If you would have told me in 2012,
the year that bore “A Queen is Knighted”, that it would take my weirdo best friend to see the book completed, I probably would have gawked at you. Joshua and I were ONLY friends at the time--no hint of romance--at the ripe age of 14. Brand new to high school, socially awkward, and both a little weird when it came to fandoms. But still, somehow, we were very good friends and he listened to all of my plot ideas for the early “A Queen is Knighted”.
We started writing together in 2014 completely by accident. Joshua knew that I was an aspiring author, day-dreaming of seeing my books on shelves in Barnes and Noble and waltzing in to sign random copies. But I had no idea that he could write. Or that he even had an interest in telling stories. It wasn’t until he texted me a silly, one-paragraph story that was left open-ended. He had baited me, and I took it. I wrote back the next scene, and then he continued it, and then I added more, until after a few hours I called him and excitedly told him that he was actually really good! I was shocked at the amount of detail that he had written with and found myself seriously stretching my own storytelling skills and vocabulary just to keep up with him. Thus, our writing partnership began...by ping-pong texting.
For the next five years, all the way up to our marriage in 2019, we continued that same story together (unofficially titled “Our Story”). Throughout the remainder of highschool, through college, and even during his 10 month period of military training several states away, we continued to set aside time to ping-pong parts of “Our Story” throughout the weeks. It’s currently sitting in a Word document at nearly 45 thousand words ~ roughly 100 pages of accumulated texts.
Shortly after we got married, though, I hit a massive wall in writing ``A Queen is Knighted'' that discouraged me so much that I stuck everything--five drafts, millions of notes, pictures, everything--into a file called “archived” and was ready to discard it permanently. I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. Seven years of failed attempts was enough for me.
But Joshua saved it. Watching me bang my head--metaphorically--against the wall, he came over and asked where I was stuck. I explained everything that was going wrong and instead of letting me give up on something that he knew was my dream, he basically outlined the entire novel and fixed all of my plot holes over the course of the next five hours. We were up until nearly three in the morning and at the end of our writing session, I knew two things: one, I finally had a complete outline that I loved, and two, I wouldn’t be able to write it without Josh’s help.
We stopped working on “Our Story” and instead started working on “A Queen is Knighted”, together. It was no longer “My Story”, and with Joshua’s help, it took us three months to start and finish the first draft and another six months to edit the complete second draft. In roughly nine months, Joshua and I together accomplished what I couldn’t do on my own in seven years; I call that a pretty impressive team.
Going forward, we plan to finish The Tunockian Chronicles together and have already started the outlining process of book 2. We also have big plans for “Our Story” and can’t wait to resume writing that book with the intent to release it!
ORDER THE BOOK NOW!
Three Kingdoms. Two wars. And one queen who is desperate to save them all.
COMING 6/8/21
Website: https://rjsetser.com/
Ebook Distribution Link: https://books2read.com/a-queen-is-knighted
AUTHOR BIO
R.J. Setser is a pseudonym for wife and husband duo, Rayleigh and Joshua Setser. High-school sweethearts who found their happily-ever-after in 2019, Rayleigh and Joshua have been writing together since 2015 and finished their debut novel, A Queen is Knighted in 2020. They live in a small town in Texas with their 2 dogs, Watson and Rosie, and 1 cat, Yuna. They spend most of their time juggling Joshua’s military life and Rayleigh’s civilian life. In their free time, they can be found with both of their families at the lake, reading or writing, and quite possibly playing sword-fighting video games “for research”. Find them on Instagram @r_j_setser or online at rjsetser.com.