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Who is the shortest TBS character? Is it Nadine?

Also, I know Paige is tall but she’s got short girlfriend energy with Arcturus (because he’s enormous in comparison I guess)

Mélusine from The Mask Falling is probably the shortest – I imagine her about 5"1'

And honestly, as a tall woman myself, I really enjoy the comedy of Paige being objectively tall, but short compared to the Rephs. (Writing her little dialogue with Kornephoros about that was fun.) I imagine her always having been quite proud of her height, and suddenly Arcturus is all 'little dreamer' at her

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I'm sure I sound like a broken record to you by now, but I love how you've created Paige and Arcturus' relationship. Over the last five books, the evolution of their relationship is so evident. And you have been so gentle with this evolution. It is precious to see such a healthy relationship portrayed over a series, where neither character is in the shadow of the other, or feels incomplete without the other. I also love the post 'canoodling' parts where they just cuddle and touch each other.

Not at all – I've poured so much of my heart into Paige and Arcturus, especially trying to make the relationship feel balanced, it is always so lovely to hear that you like reading about them.

I love those scenes, too. Probably my favourite kind of scene to write.

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NOOO. I’m weak. I’m crying. help!!! *makes a lobotomy appointment*

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Ahh I love this answer!!

Hi Samantha! I absolutely adore Arcturus and Paige. One of the aspects of their relationship that strikes me as really unique is the fact that Arcturus doesn’t comment on Paige’s physical appearance or tell her she’s beautiful. Personally I find that whole trope that romanticizes the man telling the woman she’s beautiful really problematic in the way it affirms this idea that beauty is the most important thing about a woman and positions men in the places to validate that. I really loved that Arcturus diverges from traditional male love interests in this way and I was wondering if you could speak more on your own reasoning behind it?

I'm so glad you like them. It really means the world to me that I've been able to share them with readers – always happy to chat about them.

I agree – that trope doesn't do much for me, either. For Arcturus and Paige, it felt crucial that their attraction wasn't rooted in their physical appearances. Paige is mortal, so Arcturus being drawn to her based on how she looks made very little sense, for one thing – she's not going to look that way for long. There had to be a different sort of bond to make him risk so much to be with her.

It also seemed a little . . . safe, if that's the right word, for Arcturus to fall into classic human romance tropes. I've always been resolved to embrace the mortal/immortal romance fully, in all its strangeness and complexity, and find places to subvert expectations. I want Arcturus to feel genuinely unlike a human, and to sometimes not hit the beats a reader is likely to anticipate. I want him to throw you off a little.

As for Paige, she's a grounded and cynical person – I couldn't imagine her warming to her partner talking about how beautiful she looks, because the way she looks is something she can't control and therefore isn't, in her mind, a meaningful thing to compliment. Note she's amused by Jack Hickathrift remarking on her beauty – she sees it as him trying to take a shortcut into her confidence – and unmoved when Duckett points out how handsome Arcturus is in the colony, seeing it as irrelevant in the face of his actions.

Her demisexuality plays into this, too, as she values emotional closeness over anything else. She does find Arcturus physically attractive, but it's an extension of her emotional attraction to him. She'd like him just as much if he looked different.

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GOD 🥺🥺🥺

Hi!! I really love the way you write intimate scenes. They’re so understated and sweet. I have had a little hang-up in the Bone Season series that I was wondering if you could clarify - when Warden and Paige are together and you say something like “he gathered me into his arms,” do you mean she’s sitting in his lap? I’m never quite sure how to imagine it. No pressure to answer this if it’s too awkward!

Thank you.

Yes, I must admit I do like that phrase. In one case he's literally picking up her entire body (when she's drunk and floppy in The Mask Falling), but generally it means he's drawing her in close – if he's gathering her to his chest, for example, he's essentially giving her a hug. 

I like the verb 'gather' in their quiet scenes, as it indicates an assembly, a joining – of the two of them, but also Paige feeling like all her fractured pieces, all the people she has to be to survive, are coming back together when he holds her.

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Oh my GOD I love this

In TBS1, how did Arcturus get the deer? Did it understand Gloss? What happened to it after he left?

Gloss is a language that speaks directly to the spirit. Even if the animal (or person) doesn't understand it the way polyglots do, their spirit gets it, so it can create an emotional effect. It's why Arcturus sometimes speaks in Gloss to Paige even though she can't know the exact meaning – he knows it will comfort her regardless, because her spirit recognises it.

That's how he tamed Nuala. He just spoke to her a lot until she trusted him.

He let Nuala go before he left the colony. I imagine she managed to get through the woods and is now roaming free somewhere in the wilds of England, having found some deer friends, occasionally wondering what happened to the friend who fed her apples. 

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Would warden be into tiktok

Depends on the TikTok. I think he'd be into the sea shanty trend.

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Hi! Could there be a moment in future TBS books where Warden is the one who needs reassuring or Rephaim don't need to feel that kind of emotion?

I’m afraid I can't say very much about future books without spoilers, but in terms of whether or not Rephaim can be in need of reassurance broadly, I will just point you to one of my personal favourite moments in The Mask Falling: 

Every now and then, Arcturus flinched awake. Every time, he would look around the room with hot eyes. Like something caught in a trap. Seeing me nearby, he would quieten and return his head to the cushion.  

Make of this what you will.

#fuck me up #the bone season #the mask falling #arcturus mesarthim

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You’ve said you toyed with a pregnancy plot line for TBS w\ Paige and Arcturus but decided against it. I’m kinda glad about that. Anyway, when you toyed with it can you tell at what point in their relationship it was going to happen? Also, I can’t imagine either of them being okay with it. Can you tell us what their reactions would have been and when it would’ve happened? I’m very curious as I can’t imagine that happening

I think it was meant to be around Book 5 or early in Book 6. I may actually write a little 'what if’ story about it after the series is finished, as I think it would theoretically have been interesting to explore – a Rephaite trying to be a parent despite having little understanding of what a parent even is, Paige struggling to adjust, the strains and fragile joys it would have brought to their relationship. 

Ultimately I feel strongly that it would not have been right for the actual series, or, indeed, for me – I find it troubling when every love story has to result in marriage and pregnancy, and it just doesn’t make sense in the Bone Season world – but it’s an interesting thought from the perspective of character development. 

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Hi! I'm a reader who's both intrigued by the TBS series (I read the 1st one) and kinda reluctant to continue. I find the universe interesting, and if Paige didn't grew on me she didn't annoy me either, but... here it is: I am deeply uncomfortable when the love interest is a 300-500 hundred years being. Even if the relationship is as healthy as possible, the experience and wisdom inbalance is just messed up. I know it's a popular thing that can be executed well, but it also reminds me of too many IRL events.

It's not a personal attack: I have only read the 1st book therefore I don't know how things will end for everyone, nor where the romance will go. I also know that you were much younger when you began writing TBS.

I'm not asking you to change your story or your characters: if I decide to drop TBS, I'll still read and enjoy your other books (I'm a huuuuuuge fan of Priory). I just wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Have a nice day!

Hey!

I respect this response to ancient love interests. I’ve read some myself that I’ve found unsettling, where the dynamics are clearly off – it really depends on execution, as you say. 

It is a difficult thing to balance, as a creator. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of immortality, and I was hungry for something that explored the pitfalls of an immortal-mortal relationship (enmity, friendship, love) in depth, so I set out to write it. 

For me, if you’re writing any sort of relationship between a mortal and an immortal, there seems to me to be very little point in making the immortal, say, 18, because then they might as well just be mortal. All the interesting things about immortality, the things that draw me to writing those characters – the pain of losing mortal friends, the fatigue and strangeness of living for so long, the ways an unending existence would shape a person emotionally and mentally – just won’t have had much effect on them at that age. It only really works if they have more than the average human lifespan under their belt. 

With the Rephaim, I tried to make them feel ageless. Warden was never young and he will never be old – he's like a statue, carved into being, unchanging. I’ve also tried to pace the love story with care, and I remain alert to the power balance between Arcturus and Paige, which I examine on the page as much as possible. I also try to make the Rephaim feel genuinely inhuman – Warden certainly has some kinds of experience and wisdom that Paige doesn’t, but Paige is portrayed as savvier than him in other ways. She knows the human world in a way he doesn’t. (For me, Warden is a bit different from a character who used to be human and/or mortal, and has therefore built up a store of specifically human experience. More thoughts on that here.) For me, the whole point of The Bone Season is to explore the power balance and the pitfalls, rather than just using it as a trope and brushing the potential weirdness under the carpet. 

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on it, but of course, it’s all up to personal taste and boundaries. But just a heads up that I am aware of it, and it is, in a way, the whole point of the series. 

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😍😍😍

Loved TMF! And I just want to thank you so much for writing a tender, intimate sex scene that wasn't penetration-centred & focused female pleasure. And I loved that Arcturus wanted Paige to show him how to touch her, too. It's my fave love scene penned! I personally find the kissing-straight-to-penetration scenes in books/tv really yikes as a woman. I was wondering if you intentionally moved against the grain for m/f sex scenes, or if there was no motivation behind the type of sex shown?

Okay, I said I wouldn’t answer spoiler questions for a year but . . . I really like this one and I’m worried it will get buried in my inbox, so I’m going to tag and hope for the best. 

Spoilers below the cut. 

First and foremost, I wrote the scene that felt most natural for the characters at this point in the story. Aside from her encounter with Reuben, this is Paige’s first ever sexual experience. It made perfect sense to me that Arcturus would want to focus on her. He is a generous lover anyway, and finds a lot of pleasure in his partner’s pleasure – but I thought it was especially important for him to let Paige lead at this moment, given that (1) she is far less experienced than he is, (2) her only other sexual experience was painful and traumatising, and (3) she is trusting him with her body, which has been through a great deal of physical abuse. As well as that, Arcturus is physically much larger and stronger than Paige, with the ability to restrain her, which she knows. 

So he wants her to be confident that she can control what happens. He wants her to be able to focus on herself and how she feels. He knows people have put their hands on her body without her consent. He asks her to show him how to touch her not only because he wants to know what makes her feel good, but also how to avoid what makes her feel trapped and afraid. There was no way he was going to centre his own pleasure or expect her to reciprocate, and honestly, I think it would have been wrong of him to do that. 

However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t conscious of this being an M/F scene. I did want to make a point of centring Paige and not leaping straight from kissing to PIV. I agree with you that mainstream media doing that so often is quite strange – while I imagine it’s common in the romance genre to see M/F scenes that explore intimacy in separate scenes to PIV, it’s less common than I’d like in the media I’ve personally consumed. I also wanted to make sure there was explicit verbal consent in the scene. Again, that was important for their characters, but also because I think that we, as creators, can help destroy the false idea that verbal consent is not sexy. 

So there was intention, yes. But it was also just what made sense for Paige and Arcturus. Thank you so much for the kind words about it. 

#the mask falling spoilers #the bone season #warden and paige #fuck me up #consent

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I love that scene where he smashes the vase.. idk why

I just finished TMF a couple days ago and I've been thinking about it NON-STOP. I love Paige so much, but you really put her through the ringer, I was yelling "JUST LET HER BE HAPPY." Also, I'm wondering if you ever plan on writing something from Arcturus's POV? He's still such a mystery, I'd love to see what goes through his mind. And one last thing, I desperately want to see him lose control once in anger/grief. Do you plan to write something like that ever? Thank you for this series <3

I’ve always felt strongly that letting the reader into Arcturus’s perspective would damage his intrigue, mostly because I just don’t think it’s possible for me, a human, to do justice to a non-human’s perspective. It wouldn’t feel strange enough. I am creatively restricted by my own humanity. I did give you a glimpse in The Song Rising, when Paige accidentally reverses his gift and sees his memory of meeting Terebell. I tried to write it in a broken, surreal style, but I don’t think I could sustain it for very long 

Arcturus has actually lost control in anger once, if you recall, in The Bone Season. He smashes a vase after Nashira visits him in the tower. Rephaite self-expression and emotion are subjects I want to explore throughout the series.

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oh hell, now I gotta go sleuth through that book again!

Thank you for TMF!! I stayed up until 7am three nights in a row to read it 😭 and Re-reading TBS, when Seb tells Paige there’s a secret he can’t tell her, do we the reader know what it is 4 books in? Or is it different to the secrets we’ve found out in the latest book?

You’ll know when you get there. There is a hint in The Mask Falling, but you’d have to be sharp-eyed. 

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TMF was 🥵

I...I just... I have no words. That was absolutely the most beautiful intimacy scene I’ve ever read in my life

TMF or Priory? 

(Thank you, either way. I put a lot into those scenes.) 

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If paiges poltergeist scar is always a little colder than the rest of her does that mean Arcturus constantly has a cold back cause that’s just a really sad thing to be thinking about 😢😢😭

Yes, he does. 

💔

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Literally how hard can it be for a man to be as gentle, understanding and caring as Arcturus? Now I'll be single forever and I blame you Samantha.

♥️

#lol yep

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Arcturus, Warden of the Mesarthim, realising that he wants Paige Mahoney to h*ld his h*nd: Hmm.