Hey you,

Oh my god, do you remember the first time you read Kingdom of Ash? I'm still not over mine. I don't think I ever will be.

Everyone says they wish they could read it for the first time again. Honestly? My rereads wreck me just as much. You'd think I didn't already know how it ends.

I'd only just come back to reading after ten years off, then tore through Throne of Glass and straight into ACOTAR like a maniac, with nobody to talk to about any of it. I was ready to self combust. So I made a Bookstagram account and found you lot. Best thing I ever did.

God, the hangovers though. We read to escape real life, and then the books wreck us so badly we need an escape from the escape. My Kingdom of Ash reread flattened me. Other genres, reviews, I tried everything. Nothing touched it.

So one night I picked up my iPad and went looking for therapy for my therapy.

Books for real life, drawing for the book life. Cheaper than a real therapist, and she wouldn't understand Manon.

Love,

Tracy x

P.S. Throne of Glass will always be my number one. I'll happily holiday in Velaris, but home is Terrasen.

Hey you,

You know what book merch looked like back then. Hardly any of it, and none of it felt like us. So I drew my own. I'd fuss over one line for hours. One colour. One font. Then it would click and I'd be unbearable about it.

Manon came first. Nobody was making anything for her, and I couldn't believe it. My first design was all wrong. The real one turned up in the middle of the night, me six months pregnant and panicking. A giant wyvern head, when everyone else was doing soft and pretty. I was sure you'd hate it.

You didn't. It was exactly what we needed.

The Maasverse nearly broke me. Eighteen months sitting on that idea. (Bryce's curves are there. You're welcome.) Then Shana's reel went feral and I've still never seen anything like it.

I've never made these for anyone else, you know that. I make what I'm looking for and trust you're out there feeling it too.

And it's the women who get me. I love the fictional men, obviously. But it's the badass women I keep drawing, the ones going through their shit while we go through ours. That's how I know it really is my therapy.

Love,

Tracy x