About the Book
Book: Warsafe
Author: Lauren Smyth
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Release date: May 6, 2025
Play. Win. Survive.
There’s one building on her island that Halley has never visited: the Mercenary House. Perched atop a mountain, surrounded by unnaturally evergreen foliage, the House is rumored to be a breeding ground for criminals. Mercenaries are liars, cheats, spies . . . and maybe, depending on who you ask, killers.
At the Warsafe headquarters in Seattle, Roscoe is beta testing the company’s new video game. It’s her job to track down glitches—but something is different about this one. Lurking behind the lines of malfunctioning code is a secret that threatens to drag her deeper into the game, forcing her to put her life on the line if she ever wants to come home.
Worlds collide as Roscoe teams up with Halley to uncover the island’s secret and expose Warsafe’s designs. But some mysteries are better left unsolved. As traitor after so-called traitor is revealed to be on their side, they begin to wonder: Could Warsafe’s mission be critical enough to justify its cruelty?
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About the Author
Lauren Smyth is an economics and journalism student at Hillsdale College. Since signing her first publishing contract at age 13, she has written three young adult action/adventure novels, coded two story-based video games, and started a blog enjoyed by readers and writers around the world. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her flying right seat in a Piper PA-30 aircraft, recording episodes of her Grammar Minute writing podcast, or heading upriver on her paddleboard.
More from Lauren
The Mercenary House, where much of Warsafe takes place, quite literally appeared to me in a dream.
By age 12, I’d already watched way too many action-adventure movies. (Did anyone else grow up on Tom Clancy—The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games?) Most nights, I was hyped on fictional adrenaline, and I was able to lucid dream. So I got to star in highly imaginative and unrealistic versions of my favorite spy stories when I fell asleep.
That night, I found myself trapped in the basement of an eight-story house. Guards patrolled the rooms outside, and somehow I knew I had to sneak past them to reach the top floor. I also knew I was dreaming and in no real danger, which made me brave. So I crawled through air ducts, hid in shadowy corners, and darted behind turned backs. And I escaped.
The dream was so logical compared to others I’d had that it stuck in my mind. Why was I trying to get to the roof? Why did I agree to play this “game?” What was the secret behind that dilapidated, shadowy building where I’d been imprisoned?
A few years later, I started coding video games. My first full-length game featured more than 100,000 lines of code and is probably part of the reason why I’m so near-sighted. I loved the results, but not the process. More than coding, I realized I loved storytelling—weaving together sentences and images and movements that became a world on the reader’s screen.
I hadn’t forgotten my dream, but I didn’t have the Python know-how to turn it into a game. And I’d gotten sick of naming variables. (Somewhere in the source code for that first game, there’s an if-then statement oh-so-creatively named “againagainagainagainagainagainagain.” See also the classic: “help.”) What if, instead of crawling back to my code editing software, I wrote a book?
And what if that book wasn’t just about a fictional video game, but was also an exploration of morality, economics, and politics in a parallel world?
I believe that good books don’t answer questions; they make you ask new ones. They draw you into a situation you’ve never experienced and force you to take sides, rooting for or against characters, judging or supporting their choices. If you could stop a catastrophe by sacrificing a few people, would you do it? If you were offered control over someone’s life, would you take it?
That’s the central dilemma of Warsafe. What you choose, who you agree with is up to you. Like a real video game, Warsafe lets you confront the same choices as the characters and work your way out of the puzzle—if you can do it without compromising your morality.
Remember Warsafe’s motto: Safety requires the many to sacrifice the one.
Disagree?
Enter the Warsafe universe and prove it.
Interview with the Author
- What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?
The Thirty-Nine Steps is a British spy thriller by John Buchan, better known nowadays as a Hitchcock film. Neither the book nor the film are particularly well-reviewed. The book is short—only about 250 pages in the original edition—and snappy, hopping between scenes with the speed of a Mission Impossible chase scene. It’s such a quick read that it often gets critiqued for lack of character development and realism, but I find the pace gripping. Each time I pick up that book, I can barely put it down until I’m finished.
- How do you select the names of your characters?
I often get teased about the character names in my early books because they’re overly complicated. So, for Warsafe, I wanted unusual names that were still short and easy to pronounce.
I sampled friends and acquaintances, read name tags in stores, and read so many baby name books that I started getting ads for diapers in my Pinterest feed. The result was the Warsafe cast—Halley, Petra, Calhoun, Roscoe, and Andy. These names all have a rustic feel, which plays into one of Warsafe’s underlying themes, but they’re uncommon enough to suit the science fiction genre.
Meanwhile, I keep a running list of name ideas on my phone. I sometimes have friends christen side characters, who generally end up named after singers, sports teams, or Google searches of “good book character names.”
- What was your hardest scene to write?
A major focus of my college writing classes was developing the “lede,” which is journalism-speak for the first sentence. If an article lede doesn’t hook the reader immediately, they’ll simply click away to a different news site, so you have to be confrontational and gripping. With books, however, you’ve got a little more time—maybe a whole paragraph instead of just one sentence.
I rewrote Warsafe’s lede more times than I can count. Each round of editing brought a fresh set of eyes and more revisions. It finally turned out like this:
I’d seen her name at the bottom of the list that morning. I remembered thinking it was a miracle she hadn’t been killed yet. But I was more interested in the names at the top of the list—those who still had a fighting chance to win the game—and I soon forgot about her. It’s hard to worry about mortality when you’re scrubbing burnt egg off a saucepan.
- If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?
I would read more short stories. I rarely encountered these growing up, so now I struggle to explain a plot in less than 350 pages. Maybe that’s just a genre preference, but I still wish I could join the flash fiction trend. The way some writers can fully develop a story in just a few sentences amazes me.
I would also read more news. Real stories are usually the best stories, and I like to keep a running catalogue of true events that can become scenes in books. Of course, as a kid, you don’t want to dive into all the sensational headlines. That would be unproductive and frightening. But there used to be a splendid news magazine specifically for young readers, and I wish I’d read it more throughout my teen years.
- If you could invite one person to dinner, who would it be and what would you cook?
I’d invite Richard Feynman. He was a physicist who did a series of highly entertaining lectures on introductory science. I’ve always admired the way he could take some of the world’s most complicated topics and turn them into a twenty-minute talk, always holding his audience’s unwavering attention. I’d like to ask him how he did it.
Feynman had a famously hard time ordering at restaurants where he hadn’t tried all the dishes. He formalized this as a mathematical puzzle: how many dishes should you try before choosing a favorite in order to get the most lifetime benefit? If I invited him to dinner, I’d solve this problem by only offering one dish. That would be my personal favorite—pumpkin orzo with fresh rosemary garnish. Take it or leave it.
Blog Stops
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, May 27
Artistic Nobody, May 28 (Author Interview)
CeCe Reads and Sings, May 28
Locks, Hooks and Books, May 29
The Lofty Pages, May 30
Guild Master, May 31 (Author Interview)
For Him and My Family, June 1
Texas Book-aholic, June 2
Fiction Book Lover, June 3 (Author Interview)
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, June 4
Tell Tale Book Reviews, June 5
Simple Harvest Reads, June 6 (Guest Review from Mindy)
For the Love of Literature, June 7 (Author Interview)
Blogging With Carol, June 8
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, June 9 (Spotlight)
Inklings and Notions, June 9
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Lauren is giving away the grand prize of a $25 Amazon card and a signed, hardcover copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.