Release Day is upon us! | The Heir and the Spare

It’s Release Day, my friends! THE HEIR AND THE SPARE is now available in print and ebook on Amazon.

First of all, a giant thank you to the pair of readers who not only waited up until midnight for the pre-order to drop, but then read the whole book and reviewed it. I discovered this when I went to check whether the paperback had linked in to the main page yet, and it made my day.

(Addendum: As of the writing of this post, a third reviewer has added their voice. Thank you!!)

Release Day Jitters

Full disclosure: my anxiety always flares whenever I push something new out into the world. I have a crippling fear of failure combined with a crippling fear of success, and I generally try to float between the two by aiming for mediocrity. (But not mediocrity of content, mind you, because I also have severe perfectionism at play. It’s a lovely cocktail.)

When I set up the pre-order, I made what I thought was a reasonable stretch goal, based on previous pre-orders and my intimate little author’s platform. If I reached that number, I could consider the book launch a success.

Well, multiply that “mark of success” by three. The response between my release announcement and today has overwhelmed me with gratitude and a fair degree of dread. I have been humbled again and again by how supportive and excited everyone has been for Iona’s story, and I truly hope it meets your expectations.

But if not…

(Haha, that’s the anxiety talking; I have to laugh it away. But seriously, if you hate this book, you have my apologies, and I wish you luck in finding a more palatable read.)

What’s this About the Author?

And now, for the actual purpose of this post. (Aside from the whole, “Yay! It’s Release Day!” sentiment.)

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you may have noticed that I like to play in the front and back matter. As a reader, prefaces and bios and such were the serious, official bits of a book that I always skipped. And then I started publishing and had to supply those for myself.

But I’ve never really taken myself seriously.

Long story short, I’ve put a different bio in 10 out of 11 books.

In the early days, this stemmed from my hobby-publishing status. I thought it funny to look at my life from different angles, twisted perspectives, etc. Since I haven’t done much more than education (boring) and writing (redundant information for a book bio), this ever-shifting self-definition helped me cope with having such a humdrum history to draw from.

When I formed my imprint in 2017, as part of my Official Publishing Persona, I decided to leave the quirky bios behind. I wrote a very staid, accomplishment-based summary and plugged it in for Namesake (2017) and Brine and Bone (2018).

And I would have continued on that track, except that my mom was like, “That’s so boring.”

My own mother.

Anyway, since then, the quirkiness has perhaps magnified. Soot and Slipper (2019) has a Shakespearean sonnet. Oliver Invictus (2019) has a mock-scientific field report. But if you’re looking at the back of the ebook for The Heir and the Spare, you’ll find a relatively tame, if not oddly ordered, account of my life.

That’s because the paperback bio is a crossword puzzle, and the ebook bio provides all the info you need to solve the starred clues.

I had considered leaving this as a fun little Easter egg for anyone who buys the paperback to find, but gosh darn it, that crossword was SO DIFFICULT TO MAKE AND I’M TAKING CREDIT FOR IT.

And that is that.

So anyway, in whichever format you encounter The Heir and the Spare, may you enjoy your sojourn through Wessett with Iona and Jaoven and Lisenn.

Seriously, everyone, thank you. This has been a lovely writing/editing/publishing experience, and I can now move onto the next project a happy little author.