Hello and Happy Friday Eve to all!
Even though I just got back from Europe and am still super jet-lagged, sleep-deprived, and hastily preparing for Readers Take Denver (!!!), I had to take a moment tell you about some incredibly exciting news: a brand-new special edition hardcover book, coming this summer!
(And speaking of gorgeous books, be sure to scroll to the bottom of this email
for an exciting update on the Gilded Blood Special Edition Omnibus!)
Many of you have recently discovered me because of the Gilded Blood Series, my newest and most commercially-popular series. And many more of you have been around since my debut series, The Lightning Conjurer, came out in 2018. But, like so many middle children, it's my in-between duology, The Bone Whisperer Chronicles, that's gotten the least attention even though it's probably my most unique, complex, and well-reviewed set of books to date. In fact, the sequel/prequel, The Boy Who Lurks in Shadows, is the book I'm most proud of in my entire writing career!
"Imagine The Ghost Whisperer starring Nancy Drew with a dash of A Wrinkle in Time and a pinch of Dr. Who - it's one of the most ingenious books I have ever read!"
-⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Magic Book Corner
So, if the series is so unique and special, why hasn't it sold as well? In hindsight, I think it comes down to three things:
Genre: It's much easier to market a book that falls squarely in a single category. But The Girl Who Talks to Ashes and its sequel/prequel, The Boy Who Lurks in Shadows, can be categorized under Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Time Travel, and even Horror (sort of). And that kind of genre-bending speculative fiction is really hard to sell to a wider commercial market.
Speaking of "Horror," this duology is NOT particularly scary. (I'm a massive baby and can't even handle reading horror stories, let alone writing them!) But there are some darker themes in the books that might initially scare off self-described wimps like me, while simultaneously being WAY too tame for typical horror buffs. In the end, most readers have said that there was just enough darkness to balance out the sweetness - kind of like a chocolate bar with 57% cacao instead of pure, sugary-sweet milk chocolate ;)
The "Young Adult" tag: this duology centers around Lilah Quinn, a sixteen year old girl with a strange form of epilepsy that affects the age of everything - and everyone - around her. And while it's perfectly suitable for high school-aged readers, there are also much deeper themes around parenthood, life, loss, grief, and death. There's also plenty of light, hope, and humor to balance it all out and make it applicable for folks across all stages of life.
Anyway, failed attempts at marketing aside😂, if you're interested in discovering a story unlike anything you've ever read before, allow me to present the newly-designed, gold-foiled, signed, limited edition BONE WHISPERER duology, coming this summer and available now to preorder!
"Creepy, suspenseful, genuine, goosebump-inducing, sweet, charming, raw - it is all of these things and more. This is going on my list of absolute favorite books of all time!" -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Goodreads review
Willow, a young and reluctant new mother, is terrified of her infant, Lilah – namely, her peculiar form of epilepsy. Every time Lilah's eyes glaze over, terrible things happen: flowers shrivel, food goes to rot, and even Willow's long, auburn hair turns stark white. Soon, it all becomes too much to bear. In the middle of the night, Willow and her mother dump the baby at the fire station two towns over and are never heard from again.
The next morning, Chief Stanley Quinn takes Lilah home and cares for the toddler as best as he can. With medication, her epilepsy remains under control... For the most part.
But as a teenager, Lilah isn't always keen on taking her pills. When she sneaks away to a rock concert with the cutest boy in school, a breakthrough seizure triggers an accident, landing both of them in the hospital. After Stanley breaks down and confesses everything to his adopted daughter, she decides to track down the young girl who gave her up sixteen years ago – the young girl who is now presumed to be dead. As Lilah's commitment to finding her birth mother becomes a quest to solve a long-forgotten cold case, she must learn how to control her peculiar ‘gift’ before she kills someone...
Again.
"Creepy, suspenseful, genuine, goosebump-inducing, sweet, charming, raw - it is all of these things and more. This is going on my list of absolute favorite books of all time!" -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Goodreads review
Speaking of gorgeous special editions, 1,500 gleaming, shiny, magenta-pink Gilded Blood Special Edition Omnibuses and slipcases have been loaded onto a cargo ship and are headed our way!! As much as I'd love to monitor every step of their shipping journey, this is what Andrew says about overseas cargo shipping:
"The documentation I'll have will basically be a vessel name, and it could be coming here or to Long Beach or somewhere else on the west coast. Once it arrives, we lose visibility as it's moving through customs, warehouses, trucks, more warehouses, more trucks. Eventually it gets to a warehouse here and they'll call asking about delivery hours. We get an ETA, but it's a loose one, and there's a long period where we don't have any information about where things are. And we can't call to find out, because it's different parties contacting different companies along the way. We won't know who's bringing them until they call us. It's a crazy system, but it does work."
(Ah yes, just what an author with anxiety and control issues loves to hear...😂😅)
Remember, if you supported the Kickstarter and/or preordered the omnibus before April 2nd, your book will be shipped next month! If you pre-ordered after April 2nd, your book will be included in the second wave of books and should be delivered in June/July. If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to message me or Andrew (andrew@merrick-books.com)!
Thank you so much for being here, reading 'til the end, and - most importantly - helping me bring all of these stories to life! I quite literally could not be doing any of this without you!
Cheers!❤️
