November Newsletter: A Look Through the Rosebush

Nov 15, 2023

Hello, Roses!

Eeep - we’re less than one month out from FORGED BY MALICE! I hope you are all as excited as we are! This month has been a huge time of reflection for me. Helen and I started writing BONDED BY THORNS last year for National Novel Writing Month. My phone always sends me photo memories (‘On this day last year’ kind of thing…) so every single day I look at videos and photos of us first crafting this story. We were over a decade into our writing career with a series of hit and miss books under our belts under various pen names, but every single day I dreamt of one thing: becoming a full-time author. There was literally nothing I wanted so badly in my life as that.

I had a good feeling about BONDED. I thought to myself: This one is special. But I’m kind of biased that way and love all of our characters and books, so I wasn’t sure I could trust that feeling. When we started writing BONDED, we were both coming off of major writing burn-out and feeling discouraged and a bit desperate. By the end of the month when the first draft was complete, I remember thinking one thing: that was so much fun. Rosie and her Briar Boys brought so much joy back to the writing process, and I hope that is reflected in the work.

All this to say - I’m a little bit in shock right now as I reflect at just how much Rosie has changed our lives. I am sitting on my couch on a Wednesday emailing with my agent, awaiting edits from my professional editor, and working on the third book in a series I love and people are excited to read it? The little girl inside of me is kicking her feet and screaming, “You did it!”

But we didn’t do it alone. The online book community is a FORCE. You guys are nuts in the absolute best way, and I wish I could hug every single person who tried our books because you literally made my dream come true. Thank you for every page read, every purchase, every share, every like, every TikTok, every comment, for every damn thing. Helen and I want to write stories for as long as we can - in the Briar world and beyond. For the very first time in my life, I feel like I can make this happen.

This isn’t really BONDED’s one year anniversary, but it feels like it in a way. I am so, so proud of Rosie and how far she’s come. Thank you for being here for all of it!

Aww, we had no idea what big things were coming for our Rosie girl!

Big Things Happening This Month

Eek - there’s a lot going on! Final edits for FORGED, ARC applications, ARCs going out at the end of the month… and we’re pretty confident the audiobook of WOVEN BY GOLD will be out too! We were just sent the proofing copy by our narrators today, so now we listen to the whole thing (the chonker is 17 hours!!), send them any revisions, then send the revised file to Audible! Audible usually takes 10 days to process, so we want to get this baby in there as quick as possible which means once FORGE’s edits are done this week, the audiobook is going to be my entire personality for the few days after that!

Also a huge thank you to everyone who applied for an Advanced Reader Copy! Our fabulous PA Stacey will be going through applications soon and we’re so excited for everyone to get to read!

Stacey also organizes the amazing author events at the Barnes & Noble Tukwila!

Lives

We have two live events coming up next month! Come chat with us!

New Art!

Here are two new art pieces sent to us by the extremely talented Yilok! Her art style is so stunning. It’s always so interesting to see every artist’s different interpretation of our characters!

New Members of the Briar Team

Everyone, please meet Suki and Sokka!

I posted a few months ago how my husband and I lost our cat Felix to cancer. Since then, we have been on the fence about getting a new buddy for our other cat Luna. She’s always been a “cat’s cat” over a “people’s cat”, and we were worried she was lonely without a friend. But at the same time, I didn’t feel ready for a new cat. I follow our local cat rescue and saw they posted pictures of a 6-month old kitten who was a perfect mishmash of brown tabby and orange stripes… Which so happens to be exactly a mix of Felix and Luna. We went into the pet store ‘just to look’. Well, you know how that often ends up, don’t you? The girl was in with her brother, a fully orange boy. The rescue told us that the rest of their litter had been adopted but these two have been looking for homes since August! What were we supposed to do? Named after our favorite couple from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Suki and Sokka came home with us and are now living it up in the kitty hotel (our spare bedroom). Luna’s been a bit iffy so we’ll do a slow introduction and let you know how it goes!

What We’re…

Helen:

Watching: Disneyland vlogs! We may or may not be dashing off for a quick holiday post-FORGED to celebrate…

Listening To: “Slut!” by Taylor Swift. I’m obsessed with these vault tracks!

Reading: Caraval by Stephanie Garbar. Can’t believe it’s taken me this long to read it!

Elizabeth:

Watching: The Dragon Prince: Season 4. Elves, gorgeous animation, mystical creatures, an adorkable but evil female mage… What’s not to love?!

Listening To: I literally cannot stop listening to “This Wish” from the new Disney movie coming out. It’s GORGEOUS and gives me so many vibes of the character I play in our Dungeons and Dragons campaign!

Reading: I was just sent an ARC of The Crimson Moth by Kristen Ciccarelli. It sounds SO GOOD!