A very good morning/afternoon/evening/time zone to you! I hope this message finds you in good health and you are doing well, especially with the whole [gestures to the world], y’know. But more to the point!
I’ve been doing a little cleaning lately, and found my copies of the Faery Rebels trilogy again — and also promptly re-read them all in about three days and completely forgot about continuing to clean. It’s been an absolute age since I’ve last read them, but they’re still so wonderful, and the magic (pun slightly intended) is still there. I’m about half-way through Swift as of this ask, and am still very much hooked onto each and every word.
I’m 21 now, and it’s been a good 12/13 years since I first started reading your stories (just about when Knife first released, I think!) They’ve brought me great comfort and intrigue then, and they bring just as much comfort and intrigue now. I mean it with my whole heart and soul when I say these books are like the Oak to my being Knife. I’m older now, different from who and what I once was, but this home has always been there for me and it is so near and dear I will always cherish it and love it in whatever ways I can.
Beyond the stories themselves, I, of course, must send all my love and appreciation to the one behind them all. Much of how and what I write now has been influenced by your own writing and ideas, especially since re-reading everything. You were (and are) a phenomenal inspiration to my own creativity. Ironically enough, however, I’ve spent a very long time agonising over how to write this ask.
I think I’ve rattled on long enough, and though it’s not quite an unpayable debt in it’s original context, I do owe a lot of what I make now to you.
- 🕊 (Much love from Britain)
This is so kind and complimentary that I feel almost shy about reposting it! But since you sent it anonymously it's the only way I can reply, plus it gives me the chance to share some (hopefully) exciting news about an upcoming release, so I hope my Tumblr followers will indulge me.
Anyway, thank you very much for this lovely letter -- it means the world to hear that long-time readers are still enjoying the books even now they're grown up, and that up-and-coming writers like yourself have found them an inspiration. Encouraging notes like this are the reason I worked so hard to write and get Torch published a couple years ago, despite the seven-year gap between it and the previous book of the trilogy -- I knew that even though the readers of Swift and Nomad had grown up in the interim, many of them were still longing for a proper wrap-up to Ivy and Martin's story and would read it regardless of what age was printed on the cover.
Which is also why -- and here comes the announcement -- I'm going to be self-publishing a collection of short stories (well, one of them is technically a novella and another is a novelette, but I trust nobody objects to them being a little longer!), set in the world of Knife and Swift but with slightly more grown-up sensibilities. Not "adult" in the explicit sense, I hasten to add, but featuring older characters and dealing with some more mature themes that I couldn't really dig into over the course of the main series. I'm just doing the final pass of edits and haven't fixed a firm release date yet, but I'm aiming to make Tales From the Oakenwyld available in e-book format (and perhaps paperback, if there's enough interest?) by the end of 2022.
I'll be announcing the release date and sharing the cover in a few weeks, so if you're curious to know things like how Thorn ended up as we find her in Torch, the never-before-told backstories of Rob and Martin, and what exactly Paul did tell his parents about Knife (the story of which is already available as a bonus for new subscribers!) I invite you to sign up for my Very Occasional Newsletter!
Thanks again for taking the time to write to me, and not agonizing yourself right out of doing it (as a chronic overthinker myself, I know how these things can go). Your words came at just the right time to encourage me today, and I really appreciate it!
