The Mythic Mic Podcast
Welcome to The Mythic Mic Podcast - a home for readers who dream in magic! Dive into the world of fantasy and romantasy with hosts Bethany Amanda and Sara Santillan, writers, storytellers, and book collectors obsessed with epic tales, swoon-worthy tropes, and magical worlds. Join us for deep dives into fantasy books, exclusive author interviews, monthly giveaways, and bookish discussions that will add endless reads to your TBR. Plus, don't miss our "Author's Version" episodes, where we share insider tips and advice to help aspiring authors write their first books! Whether you're a seasoned fantasy reader, a writer dreaming of publishing your own novel, or just discovering the magic, you belong here. Subscribe now and step into the adventure!
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The Mythic Mic Podcast
S.2 Ep. 76: Marching Band, Dungeons & Dragons, and a Rivalry Years in the Making: Kristy Boyce on Rolls and Rivalry
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🎙️ Welcome back to The Mythic Mic Podcast, where first loves deserve second chances, high school drama is never truly left behind, and sometimes the greatest adventure begins with a roll of the dice.
This week, hosts Bethany Amanda and Sara Santillan sit down with bestselling YA romance author Kristy Boyce for a nostalgic, hilarious, and delightfully nerdy conversation about Rolls and Rivalry, the newest installment in her beloved Quest for Love series. If you love rivals-to-lovers romance, marching band chaos, Dungeons & Dragons, and stories filled with heart, humor, and geeky joy, this episode is for you.
Kristy shares her journey from childhood Barbie fanfiction writer to traditionally published author, opening up about the long road to publication, finding the right agent, and building a career writing the kinds of stories she wished she'd had growing up. As a social psychology professor, she also discusses how her fascination with identity, relationships, and personal growth naturally finds its way into her books.
We dive into Rolls and Rivalry, a YA rom-com centered on Hazel, a competitive color guard captain determined to make her senior year unforgettable. When her former childhood friend Max joins marching band and immediately turns everything into a competition, old feelings and unresolved tensions quickly resurface. What follows is a rivals-to-lovers story packed with marching band antics, D&D adventures, and plenty of emotional growth.
⚡ What happens when your biggest rival is also your first friend?
🩸 Can competition bring two people together instead of tearing them apart?
🔥 And what if the perfect campaign isn't the one happening at the game table?
This is a must-listen for YA romance readers, D&D fans, marching band kids, and anyone who still believes first love stories never go out of style.
🔥 IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:
✨ Kristy's journey from aspiring writer to bestselling author.
✨ Balancing writing, teaching, and family life.
✨ The inspiration behind Rolls and Rivalry.
✨ Marching band, color guard, and bringing personal experiences into fiction.
✨ Why Dungeons & Dragons continues to connect readers and writers.
✨ Rivals-to-lovers romance and childhood friends reconnecting.
✨ Writing clean YA romance and slow-burn relationships.
✨ The growing popularity of gaming culture in books.
✨ Behind-the-scenes realities of traditional publishing.
✨ Barnes & Noble exclusives and seeing your books in stores.
✨ The Quest for Love series and its interconnected standalones.
✨ What's coming next from Kristy.
CONNECT WITH US
🎙️ The Mythic Mic Podcast – @MythicMic
👤 Bethany Amanda – @BethanyinFantasyland
👤 Sara Santillan – @the_magical_quill
📚 Kristy Boyce – @Kristylboyce
✨ If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review. It helps more fantasy readers and aspiring authors find their way to The Mythic Mic.
Welcome to the Mythic Mike Podcast, where myths, magic, and legendary stories come to life. Join your hosts, Bethany Amanda and Sarah Santillon, passionate authors, book collectors, and lovers of all things fantasy and romantic as they dive into epic worlds, enchanting tropes, and the books that leave us breathless. The Mythic Mic is your getaway to the magic of fantasy fiction. So grab your favorite bookish beverage, settle in, and let's step into the extraordinary. Now, here are your hosts.
SPEAKER_02Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of the Mythic Mic Podcast. This is an exciting one because we have with us today the absolutely incredible Christy Boyce. You have probably heard of Christy. She is author of Rolls and Rivalry, part of the Quest for Love series. Welcome, Christy. Hey, thank you so much for having me today. Well, we are thrilled for it. And joining me today, as always, is my lovely and incredible co-host, Sarah. Hey Sarah. Hey everybody. All right, Christy. Let's dive into some background about you before we tackle the book, which I'm really excited to get into. But of course, I want to know all about you and your publishing journey and how you've gotten here. And I promise I won't make you answer all of that right this second. So let's start first with just getting to know you. Who are you? What do you like to do outside of writing?
SPEAKER_03I mean, I feel like all I do is write right now. So it's hard to even think about like what else I'm doing. But I mean, I do have a day job. So I have a PhD in social psychology and I teach at Ohio State. So I do love psychology and I do love getting to uh teach and talk about that. And I find like it really relates back to the writing. Um, I, you know, wife and mother, so that certainly family time is always important. But I also love to garden. I slightly obsessed with it. I'm always, in fact, even when I'm going other places, I'm always noticing like, oh, look at this plant or that plant. I was just at the San Diego Zoo and I was, I was like, I know I'm supposed to be here for the animals, but I couldn't stop looking at all their like ferns and other things. So I feel like nature is like a big part of my life. And I also like to craft scrapbooker. I used to quilt. So yeah, I kind of try to find some hobbies in there, but there's not a ton of time right now for it all.
SPEAKER_02So that's so cool. So I don't do scrapbooking, but my Nana and my great aunt, literally like everybody on my dad's side of the family does card making. Oh yeah. So it's like all of the same supplies and things like that. It's really cool to hear that you love that.
SPEAKER_01I love that too. Yeah, that sounds really fun. I have a girls group. Um, it's just me, my sister, and one of my friends, and we do self-care. And one of the things that we do is scrapbook. So every month we put in like our goals and the things we like. We haven't done it in a while, but it was like the best thing that we like all the like this is our mood board for life.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I love that. Yeah. I'm actually about a year behind on my scrapbooks. I try to like get photos from my life and just caught up with last beach vacation from a year ago. So doing the best I can do, but trying. It's supposed to be instead of another like to-do list, but you know, we do what we can do.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's it's really funny. The last time I made a scrapbook, I was almost near graduation. I can't remember if it was college or high school. And my Nana had come to help me because my parents were out of town. And so I was doing this scrapbook for them. I don't remember what wedding anniversary it was. And I had I had like stamped on a little toaster on there for I think cooking, because my mom loved to cook. And my nana comes over to me, right? It's a toaster, it's gonna be gray. She comes over to me and she's like, Are you gonna color that? I'm like, Yeah, I just color pencil, you know, I'm gonna do it. She just looks at me, she's like, You're not gonna do it to my satisfaction. I'm like, it's a toaster. That was it. That would be the last scrap looking I did. That was the end. That's high stake scrap. Yes. I cannot be trusted to color a toaster, y'all.
SPEAKER_01So you're super busy with writing, and it sounds like you know, you have a very crafty lifestyle and you're adventurous, and that's exciting. Does that bleed into the books that you like to read? Like what kind of books do you enjoy reading?
SPEAKER_03I'm like a cozy person, I think. I I mean, it would not surprise anybody to know that I do love romance. And in fact, most every book, no matter what it is, if what genre, age group, what have you, I do always want like a little bit of romance in it. Otherwise, I'm like kind of searching for it even if it's not there. So I do I do read adult uh romance, love adult romance. Uh that's maybe one of my go-tos right now. I like to read a young adult romance, but sometimes it's a little hard to read the books that are in the same, like close by in the same area of what you're writing, just because you can kind of start to be, oh no, I don't want to like accidentally steal an idea or you know, kind of get gets kind of in your mind a little bit. So a lot of adult books, um cozy fantasy is another one that I'm really enjoying. I kind of like anything that gives me a little bit of an escape. So yeah, like it looks there's like a little crafty thing inside of like the cozy fantasy that's always fun too. That's mostly what I've been reading lately. I sometimes like like a high-stakes, kind of high-level like adult fantasy as well. So like the whole world, like I read Fourth Wing and things like that. So I kind of go back and forth between my cozy and like my high stakes death-defying fight fantasy novels.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. You you get a little bit of both for all the times that you're feeling like, oh, I feel cozy or no, I want to stress a little. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's interesting. A lot of authors have mentioned that they try not to read within their if they're writing, if they're currently working on something, they won't read within their genre or within their like age group because they're worried about having that crossover.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I I just realized, I know we spoke to Sarah Parker and she was like, Yeah, I I don't even she like kind of doesn't even read because she's like, I need to write.
SPEAKER_03That makes me feel better because I some people, you know, people are reading a hundred books plus per year, and I love reading, but it is hard to find that balance. And sometimes it's like, well, like I have this amount of hours today. I can use it to work on my book for my deadline, or I can use it to read. And it's a bummer to have to miss out on so many books, and I have a you know an endless TBR list, like so many of us do. Um but yeah, I'm I'm not reading as much as I wish that I could, but I also am grateful to get to write books, so it's a it's a trade-off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I know me and Bethany are currently working on our debut novels, and I was like I was telling my husband, I was just like, I would love to read more right now, but and he's just like, no, you need to write. And he's like a drill, he's my drill sergeant. He's like, All right, you should be writing right now. I'm like, okay, I'll tell.
SPEAKER_02But my books, I'm like, uh, and this you I know that's how I feel too. Well, Christy, you know, we've been talking about reading and writing, but I'm curious what sparked your desire or inspired you to start your writing journey.
SPEAKER_03So it was actually when I was a child, I've always wanted, well, my memory is that I've always wanted to to write. But really, what happened is I have a best friend, and she was, I don't know exactly what sparked her idea for this, but she thought it would be fun for us to write a novel together. Now, again, we're like in elementary school, right? So it's not, it was like Barbie fanfiction, basically, which we love. It's totally great. And we would like go back and forth. We each had a main character, and so she'd write one chapter and I'd write the next chapter, and we'd we had like a notebook. This is the 90s, right? So there's no Google Docs or whatever. So we got our notebook, we kind of trade it back and forth on the bus. And um, and it was just supposed to be for fun and it was fun. But then, you know, like many things in life, you know, we kind of move on. And I just I kind of never moved on. Like once I got that bug and I started writing, I was I just wanted to start writing my own books and I kept going really throughout all of school. And just because of the way that school is and college and what have you, I didn't always have the time. But what I found was that even if I would take long periods of time off of writing, I never could really let it go. Like it was always a part of who I was and what I wanted to get back to. And eventually I realized I wanted to really take it seriously and see what I could make of it.
SPEAKER_01I relate to your journey so much because I I was writing in elementary school, like trying to enter contests and doing those things. And then I got into college. I was like, I can't write as much. So on the summer, I would try to write. And then I got to a point where I was like, I think I need more life experience to write the stories I want to write. So I took some time off from writing. I feel like it's always just been this journey to get back to writing a book.
SPEAKER_03Yes. It took me a long time. Like I I would go back, like I had one book that I wrote. Gosh, I think I maybe even started it in elementary, maybe like junior high, wrote it all the way on and off in in fits and starts through grad school. Never finished it. I have no idea what the end of that book is supposed to be. But I it took me a while to kind of get back to, I guess to have the confidence to really feel like I'm gonna get back to this and take it seriously. It took me until after grad school to really feel like maybe I could, I could try at least to become a published author.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I am currently working on my PhD and it's very difficult to try to do my dissertation and write a book. So I've had to like split time or at night when my kids are down for sleep, I'll write. And then during the day, when I have a pocket of time, I'll work on my dissertation. So that's how I've been tackling it. But how did you tackle it? Like, how did you navigate life, work, family, and write a well?
SPEAKER_03I I have to just say I'm blown away by you that you can do that. I did not. Like I had to do just dissertation when that was done, turned in, then I could think about writing. So kudos to you. That is amazing that you're doing that. Thanks. I I think, you know, I think when when all of us are writers, you know, we find a way, right? Like we want to write and we find these little pockets of time. And that's kind of sounds like what you're doing. And that's what I still do to this day. So I like I said, I have a day job, but I'm lucky that that day job where I'm teaching is on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So those days are very focused, uh, kind of day job days, I guess we'll say. But then on my Tuesdays and Thursdays, that gives me a little more flexibility to be able to write during the day. My son's older, he's in school, so you know, I have some free time there. And yeah, weekends, nights, you know, you kind of fit it in where you can. I have been known every once in a while to get a hotel room for a weekend and just kind of just settle in there and just stay there all weekend and just write, right, right. If I'm getting close to a deadline and I just need to have a little bit of like uninterrupted time, I'll do that as well. So it's each book is a little different, but it's definitely a challenge sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Wow. You know, I'm going to steal this. I'm gonna tell my husband, Christy, the author, she's very famous. She said, I can get a hotel to write.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Tell tell him that this is fine to do, that you'll get so much work done. And then I always, you know, I always tell myself I'm gonna get so much work done. And it does kind of motivate me. I'm like, I really can't go home and then say, Hey, I got nothing done. And I took the whole weekend. So I kind of knock it out when I go to those hotels. Yeah, no, I could not go home. My husband would be so like, What did you do the whole time?
SPEAKER_02Exactly. My family was the opposite. They like, I am so focused on writing that they will literally be like, put that down because you are in a crappy mood. Like I'm like, I'm angry about characters, right? Or his chapter's not going. And I'll will sit there downstairs and stare at the screen for two hours and not talk to anybody. And they're like, This is unacceptable social behavior, Bethany. Like, you need to put that away for a week. That is also I can see that.
SPEAKER_03That's kind of fair too.
SPEAKER_02So, Christy, you know, what is it about, you know, romances, right? And and YA that really inspired you to write them?
SPEAKER_03Well, okay, not to be too uh maybe cheesy about it, but I married to my high school sweetheart. So I know some people, like I'm it's actually interesting. You'll maybe if you have other YA authors, you'll have to ask them. But I've talked to quite a few YA romance authors, and I'm not the only one who married their high school sweetheart. So I do wonder if there's a little something there. But I think because of that, I I didn't have necessarily like the traumatic romantic relationships that some people might have had in high school. So I can still kind of associate that time of life with like, you know, first love and like friendship and finding your way and finding your identity. And I think also because I'm a psychologist, I just generally find it interesting to think about how to become to know who we are and like our place in the world. And that's such an important part of that young adult experience is kind of separating a little bit from our family and our parents, and then kind of going out into that larger social world and figuring ourselves out. So I like to kind of look at that part of it and then have the romance be conjoined, I guess, that like somehow this love interest is helping us to become like the best version of ourselves. So that's I think that's kind of why I'm always drawn to young adult, the the age group of young adults, is it's just very much about kind of that new exploration into life. It's also uh maybe a little bit more optimistic, possibly. Like, you know, they're they're young, everything is possible, and that's a fun perspective to write from. Um, you know, adults can be a little cynical, myself included. So I don't love an adult romance, but it is fun to kind of go back to those early days and write about those.
SPEAKER_01I love that because I write, I'm writing an adult gothic romantic. Um and all my characters are just they're not they're fun, but they're they have problems.
SPEAKER_02I'm sure I think my YA characters have problems.
SPEAKER_01So I really like that. But I I would love for you to speak on like writing true clean YA romance. Is that a like that was a personal choice? Like you're like, I I need this to be a clean, like what was that kind of your mindset behind that decision?
SPEAKER_03So it I mean, I guess it would be weird for me to say it wasn't a choice, because obviously that's what I write. So on some level it has to be my choice. It was never a conscious thing for me. And I mean, to be fair, like when I started, so my first book is called Hot British Boyfriend, it's a study abroad romance, YA romance. And I started writing that probably, gosh, maybe 2017, 2018. And um, you know, it was a process to get it published. And so I think the conversation about all of this has changed a little bit. Like I I feel like back then there weren't as many conversations with like the red chili peppers and the spice levels and the open door, closed door. Like it just wasn't something that was really in my consciousness. So I didn't go into YA novels thinking I'm gonna do this or I'm not gonna do that. But really, what all it comes from is just me thinking about the characters that I'm writing and the kinds of stories that I write are really, it's always gonna be slow burn, just because that's that's what I write. I guess it's kind of maybe what I know a little bit for YA. And then it's also like kind of this idea of like these two people who don't know each other at all, and they're having to kind of come to understand themselves and understand each other and have this whole arc. And so by the end of the arc, that's when they finally have fallen in love, that's when they're having their first kiss. So it's never really been a thing that I had to have a debate with myself about or that anybody said anything to me about, like from an editorial perspective. It's just, I guess these are just kind of the books that come out or the books that I'm most interested in. But now, you know, we kind of have this larger conversation going on about like, you know, the open door, closed door, spicy, not spicy, things like that. But yeah, it never was really something that I I made a like a quote conscious decision about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I rem I read a lot when I was younger, and there was this series called House of Night. And now as an adult, I was like, I was reading that when I was like 15, and there was a lot going on in that book. And nobody was having conversations like the ones they're having now. It was just we liked the book and we were enjoying it, and we were reading that content and it was fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I did the same thing. There was not the YA romance that there is today back in the 90s when I was doing it. So I was reading, I kind of had to read adult romance, and it wasn't, I don't think it was all open door, but there was definitely like a lot of stuff going on in those. And I'm like, oh, like that's not, I don't know, that's not necessarily what people are reading nowadays. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's you know, yeah, it's definitely interesting how it's transformed in that particular age range, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think we're still figuring it out. I feel like there's still a lot of conversations being had about it. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think the conversations are good as long as they're they're had in a way that's open and people are listening and they're they're good for the population in which we're writing for, which is really what it's about. It's about the population in which we're writing for and what's beneficial for them at the at the end of the day. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Christy, you mentioned, you know, that that it was a journey, right? Getting your first book published.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And so I'd love to know what was your publishing journey like, both as a new author, right, and and now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's, I mean, it definitely journey is the right way to say it. It was not a quick one. It was a a long trek towards publication. You know, in in some ways, I feel like I started this this journey, if you will, in 2008. I don't think I really got very serious about it until probably 2013. And then I signed with my agent in 2019, and my first book came out in 2021. So that's a little bit of like the timeline. So it kind of depends on how you want to do the math. I mean, maybe, you know, from 2013 to 2019, six years, talking to other people that I know in the industry, that doesn't feel like that long. But to me, I felt like I was kind of slowly but surely getting there for at least a decade. And then, you know, and since I've been published, it's, you know, there are ups and downs. I mean, I've had some amazing ups, some amazing, wonderful things happening in my career, but I've also had struggles. I I have I had to leave my first agent. I switched publishers, uh, you know, sales kind of, you know, were up and down a little bit. So it's there's always going to be kind of some difficulties. I think publishing is just a rough, you know, anything in the arts I think can be kind of rough. And publishing is no different from that. So I'm I guess I just had to kind of keep being persistent and keep writing books that I enjoyed and eventually hope that publishing kind of caught up with me and they were interested in what I had to write about. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02You know, I've I've heard more and more authors having an experience where they did have to leave their agent. You know, and it's it's something that, you know, behind the scenes, a lot of readers I don't think know about or understand necessarily what goes into that. And so I'm curious if you could elaborate just a little bit more on like because we do have a lot of aspiring authors who listen to the show. Like, what makes a good agent author fit that they should be thinking about?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, it is a little bit of a tough one to know. Sometimes it's like any relationship in life, you know, there's kind of the first impressions and the honeymoon phase of things, and then you kind of keep moving and people change. So I would say one thing to aspiring authors is to do the best you can do and not put too much pressure on yourself. But I mean, for me, I think one of the things that's important now is that I I feel like I'm able to talk to my agent and to be, I guess, open and like feel like I am able to give my real opinions. I there's been, you know, uh, how should I say this? There's sometimes I've talked to people and I felt like I couldn't really be my real self with them, or I had to like tiptoe, or I didn't want to like upset them, or like I didn't want to give my real mo my real thoughts about things. But ultimately this is your career and they're supposed to be your partner. So if you don't feel like you have a good like working communication with them, then that's not great. Um another big thing, and you know, for anybody out there who's querying, they kind of probably already know about all of this, but the communication with your agent, like how quickly they can get back to you. Some agents, you know, if they're really overwhelmed, they might be taking, you know, days or a week even to reply to an email, let alone getting back to you when it comes to like reading your manuscript and giving you edit notes and things like that. So that's definitely a conversation to have is kind of what is their communication style and is it gonna work for you? Because some people are fine with that and other people they kind of need that quicker communication. And then I guess also just do they do, you know, do you have like a good fit in terms of what kind of books you want to write? Like, you know, what if you were to switch genres or switch age groups? Would your agent be open to that? Like would they be maybe willing to still submit that out to editors, or do they kind of have a certain thing that they want you to do? Um, and you know, and of course, we could do a whole podcast just on querying and agents and all those things, but there's a few things that pop into my head as you ask that question.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's really interesting that you have to take into consideration that as you grow as an author, maybe where you start and where you end up are going to be different places, and you have to consider will your agent also grow with you, or is that a you know a professional, like we have to go our separate ways type of thing? Right. That's really interesting.
SPEAKER_03It's a lot to take in. It's it's a hard thing to do. And I think you can only do your best, right? Like you you write the best book you can, you query it with the best query letter you can, and then you make the best decision based on kind of you know what agents are interested, and and we go from there. So just like anything else in life, we just have to do what we can do and and live with the consequences, I guess. But you know, we can only do so much to to know what the future is gonna bring.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's amazing. Well, your journey has been incredible. I mean, your resilience and staying in it uh to get to where you are today is just very commendable. Uh we love to tell our listeners, like, hey, you have to get that first draft done. Yes. Fun tracking, and you're gonna get to that end. Yes. And you might get special exclusive editions. Speaking of which, uh, would you like to kind of tell us your process of how you got dating and dragons to be an exclusive edition with Barnes and Noble? That's amazing.
SPEAKER_03Well, it was amazing, and I wish I had this amazing like to-do list for everybody listening so they could be like, oh, I'm gonna do the same thing. Here's the real answer. I did nothing and I wrote the book. Uh because it's it's not up, but I think it's good for people to know it's not up to the author. It's you the author writes the book, you hand it over. Now, granted, if this is an indie publishing or something else going on, there might be a different thing. But if you're traditionally published and with Random House, you know, they are gonna, they have a whole marketing team. They have people who work directly with Barnes and Noble who are pitching them things. And really, it's up, I mean, I don't, I don't, to this day, like the exact details of how it all happened, I don't really necessarily know all of them. My understanding is that, you know, probably Barnes and Noble sees a lot of possible books that they could pick up in any given month. And then there's people at Barnes and Noble, and I don't know who they are, but thank you very much if you're listening, um, who decided to pick up Dating and Dragons. And uh so really, you know, in terms of like what did I do? I checked my inbox one day and I saw a uh all-cap subject heading that said, Congratulations! Uh, you know, don't talk about this, basically. And then I was like, oh my god, what's going on? So um, you know, I guess I guess that's another one where you, you know, you just kind of have to write the best book you can. And sometimes uh sometimes people notice it and they want to do something with it. Wow, that's amazing. You're like, oh my god, dreams. It was really a dream. It was amazing to get to walk in and get to because you know, when it's when it's uh the exclusive edition and it was the book of the month. So when you walk into any Barnes and Noble nationwide, there's a whole table of your books. And I was just like, I tried to go to literally as many Barnes and Nobles as I could fit in for that whole month. I was like, How many can I find? Let me drive I literally drove to like two or three different states to be able to go to them. I just wanted to see it as much as I possibly could.
SPEAKER_02Did you separately sign them and like do any beetles in them? That's what I would be doing, and then I'm sure I would get in trouble.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, well, you don't have to secret that they love for you to sign them, especially I think. Think really if they if they have your book in stock, they want you to sign it. And I think it's people can do whatever they want to do. I've certainly done some secret signing. Like I have Dungeons and Drama is at Five Below, which I don't know if people know what Five Below is, but it's like a discount. So they don't I just I do sorry, Five Below, I do kind of secretly sign my books there. I just every once in a while I'll do that. But Barnes and Noble is very happy to have you sign, and they have like a little sign sticker. So I would always tell them when I was in the store, and that way they'd get the sign sticker, which I think is kind of nice for consumers. So they can, you know, they they know what to look for. But anyway, yeah, I definitely loved I love signing. It's one of the joys of my life, I always say. So I signed as many as I possibly could. I love that, Christy.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Okay, so I think we've I think we've teased the book and up. I think we have to dive into this. Yes. So, okay, so Christy, can you tell us what Rolls and Rivalry is about?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. So it is the third book in my, I guess, quest for love. I I don't really know if it's a series. It's a it they're all three standalone books. So you can read them all interchangeably. Um, but they're all books, uh, they're young adult romances that deal with DD and other elements of high school. So this one is DD and Marching Band in ColorGu. Uh, and so it's about a girl named Hazel. She is a perfectionistic, competitive senior. She has some big dreams for senior year. She wants to uh start her own DD campaign and be the dungeon master after kind of dreaming about that for a long time. And then she also, as a color guard captain, wants to lead her color guard to their first successful year in a very, very long time. And she has very lofty goals of all superior ratings and best in shows and things like that. Um, but then her childhood friend joins Max, and she's at first excited, but then she finds out that not only is he not excited to be in band, uh, he actually has a big chip on his shoulder, and she's not really sure why, like, why are they not friends anymore? Um, but he's also very competitive, and so he decides that his percussion section is gonna be the best in show, not her color guard. And that kind of starts him on some band camp shenanigans and rivalry, which is where the title comes from. Um, and of course, it's it's a rom-com, so there's gonna be this uh rivals to lovers kind of choke going on too. That sounds so fun.
SPEAKER_01Well, one, I just I love DD, so I'm I'm here for it. I would love to know your two main characters are in Color Guard and Band. Were you familiar with these two groups uh growing up, or are you familiar with being on Color Guard and Band to write this story?
SPEAKER_03I absolutely, yes. I mean, I each of my books is has like little elements of my life or things that I love, but of all these three Dungeons and Drama, Dating and Dragons, and now Rolls and Rivalry, this one is the one that maybe is marching band is so close to my heart when I think about high school. It was a really big part of my life. Uh all my friends were there. My boyfriend at the time, now husband, played bass clarinet. I made a lot of friends through Color Guard. I was Color Guard captain, so it definitely I'm I'm not Hazel by any means, so it's not necessarily autobiographical. Um, but I did try to put in that like that love for marching band and bandcamp and color guard and all those things. I was not in percussion, so I don't necessarily want to claim like a ton of experience when it comes to percussion, but you know, within the general marching band layout, I guess I was familiar with kind of how marching bands worked.
SPEAKER_02I am so bad at band. Okay. I would I was in band in grade school. I played the flute and it, I could not read music. Okay, like I don't know how you play an instrument if you can't read music, but I couldn't do it. So I would have all these cheat sheets where I would like write the letters above the notes, but I didn't know how to play them. And so the whole time I was faking it through middle school band. No one ever caught on. It was so great. But you did not continue on, I guess. You decided to no, no. I was like, I think this is the extent of it. And I'm such an embarrassment to my mom because like everybody on her side of the family is like Anchor Instruments, my grandma is like 95, has this organ she's still playing. Like, she can't hear it, but she swears that like she's playing it, and my mom has like a harp and a hammer dolcumber and all these things, and I'm over there like cheating, trying to just fudge my way through band class.
SPEAKER_03That is an amazing story. That feels like that needs to be a YA novel as well. Like, how far can we make it?
SPEAKER_02I would be, I would be so good writing about these little like cheaters and YA. Like, I would be so good at that. I got that down.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, as a little like side note, I mean, I also I was not a band kid. Like that sounds really weird because I just said it was like the biggest thing in my high school. So I actually was like a ballet kid. Like I was really into dance and I was into dance all the way through sophomore year of high school. And then that's when I kind of realized I never like lost my love for dance, but I knew that I'd kind of gone as far as I was gonna probably go with it. Um, there was some limits, you know, to what my I'm like five, three, like I'm I'm not really doesn't have like the ballet like, you know, physique or what have you. So I decided like to switch gears and to take a step back from ballet. And I was like, well, what am I gonna do junior and senior year? And then my friends and everybody were like, you need to join band. And but like you, I was like, I don't play an instrument, I don't know how to read music. What are you talking about? And they were like, well, what about color guard? And I was like, oh, that actually makes sense because it does have, it can, it doesn't have to, but it can have like a dance, you know, rhythm aspect to it for sure. And I knew how to like, you know, like listen to counts for music and things like that and learn choreography. So it was a really like natural thing for me to get into color guard. I did then, just to kind of continue the story, they did actually ask me to join the band as another bass clarinet. And I again was like, I don't, I never played an instrument. And they were like, that's okay, we don't have anybody and we need you. So I did the best I could do. Like, if you know about bass clarinets, oftentimes you're playing like low, kind of slower notes, like not like really, I don't know, kind of fast melodies. So I I I did okay, but I'm feeling new because it's hard to pick that up.
SPEAKER_02It was so hard. Oh my gosh. So I did dance in high school too. Just like, I don't know, junior or senior year, I don't remember. My high school, bless its little heart, I love it. But it was it was a private school, right? And it's small. So like if you want to do something, you could do it. And they probably should have had a rule against that for me. So I did dance, and the dance instructor would never put me out front for like the games and everything. She's like, You're gonna be in the back. Well, one time she was like, I'm gonna put you out front. And then we did a practice, and she's like, You're going in the back again. So I never, I was never good at it. And I made a fuss. I was like, how dare you, right? Like, I've seen it out for myself. I'm like, I deserve to be in the front once. Because one time, right? We go out there and I go back and I'm like, you should not have put me in the front. It was a poor choice on your being. Poor choice. Like, not my fault you put me there.
SPEAKER_03Well, we all have our skill sets, so you know, it's it's alerting and it's great. I'm still finding mine.
SPEAKER_02Oh goodness. Because see, I want to know why DD. Okay, I have heard about DD. Uh one of our other authors, Jennifer Ike Pali, was on and was talking about DD as well. And I was like, oh my God, I need to play this. Like, this sounds like my type of game. So tell me what inspired you to write a series about people who play this game?
SPEAKER_03And do you play it? Sure. So, not to sound like a broken record, but so I'm married to my high school sweetheart who also was my DM. So he the way that the the way that this whole thing happened, like for Dungeons and Drama, which is the first of my DD books. So when I was like coming up with inspirations for my books, a lot of it was like, well, I've always wanted to write a like study abroad book or like a musical theater book because I was in musical theater. And I was like, I think it'd be fun to write a DD book because that's one of the things that kind of brought us, like my whole friend group kind of were brought together through DD. We had me and my best friend had this is the same best friend that helped me with my writing, like kind of inspired me to start writing. So this is now high school. Um, and we started hanging out with a group of guys, and they were were, I will say very lovingly. They were big old nerds, right? So they're playing all the video games and card games, and they had an ongoing DD game and they asked if we wanted to join. And so we were like, well, okay, you know, we don't know anything about it, but okay. And it was really fun. I mean, I don't, you know, I I never have been a dungeon master. Like I've never run the game myself because it it can, there can be a lot to learn. But I had such a great time getting to play it in high school that I always, again, had had a really soft spot in my heart for that. So I thought that would be such a fun thing to write. So it's kind of where that all started. Um, so yes, I have, I definitely have played DD. I have not played recently because it's really hard to get a bunch of adults all to have the same schedule to be able to play at the same time. So unfortunately, at this point, my son plays more DD than I do. Well, that's not unfortunate because I'm happy that he's doing that. But um, you know, he has a little bit more of a flexible schedule than I do right now. But yeah, it's just another one of those things in my life that I've just always really enjoyed. And if you know anything about DD, I mean, really what you're doing is you're creating characters and you're role-playing those characters. It's almost like a little bit of like a choose your adventure kind of thing. And so if you like to write, if you like to come up with stories and characters, I think, you know, you probably would like DD as well.
SPEAKER_01I love DD. Yeah. I'm just I'm loving that we're getting more DD authors on because it's awesome. I'm like, yeah, I have someone to talk to about D.
SPEAKER_03It's just it's fun. Yeah, it's it's kind of what you make what you want to make it to a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's and it's also fun to see what a bunch of like funny people, your friends, and just get together and just have the most insane journey and adventure that you could think of. Like DMing is very hard. I've thought of DMing, but there's so much that goes into it and so much planning and everything. But I also feel like as an author, you're basically the DM of all your stories.
SPEAKER_03That is true. That is very true, right? Yeah, and you get to make up all the rules, and you know, because like one of the things that DMs do is like if you as a player want to, like, let's say you want to talk to a villager and this is like a non-playable, playable character and MPC, they have to play as that MPC. They have to come up with those lines and that voice. And that's kind of what you're doing as an author is every single character in your book, you have to, you know, embody that person and what is that person gonna be like and what are they gonna say? So I think that's probably why there's this connection both between like readers and DD, because I've met a lot of readers who are into DD, as you might imagine, but also writers and booksellers, also, people who are selling books and in bookstores. A lot of them are super into DD. So I think that there's like a an overlap. If it's a Venn diagram, we've got quite a lot of overlap between those circles.
SPEAKER_01It's like a pipeline. Like if you like DD, you're more likely to read or video game, or you know, I do think so.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. There's something about like the story. I mean, because video games too, it's a great idea. A great, great point, is like the video games are also that same kind of idea and getting to follow that storyline and kind of take your character. I mean, it depends on the video game, right? But like for some care video games, kind of take that character on a journey. So yeah, it's it is interesting how it all kind of connects together.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. I don't know if you video game at all, but they just announced that Legend of Zelda, the Ocarine of Time, they're gonna redo it for the Switch. And I was like, all of my childhood is coming back.
SPEAKER_02The best of my video gaming is like I can pick a Pokemon. Hey, that's that's that's great.
SPEAKER_03Honestly. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Pokemon is I will admit, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm not I'm not as much of a video gamer. My husband is a huge video gamer, so I kind of do the it might all like almost be its own little trope at this point, but like the video gaming husband with the wife that's reading next to him, like that's the two of us. I feel like gaming husbands and book girlies work really well together. I think I think it works out very well, yeah. We find ourselves cleared together often. Now you have to write a book. Now you have to write a book about that. I I know I was I mean, I don't know what that's gonna be yet, but I was like, I really probably should put that into a book sometime, some in some sort of way.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So I have an interesting question. Why do you think DD is becoming more popular now? There's a lot of stories that really center around DD. Like uh lit RPG does this a lot. Romance is starting to get into DD characters. I mean, there's tons of romance with DD like semantics. Um, why do you think that's becoming more popular? Is it just we grew up and now we're writing books or I don't that's a great question.
SPEAKER_03I mean, that is actually, I haven't thought about that before, but that you're right, that like the kids who were playing it in the 80s and 90s now were the ones who are creating the content. So to some extent, I can kind of see it's just like kind of bringing it to fruition and sharing it with the rest of the world. Um, and I think there's also some like nostalgia for that time of life. I'm I'm thinking about Stranger Things, right? And that is, I mean, it's it's different, but I mean it's very DD focused. And I think it like brought it to a whole new part of the world. And like you look back at those days, you're like, oh, the good old days, you know, I don't know if that's always true, but you know, like we're getting nostalgic about the 80s and the 90s and thinking about those times down in your parents' basement or whatever, which is totally how it was. So I think that's part of it. And then I also noticed there was a little bit of a jump. I don't know, this might just be my own bias, but to me, it felt like with the pandemic, people were trying to find like this connection with others, and there was a lot of online DD or live streaming of DD just to like have that connection. And then I think it has kind of followed it continued on since then. So maybe that's a little part of it too. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I actually want to speak on that because that's when I first started doing DD was in during COVID. Uh, it was like a huge thing when we were kids, and I didn't really find a lot of people who were playing it. But when I got in, when COVID happened, all like we all did it online. It was me, my husband, and a group of online people, and we just did game, we like had a huge campaign. That was really nice.
SPEAKER_03It made it feel less like a bubble during that's I've heard that like time and time again. So I think you know, and I didn't I didn't think about any of these kinds of things when I was designed to write this book. I just was like, I always wanted to write a DD book, let me do this. And then I think I just kind of honestly looked out a little bit that the book came out at a time where DD was between, you know, Stranger Things and Critical Role and all the live streaming and the pandemic, all those things I think kind of helped a little bit to like bring it more into the forefront of oh, and it's also just recently was the 50th anniversary for like Dungeons and Dragons. So I think that helped a little bit. So yeah, it's a lot of things kind of coming together there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You were right, you were there right at the right time. Luck. Everyone's yeah, Arts and Noble exclusives DD stories.
SPEAKER_03You never know with publishing what's gonna happen, but I'm just gonna I'm gonna ride the wave and just enjoy it and be really, really grateful that I got to have that experience of getting that timing right. Because people always talk about that, you know, you have to have the book, but you have to have that timing too. And for me, I just I I I really lucked out getting that all to work out together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, that's amazing. Do you sell dice? Like I don't sell them.
SPEAKER_03I do have a lot though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was like, oh, does each of your books have like dice? That'd be so cool.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, Dungeons and Drama has so I well, this is a little bit not what you're asking, but actually kind of almost a reverse. So, like what happened is I was writing Dungeons and Drama. I was really struggling with it, which is kind of my way. Like there's always a time in my in each of the books from like, this is horrible, it's never gonna get better. And one of my like really close friends and uh like writing partners, she had gotten onto Etsy and she sent me, like, trying to surprise me with this like set of like DD related, I guess, paraphernalia, like candles and uh and dice and things like that. And so I opened up these dice and they were so beautiful, they're all these jewel tones, and I was like, oh my god, these are the perfect dice for my main character in that book. And so that's why there's a a scene in Dungeons and Drama where the main uh love interest gives the the main character, Riley, these dice. And it's like, and he's like, These dice are you, like this is perfect for you. And I and that was kind of a little like I don't know, nod to my friend, Debbie, Debbie Michiko Florence. Shout out to Debbie, and I still have them, and so since then people like to give me dice, and so it's almost like the dice I get them after the book comes out, and they kind of like get then connected to the book in my mind, if that makes any sense. Um but I do I have kind of an accumulation of them at this point, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's really cool. I love that your readers connect with you through that too, and they gift you dice. I think that is such a sweet gesture.
SPEAKER_03It's really sweet. Yeah, I I love them. I have like I know certain ones like I got this here and this here, and it makes me happy. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. I'm right. I'm DD books so I can dice. Yes. Join me.
SPEAKER_02Christy, I know we've touched a little bit on roles and rivalry, but can you tell us a little bit more about the other books in the series and what you might be working on next? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, so Dungeons and Drama, I always describe it as my DD and musical theater book. So it is a fake dating rom-com. So we have Riley, who is uh she's a musical theater lover, but doesn't know much about gaming. And then she kind of gets in trouble with her parents and she has to go work at her dad's game store, and that's where she meets uh oh my god, Riley and Nathan. Sorry, I have too many main characters, so I had to keep them all straight. So then she meets Nathan, he's the gamer, and they kind of come up with this fake dating ploy in order to prove to her, like kind of ex that she's totally over him. Um and I really love that idea of like the role because there's like role-playing in DD, and then there's acting in theater, and then there's fake dating, which is kind of a little bit of both of those things. So that's the first one. That was a really fun one to get to write. And then my second one is dating in dragons, and that's kind of my nod to live streaming DD, Critical Role, Dimension 20, and all the other people out there who are live streaming their amazing games. So we have a group of high school students who are live streaming, and uh they have some serious rules, one of which is that you can't date anybody at the game table because we try we like we're really serious. We want this to be like a professional kind of campaign. And then, of course, we have our main characters now, Quinn and Logan, who are both playing the game, and so it's a forbidden love kind of trope where they really want to date, but they know that they they don't want to give up their friendships or their live streaming games. So those are the two. They are all standalone, so people can kind of pick them up whatever they want. Uh, not that I don't want you to pick up rolls and rivalry immediately, but I will say there's a few little Easter eggs, so maybe if you read the other two first, then that might make it a little bit more fun when you read Rolls and Rivalry, but you know, everybody should do what they want to do and read them in whatever order they want. I there's some people who I know who've only read Rolls and Rivalry and they had a perfectly happy time with it because they were marching band people. So they wanted to read just that book, which is very fair. Um, so yes, that's what those three are gonna be. The there's a box set of them coming out in October, which I'm really excited about and kind of honestly blown away about. Like, I can't believe that anything I wrote, like to me, like a box set is like, I don't know, like the most famous books in all of history have box sets. So I'm like, what do you mean I have a box set? Like, make it make sense, but I'm very grateful to have that box set. And then in terms of what's coming up next, so I asked my editor, because I've been doing a lot of events, and I asked my editor, what should I say about this? Because we haven't announced it yet. And so she was like, just tell them that there's more romance coming. And I'm like, well, okay, that's very general. So I I'll say a little bit more than that, but I can't, unfortunately, I can't say everything, but it's gonna be more YA. It's gonna be romance. There will be a gaming element. It's a dual point of view, which is my first time doing that. I'm kind of excited to do a dual point of view book. And then I guess otherwise the announcement will probably come out this fall. So if you, I don't know, if you see me online or something like that, you'll you'll eventually see about the book. And I'm super excited about it. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that is really exciting. Do you guys hear it? Do you hear from us? No, that's really exciting. And I'm just exciting, I'm excited for more gaming semantics. That's gonna be super fun. Where can we find your books? Where can we find you uh also box it? Where do we find this box set?
SPEAKER_03Well, I guess wherever books are sold. I mean, I think they have I I actually I'll be quite honest. Like when I found out I was gonna have a box set, I was like, let me start looking around. Like, so I went to Barnes and Noble and I was like, oh yeah, I guess they do have a section of box sets. And then I was talking to independent bookstores, kind of wondering like how does that work? And they were like, you know, actually, especially around the holidays, box sets sell well. So they are actually happy to hear about that. So in theory, at least, if readers want it, obviously, you know, you can find it online, probably can find it in Barnes and Nobles or independent bookstores if you happen to live close to those. Uh, if you want to find me, I have a website, so it's uh Christy BoyceAuthor.com. Um, I'm on Instagram. Uh it's Christy L Boyce. So the the Christy Boyce was was already stolen. So I put my middle initial initial L in there. But uh those are probably the two places where you'll find the like the news or the announcements of those kinds of things most quickly on Instagram or on my website. Yeah. Well, that's exciting. I was really excited to find out about the box set. I'm like, where can I find that? I know the box is so pretty, they did such an amazing job with it. So uh yeah, it's it's very cool.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Christy, this has been such a blast. We have just loved talking to you today. And obviously, we could talk to you forever about DD and querying and all of that, but we will we will let you go, we promise. So thank you so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much for having me. It was such a blast to get to talk to you guys as well. And thank you for all you do and really had a great time. Us too.
SPEAKER_02And to all of our listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. Please check out Christy's books, they're incredible. We have reminisced about high school here. I'm sure you will too when you read them. So be sure to pick them up. And we hope to see you at the next episode. Bye, everyone.
SPEAKER_00That's it for this chapter of the Mythic Mike Podcast. But the adventure doesn't end here. Subscribe, leave a review, and follow us on social media at Mythic Mike Pod for updates, giveaways, and all the bookish and writing fun. Want more? Join our newsletter at mythicmike.com for bonus tips, other insights, and behind the scenes magic. Until next time, stay mythical.