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What do you do when trolls try to tear down your hit fantasy series? Well, if you're Veronica Roth, the answer is: 'write another one.'

At least, that seems to be the case with Seek the Traitor's Son, the latest fantasy book to bear the best-selling author's name. Popverse was lucky enough to sit down with the Divergent creator while she was on tour for the new novel, the first of two planned books set in the dystopian Burning Empire saga. As fans of Roth's previous works, we of course wanted to know what drove her to write the story of protagonist Elegy Ahn, and one of those reasons, she says, was to stick it to her detractors.

Backing up a bit, though - we got to talking about those haters from a surprisingly positive place. See, we had read (via People) that, upon announcing Seek the Traitor's Son, Roth called it "probably the most fun I've had writing a book... ever," and we wanted to know why. 

"It has to do a little bit with Divergent," Roth answered, "Divergent was very popular and overall well-received, but there was a lot of negativity that came with it, just because any popular work is going to carry that kind of negativity. I was young, and anxious, and soaked that in like a sponge."

"In the works after Divergent," The Sixth Faction author continued, "I became very focused on growth, which is great. I got so much better as a writer because of those works that I did in the aftermath, but I also became more restrained and rigid. I was like, 'Don't be weird,' you know? 'Don't be tropey. Don't be silly.' These were rules I kind of imposed on myself because of Divergent - it was like a protective measure. It's like, 'Don't be what everyone accused you of being with your first series.'"

As you might know if you're a frequent Popverse reader, at least part of what reversed this line of thinking for Roth was Taylor Swift, but that's a story for another time. Besides, there's another American icon Roth is looking at in this example - an Olympic-medal-winning one, at that.

"Over time," Roth told us, "I was like, 'This is not going to keep working. This is not conducive to creativity.' So I took the lessons I learned from those early books, but I also tried to loosen up. I've been calling this my 'Alysa Liu gold-medal free skate.' She's so good, and she's put in so much work, right? But then, when she was able to relax and have fun on the ice, you could see it. You could feel it."

"That's how this book feels," concludes the best-selling author, "It was just finally like, 'It's okay if it's silly. It's okay if it's tropey. It's okay because you love it.'"

That's a big 'hell yeah' from us, Veronica.

Seek the Traitor's Son is available now wherever physical books are sold, and as an audiobook from Macmillan Audio. Readers can also begin the newest Veronica Roth adventure over on Spotify, whose new Page Match feature allows for seamless transitioning between physical and audio storytelling. Happy reading!

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