Behind-the-scenes with A Forgery of Roses + a Giveaway!

In which I dish some secrets about the book I've never shared before

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Hello from the drafting trenches!

I’m hard at work writing the first draft of the Den of Liars sequel. Every single time I start a new book, it feels like emotional whiplash. A month ago, I was putting final touches on Den of Liars, which I had been working on for two whole years. It was as perfect as I could make it, the plot fully realized, the characters fleshed out, the magic system working… And now, here I am, thrown back to square one on a new book, where the draft I’m writing is the *worst* version of the book that will ever exist, and where I’m second-guessing every single plot choice as I go. Yippee.

Luckily, I’ve done this several times now, so I know this is just part of the process. Every time my Impostor Syndrome tells me what I wrote is a big flaming pile of garbage, I remind myself that the first draft doesn’t have to be good. It just has to exist. Future Jessica—the lucky one who gets to do the revisions—will make it better and turn it into something I can be really proud of. But she can’t do it if I don’t write the dang thing first.

Other than the drafting, I’m extremely busy with four kids in school and sports and piano lessons and all that, and on top of that have been trying to keep up with my aerial hoop classes (which I’ve pared down to 1-2 classes per week tops because I just don’t have enough gumption to manage more right now, even though I wish I could spend all my time there lol). So life is busy, but so good, and I’m so excited for the coming months as I get to reveal more and more about Den of Liars!

Behind-the-Scenes FORGERY Secrets

This past week, I did an “Author Confession” post on my Instagram, where I talked about a little-known fact about A Forgery of Roses. It ended up being really fun to see people react to what I shared! So, friends, I thought this month’s newsletter could be a little dive into the process of bringing A Forgery of Roses to print and a few details that you might not have known about it. :)

For those of you who did not see last week’s Instagram post, here’s secret #1: there were actually zero roses in A Forgery of Roses up until one of the last drafts of the book. Because, surprise! A Forgery of Roses was not the original title of the book. I initially had the book under a different title for most of the editing process, but my editor and publishing team let me know that they felt the title I had picked didn’t fit the genre. So, back to the drawing board we went. We spent a while going back and forth with countless ideas. (One thing I’ve learned about myself since getting into publishing is that I’m actually incredibly picky about my titles—which sucks because titles are hard enough as it is!)

It finally got to a point where my team and I were on board with the word “Forgery.” A Forgery of… what though? Nothing that was in the book as it was fit well into that final blank. And then one day, I was out on a walk pushing my babies in a stroller and Marco Poloing with a writer friend, and I said “You know what would be a pretty title? A Forgery of Roses. Too bad there are no roses in my book.”

But then I had the thought… “There are no roses in my book… right now. But there could be?”

I stewed on that for a while.

It didn’t take me long to realize that roses would fit quite easily into the book. There already was a different kind of flower that grew around the Harris’s manor home—Magnolias, if I remember correctly—and I’d been toying with the idea of creating a magical gel for the oil paint that Myra used.

So I added in the ladyroses and ended up loving the metaphor they brought into the story of beautiful things masking dangerous thorns.

Which brings me to secret #2: What was the original title of A Forgery of Roses? I still look back at this title with some fondness, though my editorial team was 100% correct that it definitely did not sound like a fantasy. It read very horror, but, in my defense, there were a lot more horror vibes to the original drafts! I had to pull it back some from the grotesque and lean more into fantasy as revisions progressed. But the original title was The Crimson in the Quiet. More on the horror-ness of that later. :)

Secret #3 was another one mentioned in my instagram post. It’s that the roses, once I did add them, were initially always frozen or covered in snow in every instance they showed up. If you’ve read the book, you’ll likely remember the cold, wintry atmosphere. So when the gorgeous cover landed in my inbox with the burning rose front and center, I gasped (because I was obsessed with the art) and then was like… guess I’m adding in burning roses so this will all fit!

Back to my draft I went, and it was then that I incorporated the first line (which I became very fond of): “When ladyroses burn, they bleed.”

But what was the original first line? Secret #4: “Three corpses stalk me everywhere I go.”

See what I meant earlier about this book being much more horror-esque when I originally wrote it? I leaned into some of my favorite tropes of gothic literature when I was writing the first draft. In those early days of the manuscript, Myra was not haunted by actual ghosts, but rather psychological ones. She saw her dead parents around every turn, and since she did not know where they had gone or how they had died, she’d always imagine a new, different, terrifying manner of death for them when she’d glimpse them in her shadow. It was a fun exercise to see her psychological scars from having been abandoned by her caretakers at a young age. The third ghost was actually a portrayal of her fear of what might happen to Lucy if she couldn’t provide for her. She lived in constant fear that if she did not bring home enough money, her sister would starve.

While it was fun to write, it ultimately seemed to confuse everyone who read the book. “But wait, why are there ghosts?” “Is her sister actually dead?” “Why don’t the ghosts attack her or something?” It became clear pretty quick that the concept wasn’t serving its intended purpose, so it got the axe. But don’t worry, I have other projects in the works (not Den of Liars-related) where I get to explore psychological haunting! So sit tight for that one day!

Secret #5 has to do with the production of Forgery’s audiobook. My team had sent over a list of words they wanted to make sure the narrator pronounced correctly (definitely a common thing in fantasy, since we make up so many words). I don’t remember exactly which words they were asking for clarification on, but I remember looking at the list and being like… “I dunno. Your guess is as good as mine!”

Maybe most authors aren’t like me, but I don’t often really care how things are pronounced. For example, with Sing Me Forgotten-related things, there were a lot of French words, and while I do speak French, I didn’t always pronounce Emeric’s or Cyril’s names the French way. Sometimes I pronounced them very American, sometimes they would come out in a weird Franglais. It kind of depended on who I was talking to. So next time you see me at an event, don’t feel embarrassed if you’re not sure how to pronounce something from one of my books! Odds are… I don’t know how to pronounce it, either.

Secret #6 is that Lucy was actually originally age 5 in my outline, then age 8 in my first draft. It became clear pretty quickly that their relationship would be significantly more powerful if they were closer in age so that they could have more of an equal bond. It was also important to me to showcase Lucy’s strength, brilliance, and fortitude, and that was difficult to do when she was such a young child. Bringing her up in age helped me delve into her character and personality a lot more and really hone in on the complexity of their sister relationship.

Secret #7: A Forgery of Roses required the least revision out of any of the books I have written (published and unpublished). The book basically poured out of me from day one. I think I put together the outline around February 2020, drafted it in less than two months, and blazed through revisions (both on my own and then with my editor) so it was all done by early 2021.

This is the only book I have written so far that did not require me to completely unravel the entire book in order to piece it back together (or rewrite entire sections—or the entirety of the novel, as was the case with Sing Me Forgotten). It’s like Myra’s story dropped into my head, and there was very little that changed about the plot from the outline to the final published project. The way it came together so easily was really fun, and I’m fully expecting that to have been a one-time thing, because it seems that “writing the book the wrong way first” seems to be my MO. (HAHAHAHAHA *cries*)

Secret #8: I get asked sometimes why I chose to have August be the one with anxiety instead of Myra, and I thought this would be a fun one to answer here. The most straightforward answer is that I felt it was really important to include a character who lives with mental health struggles, as that is something I certainly lived through as a teen, and I know how much it means to see our experiences reflected in the books we read. And while I definitely think that we have a long way to go toward mental health representation in books, most of the representation I have seen so far in YA has been that of girls with mental health struggles, not boys. I chose to have it be August because I wanted to show that it’s absolutely normal for boys to live with this, too, and that it doesn’t make them any less attractive or any less of a hero than the edgy, tattooed, confident bad boys that we typically get as our male love interests. :)

As a little treat, I thought it could be fun to give away one of the UK copies of A Forgery of Roses I’ve got in my office closet! It’s a paperback, and it’s signed! And, for fun, I’ll throw in a bookmark and the gorgeous digital art by Julie Lochridge that I sent out for the book’s original preorder campaign, since I still have a handful of prints left! (see the above image—minus the signed bookplate. It’ll be five character cards, the two images of August and Myra, and then the bookmark) To enter, like and comment on this post! (see the bottom of the email) This will be open until October 10, 2024 at 11:59pm. Within a week of that date, I’ll randomly select a winner and contact them via email. The winner will just need to provide a valid shipping address (US only, sorry! I have to limit the number of things I send out of the country due to shipping costs!)

Until next month <3

Thank you so much for being here! I’m so looking forward to sharing more about Den of Liars in the coming months! Thank you to everyone who has told their friends about my books, shared about them online, and left positive reviews on Goodreads/Amazon/B&N/etc. You all are the best, and I definitely do not deserve you. :)

Happy reading!