Accomplice to the Villain
Accomplice to the Villain
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Hannah Nicole Maehrer on Accomplice to the Villain
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
A nap, a viral video, and a story that wouldn’t waitBefore any book deal existed, before any audience had assembled, Maehrer was posting TikTok skits about a villain’s assistant from a nanny job in State College, Pennsylvania, not as a marketing move but because she needed somewhere to put her creativity during a period of anxiety and depression. The moment the project stopped being private arrived without warning.
I put the twins down for a nap, came back downstairs, looked at my phone, and the video was going viral.
What the viral moment unlocked was not a shortcut into publishing but something rarer: an audience that had already fallen for the characters before a single page was printed. Maehrer reflected on how unusual that felt compared to the standard path into traditional publishing.
From what I’ve observed of the industry, you don’t need a huge platform to be traditionally published. The benefit of it is it exposes you to the readers that would be interested in your story. And I was really privileged in that regard because I had been doing these skits for so long and I had built up an audience that loved this story just as much as I did.
The audience mattered, but the deeper reason she kept writing across three books is more personal. She has spoken about depression as a constant presence in her life, and about the specific thing books did for her during the worst stretches of it.
I’ve struggled with depression for most of my life, and books have been such a great outlet because they help you feel in moments when you feel really numb. I’ve had books be a saving grace for me, so I really wanted to make something that could make other people feel like those books made me feel.
That goal, to replicate the saving-grace experience for someone else, became the emotional engine behind the series and carried forward into Accomplice, its third installment.
How she wrote it
Characters who refused to behave, and a god who lost controlThe TikTok skits did more than build an audience. Over months of daily videos, they loaded the characters so thoroughly into Maehrer’s head that when she finally sat down to write book one, 10,000 words came out in a single sitting, a number she has never repeated. By book three, the pressure that produced that first sprint had converted into something else entirely.
Fun. It was such a good time! I really know these characters and this world at this point in the game, and my confidence when it comes to storytelling has only grown.
The multiple points of view in Accomplice were not part of the original plan. Book one stayed close to Evie, the series’ lead, and the Villain. Secondary perspectives entered in book two out of practical necessity, and by book three the structure had developed its own logic. Maehrer has ADHD, and the switching between viewpoints also served a personal function during drafting: whenever one thread started to lose her, she handed the chapter to another character and kept moving.
It evolved sort of naturally. I never planned to have that many points of view, but by the time we got to this book, it almost demanded that because there’s points in the book where Evie and the villain are off doing their own adventure. [paraphrased from audio]
Some of the structural decisions were made by the characters before Maehrer approved them. Keely, the captain of the malevolent guard, was written as a minor figure with one scene. During that scene, Keely and another character began flirting on the page without Maehrer’s permission. She gave Keely more room in the book, but described the experience of a character exceeding her mandate as a recurring condition across the whole series.
I’m like, ‘I am your God, you have to listen,’ and they don’t.
Running the TikTok series simultaneously with book three meant keeping plot secrets from an audience that had followed the skits for years. To hold the two versions apart without letting the social media presence become a spoiler machine, Maehrer adopted a specific mental frame, treating the videos as Evie’s own TikTok page rather than as author content. The videos also solved a different problem entirely: writer’s block.
In fact, its often the way I work out of writers block, or blocks in creativity. It helps me jump back into the world and reminds me of the fun that is to be had when you’re letting yourself be silly, and free.
The practical philosophy she brought to drafting came from fellow author Stacey McEwan: when something needs fixing, name it a problem for future Stacey and keep moving rather than stall the draft. Protecting forward momentum required the same discipline on a larger scale, and she extended it to the question of reader expectations, which she describes actively setting aside each time she sits down.
When I go in to write, I don’t think about anything else but the characters. I kind of have tunnel vision, so I don’t worry about expectations, I don’t worry about disappointing anybody because the only thing I’m focused on is making sure I’m doing the right thing for the characters and the right thing for the story. [paraphrased from audio]
The personal thread
Evie as the friend she needed to findBefore the series had a book deal, before it had a publisher, Maehrer was posting skits while going through a difficult period in her own life. She has described the moment she created Evie, the series’ optimistic protagonist, as less like invention and more like meeting someone she had been missing.
I found Evie when I was going through a tough time in life, she felt like the friend I needed to pull me through it. Optimistic and kind, but good-humored. She made so many of my days easier during the writing process.
By the time she was writing book two, she put her intention directly into the acknowledgments: she wanted readers to feel like everything. In Accomplice, she described what the writing does for her personally in a way that goes beyond craft. Evie’s timeline and her own have run in parallel long enough that the books now function as a kind of autobiography of her interior life.
Along with my main character Evie, I get to celebrate all my emotional milestones with her and through her. The catharsis is always there and that time in my life becomes immortalized in my work.
On craft choices
When the skits became the storyMost authors develop characters through outlines, drafts, or worksheets. Maehrer spent months developing hers in public, in two-minute videos, before she typed a word of prose. When she reflected on what that unconventional sequence actually gave her, she identified something that no amount of private outlining would have produced.
In all the years I’d imagined my first novel, I’d never quite imagined the story being born this way. Creating the skits first allowed me so much time to familiarize myself with my characters, until it felt like in a way, they became my companions. It was them championing me to write their story, and I’m so grateful I was able to tell it.
Banter came naturally from the start, shaped by a large Syrian family whose humor ran quick and tongue-in-cheek, and by watching Gilmore Girls cover to cover more than ten times. The harder craft work sat at the opposite end of the process: tracking threads, keeping revelations on schedule, closing every door she had opened. She describes the emotional payoff of editing banter specifically, because she forgets scenes between drafts and returns to them as a fresh reader.
In fact, its often the way I work out of writers block, or blocks in creativity. It helps me jump back into the world and reminds me of the fun that is to be had when you’re letting yourself be silly, and free.
What she wants us to sit with
The villain question, and what it costs to answer itThe found family thread running through the series was never planned; Maehrer traced it, once she noticed it surfacing book after book, to her own experience of sometimes feeling out of place within the family she was born into. That recognition shaped how the theme functions in Accomplice: neither kind of family is treated as the default or the lesser version.
sometimes even within your family, you feel like a little bit out of place. And then in life you can find people that maybe understand you on a level that the family you were born into doesn’t understand you. [paraphrased from audio]
The series is built around a romantic premise, a heroine working for a villain, but Maehrer is clear that the villain question is also a moral premise. The line she wrote, “We’re all monsters in the end, but at least mine lives in the light,” was a setup for a specific ethical argument, not a reassurance.
We look at some people as villains, but are they the villain? And sometimes they are. But, sometimes, it is just where you are standing and what perspective you have.
That question, whether villainy is a fixed identity or a matter of vantage point, sits underneath the comedy and the romance of the whole series, and Accomplice brings it to a head.