Thank you.

No really.

I want to take a moment to thank you for being part of the first handful of people to wander into not only my author journey, but an entire world that sprang from my wild imagination.

I guess the people in my past who told me I “lived in a fantasy world” weren’t entirely wrong, were they?

When I sat down and started writing this novel back in February, I honestly didn’t expect it to become a finished first draft. I especially didn’t expect to type “The End” before the end of April.

But here we are.

95,306 words.

4,398 paragraphs.

8,383 sentences.

Roughly 379 printed pages worth of imaginary people causing me emotional distress.

And that’s just Book One.

As the very first members of Story Notes, I thought it might be fun to share a few things from behind the scenes:

• All the experts say to let a first draft sit for a few weeks before diving into edits. That is much, much harder than it sounds. Every day I resist opening the manuscript feels like a personal attack.

• My musical obsession right now is The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs by Noah Kahan. I listen to it straight through at least once a day. Sometimes more. It’s poetry set to music. It’s also my therapy. It also may eventually send me to therapy.

• I’m currently reading Miss Percy’s Guide to Welsh Moors and Feral Dragons by Quenby Olson, which is exactly as delightful as that title suggests.

• The current working title of the novel is Night’s Oath Bound. I say “working title” because publishing is apparently a land where everything can change at any moment.

• My main characters are older than many of the ones dominating fantasy and romantasy right now. Seren is nearly thirty. Some of my supporting characters are in their forties and beyond because adventure, magic, danger, bad decisions, and complicated emotions do not magically expire in your twenties. Oh, and did I mention Eryx is NOT a 200 year old fae with wings?

• You won’t find fated mates in my book. I’m a woman who believes choice is much sexier than some magical matchmaking system.

• Sometimes my characters reveal things to me that I had absolutely no clue about before writing them. Eryx casually dropped a massive plot twist into my brain while I was doing aqua exercises in a therapeutic pool one evening. True story.

• There may also be another prequel scene on the horizon. This one from Eryx’s point of view.

Speaking of Eryx, here’s a tiny glimpse of him straight from the first draft:

“Secrets were his natural habitat.”

— Night’s Oath Bound, first draft

And with that, I’ll leave you to your regularly scheduled life while I continue hovering near my manuscript like an emotionally unstable raccoon.

Until next time,

T. Marie DeWitt

P.S. Story Notes is still very tiny and cozy right now, which I secretly love. But if you know someone who enjoys fantasy, worldbuilding, or creative reinventions later in life, feel free to share this with them.