Monthly-ish Newsletter for Rowan Ravenheart

Happy Post-Release Saturday!

Whew! Release Day is now officially out of the way for Hoarfrost! The Raven & the Lake has entered the world.

And yet, I am still swamped.

A lot has happened since my last newsletter. Here are some highlights.

ARCs

My first ever ARC event was hugely successful. If you’re curious how that goes or what it looks like from a writer’s perspective, here is the data. I’m still trying to figure out its usefulness but it’s never too early to start collecting data.

• Digital ARCs through BookFunnel – I personally vetted and gave out 102 of these, 24% of them led to reviews. I call that a win for a debut by an unknown author with only 2 months of social media presence. If you are one of those who left a review or participated in social media for this book, THANK YOU!!!
• Digital ARCs through PenPinery – I’m going to take the high road here. I won’t be doing this venue again.
• Digital ARCs through NetGalley – this was the only paid outlet I used for reviews. Not gonna lie – it was expensive. BUT it has visibility into libraries, bookshops including the big names and indies, popular review sites, award groups, etc.
  I did not personally vet these, but I had 198 requests that led to 15 reviews. The numbers do not look great, but of those 15 two were to libraries that expressed definite interest in purchasing the book for their libraries. And 1 was from a Books-A-Million purchaser who also expressed definite interest.
  Also, reviews on NetGalley pushed to Goodreads, StoryGraph, Fable and others automatically.
  Overall, I was extremely pleased with how NetGalley turned out. This is going to be how I do digital ARCs from now on.
• Physical copies with PR Boxes – I did personally vet these. Of the 44 I sent out, 24 led to reviews. I would have liked a bigger number because of the cost and effort I put into them, but I did get a ton of participation on social media from 80% of these – so I am definitely not complaining. This was a huge win for me. THANK YOU GUYS!!

For my first ARC event, I have some lessons learned but more importantly, I have made lasting connections with a lot of those readers. Some have blossomed into true friendships. A large number of them have expressed interest and excitement about being involved for the next book, Maelstrom.

I am so blessed to have met so many wonderful people in the bookish community. You guys are incredible!

COVER ART

The first edition cover for Hoarfrost is one I made myself and it does not translate well enough to fit the entire series, so I have commissioned two artists to make a new cover for Hoarfrost and a thematic cover for Maelstrom. I have given them all the aesthetic details for each of the 6 books so these can be made with a forward-thinking thematic plan for the entire series. I am really excited to see what they come up with. I will choose one artist of the two and post my choices in December.

CHARACTER ART

I have commissioned two artists for Jesryn/Owyn character art, and another artist for a piece from Book 3. Six total pieces so far with a long list of others in the works.

This piece is absolutely gorgeous. It perfectly captures the longing and love between Jes and Owyn. If you have read Hoarfrost, you know it has all the feels.

These two share such a deep connection and Jasmine has captured it perfectly. I have three more pieces from her in the works.

MAP ART

As we move from Hoarfrost into Maelstrom, our world begins to expand. This requires a map – well, two actually.

Since Raven is a form of portal-fantasy, we need a map for Faery and one for the UK. The UK map is important to me because the locations in this series are actual places I have visited myself and written to capture the feelings I experienced in those places. The way the old ancient world speaks through the story, the sounds of the wind in the tall grasses and the smell of the salty air on the coast.

I want readers to feel like this story is happening in our own modern world, that a trip to those locations would give them a feeling of immersion in what I’ve written. To actually touch the places Jesryn has touched and hear the bells from St. Michaels. It gives this story a uniqueness that most fantasy books cannot.

So, maps. Yes, please. These should be ready in October.

Sales Channels

My Etsy shop is doing well. People are finding the shop and I keep selling out of the hardcover with dust jacket.

These are all signed editions. I hope to have a special edition for Hoarfrost sometime next Summer. I’ve been pricing out sprayed edges, foiling, endpaper art and maybe redesigned chapter art. So stay tuned for more on special editions.

Maelstrom
Book 2 of The Raven & the Lake

Final revisions are underway for Maelstrom. Planned beta reading starts October 3 with ARCs beginning in November. The digital ARC application will be posted in November/December.

RELEASE DAY is planned for February 9, 2027!

Currently Reading

I always like to end these with a bit about what I’m reading or found interesting.

This month has been brutal on my TBR. Four ended up in the DNF pile, two of those additionally DNR (do not resuscitate).

My best book of the month is Rain of Shadows and Endings by Melissa K. Roehrich. This was an immediate immersion read for me. I had to stop because sleep is a whole thing. I love it and I will be continuing this one in my spare time.

What hooked me was how quickly the world stopped feeling like a book I was reading and became somewhere I was simply in. The characters feel like adults rather than characters performing adulthood for an audience, and the story trusts me to pay attention instead of constantly explaining itself to me. There’s emotional weight beneath the dialogue, tension that doesn’t need to announce itself, and a world that feels as though it existed long before I arrived on the page. Apparently, that combination is my reader catnip.

The surprise rediscovery of the month was Under the Oak Tree by Suji Kim. I read some of this story digitally years ago, loved it, and then somehow completely lost track of what it was called. I picked up the hardcover, read the back, and realized this was the story that had been living in my head for years. Maxi is exactly the kind of heroine I wish I encountered more often in fantasy: quiet, vulnerable, deeply emotional, and allowed to remain soft without the story treating softness as something she needs to overcome. Also: actual knights. I apparently have opinions about the distressing shortage of actual knights in fantasy.

This month’s reading also taught me that I have reached my lifetime quota for angry women with knives. I tried several books that were well written and had absolutely nothing objectively wrong with them, but I kept running into the same character type: prickly, perpetually furious, distrustful of everyone, and ready to turn every conversation into a confrontation. I don’t dislike female anger. I dislike when anger consumes so much of a heroine’s emotional range that I can no longer find the woman underneath it. Give me tenderness alongside the fury. Give me empathy, contradiction, vulnerability, restraint. Let a woman be formidable without making hostility her personality.

I also discovered that apparently I have a very specific problem with some adult fantasy that feels socially YA. If the found family starts reminding me of The Sandlot, somebody announces a set of trials, and we’re headed toward a ball where the reluctant heroine must be stuffed into a fancy dress while everyone banters at one another, my brain has begun quietly packing its luggage. I love The Sandlot. I will die defending The Sandlot. I simply do not require Benny Rodriguez in Faery.

And then there was Steelborn by Taylor J. LaRue, which gave me Caelan Halcyon—a male lead I was genuinely beginning to love—and then presented the unfortunate complication that I didn’t want him to end up with the heroine. Somewhere around page 190, my romantic investment changed from please kiss each other to Caelan, I think you can do better. There is apparently no recovering from that. He joins Harlan Raker in my newly established support group for Excellent Fantasy Men Whose Girlfriends Made Me DNF Their Books.

The bigger revelation from all of this, though, is that I’m not actually looking for a heroine who needs to become harder in order to become strong. I want the wallflower to get the epic fantasy. I want the quiet woman to matter before she picks up the sword. I want kindness, softness, fear, vulnerability and dependence on other people to coexist with courage and enormous destiny. Maybe that’s why Maxi in Under the Oak Tree landed so hard for me. She doesn’t have to become the loudest person in the room before she’s worthy of being at the center of the story.

And apparently this is what happens when an author spends a month reading instead of merely reading: eventually I start taking the books apart to figure out why my brain either moves into them or refuses to cross the threshold.

So, that’s my reading month. If you’ve read something recently that completely captured your imagination, or a trope you want to just gripe about, I’d love to hear it. You can contact me here or look me up on Instagram @theravenandthelake.

Until Next Time…

Thank you again for coming along on this journey with me. Whether you’ve been following since the beginning or just discovered my books, it genuinely means a lot.

Until next time,

Rowan Ravenheart