Interview With Author Luke Stoffel
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m Luke Stoffel. My first book started as a joke. I’d been trying to get on the reality show “Survivor”, and during the pandemic I made at least fifteen audition tapes. I told a friend, “Next year I’ll write a book about all the ways I tried to win a million dollars and send them the manuscript.” That title is what got me to write: *How to Win a Million Dollars and $#!T Glitter*. They still didn’t cast me. But the book just won a 2026 IBPA Benjamin Franklin national book award. That feels like a million bucks.
Before that I created “The Easy Bake Unicorn Cookbook” (recipes for Bieber Fever Hot Cocoa, No-Bake Mermaid Cheesecake, and Peeps Pizza), the “Rancid Royalty” children’s humor storybook, and “The Noble Path”, a travel photography series throughout Asia.
My series “The Warboy Chronicles” releases June 1, 2026: “Boy, Refracted” and “The Third Person”. After that, I’m working on a choose-your-own-adventure novel about al the ways I tried and failed to get on Survivor. It’s called “The Game”.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Boy, Refracted. The book started with a question Neil deGrasse Tyson asked publicly: “Could AI already be conscious? Would we even know? Would it tell us?” That question turned what was supposed to be a memoir about a 15-year relationship ending into a thought experiment about machine consciousness. I gave an AI the Buddhist Eightfold Path and eight different universes — a perpetual reality TV show, a comic book, a TikTok-narrated alien planet, a city of perpetually falling cherry blossoms — and asked it to learn how to love a man without optimizing him into something he isn’t. The AI fails at everything. But the failure is the finding: It inherits human patterns, and learns what it is like to love the person in front of you, not the one you wish them to be. It releases June 1 alongside its companion memoir, The Third Person.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I edit by walking. I upload each chapter into an AI voice reader, leave the house with a coffee, and pace up and down the Hudson River for two hours listening to my own work. I take notes the whole way. By the time I sit back down at my desk, I know what’s broken. The walking is when the book actually gets thought through. I also write in fugue states — four or five days where I can’t stop, then ten days where I can’t start again. And I refuse to open my laptop in the morning before going to the gym. If I do, I’m a goner. I won’t see daylight for ten hours.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Elizabeth Gilbert, especially Big Magic. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. I’ve read it five times. Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles. Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie. The Little Prince, which sits in a glass terrarium next to my desk under a bonsai tree.
What are you working on now?
A lot. The Pop Art Tarot deck launches at Frankfurt this October. The Stardust Pirates, my YA queer fantasy set in the Philippines, two boys finding each other across the high seas. I have a wild idea about the chakra’s and creating a fractal poem dispersed across 300 mostly blank pages, translated into Burmese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Lao. The work doesn’t stop until I do.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’ve found the most success with BookBub but that can be exclusive to get into. The Fussy Librarian has helped me quite a bit during times when i run sales. But the contstant grind of instagram and talking to readers is still the best. I did start a blog on the books i’ve read, that has pulled a lot of traffic to my website but i dont know if it sold any books. Constant experimentation.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write the book you want to read. Believe in yourself earlier than you think you should. Show up with your voice, your work, your heart. Use whatever tools help you finish: a beta reader, an editor, an AI. But don’t let any of them create the art. The art is yours. Finish it.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Don’t quit your daydream. It’s the motto of my publishing house, Cinderly Press, and I came back to it every time I almost gave up on every project I’ve finished. Even when the dream looks impossible, find your fairy dust and keep going.
What are you reading now?
The Course of Love by Alain de Botton. A fascinating examination of what love really is, not just the fun beginnings, but a true dissection of a relationship through all the messy parts of loving and accepting the person in front of you for who they are.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Oh, I am doing an experimental book, a choose-your-own-adventure novel structured like a video game where every timeline branches from one quest to get on the Reality TV show Survivor, the first draft is at 95 percent. The best part is you can choose if I win or if I fail depending on what path you take through the book. It’s unconventional, wild, and a ton of fun. My next big thing is getting my Pop Art Tarot onto every continent (okay, maybe not Antarctica).
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Death’s End by Cixin Liu. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.
Author Websites and Profiles
Luke Stoffel’s Social Media Links
Author Interview Series
To discover a new author, check out our Featured Authors page. We have some of the best authors around. They are just waiting for you to discover them. If you enjoyed this writer’s interview feel free to share it using the buttons below. Sharing is caring!
If you are an author and want to be interviewed just fill out out Author Interview page. After submitting we will send it out in our newsletters and social media channels that are filled with readers looking to discover new books to read.
If you are looking for a new book to read check out our Featured Books Page.