You might not know Sabaa Tahir’s name now, but that won’t be the case for much longer. The former Washington Post editor’s upcoming novel An Ember in the Ashes has already been optioned in a seven-figure deal with Academy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad) attached. Get to know her as she gets to know Comic-Con in this exclusive video:

The high-fantasy novel is set in a world that looks a lot like ancient Rome. Inspired by her time on a foreign desk at the Post and as a kid growing up in the Mojave desert, Tahir’s novel follows two teenagers fighting to survive under an oppressive regime. Maybe you think you’ve seen “teens fighting to survive,” but this will be a whole different animal: Tahir said she drew inspiration from articles about “Kashmiri women whose husbands or sons were imprisoned by the army with little explanation and no hope of release, Liberian child soldiers who tied teddy bears to their backpacks while toting AK-47s,” and a “Sudanese refugee who said he couldn’t let himself love his infant son, because the boy was going to die anyway.” She’s the real deal.

An Ember in the Ashes is out Winter 2015.