On the List: Heat of the Everflame by Penn Cole

After a detour as an attorney and small business owner, Penn Cole is thrilled to finally be pursuing her lifelong dream of being an author. While she is a Texas girl born and bred, she currently lives in France with her husband, where she can usually be found eating way too many pastries and trolling her readers on Discord. Heat of the Everflame is the third novel in Cole’s debut four-part series, with book four yet to release.

In this epic romantasy series, Diem Bellator yearns to escape her poor village in a mortal world colonized by the gods and ruled over by their cruel magical offspring, called the Descended. As the series begins, her mother’s sudden disappearance—and the discovery of a dangerous secret about her past—offer Diem an unexpected opportunity to enter the dark world of Descended royalty and unlock a web of mysteries left behind by her mother. However, as she dives into the world of the Descended elite, Diem quickly realizes good and evil aren’t as black and white as they seem.

In the third book in the series, Diem finds herself at the center of the conflict between the Descended and the Guardians. With her newfound friends and the man she’s falling for on one side and the mortals she has vowed to protect on the other, Diem must walk a careful line to save the people she loves … even from each other.

When asked what contributed to the book landing on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller list, Cole said: “My series was extremely written-to-market, which for me is absolutely crucial in a book’s success.” She said writing to market is much more than hopping on a trope trend. “Writing to market means asking ourselves: If a reader reads 100 books and gives them all five stars, but only three to four of those books were the ‘Oh my god, I must tell all of my friends to read this, I’m obsessed’ kind of read, what is it that those three to four books have in common?” Cole researched top romantasy novels extensively and used their common traits to inspire her writing.

Cole resists the idea of an overnight success. “I spent two years tweaking and getting feedback on my book before publishing it, and my series didn’t get popular until the third book came out.” She first released the novels in 2023 and hit the bestseller lists in March 2025, when Atria released collectible hardcover editions of the series. “I have been writing for 20 years, I have multiple degrees in it, and I studied the business of self-publishing for years before I got the courage to put my book on the market,” she said. “I hate the idea that some people might look at my trajectory and feel inadequate or disappointed by their own. Don’t use anyone else’s career as a yardstick to measure yours. Your time will come!”