A: This is an adult epic fantasy, and the reading level tracks. As far as content, consider this series PG-13. There is violence, very occasional bad language, and tense situations that may not be appropriate for younger kids. There is no spice. All the romance is closed door/fade-to-black (seriously, I write these books WITH MY MOTHER!).

A: Throughout the series, there are scenes of mild to moderate violence, some moderate on-page depictions for torture, and occasional non-explicit references to trauma, sexual assault, and self harm.

Content warnings are a changing landscape. We’re empathetic to the concerns of our readers while not wanting to spoil the story. If you have specific concerns or questions on this topic, please send us a message.

A: The Palimar Saga is a planned 5-book series with each book either written or heavily outlined.

We have several companion novellas and a few spinoff novels and series planned. But our main focus for now is finishing the series. We hope to publish book 3-5 in the next three to four years.

A: YES!!!! Kate Reading and Michael Kramer (narrators for Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, and many other great authors) have produced an audiobook of Remnant. The equally talented but lesser-known narrator couple Aaron Smith and Michela Schulthies narrated Uprising, book two of the series, and are currently producing The Smuggler’s Deal, a prequel novella. Our audiobooks are available on most platforms, including Audible and direct from our bookshop. Click here to listen to the first six chapters. We plan to produce audio versions of our books as soon as possible following print and eBook publications.

A: After months of running the hamster wheel of querying for agents and publishers, with a few favorable hits and a LOT of polite form letters, we felt it wasn’t worth hustling for months or years, only to wait even longer for the slow churn of a traditional publisher to get our book out there. We also felt our priority should be maintaining creative control of our content.

Many agents and publishers gave us feedback along the lines of, “It’s a great book. You’re writing is clean, your characters dynamic, and your story engaging. However, we feel we’re not the right fit for this book.” An encouraging let down, for sure, but at the same time, watching these publishers roll out formulaic “retelling” style books one after another gave us a good idea why we’d been rejected. Publishers aren’t looking for original stories from unknown authors.

A: We have very different skill sets and working styles. C. R. Jacobson holds the trophy for the original idea and some of the overarching themes. K. R. Solberg puts words on the screen, usually late at night or early in the morning, depending on the brand of insomnia that day. C. R. Jacobson turns those words into prose people will actually read, after which K. R. Solberg makes sure the nitty gritty plot details and character arcs stay on track. Click here to learn more details about our process.

TL;DR: To the best of our ability, we don’t use gen-AI in any portion of our writing or art process, and we generally have a negative view of it’s use in art creation.

OUR USE: We avoid gen-AI in every part of our writing process. As co-writers, we use many tools to help us brainstorm, plan, write, and edit. Some tools we use have gen-AI features (Microsoft Office Suite, Google Drive, AutoCrit Editing Software) but you can easily disable or avoid those.

Predictive AI features like spell check and grammar analytics have been around far longer than gen-AI and are helpful tools for certain parts of our process. But at no point do we export any creativity, inspiration, judgement, or expertise in developing our work to a machine. That, to us, is the fundamental reason why gen-AI has no place in our creative process.

I (K R) create much of the art that accompanies our books. I mainly draw on paper or in ProCreate, a digital drawing app that has no gen-AI. I also use Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator (ironically abbreviated AI), and InDesign. These tools do have gen-AI features. They’re harder to avoid in Photoshop, since some of the classic content-aware tool engines have been replaced by a type of gen-AI. My personal principal is that I continue to use the tools I’ve always used, provided they are as reliable and non-invasive to my human process as they’ve always been. That may be too much nuance for some. But then, I’m here to make human art, not to pass a purity test or care about gotcha moments.