Dearest Squad,
A new chapter is now live! Chapter 26: Things Left Unsaid
I refer to this as the “Mostly Dead” chapter, after that moment in The Princess Bride when Westley was only “mostly dead” but still had a ways to go.
I needed these chapters, this break between all the action. The readers need a break. The characters need a break. Shakespeare and his infamous “humorous interludes” performed a similar function—emotionally letting everyone at the Globe rest and remember why they loved these characters so much…before the author goes off and puts them in danger once again.
Plus, the deeper I got into this chapter, the more I appreciated its juxtaposition to the previous one. Jack Woodcutter may be Thursday’s blood sibling, and they may be incredibly similar people, but he lives a life without family in it, for the most part. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that – it’s a valid choice that adults make during the course of their lives.
Simon Silk, on the other hand, is neither human nor fey and was born on the opposite side of the world from Thursday, but they still have this beautifully intimate bond . Silk’s care for Thursday in this chapter illustrates the love for our chosen family…and how precious it is when that family also chooses us in return.
If this book had been traditionally published—here in the US in 2026—I suspect you wouldn’t get half of these chapters. NY editors cry “pacing!” but it’s really page count, and how much the publishers think readers of a certain age (and parents of those readers) will be willing to pay to read this novel. Because pages cost money.
In the end, traditional publishing is all about money.
The first three Woodcutter novels are between 70K and 75K words. (Don’t ask me pages…“pages” depend on dialogue vs. description and the art director who’s laying it out. They say to guess an average of 250 words per page, so 70K is ~280 pages?)
At this point in the manuscript, THIEFTESS is over 62,000 words. If this were at a traditional publisher, I would have to wrap up the entire rest of the book in about 4 chapters. (Spoilers, I have notes for 10 more, so we’ll see how that works out.)
But I wouldn’t do that…I would draft the book as it needed to be written, and then the editor would go through the manuscript and try and figure out what to cut to “trim the fat.” Not to make it a better story, but to make it a shorter (and cheaper) novel.
And guess what? The more stories you write, the better a writer you become. The better a writer you become, the harder your stories are to trim.
I had to cut 30K out of ENCHANTED. I got lucky that HERO hit the mark on the first try. They were super happy to just hack off that last chapter of DEAREST whole cloth before publication.
And I am lucky now that I get to tell the rest of the Woodcutters’ adventures the way I want to tell them, at whatever length they decide to be.
I am sorry these novels are taking me so long to write, but I am not sorry about the incredibly beautiful stories I am able to give you.
I do hope you are enjoying them. I thank you, as always, for your continued support.
Much love—
xox
Princess Alethea
✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨
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