Hello!
June is one of those months that feels like it belongs to someone else. The days stretch out so long it feels almost rude — the sun still hanging in the sky at nine in the evening, stubborn and golden, like it forgot it was supposed to leave.
I love it, honestly. There is something about all that light that makes the dark feel earned when it finally comes.
Which is very on-brand for the kinds of books I write.
I have been carrying a piece of news for you since May, when I promised that newsletter friends would hear the preorder date first — before social media, before anyone else. Today is that day.
It’s here.
A Bond Beneath Smoke and Blood — The Dragonkin’s Court, Book 2 — is now available to preorder.
Pre-Order: https://buy.bookfunnel.com/gki01nmkm4
Release date: August 18, 2026. Which I cannot quite believe I am typing, because it still feels like a thing that happens in the future, and yet here we are, with a date and a link and an actual countdown.
You are the first to know. That was the promise, and I meant it.
If you have been waiting for this since the cover reveal in May — thank you for waiting. Now go lock in your copy. 🐉
The Summer Solstice falls on June 20th. The longest day of the year. More light than any other.
And according to nearly every folkloric tradition that has ever thought carefully about the fae — one of the most dangerous nights on the calendar.
Midsummer is a fae night. Not just Beltane, not just Samhain. Shakespeare wrote a whole play about what happens when mortals wander into the wrong forest on the wrong June evening. The old stories say the Aos Sí walk the roads on solstice night, that the veil goes strange, that bargains made under midsummer stars bind differently than any other time of year.
All of that light, and the magic is still wild underneath it.
I think that’s what I love most about dark romance and dark fantasy: the danger doesn’t come from the dark. It comes from the beautiful thing standing in the light, smiling at you. It comes from the moment you trust it.
Some questions I have been thinking about this solstice:
Are you a summer reader, or does the heat make you want to hibernate until October?
What’s the last book that made the hours disappear?
Dark fae courts or sun-drenched summer courts — which aesthetic pulls you harder?
Hit reply and tell me. I genuinely want to know. 😏
A Bond Beneath Smoke and Blood is the book I was most afraid of.
Book 1 had the structure of something I knew: the forced proximity, the slow-burn, the moment two people stop pretending they don’t want each other. Book 2 is different. It’s lonelier at the start. It asks Nyra to hold things she doesn’t know how to hold, and it asks Kieran’s absence to carry weight.
Writing a severed bond is strange. You have to trust that the reader can feel what’s missing. I trashed this story three times!
I think we got there. August will tell.
Before I go — a few questions to close out the first week of June with:
What’s on your summer TBR this year?
Are you a mood reader or a strict list person? (No wrong answers. Well, maybe one wrong answer.)
What’s one book you’ve been saving for the right moment — a porch, a beach, a hammock, a rainy afternoon that refuses to cooperate?
Hit reply. I read every single one, and your answers genuinely end up living in the back of my head when I’m plotting. 💜
Thank you for being here. For being the people I get to tell things to first.
I hope June brings you long evenings, good books, and at least one moment that feels just a little bit fae.
Ancient dragons. Modern firefighters. The women brave enough to love them.
They’ve lived for centuries, hiding in plain sight at fire stations across the country. But when the Kamirth — a mating cycle that strips away every wall they’ve built — chooses the one woman each dragon can’t have, all bets are off.
A second-chance romance with the halfling who ran. A one-night stand that followed her to work. A bachelor auction that saved two broken people. A prophesied queen who chose a single dad over a throne. A paramedic who proved she was more than enough. And an ancient dragon who hasn’t felt anything in three hundred years — until her.
Six novels. Six couples. One addictive series.
Nine cursed warriors. Nine fated mates. One war that will decide the fate of every realm.
The god Zarek created the Guardians to protect humanity. The demon Drayos cursed them to lose their minds. The only cure? A mate chosen by fate — and fate never makes it easy.
Their mates are humans, demons, goddesses, and a dragon princess who wants the king dead. Their enemies are gods, armies, and the darkness inside themselves. Their love stories span Heaven, Hell, the fae realm, and a small-town mortal world that has no idea monsters walk among them.
From a healer’s second chance to the God of the Underworld’s thirty-day bargain with a lonely mortal — from a warrior who storms Hell for the woman he loves to a next-generation Guardian falling for a wolf alpha on her first solo mission — every book delivers a complete romance inside an escalating, interconnected war.
Nine books. Nine couples. One epic, interconnected saga.
With love, the longest light and a thread that still burns,
Valerie
☀️💜🐉
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