a cover, a new draft, a yearning

hello, my lovely readers!

Well, Beneath the Buried Sea has officially been sent off to my beta readers and my editor. It feels a bit unreal that the story that’s been living in my bones for so many years is complete. Bittersweet, too—Raegan and Oberon are incredibly dear to me. Though I’m excited to tell Ophelia and Nyatrix’s tale—more on that later—I adore my bisexual disaster and brooding Fey king very, very much.

Speaking of BTBS—would you by any chance like to help me reveal the cover? My incredible artist is almost done, and I’d love to get this beautiful damn thing in front of as many eyes as possible. If you’d like to share the cover, please fill out the form here! I’ll even give you a sneak peek at the first chapter of Beneath the Buried Sea as a thank you. (Warning: it may cause emotional turmoil, lol.)

And just to get you extra jazzed, here’s a look a the elements of the cover! Robert is currently working to add color, texture and depth, so what you see here is just a rendering of the actual elements. Rainer, our most favorite kelpie, demanded a larger role in the sequel, and I figured we might as well put him on the cover, too. He’s suffered enough, lol.

pre-order info

With the reveal of the cover, pre-orders for the signed hardcovers will go live pretty soon! For now, I wanted to share the details of what you can expect:

• dust jacket featuring Robert’s gorgeous art.

• hardcase laminate design to match BTAD—it’ll have the kelpie wreath on the front with a quote inside, and then the moth-key on the back.

• hand-signed by me! I can personalize with your name, a song lyric, etc, too.

• a pre-order-exclusive bonus chapter of PURE FILTH, folks! <3

• double-sided art prints featuring artbysmashley’s illustrations of Raegan and the King.

upcoming works

I made a playlist for Holy Wrath yesterday, which means drafting has officially commenced. I am so, so excited for this sapphic high fantasy to come to life. I’m excited for you to meet Ophelia—a compassionate, soft-hearted woman riddled with religious trauma and so, so many doubts. And I have a feeling you’ll all fall in love with Nyatrix, a terrifying enemy knight that Ophelia is tasked with caring for while she’s kept prisoner. Unfortunately for Ophelia, the six-foot, dark-haired, muscular and slender-limbed knight from hell makes her feel things she’s never felt before. Lust, for one. Revolution, for another.

what i’ve been reading

Saints of Storm and Sorrow by Gabriella Buba has been living rent-free in my head. It’s bi panic, it’s drowning colonizers, it’s Filipino-inspired magic, it’s reclamation, it’s choosing to live. Buba handles a complicated plot with a lot of moving pieces with such ease, particularly for a debut. I would go to war for the FMC, Lunurin. Something I particularly liked about this book is that it didn’t offer us a “good colonizer” character, which we see in a lot of stories, given the white gaze of the publishing industry. This is a tale that viciously and beautifully reasserts the humanity and the dignity of the colonized; there is no room for anything else.

On a completely different note, after turning in my draft of BTBS, my brain was soooo wiped. I was exhausted to the bone. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked up Lisette Marshall’s The Princess and the Spy series to re-read. It brought me back to life, lol. I fucking love this trope-y, steamy, delightful trilogy and devoured the first two books in one day, mostly while in the bath. If you haven’t read Lisette yet, idk what you’re waiting for!

lastly

It’s been about a thousand degrees here in Philadelphia, so I’ve been daydreaming a lot about autumn. July is usually about when the craving hits me anyways, but it’s been extra intense with this heat wave. This month is also the one-year anniversary of a very shitty thing that I went through, and it’s a reminder of how much trauma stays in the body. I feel pretty healed from the situation—I’ve done a lot of work to get there—but there’s some echo of it in my bones. Like even though I’ve made it out the other side, I’ll never fully be rid of what happened and how it changed me.

So I’ll sit with it, and I’ll long for autumn—an unmarred season. When the humidity fades and the old wounds go back to sleep and I take my first deep breath in four months.

I hope you can enjoy the summertime a bit more than me. I hope the cicadas sing to you like an orchestra and the ocean greets you with open arms.

yours,
Victoria