Be still my beating heart... 💗
Happy Sunday,
I have a short update for you all—and this time, I do actually have good news to share!!! 🥳
But first, I’d like to share a moodboard & graphic I created this week to represent the main romantic storyline between Ehren & Adrian in The Blood of a Divine 🩸👑💀
And here are a few more ‘tropes’ that I couldn’t neatly fit into a nice Instagram graphic post, but they do an accurate job of describing Ehren & Adrian’s dynamic 😂
Jokes aside, you can tell from the moodboard images & tropes that the romance between Ehren & Adrian is going to be complicated, emotional, and epic—and when I say “slowburn” I really do mean SLOW and BURN. While Ehren & Adrian are two characters who have strong, compelling individual arcs in this book beyond their romance, their love story is definitely going to make readers of The Blood of a Divine feel all the feels 🔥🥀😢
On that note… because The Blood of a Divine’s main plot is much bigger than the romance in the story, and because the romance is such a slow burn that you might not see it coming until a little before halfway through the novel, the romance was always something I didn’t emphasize too much in my first few months of querying—because it’s an exciting turn of events as you read if you don’t know beforehand that Ehren & Adrian end up falling for each other in the novel.
However, because Ehren & Adrian’s relationship is one of the most (if not the most) important relationships that gets developed in TBOAD, and while I personally don’t like getting spoiled on things like this for film/tv…marketing your book to agents/publishers apparently doesn’t work that same way 😅
I always marketed that this book had romance, but I never wanted to give away specifics. However, after I got lovely personalized feedback from an agent who said that despite everything she liked about TBOAD, that the romantic subplot was too romantic for her list, I was a bit shocked—because I never viewed this book as a “romantasy” and I still don’t think it is, because it doesn’t follow a typical romance book’s formula and, again, the romance isn’t the most important storyline. So I thought to myself “if my book is ‘too’ romantic for an agent’s list, that means that the romance must be so prominent that I should definitely emphasize this subplot in my query pitches to give agents a better idea of what my book is about—and to attract those agents who love a strong romantic subplot.”
So I revised my query letter to include more specifics about Ehren’s romance with Adrian—and I feel much better about how much more it shares about the heart of my book, despite how little (zero) personalized feedback I’ve gotten since I started sending the updated query letter. But just like when I finally got to share this book’s title with everyone, getting to share Ehren & Adrian’s romance with all my supporters now and seeing how excited people are about them has felt good! ❤
Although Ehren and Adrian’s slowburn romance starts as a subplot, their relationship has always been at the heart of this book for me, and it ties into the bigger plot in a Very Important way. So if you are someone who loves to see romance in your historical fiction, fantasy, or gothic horror books… you will be very satisfied with TBOAD’s blending of all these genres ❤ (PLUS the agent who told me this book was ‘too romantic’ for her list did at least say I blended my genres perfectly in TBOAD :’))
Anyway, if you love Ehren & Adrian’s vibes in their moodboard & their tropes, please like & share my moodboard posts on X/Twitter and Instagram if you can! 🙏
This may be the last TBOAD graphic I make for a while as I shift most of my focus to finishing and editing 🕷💋 WIP, but if you’re new to this newsletter or my social media accounts, please check out my profiles for all the TBOAD graphics and writing snippets I’ve shared previously and feel free to ask me anything about TBOAD! I’m still in the querying limbo phase, but I can’t wait until the day I get to share this book with everyone (and then I won’t be the only one obsessed with Ehren & Adrian’s romance 🌹🔥)
Now onto the good news…! 😊
It’s not the good writing news that everyone probably would assume at first—and it actually has nothing to do with querying—but I have finally reached a writing milestone and I’m so excited to let everyone know about it! But… I’m not sure how much I can actually say about it yet 😅
What I can say for now is that I’ll finally be able to add a new tab to my substack home page very soon…! 💖
Yes, I got my first acceptance to a lit mag & I’m going to officially become a published short story author! 😭🥰
I’ve had quite a few good things happen in the last couple weeks & I’ve been feeling such good vibes all month—even though it’s taken a while to get here, I’m hoping this will be the start of a string of acceptances and more good things to come my way after all the work I’ve put in these past several months :’)
I’ll have to wait to officially announce where my work will be published, but the title of this newsletter is a hint… 👀
Next weekend, I’ll have a historical fiction-themed article up on the site (although I’m still not sure what to write about since no one’s given me input apart from 1 person 😂 comment or DM me with any historical writing topics you’d like me to write about, though! this is an open invitation for all future histfic-centric pieces)
And to close out this newsletter, I’d just like to take a moment to say thank you all for your support & to everyone I’ve made friends with these past few months (even if you don’t subscribe to this newsletter—but you should!) for encouraging me to not give up on getting my writing published for lit mags or querying to get traditionally published ❤ I don’t know where I’d be without so much light during the dark times of this journey, and I hope I also repay that to everyone who has helped me not give in to despair 🙏
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and/or have a great week!
Jazmin