Carissa Broadbent: On the Second-Book Challenges
In this interview, bestselling author Carissa Broadbent discusses upping the stakes in her series with her new romantasy novel, Children of Fallen Gods.
Carissa Broadbent is the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Crowns of Nyaxia series. She has been featured in Elle and Publishers Weekly, and her books have been reviewed in Library Journal, Marie Claire, Popsugar, and Vulture, among others. She writes novels that blend epic fantasy plots with a heaping dose of romance. She lives with her husband, her son, and one perpetually skeptical cat in Rhode Island. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
In this interview, Carissa discusses upping the stakes in her series with her new romantasy novel, Children of Fallen Gods, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Carissa Broadbent
Literary agent: Bibi Lewis
Book title: Children of Fallen Gods
Publisher: Bramble
Release date: December 9, 2025
Genre/category: Romantasy
Previous titles: War of Lost Hearts series and Crowns of Nyaxia series
Elevator pitch: Tisaanah bargained away her own freedom to save those she left behind in slavery. Now, bound by her blood pact, she must fight the Orders’ war—and Max is determined to protect her at all costs.But when a betrayal tears apart Ara, Max and Tisaanah are pushed into an even bloodier conflict. All the while, darker forces loom. As Tisaanah and Max are ensnared in a web of ancient magic and twisted secrets, one question remains: what are they willing to sacrifice for victory? For power? For love?
What prompted you to write this book?
This is the second book in the War of Lost Hearts trilogy, and I jumped into it right after I finished book one, Daughter of No Worlds, which followed a young magic wielding woman as she escapes enslavement and joins a powerful organization of magic wielders with the help of a reclusive former soldier. This is an epic fantasy trilogy, and it’s really in this book that the scale of the story increases dramatically and the stakes get much higher. So, while Daughter of No Worlds was a very easy book to write comparatively, and very low pressure because I was writing it solely for myself, this one was a lot more complicated because there was a lot that I was trying to execute with this story.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
This book was originally independently published in March of 2021, and it was one of the most challenging writing processes I’ve ever gone through—even now, eight books later! Daughter of No Worlds, the first book in the series, came out in January 2020, which meant that I was working on this sequel through the beginning of the pandemic, when I was also going through some stressful changes in my day job at the time. I began working on the book in early 2020 and was working on it right up until its release day (a luxury available to indie published authors!), so the whole process took a bit over a year. It was by far the most epic and complicated book I’d ever written, with three intersecting POVs, and I didn’t do enough pre-writing, which meant that there was a big hole in the first half of the book that I ended up completely rewriting multiple times.
It was painful! But it was also the most effective learning experience out of any of the books I’ve written. I learned so much about my craft and how I work!
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Of all my independently published titles, this one was the greatest learning experience. In self-publishing, authors have simultaneously more and less flexibility than in traditional publishing—more in the sense that there are fewer people and scheduling considerations to take into account, and less in the sense that indie authors are limited by Amazon, etc. in rescheduling their books. Children of Fallen Gods was a perfect storm of internal and external factors that required me to shift the publishing schedule multiple times, in small increments because of the requirements for indie authors at the time to move a release without losing all preorders. It was a huge amount of pressure! Looking back, I wish I had given myself much more time to begin with to avoid getting into this situation from the start, but I feel almost every author has some sort of story like this—seems like a learning experience most of us need to go through!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
As I referenced above, this was an extremely challenging book to write. It’s the second book in an epic fantasy trilogy, and it’s a bit of a cliche among authors at this point that book twos are uniquely painful! Of all the book I’ve written, this one went through the most extensive rewrites and had the most non-linear drafting process, because I ended up totally reworking the first half of the book. However, I have no regrets about this, as painful as it was at the time, because it taught me so much about how I work now. I now know that I need to take the time to work through gaps in the story in the pre-writing/outlining phase, and if I don’t, I can definitely get myself into some deep trouble later. This book ultimately pushed me into a radically different pre-writing process that I adopted from the third book onwards, and though of course this process evolves a bit with every book, I have largely stuck with it since. I’m grateful to this book for that reason! I learned so much about how I work.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
It meant so much to me to write this trilogy partly because writing it was my way of working out my own frustration and confusion with the world—grappling with a lot of open questions I still don’t know how to answer through these characters. Children of Fallen Gods expands the world dramatically and also gets much darker than the first book. But the relationships at its heart—the romances and beyond—are also much deeper. Even though this is a fantastical world and story, I hope that readers see themselves in the characters and that it helps them make sense of the darkness in the world as it did for me.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Don’t be afraid to learn as you execute instead of waiting to reach some intangible level of “ready” before you start. This is by far the biggest challenge I see new writers face—they never finish because they won’t let themselves really start because they feel they “aren’t ready.” Every book I’ve ever written—especially this one—has taught me that there is no level at which you “feel ready!” Every author out there, even the most successful and prolific, are constantly learning and redefining their own processes, and by far the most valuable teacher is actually being hands-on with your book.
