
It was 2014 and we were meeting our Ace editor, Anne Sowards, at a convention. Over dinner, we pitched her a new idea: a retelling of the Three Musketeers but with dragons. We talked about it for a while, and what emerged from that conversation was that Ace was very interested in a continuation of Kate Daniels. The series was selling and going strong.
The new idea was a gamble, and it was kind of odd. They would be hesitant to commit to it. We let it go.
Then it was 2016, and the dragons kept eating at our creative brains so we sent an email to our agent.
So I’m pretty obsessed with this and Gordon and I enjoyed working on it. Here is the first chapter and synopsis. Please let us know if it’s viable. Basically we got it to the “meet the hero” stage and we are stopping here for a little bit.
We had some conversations about it, and the new idea was still a gamble and still odd. We had other, more popular ideas we were continuing, like Innkeeper and Hidden Legacy. We let it go.
Meanwhile Game of Thrones exploded, and dragons flooded into popular fiction, and oversaturated it. There are Mother of Dragons baby onesies, and Fourth Wing, and even in the Solasta computer game, half of the highborn elves you encounter are just were dragons. The opportunity to infuse the sense of wonder into it probably passed.
Professional life is rife with decisions. Some are big, some are small. Every single one is a potential mistake.
I asked Gordon for his opinion on it.
Gordon:
For me, and this is something I’ve shared with our kids about life in general, it’s the things we didn’t do. The opportunities we missed or passed on. These are, if not mistakes, then regrets. Sometimes it was for, what seemed like at the time, very good reasons. Take a chance on something that may or may not pan out, or take the sure bet.
As base as it sounds, we often had to take the dough or the thing we knew would make the dough. It may not be as romantic as the two of us being starving artists with our integrity intact but we had kids and bills and kids. We took the safe route sometimes because we needed, after growing up in different kinds of poverty, the safety of food on the table and a roof over our heads. That said, I try to avoid looking at what could have been or if-only-we’d. What’s done is done and I’m happy with where we are how we got here. And that’s all I have to say about that.
I agree with everything he said above. Hindsight is 20/20 and yet at the time, you’re just trying to make the best decision based on the information you have. Every single person we talked to about serializing the Innkeeper told us that we were making a mistake, and yet it brought a lot of joy to many people. So sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t, like with Alphas.
All in all, my regrets are also about the things we didn’t do and the chances we didn’t take. Looking back at it now, I wish we had given Puffles a shot.
So to answer some of your emails and comments, we know that Maggie will not be the new anchor series. It’s too complex, it’s dark in parts, but it also strangely has the potential to be a comfort read for the right person. It’s not a career stepping stone move. We are writing it so we don’t regret abandoning it in the future.
What are your professional regrets?
Professional regrets: In my first career, right out of college, I didn’t know enough to find a mentor or widen my career choices. I took the first job that accepted me and it wasn’t a good fit. I stayed for eight years and then changed my whole career field instead of finding something in that field that fit my training and passion.
I don’t really regret it because it brought me to who I am today, but I still think about all the options I might have chosen.
BTW, when I went back to my last college reunion the program now helps students find professional mentors before they graduate. Big envy there.
My professional regret is very similar. At my first job out of college, I kept growing vertically, taking promotions and more responsibilities. But i wish I’d taken advantage of the huge company to move horizontally. It may have meant staying lower level for longer, but i feel the expansion of skills and knowledge would have been worthwhile.
Bravo for changing after eight years. Very courageous. I hope you feel satisfied and content or are working toward it.
puffles sounds fun Maggie sounds better hope it works for you creatively.
Fourth Wing made me think of Puffles and wish I could read it!
Even if it’s not an anchor series, I really look forward to reading it!
Maggie is going to be wonderful. Give yourself grace and trust in your vision, it has not led you wrong. I’m actually sad to heard you say that Alphas falls into the “ not successful “ bucket. That’s the first story I read from both of you, and it remains a favorite. I was sick and miserable in bed, I read that in the anthology I bought because of Sharon Shinn. By the end of that weekend, I had downloaded every book you had published at the time (multiple rereads since 😍). Thank you for all the hours of comfort.
❤️
Mine sounds very, very small, but my regret was not putting away the maximum amount in my retirement acct when I worked at a bank before kids….I thought I would get another job before I realized this was it until I became a stay at home mom….
It worked out, my husband’s thrift savings is doing well, and retirement is looming ahead in about 2 yrs…..
(help!!!)
There was a change in Administration where I worked. We all knew that the direction of the workplace would change, and it did.
I hoped it would change in the direction I was rooting for, but it went in a third direction. I stayed too long, trying to fit into something I didn’t fit into.
I had reasons ( a Pension, professional obligations, etc.), but I should have left before I did. When I left, it was wrenching, and it messed me up for a while. I’m not sure what I’d do if I were faced with a similar choice today. In some ways, it worked out very well, but I’m sad that I stayed two years too long.
This above. I limited my self by for years, shrinking into a smaller role every single year, yet staying when I should have gone. My world in a nutshell. And now, moved states and switched to something different that I really don’t fit into. But, hey its a paycheck for now and I’ll do my best to hang in there and learn…meantime, I do dream (and sometimes even apply) to the kind of career job I had before. But who am I kidding? I”m over the hill … and heading for the Big Retirement in about 5 years.
my regret…. leaving a lovely job and country to take a chance on a new job in a new country…. which completely destroyed my life, financial security, career, mental health… 6 years on I am barely holding on… so sometimes the safe road is the right road…
I am sure though that whatever you write will be wonderful and I am also sure I will buy it
::hug:: I am so sorry. Sometimes life just kicks you. Almost everyone experienced it, so you are not alone. We are here, we know how you feel, and we hope things will get better for you.
Thank you… your books/characters/worlds and others from beloved authors do provide an escape and solace! very much appreciated ❤️
I am sorry this has happened to you. Sometimes decisions do bite us in the back. I am hoping that your future holds all the happiness that you can hold.
I still think about Puffles too
Me, too! I had hoped it still had a future.
Me three!
I said it in 2017 and I say it again now, I would love you to write the rest of this story. Really looking forward to Maggie too. I will buy and read anything you write.
I concur – I’d love to read more about Puffles.
Every book you write, we buy.
I look back at my life and think of the “stupid, silly” decisions I made re: employment and finances. “If only I had done this” or “If only I had done that”… I could have saved up, etc etc
This is the life I have at the moment – we do what we can when we can.
Puffles is the best! Wish he would come to life a little longer!
I want to quote Marie above: thank you for all the hours!
I manage a team of younger people, and I always tell them that the only people who don’t make mistakes are those who don’t do the work.
You guys rock.
the only people who don’t make mistakes are those who don’t do the work.
That’s the truth!
My regret: continuing cosmetology school when I knew, halfway through, that I never wanted to work in a salon. We we’re young and could have used that money for other things, but I often feel like I have to finish what I start even ( or maybe especially) things I have learned to dislike.
However I still use what I learned. We have rarely paid for a haircut.
Still wish I’d ignored my Dad and joined the Coast Guard out of high school. Buoys need tending and I really wanted to be the one doing it.
While in the Navy, before Ilona and college, I worked with the CG. Brother, we weren’t tending buoys neither. LEDET in Central America. Some of those guys are high speed. People in the “Combat” branches tend to denigrate the CG but I hold them in the highest regard.
Thank you for your service Gordon. Thanks for the question. The answers are wonderful and thought provoking.
Nearing the end of my professional career – I’ll be 63 next month – I have a few regrets, mostly around not negotiating more aggressively on salary when I was in my 30s and 40s. But I am happy where I ended up and my current, and probably last position, is pretty much my dream job and I am lucky enough to have a healthy balance in my retirement account along with a couple of small pensions.
Wonderful!
I don’t know about dragons saturating the market. I still love dragons and would love to read your take on them. That is, I think there’s been a dip in the amount of new dragon stories so now would be the time to re-enter the dragon story market!
Your new anchor story!
+1
Love Puffles! Would definitely love to read all of any new stories that came from there.
I can see that developing a new world, when you already have two that are very successful could be both difficult and stressful. Since I will happily read anything you write, how about just setting a new series in a different part of one of your existing worlds? There could be no character overlap, but the background would be familiar.
House Andrews want a new anchor series which isn’t a spin-off or sequel of the previous ones 🙂. More details in the previous blog post https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/no-content/
Professional regrets: Out of high school, I did not accept the full ride scholarship to a very good art school. Instead I let my horrible, manipulative, narcissist piece of shit father insist I should be an engineer because I would never make a living as an artist. So I tried that, flunked out of school after the second semester, then screwed around with retail jobs, and IT tech support until my 30s, when I self-taught graphic design. Now, I’m 53, and have only re-embraced my artistic abilities in the past five years, am having a good bit of success, and kicking myself at every down moment for WASTING 30 something years at NOT being an artist. Thanks, dad.
Parents almost always want what they think is best for us. Refusing that or going against their wishes can seem like, to them and us, as a rejection of them and everything they stand for. I’m sorry that you were forced to put your dreams on hold but happy that you finally pursued them.
Mistakes vs Regrets ; Safe or Chaos; these are choses we all have to make. I the 90 I was a Software Engineer working on the F14 in Bethpage NY. The Navy was retiring the plane and the company was moving the division to Baltimore. I was married with kids and a new mortgage. I had to make a decision to move the family or to stay in NY. I looked for jobs and had several opportunities; one very safe working for the MTA or the other for a internet start up. I chose safe staying in NY and the MTA. I am mot a millionaire but have great kids and grand kids no regrets.
I think that anything you work on will find an audience. This new book or Puddles will be great because you look at the characters and make them real and let them grow.
Good Luck…
I’ve grown in my professional career and doing it at one company. (28years and counting) but I sometimes wonder if I would have been smarter to change companies to learn and grow in other ways, and to experience a different culture and expanded knowledge.
There have been plenty of projects we didn’t pursue because it just didn’t compare to the kpi we had at the time. But are now huge if we would have continued to develop.
If it’s any comfort i always loved dragons. Ever since Anne Mc Caffrey. So regardless of GOT, I would read your 3MK-dragons any day.
Do whatever you feel is right. We’ve got you.
Mine is not getting my bachelors and/or TEFL years ago and moving abroad. I’m wavering between still doing it and not now. It’s hard because I have the same experience of growing up in poverty that makes it difficult for me to take financial risks like this.
Missed puffles the first time round. Its awesome. Would totally buy that.
Not believing in myself enough to dive into the field that I loved. It would have been great timing, but it meant a probable move that I did not want to make for an uncertain employment guarantee.
Not so bad because I was able to experience so many things that otherwise would not even occurred to me to try. And for the most part I loved all of that and am overall happy with who I am – not so certain that would be the case if I’d followed that other path.
Is it really too late for Puffles?
Regrets. Maybe a different career path, I made a change for easier commute reasons , took a pay cut and it was a probable mistake. But. Upside was that I met some good people and learned a lot.
+1 — I don’t think it could ever be too late for Puffles. Dragons are eternal!
Thanks for this post, because I had missed the joy and potential WTF-ery that is Puffles and his Raina.
My professional regret is not believing in myself enough to put my foot down. I was asked to help a friend’s husband for a few weeks and I was foolishly flattered as I’d been a stay at home mum. I had no job description and was desperate to carve a role out for myself so I took on extra to make myself useful. Years later I am doing 3 people’s jobs and I am ill. I should have got a job description and stuck to it but I let the personal connection undermine my common sense. I still grind my teeth when I think about it.
You can still make the changes. Take care of your health!
I really liked Puffles! It would have been a good one!
I must have missed this when it was first shared. I LOVE IT!!
I really hope you find time some day to write the rest of this story. It is awesome. I already love the characters!
Not keeping up with opera singing, I was young, we moved and life happened.. but I really regret it!
Career regrets: God, I wish I’d known to be more practical. I went the idealistic millennial “I don’t need a lot of money, just want to make the world a better place” route. Severe burnout and 10 years of being an underpaid and overworked civil servant later and I’ve recently started over. Still a civil servant, still probably gonna end up overworked but slightly better paid and my skillset translates well to this job. It takes a lot less emotional energy so far. Young me was an idealistic idiot. I should’ve been an accountant or something.
Thank you for your service. Civil service is almost never recognized by those who are served, until there’s no one to answer their calls, because the position critical to their current need was defunded. It’s taken completely for granted by almost everyone, and actively despised by the willfully ignorant. You have accurately represented a good percentage of civil servants. Thanks again.
I tell my children all the time do everything , try everything. The worst thing is get to the end of your life and regret the one thing you didn’t do. When my husband was 18 years old, he was offered an opportunity to try out for a major league baseball team in Bradenton Florida. His parents at the time who were elderly parents had set up a job for him at the local funeral home driving the hearse. In their minds, from two people who were teens during the depression, It was a golden opportunity one he couldn’t miss. They didn’t allow him to go and bring a junior in high school, he couldn’t defy them. My husband is 68 years old and to this day talks about what could have been. We laugh, because if he was good enough, we would’ve never met and had our children and grandchildren but he coulda been a contender and it weighs on his mind. I guess he just wants to know if he was good enough. So you should do everything, try everything so when you get to be all you want regret it.
I hate that I went to law school. In a different world I at least tried to go to LA and make all the great sci fi and fantasy I see today.
I’m an assistant principal at an arts school now so I’m making a difference I guess. My kids are both going into the biz, one’s already there with a tv credit to his name, so I will live through them.
I would argue that Fourth Wing’s massive release shows there’s still a lot of hunger for more dragons – I’m pretty active on bookstagram and we are hitting our #hotdragonsummer very hard. As someone who grew up on Pern, I’d love to see the IA take on dragons! The appetite for romantasy is intense, and you execute this better than anyone out there.
As for professional regrets – I’m a physician with serious medical conditions. I don’t regret the seven years of training but I do wish that I had prioritized caring for my own body earlier and more aggressively rather than yielding to the intense pressure in medicine to sacrifice your time/energy/sleep/passion for patient care. I’m still in the progress of figuring out what that might look like in practice.
Not exactly a professional regret, but…
I regret that I didn’t come from a segment of society that understood the value of a “nose” as a perfume or wine professional. I have a FREAKISHLY good sense of smell. I can tell what spices the neighbors are using in their cooking from their kitchen 30 feet from my house when both their and our windows are closed. I can identify a particular flower blooming from the other side of the English walled garden at the Botanic Garden, sifting it from the scent of a profusion of other flowers in between. I have a ton of stories of finding smoldering insulation and hunting down kids’ misplaced food items by scent.
I mean, I liked being a teacher. And I love my life now, so even if I could go back in time, I would be afraid to change anything.
But I think that kind of career could have been really fun!
That’s one impressive skill. Do you have any tips for those of us who want to make our noses keener?
Gordon’s comment hit so close to home. I wish I could have been a singer for a living, but I didn’t want to starve on the streets. Instead, being a musician has been a “hobby”, albeit one very important to my mental health. While my singing and instrumental playing has improved over the years, and I’ve broadened the scope of my expertise to include some non-traditional teaching and song leading I think I made the right choice for what I knew at the time.
It still makes me sad sometimes that I had to have a “real job” to pay the rent.
I love dragon stories- have re-read Anne McCaffrey’s dragon stories numerous times. Please write dragon stories.
I convinced my husband not to take a post-doc at Berkeley after graduate school(he’d put in 12 years already.) California was being stinky about accepting out of state teachers. We landed at the University of Maryland for two years and onto Oregon where we’ve been very happy.
I hope you will reconsider the dragons. Yes, there are a lot of them out there but, there have always been a lot of dragons out there. We’ve got every take on them from Anne M. to GoT and Dragonslayer. I, for one (probably of many many) would LOVE to read your take on them.
So, this is not really a passed opportunity, it’s maybe a project deferred until you could find a more fertile spot for it to land. Face it. We LOVE your books.
+1
agreed – I’d love to see Puffles make the light of day. Maybe Puffles is a “not right now” rather than a no, especially with the self publishing options.
Also, there are plenty of vampires and weres around. Yours do better than hold their own in the crowd.
+1. We grew up on Anne MCaffrey too. Wonderful books!
Your Dragon tales would be most welcome. 🙂
No such thing as too much Dragons … no saturation … it is an unquenchable thirst … Dragons are awesome!
Plus, the Puffles story had such brilliant character development – including of the Dragons! – and fascinating family dynamics …
And the dark mist character reminded me of Michael (from hidden legacy), somehow?
Puffles would be very welcome.
Btw we took a road trip through parts of the South, because i wanted to feel some of what you had written about North Carolina, and other places. Really interesting. Hey, the tourist boards should thank you: dollars came in from another country. 🙂
Being curious about editors’ guidance, was it that the beasties were dragons, or the overall premise of the story, that they felt wouldn’t work? If “dragons” was the no-go, would changing the beastie to another creature (like wyvern, maybe?) change the situation? Or is it a case of several factors taken together?
So Puffles can’t be an anchor? Because it sounds like a fascinating world to build.
Anchor or not, I’d sure love to read that story expanded! Puffles just grabbed my imagination! And as short as it was, that snippet was fascinating. Ah well.
I totally get that HA wants to grow the fan base, and respect that you, as the professional writers, know best how to achieve your goals. I also get the frustration of the looking for and trying out ideas phase.
But I hope the bubbling enthusiasm of the BDH over pretty much *anything* gives you confidence to do pretty much whatever you want to do. Whenever the next writing comes out, we’ll be here.
+100
Yes!
^^this^^
Just like I said a year or so ago. I cut my fantasy teeth in Pern. No it was more like 9 months ago. I would like to have more.
Even if Puffles and/or Maggie isn’t going to be an anchor series, we will still read it as a standalone book. 🙂
I don’t have a lot of professional regrets. However, when I was 17, I was pressuring myself to do “something” since I saw my older siblings having a life with their professions at the time. My parents noticed, and told me that it was my life, and if I wanted to be a beach bum, they would support me. So long as I had enough food to eat and a safe place, it didn’t matter to them what I wanted to do with my life.
I do wish that the American history profession paid more than what they do since very early American history was what I was interested in when I was getting my undergraduate degree. Instead, I have three different degrees from three different universities in three different states. However, they all blend together nicely. 😀
Don’t be afraid to try something out. I did that numerous of times (medical school and law school) and things didn’t work out. I have the most ironic degree in the world. I told myself a long time ago, I didn’t want to go into math since I didn’t think I was good at it. Well…guess what? One of my degrees is in a form of math.
My biggest regret is that I waited until my forties to start really working on writing and stories. I kept telling myself it “wasn’t practical”, “I have bills to pay” and “I’m not good enough to write a full novel that anyone would read.”
I finally finished my first novel and self-published it on Amazon in 2022, my second novel released this year, and I am working on a third. Wondering why I waited so long to tell my stories.
I adore all of your work. You are the only author whose work I will buy without even checking the blurb on the back. Although I love the Kate Daniel’s series I can honestly say I don’t care what you write so long as you don’t stop!
Your books look to be right up by current reading style. I’m going to give them a go.
Thank you for taking the plunge.
Listening to my now ex-husband and not pursuing the Masters I wanted. It is probably the biggest thing I would go back and change. That and staying married to him for as long as I did.
Oh hind sight is always 20:20. Do not regret deciding on feeding yourselves! Probably most of us have been at the how do I pay my bills this month stage. It’s never a mistake to pay your bills and feed your kids!
My semi-regret is not actually ever defending my thesis. I hated my research, I was fed up with never having any money and going deeper and deeper into debt, so I took a job and left much much later than I should have. It took me the next 15 years to dig out of the debt hole. Do I wish I had the degree? On rare occasions, but I have a good retirement and can do what I want, so wth.
I’m so very happy to hear you’re not giving up on Maggie! I reread those snippets regularly. And yes, Puffles too.
I think this is good news. We still get all the continuation books, we get Maggie, and we get something else. Thanks!
Nearing the end of my working career, and while I would like to consider switching jobs, the flexibility of working from home so I can take care of my parents keep me doing what I’m doing.
One thing I’m happy about is that my husband and I took the kids to England for his work for a few years. What made me agree was a paragraph from Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold, and Cordelia’s words always come to mind when I’m funking out, “But I’ve always thought – tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something more irrevocable, than misfortune.”
Wow – fantastic quote
My going into Private Practice happened “at the right time” but God I wish I had taken the leap sooner. I think I would have been fine but fear held me back.
I would still read an Ilona Andrews dragon series. You cannot have too many dragon series and yours would be exceptional.
Absolutely!
Puffles!! I forgot about that snippet; loved rereading it now, and I’m sorry it sounds like there won’t be more.
Professional regrets: not changing my college major. I knew early on that I didn’t really want to go into a career in that field, but it was a “real” major, and my family was proud of me for making a “smart choice” for what to study. I liked learning about the material enough that I thought I could convince myself to like a career afterwards. Now I’m trying to switch paths much later in life, and feel like I’m scrambling to learn things on the fly while competing with younger professionals with more formal education (and worrying that this is another foolish choice!) I wish sometimes I could go back and tell myself to pursue from the start the work I actually wanted to do.
About 2 years into my first career out of college, I was headhunted by the competition. I was offered more money, more possibilities for growth, more challenges, more recognition…more “appreciation” than my current position, but I turned it down out of loyalty. I was employee #7 at the company that had grown to 45 employees.
6 months later, I was laid off from the company when they went back down to 6 employees.
That’s my biggest what-if/professional regret, as it took forever to gain ground professionally again.
Professional regrets: Not changing tracks sooner when I realized what a toxic pool I was mentoring people into. Personal regrets: doing the things I thought I should do instead of the things I really wanted to. But, as was said, kids, bills, kids, and sometimes you choose food and a bed over dreams.
No regrets: I broke a multi generational cycle of trauma and abuse. It sucked and it consumed most of my adult life. My kids are now living exactly the lives they dream for themselves, and while I envy their freedom a bit, I’m proud that I was able to enable that.
Good for you for breaking the cycle! That is a big and wonderful thing that you were able to do. 🤗
+100!! 💙💚💛 and hugs!!
Yes. As someone who had to do the same thing, it’s a massive accomplishment, and overrules any professional regrets.
I read Anne McCaffrey/Pern series when they were first published (yep, I am old) and still love dragons. I would much rather have dragons than *sigh* yet another vampire. Imagine my delight when I found Fourth Wing!
I think a dragon story from you would be awesome!!! The mind boggles at the twists you would put into it!
Regrets? Sure, life is full of them but I know I made the best decisions I could at the time. The key is if there is something you can do now that you passed on, do it now!
My biggest professional regret is not finishing my professional qualification (I had one exam) but life and laziness got in the way and whilst I love my current job at the company I work for I have had some bad ones and have felt trapped as my qualification level doesn’t match jobs I have the experience for so would have to take a junior role with paycut to move. Feeling trapped is the worst soul killer I think.
Love your work and glad you’re giving Maggie a chance. If you publish I will read it and it may not be for me like Alphas or it might and I like the ambiguity of that – finding something new to take joy in and love or maybe it doesn’t gel and that’s not a bad thing either (for me).
I’m currently at one of those crossroad/potential regret moments. I’ve been with the same org for 10+ years. I’m good at what I do but a bit bored. There’s a promotional opportunity that semi fits but part of me says it’s time to go. The cost of living is outrageous here and I want something better for my family.
Stay on the safe path and continue to climb the ladder or pack up and take a risk somewhere else? I work in libraries so the political climate matters a lot. Is this adulting?
Well…. I still want Puffles 🙂 I cut my teeth (so to speak) on Pern – so all dragons all the time is ok with me!
Professionally, I’ve taken quite a few risks that have panned out. Hubby and I are still holding our standards high for the company and everyone wants to “pay” as if it’s a hobby (i.e. working at Walmart would pay more). It’s kind of a struggle to turn down work, but if the job won’t even pay the bills (or our people) – we simply can’t take the gig. And we are not selling our IP to someone else for pennies – we worked too dang hard. I’d rather it fail and we sell the hardware to recover what we’ve sunk into it.
We are slowly making a name for ourselves, it’s just SLOW – meanwhile we have day jobs to keep a roof over our head and food on the table….
When I went to college, I was the first women in my family to do so. My Mom told me my choices were teacher, nurse or secretary. I wanted to study political science and history, to then go to law school. My Mom said girls did not work as lawyers. So I became a teacher. Wind down the road (extreme poor pay), I went into Human Resources and ultimately became a Manager. Still want to be a lawyer.. #retired
I love your writing and stories. I would have been all in on a Dragon story as these are some of my favorite fantasy characters. That said, whatever you write I’ll read!
I hate the “where do you see yourself in 5 years” question in job interviews. I get why they ask it, but if I have an idea of what I’m going to do in 5 years, then I’m BS’ing them. I had a plan in high school then in my senior year of college, I took a class in TV production that I absolutely loved. (As evidenced by the fact that it was the ONLY class I read ahead of the assigned reading.) I had no idea such a career in TV production was out there, so I changed my plan for after college.
Cue to 8-ish years later, and TV production is changing and my type of job looks to be phasing out and as I was the last one in so I had to work all the holidays, which got old. So my brother pointed me to a job doing graphic design and tech writing for a software company. I loved doing that.
Cue to today, and I don’t do much tech writing because I’m acting more as a project lead managing a network for a customer and I’m enjoying the job. I’m in my mid-50s, though, and my brothers have all moved to TX so I’m looking for jobs there, but I know I’m not going to find another job like what I’m doing now. I’m a bit hesitant to make the move, but it’s probably better to do it now than wait until I’m in my 60s, since it will be a lot harder to find a job then and physically make a move.
So I don’t have too many professional regrets, but my career also didn’t take the tract I expected it to when I was in high school, or even my first few years of college. If I had stuck to my career goals then, I wouldn’t be doing the job I am now.
Dragons!, I have always loved dragons, that is why I have one tattooed onto my arm (along with wolf and raven and a few bones).
Ok, wait, are the Three Musketeers actually the dragons, or do the human 3M have dragons instead of horses??
Either way sounds incredibly cool, would buy the book, but actual dragons as the 3M would be so lit! 🐉🐉🐉
Professional regrets – ya got a couple hours? We need some wine and a cheese and chocolates tray for that deep dive….
Except for – the theater professor who told me I would *never* be an actress (my very own Mr. Karp, thank you “Chorus Line”!) saying to me at the 100th anniversary of our college’s theater department “you are the last person I thought would still be involved in theater” when I was working weekends at a dinner theater as prop mistress/wardrobe assistant/general techie and working office jobs during the week. The best revenge is a life well lived!!
I know this is the time to say something deep about choices and the road not taken, etc.
Can’t.
What’s in my head right now is that I could’ve had IA books with dragons and I don’t have them. I have a thing about dragons, you see, and now it’s eating me up.
This post hit all my author buttons. Ah, regrets. Lord knows, we all have them.
My biggest professional regret involved not standing up to my Big Five editor on a number of issues. She and I were never on the same page. But I was a newbie author (by NYC standards) and I had a few lessons to learn along the way. One of those lessons was that biting one’s tongue and playing along isn’t always the strongest move. I have become a much more outspoken since that lesson hit home. In her own way, she did me a favor. I doubt she’d see it that way.
Staying too long in a department in Aerospace that increasingly didn’t value me enough for promotion.
Not saying I want to influence what you write at any time, because I completely understand your priorities. Food first, then fun. However, as always, your take on the subject is always different enough to be truly wonderful. I like ‘Man on the Road’ an awful lot.
But but but… we need puffles. Please?
I’m pushing 50 and I blew my discretionary budget AGAIN on pretty dragons from Windstone Editions. It isn’t possible to have too many dragons.
Sigh. I dunno. I’m fairly happy with now and my previous bad decisions got me here. I wish I had been smarter about taking care of myself back in the day when I thought I was fat. I kinda wish I could have found a way to get the internship at ILM and learned to make movie monsters. If I’d have known that I would have found myself as a single parent at 40 with no support, I might have continued relationships with partners that I cared for deeply but left because they wanted kids and I emphatically did NOT.
It makes for a melancholy mood, looking back for what if’s and generally I prefer to remain more shallow. But I would still really love to read Raina’s adventures.
Thank you for pulling me through A LOT of times I needed something to escape to; your books saved me more than once.
That I did my Master’s Degree rather than a Law Degree. It would have made getting a job in my field easier and have been a lot more money in the long term. But it is what it is and you can’t live in the world of regrets.
I wish I had changed careers the first time I wanted to.
I think your wrong about the time of dragons being past. I’ve enjoyed Rachel Aaron’s dragon series. its so different from George RR Martin that the dragons seem completely different species. I would buy a dragon book you were writing sight unseen because I know it would give me an entirely different an interesting perspective. Your world and character building are genius.
yeah… now that you’ve reminded us… you need to write this
+100000 only if you have enough time and energy. Health is non-negotiably important!^^
I am enthralled by that snippet. I would buy that book in a heartbeat if it is something you ever pick up again.
A narrative project never done, a series not finished, an experimental multiscreen film never expanded. a documentary. An immersive play still born, but may be revived. They all still throb a bit.
Potentially silly question. Fourth Wing is super recent and I thought was mostly popular because of the New Adult and SJM audience similarities. Is it really too late to write your dragon series? I know GOT has ended but House of the Dragon is super popular with an upcoming second season and HBO will probably make other series in the world.
Plus, as popular as GOT became, I never really saw the dragon hype reflected in what was published in the 2010s. Like I can’t think of many recent dragon books except for Naomi Novik, John Gwynne, Evan Winter, and Samantha Shannon. I guess what I’m saying is (from my inexpert opinion): there is always time to write cool dragons and we will read them. The market doesn’t seem to be flooded with dragons like it was with vampires. I totally understand if you don’t wanna write the book, but I think there is still a solid chance that the market would be interested!
Note: I know absolutely nothing about publishing and bow to your superior wisdom. 😅
My regret is not ditching my grad school advisor, being naive I kept thinking that if I just worked harder, tried harder I’d do well, instead of realizing what a narcissistic manipulative bastard he was. Totally screwed my career.
I started college when I was thirteen. Went to Cornell for a summer program, I regret not graduating.
By the time I was eighteen I let school fall to the wayside and partied, got a fulltime job and married. Sometimes the road you choose is for a purpose🤷🏽♀️
My biggest professional regret was pursuing a Master’s degree in my current field (speech therapy/speech-language pathology). I kept my day job while getting that degree, but had to quit once I started my externship. I really started getting nervous during clinicals because I was Bored. To. Death. I thought things would improve during my externship and then during my clinical fellowship after graduating, but it didn’t. I realized I liked learning about speech/lang pathology, but not actually practicing it in therapy. I absolutely hate it (though I’m grateful to be able to work), but now, years later, I have to figure out another field to get into at my age. Sigh.
all I can say is I’m excited for Maggie! I didn’t read any of the snippets because I want to go into it completely fresh. Because that’s the excitement of it, something completely different 🙂
First, I maintain that there is STILL no book series with dragons that is any better than the dragon story you started. I would buy it!
BDH, show of hands, who else would buy this?
Second, what you said about regretting things you didn’t try really resonates with me. Once upon a time I was deciding whether or not to quit my teaching job for a year to go back to school to get a masters in math. It felt like a big gamble since I could get a masters (in education, not math) going summers and evenings and not quitting my high school teaching job. But I wanted to be a college professor and I needed at least a masters in math to get there.
My mom said the following to me (it is a quote, but I don’t know where it is from): “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been.” She told me that looking back she always regretting the stuff she didn’t try more than the stuff that she tried that didn’t work out as she had intended.
I’ve been a college math professor for 38 years.
I returned to university as a .. older young adult, my final year was offered an internship that could have made that avenue a career. I didn’t accept because of health problems and regret that missed avenue and the missed ‘what if’ sometimes dance in my mind. I don’t regret making the decision and what turning it down enabled for my mental and physical health. The missed opportunity did enable me to see options regardless of fear as something to seriously look into and I’ve learned to not allow myself to to fret about missed opportunities.
My Biggest Career Regret – as a young early 18 year old moving from small town to small city of Champaign, IL – to say I was “out of my element” is an epic understatement.
Looking for a job to support me through college I came to a crossroads a) work at the University of Illinois on Campus – read very scary and intimidating place or b)work at local hospital/clinic/trauma center – my much older sibling worked in a lab at a hospital – to me this was “home”
I choose Option B and worked for almost 15 years at the Clinic. Life is ok, if barely getting by and being a single parent of 2 boys, living paycheck to paycheck. Nearing the 15 year mark in 2007 I’m told I’ve hit “the ceiling” on pay raises – this is it = $13.10/hr forEVER.
In January, 2008 I left the clinic and starting working for…yup – that scary place U of I. Fast forward to 2018-2019, many of my colleagues are retiring – at age 50! Why you may ask – because they have their 30 years in and can retire without any pay deductions or penalties!!!!
So I could be retired today and “living the life” if I had taken Option A and not the safer road, instead I’m looking at another 5-6 more years to hit the “magic 20 years”.
Do I regret it – in many ways, “Yes!” But My life might have taken a different turn and I would not have had my sons but focused on a career only. So, maybe not so much….
Please reconsider Puffles. I love that beginning or backstory or whatever you wish to call it. You had me at dragon and warg.
Can I vote to give the dragon novel another try?!
I love(!!) when you go dark, like Alphas and I’m sure Maggie, but I recognize my taste is not reflective of commercial market share lol. Right now I love and obsessively buy all R Lee Smith and works by Meatbun/Ròu Bāo Bù Chī Ròu, Shui Qian Cheng (chinese dogsblood/sufferfest danmei authors).
I don’t spend a lot of time on regrets for my self preservation, but I do try at second chances if they arise – older, allegedly wiser. and sometimes those don’t happen either. but tomorrow is another day.
Professional regrets: not taking the road less travelled earlier. Out of graduate school there were three tracks for chemistry PhDs: industry, academia and government. During my postdoctoral appointment, I did have one rather motivating professor tell me there was also being a mother. Despite that dude, I chose academia and before I realized it I was 25 years in and simply tired of fighting the ever present gender discrimination in STEM. If it wasn’t me, I watched the offenders do it to the students which was even worse.
So in 2019, I did what no academic does once they are tenured, I quit. Too many enemies at that point to be able to make any change happen. And now I enjoy working as a scientific editor and writer.
I don’t regret being an academic – I truly enjoyed interacting with my students and following my own research interests – I regret trying to change the system and letting it break me – at least for a little while.
I had some rough times in those 25-years, but it your heroines that reminded me it was OK to be strong, and smart, and woman! Thank you!!!
I regret not leaving Moscow in 2013. I’d been there teaching English for most of the time since 2005 and when a friend in Sweden said he thought we could find work in his town. Things were going so well I said maybe later, the money’s too good! Moscow was this bright shiny city dripping with money and full of people who saw English as a gateway to the modern world – I loved it, and it was too good to leave. “This place is going to be so awesome once the old Soviets are out of power,” we expats would say to each other, knowing far too little of Russia’s past and seeing only that bright shiny illusion.
A year later, I was one month pregnant when Putin invaded Crimea and I was too sick to leave the apartment, much less move internationally. Our money pretty much went up in smoke because our paychecks were in rubles, and all our clients lost their money too so private lessons dried up. We finally made it out in 2016, to Germany where I’ve never been happy, and now we’re stuck here because we make too little to leave.
The whole time my husband and I were working in Moscow, we thought the theme song for expats there was The Gambler: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” We should have folded and walked away before we had to run. The only thing I’m glad about is that we got out at all.
So glad you are safe. May a path to better times open up for you soon.
Thanks. Just feeling mopey tonight. Hindsight’s 20-20 and all.
I also wish you’d been able to write Puffles. the snippet (I just re-read it) is so good!
My only regret is that I am not a dragon. Because I am pretty sure I’d be a great dragon. You can never have too many dragons.
I would love to see more of Puffles. This sounds like the start of a good series. I loved Anne McCaffery’s Dragon riders of Pern series and Donita K. Paul’s Dragonkeeper Chronicles.
I regret not taking business classes. I regret not realizing it was okay to be an artist AND make money. I regret believing the stigma of “therapy is for weaklings”. I regret believing people who said art wasn’t important.
I don’t regret any part of what replaced all of those things though. If you asked me to make the decisions over again, knowing what I know now- I would still choose my choices. My regrets fuel my choices now. My goal is to make sure I don’t have more regrets. And that’s enough.
Oh, I’d never seen Puffles before. That would be a book I’d buy no matter how broke I was when it came out. Love what is there, now that I’ve read it. I feel like there can never be too many dragon stories.
Ironically, my biggest professional regret is not writing the damn book that’s been floating in my brain for the last 20 years. It might be terrible, and it might go nowhere, but I suppose I’ll never know?? ☺️
Sometimes a professional regret is driven by illness.
Once upon a time, a 40+ year old woman was diagnosed with a very serious illness. She could die with treatment if the illness progressed or live with it, not in remission, but not cured. She will never be cured.
Fast forward 10 years, and the regrets of not moving quickly enough from the horrific job and horrific people she worked with when sick.
She moved on, and is far healthier and happier. The biggest realization is working in a atmosphere that mimic’d hell on earth was not good for her health. And life is too short to visit hell, early (joke). Caring more about herself than her need / ego to not give up a losing situation was another life lesson.
Well, having been reading about dragons since Anne McCaffrey, so I think dragons will always be popular.
Please publish a dragon series! I hated GoT. Loved the Witches of Elinean. It seems it’s kids books or nastiness when it comes to dragon lit. HA writing a dragon series would be sublime, because besides your incredible imagination you have humanity.
I had a chance to go to the University of Edinburgh and didn’t, but everything happens for a reason and I’m sticking to that……
My biggest professional regret was taking a promotion that meant leaving a boss and a team I loved for a role on paper that ticked all the missing boxes on my CV. I only lasted a year, left without a job to go too and blew up my career
My regret – not leaving a toxic workplace sooner. The job was in my childhood community and meant I had great relationships with my patients, and the patients are why I work in healthcare. Took too long to realize that without supportive management I was shorting the patients that I loved because they trusted me and I didn’t have the resources to deliver care safely for them. Kept hoping I could change it by leading by example, and instead I’m a year out and still realizing how much it changed me (not for the better) and compromised my standards. Broke my heart to leave them and still does but I know it was the right call.
I think I am living mine right now. I moved to a school stateside for all the right reasons–money, increased retirement pension, proximity to aging parents and 20-something kids. However, my work place is chaotic, leadership lacks clarity and consistency, and–all the rest.
I could be living overseas, teaching and traveling, living my best life. Instead I am here, trapped by aging parents and the knowledge that I am here by choice. Trapped by my own petard–
For whatever it’s worth, I would have read the heck out of Puffles. Thank you for what you gave us.
I don’t have many professional regrets because the roads I didn’t take gave me more time with my grandmother.
But one of my honest biggest regrets is from my high school days. My mother worked with a very lovely French woman and I was taking French in school. She would have been willing to help me with my pronunciations if I had been so self- conscious.
“Every single person we talked to about serializing the Innkeeper told us that we were making a mistake, and yet it brought a lot of joy to many people.”
These people shouldn’t be listened to about future series. Inn Keeper is my 1st/2nd favorite series. My Mom loves it and she put KD down after book 2. We both enjoy the heck out of HL also.
Professional Regret – not realizing that my job was a dead end sooner and changing fields sooner.
I just want to say thatwhen I first started reading Kate it was because Goodreads had suggested it as yet another book with werewolves and magic. One might have said the market was saturated by all things were- wolf/cat/etc. There was no escaping from it if you were into fantasy. But it was the entire world Ilona Andrews created that did it for me. Unicorn Lane was like nothing I’d ever seen.
Maybe the market is a bit saturated by dragons now, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t picked up anything new in a while (I’m open to suggestions), but I’m certain you could do an amazing job with Puffles because what I just read was incredible.
Thank you.
I would totally read this! Like most people there are things I wish I had done at the time but fear, ignorance, and intimidation held me back. I’ve gotten older and bolder and hope that I’ve managed to teach my kid to seize the moment and have a little faith in yourself. Now, I think about the quote”what would you attempt if you knew you could not fail”? Sometimes you have to give yourself permission to try.
The professional advice i share with young people who want to work in corporate on cool projects, it’s the team your on and how you get along with your boss and their vision which matters, not the project. Projects change all the time, and if you can’t align with you boss, get out. I’ve been burned by staying on a project with a nightmare boss. Never again. If i don’t like my team, i move on.
I second that wholeheartedly!
I am one of those people who sees long series and says, “Nope.” My limit is five books with the same protagonist. Unless I was already reading a series before realizing it would be a lengthy one, I never would consider it. But I do try to read shorter series and if I really love them, I will try the longer series eventually from the same author. It’s rare for me, however.
Therefore, I understand what you mean by needing an anchor series. The Puffles series has potential and I love dragons. I really enjoyed reading about Raina and thinking of what could be. Right now, Fourth Wing is blazingly popular and I would be concerned new readers would think it too similar. Although maybe that would be a good thing as those readers would then read your book too, hmm…
I thought Maggie had an interesting mix of characters so far and I really thought it would be a great anchor for you as it was reading very different than your other series. Maggie had depth and complexity even in the snippets you graciously provided. I am still thrilled you will write it, just surprised it could not be an anchor series. I trust your judgment though!
I regret not taking advantage of opportunities before I had kids. There’s so much I want to do but with 5 kids sometimes it feels impossible to have the career I want.
After 47 years in the medical field, I realized that it wasn’t the best career choice, so I retired. (Medicine possibilities in several fantasy novels sound good though!)
Puffles interesting to some degree. Setup doesn’t appeal to me personally. Most of the other snippets you’ve posted from potential new series are much more appealing.
I don’t know how I ever missed Puffles, but I just had the most wonderful 7mins reading that! And I wished and wished and wished for more.
I am also Very excited about Maggie! #MUF
Professional regret – I’ve always wish I had some sort of applicable / technical skill. I’m a technical recruiter (I recruit developers and engineers and the like). I’m good at what I do, and enjoy it, but the saying is that anyone can be a recruiter. You don’t need any qualifications to be one. The older I grow, the more I wonder about what sort of impact I have. What I do today is a long way off from the teenage dreams I had about becoming a journalist/correspondent who then becomes the next Oprah!
Then there’s the other part of me that just wants to be happy and loved and make sure my family is happy and healthy and loved. I don’t need any certifications to do that.
Megha, but you find people jobs. You make sure they are able to support themselves and their families. It’s a personal impact on a staggering scale every time someone gets hired.
Thank you so much!! That’s the part of my job that I adore. Giving someone a good experience, regardless of whether they get the job or not. Celebrating with them when they get it, helping them understand why they didn’t. Opening up the opportunity for people from under represented communities.
I think sometimes, I just wonder how much I contribute to to the process, and if I could do more if only I had so n so know-how or certification or experience.
But you acknowledging my work means a lot to me!! ❤️
Regrets…. looking at things you can change in your past is a thing to do lightly.
You have to make mistakes to learn and change for the better (hopefully).
You have life experiences that teach you and the decisions are based on conditions at hand and the frame of people around you.
I just turned my oldest sibling (holy moly, we went and got old) onto your Inn Keeper and Hidden Legacy series. She is so excited about them. My now book reading sibling is in reading nirvana.
I love the Alphas! I was sad to read that the main hero had been killed in the future and his family was left alone to face the villains. I love your creative worlds. I love the romance 😍 too. It’s both subtle and earth shattering!
Please, keep writing. Don’t be sad about past decisions. Your books are superb quality! Thank you 😊.
I wish I had gone away to college. I could’ve gotten into some good schools, but my local state university had a really good journalism dept, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Turns out I did not. I think my life would’ve taken a completely different path.
Beyond that, though, I wish I had known about my ADHD much earlier, so that I could’ve worked with my neurology instead of against it.
Thank you for opening your hearts and being so vulnerable so bravely. I know I at least always learn so much from your reflections!
It seems like most of your series up to this point have been modern-grounded fantasy, but both Maggie and Puddles, experimental ideas, are in the as yet untouched ground of historical-type fantasy. I would love to even read short stories or novellas to get a taste (and perhaps they’d be less risky in terms of time investment?). I feel like these days, there’s also not a ton of new historical era fantasy — especially with dragons!!! — that aims towards an adult (and not YA, or children’s) demographic in literature. Also, you know the BDH would do everything it could to springboard the series, right???
Also, if I may:
In my eyes, your works are so special because of how wonderfully grounded and human and kind they are. I know I would hear that harmony no matter what melody you chose. So, I beg of you, to your heart’s content, SING!
*Puffles. 😔
What I regret professionally? Hmm that I often went the easy safe way and was satisfied with the job I have among other things also because I thought I do not get the job I want anyway and that I should have waited long to study again and in the meantime did a job that was so terribly dull that you noticed how the brain dies every day a little more.
I was always so proud of my parents for always being able to provide a roof over my head, food on the table every day, clean clothes, dental care, eye glasses every two years, drilling into me to get an education, and helping with college tuition. They were refugees and travelled through close to 30 countries before settling here. English was their third language.
Dear House Andrews, rather than as stories being ‘let go’ at a certain point in the past, I see them instead as stories entering some incubation/hibernation period to mature/ripen/get improved by the authors. So when it’s launched, it’ll be at its finest! (eg.: Puffles, Maggie, etc.)
My professional regret in the past would be for not believing in myself more. I was too focused on things I couldn’t control (people’s expectations, disappointing others, negative feedback, etc.). I still have the habit, but all these years, I also learn to tone it down so it won’t keep me stay still. I focus more on things within my control which are improving my skills, and maintaining my physical and mental health, including being kind and being the best supporter of myself.
Wishing you all the best for your future journey!
Sincerely,
long-time reader and member of BDH
I would just like to point out, that I would still read the stuffing out of the Puffles storyline! One of my fav’s of the House Andrews snippets. So good… so so so good! *making big eyes at the Authors*
Right out of school, I didn`t know what to do. I would have liked to study biology o something with animals, but the I would have to move far away from Home and get a student loan, because my parents couldn`t afford it. I was scared of that step, so I didn`t. I don`t regret the choices that followed, because otherwise I wouldn`t have my son, and we make the choices we have to in exactly that situation that we find ourselves in at that moment. “What if” and “after” and “If I had” are futile afterwards and aren`t helpful. We can only hope to learn to better detect good chances and grab onto them. I applied to good new job this spring, and are now hopeful to get it and have a better future. Even nearly 50, I took a chance and please knock on wood for me!
I would love to read your Dragon stories, because I know you will make them special! That first chapter already was droolworthy!
So I hope for us in the BDH for Dragons!!!
A toast to House Andrews! Lets soar!
With a smile from Switzerland ( today is National Day)
Inga
My professional regret was being forced to take an early retirement. That was in 2018. I felt like a complete and total failure.
My husband passed away this April.
Any regrets I had before are gone. That early retirement meant I got to enjoy most of these 5 years spending time with him on a daily basis…time I will cherish moving forward.
Life is a strange thing, you never know what will happen. You do your best, but the only thing you have control of is yourself, and that can be dubious at best.
You were among the writer’s whose books I read to him, meaning we started with Innkeeper, then I had to take him through your entire back catalog as well. Thank you for providing us with all those precious hours.
I’m so sorry for your loss, Carolyn.
I am so sorry for your loss.
Thank you
Carolyn — I will re-read your comment when I’m down or doubtful or too busy at work to walk the dog with my husband. Thank you for sharing the insight your loss as given.
Mine is listening to the well-meaning small town people including my dad who told me what to major in in college. After 2 years I quit because I hated the classes. Found my way back at 37 to finish my degree but this time I did it in the program that was my dream. Now at 51 I have a job, but it’s a job not a career. It’s a job that pays the bills but not in my passion area. I could have had a 30+year career and I regret not taking the chance when I was 18.
This resonated so much. Thank you for sharing. This really was what I needed to see right at this moment.
My regret is letting fear (of confrontation, of not being smart/good/likeable enough) keep me from going to law school. I became a travel agent in international travel and thought of it as an interesting but fundamentally frivolous career. I retired this year, though, and was astonished at the number of clients who told me I had made their lives more interesting and more fulfilled and considered my advice imaginative, smart and trustworthy. They considered me a friend and mentor in their lives. Who would have thought?
You may never know you have made an impact in someone’s life. I had a poster in my freshman college dorm room that read, “Bloom where you are planted”.
Just maybe not in the garden you’d envisioned.
Inspirational poster! 😍
Awww, I missed the opportunity to to hire you to plan our EU trip. 😉
Honestly, from the outside it doesn’t sound frivolous at all. Making memories is so important, because things come and go, but memories stay. You have helped so many people to add memorable moments to their lives.
OMW -I love that poster, and will look for one on Amazon to tuck away in my daughter’s packing for college this weekend! Thanks!
thank you! I’d love to quote this for my ig bio😍
Hm, I am not sure about dragons, but there are lots (and lots, and lots, and lots!) of vampires.
Are there any vampires like Arland, Ilemina, and Co.?
Nope.
Could you please consider writing Puffles as a “Friday / Warm-Up on Monday / First of Month / Whatever Schedule is feasible” treat? Please?
As for regrets – I agree with Gordon’s philosophy. You do what you can in a situation you are in, and that’s how you build your life in this current body/soul/part of the Multiverse combination.
Some regrets can be changed, if you wish. I’m ready for more Raina & Puffles 🫶🏻
P.S: I’m happy with my job, but I needed more years than usual to complete my degree. I had depression and I’m better nowadays. But I lost time I won’t be able to regain.
i dont get it, i remember at the time the posts about how well Blood Heir sold, it kind of does not add up.
Blood Heir sold like hot cakes. But it didn’t bring in many new readers. Rather it pulled on everyone who read our work before.
Context is everything: Blood Heir failed as a new anchor series, the hook to bring in new readers 🙂 . It did sell incredibly well because the BDH have great commercial power. Two separate things 🙂
I am one of those who thought ‘oh, you’d have to really know KD to appreciate Blood Heir.” But now I’ve re-thought — what would I make of these characters fresh and new? I saw the LOTR movies with someone who never read the books — with just that single glance between Eowyn and Faramir at the coronation ceremony for Aragorn she was like “yeah, I guess they get together and… ” posited entire future storyline as per the books”. So new readers get more than you’d think!!
This is the best blog, best authors, and BDH! Love everyone’s input here. My professional regret was not going into marketing or sales as thats more my personality than accounting. It was the safe road, but still intriguing and challenging enough in its own way. Because of it I was able to spend more time with the kids and as of this Sunday I will be an empty nester. I am going to probably cry on the way home from our daughter’s college. I’ve put a lot on hold personally for the kids but have no regrets. On to the next phase with a too quiet house, some trepidation, but a little spark of something not figured out yet 🙂 Cheers!
An Additional comment, is that I discovered in my professional career of semi-reinventing yourself as life progressed with the kids and being an accountant allowed me to do that from working in public accounting, then a huge broadcasting company, to small businesses and opening up a consulting company. Thus, I loved this flexibility of this career path. Most people still say you are not a typical accountant. I loved how someone earlier said they wished they had a mentor as thats so true. One thing that was not taught to us in school, or college (shows my age :)) was setting “SMART” GOALS and “WISE” GOALS. We were exposed to these concepts in our professional Continuting Education classes in my late 20’s, and now they are all over the internet. A College student of a friend of mine interviewed me for a college paper about my career and company and I told her the three things I wished I had done in college or known to do was to do more and join more college organizations and not focus so heavily on grades, find a MENTOR upon graduation, and to learn about making SMART and WISE Goals. She was doing it as a group project with other students interview other companies so I am hoping that it made some impact for them.
Lastly, I LOVE PUFFLES!! What a great story!!! I ADORE DRAGONS and it probably started from the Anne McCaffery series.
WOW—I’d never read Puffles before today, and I’m blown away. I would give a lot to be able to read a novel-length story with Puffles and Raina, and now I’m sad that it doesn’t seem likely to happen, since that is *exactly* my kind of book & comfort read.
Loved it so much💕
I guess I don’t have any major regrets – just a couple of paths not taken that my husband and I pull out to look at occasionally on our evening walks. For me, it’s a job in Montreal that I was offered mid-career – same company, bit of a step-up, and really attractive, since I love French culture, wine, food, language, and presumably would have loved French-Canadian culture, wine, food, language, etc, etc. But I’m a California girl and decided I might not last even one winter in Montreal – I didn’t even own a winter coat at that time (and still don’t). Right or wrong – I’ll never know. But that was my only chance in my career at being bi-cultural. And for my husband, it was being an oceanographer, which he kind of preferred, or becoming an engineer and working in the family company, which he did, and which he’s mostly enjoyed. But it’s not being out on the ocean. No huge regrets for either of us, so we’re very lucky, but there’s still a bit of bitter-sweetness to mulling over the choices not taken every now and then.
And, relative to a dragon-based Three Musketeers, I’ll point out that The Three Musketeers has LOTS of sequels: Twenty Years After, Ten Years Later, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, The Man in the Iron Mask, some others I can’t remember. So…lots of material to work with for a series. Just sayin’ 😊
I remembered Puffles after reading maybe three lines, and I remembered being frustrated I could not read about what happened next. So I’ll buy without hesitation if you ever get around to writing it.
About anchor series, I never could really enter into Kate Daniel’s world. I can’t tell you why either, it just wasn’t my thing (though I’ve read the first three novels, plus a few short stories, the only one that “spoke” to me was Magic Steals). Also I have hesitated to get in established stories, because of the time and money to be invested, and I’ve ditched longrunning series because the suspension of belief got too high for me to sustain… So I do understand your present problem with a new one. I can’t promise anything except I’ll try whatever you write
Anna
I think we are often very hard on ourselves when we think of things we regret or wish we would/could have done.
I had a friend at university who bounced back ad forth between physics and philosophy a couple of times and once when we talked about he said: “I wish i would have just stayed here at physics instead of wasting 2 years at philosophy, I would have achieved the same and would have saved time”. And I said “Well, maybe you weren’t there yet – you needed those 2 years at philosophy to come to terms with physics and why you wanted to come back. Things you are able to achieve now would not be same that you would have achieved without those 2 years of reflection and change.” And he said “huh” and smiled.
I carried a grudge for years because my parents wouldn’t allow me to attend art school as I wanted and insisted I did something “sensible that will pay the bills”, so I went to university and got an engineering degree in physics and mathematics. And got a job that paid the bills. And after 20 years I started painting again – was it time wasted? I think now that it was a good thing that I went and got my degree and a steady job, I was not in a good place at 18 and trying to survive as a budding artist would have crushed me (I think). It was not some great knowledge and reflection on my parents part, they just wanted me to settle the hell down and be sensible, but now I am at last content with the path I took.
Would Maggie have been the same in 2015 as she is becoming now? Probably not. Maybe she needed time to mature and become more.
I love all your books, they have different energy and different paths – I am so happy that you are able to write what you want and what makes your creativity flow- it shows and make your books something truly special.
And last a small quote from my mother back when I was 19: “oh honey, I wish I could endower you with experience without experience”.
it’s not too late! that one snippet you shared of puffles is Squiii! Go for it!
(in between every other awesome thing you are doing.🤗)
Lastly, you guys are very inventive, and dedicated to your craft, and it just shines through in your finished product.
Thus, something will bubble up from your research of current events and history-oh art history is fantastic too- and from your friends. Thus whatever your new anchor series will be about-we are your benefactors 🙂
I can’t thank you enough!
Sometimes the bills have to be paid and that usually means you go with the sure thing. I try not to look back or think “What if…” that leads to sadness and depression. Who knows the dragons may have flopped and no one would buy, or publish, any of your future stories. I am very happy that I picked up a Kate Daniels’ book all those years ago. Thank you !
Will you still write Puffles? It sounds delicious and the snippet was wonderful!
I asked back when the snippet was first shared and got a “Maybe”! The excitement for it has certainly not abated, so I think we can cling to that hope 🙂
Also, I think the BDH loves your “voice.” It’s why I’d read anything you write. It’s like soul-food, unique and stisfying and entertaining and so …insert… many many adjectives 😂
Focusing on the second choice instead of my passion/choice 1. Goes all the way back to deciding college, etc. I wasn’t brave enough to take the risk. From there, because it isn’t my first choice, I’ve made various mistakes because I always reach the point where I can’t be content anymore. This leads to looking for a change so I can get back to being content and not thinking about choice 1. Moving up, stepping down, varying choices along the way. It’s like those old choose your own adventure books except instead of leaving the haunted mansion safely I found all the traps and gorey ways to die.
While I do regret that first choice, I think I what regret most is contiously making the same choice over and over for the last 18 years. So I’m going to see about not making it 19 years.
I’m excited for puffles, it fits in with other types of books I’ve read since I was little too. I’ve always loved dragon stories, and I’ve always enjoyed everything you two have written. alphas always made me so curious, what would have happened next.
*curious… lol not curt
I figured that one and fixed your comment as soon as it came in 🙂. Once you refreshed, it should have come up correctly!
My biggest professional regret was not sticking to my guns and changing my college major. Had I done that, though, I likely would never have met my husband or had such an amazing life with him.
It’s worked out.
Anchor or not, I’m looking forward to reading about Maggie. I’m currently re reading Innkeeper and it’s helping me get through the week.
Who is Maggie? I’m having a brain fart.
Maggie is the new project House Andrews are working on 🙂. We received an update on its status on Friday, which created further questions https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/no-content/
Here are some of the snippets shared with us https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/maggie-maggie-maggie/ and
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/bdh-the-best-fandom-ever-and-snippet/ and
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/busy-week/ and
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/meow-meow-is-okay/
We make the best choices possible from our current circumstances. My only firm regret is letting my husband back into the house after booting him out. I’m not a quitter and had hopes he’d keep his word about changing his behavior. Forlorn hopes it turned out but it got me into ALANON where I learned so much and saved my sanity. I put my people face on for work and hibernate at home the rest of the time doing what makes me content. The jobs I enjoyed the most were working by myself or varying types of tasks so I don’t get bored. I’m not much of a dragon person but Puffles sounds really interesting! Blooming where you grow works for me!
I mourn for puffles and what Maggie could have been.
House Andrews will continue to work on Maggie and hopefully have it published 🙂, that’s what Friday’s update was about https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/no-content/
And we can’t totally rule out Puffles either, we heard a “maybe” about it! 🙂
I hadn’t seen that post yet. You’ve made my night!
wonderful!!
I have no professional regrets, but I think I agree with Gordon. I don’t regret the decisions I have made because I did what I thought was best at the time. Every decision I made influenced something else and lead me to a job I enjoy today. Everyone has different professional goals. I could leave my job and make way more money, but for me loyalty is important and being with a group I like.
For you, maybe if you had taken the chance and not put the time into KD, maybe it wouldn’t have been as much of a success. Though with your amazing talent, it probably would still have been. We all just do the best we can with the knowledge and advice given at the time.
My biggest regrets are about my inability to finish things, and then it’s too late. I had a writing idea in the late 90s about robot wars. I had a great start, but didn’t have the confidence or whatever to finish it. I’ve done it over and over. I’m getting better at finishing things, but it’s still a struggle. 🙁
If it’s such a regret, why can’t you simply pick it back up? -Although Puffles prob couldn’t get involved with ano 15 years in service to the Night King at his age I would imagine…… but I didn’t hear why it couldn’t be the new anchor series, right? Or did I just miss that?
-And Really tho, you guys could write about cleaning your shoes and apparently I’d adore it. Your voices in my head sound like a best friend’s during a fun get together after time apart. Pure joy!
Whatever you decide, it will be much appreciated.
I think that Puffles still has a shot at being profitable if not an anchor series. Anne McCaffrey has never gone out of style and this has a different flavor then the others. If the new project is giving you trouble, maybe a passion project can bring fun and inspiration!!
Agree!
Dragons are still magical to me, especially those with their own stories like Puffles (instead of just being present in a story). I would really love to hear more about Raina and Puffles if you ever decide the time is right to return to their story. <3 everything you write, no exaggeration.
I also really enjoyed the Alpha book and hope there will be more in that series!!
There are no plans to continue the Alphas storyline at this time, as per the Release Schedule page https://ilona-andrews.com/release-schedule/
If you ever feel like reviving Puffles I would 100% read it
It’s been said over and over, but I just want to say, please write about Puffles! I described it to my daughter this morning (before I read this post) and she got excited too. (She likes Innkeeper, but doesn’t read Kate.) Please!?
My biggest professional regret was listening to my mother, the high school guidance counselor, rather than my college advisor about how many credits I should take per semester.
Had I listened to my advisor sooner, I might not have flunked out of college so many times. My mother was convinced I should take 20 or more credits per semester, as she had. My advisor thought 14 was fine and 15 would be pushing it.
It took me two years to figure out that he was right and mom was wrong, wrong, wrong.
That led to my second biggest regret: not finishing my degree. My parents declined to pay for college after the first semester, so I was working *a lot* of hours to pay for school, not to mention food and housing (off campus was considerably cheaper than university room and board). It wore me down.
Eventually I was making more as a civil service tech, with no degree, than the average newly graduated veterinarian. And my then-fiance discouraged me from continuing to aim toward vet school, in favor of focusing my attention on him. But staying with him for nearly forty years is a personal regret greater than any professional one.
So the secondary professional regret is that any college degree would have given me more job options than no degree. I worked at a career I loved, but it required a lot physically, and was physically dangerous at times. Once I had rods and screws in my spine, my skills far outstripped my abilities. I had to figure out a different way to be who I am. That is hard, hard work.
Fourteen years later a bomb dropped on my marriage, and I had to go through that whole process again, except mentally this time. A degree would have given me more options at every step of the way. The two plus years of university did enrich me and give me a broader base for everything I did afterwards. But more would have definitely been better in this case.
This is not at all to say that everyone needs a degree. Just have a backup plan for what to do if your job requires physical labor, and you somehow lose that ability. I’m fortunate to have other skills, and also to have some degree of financial security left over from 34 years of marriage. But I miss being invincible.
I loved the Puffles story. I would read all of the books about Raina if you wrote them. No, I haven’t read Game of Thrones or any of the other ones you mentioned. I am attached to certain authors and would read almost anything they wrote and one of those authors is you two. Thank you so much for all your books.
Professional regrets, huh 🤔. I’m sixty-five and I wish with all my heart that I knew what I would like to be when I grow up. This should be a simple wish, an easy one and now that I have retired from a telecommunications field, it is one I wish I could answer. I fell into the job that I retired from, I was good at it, but it wasn’t what I wanted or even chose when I was thinking about what I would like to do, professionally with my life.
What’s Maggie? … Anyhoo
I wish list Puffles !!!
Things you didn’t do … In making a decision, it’s easy to feel that the logical sensible smart sure decision is … not daring.
Revisiting postponed work is not being old, its being free to give the energy time thought, it deserves. I ask you to consider in reviewing your postponed inspiration list that you feel now is the time to adventure in those waiting worlds unconnected to the worlds you have built and shared with us.
Plus … Puffles!
They are SO not ready for Raina, years young raised by her father, sheltered by her mother, afraid to let her know …
Mentored by an old half blind …
She can be controlled … family … hostages
Puff , so what’s floating your boat
Maggie is the new project House Andrews are working on 🙂. We received an update on its status on Friday, which created further questions https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/no-content/
Here are some of the snippets shared with us https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/maggie-maggie-maggie/ and
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/bdh-the-best-fandom-ever-and-snippet/ and
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/busy-week/ and
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/meow-meow-is-okay/
I would totally buy a three musketeers with dragons if you wrote it. Heck, even if someone else wrote it I would be interested, but yeah, BDH, I would buy yours outright as soon as announced.
This is a great question you asked. I see so many of my regrets in what others have said.
There are so many things I could have done differently, so many things I could have done better, I think. But I think I am where I am supposed to be. I am close to retirement–could have retired already if I had made better financial decisions and the economy had not decimated my 401K several times–but I try not to agonize over the should-ofs and could-ofs and enjoy who I am and what I have.
I wish you success in your search for a new anchor series. I have ideas and opinions but I will keep them to myself. You don’t need any more pressure. Whatever you do I will be here to support you.
Love Puffles and Raina! I hope some day in the future you both feel like working on this again! Dragons have been done and overdone, sure. 🙂 But so have werewolves, vampires, and magical powers. Didn’t stop you from writing my favorite books of all time about all of the above. Until dragons have been done House Andrews style, they have not truly been done. 🤗❤️🔥
I agree with everyone else: the time of dragons is not over, and would love to read IA’s take on dragons (especially Puffles…there’s just something so special about that snippet.)Also, I have regrets just like anybody, but the older I get, the more I realize it’s more a matter of perspective and not giving up.
I spent 40+ years working in IT, and though I was very successful (if one defines success based on promotions, salary, or professional reputation…not my definition of success) in all honesty…I knew I was really good at what I did, but I really hated IT. I stuck with it for many, many reasons (including family responsibilities and bills), but I often wished I had studied art instead.
Well, now that I am retired, I’m doing what I want and taking art classes! Would it have been better to do this years ago? Possibly…but so many things would be very different now as a result, and not necessarily better.
All I can say for sure is that regardless of what was or what might have been, I’m now making beautiful art that makes me happy and loving it. I could focus on the wasted time, but that would just make me waste even more precious time now. I’d rather spend my hours creating art and reading IA books! 🥰💕💕
My biggest regret was going to university. I have a BA and an MBA, but wish I had just gone into the trades. Just as much earning potential, but far less money and time.
I loved the dark Alpha excerpts you shared, plus what made it into the anthology. I would’ve loved Puffles, I think. I hope you publish Maggie.
(I pretty much love everything you’ve ever written, except I never really got into the Hidden Legacy series.)
I just have been more clear: Tradespeople have as much earning potential as most university grads, without having to invest nearly as much money and time. I wish I’d realized that. Plus it turns out that I prefer working with my hands, as opposed to doing sedentary work.
I took a job with the state because of my health rather than finishingmy PhD. It was not the job they told me it was, and i moved accross the country for a job that i was woefully over-qualified for. I needed stability and good insurance. My goal was to get my pension before I needed to apply for disability. 14 surgeries later, I managed to work 21 years and I would have lost my job a long time ago if it hadn’t been for a union job with short term disability. I made the job into something I could live with and I did as much as I could given the lack of initials, but I still wonder what might have been.
If I had stayed and gotten the PhD, I would have never met my husband or my kids. I wouldn’t have been able to spend the last years of my parent’s lives with them, and I would have never met some of my dearest friends. regret ignores all the benefits you lose by taking the other road. in the end, all we have is making the best of the moment we are in.
I always think of Eragon when i think of dragons and it was 2005.
There have always been dragon stories but maybe you had to look harder for them and GOT did take them to the big time.
I’d still love Puffles, (I actually don’t want him to be sent home so he can stay in the city with Raina and have an adventure too) but i know he needs his rest.
Poor old guy.
And as always you’d put your spin on it so it would be better/different/wonderful. (like the ‘they didn’t need another Anita Blake story’) Kate is NOT Anita.
as always, what you write will be love, so best of luck to you
Professional regrets:
The profession I didn’t take. My uncle was the VP of development for IBM on the East Coast in 1976. I told him about about DnD, and he asked if I wanted to move to the East coast, head up a division of a new type of computer–one based on games like DnD. He would pay for my training and get me a staff to create the first IBM gaming systems.
Obviously, since no one knows my name, I idiotically refused.
More of a potential professional path: I regret not trying to get admitted to vet school at Colorado State University (and really for just not going to CSU for college). Loved my college time overall (Metro State University in Denver is awesome!), but that is always a career potential I kick myself for not pushing myself to do.
The other is turning down an opportunity to work for a semi-non-profit in DC that may have opened doors in the animal/environmental conservation world eventually. Long story why, but biggest piece was we couldn’t make it work financially at the time. I tell myself now that we could have figured it out, but hindsight!
Maggie and Puffles: I read both snippets multiple times because I enjoyed them so much. I know I’m biased because I already love your books, but darker and more complex could fill a hole a large group of readers are needing to fill. And can the market ever really be oversaturated with DRAGONS???? I don’t think that’s possible! 🙂
I forgot to add…I really like where I’m at in life right now, so my regrets aren’t true regrets because I wouldn’t be where or what or who I am today had I chosen those paths. But it can be interesting to think about those “what if’s?”!
I really wish they hadn’t discouraged you from the Puffles storyline. I was very much interested in what happens next. I will read anything you write so do whatever you need to do for your family. But if you ever want to finish it…..
I would read the hell out of Puffles and Raina. 1000%.
my regrets are tied to the financial strains my family had at the time when I wanted to further my studies, so I try to let it go because I don’t want to be bitter about it. My elder brother could study, my younger sister as well…. let’s just say it’s an ongoing process of forgiveness. I could have studied at later stages with the money I had saved up, but by that time I had moved on in my life, started a family and shifted my priorities. I am happy personally, but not professionally. In my opinion you can have either one but rarely both. Count yourself lucky if you do.
I’ve had lots of careers and successes and failures. I have one regret. I worked in an academic setting and I received tenure but the boss really did not like me. His managers wanted to hire me and they did. But he stood up in an all hands meeting and told everyone he didn’t want to hire me. Despite having tenure he decided to fire me. I could have fought it. I don’t regret that I didn’t. But I could have gotten a payout of a year of my salary (I’d lose health benefits). Instead, I kept the year worth of employment to keep my health benefits.
I left after several months because my spouse had moved to a job in another state. I regret not taking the money and running. It was a horrible place and I’m glad I left. I own my own company now, doing what I love, with a great team I work with. I guess I might not have done it had I just left with the money. But I’m happy now so I try to not regret how I got here.
My greatest regret is not having good guidance and direction the first time I was in college in for my first career choice. I went back after a 10 year hiatus in a completely different field and I absolutely love what I do now, but often play with the what if’s. I’ve been in my field now for just over 20 years, and now the I ready for something new and different… but I also require good health insurance so that forces big limits…
Thanks for sharing. And Long Live Puffles!!
I loved the Puffles that you posted, I wish too we could have had it.
I just read Puffles, and I really wish that was a book that I could read. It really captured me.
My now husband almost took a job at Facebook and I almost went to Google when we graduated from college in 2007. We wound up at another large tech company so we’re doing very well for ourselves… but we could have retired at 30 if we’d made a different choice 🤷♀️
wow! Puffles was awesome, enthralling and wonderful.
thanks for sharing this.
I have yet to read anything bad by you two. If you want to write about a dragonised three musketeers, I have even confidence it will be good!
I’m a little late to the party. It’s been really nice to read everyone’s perspectives on their life.
I’m in my late 20s, working on making all of these big life decisions. My education is complete with a diploma in ceramics, and textile design. I’ve started my business, which needs so much attention, but I desperately want kids (two years ago would be great, time gods). I also need a (regular) job to fund the initial stages of my business, which cuts into my dedicated social time playing RPGs (think D&D) with my friends. I’m in the midst off a huge balancing act and it’s very intimidating.
It’s not too late for Puffles. I read Anne McCaffery’s Pern series as a young teen, and love the rider-dragon bond.
I want to join the growing horde supporting Puffles, I too grew up with Anne McCaffrey, yes, there are a lot of dragon books out there, unfortunately there are not a lot of GOOD dragon books out there! You can fix this, I am sure a series you put together will sell. For example, I hadn’t heard of the 4th wing series, after reading the blog I looked it up on Amazon, lo and behold, they had it and I started by ordering 7 books by this author, that’s an anchor and the 2nd dragon book hasn’t even come out yet.
Admittedly I am a book nerd, but I think it would find new readers, and we old (yes I read the Pern books as they came out) fans can certainly introduce it to new readers.
You do what you feel you need, but I definitely don’t think it’s too late for Puffles, ( the fact that I am drooling to find out what happens next is irrelevant.)
I read everything you write and I own all of your books. I would read whatever you all write. I still go back and re read all of your series.
I just want to reflect that if you had chased dragons then we wouldn’t have Hidden Legacy or Innkeeper; there is only so much time in a day after all.
So while it’s always a shame not to have something new and exciting, as a fan of all of your works I think my life would be less rich if you didn’t write what may have been the “safer” option.
The insatiable BDH might enjoy an occasional Puffles snippet. Y’all had a proposal – you knew the basic direction Puffles would fly.
Don’t know your working style – whether “doodling” in the margins of whatever majorv project I’d even possible. But why not?
I would buy this book defiantly
Beautiful leather bindings – https://mccallcobindery.com. They take commissions so could probably do something wonderful!
This is the first time I’ve seen/read the Puffers snippet. That is awesome! I would buy that story in a heartbeat!
Also, when written with heart & imagination, stories shine regardless of the number of others fall into a ‘category’. There can never be enough well-written dragons (& I don’t like GOT, but I adored Pern).
For a long time my professional regret was staying at a company that did not value me or my contributions. I stayed because I liked the people I worked with (not so much those I worked for). However, it was purchased by a larger global company several years ago.
Now I like the people I work with, the people I work for, I have work that is interesting & challenging and I have the opportunity to improve our training program. If I hadn’t been too stubborn to leave then, I would have missed the now, and I’m very much enjoying the now.
Sometimes you have to go through the thistles to get to the flowers – to keep with the ‘bloom where you’re planted’ theme.
To those in the ‘thistles’ now, I’m sorry & I hope you find the flowers soon. 🌈🌼🌸🦋🌻🌺🌈
Please write Puffles as well. Sure there’s already dragon stuff out there, but it’s not your Dragon stuff. I know I would love it!
I want Puffles. Need to know if he got home safe 🥺
wait…so does this mean we are or aren’t getting a dragon series because of we were going to read about magic clams, I don’t think you need to worry about missing your shot with dragons…we all ate up space vampires years after twilight and the sookie Stackhouse series exploded.
Oh no, ever since I read Puffles I was hoping to find out what happenedc next. Can there ever be too many dragon stories? Afterall it is a bout a young eoman going out into the world
Let the record show i wouldve totally totally bought puffles. I thoroughly enjoyed that snippet.
I love that you’re sticking with Maggie because you love it! I think the joy that you have while writing translates into your books, that’s why they’re so much fun to read.
Could Puffles ever become a thing? Or do you have plans for it? I really enjoyed that snipped and love a good “I’m here cuz of family duty, now let’s find all the plots and politics and save the world” book!
I think with the Fourth Wing popularity and the dragon loving resurgence you could tap into the market! *crossing my fingers for more Puffles*
Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed Puffles. Just curious if it could be a serial in the future. In terms of professional regret, or regret in general, I tend not to have a lot, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any. The closest for me is that I’ve wanted to start a voice-over career for years, and I keep letting fear rear its ugly head. I’m finally taking the advice of “feel the fear and do it anyway,” and I’m about to start auditioning for work. I regret that I allowed fear to make the decision. However, I learned a valuable lesson and focused on that. Best to all. 🙂
Picking up this thread after vacation with limited wifi, I do not know if someone already mentioned it, but musketeers with dragons already came up as early as 2007 – Pierre Pevel, les lames du cardinal. Do not know if translated in english. Not game of thrones dragon kind though.