Kickstarter Week 2 + Mini Profile: Ellie

Posted by Samantha on Sunday, 27th October 2019

The second week of our Kickstarter campaign has been exciting, with such milestones as reaching 100 pledges and unlocking the phone wallpapers stretch goal! We are so grateful to our wonderful Regency Lovers for their support!

Those who follow us on Facebook and Twitter may have also noticed we opened Lady Lavender‘s secondary romance to speculation. After hearing about some wonderful pairings, we hinted at a non-heteronormative pairing – and we were blown away by the support we’ve received! We also received some queries about queer characters in general, and while we haven’t yet had an opportunity to explore all their stories in full in Regency Love and Lady Lavender, we definitely have both LGBTQIA+ and racially diverse folks in our Regency story world. We can’t promise when we’ll be able to tell their stories fully, but your wonderful support on our Kickstarter is definitely helping bring those stories closer to fruition!

We’re also heading towards unlocking our next two stretch goals:

$5,000: Early-bird discount on the physical book from Amazon (until the end of December, 2019)
$6,000: Christmas short story for Regency Love

And now, it’s time for Ellie’s mini profile – we hope you’ll enjoy!

Full name: Eleanor Frances Ashcroft

What makes them happy:

Sitting in front of the fire with her family
Exploring, refining, and improving her art
Trying new sweets, cakes, and ices

Virtues: Kindness, diligence, compassion, loyalty

Vices: Anything sweet

Quote from Lady Lavender: ‘I love the symmetry of English cathedrals. I find it all very pleasing. What I love most, however, are the discrepancies. The symmetry is but an illusion; the imperfections are what can tell the living stories of each building – and I find that breath-taking.’

Kickstarter Update + Mini Profile: Lord Sutton

Posted by Samantha on Sunday, 20th October 2019

What an incredible week it’s been! When we launched our Lady Lavender Kickstarter last week, we didn’t expect to reach our AU$2,000 goal in 13 hours! In the first week of our campaign, we have received AU$3,893 in pledges from 89 backers – we are so grateful for the support from Regency Lovers! <3

As such, we are pleased to announce we have reached our first two stretch goals:

$2,500: Early release of Lady Lavender‘s first three chapters
$3,000: Floor plan and family tree in physical book copy

We will email our Kickstarter backers with the novel’s first three chapters on Sunday 3 November – over a month before the novel’s release date!

It would be incredible if we could reach our next three stretch goals:

$4,000: Phone wallpapers
$5,000: Early-bird discount on the physical book from Amazon (until the end of December, 2019)
$6,000: Christmas short story for Regency Love

We have 51 days left on our campaign, which means there’s plenty of time to spread the word about Regency Love and Lady Lavender. Please contact us if you know anyone who might like to feature either our game or spin-off novel – we are a tiny group with a tinier marketing person, and we would love your help in sharing the news about our projects!

Now for our next series of planned blog posts: mini profiles of Lady Lavender‘s characters! We’ll be posting these weekly on Sundays (along with any Kickstarter updates) – we hope you’ll enjoy them!

Full name (and title): Aubrey Charles Beaumont, 7th Viscount Sutton, 11th Baron Beaumont

What makes them happy:

Sitting in front of the fire in the fine company of James Graham
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Acknowledgement and praise!

Virtues: Loyalty, passion, acuity

Vices: Pride, irritability, spontaneity, impatience

Quote from Lady Lavender: ‘I don’t know how you manage to complete even a quarter of your exercises under such conditions – I hereby opine that one should only be required to dirty one’s hands when the climes have struck the perfect balance between rotten and radiant.’

Lady Lavender: Kickstarter Launch!

Posted by Samantha on Saturday, 12th October 2019

It’s finally the 12th of October (in Sydney) – our Lady Lavender Kickstarter campaign is here!

If you have enjoyed Regency Love, we would very much appreciate your love and support!

Please also help us share the word about both the spin-off novel and the original Regency Love game. All your love and support will help us with our next project – and we know you will love what we’re working on now!

With love,
Jenny, Melody, and Samantha

Lady Lavender: Cover Reveal + Spin-off Backstory

Posted by Samantha on Wednesday, 9th October 2019

Ladies and gentlemen, we are delighted to present to you: the Lady Lavender (draft) cover!

What do you think of the cover? Do let us know your thoughts!

Update: Our Kickstarter link is live!

As promised, here is the backstory for Lady Lavender:

Back in 2015 when we first created Lord Sutton (a plot bunny of Jenny’s genius), we were adamant he was someone the MC could not romance. He was supposed to be someone who is mostly rude to the MC, but then reveals his rudeness is a cover for his feelings – quite a cliché, we know, but delicious nonetheless.

However, as we developed Mr Graham’s story arc and fleshed out Lord Sutton’s character, we started succumbing to his charms. Ever so gradually, he became the rich, artistic, flamboyant, broody, Byronic man we know today. When Samantha wrote his confession scene, she was definitely struggling with breaking poor Sutton’s heart. However, it was the right thing to do, and both Jenny and Melody approved of the scene, which now exists in the game.

Then Mr Graham’s story pack was released, and we received many comments and messages about wanting to end up with Lord Sutton. While we did consider exploring this, we decided to remain with our original intention: to capture those bittersweet feelings of unresolved tension and what could never be. We wanted to keep eliciting those emotions in Regency Love, despite the heartbreak that comes with it – after all, we all know what happens to certain characters in the Dragon Age series, to the Friar’s letter in Romeo and Juliet, to Erik and Charles on a Cuban beach in X-Men: First Class, but we still keep going back to those stories.

Then one day, an idea came to Samantha: Lord Sutton and Ellie would be perfect for each other, and a spin-off novel would allow us to explore a romance with Lord Sutton in a different way. We liked the idea’s potential, and we saw it as an opportunity to break out of our format for a little bit, and to give Samantha a bit more freedom in shaping the narrative – there are so many aspects of Lord Sutton’s character we can explore with a novel that we can’t with in-game dialogue (even with the occasional eavesdropping)!

After five years of writing and re-writing, a few rounds of feedback from Melody, gorgeous artwork from Jenny, and some evenings spent over bubble tea, we have a story about Ellie, Lord Sutton, and their nearest and dearest (teaser: the novel contains a secondary romance).

We hope you will enjoy Lady Lavender, and we look forward to your support on our Kickstarter – the launch day is only three days away (12 Oct)!

P. S. While the events in Regency Love and Lady Lavender are technically canonical, we absolutely endorse and encourage all manners of fanworks! We love that Regency Love has made it to AO3, and you are more than welcome to write your own versions of Lord Sutton’s story!