Interview with Kavion Lewis, Author of Heist Royale

Today, we're joined by Kayvion Lewis, author of Thieves' Gambit and the sequel, Heist Royale. Theives' Gambit is a YA described as The Inheritance Games meets Ocean’s Eleven and a cinematic heist thriller where a cutthroat competition brings together the world’s best thieves. But one thief is playing for the highest stakes of all: her mother's life.

I love the idea of a 17-yr-old master thief. Where did the inspiration come from?

 

The whole idea for a book about a teenage thieving competition came to me in a dream, which is probably the most cliché thing ever but true. Once I had the idea, I think teenage master thief just came naturally. Who else would compete in a world-wide heist game?

 

Heist Royale starts off with a bang–a scene in which Ross is engaged in a heist for the Organization. I always find action to be the hardest part of writing. How do you approach action scenes? 

 

I kind of see freeze-frames from the movie in my head before I start writing. These are the moments and imagery that define the scene for me, and then I craft the events leading up to and after that. If the freeze-frame is two girls having a fist fight in a laser grid, then I work backwards and think how we got there. Most of all, I try not to overthink things, at least not while writing the first draft. Finer details and specificities can be worked out later. Initially, I just write whatever comes to mind.

 

YA is fraught with problematic family structures. But Ross’s family are all thieves! And in the first installment, Ross is out to save her mother. I love Yas with power reversals. That kind of relationship is always so revealing–even when it happens in more realistic contemporary YA. What did writing that relationship teach you?

 

I did a lot of mulling over my own relationship with my parents while crafting Ross and her Mom’s dynamic. Honestly, it made me appreciate what I have with my own Mom a lot more. We’ve had our ups and downs, like any Mom and daughter, but at least it’s not as, uh, complicated as Ross and Rhiannon’s thing.

 

You are quite the daredevil in real life–and it shows in the scenic writing in your work! How does life inform your writing?

 

I think traveling, building my own repertoire of peculiar experiences, and maintaining my adrenaline high keeps me in the fast-paced mindset that I try to capture in my books. You write what you are, so I try to stay high-octane.

 

Series writing is seriously tricky–knowing when to end a book so that it’s a satisfying reading all on its own, teasing the next read, not doing an info dump in book two…Did you always know you wanted to do a duology, or did you find that the story you wanted to tell was simply too big for one book?

 

I originally had no intention of writing a sequel to Thieves’ Gambit, despite the fact that it ends on the cliffiest of cliff hangers. In my head the story was just extremely open ended. Eventually I had to be honest with myself--the story was not over. So voila, I wrote the second book!

 

You’re big on manifesting your dreams. In a way, writers do this often through writing–our dreams are manifested on the page. What dream would Ross manifest (something that has not yet  made it onto the page) that would reveal something new about her character?

 

The only thing Ross has always wanted that she couldn’t steal for herself is relationships. She’s already manifested the friends she always dreamt of, but in the future she’d want to manifest the loving, cozy family she never really had. Isolated as she was with just her Mom and Auntie, I think she’d want to reconnect with her estranged grandparents in the future, and definitely see that problem corrected should she have her own kids.

 

You recently took up piano in honor of your grandmother. How do family ties and the desire to honor previous generations play into this duology?

 

The pressure of living up to familial expectations is something that influences Ross’s decisions, but also characters like Devroe and Noelia. I think it’s a theme that lots of teenagers, and people of all ages, can relate to. Ross’s whole life has been following the Quest family’s legacy, but like all of us she has to realize how much of her identity and choices belong to that family legacy and how many should be just Ross.

 

The heists in this book are even more elaborate than in Thieves' Gambit. How did you research and plan out these complex schemes?

 

Lots and lots of rewriting. I also watched quite a few videos about real-life casino scammers. Maybe I visited a few casinos too--might have lost some money. I also went to Antarctica and dove into the iceberg infested water to ensure I was accurately describing the bone-chilling cold during Heist Royale’s Antarctic heist. (This is not a joke. I literally went there and jumped into the Antarctic ocean. Oh the things I do for my books.)

 

There are several twists and turns in the plot. How did you approach pacing and revealing information to keep readers guessing?

 

I think the twists hit so hard because I myself have no idea what the twists are going to be while I’m writing. They come out of nowhere for me too. As for pacing, I went back and slashed quite a bit of the word count, around twenty-thousand words, after the first draft, just to make sure things weren’t lagging where they could be moving along. 

 

What’s next?

 

My next book is a YA mystery thriller involving a missing best friend, an all-girls juvenile penitentiary, and a possible serial-killing ghost. It’s the darkest and grittiest and yet most heartful thing I’ve ever written. 

 

Where can we find you?

 

Anyone is welcome to challenge me at a martial arts tournament in the Ark-La-tex area. Otherwise, you can connect with me on Instagram (@kayvionclewis) or on TikTok (@kayvionlewis) or my website, kayvionlewis.com!