From the international bestselling author of TULLY and
THE BRONZE HORSEMAN comes an achingly beautiful new trilogy of love, lost and found
Twenty-five years ago, Paullina Simons hit the literary scene with her debut novel, TULLY, which became an international sensation, garnering rave reviews, topping bestseller lists in 11 countries and selling over a million copies.
Then in 2001, Simons struck gold again with her international bestseller, THE BRONZE HORSEMAN, which has been published in over 23 countries and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Nearly twenty years after its publication, it continues to be included in lists of all-time favorite novels, including Reedsy which in 2019 has voted it as one of the Top 10 Best Historical Romance Novels.
Now, Paullina Simons has returned with her most compelling saga yet. In THE TIGER CATCHER (William Morrow Trade Paperback Original; May 28, 2019; ISBN 9780062394767; $16.99), the first book in the End of Forever Trilogy, Simons takes readers on an extraordinary adventure of love and loss across continents and time. Her captivating story will appeal to her millions of fans, as well as readers of Outlander, The Time Traveler’s Wife and JoJo Moyes’ novels.
William Morrow Publishers recognizes the fact that Paullina’s legions of devoted readers have become accustomed to binge-watching their favorite TV shows and podcasts, and they are responding to this demand with a groundbreaking program for the End of Forever trilogy to publish all three books in 2019. THE TIGER CATCHER will be released in time for the Top Summer Reading lists in May; A BEGGAR’S KINGDOM will debut in August; and INEXPRESSIBLE ISLAND will be published in time for the holiday round-ups and Best of 2019 lists in December.
True love never dies.
The Tiger Catcher is the story of Julian, living a charmed life in Los Angeles, whose world is turned upside down by a love affair with Josephine, a mysterious young woman who takes him by storm. But she is not what she seems, carrying secrets that tear them apart—perhaps forever.
So begins Julian and Josephine's extraordinary adventure of love, loss, and the mystical forces that bind people together across time and space. It is a journey that propels Julian toward impossible choices which will lead him to love fulfilled ... or to oblivion.
All the colors of your world are about to disappear…
Young and handsome, Julian lives a charmed life in Los Angeles. His world is turned upside down by a love affair with Josephine, a mysterious young woman who takes him by storm. But she is not what she seems, carrying secrets that tear them apart—perhaps forever.
So begins Julian and Josephine’s extraordinary adventure of love, loss, and the mystical forces that bind people together across time and space. It is a journey that propels Julian toward either love fulfilled…or oblivion.
The Tiger Catcher takes readers from the dizzying heights of joy to the depths of despair and back again in an unforgettable new novel from a master storyteller.
The Weeping Leaves by Paullina Simons
I want to tell you a story that describes my writer's life in a microcosm. The other day, week, month, I was working on an illustration for my second book in the End of Forever saga, A Beggar's Kingdom. Yes, I had a great idea that I should do my own sketches to open each of the four parts in Beggar's. How hard can that be, I said. Another object lesson here. Hubris. Disrespect for the concept of time. Misplaced confidence. Inability to judge your own skill set.
That last one really came into play one day in May. We were about to go to print, I had 650 pages of A Beggar’s to read through to check for typos, errors, mistakes; I had a blog tour starting in England, and one on its heels in the United States; I was going on tour in England for which travel was not yet booked; I had a million questions to answer for the bloggers so that the blog tours could actually be successful; plus I was doing massive revisions on Inexpressible Island, the book following A Beggar's Kingdom; and on top of that, my last child was graduating high school and I hadn't even made the invitations for her party; hadn’t answered desperate emails from a number of my devoted readers; and had not even begun to clean my office to prepare for the Live Facebook taping in less than two weeks’ time; and of course I had not begun to prepare my talks for the various events in front of my readers.
And yet on this fateful day in May, what was I doing? I was sitting on my couch with my iPad and my digital pencil, trying to draw leaves of a weeping willow, leaves that needed to drape gracefully over my boat in the water. The boat was there, the lake was there, the hills in the background were there, even the tree trunk was there. The leaves weren't there. I couldn't get them right. I used several different references, I made nineteen layers, I used twenty brushes, I made the leaves big and small, delicate and sharp, black and gray. My editor in Australia was literally waiting for this last illustration so she could drop it into the final proofs and send the book to print. I spent all day on these leaves, and when I say all day, I mean, ALL DAY. I didn't drink, or eat, or stop for lunch, or talk on the phone or do any of the other things I just mentioned to you above. From 8 a.m., until about 5:30 p.m., I did nothing but draw these stupid leaves. They were not even the most important element in the image. The boat and the lake were the most important. The hills in the distance were more important. The leaves were just detail. But it was a detail I couldn't get right.
Do you know how this story ends?
Do you know what happened at 5:30?
I erased them all.
Each and every leaf.
I erased them, deleted the layers, and started again. I gave up on willow leaves and drew oak leaves instead. Of course in my haste I forgot the branches, so my oak leaves hang off the tree as if suspended in the air.
But just to reiterate—an entire day of my life went to a task that in the end was completely deleted from the record, as if it never existed.
How does this apply to book writing, you ask?
Exactly the same.
When I first began the adventure of Julian and Josephine, I began it at the doctor's office. Since it was going to be the first scene in the book, I knew how important it was. I knew it had to set mood, establish character, ask questions that readers wanted answered, create a sense of desperation and mystery, and make the reader—and me too, for I am the first reader of my own books—want to find out what happened next. That's a lot for any scene to take on. It’s not just detail. It's vitally important. And I knew it. The scene was 30 manuscript pages, and I must have spent six months on it. Six months on one chapter in a story that’s 148 chapters long. You see my problem right there. Five years? I’m surprised it didn’t take me twenty years.
And here's the kicker. After some two years of working on the books, I realized I needed to begin at a different point in the story, with Julian and Josephine themselves, not with Julian and some silly doctor.
I needed to show you the love so you could travel on the journey with them and with me and live the story as they lived it. I didn't want to tell you about the love.
So, those carefully crafted 30 pages were slaughtered by my revisionist hand. They were rewritten another thirty to forty times, checked and corrected another hundred times before they became the pages you read in the final version of The Tiger Catcher.
For me, every day for the last five years of working on the End of Forever books was a day of the Weeping Willow leaves. Rome was burning all around me, a thousand other things needed to be done, yet I was on my couch, chewing on my nails, drawing and re-drawing the willow leaves in my story. That’s the truth of this writer’s life
That last one really came into play one day in May. We were about to go to print, I had 650 pages of A Beggar’s to read through to check for typos, errors, mistakes; I had a blog tour starting in England, and one on its heels in the United States; I was going on tour in England for which travel was not yet booked; I had a million questions to answer for the bloggers so that the blog tours could actually be successful; plus I was doing massive revisions on Inexpressible Island, the book following A Beggar's Kingdom; and on top of that, my last child was graduating high school and I hadn't even made the invitations for her party; hadn’t answered desperate emails from a number of my devoted readers; and had not even begun to clean my office to prepare for the Live Facebook taping in less than two weeks’ time; and of course I had not begun to prepare my talks for the various events in front of my readers.
And yet on this fateful day in May, what was I doing? I was sitting on my couch with my iPad and my digital pencil, trying to draw leaves of a weeping willow, leaves that needed to drape gracefully over my boat in the water. The boat was there, the lake was there, the hills in the background were there, even the tree trunk was there. The leaves weren't there. I couldn't get them right. I used several different references, I made nineteen layers, I used twenty brushes, I made the leaves big and small, delicate and sharp, black and gray. My editor in Australia was literally waiting for this last illustration so she could drop it into the final proofs and send the book to print. I spent all day on these leaves, and when I say all day, I mean, ALL DAY. I didn't drink, or eat, or stop for lunch, or talk on the phone or do any of the other things I just mentioned to you above. From 8 a.m., until about 5:30 p.m., I did nothing but draw these stupid leaves. They were not even the most important element in the image. The boat and the lake were the most important. The hills in the distance were more important. The leaves were just detail. But it was a detail I couldn't get right.
Do you know how this story ends?
Do you know what happened at 5:30?
I erased them all.
Each and every leaf.
I erased them, deleted the layers, and started again. I gave up on willow leaves and drew oak leaves instead. Of course in my haste I forgot the branches, so my oak leaves hang off the tree as if suspended in the air.
But just to reiterate—an entire day of my life went to a task that in the end was completely deleted from the record, as if it never existed.
How does this apply to book writing, you ask?
Exactly the same.
When I first began the adventure of Julian and Josephine, I began it at the doctor's office. Since it was going to be the first scene in the book, I knew how important it was. I knew it had to set mood, establish character, ask questions that readers wanted answered, create a sense of desperation and mystery, and make the reader—and me too, for I am the first reader of my own books—want to find out what happened next. That's a lot for any scene to take on. It’s not just detail. It's vitally important. And I knew it. The scene was 30 manuscript pages, and I must have spent six months on it. Six months on one chapter in a story that’s 148 chapters long. You see my problem right there. Five years? I’m surprised it didn’t take me twenty years.
And here's the kicker. After some two years of working on the books, I realized I needed to begin at a different point in the story, with Julian and Josephine themselves, not with Julian and some silly doctor.
I needed to show you the love so you could travel on the journey with them and with me and live the story as they lived it. I didn't want to tell you about the love.
So, those carefully crafted 30 pages were slaughtered by my revisionist hand. They were rewritten another thirty to forty times, checked and corrected another hundred times before they became the pages you read in the final version of The Tiger Catcher.
For me, every day for the last five years of working on the End of Forever books was a day of the Weeping Willow leaves. Rome was burning all around me, a thousand other things needed to be done, yet I was on my couch, chewing on my nails, drawing and re-drawing the willow leaves in my story. That’s the truth of this writer’s life
The second novel in Paullina Simons's stunning End of Forever saga continues the heartbreaking story of Julian and Josephine, and a love that spans lifetimes.
Is there a fate beyond the fates? Julian has failed Josephine once. Despite grave danger and impossible odds, he is determined to do the unimaginable and try again to save the woman he loves. What follows is a love story like no other as the doomed lovers embark on an incredible adventure across time and space. Racing through history and against the merciless clock, they face countless dangers and deadly enemies. Living amid beauty and ecstasy, bloodshed and betrayal, each time they court and cheat death brings Julian and Josephine closer to an unthinkable sacrifice and a confrontation with the harshest master of all…destiny.
💕 To be released July 23 💕
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💕 To be released November 19 💕
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I’m excited to report that my publisher, William Morrow, has created a groundbreaking publishing program for the End of Forever trilogy! You, my lucky readers, will be able to read this entire saga the way you binge-watch your favorite TV shows and podcasts. William Morrow will publish all three books in 2019: THE TIGER CATCHER on May 28, 2019; A BEGGAR’S KINGDOM on July 23, 2019; and INEXPRESSIBLE ISLAND on November 19, 2019. I hope you enjoy the End of Forever trilogy, and I look forward to reading your comments!
After graduating from the University of Kansas and various jobs including working as a financial journalist and as a translator, Paullina wrote her first novel Tully. Through word of mouth, the book was welcomed by readers all over the world. She has since written twelve novels, a memoir, a cookbook, and two children’s books. Her books have been published in over 23 countries, sold millions of copies, and have been on many bestseller lists around the world.
Paullina has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas, and now lives in New York with her husband and half of her children.
THE TIGER CATCHER, Paullina’s first book in the new End of Forever Trilogy, will be published in May 2019. A BEGGAR’S KINGDOM, Book Two, will be published in August 2019, and the final book in the trilogy, INEXPRESSIBLE ISLAND, will be published in December 2019.
Win a prize pack including:
💕 A Tiger Catcher tote
💕 Quartz crystal necklace
💕 Red beret
💕 A “From the Desk of Mr. Know-it-all” notepad
(Continental USA only)
Win a print copy!
(Continental USA only)
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