Dearest Squad,
In 2016, I released Tales of Arilland and Trixter…and right around Trix & the Faerie Queen I began to realize that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing as long as Harcourt had the rights to the first 3 books.
And if I kept writing about Arilland—thus encouraging new readers to pick up Enchanted—I would never get the rights to my series back in this lifetime.
So I had to stop.
Stop doing the fairy tale rants. Stop writing Thursday’s book. Everything. Full stop. I couldn’t talk about or promote just about anything. I had to act as if these books never existed…and then pray my fans stuck around long enough to care if they came back.
When my last agent told me not to write anymore YA fantasy, I felt as though my heart had been cut out with a knife. Trad publishing overbought on YA fantasy and they weren’t looking for any more. Even from me.
But, as Arilland is the world of my heart and writing new fairy tales is my reason for living (the reason my mother gave me, anyway), I couldn’t just abandon them.
So I wrote stories in secret. I knew all my characters’ back stories. Those stories probably wouldn’t make it into finished novels anyway. No one had to know that these pieces were part of a bigger puzzle. Some of them I wrote separately and fit them into the puzzle.
No, you are not crazy. It’s not some wild conspiracy theory.
Every fairy story I have written is all connected. And yes, I did it on purpose.
I’ve been doing it on purpose for the last decade.
I’ve mentioned before how The Unicorn Hunter changed the mythology of Arilland and informed pretty much the direction of the entire rest of the series. But also…
• The Seal-Woman’s Tale is the tragic story of Simon Silk’s parents.
• Blood & Water was where I invented my siren mythology.
• For Angels to Fly was written for a Tumblr project (remember Tumblr?) helmed by Julie Murphy. In it, Lord Death invents the first Angel of Fire.
• Hero Worship is all the fan letters Red Riding Hood sent to Jack Woodcutter after he saved her from the wolf.
• When Tinker Met Bell, one of my books set in Kristen Painter’s Nocturne Falls Universe, was where I invented my goblin/Lost Boys mythology. (Because I needed the Goblin King’s existence in Labyrinth to makes sense. So I fixed it. And added kissing.)
• The Goblin and the Treasure continued that mythology of goblins. And kobolds. And wizards. And trolls.
• Twinkle…well, Twinkle was originally a much longer story called The Love Song of Peter Woodcutter. It deserves to be its own novel. But this story was Nabi’s origin…and you know how much I love Nabi. 🦋
• Ashes and Anteros is my Ashes and Archer origin story. Only…it was never published, due to some complications with the anthology it was written for.
And there are more. So many more.
I love every single one of them.
I wrote up a reading order for a friend of mine…at least, it was the best list I could do. I’m thinking there should be another short story collection. Tales of Arilland won the Gelett Burgess award when it released, so we’ll leave that book as-is. But I’be been considering a thicker volume called More Tales of Arilland. I might even be able to get it out later this year (in my copious spare time). I have decided “Ashes and Anteros” should be published as an original short story in More Tales of Arilland.
What would y’all think about that?
And seriously…please leave a comment and tell me your answer. Wherever you read this. Please. I only had three people on the Patreon who read the new book as it came out. Three beautiful people.
But they’re still there.
And if you’re reading this, so are you.
Bless you. I love you always. I am still alive because of you.
xox
Princess Alethea
✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨🖤✨
My Writing Patreon has been keeping me alive. Thank you for your continued support!
