Welcome To Our Substack

What Kind of Posts to Expect

We are incredibly excited to officially welcome you to our Substack!

This is where we’ll be sharing announcements, behind-the-scenes details, and early looks at Because I Killed Him and the upcoming second book in The Nine Gentlemen series.

And when we say early, we mean it. Everything here will be shared before it makes its way to Instagram, so if you want to be among the first to see what’s coming next, this is the place to be.

Here are just a few of the things we’ll be sharing over the coming months:

• Because I Killed Him character art

• Announcements and teasers for the Because I Killed Him audiobook

• Behind-the-scenes details about the characters and world of Because I Killed Him

• The inspirations behind The Nine Gentlemen series

• A look into our writing process

• Book Two title

• Book Two cover

• Book Two release date

• Book Two character art

• Book Two writing progress and sneak peeks

There’s a lot we’ve been keeping to ourselves, and we’re very happy to finally have a place to start sharing some of it with you.

But we didn’t want our very first post to only include a list of things to come. So, to start things off, we thought we’d share the meaning behind the final chapter-header quote in Because I Killed Him, from Chapter 61.

We loved as fiercely as we loathed and erred as deeply as we triumphed. Yet perhaps our gravest folly lay in the lie we told ourselves and repeated to each other with equal conviction: that all love is righteous and all hatred wicked.

—THE DANDIES

Most of the chapter-header quotes in Because I Killed Him come from characters you meet within the story itself, while others are attributed to unfamiliar names. Some belong to characters you’ll never meet, but many belong to people who will be introduced in Book Two or later in the series.

“The Dandies” isn’t a single character, but the unofficial name of Bruce Waldsten’s friend group when he was a student at Grandmaster University. Bruce briefly mentions this group to Loredana in Because I Killed Him, but their significance and what happened between them will unfold throughout the series.

So, who were the Dandies?

Well… we won’t say just yet whether this is all of them. But we can share these names:

• Bruce and Evelyn Waldsten — Loredana’s parents

• Daisy Waldsten — Loredana’s aunt

• Phillipa and Lionel Prew — Edmund’s parents

• Winston and Florence Glass — Jerome’s parents

• Theodore Reeve

• Rafe Hardy

• Lawrence Hussey — Irene’s father

• Jay Hussey — Irene’s uncle

Of course, characters like Edmund, Loredana, Charlotte, Jack, Dickie, and Jerome are at the heart of The Nine Gentlemen series, but when we began building their stories, we wanted to understand in detail where each of them came from and what had happened before they were born that influenced who they would become.

We’ve spent a lot of time plotting the history of the Dandies: their friendships, their conflicts, the things they did to one another, and the things they did for one another. Some of those choices were good, others weren’t, and decades later, the consequences are still unfolding.

There are hints of this history scattered throughout Because I Killed Him, and their significance will become much more apparent as the series continues. The friendships, grudges, loyalties, betrayals, loves, and hatreds of one generation have left their fingerprints all over the next.

Which brings us back to that quote.

What do you think happened between the Dandies? And if you don’t have any theories about them yet, we’d love to hear your theories about Book Two in general. Drop your guesses and suspicions in the comments. We genuinely love reading them!

It’s always fun to find out whether we’re being as sneaky as we think we are hehe… or whether some of you have already figured out exactly where this is going.

Thank you so much for subscribing and for being here for our very first post. We hope you enjoyed this little glimpse behind the curtain, and we can’t wait to share more with you soon.

Until next time!

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