NEWS

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Amethysts & Alchemy is HERE!!!!!! (Plus an awesome Bone Whisperer update at the bottom!!)

Jul 30, 20242 min read

I am so incredibly excited to announce my neurospicy, rivals-to-lovers, cozy romantic fantasy, Amethysts & Alchemy, is out now in Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook, and Kindle Unlimited (with the audiobook releasing the next few days)! 🥳

This book is so important to me - not just as an author, but as a neurodiverse person who has often struggled to find my place in a complex and daunting world. It is my hope that by writing this book, others who have struggled with the same will feel better seen and accepted 🙏🏻💚

But this book isn't just for my neurospicy peers. It also has:

💎 A mineral-based magic system 💎 A badass alchemist / pharmacist FMC 💎 Laura Croft meets Lessons in Chemistry vibes 💎 An emotional support pig that steals the show 💎 Airplanes, spelunking, and ancient Chinese history 💎 Rivals-to-lovers romance (and OMG does it smolder!) 💎 Footnotes for those of us who want alllllll the random facts

Thank you so much for allowing me to continue sharing my stories with you. I truly hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! 💚

PS: If you're a member of Indie Fantasy Addicts, Amethysts and Alchemy is a Featured Read that will score you an extra 60 POINTS this month! And if you're not a member of IFA, what're you waiting for? We're smack-dab in the middle of the Summer Reading Challenge and having a blast!! Come join us!

As if all of that wasn't exciting enough, the Bone Whisperer Chronicles Special Edition Duologies have arrived!!

Britt and I will be packing and shipping these gorgeous babies all day today, so our responses will be a little slower than usual! Also, we have several hundred orders to fulfill, so please hold off on emailing us about status updates until August 5th.

Thank you so much in advance for your patience and support- we can't wait for ALL of these beautiful books to be in your hands!

If you're reading this on Goodreads or on my blog, be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get the most exciting updates sent directly to your inbox!

Behind the scenes secrets and some tempered tea on background drama 🍵

Rachel

Jul 20, 20248 min read

For those of you who have not yet received your Gilded Blood omnibuses, PLEASE SEE MY NOTE BELOW (also in red) before sending us shipping inquiries🙏Also, Britt wants to make sure you read her note at the very bottom of this email :)

***

I write you this long-awaited update grimy, achy, and covered in cardboard dust (but happy and grateful to be here talking to some of my favorite humans on the planet).

I stalled like crazy before doing a Gilded Blood Special Edition Omnibus because I never expected or wanted to be on the fulfillment end of things; like most authors, I'd much rather be writing books instead of shipping them. For that reason, I hired a logistics manager to make sure I could stay out of the warehouse and holed up in my office where I belong.

However, unfortunate circumstances* required me to part ways with my logistics manager back in April, under the following terms: they would fulfill the initial 1,500 Kickstarter orders, while I oversaw the incoming additional shipment of 2,000 books.

*Without spilling too much tea, I'll just say we had very different ideas on project management, customer service standards, and scheduling/organization.

Now, your initial thought - like mine - might have been, "Oh, wow, 2,000 books? That's a lot. You'd need a very large closet or a modest-sized shed to store all of those."

Oh, no, my sweet, doe-eyed friend. 2,000 books - especially when each of those books are 3+ inches thick and weigh over 4 pounds - would not fit in a closet, shed, or even a 2-car garage. 2,000 books, which take up 10 full-sized pallets, require a much bigger space than that. Oh, and did I mention the weight? These chonkers are not dainty; 2,000 of them weigh nearly 10,000 pounds. In other words, I couldn't just haul them down to my basement.

So there became the not-so-simple matter of finding adequate space to keep them, along with expensive, heavy machinery to move them into said space.

And let's not forget obtaining enough shipping materials, which also had to come on pallets and cost around $700 JUST TO SHIP from TX to CO. (Uline, ever think about opening a warehouse in Denver? Cause you should totally open a warehouse in Denver.)

This is about a quarter of the shipping supplies we had to get.

After miraculously arranging for space, materials, and temp employees in time for the books to arrive, Delivery Day actually went better than I'd anticipated. The delivery man, Chris, even had an electric pallet jack and generously helped us bring in the heaviest pallets (~2,000 pounds each) on a 100-degree day. We ❤️ you, Chris!

What I wasn't expecting in terms of complications was the level of production damage, which significantly slowed down shipping as we then had to do a QA check of every single book before I could even sign them. In all, around 25% of the holographic rainbow foil books were damaged.

On a directly-related note, we'll be doing a huge Scratch 'n' Dent sale in the coming weeks, so if the omnibus was not in the cards for you financially before, I plan to discount the damaged ones by as much as 40-50%. The imperfections aren't even that bad; I just can't in good conscience sell them at full price. I'll make an announcement about that once we're ready to launch the sale.

To my printer's immense credit, they are investigating what went wrong and will get back to us about potentially replacing some of the 300+ books that sustained production damage.

All complications aside, I'm incredibly proud to say that Britt and I (with the much-appreciated and invaluable help of Lilly Rose, Elizabeth, Amy, my stepson, Josh, and my husband, Aaron) shipped out hundreds and hundreds of books this past week, finishing the second batch even as my previous PM was still sending out final stragglers from the first batch. (Though, in his defense, they'd been recently hit by a literal hurricane.)

If you were in that first batch, and particularly if you were a KS supporter, please know how sorry I am that you had to wait as long as you did. Britt and I have done everything we can to ensure that never happens again.

We made about 20 UPS/USPS drop-offs with my car packed this full.

Deep breathsAnyway. Now that the vast majority of the books are in your hands or well on their way, I want to thank you all so much for your support, kindness, and patience as we maneuvered through this VERY unfamiliar territory and did the best we could. Moving forward, all special edition book orders will be fulfilled directly by me and/or my team. We expect future projects, like the Bone Whisperer Special Edition Duology, to go MUCH smoother and faster now that we've handling everything ourselves and are better prepared to handle large volumes of books

ATTENTION: If you have not yet received your omnibus, DO NOT PANIC. There are a few reasons why that might be:

1) I just dropped off the last batch at UPS/USPS this morning, so your package may not have been scanned yet.

2) The hurricane in Texas and recent tech outage is slowing down deliveries all over the country.

3) You may have ordered your omnibus with another book that has not yet been released, like Amethysts & Alchemy or the Bone Whisperer Chronicles. In that case, all of your books will be shipped together once those preorder titles are available.

4) UPS/USPS may need additional information from you, which Britt will reference in her note at the end of this update.

Speaking of the Bone Whisperer Special Edition, we expect those to arrive any day now. I was hoping they'd be here by today, as I was advised they would be (and therefore stayed home instead of camping with my husband and friends this weekend😫), but customs are a fickle B and I haven't received updated tracking yet. If they do get here before San Diego Comic Con, I will ship as many as I can before I have to leave for the airport. Otherwise, we'll start shipping them out as soon as I get back.

Lastly, but by far not least: Amethysts & Alchemy.

The early reviews have been steadily coming in and I am floored by the overwhelmingly positive reception. As I've mentioned, I'm pretty nervous about this book because the main character will be too prickly for many, even though her character arc is among my favorites of any of my FMCs. That said, I cannot wait for you to meet Delaney Stone, who is so incredibly important to me, both as an author and a neurodivergent woman. The MMC, Heath, might also be my favorite to date. (Yes, even swoonier than an incubus, if you can believe it!)

Also, the audiobook is done and I'm 23 already chapters in. To say I am in love with Lia Langola's performance would be a massive understatement. She captured Delaney PERFECTLY, as though reading the words straight from my mind. As soon as I have the preorder link, most likely a few days before publication, I'll post it here and on my socials. I cannot wait for you to listen!!

BTW, if you preordered a signed copy from my shop, I'll do my best to get that to you before its official publication on 7/30!

Thank you so much again for being here during what has been an overwhelming period of growth and change. Your positivity and humor has brought a smile to my face even during the sweatiest, grimiest, and crankiest of moments.

I love you all - even you, Karen.

(IYKYK.)

Cheers!❤️

If you're reading this on Goodreads or on my blog, be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get the most exciting updates sent directly to your inbox!

A Word from our Queen Helper Bee 👑🐝

Rachel is being wayyyy too nice up above you guys! I won’t dive too deep into it but if you guys knew even a smidge of what’s really been going on BTS your jaws would be on the floor with what we've been dealing with. We are so grateful for the lessons we’ve learned over the last few months since I’ve been on board with Team Rachel and we’ll be making some really important changes going forward with our fulfillment processes.

We cannot thank you enough for communicating with us in such a kind and polite manner while you’ve been waiting FOREVER for your beautiful books and even while dealing with some unfortunate mishaps in quality upon arrival due to brutal post-workers (and absolutely not due to “fragile” being stickered or handwritten on your boxes). To the Karens - just maybe, mayyybbeee try talking to us the way you’d like someone else to talk to you if you needed help getting an issue resolved. Idk.. just a thought.. Although if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re likely NOT the problem.

On that note - if you have already received your tracking number but have yet to receive your order and think it may be stuck in transit - OR you haven’t received any info but have yet to receive your order - here are a couple tips to troubleshoot and keep in mind:

Contact your local USPS (not the 1-800 #, but your local PO #), provide them with your tracking # and check to make sure your address is complete and correct. We had a handful of orders come in that were missing apartment numbers or had incorrect zip codes, etc and as much as we wish we could help fix that, once the packages have been sent out to the address you provided at checkout, it’s a matter of having the carrier intercept and resolve.
Once you’ve contacted your local PO and are still in need then OF COURSE please send us an email and we will be happy to help take care of you and get things figured out.
If your order had another item that was also a pre-order item (ie: The Bone Whisperer SE and/ or Amethysts & Alchemy) then your order will ship once we have received all items needed to fulfill your order.

Any other questions about orders, please email us at support@rachelrener.com!

OK! Moving on to WAY more fun stuff!

YOU GUYS! HOLY MOLY GUACAMOLE!!! I just finished reading The Bone Whisperer Chronicles (The Girl Who Talks to Ashes and The Boy Who Lurks in Shadows) and OH EM GEEEE!!!! I am not even kidding - this duo has skyrocketed to my ALL TIME FAVES of books I have ever read in my entire 35 years of existence! I had so much fun buddy-reading this with two other Rachel super fans, Mollie and Brandy (who also happens to be a friend from my local book club) and we really enjoyed sharing our thoughts, theories (and maybe, nope definitely, even tears) throughout our reading sessions. Rachel said I even got a major plot twist right and I was so proud of myself haha!

So on that note, stay tuned for something AMAZING coming this October regarding this fantastic duology! I’m literally texting and calling Rachel daily about our shipment of the special edition for this duo because I NEEEEED IT on my shelf PRONTO! So do you, so hurry up and go snag the preorder!

Alrighty, that’s all I have for now fam! I’m SO excited to hang out and help Rachel at San Diego Comic Con next week while also getting to visit some friends and family while I’m there. Fun fact: San Diego is my hometown where I was born and raised so you already know I’m sneaking in some beach time too, perfect timing for a little summer break finale.

XoXoX

Britt 🫶

(Many of) the second batch of omnibuses are a-go!! 💫

support385039

Jul 15, 20241 min read

Hi, everyone!

This is a short but super important update to let you know the second batch of 2,000 omnibuses arrived on Wednesday and we've already shipped out 250 of them! So if you ordered your omnibus after April 2nd, we'll be working on getting yours out over the next two weeks. (But please wait until July 22nd to email us about your order if you haven't received tracking info by then because we are positively slammed with books and boxes!📚📦)

In the meantime, here's a lovely photo dump of what our last 60 hours have looked like!

We moved nearly 10,000 lbs of books on Wednesday!

Girl Power💪

Pallet Party!!🎉

Quality Control Check

Signing, signing, signing...

Cheers and happy reading!❤️

A Word from our Queen Helper Bee 👑🐝

Keeping this super short because we have even MORE boxes to unload and pack, but I just wanted to take a minute to say how fun it's been to sleep over at Rachel's house and flirt with Terrance and read The Girl Who Talks to Ashes while sitting next to the author on the couch! 😂

(I am LOVING this one by the way!!!!)

XoXoX,

Britt 🫶