L.M. SAGAS

sff author || CASCADE FAILURE & GRAVITY LOST || she/her twitter || insta have questions? ask away!

[lmsagas]

Hey, so i have become absolutely obsessed with cascade failure (about to start gravity lost) and i just want to ask if you would be able to share more in depth what each of the crew members looks like, such as their clothes and physical appearance? :)

hello there! i can do you one better! here's the character art from the pre-order art card :)

featuring The Blue Coat(TM), saint's legendary side-eye, and a torchie cameo

[lmsagas]

Hi! I just picked up cascade failure onna whim a few weeks ago and ended up going back for gravity lost about 4 chapters imto the first book cause I knew I was hooked. I work at my local b&n and ive been reccomending this dualogy to anyone who will listen. Im gonna have to shortlist more copies cause we only get one in at a time lol

Anyway, pls write more book. ur words r good and i want read <3

this is so wonderful, thank you so much!! and definitely working on that last bit 😉 fingers crossed i'll get to share more soon!

[lmsagas]

hi! where did the name Ambit come from? Gambit? Ambition? i'd love to know!

i love this question! in part because the answer is a ridiculous mishmash of inside jokes and me being really bad at idioms. my first car was called gambit (after the one and only remy lebeau, naturally), and for the longest time i thought the phrase was running the gambit, which i thought would be kind of fun title/ship name wise.

ONLY, it turns out the phrase is actually running the gamut, and i didn't like that as a ship name. gambit felt a little on the nose, too. but if you drop the g, you get ambit, which refers to the limits or range of something, which i thought was really cool conceptually for a vessel used to push the boundaries of exploration and go to the very edges of the universe. thus, the ambit was born (and the series name, ambit's run, was my silly little wink to all those years i spent getting that idiom totally wrong)

[lmsagas]

hi it’s not really a question, but i just binged Cascade Failure and i absolutely adore these characters you’ve created! i couldn’t help but truly giggle at some lines (despite being in a car with my mother) because i loved it or wasn’t expecting the snark (somehow, considering the characters lmao)

the giggles are absolutely the point 😁

[lmsagas]

Hi! I just finished Cascade Failure and I love it so much. Thank you for writing such a wonderful book! I immediately bought Gravity Lost and am so excited to read it. Also, I really appreciate your answer to the question on face casting. I’m hypophantasic, so I can barely form images in my head. It’s great to know how you picture your characters. Can’t wait to see what you do next!

thank you so much!! i hope you enjoy(ed? are enjoying?) gravity lost, and i'm stoked you liked the face cast! if there are ever any other characters you're curious about, let me know! can't promise i'll remember exactly who i had in mind when i was writing them, but i should at least be able to get us in the ballpark! ☺️

[lmsagas]

Hello! I spent the last two weeks reading your duology and your characters absolutely stole my heart. I really got the sense you invested a lot of time of building them up and exploring their relationships with each other. I just wanted to let you know I can't stop thinking about them and will absolutely fly to the shelves if any more ever came out <3

🥰🥰🥰

characters and all their messy, awesome, awful relationships have always been my favorite part of books (what do you mean i have to actually have a plot?), so i can't tell you how much it means when people enjoy these chaotic little hobgoblins.

[lmsagas]

Why are you so good??????? This makes no sense?? I’m not into Sci-fi as much and here I am, done both books in three weeks??? Are you a witch????

🤫

(seriously, though, this made me smile. so glad you enjoyed them!)

[lmsagas]

Impulse bought Cascade Failure and for the first time in a long time actually got myself to read the book i bought. Anneka talks like how I think while Jal has my reaction to social anxiety and prepping to say things way before hand. The only other series that has made me feel so seem as a person was the Murderbot Diaries. I haven't finished Gravity Lost yet but I needed to thank you for putting bits of me on the page. I used to think I knew what feeling connected to a character felt like but you have taken it to another level. I am ever so slightly devastated to know there is not a third book planned for but I am definitely going to keep a watch for any other works from you while holding these two close. The little foursome (fivesome with Bodie really) crew has well wedged themselves into my heart. I'm probably going to annoy people around me till they read them so i can talk to people about them. I'm just past the bar scene in Gravity Falls and really, it is so so good. I laughed so hard I had to put down the book. Wrapping it up, thank you so much for writing these books.

this makes me so happy, thank you! ❤️ i think everyone weaves a few threads of themselves into some of the characters they write, and it's such a wonderful thing to know that some of those threads resonate with other people too. everyone should get to feel seen (and get to laugh so hard they gotta put their book down for a second—that's important, too 😄😄😄)

[lmsagas]

I just finished Cascade Failure and I'm probably going to buy a copy of Gravity Falls tomorrow because I don't think I can wait my turn for my library's copy. I love your characters so much! I'm especially invested in the relationship between Jal and Saint - there's something so lovely about repairing a friendship. I'm very much over real life AI, but sci-fi AI that raises questions about humanity is lovely. (I think Eoan would appreciate being thought of as lovely.) I aspire to engineer as well as Nash does one day. And of course, Bodie is my favorite!

thank you so much! i can confirm that eoan would absolutely appreciate being thought of as lovely, and may your engineering adventures involve a torchie-the-plasma-cutter (or contemporary, situationally appropriate equivalent) of your very own! 😉

[lmsagas]

Hi! I just picked up Cascade Failure and excited to get lost in the world! I’m always curious about pronunciation so I wanted to ask if Jalsen was pronunciation with a hard or soft “J?” Thanks in advance!

VERY late getting to this, but it's pronounced with a soft "j" like hall-sen. which made for some very fun moments in the audiobook when jal goes down the hall or jal hauls something. 😂 it was of course totally intentional and not at all something i only realized after the fact.

hope you enjoy(ed?) it!!

[lmsagas]

Hi! This isn't an ask, but I wanted to say that your books are amazing. When I was younger, I used to burn through books, but I lost that love a long time ago. Now it takes me weeks to get my way through a book, and I'm struggling the whole time, whether it's audio or a paper copy.

Not with Cascade Failure or Gravity Lost. I absolutely fell in love with your characters and the way they interact. I ended up listening to both books within 3 days because I just couldn't get enough! The real consequences of what they've done and what they've been though was something that had my heart hurting right with theirs. These two books brought back a love of reading I'd thought I'd lost, and I can't wait to see what other works you come up with. (Even if they don't include our favorite crew of misfits!)

this means so much!! i was also a voracious reader when i was a kid, and i went through a similar sort of multi-year reading slump that i honestly only recently started to shake off (with the help of some really great, itch-scratcher books). knowing that the ambit's run books could do that for someone else makes me so happy, you don't even know. 🥰 thank you!!

[lmsagas]

Hi! Just finished Gravity Lost and I'm obsessed! That and Cascade Failure are the only books ove rated 5 starts so far this year 🥰🥰 They're such a hoot! Anyway, I was wondering if you have any face casts for certain characters? Like real humans you think look sort of like the Ambit crew? (Or any of the characters tbh) I've got aphantasia so I can't picture stuff in my brain. I've gotta settle for spinning a jpg on my phone instead of microwaving them in my mind lol

oh hi! you say hoot too! 😁 (it's right up there with copacetic and yeehaw for me)

and yes! i'm pretty visual, so i picked out face casts early on for, at least the core four. jal is garrett hedlund, saint is idris elba, nash is jessica henwick, and eoan is indya moore. there are a couple side characters that i got overinvested in and fell down the face claim rabbit hole on, too, if there's anyone you're curious about in particular!

[lmsagas]

YOOOO cool to find you here!! I charged through Gravity Lost in just two days it was so damn good (and then immediately went back to reread cascade failure.) Thanks for giving us such good books!

YOOOOO i am so bad at Being On The Internets but thank you so much for the kind words!! :) this makes my week!

[lmsagas]

ahhhhhh (she says, very cool and chill and professional) CASCADE FAILURE made it into the voting round of Discover Sci-Fi's Reader’s Choice Sci-Fi Awards--chilling in the "best debut" category with some other amazing pics

voting is here if you're curious about the other contenders (whispers: or want to vote for your favorite crew of disaster dumplings in the debut category)

[lmsagas]

hi!!!!! just wanted to say cascade failure is one of my favorite books ever right now, j picked it up at a bookstore after getting ‘space found family’ from the synopsis and yeah. rotating the characters in my head like a microwave, thank you for writing it <3

this is so lovely, thank you so much! and thank you for taking a chance on my silly little space fam :)

(please remember they're best when microwaved on low, but you can also use the casserole setting.)

[lmsagas]

Are you planning another book or Ambits run? If you are when? also I was foaming at the mouth with the last book and cried throughout, your writing is awesome and if I can become a 5th of how good you write I think I would be amazing author.

ahh thank you so much! currently, ambit's run is only planned as a duology, but i'd love to get back to them someday (publishing being publishing, i think a lot depends on if there's enough reader support).

as for what's next, i'm hoping to have some more info on that sometime in the new year! got loads of little chaos gremlins ready and waiting that i can't wait to inflict on share with the world, just waiting to see how things shake out! ;)

(p.s. good luck on your writing!!)

[lmsagas]

“It’s okay,” Saint told him, softer than he thought he knew how to be. He was a hard-nosed bastard with a thick skin and a thicker head, but Jal cried like he couldn’t breathe, like he was drowning under all that grief and fear and pain... - THAT SCENE from CASCADE FAILURE

massive thanks to @amikoroyaiart for the absolutely beautiful art!