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The fandom newsletter for the Conspiracy of Us Fandom. 
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Hello friends! 

How are you this month? Is it fall weather where you are yet? I've been out of school for many years now, but this time of year still feels like a new start. There's something crisp and exciting and anticipatory about September that makes me want to make lists and buy pretty new notebooks and get started on upcoming things after the lazy days of summer. 

On that note, I promised you a good newsletter this month after a couple months of less content, and September is a great time for that. So get ready for some really exciting news, and some bonus content a lot of you have been asking me about . . .

Enjoy!

Much love,
Maggie
 


 

Travel!

As you might remember from the last newsletter, I’ve been in Paris since the beginning of August, doing some book 3 writing and researching. (And meeting some French readers. Bonjour, guys!!) Now I’m about to head up to the UK for a few weeks, to see friends and family and hang out in London and get used to hearing English again . . . 

I’ve chronicled my travels on Instagram, if you want to see.

I’m going to start a new segment to this newsletter, and that’s Ask Me Anything. I get some great questions from you guys via email and social media, and I’ll pick one or two a month to answer. So if you have anything you want to know, about the books or writing or traveling or my cats or my favorite Indian food, just email me (maggiehallbooks@gmail.com) or Tweet or Instagram me (@maggieehall) and I might answer you next month. 

This month’s question: 

Q: 

A few of you have written to me lately about fanfiction. You’re asking me things like whether I mind if you write and post Conspiracy series fanfic, and whether I’ll read some you’ve written. 

A: 

I think fanfic is great and I am more than happy for you to write it about the Conspiracy characters and universe. Have fun! Besides being entertaining, fanfic can be a great way for new or experienced writers to play around with words and practice and have fun doing it. So from my perspective, yes, do whatever you’d like—share it with each other, post it, critique each other’s work, anything. (As long as you’re not trying to make money off of it, which is a whole other issue that you should avoid with all fanfic, not just mine . . .)

However, for boring legal reasons, I can’t read what you’ve written, even if you send it to me directly. I’m sorry! :( But I love that you guys are having fun with it. 

 

Next, news! This is a good one:

The title of Conspiracy #3. 

Being part of the fandom email list, you guys are the very first to know. (And I’m kind of nervous! I hope you like it, because I love it!)

Okay. I don't want to draw this out. 

Ready? READY? 

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Here we go . . . 

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Really, this time . . .

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THE ENDS OF THE WORLD (Conspiracy of Us #3) is coming July 2017. 

There are a lot of meanings to this title. You’ll have to learn about most of them when you read the book (sorry!), but there's one I can tell you one now: it’s an Alexander the Great quote. Alexander set out to conquer “to the ends of the world,” and it's always been a quote that's resonated with me for this series. 

And what else could it mean?? I’ll let you speculate. :)

But wait! Don’t go yet. I have some bonus content that lots of you have been waiting for. (I told you this was a good month.) 

***SPOILER*** IF YOU HAVE NOT READ MAP OF FATES, beyond this point gets spoilery. WARNING WARNING WARNING. 

This is a scene that got heavily edited for the book. Today I'm giving you the…less-PG version. :) 

Before I give it to you, though, an important note on only reading what you’re comfortable with, here and anywhere else.

First, I’m not ever going to send you guys something X-rated, okay? This isn’t that kind of newsletter, so don’t worry. (Or, if that’s what you were hoping for, sorry! That’s what fanfic is for. ;) ) However! This scene got trimmed down in the book because it’s a little more…intimate than my editor thought was appropriate for all audiences. I’ll put it this way: If this scene were a movie, it’d be rated PG-13, but since it’s in Avery’s head, it’s a little different. A little more. I’d treat it as an R-rating, and pay attention to what that means for you. For some of you, it won’t bother you at all. For some of you, it might be a little much, or you might know that your parents wouldn’t want you to watch an R-rated movie and so you feel like you shouldn’t read this. And that is completely fine. I really, really respect that! There is plenty of other stuff here for you—and there will be plenty of bonus content in other newsletters for you—if you’d rather skip this month. It’s the sign of a mature, smart reader to know and respect what they’re comfortable with. And since my readers are obviously the smartest, I know you guys can handle it. 

But if you do want to read a Certain Scene with a little extra content, here you go...

[Context, if you don’t remember this scene in the book: Avery and Stellan are in a bar in Cannes. Avery and Jack have just had a big fight and she ended things with him. She found Stellan and they have both had a couple drinks too many. This is an early version of this scene that’s similar to what happens in the book, but with some notable differences.]
 

“Sometimes you want something you think you shouldn’t,” he said. “You’re not even sure you understand it.” I could see the pulse pounding at his throat. “But not having it feels like you can’t breathe.” For the first time, I noticed my own breathing. How shallow it was, how quick.

“You even want the power we could have together,” he went on. “Then you wouldn’t be alone. You liked it when we said something and people listened.”

I swallowed. He looked at my mouth.

“I think you’re even starting to care about the Circle. To want to be part of them. You want to be wanted. Say it. I want to hear you say it out loud.”

I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. My body wasn’t my own. My voice wasn’t my own. I didn’t want it in the way some of the Circle did. I didn’t care about money, fame, ruling the world. But the rest of it? 

An hour ago, I would have denied it all. Now . . . “I want it,” I whispered. Stellan was still watching me, rapt. “I want all of that.”

It was so wrong to feel those things. I couldn’t believe I’d just said it out loud. But I felt light. Free.

A smile flickered across Stellan’s face. His pupils looked huge in the low light. “What else?”

A thrill shivered through me, hitting low in my stomach. A minuscule shift, and one of his knees slipped between mine. He looked down at it. I did, too. 

“Little doll, is there something else you want?” he murmured. 

I stared into his eyes. It was only a moment, but the moment dragged back as far as I could remember, like we had never been anywhere but here, suspended precariously between yes and no, between want and don’t.

I felt terrified. I felt powerful. I felt bold.

I nodded.

 

Stellan stared at me for a beat. Two. Then he stood, abruptly enough that I pitched off my bar stool. He caught me, tossed a handful of euros on the bar, then took my hand and led me outside.

We made it almost to the bottom of the steps.

He turned abruptly, leaving me standing one step higher; he gathered his fingers in my dress and pulled me against him.

There was a second of hesitation, of skin touching skin, a cold nose on a warm cheek, lips almost brushing, so close, and are we really—

I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his.

It was all the encouragement he needed. Sparks shot from my lips through the tingling tips of my toes. His hand was firm on the back of my neck, lifting my face to his, and the rest of the world fell away.

I’d half expected, after so much buildup, for kissing him to be disappointing.

I was wrong.

He pulled away a few inches, eyes wide. “Oh,” I breathed, and it said a million other things that would make me blush to say them out loud. His lips curved into a smile, and then I couldn’t see the smile anymore, just feel it, and then there was nothing else.

I realized now that I’d thought about this before, even if I’d tried not to. I’d imagined it would be the almost-violence of lips and breath and hands that would burn so hot it’d flame out as quickly as it had started; that we’d just have to do it once and get it out of our systems.

I hadn’t imagined this: the feeling that, even though he had far more experience than I did, he was just as captivated as I was by how our lips took no time at all to get used to each other, the echo of our muffled breaths, the fact that it was chilly outside, but between our faces, it was nothing but soft and warm. I hadn’t imagined, though maybe I should have, that this would be the physical manifestation of that way he had always looked at me, since the day we met, like he could tell what was going on inside me so well it was almost uncomfortable. I’d never been kissed by someone who knew what I wanted before I did—exactly when to run his hands through my hair, when to cup my face like it was something precious.

It was deliberate, sweet, frantic at the same time, tinged with vodka and lime and not the taste of cigarettes, and I wondered very briefly whether that was for my benefit and then that thought was lost, too, because everything was lost except for the small, pleading noise I made when his mouth broke away from mine.

“Kuklachka,” he murmured. “Little doll.”

Little doll. That’s exactly what I didn’t want, wasn’t it? To be anyone’s plaything in this game.

I forced myself to push him back, hands on his chest. If I hadn’t been drinking I probably wouldn’t say this, but now, “Do you just want what I can do for you,” I whispered, “or do you actually want me?”

I expected him to say whatever it took to keep kissing me, because he was a guy and his shirt was already half-untucked and my lipstick was already on his neck. But a look deeper than I would have imagined passed over his face. He licked his lips, and I couldn’t help but glance at them. His eyes darkened. “Both,” he said, like he’d just realized it himself.

I didn’t know where we were. Who we were. We were on a street for a few minutes, I think, his mouth on my earlobe and my jaw. I was sitting on a low wall, his chest pressed between my knees, my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. Kissing against a statue in the middle of the sidewalk, and I felt like someone else as I pulled his lower lip between my teeth. Against a wall, in a doorway, my feet dangling a foot off the ground, my back clanging against the metal gate of a storefront, closed for the night. And then things started to look familiar, but I didn’t care, and then up a driveway, and I think we went up some stairs, and doors and more doors, and then we very definitely opened the door to a bedroom.

I pulled away with a gasp. “Are we back at Colette’s?”

He nodded. His shirt was askew, hair sticking up. He must be staying in a different wing than I was, and thankfully, no one else was around.

I flashed briefly to another set of lips on mine, a kiss that felt so different than this did, a clench in my chest just at the thought—but no, it was Stellan now, in the doorway, waiting. 

I almost expected the look on his face to be triumph, like it was when I’d asked him to teach me to fight. I’d been saying no for so long, and all of a sudden, here I was, saying yes yes yes yes. But there was no hint of smugness. He looked at me like he’d never wanted anything more in his life.

There was a normal amount of beautiful a person should be allowed to look, then there was this. Was it possible he was actually more attractive all flushed and wild like this, or had I made myself block him out so thoroughly I’d just forgotten?

My fingers itched to touch him. “Yes,” I breathed. “Okay.”   

The heat in his eyes took my breath. His hands were on me again and then his lips. We ran into something—the bed. He sat on the edge and pulled me to him again. Our faces were at nearly the same height like this. It was getting increasingly difficult to hang on to any wisps of thought.  

After a long time or a little time, not quite by accident and not quite on purpose, my hands were groping for the buttons of his shirt. The first one popped open. Two. 

He pulled back, breathing hard, watching my hands undress him. “Really?” said his eyes, but his mouth didn’t have time to repeat it, because I smashed mine into it again, telling him please, don’t think, don’t ask, don’t talk. For once, don’t make me agonize and decide and wonder whether I’m doing the right thing. Just do

I worked open the rest of his buttons, let my hands roam over the expanse of skin I’d uncovered. The low rumble in his throat told me he might be surprised, but he wasn’t going to protest. I’d seen him without a shirt on, of course, but now I skimmed my hands up his chest, over his shoulders. Traced his scars with the lightest touch of my fingertips, like cool polished marble against the warmth and softness of his skin. He let out the smallest sigh and his eyes fluttered closed. I only realized I was staring, mesmerized, when he opened them again and smiled like he was amazed to realize I was still there. 

He tucked my hair behind my ear with a touch that felt like a kiss. I couldn’t help but think of how long ago it felt when he’d taken the bobby pins out of my hair on the plane, and how, if I’d tried to picture this happening then…honestly, I probably could have, easily. 

And then he pulled me onto the bed. His fingers trailed down my shoulder, and toyed with the top button on my dress. He looked up, his face uncertain for the first time since we’d left the bar. 

When I gave him a nod and a tiny smile, he gave me a bigger one, and popped more of the buttons open expertly. One stuck, and after a second of fighting with it—a second too long of him not kissing me—I sat up impatiently and ripped the whole shirt off over my head. 

Only then did I remember I wasn’t wearing a shirt, I was wearing a dress. Very suddenly, I was sitting in a nest of Stellan’s sheets wearing just the bra I’d washed in the sink yesterday and underwear I’d found cheap at some department store in Paris. 

For the first time since we’d gotten here, I really looked around. One soft bedside lamp. Two books on the coffee table. Stellan—oh my god, seriously, really, Stellan, after I had so studiously not done this for so long?—next to me on the bed, his eyes tracing lines of fire over all this exposed skin.

I wasn’t usually that self-conscious, but with him looking at me like that and my thoughts running wild, it was hard not to be. I pulled into myself, crossed my arms over my chest. I knew what it meant if we kept going. Where this was headed. It wasn’t too late to button his shirt back up and grab my dress, turn this back into the sweet kind of kiss. The kitten-bliss kind of kiss.

Stellan’s expression softened, the fire burning to embers. An understanding look came over his face. He shrugged his shirt back over his shoulders and tried to hand me back my dress. 

The nervous butterflies in my stomach flapped, but he had misunderstood. This pause, the irregular pattering of my heart against my ribs—it wasn’t because I wanted to say no. 

I tossed away the dress. Then I pushed the shirt all the way off him and pulled him back down onto the bed.

How did kissing with so much of his skin touching so much of mine feel so different from kissing with clothes on? His thumb skimmed my ribcage; I arched into it involuntarily, into him.  

He pulled away again, sweeping strands of hair off my face. “Avery, wait.” His use of my real name was jarring. “Have you ever…” 

I closed my eyes. There was no point in lying. He’d know. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.” 

To my relief, he brought his lips to mine again, and I lost myself in him again. My fingers found their way to the top button on his jeans. 

Again, he broke away. “Are you sure?” he said. 

I nodded. 

“Really sure?”

“Really sure.” The button popped open, punctuating my statement. He groaned and went back to kissing me. My head was spinning, and it was not just from the vodka shots. I thought for just a second about how I was entering uncharted territory— 

No. Don’t think. 

I eased his zipper down.

“Okay, stop,” he sputtered against my mouth. He broke away once more. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t. You can’t.” 

My eyes flew open. “What? Why?” He lowered his forehead to mine and left his body hovering above me, and I kissed him, tasting the heat and sweat and desperation that matched mine in the crook of his neck. 

He sighed like it hurt him physically and rolled off of me. “Avery. I don’t want to be something you regret.”

It hung over us like a wet blanket, and I shivered. “I won’t—” 

“Just so you know, this is far more difficult than I’m making it look. Please put your clothes on before I change my mind.” He turned away from me to the other side of the bed, and I sat, staring. He was serious. And that was incredibly embarrassing. 

My skin was hot all over, and then cold. The sudden absence of his body gave me goosebumps. I didn’t know where my dress was. I couldn’t think. But his shirt, lying at the bottom of the bed, would go down to my knees. I slipped my arms into it, buttoning it up as high as it would go.

“Okay,” I said, and he turned back around. Me being dressed did nothing for how he looked wearing practically nothing, and there was a not-small part of me that regretted agreeing to stop. 

He looked me over. “That is not much better,” he growled.

I jumped up. My dress was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. I tried to button the buttons back up, but my hands were shaking. Finally, I slipped it on as-is, right over Stellan’s shirt. “I’ll go. I’m going to go.”

“No, wait.” Stellan caught up with me at the door, blocking my way out. “I want you to stay. Just…clothed enough that I can think. Okay?”

No, not okay. Why did he think I could never admit to what I really wanted when it turned out like this? 

“Move, please,” I said, not looking him in the eyes. “I’m leaving.”

“Avery, this is not what I meant at all…”

“Then why treat me like a child who needs to be protected from making bad choices? What I’m going to regret and not and whether I care is my decision. It’s not your choice. It’s mine.” 

Stellan stiffened. “I know that’s your favorite point of moral outrage right now, but I’m pretty sure what we were about to do takes two people. It was my choice as much as yours. And as much as I might wish I did, I don’t feel comfortable with a yes from a girl who’s drunk and upset and otherwise not thinking clearly. Okay?” 

I swallowed. “I’m not that drunk,” I muttered, but the spinning in my head told a different story.

He softened. “Then let’s revisit this…issue when you’re sober. Like tomorrow. The next day. Literally any other time. Let’s just sleep it off tonight, okay?” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I could see the pink flash out of the corner of my eye.

I pulled away, and the hair fell back around my face. No. I couldn’t stay here. This was humiliating. Everything in me was saying to go. I shook my head and reached around Stellan to grab the doorknob. 

In my peripheral vision, I could see him run both hands through his hair. “Just don’t leave the house. It’s not safe—“

“I don’t care,” I said. This was starting to feel uncomfortably like fighting with Jack earlier. And that made me remember how I had broken up with him literally hours ago, and here I was, half-naked in the bed of his ex-best-friend. I felt gross and like the most awful person in the world and he was right—I already regretted all of this. “Move. Please.” 

We both jumped when the door slammed open from the outside.

“Merde,” Elodie said, breathless, wearing a black evening gown and heavy eye makeup, her bleached hair slicked back from her face in a headband. “There you are. Why weren’t you answering your mobile—”

She finally noticed me.

Hope you guys enjoyed this month's newsletter! Remember to send me questions if you'd like, and I'll talk to you next month.

xMaggie

Just in case, here are more links to Map of Fates where you can review, if you’re so inclined: on Amazon and BN. And here's Conspiracy on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. (You do NOT have to have bought the book on Amazon or B&N’s site to review there!)

Copyright © 2016 Maggie Hall - Writer, All rights reserved.


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