Sometimes the best way to test whether your stories have actual pulse is to watch faces while you tell them. Last night I found myself in Principal Tower’s cinema room, surrounded by the kind of glass and steel that makes you feel simultaneously insignificant and invincible, talking about the messy, impossible journey of turning ideas into books that people might actually want to read.
We traced the strange path that led Eastern Empire from scribbled notes in a Beijing dormitory to international recognition, and Omnichannel Hearts from train journeys across Russia to readers debating digital intimacy in three languages. The conversation wandered through mistranslated emojis, the ethics of personalised algorithms, and whether augmented reality can ever capture what a physical map feels like between your fingers.
Someone asked about the celebrity manicure referenced in chapter five of Eastern Empire. Yes, it happened. No, I can’t tell you whose nails they were.
The strangest moment came when I realised exactly one year had passed since I stood in that Moscow library, nervously presenting Omnichannel Hearts to fifteen people and wondering if anyone beyond that room would ever care about these stories. I wrote about that uncertainty in my Thank You post back in July 2024. Last night’s conversation proved the stories now speak languages I never expected them to learn.
The international response continues to surprise me. Glamour Bulgaria called Eastern Empire “a brutal yet beautiful cartography of ambition” — a phrase that’s currently taped above my writing desk because sometimes you need reminders that someone, somewhere, understood exactly what you were trying to do. Arts & Culture UK published a critique that both praised the novel’s scope and challenged its “uncompromising view of transparency,” which felt like the kind of serious engagement every writer hopes for.
We’re preparing UK paperback editions of both Eastern Empire and Omnichannel Hearts for autumn 2025. They’ll include reader guides, augmented reality city maps, and probably some fresh typos despite our best efforts. I’ll share cover previews when they’re ready to see daylight.
Thank you to the Stories & Surfaces community, to everyone who came, asked difficult questions, and proved that Principal Tower can feel as intimate as any library when filled with genuine curiosity about how stories get made.
Posted from London, where good conversation still lingers in the glass towers of Shoreditch.
— Writer Julia Zolotova