https://www.elevatedmagazines.com/single-post/victoria-bolton-is-building-a-world-bigger-than-the-books?fbclid=IwY2xjawUahNZwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMXl0cXQ4VXBkbXUxZzA4MGNzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeXoN8vKcW-9YX1-aq-dp7kMCSV4hgarXuOUx3rKGU2eQebuGic3RLpx9Wy4w_aem_HSzKU5ekGqSXiauKf9ofNA Victoria Bolton Is Building a World Bigger Than the Books With Scions of Legacy: The Public Trust, author Victoria Bolton takes the next generation of her Rude Boy USA universe to Washington—while music, technology and visual storytelling are allowing a world she imagined more than a decade ago to become something much larger. There are probably easier times to launch a novel than the one Victoria Bolton has chosen. It’s early September. Her day job in technology is entering one of its busiest stretches of the year. She’s also recovering from an injury. And in the middle of both, she’s preparing to release Scions of Legacy: The Public Trust, the second novel in her Scions of Legacy trilogy. Bolton laughs when the combination is pointed out. “It’s early September and my day job is picking up, as well as me healing from an injury. So yeah, I am getting ready to promote a book.” None of those things seem as though they should naturally go together. Yet somehow, she’s actively doing all three. And once Bolton starts talking about The Public Trust, it’s easy to understand why the book isn’t being placed on the back burner until life becomes more convenient. There is genuine excitement in the way she talks about returning to this world and finally getting the second installment into readers’ hands. Then again, with Bolton, releasing a book involves considerably more than releasing a book. There are trailers to think about, music connected to the story, visuals, promotional ideas and an entire fictional universe she has been steadily promoting all year. That universe began with Rude Boy USA. Now its children have grown up. And some of them have made their way to Washington. The Next Generation Takes Over Scions of Legacy is a spin-off of Bolton’s original Rude Boy USA trilogy, but calling it simply a spin-off doesn’t quite capture what she is doing with it. The new trilogy follows the adult children of the protagonists John and Bunny LeBlanc from the original series. They inherited their parents’ names and histories, but Bolton didn’t want them to simply repeat their parents’ stories. They have their own ambitions. Their own relationships. Their own mistakes. And, increasingly, their own relationship with power. The first book, The Powers That Be, introduced readers to this next generation. It has been received well by audiences. Bolton would naturally like to see its follow-up receive the same kind of recognition. But ask what she really wants from The Public Trust, and the answer becomes considerably less complicated. “Of course I want it to do well,” she says. “You always want the next book to do at least as well as the one before it. But at a minimum, I want people to at least like the story. That’s important to me because I took some risks with dipping into politics, a genre that a lot of people are not comfortable with talking about.” Pedigree, scheduled for mid-December 2026, will conclude the Scions of Legacy trilogy. Before readers get there, however, Bolton is taking them somewhere she has wanted to explore for some time. Washington. Her “House of Cards Moment” Bolton calls The Public Trust her “House of Cards moment,” although she is quick to make clear that she isn’t trying to recreate the television series. What she means is that this was finally her opportunity to take a longstanding interest in politics and place it directly inside the fictional world she had already built but with a magnifying glass to the Capitol. Politics had surfaced before. In The Tide Is High, the third book of the Rude Boy USA trilogy, Bolton explored politics on a local New York City level. With The Public Trust, she wanted to widen the lens. “I’ve always been interested in politics, and I had already touched on it in The Tide Is High,” she says. “But Washington gives you a completely different canvas as a writer; a lot of things that happen there would shock you.” What she didn’t want was a novel that simply chose a political team. To Victoria, that’s too simple. The attraction of Washington, at least from a storytelling perspective, was not writing a book declaring one party righteous and another corrupt. Bolton was more interested in what happens when the cameras aren’t there. What happens in the rooms the public doesn’t enter? How do people operate inside a political system once ambition, loyalty, relationships, reputation and power begin competing with one another? And what happens when the public version of a person isn’t necessarily the complete version? “I didn’t want to write something where the point was, ‘These people are good and those people are bad,’” Bolton says. “That’s not really what interested me. I wanted to play with what happens behind closed doors. People have relationships. They have ambitions. They make deals. Some are crooked. They have things they want. Politics doesn’t suddenly make people stop being people.” That also raises an interesting question: Does Washington actually want a lens on itself? Political fiction has always had a peculiar appeal. To someone far removed from government, Washington can feel like an almost exotic ecosystem with its own rules, hierarchies, and language. To someone who lives inside that world, a political thriller offers a different kind of entertainment—the opportunity to recognize familiar behaviors while deciding just how close, or how far, fiction has come to reality. Bolton seems perfectly happy to let readers make that determination for themselves.…

Victoria Bolton Takes Her Fiction to Washington in The Public Trust by Edward Marcel September 17, 2026 Reading Time: 4 mins read Victoria Bolton may be recovering from an injury, but apparently no one has convinced her that recovery is supposed to involve actually slowing down. “I probably need to…

BunnyWine wins its first book-related category award from VidU for Best Visual Effects for the short One Bullet, No Rewind. The award celebrates the best in AI digital video creation. I use this service to create all of my book trailers, and I think it does a fantastic job making…

https://www.americanbookfest.com/2026afapressrelease.html Congratulations to the Winners & Finalists of the 2026 American Fiction Awards! The 2026 American Fiction Awards9th Annual Awards Honoring Literary Excellence For Immediate ReleaseAugust 2026 Contact: American Book FestE-mail Press ContactAMERICAN BOOK FEST™ ANNOUNCESWINNERS AND FINALISTS OFTHE 9th ANNUALAMERICAN FICTION AWARDS Mainstream & Independent TitlesScore Top Honors in the2026 American…

Note: This page will update as new music is released. * New music associated with the books is now appearing on streaming services. The first single, “Rude Girls Town,” is available on streaming services. It’s a quick banger. The Rude Boy USA Trilogy Album is available on ALL streaming platforms…

Today, I will share a story about my first published book, Looking for Mr. Potential, which came out in 2000. Although I had written small stories as a kid, this was my first time exploring the world of book publishing. Upon discovering boutique publishers such as iUniverse, I risked all…

Sponsored Love: From The Mid-West To The East, How Victoria Bolton’s Creative Life Took Shape Lifestyle is often shaped long before a career begins. For author Victoria Bolton, the foundation was laid on the South Side of Chicago, where community, reputation, and resilience were not abstract ideas but everyday realities. …