Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat.

Paige Regan: Just support your fellow artists and your fellow writers and be supportive of your team. You know, thank your editor, show your appreciation like they are working so hard. And it may not be the same position as you have, it may not be the same thing as writing, but having others who understand your love for writing or books or anything, it’s. It’s so, so important. Writers are so inherently lonely. Um, so it’s, it’s great to make friends that can relate to you in those flights.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Paige N. Regan, is a dark fantasy author known for her great ability to infuse humor into the macabre with a focus on young adult and adult novels. Her captivating stories transport readers into worlds teeming with magic, myth, and murder. Her most recently published works include Sin and Bones and Blood and Stone, which are the first two books of the Sin and Bones trilogy. Page’s upcoming gothic fantasy novel, We Are Buried in the Garden, is set to be released in September 2026. I’ve read sin and Bones and can tell you it’s an exciting, otherworldly tale about a teenage girl dealing with all the difficulties involved in growing up while facing supernatural forces and influences and that create unusual challenges for her to overcome. For the record, Paige and I met while she was a student at Point Park University and I was one of her screenwriting professors. Paige has the distinction of being the very first of my former students to appear as a guest on Story Beat, and I couldn’t be more proud or pleased. Truthfully, for me, this is a milestone moment. So for all those reasons and many more, I’m thrilled to welcome to Story Beat today someone I actually taught, the exceptionally gifted writer, Paige Ann Regan. Paige, great to see you again, and welcome to the show.

Paige Regan: Thank you, Steve. It’s so exciting to see you. So excited to be here.

Steve Cuden: Indeed. Indeed it is. It’s exciting. So it’s very cool that you’re my first student to appear on the show. I’m just curious. I’m assuming since you’re now a published author, that I didn’t totally ruin you as a writer.

Paige Regan: No, you actually helped a lot. Um, you gave me the structure I needed to actually finish my project, which is awesome.

Steve Cuden: I focused on that, trying to get students to understand that being a perfect author is not the goal, at least not in the beginning of a writing career. The goal should be getting it finished.

Paige Regan: Yes. Oh, my gosh. That’s been so important. Um, I’m not sure I would have finished most of my projects if not for a lot of your classes, so thank you.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s cool. Um, well, you’re welcome. I’m glad it sunk in a little bit, that’s for sure. In fact, when I read your work, it sunk in a lot. So how old were you? Let’s go back a little bit. When you started to think about, for the first time, words and writing and books. How old were you?

Paige Regan: Oh, my gosh. So I was probably three. Honestly, my grandmas taught me how to read and write from a very young age. They were very story focused. Um, we used to do, like, a lot of improv together when I was growing up, so they kind of instilled the love of stories. And then as I got older and just kept writing them, I finally realized, oh, I can do this for a career. This is kind of what I want to do.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s. That’s it. And it’s not the easiest road in the world, but if you get there, you really, really can get there. So I want to go back a half a step. You did improv with your grandmas?

Paige Regan: Yeah, we did a lot of, like, random improv, a lot of, like, imaginative play. Like, it was. It was very silly. I used to actually, um, write little plays, like, moments before I’d perform them for them in, like, the nursing homes and everything.

Steve Cuden: This was in nursing home?

Paige Regan: One of them, yes. One of my grandmas. Yeah, it was in a nursing home.

Steve Cuden: Were other people watching you? Were you performing for them?

Paige Regan: Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes the neighbors would come down, and they would just be happening to walk by. I’d be in the lobby doing this.

Steve Cuden: Wow. Well, so you were performing as a little kid then already?

Paige Regan: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. No. Stories were everything for me growing up.

Steve Cuden: And were you a big reader when you were a kid?

Paige Regan: Yes, I loved reading. There were a couple of periods where I dropped off of reading for a while, but I have been reading for a very long time.

Steve Cuden: Who influenced you when you were a kid? Who did you read? Who did you like to read?

Paige Regan: Definitely, uh, Lemony Snicket was, like, my first big chapter books. The Series of Unfortunate Events. Those were the big ones. I loved the Magic Treehouse and Then as I got older, I got into, you know, like, Twilight, Hunger Games, things like that.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the influence on your work, that’s for sure.

Paige Regan: Yeah, for sure. It’s gonna say. During middle school, I had, like, a weird classics period where I read everything Mark Twain wrote. I read Alice in Wonderland. I read, like, anything that was in the, um, public domain. I searched it up and read it.

Steve Cuden: Wow. And you were doing this way before college? Yes.

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah. This was in middle school. I went through a weird classics phase.

Steve Cuden: And so you came to Point park as a screenwriting major. When did you start to get into movies and tv? And the thought of working in that

Paige Regan: world, that was probably closer to middle school, high school. I’ve always loved movies. Movies have been, like, a big thing for me growing up. Um, I remember I had a Barbie camcorder one Christmas, and I would film a Barbie camcorder. It was super pink, super flashy. I used to wear, like, all my glitter costumes and do whatever for it. Um, so I’ve always had, like, a huge soft spot for film and tv, and that kind of expanded.

Steve Cuden: Did you notice as you were watching movies that the books you had read as a kid were influencing stories that you were watching on film and tv?

Paige Regan: No, not when I was younger. Did not click.

Steve Cuden: But I assume it clicks for you now.

Paige Regan: Yes, yes, much more now.

Steve Cuden: There’s a lot of crossover between what happened in the world of fantasy and science fiction and all that sort of type of, um, genre work that people did well before. There were movies that eventually influenced the movies and TV that then influenced you to write the kind of, uh, work that you do.

Paige Regan: Absolutely. Uh, actually, this past fall, I went through this fun little game, I guess, where I read a bunch of classic books again, and then I’d watch the movies afterwards and kind of see where the influences came in and where they fell off. Um, I still am very upset about all the Dracula adaptations. Mina Harker, My Beloved, she can’t catch a break.

Steve Cuden: Did you train as a writer anywhere aside from Point Park? Did you take classes anywhere?

Paige Regan: No, just a couple of creative writing classes in high school.

Steve Cuden: So the training that we gave you there then, has stuck with you. It’s held you in good stead.

Paige Regan: Yes, absolutely. I still have all of the books, like the textbooks I had from college still sitting on my writing shelf to reference back to when I need to.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s good. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that you do occasionally need to refer to things because there’s so many moving pieces and parts to a story, especially a long form story like what you write, uh, that you can’t always keep it all in your head at once, can you?

Paige Regan: Oh, no, absolutely not. The amount of documents I have that are organized for different, just even different possibilities of endings, um, is staggering. Yeah, there’s a lot of organization involved and I do have to reference back, especially when I get stuck on a scene or I’m struggling with a character. Um, currently the manuscript I’m working on right now, I had trouble for about a month and a half just trying to figure out the main character and the pacing I wanted to have for it. So I referred back to a couple of my, uh, writing reference books and that kind of kicked me back in gear.

Steve Cuden: What did you do in that case to figure out how that character worked?

Paige Regan: Uh, so I sat down and I just went with the basics like I wrote. Okay, what’s her motivation? What is, like, who is she? What’s her interests? I just went all the way back with her story and I found out there were gaps that I just hadn’t filled earlier on. And I was like, all right, well, we gotta fix this.

Steve Cuden: That’s what I’m talking about. There are things that you. There’s so much to think about that you sometimes overlook. Uh, a corner or an angle or some way to think about a character. That’s what you’re talking about, I assume. Yeah.

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: And so once you then figured it out, you have those epiphany moments where you go, aha, now I know what I’m doing. Right?

Paige Regan: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Was there some point in this whole process, from whatever age onward that you finally thought to yourself, you know what? I am a pretty good writer and I really think I can be published.

Paige Regan: I’m still getting there. M. I’m working on multiple manuscripts right now and outlines for another couple of series, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get past the imposter syndrome entirely.

Steve Cuden: Well, I want to encourage you to take a number and get in line because that going to be true for the rest of your life. That’s how it works for most writers that I know is that we act like we know what we’re doing, but in fact we’re always thinking they’re going to catch me, that they, they are going to figure out I don’t know what I’m doing. Oh, yeah, that’s still true for me. And I’ve been at this for a long time, so don’t worry about it, don’t sweat it. Just do the Best work you can and keep going. That would be my encouragement to you that. Do you now think of yourself primarily as a novelist?

Paige Regan: Yes, I see myself definitely as more of an author, um, than I have a screenwriter. I still write scripts once in a while, usually for, um, video game clients. But I do see myself more as an author at this point.

Steve Cuden: Do you think about your books as something that can be translated and turned into screenplays?

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah, yeah. I use a lot of the tricks I learned in college to like, get the outline and everything done. And I’m like, okay, well, I think it could be put into a movie.

Steve Cuden: 100%. Well, we’re going to talk much more about your books in a moment, or at least Sin and Bones. Uh, but. But there’s no doubt in my mind from reading what you’ve written that they’re cinematic in nature. They already lend themselves to being translated and adapted. So don’t think they’re not. They really are. They’re right in that pocket where it could be turned into a series or into a feature.

Paige Regan: Oh, well, thank you.

Steve Cuden: You’re quite welcome. All right, so you focus, obviously, and we’ll talk about this again in a moment on magic, myth and murder. That’s a lot of what you do in your books and. And then you somehow manage and I’m not sure how you do it to make the macabre kind of lighthearted and entertaining. While it can be kind of heavy at times. How did you become interested in blending humor or light aspects of it into what is a typically dark and troubling topic or topics?

Paige Regan: I have always found humor to be a great way to cope with very traumatic and dark topics to begin with. A lot of my own experience, but I think that it.

Steve Cuden: So what were your influences to get you to be light hearted about darkness?

Paige Regan: I have this kind of mindset that you just kind of need to laugh at things once in a while. Like life is going to throw shit at you all the time. And yeah, a little bit of gallows humor. Some of it’s just like, you know, it is what it is. Things are going to keep happening so

Steve Cuden: well, things are gonna keep happening and, you know, life has a way of rearranging things for you whether you want it or not. When things come and they’re not right, it’s great to continue to have a sense of humor about it, even when it’s really awful. I think that’s what’s great about what I read in this book is that you’re not treating it so heavily that it’s unpalatable to get through. And it shows that these characters, or your protagonist in particular, that she is, um, able to survive what for many people would be, you know, truly devastating time. Let’s talk about Sin and Bones. Tell the listeners, you know, pitch it to us. What’s the story of Sin and Bones? What’s it about?

Paige Regan: So Sin and Bones is about a teenage girl who went through a very traumatic incident. And so she decides to make a kind of shady bargain with the Fae to hunt down the men who hurt her.

Steve Cuden: Well, what are the Fae?

Paige Regan: So the Fae are like fairies. They are these high mythical beings. They’re pretty inspired by Celtic Fae mythology, but I kind of put my own little twist on it. Um, I did a lot of research into different mythologies of the Fae. The Unseelie, the kind of dark, miserable ones. I’ve noticed a lot of Fae stories, which there’s no problem with this, but a lot of them are just kind of like pretty elves doing their thing. And I was like, okay, I want to make it a little grimmer, a little darker, closer to the origin. What?

Steve Cuden: Is there a particular book about the phase that you read that you can refer people to?

Paige Regan: Um, I didn’t read a particular book. I actually went online and found. Found a bunch of Britannica, I believe they had a bunch of articles and like, different journals about it. So I’d go through and read through those, and that was a pretty good resource.

Steve Cuden: So where did the idea come from for this story? How were you inspired to get here?

Paige Regan: Funny enough, this actually used to be a screenplay I wrote in your class.

Steve Cuden: And you know what? Now that I think back, because this is a decade ago. Right. So now that I think back, I remember you were doing something that had the Fae in it.

Paige Regan: Yeah, it was during the, um. It was during the MeToo movement. I started it. A lot of stories I had read covering Eve’s trauma, dealt a lot with the depressive aspects, but not so much the kind of anger that I was looking for. And so I put that together. And I’ve always been interested in the Fae. I always thought they were really neat and fun. Um, so I decided to put it together.

Steve Cuden: You’ve given them depth. That what I think is not typically there when you think of the Fae. You’ve given them, you know, kind of a three dimension that wasn’t there before.

Paige Regan: Yeah, no, the Fae were very much, um. They’re like tricksters. And they had. Some of them had like a little bit more personality, but a lot of them were just Kind of, oh, this will scare your child. Uh, and I kind of modeled them more. It gave them a bit more emotion.

Steve Cuden: Well, for sure. And they’re kind of like the dark version of Tinker.

Paige Regan: Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: Would you categorize this book as ya know, what category is this in?

Paige Regan: I do upper ya. So like 16 and up.

Steve Cuden: 16 and up?

Paige Regan: Yeah. I don’t try to recommend it to anyone younger than that just because of the sensitive topics, even if I don’t write out those topics.

Steve Cuden: And are you thinking about that audience as you’re writing?

Paige Regan: Yes.

Steve Cuden: You’re purposefully writing it to target that particular group.

Paige Regan: I definitely keep it in mind in the first draft. It’s just all for me. Uh, but after that, when I go through the revisions and rewrites, I do think about, okay, who would be impacted by this? Who do I want to write for? And that is the group like 16 and older that I end up focusing on.

Steve Cuden: Certainly adults can read this easily. It’s not, it’s not a childlike book, it’s an adult book, but it’s definitely appealing to a, uh, generation from about, like you say, middle teens and on up.

Paige Regan: Uh, yeah, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: I’m interested in the very beginning of the book. You print content warnings. Now I’ve, um, I don’t read a lot of books targeted for this group, so I don’t typically see content warnings. So when I saw it I went, this is very interesting. So I want to go through it a little bit. You put in there that there are mentions of sexual assault and rape, which is true. There’s physical, verbal and emotional abuse. There’s mentions of suicide attempts not seen on the page, suicidal ideation, self harm, also not seen on the page, violence and death, religious abuse and family member with dementia. Why did you feel it necessary to put that warning at the top of the book?

Paige Regan: I felt it was important because even though it is aimed m for a older audience, I guess like older teenagers, I still think it’s important to give those kids like a heads up. Um, I don’t want it to surprise anyone. And if they are going through something similar and are not in a place where they are okay with reading that content, I don’t want to put them through that. So I thought it was appropriate for

Steve Cuden: my younger audience because the younger audiences. Correct me if you think I’m wrong. Younger audiences aren’t quite mature enough to be prepared to, to handle it and know how to handle it. Is that why not always?

Paige Regan: Um, I’d say yeah, they’re, they’re not as experienced with healing from these things yet. Some of them might still be going through it at the time.

Steve Cuden: Right.

Paige Regan: I mean, I don’t want to surprise any of my audience with something that’s going to trigger them or upset them. Um, but especially for teenagers, I think it’s important to be able to be like, hey, here’s this has the stuff in it. You know, heads up. I don’t want to bring up anything too rough for you or influence them in a poor way.

Steve Cuden: So, you know, in a way, probably I’m going to guess that for some readers that would entice them in.

Paige Regan: Yes, some of them, yes. I have had them pick up the book at, uh, vendor fairs and things like that and go, oh, actually, yeah, absolutely. I want this.

Steve Cuden: Have you received any feedback from anyone who said thank you for putting that there? Because then I don’t want to read it.

Paige Regan: Yes, I did have a couple like that and I was totally fine with it. It makes perfect sense. You know, this is not for everyone. I write happy stories to an extent, but a lot of my content is dark or depressing or traumatic in some way. So it’s not for everyone.

Steve Cuden: You’re right. It’s definitely one of the things I know you definitely, um, uh, I know you learned it at school, but you also have been very good at using it. And that is the infusion of conflict into the stories. And conflict frequently is triggering for people just because that causes anxiety, that there’s that kind of, uh, conflict, uh, that’s happening and people sometimes don’t want to handle it. But that’s the purpose of the story is to have people get to a catharsis after they’ve gone through a conflict filled episode. And that’s what, that’s what this is. Um, your dedication says, to the girls that crave justice in a world not built for them. Explain what you mean.

Paige Regan: So I wrote that because this book is a little personal to me. So I did start writing this during the MeToo movement. Um, that’s what really brought it out for me. And I realized a lot of my own situation. And I think it’s really important to feel seen and to, as an author, to have other people feel seen as well. So I really wanted to write this for them, for the young girls that have struggled with things like this, struggled with situations like Eve or Haley or Sage, and just don’t know what to do or don’t know how to handle their emotions. And some of them might end up very depressed, some of them might end up furious. Um, and so I really wrote this series as kind of like a. A love letter to them over the course of how to heal from that or that you can heal from that, that’s very good.

Steve Cuden: That’s what. There’s a lot of that going on in here. And clearly, from the very start of the book, Eve has already gone through a traumatic event. And so a lot of the book is overcoming what the emotions that she’s dealt with in that. Of trying to get past that trauma or live with the trauma in a, you know, in an easier way. Um, so the book has clearly has mature themes in it. You’ve got survival and revenge. That’s part of this. The trauma we’re talking about. It’s the recovery from the trauma, and then it’s self identity, who am I? And others in the other characters in the book are dealing with their own identities. When you write about such heavy topics and you have to spend a lot of time and energy thinking about such heavy topics, how does that affect you personally as you’re dealing with it as a writer?

Paige Regan: It’s kind of my bread and butter. Um, I thrive on writing the angsty, miserable, sad moments. Um, I know. It’s so weird.

Steve Cuden: Does it make you feel good that you’re doing it?

Paige Regan: Do you feel cathartic? A little bit cathartic.

Steve Cuden: It’s an uplift of sorts. Yeah.

Paige Regan: Yeah, it feels good. Especially because I know, even though I write dark stories, I like there to be some kind of hope within them, and I know that’s going to be there or that is there somewhere in the story. So I feel really good when I write those darker, um, traumatic moments that’s

Steve Cuden: clear and evident in the work itself, that you want people to come away from it with a sense that you can get through this and that there is hope at the end of the road. It’s not Chinatown, you know, you’re not. Or the Godfather. It’s not that at all. It’s something much more uplifting. You say you’ve always been interested in the topics of. Of mythology and, uh, mayhem and murder. This is something that’s always been fascinating to you.

Paige Regan: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Mythology, I’ve always been super interested in. And, uh, during, I think, high school or college, in between there, I transitioned to pagan. So mythology is, like, right up my alley.

Steve Cuden: What do you mean you transitioned to pagan? What does that mean?

Paige Regan: So I grew up Catholic.

Steve Cuden: Okay. And that’s in the book, too?

Paige Regan: Yes, yes. Catholicism. The trauma of Catholicism. And I did grow up Catholic, but around middle school, Um, I kind of phased out of that, and I didn’t really have much to believe in or really search for. And so I just kind of researched a bunch of different mythologies, different religions, and paganism really stuck with me. So I like to include bits of that in my work as well.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s clearly evident in the. In this other world, the fey world, uh, that the paganism. It’s not paganism per se, but it has that essence and feel of it.

Paige Regan: Yeah, it’s totally. It’s related. Even if it’s just, like, atmospherically.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, definitely. Tonal. Tonally, it’s quite evident. Um, what appeals to you about these darker topics, what is it that draws you to it?

Paige Regan: I mean, I’ve always been kind of a morbid kid. Um, I grew one of my favorite movies when I was a toddler with Scream. So I’ve always had a little bit of a morbid sense of humor. Um, I really feel like there is usually some kind of hope at the end of a lot of horror that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. And so I like when things get really dark because then you can pull out of that. There is still somewhere to go after that.

Steve Cuden: Well, that is the essence of what takes. I think it’s what makes horror so popular. It is that most horror movies have this. A, uh, cathartic moment at the end that’s very deeply built. So you’ve got the fear and the fear and the terror and the fear. And then suddenly there’s a ray of light at the end and you can walk away with your protagonist intact. Hopefully doesn’t work in, uh, every story, but most. Most of the. Certainly the Hollywood ones wind up with your protagonist intact. Why? So that they can have another sequel. I mean, that’s what that’s all about. And that’s a money issue. But the truth is that that catharsis, uh, I contend, is the storytelling drug. It’s what brings people back over and over again to want to reread books and rewatch movies, is that they’ve had a catharsis at the end of the movie. That’s what you’re talking about, correct?

Paige Regan: Yes.

Steve Cuden: All right, so how did you come up with the concept of this world that we wind up in?

Paige Regan: I really love the idea of, like, political intrigue, um, in different kinds of mythology and different kinds of fantasy stories. And so I kind of wanted to mess around with the different court systems and the different types of Fae. Um, I had a lot of fun writing the different types of Fae. So I really wanted to just kind of delve into what I would have thought the Fae were as a child. What would have scared me as a kid, but also fascinated me. And that’s. That’s kind of where I came up with a lot of this. Because I used to go, like, traipsing through the forest a lot as a kid. My friend, he had, like, a little forest and a creek in his backyard. And we would make up stuff like this all the time with, like, creepy Fae and mysteries and all the kind of horror you can imagine. We would just have a blast with it. And so I kind of went back on that.

Steve Cuden: Did anything weird ever happen while you were out there?

Paige Regan: Not really. Not that I can think of. Um, it might have been weird to our childhood minds, like coming across a. Like a broken doll or something. Um, but it was really more of the what could happen that really drove us.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that’s the imagination running wild, especially as a kid. But it happens for adults, too. I mean, if you now as an adult, if you wound up in a forest and you ran into something like you describe in the book, it might give you pause maybe a little bit.

Paige Regan: Maybe question it all.

Steve Cuden: Uh, right. So let’s talk about Eve Carter. This is your protagonist. She is a high school senior. Did you pick that age that year because that was the audience you were appealing to? Or why did you pick that age?

Paige Regan: I didn’t really pick it at first. It kind of just happened. I kept messing around. Originally she was in college, and then at some point I had her out of college, and then at some point she was in middle school. It went all over the place. But I think I finally settled on her senior year because it is a huge transition, uh, transitionatory period. Um, like she’s graduating. She is still trying to transition from her trauma. Like, try to find a way past that. She doesn’t know what her future is, but everyone else is jumping into their futures around her. And I felt that was a really good place to put her. And it does work with the age group, which is awesome. But it wasn’t my initial thought. I was trying to think of what worked best for her as a character.

Steve Cuden: So this is good for the audience, the listeners, to understand that you can develop a character down one whole road and realize at some point, no, this is not right, and then go back and fix and fix and fix. And that’s what you went through with this. You had her as one age or another, but then you ultimately settled on 17.

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah, I rewrote this thing probably 15 times, um, in different formats. It started as a screenplay for the first five times and then transitioned to prose. And she went through a lot of changes before she became the character she is now.

Steve Cuden: So talk about that transition from screenplay to prose. Was that a, ah, challenge for you, or was it. Did you find it relieving to do it, or how did it come about and how did you feel about it?

Paige Regan: So it was kind of a challenge at first because I’d gotten so used to cutting any kind of fluff from my writing, and now I was like, oh, I don’t need fluff necessarily, but I need to bulk up my book. I need to have some kind of descriptor and more things happening than what I normally would in a screenplay. So that was definitely a little difficult to get used to. I think I managed to finally get used to that. But that. That was definitely a hard transition, jumping from screenplay to prose. But before that, when I was going just into screenplays, like, it was a hard transition going from prose to screenplays. So it’s kind of back and forth.

Steve Cuden: So that’s very interesting because as I’m, uh, not telling you anything you don’t know, but the emphasis on. When you’re teaching screenwriting is on less is more. Tight, tight, tight. Only give enough description to get you from one moment to the next, but you don’t need to fill in all the blanks. That’s something that the actors and the director and the production designers and so on do. You don’t need to describe everything. You need enough for them to get what they’re doing. But as the author of a novel, you have to fill in most of those blanks and still leave enough room for the reader to have an imagination about it.

Paige Regan: Right, exactly. And it’s still very much. You want to keep things tight, tight, tight. Um, you just have a little bit more freedom and you get a little bit more control over it. Like, what you’re writing has to have some kind of meaning or tell some kind of story in its own.

Steve Cuden: Do you. You enjoy that process, though?

Paige Regan: Oh, my God, yes. I love it. The first draft is always kind of rough for me. That’s probably my worst one. But when I get to revising, like, oh, I’m all for it.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s that. You know, we talked about puke drafts in school that you just. Are you a, uh. Do you like to do that? Write fast and get it out and then revise?

Paige Regan: Yeah. So my. My process right now is I will write my first draft and uh, just try to get it out, you know, beat myself up over it for a couple of weeks, and then push out the last, like, 40,000 words in two weeks. And then I’ll send it to my editor for developmental edits, and once she brings it back, like, I love seeing the red penny. That is my favorite thing in the world.

Steve Cuden: Oh, that’s interesting. Why?

Paige Regan: Because, uh, she notices so many things that I would have never picked up on. Some of them I have picked up on, and I’m really glad to have that confirmed. Like, oh, yeah, this doesn’t work, or this is wrong. But it is so helpful to have another set of eyes on my story and to see how much better it can be and to push it to that next level.

Steve Cuden: So you love a good editor, then?

Paige Regan: Oh, my God. Yeah. Editors can make or break any story,

Steve Cuden: and that means that you, um, are giving up a certain amount of your ego by doing that.

Paige Regan: Yeah. It’s very difficult, I think, for younger writers to give up that creative freedom and to kill their darlings.

Steve Cuden: I honestly think, other than certain writers who get so good at it that they don’t need editing anymore. I think every. Every writer needs an editing.

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah. Oh, no, absolutely. Like, I will praise my editor Mattie, till the end of my days.

Steve Cuden: Well, and that’s really good to know. I think that that’s the right attitude. Is that part of it, is that you probably, like, I do, you get a little bit lost in the forest for the trees.

Paige Regan: Oh, 100%.

Steve Cuden: No pun intended, with your book. Um, so let’s go back to Eve for a moment. She’s got more than a few troubles. I assume that you either have known people with those troubles, and I’m not asking for any. I’m not trying to pry into your personal life, but you either know people who have had troubles like that, or you’ve read about people with troubles like that or you’ve experienced them yourself. Usually it’s one of those three. Um, when we meet her, she believes she’s going to hell. That’s right at the top. She thinks she’s going to hell. Correct.

Paige Regan: Yes.

Steve Cuden: And then she’s, uh, been moved across her desires, her wishes. She’s being moved across the state of Vermont to another place. Um, she’s dealing with a mentally failing grandmother. This is all sort of in the beginning of the book. And she’s. She’s got an abusive father. All these things are happening to her. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’. Am. Before we even get into the essence of the story, would this story work at all? If Eve’s life wasn’t so difficult and filled with conflict.

Paige Regan: No, I don’t think it would. She does not have the kind of support. Support system to easily heal from her trauma. Having this constant bombardment of conflict in the form of having to figure out her own support system, having to find her own group of people that are willing to help her and get her out of that, um, versus having that established already, I think she’d be a completely different character.

Steve Cuden: So I want to compliment you on something you do extraordinarily well that I think most young writers don’t do so well. You very slowly build the story. We don’t get jumped into the middle of where it’s going too fast. It takes a while for it to build, but you do it in a way where it’s not the least bit duller or uninteresting. And to me, you bring in these two girls, Haley and Sage. And for a very long time in the book, we don’t know that this is going into an otherworldly scenario. Even though there are clues, but we’re not there. You do that slow. And I think that that’s really great. That’s great storytelling. Uh, was it your intention all along to build that slowly till we get into the heart of where it is going to go?

Paige Regan: I thought that with Eve’s story, she deals with so much. I didn’t want to immediately jump into the fantasy aspects and just throw everything at my readers at once. I think that the slowness is also part of her depression. It’s the very slow movement through her life where there’s a ton of things happening, but she’s not always very present for them. Um, until we get to the Fae world and she starts making her big decisions.

Steve Cuden: But it takes. It unfolds very deliberately for a long time. There’s work we like. I say we get clues with Liam about this is something going on, but we don’t know what it is. It’s not. It’s not in your face. It’s just something odd’s going on. And, you know, I think, as you probably also learned in school, that all stories are stories of suspense. And that’s what you’re building here is a suspenseful story. And so we don’t know where it’s going. Did you know as you were. As you were writing this, did you know exactly how it was going? Did you build out an outline before you started to write?

Paige Regan: Oh, my gosh, yeah. Yeah. The. I will say I spend the most time of My writing process on outlines, I will sit there and write it. I’ll maybe get like 10 or 20,000 words of the first draft done, and I will see where it stands with the outline, if the outline still works. If not, I sit back and I redo it. I adjust it how I need to. Um, but I really like having a tight outline before I begin my work because, I mean, I will probably toss some things away here and there and move things around as I need to, but the outline is so important to me.

Steve Cuden: Tell the listeners about how many pages 20,000 words works out to be.

Paige Regan: Oh, gosh, that’s. I usually, on my calculator, do it. Um, that’s what, like a hundred something pages?

Steve Cuden: It’s going to be somewhere between 60 and 100 pages, probably.

Paige Regan: Yeah. I was going to say somewhere in the higher. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And how often when you get to the end of having developed that outline, do you look back and go, no, I’ve got to go back to the beginning and fix.

Paige Regan: Yep, every time. Almost every time. Sometimes it’s smaller things, which I’m lucky for. I know My second book, uh, the sequel to Sin and Bones, I only had to revise it two times, which was awesome. And only the outline.

Steve Cuden: The outline or the book?

Paige Regan: The outline, yeah. Oh, the book. Now, the book is its own beast there. But the outline I only had to revise two times before I was happy with it. But the first book, Sin and Bones, uh, that was a monster. And my current outline that I’m working on for my book in September, I am still currently messing with the outline as I write the story.

Steve Cuden: As you’re writing, once you start to write, whether it’s the script or the text of your novel or whatever it is, you’re gonna continue to make corrections along the way.

Paige Regan: Oh, absolutely. Your characters unfold before your eyes and make their own decisions. And then you’re like, well, I can’t have them do XYZ because that’s not who their charact character is anymore.

Steve Cuden: How much do you feel like the storytelling is coming through you, like you’re a conduit for it versus you’re doing it?

Paige Regan: I’d say fairly often. Um, it’s really when I get into a zone, like at first, uh, usually at the beginning of my writing process for the day, I’m like, oh, yeah, it’s just me throwing down words again, trying to get this out of the way. But once, uh, once I get in the groove of things, I’m like, oh, yeah, the words are just coming. They’re Just flowing out of here and

Steve Cuden: you’re sort of just in the middle of it. You’re not really thinking all the way through. It’s just happening.

Paige Regan: Yeah, that’s the zone. And it gets so much easier once characters are better established and everything. Because you already know them.

Steve Cuden: Do you start to hear them talking in your head?

Paige Regan: Oh my gosh, yeah. No, I have like fan cast voices in my head for everyone.

Steve Cuden: Does it ever freak you out that you’re hearing voices in your head? No, that doesn’t me either.

Paige Regan: I’ve been talking to myself for years.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s what a writer is. Certainly a novelist is someone who’s talking to themselves. But it’s coming out on paper or in a computer, however you’re doing it. Uh, and uh, you know, that’s when that happens. That’s like my favorite part of all of it. When you get into that zone.

Paige Regan: Yeah, no, it’s. It’s wonderful. It is the best feeling in the world to just be able to pump out like 15,000 words in two days. Like that’s amazing.

Steve Cuden: All right, so tell us a little bit more about Liam. I mentioned him a moment ago. Who um, is he and what’s he all about?

Paige Regan: So Liam is a. He is a Fae that is kind of Eve’s love interest. But they’re more of a love story. He’s not. The romance isn’t the point of the book. But he is her, I would say quote, love interest and also becomes her one of her best friends. He kind of helps snap her out of a lot of her darker moments.

Steve Cuden: There’s a lot of tension between them which gives it that the feeling of a sexual relationship even though there is none.

Paige Regan: Yes. No. They have a kind of fun, snarky, bantery kind of behavior. But he is definitely, at least at the beginning of the book, he’s definitely a little self centered, a little bit of a smart ass and kind of has to learn how to manage that behavior in the presence of someone who is so deeply wounded that his behavior is not funny to her. It’s hurtful. And he kind of has to reconcile with that and realizing uh, like grow from that.

Steve Cuden: Because he’s a little cavalier about it all.

Paige Regan: Oh yeah. No, he does not understand anything that’s going on.

Steve Cuden: And Eve is not really cavalier about much at all. That’s a conflict right there.

Paige Regan: Yeah, she’s very private and she is also a little aggressive.

Steve Cuden: So your magical world, the fey world sort of comes off a little bit like ah, it’s a kingdom, which it is A kind of a kingdom. And is there a parallel to any real world stuff that you looked at? And there’s a parallel to it.

Paige Regan: I’m sure there’s a lot that is parallel that I didn’t think of when I was writing it. I focused much more on the characters, traumas, and giving them all distinct things to heal from that. I tried to research very well the kingdom thing. I mean, I read a lot of fantasy and I like to watch history, uh, documentaries. So I’m sure some of that has snuck in here.

Steve Cuden: Are you a Game of Thrones fan?

Paige Regan: I did love Game of Thrones, yes. I, um, I have opinions about the last season, but I won’t get into that right now.

Steve Cuden: Well, the Game of Thrones is very different from what you wrote, but there are elements of it in terms of the hierarchy.

Paige Regan: Yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: Um, how much of the story did you intend, if not all of it, to be allegorical, about the universal issues of growing up?

Paige Regan: Uh, so when I first wrote it, I didn’t intend for that. But once I got through my later revisions, I started to understand my themes. My themes don’t usually come till after I’m working on the book for a while. So once that came in, I was like, oh, I can kind of mess with this. So it became intentional.

Steve Cuden: I love that you say that the themes come after you’ve been working on it, if not a full first draft. Right?

Paige Regan: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And that’s something that I think we talked about in school is that. Oh, yeah, uh, don’t worry about your themes to start, because sometimes that forces you into weird dead end alleys. And, uh, so if you just write the story and then go back and look at, well, what themes am I talking about here? Then you can go back and make sure that that’s represented all the way through.

Paige Regan: Yeah. That is why I love the revising process, like right after I get my developmental edits, because at that point I see everything my editor has seen. I’ve had some time away from the script to look at it and start picking out the themes and be like, oh, here’s how I can emphasize that. Here’s how I can make it better than what it was.

Steve Cuden: What do you think you did? Eventually, Eve becomes self empowered. For a long time in the book, she’s sort of the victim, and then she becomes self empowered. How challenging was it for you to clearly express that shift and to get us to a sense of that empowerment?

Paige Regan: That was probably one of my biggest rewrites. Um, it was very difficult to figure out how to manage that within her character. At points I knew she was being too passive, but I needed her to be at least a little passive at the beginning of the book because of everything going on around her, Getting her to that point where she is self empowered and she is going to do something about it. I rewrote. Honestly, I rewrote the ending of the first book like, a hundred times before I settled on, oh, I think this is the situation to put her in.

Steve Cuden: It took you that long to understand that particular turn?

Paige Regan: Yeah, sometimes it takes a long time. And this was definitely one of them.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely. Uh, you’re lucky if you get it right off the top. You’re lucky.

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah.

Steve Cuden: Uh, but most of the time it’s just grunt work to try and figure out why isn’t this working. And then you have to go back and work and work and work, which is what you’ve done. You’re very diligent about it, obviously. Did you do anything as you were developing all these characters to avoid stereotypes?

Paige Regan: I didn’t, like, consciously try to do that. Um, I did go through during edits and revisions to be like, okay, let’s double check everything. And, you know, I had been doing my research as I was writing the first draft, before I wrote the first draft, and then again during edits. Um, it wasn’t something that was immediately on my mind until the editing process where I was like, okay, I want to look at this really hard and just make sure that I’m not hitting anything too stereotypical or upsetting, I guess, in that regard.

Steve Cuden: Well, but again, you had to sort of create characters for a little bit before you said, oh, wait a minute, I’m sure you did this where you went, that’s just like some other character I’ve seen or read. And now I’ve got to figure out how to make that character not stereotypical.

Paige Regan: No, it was, um. I would say Haley was probably the hardest one in regards to that, because I originally had written her as kind of a happy, go lucky comic relief. And as I was reading the story, it felt very out of place. She didn’t feel human. She felt very one note. So during a lot of my revisions, I tried to flesh out her character more. And I wanted to flesh out her hobbies, her family, um, her interests, things like that. That really helped build her character into an actual person.

Steve Cuden: And those are the kinds of things that a screenwriter needs to do. But frequently that information will not come out in the screenplay. It will just come out in the, um, sort of in the feeling of what’s going on with the character? Not in detail, but in a novel you can actually express all that, right?

Paige Regan: Yep. That is my job.

Steve Cuden: And that’s fun for you.

Paige Regan: Oh my God. Yeah, I love it. I love making my own little weird little worlds.

Steve Cuden: And good on you. Because that’s what’s gonna make separate you from the rest of the pack, is your weird little worlds. I’ve not had the privilege, uh, of reading Blood and Stone yet. Um, but what’s that about?

Paige Regan: At that point, Eve is trapped in the Fae world with Haley and Liam and Sage already live there. But she is trapped and forced into a kind of competition for who is going to be the heir of the Bone Court. And while she’s there, she is also trapped with the men who raped her. It’s a very. I don’t want to say it’s a messy book because the book itself is not messy, but it’s a messy situation that she’s in where at this point she has tried to kill Liam. Um, but now she has to partner with him to try to survive in this Dark Fae world. She has established a wonderful friendship with Haley and Sage. But now there is a betrayal. Um, she is now trapped with the men she was hoping to be rid of forever and has to actually go forth and take care of that on her own terms as well.

Steve Cuden: So you describe that well, that she’s got a messy life and world, but the storytelling is not.

Paige Regan: Yeah, she, she has a bunch of mess. She is going through it in book two. Um, but the story itself, I’d like to think it’s pretty easy to read.

Steve Cuden: And is we are buried in the garden. Is that book three or is that another book entirely?

Paige Regan: That’s a separate book. So book three is coming out next.

Steve Cuden: Do you have a title for it yet?

Paige Regan: I do, and I can tell you now because I haven’t. By the time this is, uh, posted, it should be out. Um, it’s Heir and Throne.

Steve Cuden: Heir and Throne.

Paige Regan: Mhm.

Steve Cuden: That’s H E I r, not a I r. Yeah.

Paige Regan: H e I R and Throne.

Steve Cuden: Is that the conclusion of the story or will there be more?

Paige Regan: No, that’ll be the final book of the trilogy. Um, unless someone commissions me like $8 billion. And it’s like, write more. And I’m like, sure, oh, every author is.

Steve Cuden: Is going to get a check for $8 billion.

Paige Regan: I know, right? That’s just a standard these days.

Steve Cuden: So tell us about we are buried in the garden. What’s that about then?

Paige Regan: Yeah, so we are buried in the garden. Is my first standalone adult novel. It is a gothic fantasy about a young woman named Marceline who has just lost her sister. Her sister has passed away, unfortunately, and she is marrying into a renowned doctor’s family to try to bring her sister back to life. Um, however, once she arrives there, she soon realizes that the way to bring her sister back to life is not nearly so easy as she had hoped and perhaps not quite as moral as she had hoped.

Steve Cuden: So when you say bring her back to life, she. Is she buried already? She’s already in the ground.

Paige Regan: So her body’s buried, but her stomach spirit is still there. So she is haunted by her younger sister, uh, throughout the book. And you get her point of view and her sister’s point of view throughout the story as, ah, her sister is slowly facing the threat of her spirit being corrupted for not resting for so long. And so they’re on like a whole time limit thing to get her sister brought back to life before she turns into a monster.

Steve Cuden: It’s the infamous ticking clock.

Paige Regan: Yes. I love my ticking clocks.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s what makes a, uh, lot of the tension and conflict work, is that, you know, somebody’s on a deadline of some kind. Not every story in the world has those, but when they do, it usually ups the ante quite quickly.

Paige Regan: Oh, yeah.

Steve Cuden: And I think that’s fun. Now, when she’s brought back to life or when she tries to be brought back to life. This is not Frankenstein like, is it?

Paige Regan: No. So it’s not. It’s a little bit based on the Frankenstein idea of, like, playing God bringing a man back to life sort of situation. But it is much more of, uh, a she is grieving and desperate to bring her sister back, and she uncovers someone that was brought back and how

Steve Cuden: that happened and then uses that to go at it kind of.

Paige Regan: She has to make a moral decision from that point whether it is still worth to bring her sister back or not.

Steve Cuden: And that moral question, uh, will have certain religious overtones to it at the same time, I assume.

Paige Regan: Oh, it always does.

Steve Cuden: It always does. Because, you know, uh, we’re not really built as humans to live forever. I mean, that’s just. We’re just not built that way. And so we have a lifespan of some length, whatever that length is. And hopefully we make the best of it as we’re in it. But, uh. And that’s part of the morality of what you’re discussing, I have to guess.

Paige Regan: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Steve Cuden: So, all right. Do you maintain a daily writing routine?

Paige Regan: I do write every day. I do not always write the same amount of words every day.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s okay.

Paige Regan: So some days I’ll get like 100 words done. Some days I sit there for 10 hours and I get 10,000 words done. So it really just depends. But I do try to write something every day, even if it’s not this manuscript. Like, I’ll work on an outline or, or I will write like a short story or just fumble with something.

Steve Cuden: You feel like you’re maybe a little stuck. Is there something you do to jog you out of it?

Paige Regan: I force myself. I sit there and I force myself to write something. I might switch chapters, I might switch POVs. Um, if it’s really, really not working, I’ll go back and reread the story for what I have and see. Okay, what naturally comes next. And we can fix that in post.

Steve Cuden: There’s no substitute for just sitting there and working, which is what you do. So when you’re in that chair and you are working away, what is it that you do for further inspiration? Or are you just looking to get in that zone?

Paige Regan: I mean, I’m really aiming to get in that zone, but that’s not always gonna come. So sometimes I have to put on some background music that kind of like gets a moody atmosphere sphere. Um, or I might. I have a folder of inspiration pictures I picked out during the outlining phase that I’ll pull up and kind of flip through. But I try not to look anything up when I’m writing or when I’m stuck because it’s just going to distract me.

Steve Cuden: Are you easily distracted?

Paige Regan: I am. Um, unfortunately, the Internet is a very distracting thing, so my best option is to pull up things I already have saved or to go for a walk or. I also read a lot, and I’ve been expanding a lot of the books that I read so I can kind of pick inspiration from other genres and stories.

Steve Cuden: Do you try to read things that are not related genre wise to what you’re writing entirely?

Paige Regan: Oh, 100%, absolutely. I think that that’s probably one of the best things I can do for inspiration is reading anything really. Like, I might not be super interested in a specific time period in history or something, but I can pull out things that happen during that time that I’m like, oh, this would work really well for this. Usually it just kind of pops in my head and I’m like, oh, that’s a great idea. I can use this later. And I put it in my D file.

Steve Cuden: Who’s your favorite writer right now? Who do you read oh, my gosh,

Paige Regan: right now, I mean, I love Brandon Sanderson. He is, like, top tier. Um, I actually vended at, uh, Dragon Steel Nexus, his convention last December, and I loved it. Um, but I am also a huge fan of Matt Deniman. Um, he has written the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which I am obsessed with. Holly Black is a huge inspiration. Um, I’ve been reading her books for so long, she’s written about Fae for since I was a teenager. Yeah, I’d say those are probably my big three right now. My top three.

Steve Cuden: Do you try to read something every day?

Paige Regan: Yes, yes, absolutely. I’m actually currently on, uh, the Gate of the Feral Gods, which is book four of Dungeon Crawler Carl. So I’m reading that and then I have a couple book club books to get to, and then I’ll jump back in the rest of his books.

Steve Cuden: Do you ever find, like, while you’re writing what you write, that you need to put that aside the other kind of stories that have even a similar

Paige Regan: tone to yours sometimes, not all the time. Um, actually, uh, more often I find that I do the opposite where if I really want to get in the zone for a story, I will try to surround myself with that kind of vibe. So leading up to this, when I was working on the outline, I read a ton of gothic novels, uh, for my book in September, like Frankenstein, Dracula, um, a couple newer authors, um, like Don’t Let the Forest in, things like that. And that really helped cement the kind of creepy vibe I was going for.

Steve Cuden: Do you ever read H.G. wells?

Paige Regan: Yes, I actually have a big Barnes and noble collection of H.G. wells. Uh, I think seven novels. I got it back in high school, and I read the first, I think three or four novels of it. And it’s been sitting on my shelf meeting for me to pick up and read the rest of them.

Steve Cuden: I think that you’d find him interesting for what you do. He’s absolutely unrelated to the world that you’re in. But I think that you’d find the way that he writes, the way he tells stories to be very, um, uh, intriguing to you. I could be wrong about that. You’d have to tell me.

Paige Regan: You’re right. I mean, I’ve read. Let’s see, the Invisible man is probably one of his most famous that I love.

Steve Cuden: Um, War of the Worlds.

Paige Regan: War of the Worlds. I haven’t gotten to that one yet. Uh, the Time Traveler.

Steve Cuden: It’s a time machine, I believe.

Paige Regan: Time machine. Thank you. It’s been a while since I read it.

Steve Cuden: Well, like I say, you know, there are a lot of great ones out there, and among them would be Mary Shelley and, uh, certainly Stoker and so on. Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been having just an absolutely wonderful conversation with Paige Regan for a, uh, little bit of time here, and we’re going to wind the show down. And I’m wondering, Paige, in all of your experiences now as a writer, can you share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?

Paige Regan: Yeah. So actually, what really got me into writing professionally was I decided to do freelance writing for video games. That’s how I started before I became an author. And my. My first couple of clients, all they wanted were corruption games for how to write, uh, like, characters becoming corrupted. And I took that a little bit more as, oh, like murder. That’s not quite what they were going for, I realized very quickly.

Steve Cuden: So corrupted, as in, like, politically corrupted.

Paige Regan: Um, they were going for sexually corrupted.

Steve Cuden: Sexually corrupted, yes.

Paige Regan: And I went much more of like, oh, you want, like, murder. And

Steve Cuden: what video games. Do we know any of the names?

Paige Regan: They are a bunch of indie studios. Um, one of them was For He’s. Or games for. They have a game called Uni. Um, I did manage to convince them to let me write, like, a murderous route, so I’m. I’m quite proud of myself for that one.

Steve Cuden: Do you enjoy writing video games?

Paige Regan: It’s so much fun. Um, I’m a huge gamer, so it’s. It’s pretty natural for me to jump into that.

Steve Cuden: So that. That’s in your wheelhouse.

Paige Regan: Yeah, yeah. It’s not like my main career kind of thing. That. That’s. That’s definitely more of hobby at this point. I just find it fun to do.

Steve Cuden: I’ve never written a video game, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’d have to go learn all about it. So I find that interesting. That’s a much more expansive world than writing a novel, isn’t it?

Paige Regan: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. No, it is. Um, the amount of words I write for video games, I could be writing, like, Wheel of Time, uh, for one game.

Steve Cuden: All right, so last question for you today, Paige. Uh, you’ve given us a tremendous amount of advice throughout this whole show, but I’m wondering, do you have a single piece of advice or a tip that when somebody says to you, how do you do this? Or how do I get into this? That you like to give to them other than writing?

Paige Regan: Just constantly do it. Get through the book? I really like to say, um, Just support your fellow artists and your fellow writers and be supportive of your team. Thank your editor. Show your appreciation. They are working. And it may not be the same position as you have, it may not be the same thing as writing, but having others who understand your love for writing or books or anything, it’s. It’s so, so important. Writers are so inherently lonely. Um, so it’s. It’s great to make friends that can relate to you in those plights.

Steve Cuden: It is important to have a support system of some kind that the people that you’re. You deal with and you’re around aren’t telling you, stop doing that. It’s a waste of time or something like that that you need that support.

Paige Regan: Absolutely. And just being. Helping support other artists, too, even if they’re in a different part of their career than you. Like, support their successes. Be happy for them like it is. We’re all here for each other. We’re all struggling. I think it’s so important to just show kindness.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s just a terrific bit of advice to show kindness, not just in the writing business, but in general. And, uh, I think that that’s really terrific advice. Paige Regan, this has been so much fun for me to finally get a chance to have one of my former students on the show. This has really been cool for me and for any of you that are, I’m so glad that you, you were here today. And, uh, for those of you interested, check out Paige’s work on either Sin and Bones, Blood and Stone, What’s. What’s the third one called Now?

Paige Regan: It’s going to be Heir and throne. It’ll be March 2027.

Steve Cuden: Cool. And also check out We Are Buried in the Garden. Paige Regan, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your, uh, energy and your wisdom. And thank you very much.

Paige Regan: Thank you so much, Steve. It’s been so wonderful. I’m so glad you invited me.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.