Rebecca Yarros appeared at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 26, 2025, speaking to a sold out crowd in the Bovard Auditorium on the University of Southern California campus. This marks the first time she’s been able to speak a bit more freely about the third installment of The Empyrean series, Onyx Storm, since the book’s release in January. While speaking with fellow author Rachel Howzell Hall, Yarros shared some great snippets into the fourth book, the Fourth Wing graphic novel and TV series, and her writing process.
Rebecca Yarros knows the name of the next Empyrean novel.
Right off the bat, Yarros shared that she already knows the name of the fourth book of the series, which doesn’t have an anticipated release date yet, but she did not share it with the audience, much to this reader's disappointment. She gave no hints or clues as to what it could be, leaving fans open to theorize and speculate with only the end of Onyx Storm as their starting point.
And, while fans might think she sees those theories, she confirmed that she has Fourth Wing hashtags blocked on social media, so she doesn’t see them. She believes it could change the direction of the story if she saw theories, and because she’s known how the story will end since the beginning, she steers clear. However, she does love seeing the fan art and cosplays readers create, including the readers dressed as Violet and the individual wearing a dragon onesie at the panel.
Lore Olympus helped with her burnout after Onyx Storm.
Yarros has been incredibly open on her social media pages that she experienced intense burnout after finishing Onyx Storm, even sharing that she had panic attacks opening word documents for nearly six months after turning it in. During the panel, she shared that she started reading the Lore Olympus series during that time. While she enjoyed reading it and found herself moving through the volumes quickly, it also helped her process with the Fourth Wing graphic novel as she worked to decide how different scenes should be depicted and what dialogue made the cut.
She discussed she’s had a fun time working on the graphic novel adaptation, enjoying trimming things down to the true essentials, while also figuring out how things would visually look on a wider scale, since the story is often through Violet’s POV, and she can’t see everything. Right now it sits between 70,000 and 80,000 words. When asked about how working on the graphic novel might impact how she writes the series moving forward, she said she doesn’t think it will change her writing approach or how she writes the next two books.
She can only write one project a day.
Though she writes fantasy and contemporary romance, Yarros can’t work on writing more than one book per day. It helps keep her in the space she needs, so dragons don’t appear to solve the problems in her contemporary books. However, she does find that ideas for other projects might pop up anyway. To handle that, the thought gets written on a sticky note and placed on the plotting board for review later. This method prevents her from forgetting the idea while still focusing on the project she’s writing that day.
When it comes to writing The Empyrean series, Yarros has a series bible she uses to keep track of every detail, including how she describes a character’s appearance in each book. With Onyx Storm, several new character POVs are included, and while she confirmed she will continue to include other POVs because Violet can’t be everywhere at once in the middle of war, the author was coy about which POVs should would return to or which other characters’ POV she would write in.
Yarros also shared that one of the first books she ever wrote was as a sophomore in high school for a year-long English project. It followed the government using an Ebola outbreak as a method of population control, which is so different from what readers know her to write today. Could she write a dystopian series after finishing The Empyrean? She isn’t asked that directly in the panel, but with the return of popular dystopian series like The Hunger Games with Sunrise on the Reaping, maybe it should be in the cards.
She still loves the Fourth Wing television pilot.
Yarros couldn’t say anything more about the upcoming Fourth Wing TV series other than what she’s already said: she loves the pilot. She believes it captures what fans love about the series. However, she did say she had a meeting about the adaptation the day before, confirming that the things are still moving along, even if there isn’t news she can share yet. Hopefully that means readers will hear more soon.