Greetings, Reader!
I’m Sav A. Villescas, author of the forthcoming adult Romantasy novel The Beast’s Bargain (summer 2024, and available to read episodically on Kindle Vella right now), as well as a slew of other projects currently simmering on my mental stove. If you stick around, I might even tell you about those other stories…
How it started
I’ve been writing just about as long as I can remember—always fantastical stories with a kernel of magic and a whole lot of angst. Stories were my escape through many a dull math class and church service, and there are boxes full of half-finished notebooks to bear witness to it.
Back in January 2023, my best friend Jasmine Romero and I had just typed “The End” on our respective novels and needed to let them stew for a couple months. Well, we ended up taking a bit of a risk during that time: trying our hand at Amazon’s brand new serialized fiction platform Kindle Vella.
Over the holidays, I had been toying with a new story idea. I didn’t have much to go off—just a grumpy, cursed man and the woman he kidnaps to break said curse. I imagined them curled up in a snowy cave together, reluctantly sharing a bedroll to keep from freezing. It was just the seedling of an idea, but I knew then that I needed to know more about them. Who were they, and why were they traveling together if they obviously hated each other so much?
And why did I get the impression that they didn’t quite hate each other as much as they said they did?
So when Jasmine and I found out about this new platform on Kindle, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to try writing in a slightly different format (and to make some money while doing so). In May 2023, we launched our stories on Vella and put our writing out into the world for the first time ever.
How it’s going
Close to a year later, Jasmine and I are almost done with these books and are preparing for the paperback and ebook release date this summer. We’ve also launched a podcast to document our experience, where we discuss all things writing, publishing, and bookish news. It’s called The Fantasy Forge, and you can find it on Spotify!
The Beast’s Bargain will be my first published novel, and it is slated to release July 2024, alongside Jasmine’s debut Falling Star (which is a wonderfully sapphic princess/bodyguard fantasy that I will literally never ever shut up about). As we get closer to the release date, I will be sharing early updates here, including the cover reveal and an early pre-order link!
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here. I am so excited to take you on this journey with me.
Sincerely,
Sav
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