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

Can you believe we're officially less than one week away from BARGAIN having been out in the world for a full year? A YEAR? I think that anniversary date, October 28, might be a really interesting time to reflect back on the past year and maybe even look forward to things to come. I don't know. Maybe.

Could mean anything, really...

No new announcements from me this week though, I'll get you right into the quiz and R.A.'s author insights for this section and just pop in a very quick reminder here that I'll be pulling winners for the giveaway from last week's post later today, so if you haven't entered you have just a few more hours from when this goes up!

Time for this week's reading quiz!

Two down, two to go. Just this and then one more chance to pull in as many points on these quizzes as you can! As a reminder, the person who scores the best across all four weeks' quizzes at the end of this readalong will win a one-of-a-kind hand-annotated copy of TBWM annotated by R.A. Basu and myself!

Take the Week 3 quiz here!

And finally...

TBWM insights with R.A. Basu:

Chapter 24:

Before the version where Nanny and Samina lived with Poppy in her early years, it was Harithi who gave Hasan the idea to put on a play for Poppy so she'd feel more connected to her culture. This version is so much better I can't believe I didn't think of it first - but often writing is like that, where you have to put down all your initial ideas first before you unlock the better ones.

Chapter 25:

In high school, one of my favourite Shakespeare tropes was "play within a play". That's where the inspiration for this scene originated from. It's great for a variety of reasons. For one, we get worldbuilding: a slice of Virian mythology as well as insight on how Virian culture is surviving despite the Welkish empire's best efforts. And from a character perspective, watching plays or consuming art generally is just a great way to connect with other people and process your own internal feelings, which is what Poppy gets out of this experience. It's probably one of my favourite scenes from the book.

The reference to Bahaari is a nod to the early romantasy cut (which we aren't talking about) in which they actually DO go to the spring festival and it is (to be very honest) just a thinly veiled version of the Holi scene from the 2013 Bollywood film Ram-Leela.

Chapter 26:

"Wait, I've seen those statues," she realized. "In a museum in Welkland." 

The idea for the stolen idols came from (obviously) the British Museum. I'll take a moment here to plug the podcast Stuff the British Stole, which was instrumental in getting my blood pressure up for this book.

"I was wondering if you'd tell me the story of how the Welkish people came to rule Viryana. Not the version that my tutors taught me. Your version, the one your parents told you."

If you remember earlier, I set the hostage exchange in the Museum because I wanted them to talk about the Jagat Rai lore — most of the conversation that I had to cut from that scene to maintain pacing has now moved here, where it makes more sense.

"If a rich man gave ten crowns to the gods, but a widow with a single crown to her name sacrificed that lone coin, then the gods would favor the widow." 

Yes, this is a Bible reference. 

Chapter 27:

I love the scene where Samina asks Poppy the truth about what happened all those years ago. I can't believe a version of this book existed where we didn't have this. Samina, this whole time, has been convinced that she knows what happened and doesn't need closure, but she's lying to herself. Then she talks to Poppy, who tells her the truth, and she still doesn't get closure, not really. Then she delivers a very brutal truth to Poppy, who changes her whole act following this interaction.

"I think you're so used to being the most marginalized person in the room, you don't know how to recognize that other people have it far worse than you." 

This is pretty much Poppy's whole problem, and to an extent, something I've seen with young people who are diaspora. I myself am guilty of this.

It's easy to get caught up in first world identity problems: Instagram comment sections say I should go back to my "own country", but I was born in Canada, now what? The Indian service worker at a fast food restaurant once told me I'm "not really Indian", but if I just say I'm Canadian, people ask me where I'm "really from" - what do I say to that? Is my second-world fantasy book "Indian enough", or is it just full of flat caricatures? These are heavy questions, and the fact that other people have it worse isn't really an answer to them, but it's important to keep things in perspective. Yes, I'm still struggling to find the balance between the two cultures I live in, but it's a blessing that this is what I consider a "problem" when so many people, particularly women like me, don't have access to healthcare, food, education, clean drinking water, shelter, and are suffering the effects of climate change from an industrial revolution they barely benefit from. If I'm always thinking about myself, then who is looking out for them? This is the lesson Samina tries to impart on Poppy here, and the one that she learns with Hasan in the next chapter when they go into the village together.

This was more of a soapbox speech than a fun fact, sorry LOL.

Chapter 31:

Readers telling me what they think about Zeyar is one of my favourite things ever. Some people love him! Some people hate him! So far, whatever we've seen about Zeyar has been through Hasan primarily, and obviously Hasan is biased. In this chapter, I wanted people to understand him, in his own words.

Chapter 33:

"You had nothing when we found you, but we gave you a home, even gave you our names: Poppy Demetria Sutherland." 

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to admit this, but this line of dialogue very nearly did not make it into the book. The version of the draft that the art director read contained this line, and as she was conceptualizing cover designs, I was doing a dev edit where I cut it. Then we got on a call to discuss the first cover concepts, and she gushed about how much she had loved this line and the ways in which it had influenced her creative process. The cover journey took us in a different direction from those first concepts, but her love for that line is what made me bring it back.

Chapter 36:

"It takes more than just two people to create change, Poppy." 

Back in 2019, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined protestors in Montreal walking in the march for climate. I don't have Twitter/X anymore, so I can't find the post, but someone replied to his tweet from the event along the lines of, "If only you had the power to do something," basically highlighting that Justin Trudeau could, in fact, do something significant to influence Canadian climate policy, rather than just showing up for the march. This was kind of in my head when I wrote this scene a couple years later. People in power either underestimate or self-dismiss their ability to create change. Poppy points out that her parents should have created a more equitable society, but Demetria feels as though that's beyond their power, despite her and Clarence being the most influential couple on the island.

And just like that, we are three quarters of the way through this readalong and less than one full week away from our release date anniversary. Which I'm sure is a special date to mark on the calendar only for being Bargain's birthday. No other reason...