SideQuested Book 1

Let me be absolutely clear: SideQuested wouldn’t exist except for Ale Presser. We were working on our first comic for the better part of two years before she told me she had this idea for a fun romcom targeted at a young adult audience instead of our usual adult audience. And she wouldn’t let me kill anybody in the new story!

And I was just…nobody? I can’t even kill one extremely minor secondary character, as a treat?

Nobody, Ale said. This world is hard and getting harder, and you and I are going to make an enjoyable story which makes people laugh and think, but mostly laugh. Also, dragons and magic. And then she gave me a list of the main characters’ names, so my first project was figuring out a backstory for Charlie and Leo which avoided the first-cousin problem she didn’t mean to create, because Ale’s primary language is Portuguese and this means we sometimes bump into potentially serious translation issues.

It’s been fun, it really has. I love all of these little goobers, especially Robin. I’ve never written a character made from glitter and sparkles and pure common sense before, and it’s been a delight.

Apparently other people think there’s something delightful here, too? Because out of the blue, Alex Slater, formerly of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, asked to discuss our work, and this led to signing with our wonderful agent, Bailey Tamayo, which led in turn to working with our amazing editor, Katie Gould, and her incredible creative team at Andrews McMeel.

And now, two years later, we’re on the verge of SideQuested going live in print. I’ve held my own books before, but these are all indie titles and I know every single drop of labor that’s gone into them. There’s something especially delightful about holding a book that’s a team effort, where we’ve each worked to take the pieces to make a whole. It’s another form of magic, really.

It’s all thanks to Ale Presser, and I’ll never let her forget this.

Preorder SideQuested Book 1 here!