This book has been a very long time coming and has had quite a twisty birthing process. If you know anything about the history of my fantasy series, Earthsinger Chronicles, you may recall that I initially self-published the first two books. A year after I released Song of Blood & Stone, I received an email from an editor at St. Martin’s Press, Monique Patterson, who eventually offered to republish that series. But before that, she asked me what I was working on next.
I pitched her the initial idea for this novel, a story which began as a spin-off of my paranormal romance series, The Eternal Flame Series. The original story revolved around a character from Angelfall who was going to disappear through a portal in the third planned book (a book that has not, as of this writing, been completed).
I tweaked the pitch, made the book a standalone, and gave the heroine a different name and backstory. This new iteration of the story was only connected to the world of Angelborn by the existence of portals to other dimensions. However, all three series (Earthsinger Chronicles, Eternal Flame, The Bliss Wars) exist in the same multiverse, and savvy readers familiar with my other books will see the connections that link these worlds together.
Of course, my editor did not end up purchasing Savage City, and the manuscript sat gathering dust while I worked on my contracted projects. I would pick it up again at various times over the years. My agent gave me feedback on it twice, in fact.
At one point, I was going to turn it into a YA novel. I briefly experimented with it being a Middle Grade book and aging everyone down quite a bit. However, once I completed Earthsinger Chronicles and had more time and space for this story to breathe, I realized my heroine needed to go back to her original age, and I would try to make her story work. I threw out the many, many other drafts from over the years and began writing from scratch. And Reader, I finally finished it, as you can see.
Many thanks, as ever, go to my accountability and sanity partners, Ines Johnson and Cerece Rennie Murphy.
To my agent, Sara Megibow, for her invaluable feedback over the years.
To the Humpback pod, with whom I workshopped many of the chapters. Special thanks to beta readers: Olivia Bedford, Jean McAuliffe, Elizabeth Ollo, and Erika Springer.
To my editor, Danielle Poiesz, who pushed me to dig deeper.
To my copy editor, Sidney Thompson, whose red pen is a mighty sword.
And finally, to my family: my brother and first reader, Paul, who I keep making read my kissing books. My mother, who always shares my kissing books with all of her friends. And my husband, who keeps inspiring me to write kissing books and always encourages me to roar.