Series 1 · The Phoenix Letters
Two letters a month. One love story caught between two kingdoms.
A letter subscription for grown-ups who still slow down at the mailbox. Twice a month a wax-sealed envelope arrives with your name on it, carrying the next piece of a fantasy romance told entirely in letters.
Be first to receive Letter One
Join the waiting list. We'll write when Series 1 opens. See plans and pricing.
Series 1
The Phoenix Letters
Kiara Solmont is a princess of Solmere and a commander on its front lines. Corvin Darkhaven is Court Mage of Umbravale, advisor to the queen her kingdom is at war with. They met once, briefly, and were never meant to speak again. They write to each other anyway, in secret, and the letters keep coming.
It starts as reconnaissance. Each one is trying to learn something. Somewhere around the sixth envelope, they both stop pretending that is all it is.
This is an enemies to lovers romantasy, and it is a letter story subscription in the oldest sense. Stories told through letters give you something a novel cannot: the wait. You read her question in March and you do not get his answer until April.
That gap changes how the story sits with you. You carry a half-finished argument around for two weeks. You reread the last paragraph on a Tuesday because something about it has started to bother you. By the time the reply lands you have already decided what you hoped it would say, and it is usually not that.
No app. No feed. Paper you can hold, and a story that waits for you to open it.
Nothing is abridged and nothing is summarised. You get the letters themselves, in the order they were written, with the parts the writers would rather you skipped left in.
Length
24 letters
Delivered across 12 months, 2 per month.
Shape
Enemies to lovers
Two kingdoms at war, and two people on opposite sides of it who keep writing anyway.
Written for
Grown-up readers
Adult romantasy. If you have opinions about slow burn, this was written for you.
What actually shows up
Two letters every month, posted to your address. Not an email that looks like a letter. Real letters in the mail, with a stamp on the corner and your name written across the front.
Most snail mail subscription boxes send you objects. This one sends you a story, and the objects come with it.
You will know which envelope is ours before you read the front of it. It is heavier than the bills. There is a seal on the back that has already cracked a little in transit. Whatever else is in the pile that day, you will open this one standing up, still holding your keys.
Paper with weight
Heavy stock that holds ink and takes a fold. It feels like correspondence, not like a flyer.
A wax seal
Each envelope is closed with a seal you have to break. That small resistance is the point.
Something tucked inside
A pressed flower. A torn map. A feather. Whatever the letter's writer would have sent.
Not always the two of them
Most letters pass between Kiara and Corvin. Some do not. A friend writes, or someone who should not know about any of this, and you never know whose handwriting is on the next envelope.
How it works
Three steps, then twelve months of post
A monthly letter subscription runs on a simple rhythm. You join, the letters come, the story moves.
Step one
Choose your plan
$14.95 a month for 2 letters, or pay for the full series up front. See plans and pricing.
Step two
Letters arrive
Two envelopes reach you each month. Letters mail on the Friday of the second and fourth weeks of each month. Order cut-offs are the 1st and the 15th — order before the 15th and you're in that month's second mailing; order after the 15th and you're in the first mailing of the month after.
Step three
The story unfolds
24 letters across 12 months, in order, until you know how it ends.
What is inside the envelope
The inclusions are not merchandise. They are the things a character would actually have sealed into the paper before sending it.
A pressed flower
Sent from a garden that is about to be on the wrong side of a border.
A map, torn
Half of something. The other half arrives later, from the other correspondent.
A feather
From the bird that carried the letter, or so the letter claims.
Inclusions vary by letter and are chosen to match what is happening in the story that month.
Why this one and not another letter subscription
Letter subscriptions mostly split two ways. Some send a beautiful object each month with a note attached. Others send a mystery with a correct answer, and your job is to solve it.
This is neither. It is a novel that arrives in pieces, and the pieces are the novel. Nothing to solve, nothing to assemble, no answer key at the end. You read it the way you would read anything else you love, just slower and with worse timing.
If you are shopping around for the best letter subscription for adults, the question worth asking is what the envelope is actually for. Here the letters are written first and the objects are chosen afterwards to match what happened that month. Never the other way around. A snail mail letter subscription lives or dies on whether you want to read what is inside, so that is where the work went.
Price
$14.95 a month
That is 2 letters a month, or $7.48 a letter. Pay for the full series up front at $155 and keep $24.40, or take the Keepsake Edition at $199 and get a box to put it all in.
A snail mail club subscription should not cost more than the books you are already buying. This one is priced to sit alongside them.
The Keepsake Edition
$199
The complete series in a keepsake box, with a wax seal stamp and the borderlands map.
Buying for someone else? Either prepaid plan can be given as a gift, paid once with nothing to renew, on the gift page. Looking for a deal first? We keep an honest page about that at discount codes.
Before you decide
Everyone starts at Letter One.
Join in March and your first envelope is still Letter One. It is a story, not a magazine, and you are not walking in halfway.
Thirty days, and you keep the letters.
If it is not for you, tell us within thirty days and we refund you in full. Anything already delivered is yours. We are not asking you to post a wax seal back to us.
Cancel yourself, any time.
No phone call, no password, no retention offer. Changes made by the 1st or the 15th apply to that mailing.
United States only, postage included.
The price you see is the price. International is coming and the waiting list is where you will hear about it first.
Questions people ask first
How often do the letters come?
Twice a month, every month, until all 24 letters have arrived. They mail on the Friday of the second and fourth weeks.
Are these real letters or emails?
Real ones. Story letters in the mail, stamped and sealed, addressed by hand. Nothing arrives in your inbox except the occasional note from us.
Do I need to have read anything first?
No. Series 1 is self-contained and starts at Letter One.
Can I give it to someone else?
Yes, and gifts are prepaid only, so nothing renews and there is nothing for them to cancel later. The gift page has the details.
What if I move partway through?
Email support@crossedquills.com before the next cut-off and we will redirect the rest of the series.
More at the full FAQ.
The first letter has not been posted yet
The first letter of The Phoenix Letters mails on Friday, February 12, 2027. Join the list and you will hear before anyone else. Questions first? Read the FAQ.