Heists 101 with Caitlin Schneiderhan

Lit Service

What are the building blocks of a heist? Caitlin Schneiderhan chats with Caitlin (two of us! Correct spelling and everything!) to chat about her debut book Medici Heist and how she went about planning it.

Caitlin Schneiderhan is a genre-loving writer on the hit Netflix show STRANGER THINGS. Originally hailing from Silver Spring, Maryland, Caitlin hatched from a cocoon of Terry Pratchett novels when she was 13. She spent her teenage years scribbling stories during class instead of paying attention (you can’t prove she wasn’t just taking notes). Eventually, she decided to chase that storytelling bug all the way out to sunny Los Angeles, where she spent a few years scribbling scripts at assistant jobs instead of paying attention (you can’t prove she wasn’t just taking notes). She has been named one of MovieMaker Magazine’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch, and has projects in development with multiple production companies around Hollywood.

More about Medici Heist:

A sharp-witted teenage thief leads a team of skilled misfits in a dangerous and daring heist for fortune, freedom and revenge against a corrupt Pope in Renaissance Italy in Caitlin Schneiderhan's clever YA debut, Medici Heist.
Welcome to Florence, 1517, a world of intrigue and opulence, murder and betrayal. Seventeen-year-old conwoman Rosa Cellini arrives in the city the same day that the Medici Pope, Leo X, returns to take up the reins of power. This is not a coincidence. The new Pope is extorting a mountain of indulgence money from the people of Florence to bolster his power and standing, and Rosa has a plan to take it back.
To pull off the Renaissance’s greatest robbery, she’ll recruit a team of specially-chosen, highly-skilled misfits: Sarra the tinkerer, Khalid the fighter, and Giacomo, the irrepressible master of disguise. To top it all off, and to smooth their entrance into the fortress-like Palazzo Medici, Rosa even enlists the reluctant help of the famed artist Michelangelo.
But as the authorities draw closer and the Medici’s noose pulls tighter around the land, old secrets resurface and tensions in the group start to flare. What began as a robbery could be the key to saving the city itself—if Rosa and company don’t destroy each other first.