I am back! And I hope life remains smooth enough for me to cling to a regular schedule again. 🤞 Admittedly, with two books releasing over the next five months, I might have a few interruptions…
But I will do my best, friends! And to that end, I’ve un-paused paid subscriptions. Feel free to downgrade now, if you so desire.
Or you can also upgrade now, if you’re wanting to access all that educational content behind the paywalls. 👀
As always, with my audio posts, I’ve got a full (and edited so it actually matches what I say!) transcript below. And I’ve included links to any posts I mention, for easy perusal.
Up Next!
Lastly, very quickly while I have you here, please consider slinging a pre-order my way! The personal challenges of this year have been…well, they’re making self-promo tough, let me tell ya. 🥴
So any support you might want to offer me in the form of buying my books—I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. I have general preorder links at the buttons below:
And here are links to purchase signed, personalized editions via Schuler Books & Media. (Just make sure you specify in the comments section at checkout to whom you want it signed!):
Or, in case you missed it, we announced the stunning Illumicrate edition of The Executioners Three, and you can learn more about that at the link below.
💚 - Sooz
Links Mentioned:
My Books Ranked from Easiest to Hardest to Write — with more info on the Murder Quartet
Transcript:
Hello, friends. ‘Tis I, Susan Dennard. It’s been a bit, I know, and even longer since I did an audio message, or I guess you don’t call it that. A…an audio recording?
This isn’t a podcast. It’s me just chatting with you about a subject, as you all well know.
I’m not going to pretend that I am back to normal. What I went through in the spring was a lot. I will no doubt be talking more publicly about it when I start doing events later this month and touring and whatnot—mostly because I am very bad and keeping secrets, even terrible ones. And I don't want this to be a secret. I'm just not ready to talk about what I went through.
And I'm still processing. So there you go. Moving on.
I do want to dip my toe back into, you know, writing advice and the creative, writing life. What that’s like. And I was given an awesome question from a lovely reader (and fellow writer) named Lisa, who was asking about some books that I recently wrote.
I will link to a deeper description of those books below in the “show notes.” But these books are four…I shouldn’t say loosely connected because they are all overlapping on a Venn diagram, but they are standalone with different main characters, different settings. But all in the same…an alternate universe version of our 90s.
They’re kind of like The Executioners Three, in that they are very romance forward. There’s murder, there’s ghosts (or some sort of supernatural component). And again, the 90s—although it’s it’s less intense with the 90s vibes. And certainly no 90s jokes like you get in The Executioners Three. Mostly because Freddie is a one of a kind voice. I cannot be that cheeky with every character. (Everyone would be so sick of me.)
Additionally, I wrote the Murder Quartet in what is my favorite tense, which is present—but third person present. Whereas The Executioners Three is third person past.
All of this is to say, I wrote these books very quickly. They sort of poured out of me. The first one I started late last August, and I wrote most of that book in about two and a half weeks, if you can believe it.
And then I wrote another one, similar to it, but in a different season, so that one was set in sticky summer. I wrote another one set in cold winter during January. And that…I wrote about half the book. And then in spring (May) I wrote another one, set also in spring.
You might be noticing a pattern here!
And I wrote close to 60K in that one. It was past halfway, but not quite two-thirds.
And then I started…I have a third, or a fourth one, rather. And that one actually, (unsurprisingly) was the hardest to write because I set it in fall. And it is not fall! It is not fall yet. I am not feeling fall vibes.
So that one took me some more tries and more grinding through before I finally tapped into my main character and the dynamic between her and the mystery.
But that one is also, that one’s a fall vibes book. And I wrote 40,000 words in that one.
So yes, you can see none of them are finished. I have slowly added more to the others—the ones that were more substantially written than the fourth one. And so one of them is now almost finished. (The one I started last August). But still, none are completely done.
They have substantial amounts written, but unfinished. And they were each written, those substantial portions were each written very quickly. Faster than I typically write.
However, as I say that, I have to caveat that that’s not actually true. When I am writing first books in series—which up until now, other than The Executioners Three—is all I've ever done. Right? I have done long series or trilogies.
And so The Executioners Three was my first standalone. It took me a long time only because I just couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Initially, it was a contemporary romance, and then I added murder, and then I murders weren’t selling, so I added ghosts, and then hilariously, murders became popular. And now I have a combination of the two, but I like supernatural elements.
It just jves for me best. And I kind of actually wanted to recreate the joy that I had writing The Executioners Three back in 2018, when I was first starting IVF. Which is what I set out to do with the first in my Murder Quartet, Two for Joy. The one I wrote last August.
And I realized as I was doing that that, “Oh my goodness! I'm really good at standalones! And I'm really good at first books in series!” The Luminaries came very quickly. Truthwitch came very quickly, even though it’s quite long.
What I’m not good at is sequels, and I shouldn't say I’m not good at them. I am just slower. They require…I can’t pants a sequel because I have set up things that I must follow through on. I have made promises to the reader and I cannot let the reader down. So that takes me longer.
I can…I move in fits and spurts as I crank my way forward following character—which I have talked about at length, my need to follow character (and I will link to that as well).
And on that note, I’ve also talked about why the sequels get harder and harder (when I was discussing how I have to follow the characters). And so when I actually say the word “pants,” I don't mean “pants” in the way that people typically think about it.
I don’t just sit down with no idea where I’m going and things pour out of me. I’m sure some writers do that. That’s not what I mean. I have to know the world I’m writing in. In fact, I start with three things.
For each of these Murder Quartet books, I’ve started with three things, and it worked so well for me that I plan to try to do this for everything I write moving forward.
I know my world. So I’ve made a map of the location. I know, and to be clear, the map often changes as I’m writing and I’m like, well, I don’t want that over there. That’s not helpful. I’m going to move it! And so I do.
The map will evolve as I’m writing. But I have a starting point so that I see where things are logistically. And that allows me to make decisions on where my character goes, how they get there, etc.
I know my characters. I know my main character, and I hear them in my head. I can hear their voice, whatever it might be.
To be clear, it takes me a few chapters. I might rewrite the first chapter a few times as I fully lock into their voice. And they may…I may not really sink into them completely and understand their particular quirks and nuances until I’m you know, three or four chapters in. Then I will smooth out the opening.
But I have to at least know their name and the general vibe around them.
And then the last thing I’ve discovered that has been working really well for me is that I make a mood board.
I have never done this before. I definitely would always make Pinterest boards. I mean, my Truthwitch Pinterest board is enormous and public, if you want to look it up. (I will link to that as well, I suppose.) But I have started making, like, just a dedicated mood board in Canva.
I use the same template every time. And I’ve shared one for Two for Joy, actually, in my fan newsletter. I can link to that as well. But what I like about making these mood boards is that I have a limited number of spots. And so I have to pick out sort of the key elements that I need for the vibe, right?
(I know vibes have become almost a pejorative term in writing these days because, you know, everyone complains, “Readers just want vibes. They don’t want plot!” I’m not going to totally argue with that, but I don’t know that having strong vibes is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I would like to think that all of my books have very strong vibes in addition to strong plots.
You know, the Witchlands has a very, I think, bright, epic, sweeping, magical, vibe, and depending on where they are in the many books of that series, the vibes will change. And of course, which character’s head we’re in. The Executioners Three has full, fall, cozy-with-a-dash-of-horror-vibes. The Luminaries, I think, has very strong, spooky forest, what-might-be-lurking-around-the-next-dark-tree vibes.)
And so for the Murder Quartet, I knew because I was setting each in a different season. I wanted them to have very distinctive vibes.
So to go back to Two for Joy, the one about the one set in summer, I knew it was this hot, sticky lakeshore, dune, tourist-resort vibes. 90s. You know, hanging out with friends, summer vibes. But also there’s danger and murder.
So I made a moodboard and it went so well that I decided to do that with each Murder Quartet book that followed. And in the process of making the mood board, I found different parts of the story I wasn’t expecting.
When I was making the Four and Twenty Blackbirds moodboard, which is the winter book, I discovered there’s a lot of red. Red against snow, and that in turn led me to different things that I ended up putting in the book—and almost, it anchored me into some surprise things as I was drafting.
When I was making the spring mood board for the book Three Mollys in the Well: flowers, obviously, right? When you want to evoke spring vibes, you got to have lots of flowers—which helped me in turn develop the setting and the things that my character notices in all the places that she is.
But how do you offset such beauty, you know, the beauty of a field of wildflowers, so that it feels also horrifying and you can add some terror and murder to it?
(Oh! My kitty just showed up. Because we got a dog, which I have talked about, Junebug, he’s deeply unhappy. He hates her. And I don’t blame him. She’s a puppy. She wants to play. She does not understand that him scratching at her is not him inviting her to play. So we’re working on that.
She is not around right now because I needed quiet in order to record this. But the kitty—his meows are just like special seasoning to this. But back to where I was before.)
The three things I need—to list them again—are a map, the character (my main character, their voice, their desperate desire when the story opens), and then the mood board. And with those three things, I usually have enough juice, enough sort of of a sandbox that I can dive in and start going.
And then knowing who my character is and what they want, as the scene opens, and where they are as well (and the vibes of where they are), then things just sort of unfold.
It really feels like, and I think I’ve probably used this metaphor before, but it feels like I’ve found a piece of thread and here's the spool over here…And now I’ve just, I finally found where the thread is, and now I’m pulling. And it just comes. It just comes and it comes and it comes, and it comes and it comes and it comes, and it feels amazing.
And I can write 5,000 words a day—that is usually my goal. Bare minimum 3,000, but I can usually do (when I hit that grooving point) 5,000 words a day. Maybe more, maybe a little less, but around there. And that gets me pretty far into a book by two and a half weeks.
But it inevitably….Guys, every time, at about two and a half weeks, I peter out. I run out of steam. Either I no longer…like, I’m far enough in that now I have to make some story decisions, which is what happened with Two for Joy. It was like, okay, “We’re at act three now, lady. You got to pull all this stuff together to reveal the murder and set up your climax. So time to get serious, look back at what you’ve got. You can’t just keep doing your version of pantsing now.”
Or, um, in One Raven for a Dove (that’s my fall book—the one that I struggled with a bit to tap into my main character's voice and her desperate desire), I ran out of steam because…
For one, I really do think I need to wait until I’m in fall vibes for that one. (But it’ll come, it’ll come soon enough.) But also, because I just sort of lost sight of the romantic arc in that one. And rather than go back and read and then, from there, push on , I decided to just set it aside. I have so many other things to work on.
The beauty of trusting my own instincts and being a fluid writer, which of course, I will link to, as well, my two, quite popular, successful posts (in that people resonated with them on being very fluid and trusting, that fluidity) .
Because of that, I just now let myself stop. I might grind for a few days, hoping I can retap into it and get a little bit more eked out, a few more 5,000 word days. But usually, after two to three days of trying, I’m like, okay, you’re definitely at the bottom of this river. You’re out. Let the spring refill that basin and move over somewhere else.
And so that’s what happened with One Raven. And as I talked about, too, because I jump around so much, I do try to keep track of how much I produce each week. Just kind of track it weekly, if not daily—if I remember.
(I’m not the best at remembering. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not great with routines, guys. I just, you know, there are certain routines in life that one must do, such as getting my daughter dressed every day and fed and to school. But when it comes to my actual career and remembering, you know, to check things off the to-do list every single day…
I’m not great at that. And that’s okay. I have discovered, too, that you can be successful without relying on things like checklists and calendars and agendas—that work great for other people, but maybe not me.)
And what’s been really great, too, about this Murder Quartet and the fact that I was able to write so much so quickly is that it helped me lock into what the full story is before I was influenced by anyone on the outside.
And this is not…Like, let me make this very clear: I am not saying you should never brainstorm or share your ideas with someone else. No. Some people absolutely need to right from the get go. To shoot ideas off of someone. You know, bounce it off, see what comes back. Share.
I am just not that person. I need to sit in my little goop of map, voice and moodboard until I fully hear the character and I follow that character where they need to go. I can’t have the input of other people because it interferes with the character.
And that might be—to use, you know, strength language (thanks, Becca Syme! Again!)—my Empathy, which gets very overwhelmed by other people’s emotions.
I feel what everyone else in the world is feeling at all times. And so that’s another reason why I can’t write unless I’m by myself for the most part—because I can’t shut down what other people are feeling. I feel what they’re feeling. And if I’m going to tap into my character fully and pour their emotions onto the page, I cannot have any other external input.
My child certainly cannot be in the same room. Sometimes if she’s, like, got her headphones on and is watching a movie on her iPad, I can do it. It really depends on how locked into a character I am. But if I’m just maybe at the very beginning, or like with something as complicated as the last Witchlands boo…
No, Mama needs to be alone. Put Susan in her office, make everybody leave, then I can get it—then I can get into the right character space.
And so now that I know that about myself (again, thank you to Becca Syme) and have worked hard at that and creating sort of ideal conditions for my own writing and my own fluid flow, I know that I need to write as much as possible before I even tell anybody else that I have this idea.
Because the input of other people messes with my own certainty. My own sense…or connection, perhaps is a better word, to the story. I start to get…
It’s like radio interference. It’s like static comes crackling through and I no longer see the heart and character and voice—and even world and vibe—that I was so initially excited to write.
And so now, I know: write in secret as far as you can. And only when I am truly stuck, stuck, then stop, maybe ask for help. The farther I can get, though, before I do that, the better.
And the other thing, too, like what’s been really great about this Murder Quartet, is that writing so much of the books up front means I figured out the story. I know what the story is.
Yes, I may not know how it all wraps up at the end, but I know whodunit. The world is fully locked in, the characters, their arc—it’s well on its way. It’s just now a matter of committing. You know, sitting down and working through some of the crunchier planning, less pantsing stuff.
And there’s no…While I absolutely will take editorial feedback and critique partner feedback, there’s no worrying that I am… The book can’t be tainted because I have written enough now that my own certainty in the story is committed on the page.
I don’t have to worry that what someone else thinks is going to interfere with that and then disrupt the drafting process for me.
Which is another thing that made sequels hard for me, right? Because I’m already multiple books in. The reception of readers really impacted my ability to create or not create. And I’ve talked about that as well with like how difficult Witchlight…or yeah, Witchlight was because of the reception to Witchshadow—which wasn't even bad, but there was the one reader who didn’t like it. And that that just messed me up (which I will link to that as well).
And then the other thing that’s been really sort of eye-opening and helpful for me to learn with this Murder Quartet is the joy that I have taken from writing it. Because, guys, it is just so much joy! I can’t even convey it to you.
And that is me saying that when I was going through truly horrible personal experience during the months of February, March…I guess it was March, April, and May. Horrible, okay? Just rough. I will talk about it another time, not today.
And I yet, still, I was able to like eke out these moments. I'm actually getting emotional. When I was able to write the third book, the spring book Three Mollys in Well, that were for me—and that were separate.
You know, it’s these precious moments where I was locked in to my character and I was trying to figure out whodunit and following the romance, following the murders, following this really cool setting that I loved...Just sort of soaking in those vibes, the spring vibes of this world I built…
And those were precious. Those were precious hours. The two and a half, three weeks I spent working on that book were amazing and helped me get through some very, very tough personal times.
And so knowing how much that did for me—there’s no price you can put on that. If I never sell this Murder Quartet, if they never get published, fine. I’ll give them to readers for free, if I need to (if, you know, if there seems to be an interest out there). But no one can take those hours away from me. Those many hours I spent writing. And that is incredible.
So. There are many books, of course, that I have written that were due and I needed to turn in in order to get paid. I still need to get paid. I have a family. I have bills. I can’t just not…Like, I can’t just exist off freewriting for the rest of my life. Obviously, mama needs to pay her bills for her child. (My child also has, you know, medical concerns that are not cheap to manage. I have stuff that is not cheap to manage.) So these are all things that I have to take very seriously.
But to be able to additionally tap into a place of joy while I am drafting instead of existing in the soup of terror that was my life during the Witchlands. Because I felt so much stress, right? To get that right, I built such a complicated, long-reaching world with a payoff that really mattered to me and promises that I needed to keep because I wanted to get right for the readers.
That stress of wanting to perform and pull it off for the readers was immense. It really was. And it made some of the writing not fun. I can’t deny it. There were moments where the terror of getting words down fast enough was extreme. And getting money to get food on the table, to pay my mortgage, these were all things that absolutely weigh in.
So to be able to shift to this Murder Quartet—which, yes, I did write Two for Joy when I was still working on Witchlight, as well as Executioners Three. I just sort of stole a two and a half week period there where I hammered this out. And it was glorious and beautiful and it honestly…
All of that has restored my faith in my own ability to write and to write for joy (which maybe is appropriate, given the title Two for Joy). But I didn’t know I could do that still.
And that’s not to say, too, that there were no moments of joy writing Witchlight. I am proud of that book. I think it is—not to sound completely full of myself—but I think it is a craft effin’ masterpiece. I used every single thing I know and have learned in the last 15 years of publishing, which is…more years. How many years? 16 years of actually writing seriously.
I used everything. And I am so proud of what I pulled off—or what I think I’ve pulled off in that book (readers will decide, of course)—but I know that that is like tip top, maximum peak craft in a book. Everything I know. And I am fucking proud of it.
But to be able to then write these much easier, smaller standalone books —and just savor them and enjoy every minute that their characters, Magpie and Kitty, their voices poured out of me. Ah, it felt so good. And it restored my own faith in this career choice. And in my abilities.
Like, “Oh, okay, you do have this like built-in algorithm that’s going to guide you through how to write a book. And when you’re not doing sequels where you have to reckon with, you know, five previous enormous books filled with plot twists and character arcs—and all you’re doing is a single book…Oh, yeah, Sooz. Yoou actually actually do know what you’re doing. Not bad!”
And so whatever comes with this Murder Quartet, whether they sell, whether they don’t, I got so much out of them. I got so much out of them at a personal level that how can I regret that, you know?
And it’s taught me too, how I want to move forward. I don’t….I’m not going to write off sequels in like series. In fact, one of the books that I’ve been chipping away at for years now is definitely…I’m looking at it as like a three, a trilogy of novellas. So there you go. Another trilogy!
But now that I also understand how my brain works and how my writing brain specifically works, I don’t have to be frustrrated with myself when sequels take longer.
They just will take longer, Susan, and that’s okay because you don’t write them the same way. You write by character and when the character is locked into plot decisions that came in previous installments…GAH. Then it becomes problem solving—and that slows you down, versus a standalone or a first book, where I can just go where the characters take me.
So, yes, I have so many works in progress on my hard drive, so it’s been really fun, you know, since this sort of burst of confidence, burst of writing passion that has filled me, to pull those out and try to apply what I know.
Like one book that I actually shared the prologue to (and I will link to that as well). It went through a few iterations because (now I know this about myself) the original iteration, I tried to sell just based on proposal with a really detailed outline.
Yeah, I can’t do that. I can’t just write an outline because it steals all the joy for me. And when I sit down to write the scenes, what’s the fun in this? I've been here. I don’t care. Now, what? Now I just have to write them making the choice that I already figured out and that maybe, now that I’m in their head, they wouldn’t even make. Ugh.
So I have since learned I can’t write that way, which is another reason I wrote so much of the Murder Quartet up front—so that then the story is figured out. I don’t have to sell based on some tiny, little, you know, a chapter or two and then I’m locked into some outline. Instead, it's already figured out. “Here you go. You read it. You decide if you like it or not, editors.”
And so I, with this book, Alchemist in the Nightsong, I had done that years ago. It killed it. So I set aside for a long time until I was feeling the spark again, pulled it out. I wrote like 60,000 words in a flurry of inspiration.
They were terrible, though. And like, I don’t…Not all terrible words are unfixable. In fact, many are quite fixable, but this one I knew, even as I was writing it, I was like, “This isn’t going to work. None of this is going to work. This isn’t actually what I want the book to be, but I'm enjoying this, so I’m just going to keep going.”
And that’s fine. I got pretty far (like 60,000 words) and realized like, you know, “Everything I think I know about this book is wrong and now I’ve written a draft that is kind of incoherent because I’m figuring it as I go. And I like these new characters I’ve discovered, and okay, set it aside.”
So I set it aside again. And then, like, a year later, a year and a half later, I pulled it out one more time and I started over. And this time, it was the right version. It was the right story. But I was only able to write like 20,000 words before I hit a wall. And as mentioned before, when I hit a wall, I set it aside.
Plus I had many deadlines then. I was still working on The Hunting Moon, and I was still working on Witchlight, oh my gosh. So it was, it was not, it was fine. It was fine to set it aside and not work on it (and only sort of look at it every now and then when I was feeling it). But I couldn’t give it all my focus to figure out why things weren’t working and what I needed to do next to take my character where she needed to go next.
But now, now that I know all that know, I have pulled it out. And I have made sure that I have a map, which I do. (I actually already had a map.)
I already know my character, right? Because I've written 20,000 words in her voice and in another POV character. So I know them. But what's missing from my little trifecta? Oh yeah, mood board. So that’s my next thing I’m going to do. I’m going to make a mood board.
(I did actually send it to my wonderful, amazing beta reader, Rachel, and was like, what do you think? Can you tell me what you think would come next? Because I’ve written some stuff, but I’m not sure it’s working. And she read it. And actually what I had written to come next does work, but I could see…I saw why I was stuck.)
And so now, thanks to her help and trusting myself—like, what I had written before actually does work!—I am now once more churning forward on this book. Albeit slowly, but churning forward. And that’s exciting!
It’s much, it’s crunchy fantasy. It’s very different from the Murder Quartet. It’s more in the line with the Witchlands. We’ve got conflicts, world building. We've got gods, magic. It’s definitely nothing like Earth—not like our Earth, I should say. There’s, you know, actual earth and sky and animals. But, I mean, our world.
So, yeah, it’s, I am trying to take all of the lessons that I learned sort of by chance with the Murder Quartet and apply them. And continue to just trust that I do know what I’m doing. My algorithm is well defined and well built at this point. I don’t have to get feedback from anyone else (until I feel that I need it—or want it, I should say. Not that I need, but that I want it). I don’t have to tell anyone else about my ideas until I want to.
And I can write hard stuff, but enjoy the process. These two things are not mutually exclusive. We do not have to punish ourselves just because we want to write books and get paid.
In fact, there is no virtue in making yourself miserable. And that doesn’t mean you won’t make yourself miserable writing a book. Some of the hardest times in my life, which I talked about in that very, the very first thing I’m linking to below were when my books weren’t going well.
And yes, oftentimes when my books are going very, very badly, it’s because my life is also in upheaval. And the two—going back to my Empathy—they are inextricably linked. I cannot disconnect those. But just because I am feeling good also doesn’t mean what I’m doing is wrong.
Sometimes there will be punishing moments; it is the nature of deadlines; it is the nature of wanting to be paid for your art and working hard to be paid for your art.
It is the nature of having to write through tough times in your life because you do need to get paid and readers are expecting it.
There's no way you can escape that. No job is perfect. No job has only happy moments and in fact, I would say most jobs are majority challenging moments. But those moments of joy that I get from it—when I have these two and a half week bursts of glorious writing…Oh my gosh, they go so far to offset the hard parts.
Or the parts that I’m not very good at. You know, the administrative side, keeping up with emails, promoting myself, remembering to include pre-order links, blah, blahdyboo.
(Oh my gosh, I should probably put a pre-order link here as well. You know. Yeah.)
That stuff that is just not natural for me and not necessarily the fun part. There is reward to be had when I find those moments of like, “Oh my gosh, this book! I’m having so much fun writing this and discovering where they’re going! And I don’t know where they’re going. This is so exciting. And oooh, are they going to kiss?”
It feels amazing. It feels amazing. And as I continue to learn more about my own process and apply it, I can only hope that each book will get…I don’t think they will get easier. You know, I’m not going to pretend that Alchemist is easier to write because again, we’re talking high fantasy. It’s crunchy, it’s gritty, and it’s complicated. And so it takes me more stop, start, stop, start, think, pause, think, figure out, how do I make this all line up?
But that doesn’t mean there are no moments of enjoying it and leaning into those moments of enjoying it. And it doesn’t mean also that I can’t use what I know about myself—and following my characters and not talking about my ideas until I’ve reached a point of inner certainty. Those are all valid and useful for me to know, to make maybe not the book easy, but easier than it would have been for Susan of, you know, five years ago. 10 years ago, certainly.
So this was a very long answer to your question, Lisa, about sort of the creation of the Murder Quartet. But there was so much that I learned about myself along the way. And I don’t know. Wish me luck, guys. Let’s hope somebody buys it and that readers enjoy them if a publisher does in fact purchase them and decide to print them.
And yeah, thanks for being here. Thanks for supporting me and the list, the Misfits and Daydreamers. If you would be so kind as to sling a pre-order my way, you know, add Witchlight or The Executioners Three to your shopping cart, I would be beyond grateful.
It’s weird having two books come out so close together, especially because they are so completely different. The Executioners Three is very much in line with the Luminaries trilogy. And even my debut, Something Strange and Deadly, in that it’s firmly teen and, you know, it’s an alternate version of our universe.
Meanwhile, the Witchlands is the Witchlands. It is high fantasy, sweeping, epic, many books, many characters. It is everything that I love most in fantasy, you know, crammed into one enormous series. And I am really effing proud, if you didn't pick up on that earlier, of the conclusion—and I hope fans, Witchlanders out there, all enjoy it.
So if you're a fan and you’ve read the other books, please, I would really, greatly appreciate a Witchlight pre-order. And yeah, of course, with The Executioners Three as well.
If you pre-order in the U.S., you can get the hardcover, you automatically get the printed edges, which is pretty cool. And there might be something beautiful inside, too. I shall say nothing more.
And then the UK edition, of course, we have Waterstone Special edition, which is awesome. And, I mean, just gorgeous, like gorgeous, the printed edges (or sprayed edges, I guess they are over there). And then also the Illumicrate edition. So I will link to all of that.
And yeah, thank you again for listening. I will be back with more soon. À bientôt!
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