BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Hi all,
I am SO excited to finally announce my next novel, IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS, which is coming out with Tachyon Books in spring 2026.
Here’s the Publishers Marketplace announcement that just went live today:
IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS is a book incredibly close to my heart, and also very timely in more than one way - and ever since I started work on the first draft, in mid-2023, I’ve been absolutely dying to tell you all about it.
You’ll get more details about what this book is and what it means to me closer to the release date. For now, here’s the blurb my agent wrote when we went it out on submission:
Once upon a time, people wrote stories, and they owned the stories they wrote. But all that changed when Inspiration created its AI language model. The language model was based on all of the language in the world, so it contained every idea anyone had ever written down. Inspiration couldn't take those ideas back out, so they saved up money and bought them. Now they own all the stories.
Kelli Reynolds is a script supervisor for Inspiration — a professional who edits the output of the language model into intelligible stories. Kelli’s proudest contribution is the pirate Orlando — a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.
Then Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan shows up. Rowan’s the one Kelli based Orlando on, when they were teenagers. Back then, their relationship was a secret. Kelli thought at the time that Rowan, a trans man, was a girl. And Inspiration doesn’t allow any stories about girls that love girls, or girlfriends that turn out to actually be boyfriends.
Now Rowan’s tangled up in the black market, smuggling forbidden stories like the ones Kelli wished she’d had as a teen. He needs Kelli’s help with something — something illegal.
Kelli’s not sure she wants to be in this story, but she can’t let Rowan walk out of her life again. As she becomes entangled in Rowan’s scheme, it brings up the long-hidden truth of the disastrous choice that ended their relationship last time around. Kelli has to decide: will she risk the neat story of her life now for the world she wished for then, a world where every necessary story can be told? She asks herself: What would Orlando do?