It's time for the first week check-in of the To Bargain With Mortals anniversary readalong!

We've got two main things here this week: the weekly reading quiz and R.A. Basu's author insights on the first 10 chapters.

First up is the reading quiz, which I hope you have even a fraction of the fun taking it that I did making it. I got so nostalgic recently for those old reading quizzes we had to take in school (it was Accelerated Reader (AR) at my school) and because I was in the middle of planning this readalong, it turned into this.

It's not for nothing though! There WILL be a prize for the person who racks up the most points across each week's quiz at the end of the month. The top scorer will win a one-of-a-kind hand-annotated copy of To Bargain With Mortals, annotated by R.A. and myself. So give it a shot and let me know what you think ;) Feedback and the results will help me determine how much more difficult to make the next few weeks.

Take the quiz here!

TBWM insights with R.A. Basu:

I will now be handing you over to R.A. for some insights and behind the scenes trivia on the first ten chapters, BUT I do want to say that if you are reading for the first time and are very sensitive to possible spoilers, you might want to wait until you're through Chapter 11 to read these. There is a thing that's repeatedly and sort of unavoidably referenced in a few of R.A.'s notes here that has not happened as of Chapter 10, but you definitely know it's coming by this point. I just wanted to give you a heads up! Feel free to either read them now or wait until you're through the events of Chapter 11.

Prologue:
As Bindery subscribers who got the preorder gift know, the current prologue was written as part of my dev edit with Bindery. The old prologue is the scene where she is exiled overseas, where her father confronts her over giving a family heirloom to Samina. 

Nanny's character doesn't exist until the Bindery Cut. Samina was just some kid on the street that Poppy used to play with. I think the edit was a huge improvement in more ways than one, first of all it brings Poppy and Samina even closer together, and second of all it never really made sense that the Sutherlands let Poppy outside to play with random Virian children.

Chapter 1:
This was the chapter I chose to showcase as part of Pitch Wars! 

Chapter 2:
This chapter has been in the book since the very first draft. After I started editing, and I decided I wanted Poppy to be the central character, I wrote what is now chapter one so that readers could be introduced to her first. The first two paragraphs are nearly word for word identical from my very first draft to this one.

Chapter 3:
Not specific to this chapter, but since we have all the brothers together I thought I'd bring it up. BARGAIN started off as a Hades and Persephone retelling, in the loosest way possible. I went rogue very early in the first draft and realized I didn't want to do a faithful retelling after all, I just wanted to have him kidnap her and then they both catch feelings. (Yes, it was a romantasy at the start. No, we don't talk about that draft anymore). Even after I moved away from this, the origin is still evident in their names: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and Persephone are now Zeyar, Paranjay, Hasan, and Poppy. 

Chapter 4:
Originally, chapter four showed Paranjay actually getting arrested by Richard Montrose. It was cut to create drama and tension and to slim down the number of POVs used.

Chapter 5:
Since the chapter where Paranjay gets arrested is cut, this is actually our first introduction to Richard. I'll be the first to admit I was heavy handed when it came to Richard's characterization. He is quite literally society's golden boy - blonde hair, blue eyed, successful, rich, a Prince Charming if there ever was one. Even though Poppy is primarily attracted to him for stability and legitimacy, I wanted it to be plausible that she could be so distracted by his apparent flawlessness that she doesn't realize he is playing her, even though her best friend tries to warn her off him.

Chapter 6: 
For some time, I debated cutting the scene where Catherine warns Poppy. Part of me wanted it to be a surprise when Richard turns out to be a conniving bastard, but I also wanted the reader to understand why Poppy feels like she must go through with this, rushing and ignoring red flags.

Not a fun fact, but I hate the dinner date scene with Richard. This man gives me the fucking ick. The food waste in this scene is also intentional — at a time where people are starving, Richard orders excessive quantities of food just to prove that he can, and then doesn't blink an eye when it gets wasted.

Chapter 9:
I don't know how people view Richard's proposal. It's a grand gesture, sure, but as Zeyar later observes, the whole thing is set up in such a way that Poppy cannot turn him down — not that she would have. The proposal speaks to Richard's manipulative nature. We've seen Poppy do and say things she doesn't believe in as she attempts to impress Richard, but Richard has been pretending this whole time, too. He cares about orphans as much as he cares about her.

Chapter 10:

"'Surely he has someone he cares about." Zeyar waved his cigarette in the air. "A close friend, a mistress. He must have a woman — he's Miss Marnapur's most eligible bachelor, for gods' sake." 
Hasan paused. "Since when do you read Miss Marnapur?" 
"I don't," Zeyar said. "Harithi enjoys reading it. Says it's funny." Hasan's brow creased. "I don't think I've ever seen her with it."' 

This whole fucking exchange makes me laugh every time I read this book. This bit of dialogue remains hilarious to me, for reasons that become obvious later on.

And that is where I will leave you for this week! Next up is chapters 11 through 23, starting tomorrow, and I'll see you all back here in a week for the next drop. In the meantime, we've got the readalong chat going on Discord and R.A. has joined us for that as well, so come on over if you're not there already!