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I want to welcome Briana Chen to Books R Us. She is touring the blogosphere with I read Book Tours. The author has written a guest post for my readers. She is giving away a signed copy of the book and some swag. Enter below.
Book Title: THE THIEVES' CAROUSEL by Briana Chen
Category: Adult Fiction (18+), 300 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Z-Choice International
Release date: August 2025
Content Rating: PG-13 +M: Some bad language, violence, and dark themes (implied abuse, self-harm)
What price would you pay to undo a death?
In the shadowed streets of Aspizia, two thieves—Lyo Morandi andJasper Bray—risk everything to rewrite the past. Haunted by the death of their friend Milo, they set their sights on a forbidden prize: a ring reputed to alter time.
To steal it, they must infiltrate the Thieves’ Carousel, a ruthless exhibition where the city’s most dangerous criminals flaunt their treasures—and fight to keep them. But as Lyo and Jasper descend deeper into the catacombs beneath Aspizia, they uncover a truth far more dangerous than they imagined: the ring’s power comes at a devastating cost.
Loyalties splinter. Betrayal lurks around every corner. Loyalties splinter. As the game turns deadly, they must ask themselves: How far will they go to rescue the past and save the future—and how much of themselves are they willing to lose?
The Thieves’ Carousel is a gripping tale of ambition, sacrifice, and the haunting price of second chances.
Amazon ~ B&N
How to Write While the World is on Fire
When I started The Thieves’ Carousel, I thought I was writing about power, smoke, masks, and the machinery of control. Halfway through, I realized I was writing about collapse. About what happens when beauty curdles into decadence, and faith rots into ritual. It became less a fantasy and more a mirror, a city devouring itself while pretending to celebrate.
Aspizia—the heart of the novel—is a city built on guilt and gold. Its canals shimmer by candlelight, but they also carry the dead. The air smells like incense and iron. Gambling halls gleam beside orphanages, and masked aristocrats sip wine as the streets flood. I wanted readers to feel seduced by it, then unsettled by how familiar it all felt, a world that dazzles while quietly unraveling.
That’s what writing during chaos does to you. You start to see the poetry in the fracture lines.
I wrote most of Carousel while the world itself seemed to be falling apart—politically, environmentally, existentially. There were days when art felt absurd, like I was painting roses while the ceiling burned. But it was in that absurdity that I found clarity. The story became a way to confront decay without surrendering to it.
Writing while the world is on fire means learning to create inside the smoke. It’s not about ignoring the chaos, but transmuting it. Every flicker of fear becomes world-building; every grief becomes dialogue. The setting isn’t separate from you—it’s an emotional translation. Aspizia’s fog is just my own uncertainty given form. Its collapsing cathedrals are my sense of helplessness, turned tangible.
Sometimes the act of storytelling itself feels like rebellion. When you write, you insist that something still matters, that a story is still worth telling, that people are still worth saving, even in fiction. I think that’s why I poured so much of that ache into Lyo and Jasper, the story’s central bond: two thieves bound by loyalty and loss, trying to repair a world already rigged to break them. Their story is equal parts devotion and defiance, a testament to the idea that even in ruin, love can still be a kind of protest.
And maybe that’s the point. Writing in dark times doesn’t mean pretending the darkness isn’t there. It means looking directly at it and lighting a single match.
Carousel’s heartbeat is that quiet persistence. Beneath the blood and smoke and impossible choices, it’s a story about endurance and the belief that even when the cycle repeats, someone will choose to try again.
The truth is, the world is always on fire somewhere. It always has been. But the miracle is that we keep rebuilding—
Brick by brick, word by word.
BRIANA CHEN is an award-winning fantasy author and repeat offender when it comes to falling headfirst into fandoms. She loves morally gray
characters, unpredictable plot twists, and books that make her stare at a wall for hours afterward.She is also a digital artist, gamer, and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. She currently spends her time battling artist’s and writer’s block—sometimes simultaneously—and pursuing more adventures to add to her hoard of treasure.
Connect with the author: website ~ instagram ~ goodreads
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Matt Daughtry has always felt like he and his parents live in separate worlds—his shaped by the urbane, Northeastern liberal elite, theirs by Southern conservatism, homespun “common sense,” and talk show-fueled conspiracies. His homosexuality remains an open secret, something they sidestep rather than confront, much less accept. When he and his sister return for Christmas, the wrong sibling brings home a boyfriend for the first time.
