Hello fellow traveler,

Oh my goodness, my fantasy epic The Rooted and the Winged releases on Kickstarter next Tuesday!! This Earth Day. I am beyond excited to finally share this book of my heart with you.

A reminder that if you want to be notified right when it goes live, you can sign up here! If you're an early bird faerie, there will be a limited number of discounted SIGNED paperback books!!

​https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samanthacurran/rooted-and-the-winged-an-illustrated-faerie-fantasy-novel​

Kickstarter

To be completely honest, I've struggled with fountain pens in the past. They never held the ink right for me and I was so nervous about making a mistake because it's quite permanent. But I knew I wanted to hand ink The Rooted and the Winged so it had the feel of Tolkien and the Golden Age illustrators I love so much.

I picked up a fountain pen that my grandfather had used before he passed away, that I had never tried using before. And it just connected for me. The ink flowed and soon I wasn't afraid anymore. I feel like a part of him was with me, guiding my hand.

I inked over 43 illustrations for the book. And I managed to get myself to part with 9 originals as part of the book's Kickstarter release. So you can hold in your hands one of the illustrations that will appear in the book. They are first come first serve! You can pick your favorite out of the 9.

Book Art

I had someone ask me, why should I buy the book through your Kickstarter? Well you don't have to - it is releasing later, on July 1st, wide on Amazon and other platforms. *But* I wanted to make this copy of the book something super special, to celebrate its release with you. A release only happens once after all!

So I add an extra 24 pages to the Kickstarter edition! These extra pages include:

• 12 extra illustration throughout the book featuring character art
• A behind-the-scenes section where you can see how I created the illustrations of the The Rooted and the Winged, and my thought process behind them.
• Plus deleted scenes from the book!

These deleted scenes include a secret song that never made it into the final book, a visceral backstory scene of a very difficult moment in Fafnir's life, and a fun scene where Isolde, Fafnir's sister, sleeps over at his tree house - and complains about how there's only one chair because he's never had any guests before. This scene still amuses me even though it didn't make the cut into the final book, and I'm thrilled that I get to share it with you.

Oh, *and* I'm hand-embossing every copy I sell, just for this Kickstarter.

Here's a peek at the behind-the-scenes section!

And a glimpse of one of the extra illustrations. There will be spreads! <3

More fun facts about the Kickstarter exclusive paperback:

Book Excerpt

I want to share a little scene that I didn't plan to write, but that flowed out of me as I was lost in the story typing away. As someone who thinks deeply about the world and humanity and the underlying meaning behind things, I wanted to find places to put reflections into my book that go beyond the story into something deeper. Here is one of them:

Chapter 4: Innocence

Aisling’s mouth hung open. “How did the Mother Wind create so many faeries from her hair? She must have had so much hair. Is that why she made them so small?”

Cillian laughed. “Maybe so. Some say she has infinite volumes of hair, and so, it was no trouble for her. Others say she gave away every hair on her head that day and it took thousands of years to grow it back again. I think it is some mysterious combination of both.”

“How can two things be true at once?” Aisling pressed.

Cillian knelt before her and pointed toward the moon. It was a perfect silver disk, illuminating the black veil of the night.

“Have you seen the moon in the water at night?” he asked.

“Yes,” Aisling said. “In a great big puddle at my roots.”

“How can the moon be both at your roots and in the sky?”

Aisling pinched her brow. “I don’t know.”

“Ah, just so,” said Cillian. “I think the truest truths are beyond our understanding.”

Kitty Photo

Today's kitty photo is Hotchner spilling over the edge of the couch like liquid, because I resonate with that feel right now, haha.

Sincerely,

Samantha

P.S. Things I Love Right Now

I'm simplifying this section to say simply - the fact that my book is almost out in the world. At long last.