Once & Future Coauthors Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy on Writing with Your Soul Mate

Let’s start with the beginning: a hook. Five years ago, coming home from a writing retreat in the Upper Peninsula, I first dared to tell Amy Rose about a story idea I’d had since I was little. A girl King Arthur retelling. In space. She was wildly supportive, so much so that I remembered her reaction for years—years in which I was too intimidated by the Arthurian canon to write more than one chapter. It was a chapter about a lanky girl, crashing her spaceship on Earth and pulling a sword out of a tree. But I stopped there. For years.
As career writers who support one another editorially, financially, and emotionally, Amy Rose and I have a fun habit of sitting down once a season to write our “Dream Books” list. This is a wild list of stories just tap-dancing in our heads—everything we’d like to write. At the end of my list, I would hastily add, “And I’d like to write girl King Arthur.”

During the fall of 2016, Amy Rose and I were talking through this list, and when I got to my usual send off, Amy Rose asked why it was always last. I shared that I was daunted by the task, and added, “But I’ll write it if you write it with me.” I showed that one chapter to her, and she promptly disappeared into the bedroom and came back a few hours later with a second chapter in the point of view one grumpy, teenage Merlin.
That might have been about it, but something happened in November 2016. Something political that became very personal when members of our rural Midwest community sent death threats to our family. They didn’t like that we existed; the police declined to help. We were terrified and stopped leaving the house.
To hide from this terror, we started to write the manuscript of Once & Future in earnest. There were no rules…just banter and friends, found families, identity freedom, and queer love against the backdrop of glittering stars. The only time we left the house was to visit our teen writing group, SAGA (who the book is dedicated to), talking through everything from plot to villains. We had so much fun, but we didn’t work on this during regular hours. This story was for the evening, a sort of writing dessert. While I cooked dinner, Amy Rose wrote a Merlin chapter. While she cleaned up, I wrote an Ari one. And vice versa.
We were shocked when we’d finished. And we sent it to our agents.
They read it so fast that we were delighted. And they were delighted too. They had one note. Could we cut 40k from the manuscript? Also, could we do it a bit fast because summer was coming, and publishing turns from a carriage into a pumpkin during the summer months?
There was no time to mourn our overwritten first draft. We cut 40k in ten days while our kiddo was on his spring break with his dad, and then we sent it back to our agents, who promptly sent it out to publishers. Now, most of the time, submission is incredibly nerve-wracking. However, the moment our manuscript was away, we packed up our belongings, cashed in our savings, and moved away from the Midwest. To the mountains of Vermont where we had met in grad school.
A few months went by, and while on family vacation in Rhode Island, we received word that there was an offer on Once & Future. Then, a week later, there was a second offer. The choice between them was very hard. In the end, we were delighted to roll the dice and try out a new imprint at Little, Brown, Jimmy, with an old friend at the helm. Our editor would be the same editor I’d written two of my other books with at a different publisher.
We could not wait.
But oh my gods, our editor was tough! Round after round, the story went from good to better, painful to punishing, from a jog to a sprint. We were no longer putting in hours at dinner; we had dropped everything to get this book to its full potential. This hard work and our ceaselessly vigilant editor paid off: we received three starred reviews and made a few Buzz and Watch lists.
That’s when the nerves really kicked in.

Amy Rose and I had each published four other books before this one. We’d had experience in release and promo, and yet everything with Once & Future seems to set its own rules, needs its own rhythm and attention. Here I am, writing this against the backdrop of a spring snow fall, while Amy Rose works on the sequel, The Sword in the Stars, upstairs.
Once & Future is releasing in three days (as I’m writing this), and we need to pack for our first ever book tour, but I’m feeling anxious. I’ve never been so openly queer in my novels, and while on one hand, I’m excited to be honest about what it’s like to be LGBTQ+, I also know that any success with this book will attract the attention of the crueler humans in this world. The ones we’d started writing this story to escape in the first place.
At the same time, I couldn’t be prouder of this book of my heart.
Holy crap, I’ve never given into that phrase before! I tend to think of all my books as vessels for my deepest emotions, but actually, this one is unique. My epic love for Amy Rose found its way into this story, and our ceaseless hope for a more openhearted world became its backbone. So I guess this means this book is my heart.
To be honest, I’d sat down an hour ago to write about the logistics of coauthoring, and then this story just sort of fell out of me. Like all things with Once & Future, I’m going to let it steer its own spaceship helm, happy to stare out the window at the stars and hope this book brings as much joy and understanding to teens and adult readers as it brought to our home.
Cheers & love,
Cori (& Amy Rose)