 leans more into the fantasy romance category. It’s not a full romantasy, McQuiston pointed out. “I don’t know what even is the line between those two,” they added.
“I kind of grew up as a classical fantasy reader, as a Tolkien kid,” they noted. “I love fantasy as a genre. I love magic. I love playing with magical systems and playing with fantastical settings. And so it’s felt really, really fun to get to actually play in that world after writing so much contemporary, which I also love.”
CMQ5 will mark McQuiston’s return to novels since 2024’s The Pairing. After that was published, they started working on the screenplay for Prime Video’s Red, White, & Royal Wedding. “What screenwriting showed me most of all, as much as I learned from it and as fun as it was, is that I do think books are home for me,” the author reflected.
“So much of what I love about writing novels is doing stories that have a lot of interiority, and that’s something I find really challenging to put in a screenplay,” McQuiston said. “And so I think people will see me just recommit to the interiority [in their next book], but also hopefully using some of the tricks I learned to externalize that a little bit more in my writing.”
