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So what’s next for this Walking Dead star? Music, a new show and finally growing up.

if you’ve been wondering what Emily Kinney has been up to since her character (RIP, Beth Greene) was killed off in The Walking Dead last season—well, a lot.

For one, the Nebraskan turned New Yorker moved to Los Angeles, which has led to some longdelayed adulting. “In L.A., you end up doing more adult-type things,” says the 31-year-old. “In New York you always have roommates, and now I have my own little spot. And I bought a car.”

Kinney has also been spending a major chunk of time in Toronto shooting Conviction, premiering October 3 on ABC, a drama about a group of lawyers who are trying to get justice for the wrongfully convicted—kinda like Scandal meets the Innocence Project. “It’s very smart and fast-paced,” she says of the show, on which she plays a paralegal with “a hidden past.” “There’s a lot of walking-and-talking and lots of sexy mystery.”

Not quite so glamorous and altogether mundane? The massive snowfall that hit the 6ix during filming—which was unfortunate since it was meant to be fall and the episode they were shooting that day had an outdoor scene. “We had to trust in the magic of TV,” says Kinney. “Sure enough, when we showed up, the area looked like there had never been a huge storm. People had come in super-early and melted all the snow!”

There’s one more thing Kinney has been working on: a “collection of songs” set to release, one by one, this fall. Trust us—and all the people who made last year’s single “Be Good” one of the most downloaded songs on iTunes—this music is no side project. While she calls music her “first love,” she prioritized acting as a career because she “knew how.” “When I first moved to New York, I could go to auditions and get a job,” she says. “Music is different because you’re the one creating the project from beginning to end and no one really ‘hires’ you.” Still, she feels like they’re just different sides of the same creative coin: “For both acting and writing a song, I try to find a truthful moment that serves the character or the song.”