In The Crimson Throne (Sourcebooks Fire, Oct.), bestselling authors Sara Raasch and Beth Revis deliver a new duology that’s being touted as Powerless meets Reign. We spoke with the New York Times bestsellers behind Night of the Witch and The Fate of Magic about the draw of historical romantasy, literary Easter eggs, and the joys of tag-team writing.
The Crimson Throne features fae magic and court intrigue. What inspired you to create this story?
Sara Raasch: Beth and I are making it a habit to follow our hearts in historical romantasy.
For our first duology, Witch and Hunter (Night of the Witch and The Fate of Magic), we chose Germany because we both have ancestry there, and it allowed us to dive deep into our pasts.
For our follow-up duology, it really was a no-brainer that it would be set in Scotland; both Beth and I have a mad obsession with Elizabethan England—who among us millennials wasn’t hooked on The Tudors?—and Beth is a fount of knowledge when it comes to all things Mary, Queen of Scots. It got to a point where I’d just sit back and watch her weave Mary’s life and court seamlessly into our story. Get you a co-author who is an expert on history!
Beth Revis: I grew up on old-school fairy tales—the ones where you never give the fae your name and you never eat anything at the goblin market. These childhood stories blended with my adult love of history. So much of what’s real—such as the fact that Queen Elizabeth never stepped foot in Scotland, or the origin of Hadrian’s Wall and its lasting legacy, or the way most standing stones (like Stonehenge) exist only in Great Britain—seemed like the perfect canvas to fill in the holes of history with a bit of fae magic.
What can readers expect from The Crimson Throne?
SR: If Night of the Witch was spooky, steamy, witchy magic, then The Crimson Throne is spooky, steamy, fae magic. It’s set in the same magical universe as Night of the Witch—so readers might catch some fun Easter eggs!—with a backdrop of sweeping Scottish moors instead of the mysterious Black Forest.
BR: I wrote the female main character, Alyth Graham. The illegitimate daughter of a fae prince, Alyth keeps her powers hidden from most of the human court of Mary, Queen of Scots. She has an uneasy, power-imbalanced relationship with the young queen, who knows that Alyth protects a barrier that surrounds Scotland and keeps out the vicious, bloodthirsty fae known as Red Caps. Alyth was literally born to serve both Scotland and the Otherworld, and if there’s one thing she doesn’t need, it’s a man who’ll just complicate things and distract her…
SR: Enter Samson Calthorpe, an orphan scraping by in the slums of London. A fae object cursed him as a child, and when he stumbles on the chance to steal that object and undo his curse, he takes it—only the item happens to be in Mary’s court.
This throws Alyth and Samson on a crash course in a world where Scottish-English tensions are high. And the tension between magical and ordinary is even higher...only Samson might not be so ordinary after all, and Alyth will have to choose between duty and her heart.
Expect lots of yummy enemies-to-lovers tropes—a knife to throat scene! Only one campsite!—as well as loads of creepy fae magic and an enchanting Scottish atmosphere.
You’re no strangers to writing hit books. You’re also the authors of the bestselling Witch and Hunter duology, published by Sourcebooks Fire, that includes Night of the Witch and The Fate of Magic. What do you like about working together?
SR: In short: co-writing is phenomenal. Everyone should do it.
The longer version: writing with Beth is like having a whole extra brain that knows the story as intimately as I do, is always ready to leap in to fix any plot snags, and is chock-full of the best—and I do mean best—historical facts. Beth is the reason our books are so fully rooted in the time periods we’ve chosen. I am forever honored to get to work with her!
BR: Psh, I’m the lucky one! One thing that I love about co-writing is how we balance each other out. Whenever I get too obsessed about the historical details no one cares about, Sara pulls me back to the real story. We will both freak out at different points in the writing process, but so far, we never panic at the same time, so we pull each other out of our conundrums.
What’s the best part about writing historical romantasy and fae fantasy?
SR: The magic! The setting! The romance—between the characters as well as in the sweeping atmosphere! All of it? All of it.
BR: It’s truly the best of both worlds. Diving into history is fun (because I am a nerd), and I absolutely love researching the little details or bringing up wild things in history that are too bonkers to be true…yet absolutely are. And then the joy of exploring the impossible within the framework of fact, filling in the blanks of history with magic—it’s what I love about fiction, this myriad exploration of real and not, of dreaming and learning simultaneously.
SR: The escapism—getting to float away in a world of eerie fae magic and glittering court intrigue is such a luxury, and being able to incorporate familiar historical elements is just icing. Beth and I both were those kids who had borderline unhealthy obsessions with various historical time periods, so getting to play around in those times while adding magic? We’re living the dream!
BR: Plus, I’ve been trying since eighth grade to write a novel about Lord Darnley’s murder. (Let’s all just ignore the fact that writing about historical murder is my definition of living the dream, haha.)
What is your writing process and how do you divvy up who writes what?
BR: One thing that truly helps is developing the story beats early and cementing them into a chapter-by-chapter outline. I tend to work a little looser in my own stories, but the structure of a detailed outline gives us the exact roadmap we need.
SR: We each take a POV character. In Night of the Witch, Beth wrote Otto, our resident witch hunter, while I wrote Fritzi, our snarky witch. In The Crimson Throne, Beth writes Alyth, our duty-bound guardian, and I write Samson, our lovable English spy.
Doing an even split of 50/50 tasks by character helps us keep the process streamlined. We also rely very heavily on Google docs to allow us to write across distances. She’s in North Carolina, and I’m in Virginia, and often we’ll both be in the doc, working away, and send each other little “Hey, I see you!” messages.
BR: One thing people are always surprised to learn is that Sara and I never met in real life until after Night of the Witch was done–thank goodness for huge email chains chock full of every random idea and hundreds of comments in every doc!
A new deluxe paperback edition of The Fate of Magic, with designed edges, will be published on September 2. What do you think great packaging adds to a reading experience?
SR: Oh, the deluxe edition of The Fate of Magic is so stunning! Can we just take a minute to fawn over the unintentional Wicked vibes with the green-and-pink color scheme of that duology? Talk about fate!
BR: I cannot tell you the number of times I longed for designed edges on a book, and to have two that are so beautiful and matching?! Truly a dream come true.
SR: Great packaging contributes to what I mentioned above: the escapism. It helps cement an aura as readers dive in, and it adds to that feeling of luxury. There’s a reason books with designed edges have taken off so well; we all want to feel a bit fancy!
Are you at work on part two of the Spy and Guardian duology? If so, what can you reveal?
SR: We turned in the first draft of the sequel not that long ago! While we can’t reveal too much yet, I can tell you that I love it even more than the first book. Alyth and Samson go through it in this one. It’s darker, twistier, with even more fae magic and higher stakes, and we get to see so many fantastic new places—from the wild, rushing coastal islands of Scotland to the northern Highlands... and even the deadly, entrancing fae court!
BR: If you look closely at the gorgeous edges designed in the first edition of The Crimson Throne, you’ll spot so many essential details to the new duology—the Celtic knotwork, the clever dagger blades, and even thistle flowers—perfection! The cover design is so good that it actually influenced a detail for the sequel that we’re so excited to share soon.
And a special hint just for the nerds: We brought in a fae creature inspired by my favorite legend about the important Scottish rebel and king, Robert the Bruce.
