When the Sea is Rising Red was not the first of the hobverse books I’d written. That dubious honour goes to a book that had the rather unfortunate name of Hob an Lam (I know it was unfortunate because an agent told me that she’d avoided reading the full because of the title.)

But WtSiRR was the first of them to be purposefully written as a YA, and the first of them to be sold. Which left me in the rather weird position of having a handful of (unpublished) fantasy books all set in a the same world as one (published) young adult book. Publishers don’t like this, apparently. And I really did not want to rewrite all those other ones to fit YA guidelines. (I’m contrary. Also, no.)

Along came a wherry boat…

Brianna and I had met in the rather infamous AbsoluteWrite water cooler and become good online friends, separated by oceans but joined by whizz bang crackle internet and a mutual love of Kelly Link. When it became clear that my hobverse books were doing the unthinkable and jumping from one marketing genre to another (you can actually hear my eyes rolling in my skull at this point, I promise) we decided to join forces like two crazy kids and put them out there ourselves.

It was a no-brainer to go with the book which continued Felicita’s story, and so House of Sand and Secrets became the inaugural Folded Wherry novel. Not only did it build on the promises of Felicita and Jannik’s relationship at the end of When the Sea is Rising Red, it also had the seeds of later conflicts related in Hob an Lam (now renamed Bones Like Bridges, which I’m sure you are all grateful to hear.)

It means that those stories have a home, and whenever a new story set in Oreyn comes barrelling through my subconscious, I can let myself write it without feeling guilty.