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Has the pandemic affected your writing? How has it been for you to try to immerse yourself in a fantasy world when real life is so tumultuous? When the sisters’ long-awaited invitations to Caraval finally arrive, it seems their dreams have come true. But no sooner have they arrived than Tella vanishes, kidnapped by the show’s mastermind organiser, Legend. I wrote Caraval as a standalone. I hadn’t thought through the whole series, and even if I had, I probably would have made a lot of mistakes because I’d never written a series before. With Once Upon a Broken Heart, I made a point of figuring out how many books I thought the series should be, and writing with that in mind. I wanted to write a series where you could read each book on its own and get a complete story, but then when you read all the books together, they feel like one complete story, too. I spent a lot of time figuring out the whole arc before finishing this first book. That’s why I wrote half of the second book before the first book was edited—because I wanted to set up a really cohesive series this time. I started writing Once Upon a Broken Heart in the spring of 2019, right after Finale came out. I finished my first draft right before Covid-19 hit, but it was revised during the pandemic, and that affected the book a lot. It was a really hard time, so I wanted to give my character even more hope and optimism. Even though it’s a story about heartbreak, I wanted to write a character who believes in fairy tales and true love and love at first sight and all of these things. She imagined loving him would feel like falling in love with darkness, frightening and consuming yet utterly beautiful when the stars came out.
Caraval is Magic. Mystery. Adventure. And for Scarlett and her beloved sister Tella it represents freedom and an escape from their ruthless, abusive father. No one is truly honest. Even if we don't lie to others, we often lie to ourselves. And the word good means different things to different people. Alas, another epic series draws to a close this month. Stephanie Garber concluded her Caraval trilogy with the release of Finale, and as anyone who loves reading series can tell you, the last book hits hard whether you enjoy it or not. If you love it, you’re saying goodbye to an old friend. If you don’t, gut-wrenching dissatisfaction. Regardless of how the end feels, sometimes the best way to recover is to find similar yet new reads to refill the hole in your heart. Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.
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He’d heard every person gets one impossible wish—just one—if the person wants something more than anything, and they can find a bit of magic to help them along. Dreams that come true can be beautiful, but they can also turn into nightmares when people won't wake up. Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over. Welcome to Caraval, where nothing is quite what it seems. Caraval is a once-a-year week-long performance where the audience participates in the show. And for Scarlett and her beloved sister, Tella, it represents freedom and an escape from their ruthless, abusive father. When the sisters' long-awaited invitations to Caraval finally arrive, it seems their dreams have come true. But no sooner have they arrived than Tella vanishes, kidnapped by the show's mastermind organiser -Legend.
What appeals to you in a romance tale? What are the characters like who fall in love? Who's your favorite female romantic hero? What does her ideal partner look and act like? Are you looking for a person like that in your own relationships? Scarlett has never left the tiny isle of Trisda, pining from afar for the wonder of Caraval, a once-a-year week-long performance where the audience participates in the show. Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever. Caraval is over, but perhaps the greatest game of all has begun - with lives, empires, and hearts all at stake. There are no spectators this time: only those who will win and those who will lose everything. Welcome, welcome to the Caraval's Finale. All games must come to an end . . .It has been harder to write since being published, for sure. It was just me and my computer before, so it was super easy to sit down and write. But I’ve learned a lot, so in some ways, I feel like it’s starting to get easier. After I sold Caraval, I tried to write the second book in the series, and I was suddenly aware of all the things I didn’t know. I was really good at being an unpublished writer, and I knew nothing about being an author. I feel like I spent the last five years figuring out what it’s like to be published and how that changes things, finding that balance. The Caraval trilogy put me in the mood for stories about high-stakes competitions, magic, circuses, and the overall art of performance. Here are some book recommendations along those lines that might help with the recovery process.
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