Category: Stariel

Forgive me, I couldn’t resist the punny title.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit overwhelming on the award front in the best possible way. First, the audiobook of A Rake of His Own was awarded an earphones award by Audiofile magazine for its excellent narration by Nicholas Boulton. They were, of course, completely correct to do so because Nicholas has a voice like smooth chocolate and I couldn’t imagine a better performance.

Nicholas Boulton’s narration of this audiobook–part fantasy, part mystery, part romance–is all pleasure. “

Audiofile Magazine

Second, A Rake of His Own won the 2023 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel. The SJVs are New Zealand’s national speculative fiction awards. Which means a pointy trophy will be arriving soon!

Two pointy trophies, in fact, because my story How to Marry A Winged King also won the SJV Award for Best Novelette! This story first appeared in the FaRoFeb anthology Once Upon A Forbidden Desire and is currently out of print, but I’m working on a slightly revised and expanded version of the original and hope to release it later this year.

Thank you SO much to everyone who nominated and / or voted for my work this year. I’m a bit stunned (but will also of course be referring to myself as ‘multi-award-winning-author AJ Lancaster’ from here on out, of course).

I cannot fully express what it means to me to have A Rake of His Own in particular receive accolades, but I am about to get emotional and navel-gazing here and try anyway. You’ve been warned.

I often joke about A Rake of His Own being a “great bonus novella!” because that was how it started life (in theory, at least; in hindsight, it was never going to be anything but a novel). I had wrapped up my series finale, but I had this dangling romantic plotline still hanging between two secondary characters, so I thought I’d write a wee novella to tie that loose thread up.

Of course, A Rake of His Own ended up being my second-longest book, coming in at around 120k words (only The King of Faerie, my Stariel series finale, is longer). I was proud of The King of Faerie, but it had been at times an exhausting book to write, with lots of plot threads to tie up and a weight of expectations on my shoulders to finish the series on a high note.

A Rake of His Own felt free of all such expectations. I hadn’t set out to write it as part of the series or as a novel at all. There were no larger series-arc promises left to keep. So I let myself just write in a way I hadn’t for a long time, without consideration for anyone else but me.

The result is somewhat sillier than the main quartet and a bit more raunchy. The lead character is riddled with anxiety and prone to internal monologuing and self-arguments, in contrast to my more decisive heroine of the earlier Stariel books. It was my first attempt at a murder mystery and also my first book with a gay lead.

Reader, it was so much fun to write.

But I was worried no one would like it. Putting a book out into the world is always an incredible act of vulnerability, but this one in particular made me feel even more exposed than usual, perhaps because Marius’s anxious nature is in many ways my own. What if it was too much? What if no one found my banter funny or liked my murder mystery? What if everyone thought Marius was annoying? What if readers freaked out because I used the word ‘cock’?

I was tempted to tone it down, to smooth away some of its weirder corners or make the sex scenes more euphemistic, even though that felt like a betrayal of these characters. In the past I have occasionally given in to this voice of fear, to an imagined critic, not substantially but in small ways (which is something I now regret and a lesson learned for me to be braver in future).

This time, I managed to hold firm against the clamour of voices in my head. However, I remained a pile of nerves at war with myself over it right up until I hit the publish button and couldn’t unmake the decision.

(Here I would like to thank all my writerly friends who patiently suffered with me during this time.)

All of which is to say is that A Rake of His Own sits very close to my heart. I am so incredibly proud of this book and prouder still that I didn’t chicken out of letting it be its full, utterly ridiculous, shamelessly sensual self. I have been humbled and delighted by its reception and the fact that (thankfully for my career) it has been enjoyed by many people other than me. Mostly people didn’t even freak out about the cocks.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.