John Scalzi on Zoe's Tale

John Scalzi has finished Zoe's Tale and has posted his thoughts on writing the novel, including what he was trying to do (find the voice of a 16 year old girl) and the challenges of doing it.

Even though the book take place in the Old Man’s War universe and in parallel time to TLC, the goal in the writing — as is the goal for each of the books I write — is to make it able to stand alone; that is, write it so that you don’t have to have read any of the previous OMW series books. At the same time, I have to make sure that the people who have read the previous books don’t get bored with me doing setup for the new readers. - John Scalzi

The Old Man's War novels have been consistently good and consistently interesting, so while Scalzi is changing things up with the the introduction of Zoe as a primary character AND the fact that the novel takes place at the same time as The Last Colony, I have no reason not to trust Scalzi to do a good job. I've read five of his novels and have not been disappointed.