People Like Us Update (Patreon)

Happy Thursday! We hope all of you have been having a great September thus far. We are preparing for fall 🍂🎃 Which means a lot of things. Like scoping out pumpkin candles, getting ready for Hocus Pocus 2 to drop, and also hunkering down in our cozy writing cave.

Which brings us to this update! We've been teasing People Like Us for what feels like a while now. We've been a little vague on details, and a good reason for that is we've been trying to figure out exactly "how" to write this without it taking too much time from writing novels and from burning out from so much writing. We've started, stopped, started, stopped, and we realized we definitely need a better writing model for how to continue so it'll get completed while also not pulling us away from our other projects. 

So let's break down what we've announced so far about People Like Us: 

The POVS are Maximoff, Farrow, Thatcher, Jane, Oscar, and Jack

It will explore events during Charming Like Us, Wild Like Us, and Fearless Like Us through those 6 POVs

It's an episodic serial that we planned to publish on Kindle Vella simultaneously with Patreon, but we decided that Kindle Vella wasn't the right home for it. 

Episodes release in chronological order starting with events in Charming Like Us

What's changing & why? 

💗 We're planning on changing the style from "episodic serial" back to a more standard "chapter" format. Originally, we planned to write it in short 600-800 word chunks that we'd call "episodes." This style of writing is not something we're used to, and we admittedly struggled with it 😔 Even though they're shorter scenes, it almost feels more daunting to us to have such a restriction on our writing. So you can expect our normal length chapters for People Like Us. "Episodes" are going out the window! *chucks 'em away* 

💗 One of our biggest fears is burn out. It's when you stare at a computer screen, needing to write but the words just can't come. It's the worst. It's happened before and we're terrified of it. So we know when we need to adjust. We're big mood-based writers, and as you can tell on our Patreon, we really jump around in the timelines and have fun writing whatever interests us in the moment. Having People Like Us tethered so strictly to a chronological format has really made writing it so much more difficult. We've tried to get further along this project and we're still way too close to the start. It's felt harder to write than any of our books or bonuses. It comes down to the fact that there are scenes we want to write now, but if we were to write everything in chronological order, they'd probably take many months to get to. Like Fearless Like Us! Gah, there are SO MANY scenes we've wanted to write in that timeline, and we've been holding ourselves back because we've tried to stick to chronological order. It's so tough. We didn't even write Some Kind of Perfect in chronological order, so this has been pretty new for us (and we've found out it's not a "good" kinda new). And we're writing People Like Us with the notion that it drops little-by-little on Patreon before it's actually a completed novella (so not everything would be pre-written in advance of it coming out) -- because we don't have time to complete a whole novella/novel over the  main Like Us books and our new series for Berkley Romance (Dishonestly Yours). 

So this is the biggest change: We're no longer writing People Like Us in chronological order. So the chapters will not be posted on Patreon in chronological order. One day, you might get a scene from the Fearless Like Us timeline and the next day you might get one from the Charming timeline. It's what whatever we're in the mood to write. Like we mentioned, Some Kind of Perfect wasn't written in chronological order, so we're more comfortable with this writing method for 6 POVs.

How will you be able to read People Like Us in chronological order? 

💗 When we've finished writing everything we want in PLU (we have a list!), it will be compiled in chronological order in a physical book that you will be able to buy on Amazon. There will not be an ebook with it, since all the digital chapters will be exclusive to Patreon. 

💗 Until then, we will have a chart/list on Patreon that you can refer to and read it in order as well. 

When will we be posting People Like Us chapters? 

💗 November! 

💗 These chapters will be your main and/or extra bonus scenes. They will be tagged with People Like Us, so you will know that those particular bonus scenes will be compiled into PLU and eventually released in paperback format.

What about Luna & Donnelly? 

💗 We're aware that there aren't a lot of Luna and Donnelly bonus scenes on Patreon yet, since their book just released. So some months, they'll pop up as POVs for an extra bonus scene. But if we have the time (fingers crossed), we are hoping to add a second extra bonus to the month. This isn't guaranteed though! 

To recap: 

💗 People Like Us will be released as main/extra bonus scenes here on Patreon. It will cover the events from Charming Like Us, Wild Like Us, and Fearless Like Us through Maximoff, Farrow, Jane, Thatcher, Oscar, and Jack's POVs. It won't be posted in chronological order, but the final paperback will organize all the chapters in chronological order. Expect the first PLU scene to drop here on Patreon this November!! 

Thank you so much! 

We really appreciate all your support, and we hope you can understand this change. We want to bring you content from these characters during this timeline without fear of burnout. We're so incredibly excited to finally share all that we've been planning for so long. And for the longest time, we've been feeling anxiety and pressure whenever thinking about People Like Us. So we're happy to say we're finally feeling excited again. We hope you're excited too!! 😊💖

xoxo Krista & Becca