Two years ago in May, Marie and I said ‘let’s do this’ and launched a whirlwind four months of writing. Most weeks, we put down 10k words or more, and by the time October rolled around, we had a 225k word book draft for what would eventually become The Mask of Mirrors.

Last year in May, we got our first offer for the book and received an enthusiastic proto-response from the editor who made the offer we eventually accepted.

This year, we have a finalized book (at least, we’ve finished with the proofread pass and ARCs are coming soon), a new publication date of January 2021, and a cover debut and excerpt on io9.

After a winter hiatus for a whole rash of life stuff, we’re back into drafting book 2 and it’s shaping up to be so much fun. I’m looking forward to what next May’s updated will be.

This post originally appeared on Alyc Helms’s website.