I pictured people snuggled up with a cozy blanket and a hot cup of their favorite tea or even a hot chocolate.

I dreamt of readers staying up too late saying “just one more chapter,” without work being the priority in the mornings.

At the time I was dreaming this… I was so new in my journey, I was scared. Scared I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Wondering who tf I thought I was to even attempt this.

So I began talking to a small indie publisher. I went back and forth with them for MONTHS… not because we couldn’t agree… but because they were so sweet but ultimately unreliable for me. They asked me to push back my timeline until spring. I thought about it… and asked if they could do February to meet in the middle. They said ok.

But then, the rug was ripped out from under me. Right at contract signing they backed out because they didn’t believe in themselves enough to take on my vision for Daughter of Origin.

Even though I was upset and a bit angry at the time, I understand that when I dream, I dream big and it can be intimidating.

Regardless I clung to the idea of February because it’s “Fae-bruary”…. and I needed time to market, send our Beta’s, then Arc’s then PR boxes…etc.

But as I continue on this indie journey— I’ve learned that most of the time, influencers don’t even post the PR boxes or the books inside them…

So the timeline of February no longer made sense to me to wait since my Arcs were done.

✨So, now I’ll be releasing Daughter of Origin on………………………

✨NOVEMBER 20th. ✨

That’s right, 18 days from today. 🥰

Make sure you’ve checked out the link www.llschmid.com for all four versions of the physical book (paperback, hardcover, special edition with sprayed edges and FMC/MMC character art or the Black Lux edition with sprayed edges and all the character art), and https://linktr.ee/TheOriginSeries if you want the E-Book.

And as for some of those PR boxes?? I decided to create something for actual readers instead…

I’ll be releasing “A Night in Nythara” boxes that will have actual fine China tea cups, the very loose leaf tea blend they drink in the book (complete with tea bags so you don’t have to buy anything extra), a custom bookmark depicting one of the scenes in the book, a personalized letter for you— the reader, stickers and a special key. Oh, and a custom fragrance.

I love yall so much, I’d rather you have something that comes packaged lovely and helps you relax or immerse yourself in this world I built… especially over influencers who likely won’t even read the book.

Don’t forget to ask about the retreat either!

November 26–29, 2027

We have 6 overnight spots left!

🖤 2 private king bedrooms—your own bedroom, with a shared bathroom. $200 deposit.

🖤 4 spots in shared accommodations—your own sleeping space in a shared room or area. $100 deposit. I’ll send the available room and bed options before you reserve!

Nothing else is due until January!

All this to say, yeah, Daughter of Origin is releasing early 😂

Love you guys!

L.L. 🖤

Two private king bedrooms left. Four shared space room spots left = Six overnight spots total.

Ladies… this started with readers asking if we could all get together…

Now there’s a house reserved in Charleston, deposits coming in, and me wondering whether we can have someone cook us an actual meal from Nimue’s kitchen or if I should just do it myself…

Because I have absolutely no ability to be normal about this trip like… at all. 😂🖤

Heather, Blair, Lisette, Angela, and Carah are officially coming!!

Heather, Blair, Lisette, and Angela have reserved private king bedrooms, and Carah has reserved a spot in the shared room. I’ll be staying at the house with everyone, too!

Which means we currently have:

🖤 TWO private king bedrooms left.
🖤 FOUR additional spots in shared accommodations.
🖤 SIX overnight guest spots remaining altogether.

If you’ve been thinking about coming, here’s everything we’re putting together!

November 26–29, 2027 | Charleston, South Carolina

Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Three nights, four calendar days, and a very good reason to tell your family you already have plans after Thanksgiving. 😂

Check-in is Friday at 5 p.m., and checkout is Monday by 10 a.m.

We’re staying at Ivy Manor, which includes the main house and a separate carriage house in downtown Charleston. There are beautiful bedrooms, porches where we can curl up with our books, and a private backyard for our tea party.

I want coffee/tea in our comfy clothes. Books open on the porch. Conversations that start with “Okay, but when he said…” and somehow last an hour.

And enough downtime to actually enjoy being there.

The bookstore crawl 📚

We’re planning to visit:

🖤 Sweeter Than Fiction in downtown Charleston
🖤 The Archive in Mount Pleasant
🖤 Love Spell Books in Summerville
🖤 The Bindings Collective in West Ashley, from the creator of the Smut Bus!

I’ll finalize the route and timing around holiday opening hours, but yes, we’re making a whole outing of it.

Bring your book money. I will provide transportation for house guests during our scheduled group outings, but I cannot provide the self-control…bc I have none 😂.

The bookish tea party 🫖

My friend Megan, a chef, will be putting together our tea party, complete with sandwiches, scones, Devonshire cream, tea, and a beautiful setup.

Bring the dress. Bring the earrings. Bring whatever makes you feel lovely.

We’re going to eat tiny sandwiches , be whimsical AF, and discuss books with a level of unhinged passion.

Food in the house 🥐

Breakfast will be provided— think bagels, pastries, coffee, and an easy start to the morning.

I’ll also stock the house with food for lunches and snacking: bread, sandwich supplies, veggies, hummus, chips, chocolate… the things you want available when you’ve finally sat down with your book and don’t want to leave again.

We’re planning welcome and farewell dinners together, too.

And I have a new idea I’m VERY excited about: Dinner at Nimue’s Table.

One reader emailed me saying she wished she could taste Nimue’s cooking, and now I’m looking into having a cook recreate a meal from the book for us.

That part is still being priced and worked out, so I’m not calling it confirmed yet. But tell me that wouldn’t be incredible?! 🥹

Additional restaurant meals, alcohol, coffees while we’re out, and personal purchases are separate.

Reading, games, and talking about the books 🖤

There will be time to read. There will be bookish games. Think FMK but unhinged 😂. There will be conversations about the series, your theories, your favorite characters, and whatever you’ve been wanting to ask me.

You do not have to finish your book before you come. You do not have to know anyone already.

This whole thing started because we wanted to meet each other.

Surprise gift boxes 🎁

Everyone attending will receive a surprise gift box with swag and an extra-special surprise from me.

And no, I’m not telling you what it is. I am capable of keeping SOME things to myself. (At least that’s what I tell myself anyways…😂)

I’m also working on a possible surprise guest and looking into sword yoga! Neither is confirmed yet, but I’ll keep you updated as those conversations happen.

Okay, let’s talk rooms and pricing.

The house package is $2,000 per person.

That includes:

• Three nights at Ivy Manor.

• Breakfasts, stocked lunch supplies, snacks, and house drinks.

• Welcome and farewell dinners.

• The catered bookish tea party.

• The bookstore crawl and scheduled group transportation for house guests.

• Bookish games and planned retreat activities.

• Your surprise gift box.

• A weekend hanging out with me and fellow readers!

Your travel to Charleston, book purchases, personal shopping, and additional food and drinks while we’re out are separate.

The two remaining private king bedrooms are yours alone, with shared bathrooms.

The four remaining shared spots are in shared rooms or sleeping areas, with an individual sleeping space for each guest. Some available spaces are sofa beds. I’ll send you the exact room and bed options before you reserve so you know what you’re choosing.

No mystery sleeping arrangements when you arrive. 😂

Deposits and payments

I know life is lifing. I also know the holidays do not need another bill attached to them.

So your deposit reserves your space and counts toward your total. Nothing else is due until January.

Accommodation Deposit Remaining payments

Private king bedroom $200 deposit and then Five payments of $360

Shared accommodations $100 deposit and then Five payments of $380

Payments are due:

📚 January 15, 2027
📚 March 15, 2027
📚 May 15, 2027
📚 July 15, 2027
📚 September 1, 2027

They’re spaced out so you have time to save between them. You can pay ahead, too!

Want to join us without staying at the house?

The activities-only ticket is $799.99.

That includes the scheduled retreat activities, bookstore crawl, tea party, welcome and farewell dinners, and your surprise gift box.

You’ll arrange your own accommodations and transportation, along with your own breakfasts and lunches. The group transportation is reserved for house guests.

It’s $50 to reserve, followed by:

📚 January 15: $150
📚 March 15: $150
📚 May 15: $150
📚 July 15: $150
📚 September 1: $149.99

How to join us

Reply to this email or message me and tell me which option you’re interested in:

🖤 Private king bedroom
🖤 Shared accommodations
🖤 Activities only

I’ll send you the available room details, reservation and cancellation terms, and payment information before you send a deposit. Your space is reserved once your deposit is received, and keeping payments current keeps your reservation in place.

Heather, Blair, Lisette, Angela, and Carah… I am SO excited you’re doing this with me.

A year ago, these characters were living in my head.

Now we’re planning a weekend together because you wanted to stay in their world a little longer.

That’s going to make me cry if I think about it too much, so instead I’m going to go plan tiny sandwiches and focus on sword yoga 😅🖤

L.L.

If you haven’t been following the Substack chat, you missed the part where some of my readers decided we needed to meet in person… and asked about doing a Daughter of Origin retreat.

I said I’d look into it.

Which turned into looking at houses, planning a tea party, and figuring out how to spend four nights in Charleston with women who are just as attached to these fictional people as I am. 😂

This idea came from you, my readers, and I love everything about that. Whether you’re in the chat every day, mostly read the emails, or just found your way here, you’re invited.

Picture this…

Four nights together in Charleston

The Airbnb I’ve picked is Ivy Manor, a beautiful downtown property with a main house, a separate carriage house, eight bedrooms, and outdoor space for our bookish tea party. We’ll be near King Street, Rainbow Row, with shops, restaurants, and historic places to explore around us.

I’ll be staying with you the entire time. We’ll have our welcome and farewell dinners together provided by yours truly, coffee/tea in the mornings, books scattered around, and time to finally get to know the women behind the usernames.

So what will we do??

1. A actual true tea party, complete with tea sandwiches, delicate desserts, loose leaf teas, and plenty of time to gossip about our favorite book boyfriends.

My friend Megan, a world-class chef (literally, that’s not me just saying it lol), is working through the tea-party plans with me.

We’re talking a beautiful setup, tea, sandwiches, Devonshire cream, and the little details that make it feel special. The plan is to use the outdoor space at the house, with the final setup and weather arrangements still being worked out.

Bring something fun to wear if you’d like to dress up! I absolutely want pictures of us together.

1. A bookstore crawl!!!

We’ll do our bookstore crawl Friday or Saturday, depending on weather and store availability.

The planned stops include Sweeter than Fiction, the romance bookshop on King Street, and The Archive in Mount Pleasant, with its dark academia atmosphere, books, and café, and Love Spell Books in Summerville, which specializes in romance, fantasy, and romantasy and supports indie authors.

I’m also working on whether we can meet up with Bound to Bindings— aka the Smut Bus!

The final route will be confirmed around schedules and what we can comfortably enjoy in a day.

We’ll browse, swap recommendations, and enable each other’s purchases. Nobody here is going to ask whether you really need another book. 😂

1. Time to actually read

I’m leaving downtime in this weekend on purpose.

Bring the book you’re halfway through. Bring the one you’ve been meaning to start for six months. Buy three more while we’re there.

We can sit together reading and occasionally interrupt each other with, “You need to hear this.”

There’ll be bookish games, prizes, Daughter of Origin discussions, and time to ask me questions, but you won’t have something assigned to every waking minute.

If you need an afternoon with your book and nobody talking to you, I respect that deeply. 😂🖤

1. Surprise gift boxes… and possibly a surprise guest

A surprise gift box will be waiting for each attendee, with bookish swag and an extra-special surprise from me.

No, I’m not telling you what it is. 👀

I’m also working on a possible surprise guest! Those details aren’t settled, so I can’t promise that appearance yet. But you’ll hear more if it comes together.

Breakfasts and dinners together

For guests staying at the house, I’ll provide breakfast each morning, Friday through Monday, along with house snacks, coffee, and nonalcoholic drinks. Feel free to bring your own wine or bevvy.

I’m also providing Thursday’s welcome dinner and Sunday’s farewell dinner, which are included for both overnight guests and activities-only attendees.

The meals you’ll cover separately are lunches outside the tea-party refreshments, Friday and Saturday dinners, alcohol, and anything you purchase at cafés or restaurants while we’re out.

Please let me know about allergies and dietary requirements when you reserve so I can work through those arrangements with you.

Our weekend together

Thursday, October 21: Arrive, get settled, and meet everyone! Plan to arrive by 4 p.m., with the precise house-access window confirmed before you arrange travel. We’ll have our included welcome dinner and spend the evening getting acquainted.

Friday, October 22, and Saturday, October 23: Breakfast for house guests, followed by our bookstore crawl on one day and tea party on the other. There’ll be time for exploring, reading, games, and showing off everything we bought.

Sunday, October 24: Breakfast for house guests and a slower morning. If enough people are interested, we can arrange an optional Charleston food tour at an additional cost, subject to availability. Otherwise, enjoy time to explore or relax before our included farewell dinner and last evening together.

Monday, October 25: One final breakfast for house guests, packing, and goodbye hugs. Everyone must be checked out by 10 a.m.

Sleeping arrangements

The house and carriage house have eight bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms, with seven king beds, one queen, two singles, and two full sofa beds.

Some bedrooms will be shared. Depending on the final room assignments, some guests will have a sofa bed. I’ll explain your specific arrangement before you pay a deposit.

There will be a limited number of king bedrooms available for single occupancy, allocated first come, first served once I’ve confirmed the room plan. Those guests will have a bedroom to themselves, although a private bathroom isn’t guaranteed.

Private king rooms reduce the number of overnight guests we can accommodate, so the final number of house tickets depends on the room selections. A room is reserved only after I confirm its availability and receive the appropriate deposit.

Staying somewhere else? You can still join us

If you’re local, prefer your own accommodations, or miss out on a house spot, you can reserve an activities-only ticket.

You’ll join us for the scheduled bookstore crawl, tea party, welcome and farewell dinners, games, discussions, and group activities. Your surprise gift box is included, too.

You’ll arrange and pay for your own accommodations, breakfasts, and all transportation, including getting to each meeting point. My available van space is being reserved for the house group.

Activities-only tickets include scheduled gatherings, rather than unrestricted access to the house. Those ticket numbers will depend on the property’s approved gathering capacity.

The packages:

Four-night house package: $2,000 per person

Includes your accommodations, four breakfasts, two dinners, house snacks and nonalcoholic drinks, tea party, organized bookstore crawl, scheduled games and activities, prizes, and surprise gift box.

Transportation for scheduled group outings is planned for overnight guests, with final arrangements confirmed before reservations open.

Activities-only package: $799.99 per person

Includes the scheduled bookstore crawl, tea party and refreshments, welcome and farewell dinners, group games and discussions, and surprise gift box.

Travel to Charleston, airport transfers, shopping, meals listed separately, and optional activities such as the food tour aren’t included in either package.

How to reserve

I want everyone to have room to plan for this without adding another holiday-season bill. 🖤

Your reservation deposit goes toward your package total— it isn’t an additional charge.

• King bedroom to yourself: $200 deposit, subject to room availability and my confirmation.

• Shared sleeping arrangements: $100 deposit.

• Activities only, with your own lodging and transportation: $50 deposit.

The target deadline for the first deposit is October 23, 2026. Reservations will be allocated in the order confirmed deposits are received.

Nothing else is due until January.

Payment date

Private king bedroom package— $200

Shared accommodation package— $100

Activities only— $50.00

Initial reservation deposit

Remaining payments:

January 15, 2027— Single King $360, Shared room $380, Activities only $150

March 15, 2027— Single King $360, Shared room $380, Activities only $150

May 15, 2027— Single King $360, Shared room $380, Activities only $150

July 15, 2027— Single King $360, Shared room $380, Activities only $150

September 1, 2027— Single King $360, Shared room $380, Activities only $149.99

You’re welcome to pay ahead. Keeping your payments current keeps your reservation in place.

I’ll send your confirmed room or ticket details, payment instructions, and full cancellation and refund terms before collecting your deposit. Please wait for those instructions before sending money or booking travel.

The house arrangements, gathering capacity, vendors, bookstore stops, and possible guest appearance are still being finalized. If those details aren’t ready in time, I’ll move the deposit deadline so everyone has time to review them.

Tell me how you’d like to join us!!

Comment below or reply to this email with “PRIVATE KING,” “SHARED,” or “ACTIVITIES ONLY”, and I’ll send the appropriate reservation details.

You don’t need to have been in the original chat. If you’ve been reading these emails and thinking you’d love to meet everyone, this invitation includes you.

You ladies asked for this. Now I’m picturing us around a table together, talking about the story that brought us here… and I really want to make it happen. 🥹🖤

Love you all,

L.L. Schmid

If you’ve already preordered Daughter of Origin— thank you. Truly. Seeing those orders come through makes this whole wildly ambitious, occasionally terrifying dream feel so real. My kids love when my phone makes the cash register noise. It makes our whole home celebrate and tbh… it feels amazing to bee a 41 year old mom showing my kids you can trust in yourself and chase your dreams even at my age.

If you’re still hovering over the button… thinking maybe February is too far away… well, come here. I’ve got a little secret. Things are progressing SO nicely that I may be able to release earlier than I anticipated.

I wrote this book because I wanted a woman who had already lived a whole damn life to get her adventure.

Aelyra is thirty-three. She’s a mother of three. She has history, responsibilities, and people she cannot afford to lose. Falling into a world of ancient magic and dangerous Fae politics does not suddenly make her children somebody else’s problem.

They come with her.

And that changes everything.

The danger. The decisions. The love. What she’ll endure— and what she’ll burn to the ground.

Then there’s Arrandyr. Five hundred and fourteen years old, six feet seven inches of morally grey touch her and die energy, and somehow still capable of making a woman want to square up with him. Possibly at very close range.

You get what I mean. 😂

But I want you here for all of it. The banter. The slow burn. The friendships that become family. The children who have their own place in this story. The moments that make you laugh— and the ones that make you put the book down because you need a fucking minute.

If you’ve been waiting for romantasy to make room for a grown woman with children, scars, and a future still worth fighting for—this is the book I wrote for you.

And you can claim your copy right now.

Paperback: $18.99
Hardcover: $31.99
Collector’s edition with sprayed edges and character photo’s: $49.99

PREORDER DAUGHTER OF ORIGIN 🖤

Release is currently scheduled for February 7, 2027. These are preorders, my loves—not books shipping tomorrow.

Every order also helps fund the next pieces of bringing this story to life, including the audiobook. That is a huge undertaking for an independent author, and your purchases help make it possible.

So if you’ve been watching the art, meeting these characters, and telling yourself you’ll order eventually…

Let this be the moment you do.

Pick your edition. Claim your copy. Give future-you something delicious to disappear into.

Your TBR will cope. She’s survived worse decisions. 🖤

Love,

L.L.

I have a lot happening behind the scenes, but there’s something I want to put out there because I’m seriously considering it.

I might release Daughter of Origin earlier than February 7.

MIGHT. Please don’t go rearranging your calendars yet. 😂

But I’m considering it, and a big part of that decision comes down to whether I can put together a street team that will help me get this book in front of people now.

And I want to be honest with you about why.

The audiobook is likely going to cost me $8,000–$10,000. That pays the incredible audiobook narrators, as well as production to put the raw audio together.

But yeah…. I also stared at that number.

I want to make it happen for you all. For the mom who has too much to do, and needs to lose herself in the fantasy while folding laundry or doing dishes. I want that woman to be able to listen to this book, and I want to give it the voices and production it deserves. But I’m funding this myself, and that money has to come from somewhere.

Book sales are how I get there. And because printing books and getting them into your hands costs money, $10,000 in sales does not mean I have $10,000 sitting there to spend on audio.

Getting the book out sooner could help me fund that next step. But I need momentum behind it. I need people discovering it, talking about it, and telling other readers why they want to read it.

So… I need my people. The mother who’s struggling to find herself after birth. The woman who just wants to find herself again. The mom sitting at soccer practice or commuting. Those women need this book.

So that means I need a street team that wants to get involved and keep showing up, even if it feels like you’re getting no where. People with grit, and passion.

You know how you keep seeing the same book all over your feed until you finally go, “FINE. WHAT IS THIS BOOK?”

That kind of recognition takes people talking about it repeatedly. Different videos. Different conversations. Different reasons to pick it up.

That’s what the women who want an older FMC, a mother, need us building.

Make the reel. Make the TikTok. Talk about what you loved. Talk about the scene you’re still thinking about. Talk about why you wish more books did this. If you’ve read it and have seventeen things to say, I want all seventeen, you can talk about the way it made you feel without spoilers. 😂

And the comment sections of booktok and bookstagramers matter, too.

There are BookTokers and bookish Instagram creators having conversations this book belongs in. People asking for recommendations. People describing exactly what they wish they could find in their next read. People talking about how they fell in love with side characters or the overall theme of a book… thats where your feelings about Daughter of Origin and its characters can THRIVE.

I want a team that notices those opportunities and joins the conversation in an organic, natural, non promote-y way. Bc doing it promote-y is icky for everyone.

If Daughter of Origin fits what someone is asking for, tell them about it. Say WHY it fits. Talk like yourself. Be open about being on my street team, and recommend it based on what you actually know and have read.

We can find specific creators and videos together—but I also want people who see an opportunity and think, “Oh, I know exactly which book you need.”

And we need that happening now.

We have months of conversations we could be having before February. Months of people discovering the book. I want to use that time smartly.

You do not need ten thousand followers to help. You need to be willing to make content, engage with people, and talk about this book consistently. I’m looking for people who have the time and WANT to be part of building this with me.

I can give you material to work with— excerpts, artwork, information, and content ideas. Bring your personality. Bring your opinions. Bring the way you talk about books when you’re excited enough to send your friend six voice messages in a row.

If you’re reading this thinking, “L, yes. This is me,” reply to this email.

Or email hello@llschmid.com with ORIGIN CIRCLE in the subject line.

Send me your TikTok and/or Instagram handle, tell me whether you’ve read the book yet, and tell me what you realistically have time to do each week. Videos? Reels? Getting into book conversations? All of it? Tell me.

I want to put together a team we can actually count on— and then get rolling.

And if you’re here to read, hang out, and watch me lose my mind over all things publishing, you’re welcome, too. I love you for being here. I love you for wanting to be here. 😂🖤 You don’t have to join the street team to belong, not with us.

February 7 is still the release date. An earlier release is a possibility I’m exploring, and I’ll tell you here if that changes.

In the meantime, you can preorder at llschmid.com, and every preorder helps move this forward.

Never in my life did I ever think 659 people would care about something that came from my imagination, or that getting to know each of you would bring me such joy and fun. I cannot thank you enough. If you haven’t introduced yoursel— PLEASE, do.

Let’s see how many more we can bring into this. 🖤

Love always,

L.L

And I wish I had a really impressive, long, thoughtful answer… like I have some beautifully organized “author system” where I collect all my beta feedback, categorize it, thoughtfully analyze it, make a revision plan, and then calmly work through it.

I do not. I’m more like a feral squirrel than I like to admit.

So… here’s how I did it:

1. I started making changes while they were still reading.

I know you’re probably supposed to wait until all your beta readers finish before you start touching anything because one person’s opinion is just one person’s opinion.

And I did understand that… in theory.

But while they were reading, they were leaving comments and answering chapter surveys, and I was reading all of it. OBSESSIVELY. Literally curled up on my corduroy couch from TikTok shop eating Parmesan cheese shavings for protein intake and trying not to dehydrate because I didn’t want to drink anything and have to get up to pee…. but also hydrate because parmesan is salty AF. It was a weird time in my life lol, but I digress.

…so when someone asked a question, my brain immediately started working on it. When multiple people asked the same question? Well, alright. But when multiple people asked the same question— that got my attention.

If they didn’t understand why someone did something, I went back and looked at whether I’d actually given them enough information to understand it. If they wanted more of a character, I started thinking about where that character naturally belonged.

If something didn’t hit the way I thought it would, I wanted to know why.

And sometimes they would say something and I would immediately think:

Oh. I know exactly what this needs.

So while they were reading... I was writing. By the time Beta Round One actually ended, I already had a ridiculous amount of the revisions underway.

Which brings me to reason number two.

2. I am a psychopath.

That’s it. That’s the reason. When I lock in on something, I LOCK. THE. FUCK. IN. There is no casual little, Oh, I’ll work on my book for an hour today.

No.

I will stare at the same chapter for six hours. I will go to bed thinking about a scene and wake up because apparently my subconscious continued working the night shift and has now presented me with a solution.

I will suddenly realize something while I’m making dinner and disappear to write it down. I have five children, a husband, a house, animals, and an entire life happening around me, and somehow during this particular stretch of time I also became a writing gremlin even the were wary off approaching. Come to think of it… my husband did keep the house stocked with chocolate during that time… but he knew what was up.

I was working.

But.

There is a third reason. And unfortunately, this is probably the biggest one.

3. I am also... a bit of a fucking idiot.

I wrote Daughter of Origin in Word like an newbie author would do because who the fuck expects it to take on a life of its own at first. I did about two revisions in word before I’d ever even learned you’re supposed to keep your earlier drafts LOL.

Then I moved it into Google Docs for editing purposes to share it with my editor. At some point, I realized I should probably check with my book printer/seller and figure out what the actual parameters were for printing this thing.

You know… “Author things.”

At the time, my book was showing up at almost 550 pages in word.

Which was already a large book. But it’s fantasy. There are six Fae Courts. Theres a book husband. There are three children. There is a thirteen-pound dog who requires her own continuity department because she’s based on my actual dog that passed.

There are things happening. Whatever. Then I put the manuscript into the specifications I thought I needed for printing.

And suddenly my book was... 998 pages. Nine. Hundred. And ninety-eight. Pages.

I almost fucking died.

Because the worst part was that I was sitting there staring at 998 PAGES thinking:

But it’s still missing things. 😂

There were relationships I wanted to develop more. There were pieces of Arrandyr I wanted readers to see. There were scenes with the children that existed perfectly in my head but had never made it onto the page.

There were conversations I knew these people had. There were parts of Aelyra’s healing that I wanted to give more room.

There was more Mira. More Nimue. More Jorah. More found family. More romance. More little moments that made these characters feel like actual people instead of characters who only existed when the plot required them.

And I was looking at all of that going:

YOU CANNOT ADD ANYTHING, LAUREN. YOUR BOOK IS 998 FUCKING PAGES. IF THEY WOULDN’T DO IT FOR SARAH J. MAAS THEY WONT DO IT FOR YOU!!

Actually, I couldn’t even keep what I already had. Because my publisher’s maximum was 883 pages.

So I started cutting. And refining. And tightening. And editing. I looked at every paragraph like it personally owed me money.

Do I need you? Are you contributing? Why are you here? I got ruthless. And eventually...

883 pages.

Exactly where I needed to be.

I had done it. Except I still wasn’t completely happy because I knew things were missing.

But what the hell was I supposed to do? The book was literally at the maximum.

I couldn’t add another hundred pages of Aelyra healing and Arrandyr becoming a bigger badass and Mira being terrifying and Jorah being Jorah because I had already written him into a weapon.

So I accepted it. Kind of.

Then I bought Atticus. Now, I originally bought Atticus because I needed to properly format the book so I could get the correct measurements for my cover.

Very responsible of me. Very professional.

I thought “Look at me knowing things about publishing.” So I put my enormous, terrifying, 883-page book into Atticus.

Atticus formatted it properly.

And Daughter of Origin was...

390 pages.

...

I’m sorry.

What?

THREE HUNDRED AND FUCKING NINETY PAGES.

I had been over here hacking pieces off my book like I’d taken up wood carving as a hobby. I had spent all this time desperately trying to shove my book underneath an 883-page maximum...

and apparently I wasn’t even fucking close.

Which is when my brain went:

Oh.

And then:

OH. I HAVE ROOM.

Suddenly every scene I’d been carrying around in my head was back on the table. Every little moment I’d wanted to write but had told myself wasn’t important enough to justify the pages?

GET BACK IN HERE.

More of the children?

YES.

More Arrandyr?

Obviously.

More Mira?

OH, YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA.

More of Aelyra actually healing instead of me just telling you time passed and expecting you to understand what happened inside that time?

Yep.

More relationships. More conversations. More tiny moments. More history. More explanations. More of the things that make Elowyn feel like a home instead of merely a location where the plot happens.

And this is the part I think people misunderstand when they ask how I wrote all of these new scenes so quickly.

A lot of them weren’t new to me. They just hadn’t been written. They were already in my head. I knew they happened. I knew these conversations. I knew pieces of these characters that hadn’t made it onto the page because I had spent months thinking:

Nope. Can’t fit it.

Turns out...

I could. I could fit a lot.

So when Beta Round One readers started asking for things that already existed in my brain?

Oh baby.

The floodgates fucking opened. And now my returning beta readers are reading Beta Round Two and finding entire scenes that did not exist a few weeks ago. One of them got to one of the newest chapters and asked me:

“Did you just have this locked and loaded on your computer or did you write this in the last few weeks????”

Nope. Wasn’t on my computer. It was locked and loaded inside my skull.

Another beta reader has now asked for my P.O. Box so she can send me her therapy bills after reading one of the new additions.

So I think things are going well. And THAT is how I revised Daughter of Origin so quickly between Beta Round One and Beta Round Two.

I listened to my beta readers while they were actively reading. I started writing before they were finished. I became completely fucking unhinged and locked in.

And then I discovered that I had accidentally spent months believing my book was more than twice as long as it actually was.

So, yeah...

Some of the credit goes to hard work. Some goes to my beta readers.

Some goes to the fact that these characters have apparently been living fully developed lives inside my head whether I write them down or not.

And a truly alarming amount of the credit goes to...

me not knowing how page formatting fucking works.

I am a published author.

Well.

Almost.

God help us all.

— Love, L.L.

We got OVER 50 APPLICATIONS to Beta Read Daughter of Origin.

Fifty.

I genuinely did not expect that many of you to volunteer to read 124,000+ words of my emotional damage and then willingly sign up to tell me everything I did wrong. 😂

And let me tell you—choosing seven was HARD.

There were so many applications I loved. People who have Beta Read for other authors, people who have never Beta Read a book in their lives but gave incredibly thoughtful answers, mothers who saw themselves in Aelyra before they’d even met her, voracious romantasy readers, emotional readers, analytical readers, and people who basically said, “Give me the book and let me rip you a new one.”

Which, unfortunately for my feelings, is exactly what I asked for.

I didn’t choose seven people because I thought they’d tell me Daughter of Origin is amazing. I chose seven people because I think they’ll each read this book a little differently—and because I trust them to tell me when something isn’t working.

So...

THE SEVEN BETA READERS FOR DAUGHTER OF ORIGIN ARE:

Nicole — nryerson17•••
Suzanna Lee — Suzilitalee•••
Lisette — lfv0921•••
Brittany Hartmann — blh43089•••
Heather Olsen — heatherolsen2442•••
Kyle — Oddmanout25•••
Tegan — tegankdoe•••

YOU’RE IN. 😭🔥

If your name and partial email are listed above, check your inbox! I am sending each of you instructions privately.

Your Beta Reading window begins TODAY and ends September 1 at 8:00 PM ET.

You’ll be reading Daughter of Origin through BetaReader.io, where you’ll be able to highlight the actual manuscript and leave your reactions directly on the places that caused them.

And PLEASE use that feature.

I want the unhinged reader thoughts.

I want “OH MY GOD.”

I want “FUCK THIS MAN.”

I want “Wait... what?”

I want “I KNEW IT.”

I want “Lauren, absolutely fucking not.”

I also want “I’m confused,” “This dragged,” “I don’t believe she’d do this,” “I skimmed here,” and “Something about this isn’t working for me.”

I want you to fall in love with it.

And I want you to rip me a new one wherever it needs it.

Because this is the last window where I get to hand Daughter of Origin to people whose literal job is to find the weak spots before the rest of the world gets it.

Which brings me to the slightly terrifying part.

I was up until 2:00 this morning working through last-minute edits before getting this manuscript ready for you.

I’ve wanted this day for months.

And now that it’s here?

I’m fucking terrified. 😂

Because seven people are about to read the WHOLE THING.

Not Chapter One.

Not a carefully chosen quote on TikTok.

Not an aesthetic Reel with pretty music where I get to control exactly what you see.

The book.

My weird little world. My characters. My twists. My secrets. My favorite lines. The scenes that made me cry while writing them. The things I’ve been biting my tongue trying not to spoil for months.

You’re about to know all of it.

And I desperately hope you love it.

But more importantly, I hope you tell me the truth.

Because when Daughter of Origin goes out into the world on February 8, I don’t want to wonder whether I could have made it better.

I want to know we fucking tried.

So, to my seven:

Welcome to Nythara.

Please be gentle with my heart.

And absolutely ruthless with my manuscript.

Let’s make this book incredible. 🖤

Love always,

L.L. Schmid

Yesterday, the brand-new Instagram account just 4 days prior, I made specifically for Daughter of Origin, had something like 32 followers. As I’m writing this, it has more than 1,350. My TikTok is creeping toward 3,000.

And I know I’m supposed to be feeling like I’m riding high on excitement right now…

But……….Holy shit.

And don’t get me wrong—I am riding high emotionally. Because holy shit...

I mean…this is what I wanted. I wanted people to find Aelyra. I wanted women to hear that there was a 33-year-old mother of three walking into a romantasy story and say, Wait. What? I want to read about her. I wanted readers. I wanted people talking about this book. I wanted preorders. I wanted strangers on the internet to care about something that, for a very long time, existed only inside my head.

And now they’re starting to.

So naturally, my brain has responded to this objectively wonderful development by going, “oh fuck.”

Because something strange happened in my brain recently… it’s almost as if I knew I was marketing it and sharing it but now it suddenly gets an audience and I have to admit I feel a bit queasy. The stakes change. When thirty people are watching, it’s relatively easy to be brave. When hundreds of thousands of people are watching, suddenly I’m clutching my manuscript wondering: What if this book isn’t actually good?

What if all of this attention turns into anticipation I can’t live up to? What if people preorder it because the premise sounds incredible, and then February comes and they actually read it and...

Oh. Meh.

What if it flops?

And I don’t even mean financially. I mean the worst kind imaginable.

What if I disappoint them?

Tomorrow, my beta manuscripts go out.

Seven people are going to get the entire thing. Not a Reel. Not a trope list. Not a carefully selected excerpt or Chapter One sneak peek. They’re getting all 130,000-ish words of Daughter of Origin, and I am specifically asking them to tell me what’s wrong with it.

And I mean that.

I don’t want seven people to come back and tell me I’m brilliant. I don’t want them protecting my feelings. I don’t want, “OMG, I loved it!” followed by nothing useful.

I want them to rip me a new one, I can take it.

Tell me where you got bored. Tell me where you were confused. Tell me where you wanted to skim. Tell me if a character’s decision made absolutely no fucking sense. Tell me if the romance didn’t land. Tell me if you saw something coming from three counties away. Tell me if I thought I explained something and apparently only explained it to myself. Tell me where you wanted more and where, “for the love of God, L.L.”, you needed less.

I want all of it because I still have time to fix it.

I want these seven people to help me find every weak spot I can find before thousands of other readers get their hands on it.

Because to be so for real… I am fucking terrified they’re going to hate it.

Welcome to the author’s brain. There are no adults here.

It doesn’t help that we’re currently putting my editor’s comments into the manuscript, which means I’m rereading the book. Again. And again. And there are sentences I get to and think, I’d write that differently now. And I wind up doing exactly that. There are scenes where I wonder if I should move something, add something, take something away, make this sharper, make that softer, change one word, change twelve, or burn an entire paragraph to the ground.

The book keeps getting better.

That’s the problem.

Because I’m getting better, too. I’ve never done this before to this extent.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been told my many people in my life that I should have been a lawyer or a writer. I’ve been through a lot in my life that has made me eloquent and funny. But, I’ve been through a lot in my life that causes me to over explain and that sometimes makes its flowery way into my writing. Joy!

The writer editing Daughter of Origin today knows things the woman who first sat down to write it didn’t know yet.

Very cool.

Love that for me.

And while I’m doing this, more people keep showing up. Another follower. Another comment. Another preorder. Another person saying they can’t wait until February.

Every preorder is a real person saying, I trust you with my money before I’ve even read the book. Every follow is someone saying, Okay. You’ve got my attention. Every person asking when it’s coming out makes this story a little less like the private world I’ve been living inside and a little more like something that will eventually belong to readers. It’s so scary! It’s so exciting! It’s… just SO!

I desperately hope that the readers who are preordering will love this world and these characters the way I do… and sometimes my neurospicy brain doesnt always think like everyone else’s and I just pray I’m not deluding myself into thinking this book is good.

Maybe that’s why I’m writing this instead of pretending I’m walking around completely confident because a Reel went viral.

Because I am confident.

And I’m terrified.

Two things can be true at the same time.

I believe in this story. I believe in Aelyra. I believe there is a reason I couldn’t leave these characters alone. I believe women who have already lived entire lives deserve to stand at the center of fantasy stories—not conveniently off-page while someone younger gets to have the adventure. I believe mothers can be warriors and lovers and complicated women with rage, regrets, desire, scars and power.

I believe in Daughter of Origin.

And I am still scared you won’t.

Maybe that’s part of making something you actually care about. At some point, you have to accept that you will never reach the magical moment when you look at 130,000 words and think, Yes. Every single one of these is perfect. I shall never touch them again.

You edit it. You question it. You obsess over things no normal human being will ever notice. You hand it to an editor. You hand it to seven beta readers and explicitly ask them to hurt your feelings. You listen. You make it better.

And eventually—God help me—you stop touching it.

Then you hand it to the reader.

I’m not quite at that last part yet.

Tonight, I’m somewhere between holy shit, 300,000 people saw my Reel and maybe I should rewrite Chapter Seven.

But underneath all of this anxiety that has me writing to you all, my beautiful OIC’s at 1:26 in the morning, there is something else.

Gratitude. So much gratitude for it all.

Because 32 followers becoming more than 1,300 overnight is insane. Nearly 3,000 people choosing to follow this journey on TikTok is insane. $2,823 in preorders for a book that doesn’t come out until February is insane.

And tomorrow (well later today I guess actually lol), seven of you (because I couldn’t pick just five) are going to open a manuscript containing people and places that have lived inside my head for months. They’re going to meet all of them. They’re going to know things I’ve been desperately trying not to spoil on the internet.

They’re going to see the whole thing. I hope they fall in love with it. I hope they rip it apart where it needs to be ripped apart. And I really, really hope those two things can happen at the same time.

Then I’m going to make Daughter of Origin as good as I possibly know how to make it.

And eventually, I’m going to have to do the scariest thing I’ve done with it yet.

Trust it.

Even if everyone is watching.

Pray for me!

Love you all,

L.L. 🖤🖤

Ok…. heres the stipulations:

1. I do NOT want ya’ll to fluff me up and tell me how much you loved it (I mean, yes but also no lol) because I want you to tell me all the parts that are boring, dont make sense, drag on, or need more clarification.

2. If it makes you pause… in a bad way, like “wtf did I just read” and not because the emotions got you good, I need to know. This is my one and only chance to make this thing PERRRRRFECT.

3. If the slow burn isnt burn-y enough, I need to know.

4. If it’s too burn-y, I need to know.

5. If it doesn't feel like enough is happening, I need to know.

Tear me apart, in the best way, because this book and its overall messages deserve to be heard around the world and that can ONLY happen if you guys help me perfect it.

I’ll be choosing beta’s by August 15th. You do have a time clock on this. I need it completed and your feedback returned to me by September 1st, 2026. Thats 17 full days of reading.

If you dont get selected for beta reading, dont worry I have a follow up that will come to teach you how to get arcs.

That being said…… here’s the application:

Beta Application

Love you guys!!

🖤 L.L. Schmid 🖤

And I have been sitting over here watching your comments and reactions like—

👁️👄👁️

Because here’s the thing.

You know nothing yet.

Respectfully. 😂

You have met Aelyra. You’ve met her children. You’ve gotten a glimpse into the life she’s been living and the choices beginning to close in around her.

And some of you already have opinions.

Which I LOVE.

But what is absolutely killing me is knowing what happens after the point where I left you.

Because Chapter One?

Chapter One is me being nice.

Chapter One is me inviting you inside, taking your coat, pouring you a drink, and saying, Welcome! I’m so happy you’re here!

The rest of the book is me locking the door behind you. Ever seen the movie “A Bronx Tale”? Yea… after Chapter One… thats me being like “Now you’s can’t leave.”

😂

And I can’t tell you anything either. Do you understand how DIFFICULT this is for me?! It is literal torture.

There are characters you haven’t met yet who I am genuinely desperate to talk to you about. You will love them, you will hate them, you will cry right alongside them.

There are places in this world I have been living inside my head for months that you haven’t seen. There are conversations I desperately want to quote at you.

There are moments that made me laugh while I was writing them, moments that made me sit back from my computer and go, ohhhhhhh shit, and scenes I wrote while crying like an absolute lunatic.

There are easter eggs inside this book that will come back and slap you right in the gob one day.

But now we’re getting to the REALLY exciting part.

Because Daughter of Origin is officially out of my hands and into professional editing.

Which means we’re getting closer to the moment I’ve been simultaneously dreaming about and absolutely terrified of:

Other people reading the entire book.

Not eleven-second TikToks where I emotionally terrorize you and then refuse to elaborate. 😂

The whole thing.

All 130,000-ish words of it. And everything I have been keeping my big mouth shut about for MONTHS. Well... mostly keeping my mouth shut.

I’m only human. 🤷🏻‍♀️

And because we’re getting close to that stage, I’m going to be opening applications soon for the first beta readers of Daughter of Origin.

These will be a very small number of people who get to read the manuscript before almost anyone else.

And I don’t just need people who will tell me they love it.

Actually, please don’t apply if that’s all you’re willing to tell me. 😂

I need readers.

Romantasy readers.

The people who know when a slow burn is burning and when it’s just taking too damn long.

The people who notice when something doesn’t make sense, and will finish the whole book before saying it didn’t. (Easter eggs remember?)

The people who become irrationally attached to fictional side characters and would like to formally complain when I hurt them.

The people who will message me at 1:47 in the morning with something along the lines of:

LAUREN WHAT THE FUCK.

Those are my people.

And after beta reading comes something even bigger.

ARCs.

Those will go out much closer to publication, when the book is polished, formatted, pretty, and ready to make its way into the world. And THEN...

I’m putting together a Daughter of Origin street team.

And that group?

Ohhhhh, we’re going to have fucking fun. Because I don’t want this launch to feel like me standing on the internet screaming,

“PLEASE BUY MY BOOK!”

I want it to feel like a bunch of people grabbing their friends by the shoulders and saying, “NO. LISTEN TO ME. YOU DONT UNDERSTAND. YOU NEED TO READ THIS.”

I want inside jokes. I want theories. I want character wars.

I want people arguing about who they would trust with their life and who they would absolutely push into a ravine and relish their screams.

I want readers discovering things I buried in the story and coming back into the Inner Circle screaming because HOW DID WE MISS THAT?! I want this whole thing to feel like what reading has always felt like to me:

Finding people who understand why fictional worlds can somehow become real places in your memory. And if you’ve been here since before Daughter of Origin was even a real book you could hold in your hands... I hope you know how special that is to me. Someday someone is going to tell you they just discovered Daughter of Origin.

And you get to be obnoxious and say:

“Oh, I’ve been here since Chapter One.”

(As you should. 😂🖤)

And to those of you who read the Chapter One preview... I have one major question.

What do you think happens next?

Because I desperately want to hear your theories. And I promise……………. I won’t tell you if you’re right.

😏

—L.L.

Love,

L.L.

For over a year, this story has lived only in my head, on my laptop, and in stacks of printed pages scattered across my house with colored rainbows doodled on the back by my toddlers. I’ve spent countless hours writing, rewriting, questioning my entire premise, my sanity and who I think I am that I could write an actual BOOK…. wondering if this story would ever resonate with anyone besides me.

Then, about a month ago, I finally worked up the courage to start sharing pieces of it on TikTok.

I had no idea what would happen.

I certainly never expected thousands of people to watch, hundreds of women to tell me they finally felt seen, or complete strangers to begin asking where they could buy a book that wasn’t even available yet.

Yesterday...

It finally became real.

Preorders officially opened.

Typing those words still feels surreal.

To every single one of you who has followed this journey over the past month, left a comment, shared a video, joined the Origin Inner Circle, or quietly cheered me on from behind your screen...

Thank you.

I’m genuinely overwhelmed by how interested you’ve become in this story, these characters, and this world. Every message asking, “When can I read this?” or “I need this book!” reminds me that maybe I wasn’t the only person waiting for a heroine like Aelyra after all.

One of the greatest surprises has been the response to her.

A thirty-three-year-old mother.

A woman carrying visible and invisible scars.

A woman who doesnt have the luxury of breaking down when she desperately needs to because there are little eyes watching her.

I’ve lost count of how many women have told me they never realized how much they wanted to see a mother at the center of an epic Romantasy until now.

Those comments have meant more to me than I can adequately express.

Because of that...

I’d love to do something special for the people who have believed in this story before it ever even reached pre-order status and bookstore shelves.

A Gift for the Origin Inner Circle

As a thank-you to the members of the Origin Inner Circle, I’d love to permanently include you in the first edition of Daughter of Origin.

If you’d like your name printed in the acknowledgments, simply send me a private message here on Substack with your full name exactly as you’d like it to appear in print.

Whether that’s your full legal name, a nickname, or another name you’re comfortable being published under is entirely your choice.

I’ll be collecting names over the coming weeks before the acknowledgments are finalized.

Years from now, whenever someone opens a first edition of Daughter of Origin, your name will be there as one of the readers who believed in this story from the very beginning.

I can’t think of a better way to thank you.

From the bottom of my heart...

Thank you for believing in me.

Thank you for believing in Aelyra.

And thank you for helping make a dream I’ve carried for so many years begin to feel wonderfully, impossibly real.

We’re only just getting started.

If you want to pre-order you can click here.

I love you all. 🖤

With love,

L. L. Schmid

I’m deep in self-edits for Daughter of Origin, and somewhere in the middle of rereading everything, I had one of those moments every writer simultaneously dreads and loves:

“Fuck... I need to give better context here.”

Not because I wanted to make the book longer (it’s already becoming the hefty Romantasy it was always destined to be), but because I realized readers needed more context before one of the major story beats. Once I saw the gap, I couldn’t unsee it.

So instead of pretending it wasn’t there, I stopped. I planned. I plotted. I mused.

Hell, I even asked my teens and husband about what I should do.

Turns out— I really needed to add it. Sooo……..

I outlined an entirely new chapter, wove it into the manuscript, and now I’m continuing my edits. But now because I added that context I’m finding more things to edit as the book goes LOL!!

As frustrating as it can be to feel like I’m taking a step backward, I’ve learned that’s usually where the biggest improvements usually happen for me. Every edit brings me closer to the story I wanted to tell from the beginning—not just a finished book, but one worthy of the readers who will eventually trust me with their time.

On another exciting note, my TikTok has reached almost 1000 followers (largely because of you all!) and once that is done, I can get my website up and ready for pre-orders! I don’t think ya’ll really understand how meaningful it is to me to do this, or how much each of your comments, save’s, shares, reposts, and even tagging of your friends has done to help boost this book to more people.

Let me be SUPER clear here. I was talking to a publisher (as some of you already know) and they’re awesome. But one thing that struck me was they said “We’re not in it for the money.”

And I thought to myself… well….. I am. Let me explain why though:

Aelyra’s story isnt just hers. It’s mine and countless other women’s story across the globe.

• Being raised in a home where you feel unwelcome and unwanted.

• Learning to read peoples emotions and people pleasing to keep yourself safe.

• Marrying the wrong man who performed love until he stopped performing.

• Losing part of yourself in motherhood.

• Gaining a whole new part of yourself in motherhood.

• The weight of emotional, physical and social responsibilities being solely on you.

• Abuse in all forms, financial, emotional, psychological, religious, social, physical, and sexual.

• Dreaming of a peaceful existence you’re not sure you’ll ever have.

• Self loathing at the body that changed, guilt over not appreciating every single moment with your children.

And Arrandyrs story isnt just his. Its my husbands and countless other men around the world…

• absentee fathers even if they were still in the home.

• overbearing mothers

• being made to be the problem and filling with anger

• dating the wrong kind of women trying to replace that love you never got at home and didn’t have the words to articulate.

• getting into trouble

• having deep rooted abandonment issues from family never being what you needed them to be for you.

• Being used for financial gain.

• Bearing the incredible mental, physical and emotional responsibility of protecting those you love, even from your own damage and emotions.

So… every single person who buys this book doesn’t just get a copy of a Romantasy. They get a place to feel seen, heard, loved, worthy, and I hope, a piece of healing for themselves as they see these characters battle with their own emotions, their own lived scenarios, and how they are still allowed to become the best version of themselves regardless of their pasts.

So to me… yea, I’m in it for the “money” because it’s a QUANTIFIABLE way for me to see how many people my characters are helping.

And finally...

To everyone who’s joined this little corner of the internet recently—welcome.

Over fifty of you have subscribed since my last post, and I honestly can’t tell you how much that means to me. Every time I get a notification that someone new has decided to follow along, I have a tiny moment of, “Wait... there are actual people excited about this… people who care enough that want to follow the journey from the inside?????” And then in full transparency I do a little dance. 🤣

There are days when writing feels magical, and there are days when it feels like wrestling a dragon armed with nothing but rage and stubbornness— aka a toddler.

Thank you for being here for all of it. I love you guys.

I’m excited to keep bringing you behind the scenes as Daughter of Origin comes to life. There are so many characters, secrets, and moments I can’t wait to share with you.

We’re still at the beginning of this adventure, and I’m so grateful you’re taking it with me.

Until next week,

Lauren

Honestly, that feels appropriate.

Because if there is one thing I’ve learned while writing Daughter of Origin, it’s that freedom is a precious thing. It is worth protecting, defending, and fighting for.

No one in this story understands that better than Arrandyr.

(And if you want to help me settle the debate on how to pronounce his name, leave your guess in the comments first before I tell you how I say it.)

So tonight, while the sky outside bursts with celebration, I want to introduce you to the male who has lived in my head, haunted my thoughts, and quite possibly ruined me for writing any other fictional male.

Meet Arrandyr.

My 514-year-old shadow prince.

(Second pic is just to help you see his face as I pictured him in my head.)

The most feared male in all of Nythara.

He commands shadows that move like they’re alive — because they are.

He’s been feared since the moment he was born.

He was born with shadows bursting from his skin. His own mother looked at her newborn son and called him a monster.

She’d lock him in the dark to try to make the shadows leave him. He was her greatest shame.

He spent days locked in the dark, with no one but the shadows to accompany him as he cried for his mama. He learned to fear himself before he had ever learned to walk.

Over the years, his family learned to exploit the fear he inspired, and desperate to please them and be loved, he leaned into that role. And he was damn good at it.

Then… betrayal.

A century. Alone. In a cell built by the people who were supposed to be his whole world.

But those who knew him and loved him were devoted to him, despite his own belief that he was unlovable.

He built a house with his bare hands when he had nothing—a place that was his. And somehow, impossibly, the house woke up. Grew fond of him. Started caring for him and his found family.

It was as if even the walls in this home could tell: this male deserved to be loved.

As a personal aside, I fell for my husband because he saw a woman, a mother, who had been hurt deeply. He never once asked me to be less, chastised me, or gave me reason to have any fear… and that is how I built Arrandyr.

He is the male I have always dreamed of, and never thought I would ever have.

So I built a male out of that same bone-deep ache I had always had, and the absolute joy I now have in my life.

Because my husband, if we lived in different times and magic like faerie tales existed, would be:

A male who can level a kingdom with a thought and still believes, quietly, that he is not enough, and that being seen fully for himself means being left.

A male who would burn the world down for the people he loves, never fully believing that he is worthy because of what his mother did to him.

Arrandyr is that male. Fearsome. Capable of extreme violence if need be. Protective. Reasonable. Communicative. Gentle. Funny. At his heart, generally happy.

And then I handed him Aelyra.

A human woman. Thirty-three. A mother of three. A woman who spent so many years disappearing beside her mother and inside her own marriage that she never got a chance to become the woman she was always destined to be.

She walks into his life certain she’s the one who needs saving, certain she’s the problem, certain she has too much baggage.

And yet...

The real love story is a five-hundred-year-old male who believed he was unlovable, meeting the one person who looked at him like he always was.

Tonight, while the sky outside bursts with celebration, I’m introducing you to the male who ruined me for writing anyone else, because so much of who he is, is my husband.

Tell me honestly: what makes a fictional male unforgettable? 🖤✨📚

I don’t think we fell in love with Feyre, Aelin, Nesta, Auren, Manon, Bryce, Lysandra, Morrigan, or any of the other women who live rent-free in our heads because they were strong.

I think we love them because they were hurt people who don’t choose to hurt people.

And because, despite everything that happened to them, they still found strength, happiness, purpose, love, friendship, and themselves.

Feyre learned she deserved more and it was ok to seek it.

Aelin carried unimaginable loss and still chose joy. Nesta survived her own deep rooted self loathing and found herself in her family again.

Auren reclaimed her own body back from someone who used it.

Manon chose love over blind loyalty and legacy. Lysandra finally got to become herself, taking her body back in whatever form pleased her most.

Bryce crossed worlds for the people she loved and had faith. Danika loved so fiercely that her love outlived her and helped to save her world.

Jesiba loved in silence. Lehabah gave everything. Lidia sacrificed her joy in order to save the world.

Asterin chose faith in good despite everything that was done to her.

None of these women were beloved because they were perfect, they were flawed, and had struggles. They were beloved because they suffered, and we watched them decide that suffering would not be the end of their story.

And if I’m being honest, I think that’s why so many of us read romantasy in the first place.

Not because we believe in dragons or fae males or magical bonds. (I wish!)

But because we desperately want to believe that our story isn’t over, that mistakes, Orr choosing wrong once doesn’t mean we’ve lost our chance at choosing right.

That surviving something terrible doesn’t mean we’ve forfeited our chance at magic.

That being thirty-three, or divorced, or a mother, or exhausted, or hurt, or afraid doesn’t mean we’ve missed our chance to become the heroine of our own story.

Which brings me to Aelyra.

Aelyra is thirty-three years old.

She’s a mother of three.

She chose the wrong man.

She survived him.

And at the beginning of her story, she believes the best part of her life is already behind her.

I wrote her because when you’re in the throws of abuse it’s easy to believe that you’ll never laugh with your whole heart again, that you’ll never have the confidence you wish you did, or that you’ll ever find the love that you’ve craved your whole life.

I wrote her because I’m what happens when the woman who survived the wrong story finally gets the right one.

And maybe, if you’ve ever wondered whether you missed your chance, then I wrote her for you too.

— L. L. Schmid

What you don’t know is she is also a dog mom to a fierce little Rat Terrier named Emma. Emma is completely unaware of her size, and loves Aelyra more than she loves her own life.

Emma has been with Aelyra through years of abuse and is an excellent judge of character because of it.

Emma is inspired by my very real soul-dog, Emma, who really lived that life with me for sixteen years. I could think of no better way to honor my girl than to immortalize her in my books.

She passed on August 2nd 2023 and I miss her every day. The personality you’ll see her have in my novel is exactly how she was in real life. Funny, personable, loyal, and attached at my hip.

The last picture was her having a heart attack at the vets office. She only had eyes for me and waited until my husband arrived before she let herself pass. I truly believe it’s because she didn’t want me to be alone when she died. She was my fiercest protector and one of the greatest loves of my life.

As much as I love talking about my FMC, MMC, morally gray fae men, devastating plot twists, and the fact that I apparently decided my debut novel should become a seven-book emotional support crisis...

I realized something.

I don’t actually know YOU yet. 😅

And since you’ve officially become founding members of the Origin Inner Circle, I think that needs to change— like, now. 😂

So consider this our first official OIC Roll Call.

Tell me as much or as little as you’d like (for the love of God, please don’t doxx yourselves—we’re trying to survive emotionally devastating fantasy, not identity theft).

I’d love to know:

🖤 Where are you from? (Country, state, general region—whatever you’re comfortable sharing.)

🖤 What stage of life are you in?

• Teen?

• Twenties?

• Thirties?

• Forties?

• Beyond?

• Married?

• Single?

• Parent?

• Dog parent?

• Surviving purely on caffeine and spite?

🖤 What made you fall in love with reading?

🖤 What was the first book that absolutely consumed you?

🖤 Which fictional character permanently altered your brain chemistry?

🖤 What fantasy or romantasy world would you move to tomorrow if given the chance?

🖤 What do you wish fantasy and romantasy had MORE of?

Examples:

• Older protagonists?

• Mothers?

• Better friendships?

• More political intrigue?

• Found family?

• More spice?

• Less spice?

• Better villains?

• More emotional devastation?

🖤 Would you be interested in:

• Book clubs?

• Livestreams?

• Read-alongs?

• Character voting?

• Behind-the-scenes editing sessions?

• Cover reveal events?

• Beta reading opportunities?

• ARC opportunities?

And finally...

🖤 What book, series, scene, or character have you still not emotionally recovered from?

I’ll go first.

I’m Lauren.
I’m a 41 year old girl in her teens that still loves all things whimsical, “romantical” and a sucker for things that make me feel like I’ve stepped back in time.
I’m a wife to the guy who inspired my MMC, mother of five, former police officer, homeschool mom, and apparently someone who decided that writing a 120,000-word romantasy while raising children and running an online sales business (NO, I’m not part of some MLM lol- I own the company myself and built it from nothing.) sounded like a reasonable life choice.

I fell in love with reading because books were the first places I ever felt completely safe. My childhood… left a lot to be desired and books were a way for me to escape it for a while.

And I have still not emotionally recovered from:

• The Thirteen.

• Lehabah.

• Sam Cortland.

• Gavriel

• Aelin screaming “TAKE IT OFF!!!!!!”

• The Suriel.

• Professor Snape “Always”

• Pretty much all of Sarah J. Maas, and Rebecca Yarros, honestly. I feel like they’re my literary hero’s with how immersive they made their worlds.

Now it’s your turn.

Welcome to the Origin Inner Circle.

Let’s get to know each other. 🖤

Ok, you bad ass fire breathing bitch queen lovers…

Welcome to The Origin Inner Circle.

Seriously.

What I love most about the Beta reader content is that you aren’t joining after the book is finished and theres nothing to do but to say whether you liked or disliked it (you better not dislike it! 😂).

You’re joining while it’s still being forged. You get to help it be molded into something as tremendous as Prythian, Terrasen, Navarre, or Midguard. You get to help shape it into the biggest, richest, most unforgettable world I'm capable of creating. Those worlds set the bar for me. That's what I'm chasing.

That makes you part of something incredibly special to me. And, I’m humbled to have you here. Some of your comments on my TikTok have had me crying. Thank you.

I want to tell you exactly what this community is—and what it isn’t, because expectations are important.

This isn’t going to be a newsletter where I disappear for three months and randomly email you when the book launches. Ew. Who TF wants that??

No, you’re getting a front-row seat to the show.

Over the coming months, you’ll watch The Origin Series evolve from a manuscript in editing to finished manuscript and into a published novel.

Side note, I’m 41, you’re going to see an Oxford Comma in my writing. Annnnnd for full transparency, I do love a well placed Em Dash… (it’s this one “—” for anyone who doesn’t know). I grew up playing Oregon Trail and having teachers tell me I would’t have a calculator with me at all times (suck it Mrs. Butler!). I also was the kid who played goalie in soccer because I liked having time to pretend I was at a fancy ball and just dance around until I was needed. So…. yeah.

You’ll see worldbuilding here that won’t appear anywhere else.

You’ll meet your characters before the rest of the world does.

You’ll watch scenes change and morph into something that you want to scream, cry or laugh at.

You’ll see artwork as it’s commissioned— and yes, I do plan on using real artists. My oldest is helping me find creators to work with because she’s artsy like that.

You’ll witness the cover come to life… I already have a vision for it in my head and it’s fucking gorgeous.

One thing that is incredibly important to me:

I’m committed to working with real people. That means hiring talented artists to create original character art and a cover worthy of this story… because when it comes to books, let’s be honest a lot of us judge them by the cover.

It means working with professional editors to make this book the strongest version of itself.

It means investing in quality instead of cutting corners.

And here’s where you come in.

Your thoughts matter to me.

Your excitement matters… more than you could ever know.

Your feedback has the potential to shape this story before it reaches thousands of readers… and as a thank you, our OIC will get its own mention in ALL of my books… because this bitch is about to be a planned 7 part series because its that epic of a tale.

In the next few weeks I’ll be selecting a small group of beta readers.

Rather than simply picking names from applications, I’m planning something a little more fun.

Members of the Origin Inner Circle who submit their applications will have the opportunity to enter a live Zoom drawing where I’ll randomly select the first beta readers out of a pool of the most qualified (aka biggest readers!) applications.

If your name isn’t chosen, don’t panic!! (Completely hypocritical of me to say because if I was on the other end of this I 100% would absolutely panic)

You’ll still have opportunities to join the ARC Team and read the book before publication in exchange for an honest review.

I’m also beginning to dream bigger than just “publishing a novel.”

I’d love to create character content, cinematic teasers, and eventually audiobook experiences.

If you’re an artist, illustrator, graphic designer, actor, actress, voice actor, composer, musician, or another creative who believes you’d be a great fit for this world—but understands this is an indie debut with a carefully managed budget—I would genuinely love to hear from you.

Sometimes the best collaborations begin long before anyone is famous.

Thank you for believing in this story before it exists on a bookstore shelf.

Someday, when thousands of people are reading The Origin Series, you’ll be able to say:

“I was there from the beginning.”

And I don’t plan on forgetting that.

Welcome to the Origin Inner Circle.

— L.L. 🖤

Actually….. before you go...

Hit reply and tell me one thing.

What’s the last fantasy world that completely consumed you?

Was it Prythian?

Terrasen?

Navarre?

Middle-earth?

Something else?

I read every single reply, and I can’t wait to get to know you.

Subscribe now

Not all FMC’s are made equal.

My name is L.L. Schmid, and I'm currently writing The Origin Series, an epic romantasy centered on a heroine who is a little older than most fantasy protagonists—a 33-year-old mother of three whose life is turned upside down by ancient magic, dangerous politics, impossible choices, and a destiny she never asked for. If you need a comparison she’s a little like if Violet Sorrengail, Aelin Galanthynis, Bryce, Feyre & Nesta were all rolled into one person, shoved into motherhood and had to overcome intense abuse while being a parent to three small kids.

1. The first half of my life kinda sucked in all the ways that really matter…

As an only child with a disruptive home life, books were some of my first friends. My characters weren’t fictional people on pages. They were real people with real lives I was invested in so I could escape the hurt of my own life for a while. For years stories have lived in my head. Worlds. Characters. Conversations. Entire scenes that I never felt good enough to put to the page. This Substack is where I'll be sharing that journey as The Origin Series comes to life like.

Here you’ll find:

• Exclusive excerpts from upcoming chapters

• Character introductions and lore

• World-building notes

• Behind-the-scenes writing updates

• Deleted scenes and bonus content

• Occasional thoughts from me, the author, trying to keep all of this organized as a mom of five kids who also has ADHD.

I’m currently working on Book One, and while I don’t know exactly where this road will lead, I do know two things- this story is too big for just one book and stories are better when they’re shared.

2. If you’re here its because you love Romantasy with intense world building, characters you can adore and

Some you can love to hate too. The spice will be there, the world building is epic, and the FMC and MMC are not your average main characters.

3. If you’ve been through trauma…

You’ll love this series. I do cover some pretty serious topics like domestic abuse, sexual abuse, narcissism, gaslighting, manipulation, physical abuse, reputation smearing while also giving my characters the space to find healing, finding their power and ultimately becoming the absolute fucking badasses they are despite what others tried to do to break them.

4. I will be posting 1-2x per week.

Listen, I’m a mom of five kids. Some weeks it will be one and others it will be two- and my vow to you on this journey is to not only to give you the inside scoops on what is happening in the Origin world… but to also take your feedback.

For now, meet your FMC. Aelyra Nightengale.