This guest post is from Aarya Marsden, who isn’t shy about her love of Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series.
Aarya Marsden is a pseudonym for an Indian-American college student and long-time romance reader. Her favorite authors include Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, Lucy Parker, Kresley Cole, Alisha Rai, Lisa Kleypas, Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, Meredith Duran, Mina V. Esguerra, Kate Clayborn, and many more.
You can follow @Aarya_Marsden on Twitter, where she gushes about romance novels and is a firm advocate for a happily-ever-after.
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Wolf Rain by Nalini Singh is out this week on June 4. This is not a review for Wolf Rain, because I am not capable of writing an objective and well-reasoned review for a book that
a) I’ve been waiting for since 2012
b) is in my favorite series of all time
c) is the reason why I kissed my iPad when I received an ARC.
My fangirl status is fairly obvious if you remember my rant a couple months ago and realize that I own autographed copies of all of Nalini Singh’s PNR/UF books.
You may not be a Psy/Changeling fan, but I think you know what I’m talking about. You love certain books and authors without reservation. You eagerly comb through newsletters to find clues about the next book. When there are no more new books to read, you shrug and then start to reread with book one. When release dates are announced for the next book, you schedule vacation days and tell your family not to disturb you on threat of dismemberment. When you see the author post pre-order links on social media, you rush to preorder the book, only to realize that you’ve already pre-ordered it months ago. Sometimes you even cancel the pre-order and reorder it again, as if that’ll make the book come out faster. Maybe you have very pleasant dreams where you’re reading an anticipated book, only to wake up and realize with dawning horror that you still have to wait for three months. And by the time the book is released, you’ve already read the chapter one excerpt fifteen times and therefore skip directly to chapter two.
If those examples sound oddly specific to you, I plead the fifth. Being a fangirl is a lesson in patience and torture. In my experience, the lesson is skewed toward the torture. But the Torture of Waiting, like all things, has to come to an end. It’s release day!
What’s your Plan of Action? Perhaps you need to identify where you fall on this scale.
LEVEL ONE
It’s just a book! You’ve waited this long, so how is a few more weeks going to hurt you? There’s no need to read it at midnight. And in any case, you like reading physical copies and plan to run by a bookstore soon.
LEVEL TWO
This book release is a once-in-a-year event. You can’t just waste it on your normal life! It has to be saved for something special, like a beach vacation or a weekend at the cabin. Waiting is torturous, but you know that you’ll be so much happier if you put the book aside for your upcoming vacation.
LEVEL THREE
You’re super busy at work/school and for some unfathomable reason, all NYC-pubbed books come out on a Tuesday. A Tuesday. Can you believe it? Like readers don’t have jobs or obligations during the week. Anyway, you’ll probably wait for the weekend and savor the book on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
LEVEL FOUR
Preparation is crucial. You’ve already taken the day off from work and are going to savor the book while lying down in the hammock in your backyard. When else are you going to use up sick/vacation days? The best part: no annoying spouses or school-age children bothering you in the daytime. You can enjoy your book in peace.
LEVEL FIVE
You sleep at 5:00 pm on the day before the release, setting a series of alarms starting at midnight. When you wake up, you rush over to your kindle app and click “sync.” By some cruel joke, Amazon does not automatically deliver pre-orders at midnight E.S.T. From years of experience, you know the truth: sometimes the book is delivered at 12:30 am, 1:00 am, 1:37 am, or— horror of horrors!—3:00 am. There is no rhyme or reason to it. You curse at Amazon and promise to delete your account.
You cancel the pre-order and one-click again as if that’ll trick the system. You pray to a deity that you don’t believe in for sure, but figure that there’s no harm in trying. You stare at your phone, contemplating if the pain of talking to customer service will yield any result (here’s a tip: it won’t). What happens next?
5a. You end up falling asleep at 2:00 am with the e-reader wrapped around your arms and wake up in a panic at 9:00 am because you need to get ready for the day ahead. This is especially sad because you then have to pretend to go through the motions of the day while feeling the weight of your phone’s kindle app in your pocket. By the time you come home, you skip dinner and start reading immediately.
5b. THANK THE LORD! It’s here. Your fingers are trembling, but you find the presence of mind to flip to the first page. And if the book is as good as you expect, you’ll happily sigh as you finish the book. Depending on your reading speed, you may or may not finish in time for the day ahead. If you do, you may force yourself to go to work/school and do a remarkable impression of a sleep-deprived zombie. If you have no fucks to give (and did not schedule a vacation day in advance), perhaps you a) call into work and pretend to develop a sudden but very contagious cough or b) email your professors and explain how sorry you are that you cannot attend lecture today because of a dehabiliating fever. This isn’t going to earn you Good Place points but I think we’re allowed to be unethical every once in a while. I can feel my descent into the Bad Place as we speak.
5c. Victory! The book is delivered after a minor delay. You lovingly stroke the screen of your e-reader, half-ecstatic and half-amazed that this isn’t a dream (oh god, what if it is? You’ve had dreams like this before). Your heartbeat speeds up, your breathing starts to shake, and there is an inexplicable emotion building up in your chest. Is it joy? Relief? Disbelief? A combination of all three? But you don’t open the book up right away. You just stare at the screen, because a new realization hits you: “If I read this now, what am I going to do until the next book?”
The Torture of Waiting isn’t just something that happens; it’s something that I cause as well. When I finish the anticipated book, I’m ecstatic (assuming it lived up to my expectations). But I end the Old Torture of Waiting for the book I just finished and begin a New Torture of Waiting for the next book. For a book that may not even be written or announced yet. The author or publisher didn’t do that; I did that.
Now, it’s unreasonable to avoid the anticipated book entirely. There is still the Old Torture of Waiting to think about! But I have become an expert at enduring the Old Torture of Waiting; I’ve survived it for a year, after all. Surely I have the endurance to wait a little longer and avoid the unknown territory of a New Torture of Waiting. The question is: do I have the self-control to wait and savor the rare in-between stage: the happiness of possessing an anticipated book without reading it because I don’t want it to end?
I can’t speak for you. Everyone reads anticipated books differently, as evidenced by my detailed list of possibilities. There is no right or wrong answer, just whatever works best for you and elicits the most amount of happiness. Personally, I’m a combination of 5b and 5c (although 5a happened to me once and I’ve sworn to never repeat it).
I am always a little scared to start because I know reading the book will be bittersweet. But I just can’t wait. I’ve never been able to hold off on reading an anticipated read because I find so much joy in snuggling under the blankets and reading in the dark. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and hiding my book under the covers because I wasn’t supposed to be reading after bedtime. It feels forbidden, like you’re the only person awake under the vast night sky and only the stars know your secret. It’s an echo back to the major book midnight premieres, like the midnight release for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007. I can’t replicate that level of excitement and the crowd for every book, but I can have an echo of the exhilaration during my solo midnight reads.
I didn’t read Wolf Rain at midnight, mostly because I was lucky enough to receive an ARC at 2:59 pm. I was in class at the time, and it was probably the most torturous lecture that I’ve ever attended (sorry, Professor Blume). I took notes and tried to pay attention, but my mind was already in the heart of the Sierra Nevadas with the SnowDancer pack. After class ended, I ran home and jumped onto my bed. I flicked to the beginning and started reading the book that I’ve been waiting for since 2012 (yes, there have been other Psy-Changeling books since then but 2012 was the release date of the last full-length SnowDancer-focused novel).
I laughed at Memory’s refusal to accept Alexei’s courting gestures, cheered when I saw familiar beloved characters, wept at Memory’s infinite courage, gasped at new revelations about the PsyNet, and swooned when Memory and Alexei earned their happily-ever-after. It was a book worth waiting for, and I have no regrets about not putting the book aside and waiting a little longer.
Am I alone in reading anticipated books at midnight? Do you savor a book for a long time or read it all in one shot? What series or authors fall under the category of anticipated books for you? What are your rituals and traditions surrounding anticipated books?
I have actually done the ‘this book is a reward for finishing my exams’ with an anticipated book and stuck to it (I think one of them may even have been a Harry Potter). Also I think having worked in a bookstore spoiled me because ARCs. Glorious ARCs (though with ARCs- do you read them straight away but and then have to wait to flail with people?)
This post is absolutely fascinating because it’s so foreign to me. I’m like level… zero, tbh. It doesn’t matter how excited I am for a book, it’s going to be at least two years before I read it because I have very strict reading-order rules in order to ensure I get through my TBR list. I will occasionally make an exception for books edited by a close friend (for his sake, not mine), and I do intend to make an exception for the final book in Michelle West’s second Essalieyan arc, but I haven’t read the rest of the second arc yet and also intend to reread the initial duology and first arc first, so even with the queue jump, it will still be months between when I get the book and when I read it.
If I’m really waiting for a book, I’ll pre-order it and leave my kindle on overnight so that when I wake up, it’s already there. I’ve never taken a day off work to read an anticipated book—but I’ve often wished I could!
One of my biggest problems with over-anticipation of a book is that the book itself can then seem a bit of a letdown—the sort of day-after-Christmas sensation. I couldn’t wait to read Sarina Bowen’s BROOKLYNAIRE, but afterwards I felt that fanfic and my own shipping of Nate and Becca was…I don’t know…certainly not better, but maybe more accurate based on the way the characters interacted in the previous books? OTOH, I absolutely loved Katee Robert’s THE BASTARD’S BARGAIN, which I’d also highly anticipated and which I thought was completely true to the characters as they’d appeared in the previous books in the series.
Right now, I’ve been waiting well over a year for Kati Wilde’s LOSING IT ALL, an MC romance that was perfectly set up in the previous book, BURNING IT ALL. I really hope that when it’s finally released it brings all the enemies-to-lovers angsty goodness promised in the prior book.
@Anonymous: I’m in absolute awe of your self control. And a little bit jealous because there’s no way in hell I can ever enforce TBR rules. I’m 100% in need of TBR rules because I own about 500 unread books/arcs on my kindle (most were purchased as freebies or on sale).
How on earth do you structure your TBR and follow it? Even if I were to make a list, I’d abandon it completely if I’m not in the mood to read the next book or if a library hold came in. I’d be fascinated to hear more about your process.
I am unable to relate to an almost depressing degree. Trying to think of books I anticipated a ton and actually read as soon as they came out and it’s been…a while. Probably not since A Dance With Dragons, which tbh I read so fast I messed up my actual eyeballs and have worn reading glasses ever since (worth it, but not something I’d repeat).
Otherwise, no matter how excited I was before release, unless there’s a worry of spoilers or a need to talk to others about the book, they tend to chill on a shelf for a long while. I may enjoy the promise of the unread, the anticipation before one finds it whether it’s as good as you hope, or better. Or a waste. And rarely am I in just the right mood for a book that’s just out. Maybe I’m just scared to start but I CAN wait.
(I really can wait–to a point. There’s def stuff waited so long for I just don’t gaf anymore, or I’ve well moved on from liking the series/author.)
I may also be paranoid that if I read all the really good stuff I’ll have nothing but chaff left…which considering the number of genres I read, is bs. Yet there are times I am just stood spinning around in my library not wanting to read ANY of it and end up with a coloring book, so. Yeah.
Winds of Winter is probably the novel I’m most anticipating now, the one I probably will read as soon as my HC arrives in the mail, or if I’m able to go pick it up, that day (fingers crossed that day comes at all). There are art books for Marvel and Star Wars that I’m anticipating just as much or more, but I know they’ll sit a while once I get them.
But I wouldn’t say ASOIAF my favorite series of books…maybe it will end up being so, but right now it’s just the only series I can think of that I love a lot that isn’t finished being published, or isn’t a series I’ve basically given up on seeing another book for. Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard books, looking at you. 🙁
There are authors I’m anticipating getting new stuff from (Naomi Novik! Erik Larson!) but that stuff won’t be continuations of series and I don’t know enough about the books to get excited for them yet…
And there’s a couple series I’ve REALLY enjoyed the first one of, then gotten the next one, or even the third and final one too, and they’ve just sat waiting. (The Girl in the Tower/The Winter of the Witch and Grey Sister are just chillin’ atm, tho I loved their respective predecessors. As are the next, like, six Fitz and the Fool books, after I really enjoyed rereading the first three in the series.)
Also, I never read two books in a series back to back or even slightly close together. That breeds boredom, no matter how much I love the books. There’s maybe two serieses I used to be able to reread all in a row, but I just don’t risk even that anymore. So if the new and anticipated book comes out just after I read the last one, I will tend to let that one sit a good long while. Even if I waited to read that last with the idea that a shorter “waiting torture” period would be nice. Oops.
@DiscoDollyDeb Yes, same! It’s a good reason to give books room to rest, to get expectations to something a tad more reasonable. Of course, I have also found books that well exceeded expectations and I kick myself for waiting so long, lol
I preorder Cat Sebastian’s books as soon as they’re available for it. Also, Madeline Miller. She’s amazing.
I was doing a spinal tap at midnight when the last Harry Potter came out. Once everyone was stable and I was OK to leave, I headed straight to B&N where most of the crowd was gone, had one of the last slices of cake, bought the book and went home to read until 7:30 when it was time to go back to the hospital and round. I worked as needed and read the rest of the time, did call in sick on Monday. That was the last time I got so crazy but I do still pre-order and stay up late with certain authors. And I have been known to read an entire backlist in preparation for the new release.
What a fun post – makes me think about my relationship to books and to authors. Thanks for sharing.
@Vicki: I think a lot of Harry Potter fans remember the DH midnight release. I was only ten, but I remember lining up in the Kroger (grocery store) for two hours and seeing the woman in front of me *flip to the very end* as soon as the cashier handed her the book. Which is fine, but then she proceeded to call someone and tried to tell them what she read before the entire store angrily shushed her.
@JJB and @DiscoDollyDeb: hmm, I’ve never really suffered from *too* much pre-release anticipation. I’ve definitely not *loved* some anticipated books but usually do like them. Then again, I only let myself get really excited for very few authors so maybe that’s why.
Thank you, Aarya, that was such a fun piece to read! I have to admit that I am now somehow too old and jaded to feel that way about any author – once upon a time I got that way about Diana Gabaldon’s books, even missing my own daughter’s birthday party to attend a release day signing and then start reading. And of course, I remember reading the last Harry Potter aloud to my son until after 2am when he fell asleep, and I kept reading. But now I fall asleep myself, no matter how good the book, and no author lights me on fire anymore, though there are so many that I revere. But I loved vicariously sharing your enthusiasm!
@Aarya Marsden – It’s partly just native temperament, tbh. I was that kid whose parents would throw out all her Hallowe’en candy in like March or April because she had sorted it all according to preference and was dutifully but too slowly making her way through it. You’d think this would have deterred me because I never got to eat my best candy, buuuuut it didn’t, so. Meanwhile, my brother’s would be gone within a week.
My TBR system has been evolving slowly over the last decade or so into a thing of glorious madness. All the books I buy get put in a pile and then sorted into nine sub-lists in pencil according to how excited I am about them (the more excited I am, the later on the list they go) every few months; then at the end of the year the sub-lists are added sequentially to the master list in ink. Books that are part of a series are added to the entry for the earliest book on the list (so occasionally I do actually read something the year it comes out), but if an unfinished series comes up in the reading rotation, the whole thing gets demoted to the pencil list, because I like glomming series.
This is not completely rigid. There are times when I do make some local readjustments to part of the list once I get there because I’m not quite in the mood for something, but they have to be very local readjustments — no pulling up from the back. Also if a book doesn’t belong to me, it does get promoted in the queue so that it can be returned in a timely fashion. This isn’t a flawless system, and it gets tweaked every so often, but it does ensure that I do read everything I buy, and despite the madness of it, I find it deeply satisfying somehow. The Inking of the Master List happens on New Year’s Day and I legit look forward to it all year.
I’m religious about pre-orders, though. I have a whole system about that too.
I am definitely Level 5. BUT since I’m retired, I don’t have to worry about not getting enough sleep. AND since I live in Hawaii (that’s 6 hours behind NYC right now), I can sometimes get the book “early” (like late June 3rd, I hope).
Being in Australia new releases tend to arrive at lunch time so there has been the odd afternoon where I wasn’t entirely productive and had my kindle sitting on my desk discreetly turning pages.
But in August for the first time I’ve already booked a day off because three new releases drop on the same day. I’m a long time member of Bad Decisions Book Club and decided to just take the day instead of pretending to work. The tough part will be deciding which book to read first.
I totally relate to this. My must pre-order and read immediately authors are Nalini Singh and IIona Andrews. Thea Harrison used to be on it but fell off due to disappointment with some of her more recent releases so now I wait for reviews before purchasing her books.
Back in the days before digital books I used to schedule Tuesday off whenever there was a new In Death release, go to Waldenbooks at the mall at 10am to pick up my copy and start reading. I used vacation time and considered them treat days. Then I switched to day shift and had Tuesdays and Wednesdays off so that always worked well for new releases.
Every now and then one of the grocery stores would put the week’s upcoming releases out on Sunday afternoon, but that only worked some of the time. Not that I would go to multiple grocery stores on Sundays and Mondays to check (I totally did!)
One of the drawbacks of reading 99% in digital is there is no chance of an “accidental” early release. Thankfully Kobo works on whatever time zone you’re in so none of the wait-until-midnight-on-the-west-coast agony. Google Play does as well, but I’ve found unless a book has had a long pre-order they aren’t always available right at midnight there.
After so many years of working graveyard and swing my sleep schedule is screwed up anyway. So I have no issues with getting a book at midnight and staying up to read it. I don’t always stay up to read the whole thing, but the lure of “just one chapter” is too strong to ignore for an anticipated release.
Looking forward to Wolf Rain tonight.
There are series that release a new book once a year and I have to do a total reread before I can read the newest. Psy-Changeling and Archangel/Guildhunters are two of those series. (Along with Kate Daniels, Hidden Legacy, and Eve Dallas.) I try really hard to set it up so I finish the “last” book just in time for the newest. It doesn’t always work because life and my own pesky deadlines sometimes get in the way. It’ll probably be a week before I get to WOLF RAIN. I’m on HEART OF OBSIDIAN at the moment. FYI, this is the 6th time through this series for me.
Bottom line, I’m a superfan at sort of a Level 5(c). 😆 (I also pretend that Nalini “borrowed” my name for Silver Mercant–and we’ve joked about it in person. She is totally made of awesome! Just FYI.)
I taught myself an entire *second language* in high school so would not have to wait for the translation of the Wheel of Time Series. The translated edition would often be bad (fantasy not being taken seriously by the low end publiaher) or split up into multiple, much more expensive books. Which level is that ;)?
@Mona: You win. You absolutely win. That’s a Level 100! As an aside, I’m so awed by non-native English readers who voraciously devour books in English. I don’t really appreciate how lucky I am that I’m fluent in a language that publishes all the books I love.
@Anonymous: Thank you for breaking down your process for me! I confess, that would never work for me but that’s the beauty of reading. We all have different methods and ways to devour books. 🙂
To everyone else excited about WOLF RAIN tonight: I hope you enjoy the book (at midnight or at a later time). I’ve been bursting to talk about this book for ages, and can’t wait for everyone else to squeal about it.
I used to get very enthusiastic for book releases, even going so far as to make book lists and calendar plans for the dozens of authors on my autobuy list. I would switch shifts with coworkers so I could rush to the book store to glom the much beloved books. The local Borders employees got used to seeing me every single Tuesday first thing in the morning, and I spent a crap ton of my wages there. I bought multiple editions of my books (I too owned the US and international Nalini Singh books because I loved the different covers.)
My last big hurrah was…Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Acheron. I stayed up for over 24 hours to read that brick of a tome, and I was so let down that I never let myself go that over the top again. I would eagerly look forward to some books from Patricia Briggs and hit Hastings before I got to work. But those days are gone now, and part of that is due to the demise of the book store in my area. We have a lackluster BN, but they rarely have my books. Borders and Hastings, B Dalton and Walden books are all gone. And a few years ago my favorite used one (and my employer at the time) closed too. Now I rarely have time to read for fun, and I only have one author on my autobuy list anymore.
Mine was DH. It was released at midnight at the local Waldenbooks (we still had one then). I had to get up early the next morning, so my husband went, saw the crowd, and then he went to a local grocery store where there were stacks and stacks of DH and no crowd at all. So he sat up late reading it, and was asleep when I got up and began reading it…we sort of tag teamed our way through it.
I’ve definitely taken mental health days for a book release but it’s been awhile. I’m super lucky and get ARC’s for working in a library but still savor that long awaited book feeling right before I devour it. Often times I need to read it again just to actually enjoy the story and process everything. Could I slow down the first time? Probably but one does not simply put an Ilona Andrews or Nalini Singh book down. Also 2012?! I didn’t realize it had been that long.