Welcome to Rian's story — The Knight & His Magical Armlet!

Thank you so much for your patience! I have had a series of unexpected events this summer, and had to adjust my timelines, but your book is coming to you!

You signed up for this bonus story in the back of The Squire & His Magical Library. That list is now closed, so congratulations on making it in!

Readers love a companion story, everyone tells me. It's easy, they say. For instance, write an important event from one novel in the perspective of a different character, and send it to your readers as a bonus. So I was going to write the story of Rian and Maura's first meeting from Rian's perspective.

I pulled up the relevant scenes in The White Deer of Kildare, pulled out any quotations and actions that would need to be the same, and...

Well, if this was going to be a short story, it needed a story goal. I actually edit short stories for my day job (if by "job" you mean "it takes a lot of time and no one pays me"), so I am constitutionally incapable of producing a story without a character arc and a story goal. Okay. Easy. I could see that it was the magical armlet, thus the name of the story. It makes it a little longer, to really develop the character, but that's more enjoyable, right?

But there were some lingering questions from Squire, which Rian wouldn't have been able to answer when he was young but his older self would certainly think about. So I worked those in.

And then I thought of a really wonderful plot twist—I do love my plot twists! And it worked back to Nessa, the central character in Squire, because we all love seeing characters come back again. And then I thought of more ways to deepen the arc with Rian's son (but I only thought of it halfway through writing).

I enjoyed writing it, but this was already twice as long as I had planned, so I really had to wrap it up. I sent it to my editor. While she was reading it, I got really excited about how this part of the story connects to the next story I have in mind. Then my editor had more ideas. She wanted a new opening scene, which would be way more fun than what I had. She wanted more of the flirtation and conversation on the page. We both knew that I needed to tie the Nessa and River plot line back to the beginning of the story.

So it had to be a novella.

My editor says I like weaving too much. I think maybe I like Rian too much. Either way, I definitely want to write this properly, into a whole novella with interconnected story lines.

But I haven't forgotten about your bonus story!

I've decided to do this two ways, and you get TWO versions of the story.

First of all, you get a backstage pass into the middle of my writing process. Today, I'm sending you a link to the first version of this story. I do my own first-round editing before I send it to my editor, but since we decided to go nuclear on edits here, I didn't do her line edits. So I don't think this is super messy in a grammatical way, but it's the middle of the writing process. I made the epub myself (my regular books are professionally formatted). And it has all the imperfection that I just described—all the places that we wanted more.

I'm calling this the "inspiration draft," and I'm sharing it with you.

Secondly, you will get the whole novella as a preview copy!

As soon as this book is finished, and professionally edited, proofread, and formatted (whew!) I'll send you the completed story. You'll get it before it's available on the sale sites.

What's the difference?

If you don't want to read the "inspiration draft," that's fine! The plot structure is basically the same, so it does have the twists at the end. If you want the full lead-up to the surprise, you can wait!

The "real version" is about three times as long. The plot line with River becomes essential from page 1, and there's more page time with Rian and Maura together.

I can't wait to hear what you think of both stories! I wish I could transport the entire completed story into your e-readers today — magically! 😂

Get my inspiration copy

I will send you another update, but meanwhile, I'll also add you to my main newsletter (if you're not already on it) so we can get to know each other. You'll get another bonus story there!

Thanks for reading along with me,

Christy