Aria and David Griffey

Hello all! Yesterday, we had the cover reveal for The Heart of Resistance at our used bookstore in Delaware, Ohio. I printed up a big banner with the final cover art at our local Maker Studio and displayed it proudly on the wall next to our sci-fi/fantasy section:

The art was done for us by the highly talented Addison Horsell, and the typography design for the title and other text were done by my friend and fellow indie author Cheyenne Van Langevelde. Both of them were incredible to work with and nailed our vision.

As you can see, we now have an official release date as well! HoR will be hitting shelves on March 25, 2025, if all goes according to plan. Preorders are still slated to open later this month; we are planning to do them via the bookstore in order to avoid some hiccups associated with the IngramSpark preorder process, so that is taking a bit of extra time to set up. In the meantime, I would encourage you to add The Heart of Resistance to your TBR on Goodreads! I was finally able to get an A. D. Griffey author account on the site and get HoR listed properly, so please go forth and add away.

As for the current state of the book, right now David and I are working through our final round of line edits/revisions. We have been reading the draft out loud to each other and correcting as we go, which is quite fun! The best thing is, we are both enjoying the book as a story; they say “write the book you want to read,” and I can genuinely say that we are enjoying reading HoR even for the umpteenth time. I think a lot of that feeling is due to our process: the way that we co-write has made the book feel as though it is written by a third party. Our writing voices have become so combined that it is almost impossible for us to tell which of us wrote what parts. Reading and re-reading the draft, even out loud, never feels “cringy” the way it can when it is solely one person’s work.

We have made some significant structural edits to the book since we first sent it out to beta readers; the story was originally split into four parts, and we decided to further divide it into five and move one of the parts in order to fix some pacing issues and introduce certain elements of the story earlier on. Altogether, we now feel that the structure is much more stable. What’s more, each part now has its own distinct climax, culminating and tying together in the final climax at the end of the book. I could probably geek out about story structure for another five paragraphs, but suffice it to say that we feel these changes make the book much better, and now we can’t imagine it any other way.

The next step will be to finish the line edits (we only have about five chapters left!) and then I will print out the full draft, put it in a binder, and do continuity edits with an actual pen, similar to my old “five colored pens” method from way back 🙂 Next, the draft will go to our proofreaders for final typo and stylistic checks. Once it comes back from them, I will begin formatting and hopefully catch any remaining errors in the process.

So there’s still a lot of work to do, but the story is in the best shape it’s ever been, and we cannot wait to share it with you! Please consider following along on the A. D. Griffey Facebook and Instagram pages. Over there, I’ve been posting quotes and other tidbits from the book! Today, I’ll leave you with the passage that inspired our cover art. As always, all quotes are from the current draft, and subject to change.

A shape caught her eye from within the mass, something large and dark looming just at the edge of sight. She squinted, shielding her eyes against the sun, trying to decipher what it could be. Then the storm parted suddenly as the shape broke through, shedding wisps of vapor from its hull as it blotted out the golden clouds. Elsie’s mouth dropped open. She had never seen anything so massive, nor so terrifying. The thing, the ship, did not look like any other airship she knew. She saw figures climbing up and down, appearing antlike in comparison to the massive structure. Black smoke billowed out behind as it lumbered through the air towards them.

“Arthur,” she said, her voice almost a whisper at first, then rising into a shriek of terror. “Arthur!”

Arthur broke from the embrace and ran down the stairs to join her on the main deck, his grin erased by a look of grave concern. She pointed breathlessly at the enormous ship, her hand trembling in the air.

“What is that?”

Arthur stared, his face falling into an indecipherable, emotionless mask as he took it in. At length, he finally spoke.

“Kid, that is an Imperial dreadnought.”