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Dearest Squad,

Only a few more chapters of Thieftess Thursdays (and the concurrent writing essays) to go!

When I am finished posting all of the Thieftess chapters on Patreon, I will post some more writing essays, as well as a novella or two that y’all may not have access to if you haven’t bought the anthology. (If there are any short stories you think everyone should see because they haven’t gotten enough love, please let me know! almost no one leaves comments, so your chances of getting whatever you want are very high if you just respond.)

Love you, Squad!
Thank you for your support!

xox
Princess Alethea

(Please support me on Substack and/or Patreon!)

Once upon a time, a librarian asked me how many fairy tale, folklore, and classic fantasy references I had made in Enchanted. I had only listened to Katy Kellgren’s audio narration about 4 times at that point (I lost count after 10) and I was about to go on a long road trip with my parents, so I took out a notebook and pen and hit PLAY.

By the end of the audiobook I had a list of 36, which I published on my blog.

I have never done this with any of the other Woodcutter books, though I was tempted after one reviewer of Hero said I “ran out of fairy tales in Enchanted, so the author just made up her own for this book.”

Excuse me? Hero was based on “Master Maid” (Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book), “Hansel and Gretel,” Hercules, Shakespeare (remember Hero from Much Ado About Nothing?)…Thursday even makes a cameo with her pirate ship full of Simons (“The Story of the Seven Simons,” Andrew Lang’s Crimson Fairy Book)…but I had no desire to waste my time arguing with someone who clearly wasn’t as well versed in fairy tales and folklore as I.

That didn’t stop me from carrying on with my Easter basket, however.

From time to time, I wonder how many references I have seeded in each of the Woodcutter books. Perhaps when I read them all again before Endless (Wednesday’s story), I will make another list. These moments are so fun to write. It’s also fun when I forget about them and read the book again later. Such a delightful surprise!

I can go ahead and tell you a few I wrote into Thieftess, because I jotted down notes for this essay as I was finishing up the book:

—“For an island in the middle of nowhere, this place gets a lot of visitors.”

Crow says this at the beginning of Ch. 50 (Death Keepers of the Permafrost). This line is absolutely a reference to Gilligan’s Island, an old classic TV show I watched all the time when I was a kid about a handful of people stranded on an island. It had a fabulous intro and outro theme song…and a surprising number of special guest stars (including a young Kurt Russell!). I suspect Thieftess’s ensemble cast owes a lot to my love of Gilligan’s Island.

—“He was doing the best he could. They all were.”

At the time I wrote Ch. 54 (Madame Reynard), I was also doing the best I could. Writing every day, in horrible pain, in horrible debt, hanging in there one word at a time until I got to the end of the book. Which felt like it would never come. A bit of hypomanic dialogue started looping inside my head:

Q: “What are you gonna do now?”

A: “I’m gonna do the best I can.”

Many of you might remember this exchange from The Nightmare Before Christmas. But it’s actually an Easter egg in The Nightmare Before Christmas, a call back to a Cab Calloway line in Old Man of the Mountain, a Betty Boop cartoon from 1933. My parents bought some VHS tapes full of Betty Boop cartoons that my little sister and I watched ad nauseam when we were kids. Snow White and Old Man in the Mountain were our favorites in the set.

Dad took Soteria and me to see The Nightmare Before Christmas when it released in 1993. When the credits rolled at the end of the film, she and I stared at each other in awe.

Dad slept through the whole thing.

—“This is a knife.”

Nabi says this in Ch. 54 (Madame Reynard).

No spoilers, but I freely admit that this line was 100% a send up to one of the great Fairy Tale Heroes of the 1980s: Crocodile Dundee.

—Athanasia Pendragon, author of the Legendarium (Ch 55)

There is a woman who constantly uses my email address to sign up for crap she doesn’t want. Political emails, random newsletters, the works. Her name is Athanasia Kontis. She lives in upstate NY. If you happen to know her, please tell her to cut it out, thanks.

Using Athanasia’s name in Thieftess felt a little like using my own name without 100% cheating. (Jane Austen writes about Janes all the time—could I have called her Alethea? Nah…)

While “Pendragon” is indeed a reference to King Arthur Himself, the true reason the name made an appearance in my fairy tale World is because of Howl, or “Howl Pendragon,” as he was known to some.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is one of my Top 5 Books of All Time (sorry, y’all, I like the book way better than the film). This book was the inspiration for my publishing logo (Alethea’s Moving Castle). But Thieftess is not the first time the name Pendragon has been mentioned in my fairy tales. You’ll have to read The Glass Mountain to find the first one.

Hey, Disney makes references to their own fairy tales all the time. Why can’t I?

How many Easter eggs have you caught in my stories?

xox

Princess Alethea

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Dearest Squad,

“Nabi” was one of the first Korean words I learned while watching Nevertheless in 2022. (It’s not my favorite drama…but it had some good stuff in it. They all do!) Nabi means “butterfly.”

Butterflies are fabulous. Colorful. Beautiful. Ephemeral. They are symbols of freedom, transformation, and rebirth. They also represent chaos. The stone that starts the avalanche. I refer of course to The Butterfly Effect as it pertains to science, math, meteorology…and life.

(Y’all know me. I was going to turn the conversation back to science at some point)

Back in 2016, I knew the female bartender in Thieftess’s first chapter was one of the Savage Seven from Enchanted, Chapter 14: “Pain and Punishment.” I just didn’t know her name was Nabi until I started writing “The Love Song of Peter Woodcutter” (a.k.a. “Twinkle”) in January of 2023. Her character all but leapt off the page.

Like the other major side characters in Thieftess (Tempest, Black Jenney, Yorgo Krakatoa, Webster Poom, etc), Nabi has a detailed backstory. Yes, I wish I could write her entire novel, but I really do have to finish the Woodcutter Sisters first. Also, It would be cool to actually, you know, GO BACK TO KOREA and do some in situ research for that one. Unfortunately, that requires money which I super don’t have.

(Please support me on Substack and/or Patreon!)

The existence of Nabi meant that Korean folklore was now officially a significant part of the makeup of my fairy tale World (I don’t actually have a name for this world/planet—Arilland is just one small country). I invented the Land of Seven Kings almost as a joke—for those non-ARMY in the audience, the seven members of BTS are sometimes referred to as “seven kings.” Only, as soon as I named it, the history of this imaginary fairy tale land sprang into my head as well. As these things tend to do.

In a nutshell (please forgive the lack of detail/nuance here for summary’s sake):

Once upon a time there were seven brothers who ruled over a great land (read: huge unified country) as kings in perfect harmony. Their land was a thriving, prosperous place. The seven brothers were all incredibly handsome and incredibly promiscuous, which led to the saying “In the Land of Seven Kings, every man is a prince, and every woman in a princess.”

Of course, as we are all painfully aware, nothing lasts forever.

The youngest brother considered this when he knowingly took a beautiful gumiho woman (nine-tailed fox) as his consort. He stole her fox bead (a marble-sized essence of the gumiho’s power, often transferred through a kiss). The fox-woman escaped before the king could kill her, which meant that the king would always be in danger of the fox-woman returning and reclaiming her power. In the meantime, the fox bead allowed the youngest king to live an unnaturally long life…so long that he outlived every single one of his royal brothers. Now he rules that impossibly vast country, all alone.

One old king just doesn’t have the ability to properly do a job that once took seven men, no matter how much power he thinks he has, and ultimate power corrupts absolutely. And while he may have sired countless children, only one has the ability to reclaim that precious fox bead: the granddaughter of the gumiho it originally belonged to.

Sound fun?

The reason I am telling all of you this now is because I honestly have no idea if or when I’ll actually be able to tell that story. Yeah. Sorry about that.

I also wanted to tell this story because it should be noted that I finished writing Thieftess the day after I went to see BTS in concert. As my poor, broke tuchis wasn’t able to attend any of the US concerts, one of my dear friends (who also happens to be a character in Thieftess) bought me a ticket to see one of the Tokyo shows at my local movie theatre.

It was an odd venue in which to see a concert, but my soul was desperate for even a sliver of joy. The theatre was too hot and the show was late, but BTS were wonderful and that’s all that mattered.

It made me miss Piper. She loved BTS. Jungkook, especially. I knew about BTS many years before I got into K-pop myself—mostly because of Piper.

As I drove home, I was reminded of the last novel I finished drafting. It was October of 2023. Tempest and I were in Seattle for a month—housesitting for Piper—and I was trying my damnedest to finish the crazy manuscript I’d been working on for 4 months before The Rose concert. I wrote hard and fast, but I just couldn’t manage it.

The Rose were amazing. I danced my face off for 2 hours straight. It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended—a celebration of what I feel is their best album: DUAL.

I finished writing that manuscript the very next day.

I’d tell you the working title of that novel, but it may never see the light of day either. Yeah. Sorry about that, too.

If only, if only…

xox
Princess Alethea

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Dearest Squad,

It was right around this chapter that I realized that I really needed to remember what time of year it was. Most of Thieftess is set in inns, on coastlines, in the Permafrost, or on the sea itself. But when Thursday’s crew returns to a familiar land, what exactly does that land look like?

I mean, Arilland borders a Giant Enchanted Wood. It would probably be good to know if there are, you know, leaves on the trees or snow on the ground.

And let’s be honest…by this point in Thieftess, most of the characters—and I suspect most of the readers—have had their fill of ice and snow.

There is an infamous Excel spreadsheet that my dear friend Eric James Stone helped me conceive back during the copyedit of Enchanted (I had spent months working on revisions and alterations and this was supposed to be the final pass) when someone did the math and decided that Sunday was “too young” and Rumbold was “too old,” fey blood and fairy spells bedamned. Sunday was “not quite 16” (Lydia Bennet’s age in Pride and Prejudice) so I was informed that Rumbold could not be older than 20 (even though his age is never technically disclosed).

Pretty sure this was the edit that made me hate my first novel.

Gods bless Eric, who helped me create a spreadsheet of all the main characters’ ages, so I could get a better sense of who was how old when certain Big Events happened, because now I had to shoehorn my book into this fixed timeline. I had to do a close read of every chapter to make sure every reference to something that happened “before Sunday was born” or “a decade ago” was actually correct.

We assumed a 12-month calendar and I chose a generic year to make things “easier.” I gave Jack Junior my birthday—January 11—and went down the list of siblings from there.

I’m a world builder. Very little of this ends up in the book, but it all lives in my head forever. I was never going to reveal the exact dates I plugged in to this spreadsheet, but I knew the woodcutter birth order and who was born in what season. Ergo, I technically know what astrological sign all the Woodcutter children are. (Ha! Next book: Astrology of Arilland)

The “exact ages” pass on Enchanted took me almost as long as the one where I had to cut 30,000 words out of the original draft…but that Excel spreadsheet lives on. It is VITAL to my fairy tale World. I refer to it every single time I wrote a short story set in or around Arilland. I know what time of year each novel is set in (Enchanted happens in the autumn, thus the orange leaves on the Nameday cover and the apples for sale in the market) and how long each one takes.

I’ve known how old Ashes has been at every single moment.

So when it came time for my pirates to Return to Arilland, I opened up my spreadsheet and checked a few things. Seven’s Seas visited the Permafrost in winter—ouch, but that tracks with the northern lights—which meant that when they saw Arilland again, it was early spring. Excellent. Trees are especially beautiful in the springtime.

It also meant that Peter, our sentimental spring child, would be having a birthday.

What better time to celebrate the reunion of a few precious Woodcutters?

xox

Princess Alethea

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The post THIEFTESS Chapter 53: Return to Arilland appeared first on Alethea Kontis.

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“We are Black Roses. We know how to cry.”
—Alethea on Stationhead, circa 2024

Dearest Squad,

Right around the time I started writing this chapter, my favorite Korean indie rock band The Rose announced an upcoming album, a limited-city world tour, and an indefinite hiatus.

Some of you might recall the moment last summer when my favorite K-pop group VANNER announced their own indefinite hiatus due to the youngest member going into the military and other personal matters. Yeah, I cried. I made a video about it on TikTok. My international VVS fandom family banded together and vowed to support each member through this time and—most importantly—continue supporting each other. It’s been a strange and difficult year, but VVS is limping along. Every day, we hope for the best.

This time, though, I’m just angry. Incredibly angry and desperately sad.

And no, I can’t explain why.

It might be because the Rosarium app doesn’t exist anymore, but I had moved on before its implosion. It might be because most of my real-life Black Rose besties are in LA. Maybe it’s because “Blue Moon” is a bittersweet farewell I don’t want to hear. Maybe it’s because I can’t afford to see them on tour before…whatever. Until whenever. Maybe it’s because, as much as I tried to be thrilled about releasing this book, June emotionally chewed me up and spit me out.

Yeah, that last two are definitely a big chunk. But it’s more than that. I can’t put my finger on exactly what. To be honest, I don’t really want to.

Because in the end, it’s all just…grief.

I am so very, very glad the universe conspired to allow me to get to see The Rose in Seattle in 2023 when they toured for DUAL. Best album. Best concert ever. (Apart from seeing VANNER in Korea, obviously.) I am beyond happy that my mother encouraged me to splurge and get the burgundy hoodie from that tour. It’s still one of my favorite pieces of clothing ever.

I even brought it storm chasing with me this year.

As a creative person who rides the Burnout Cycle on Expert Level, I completely understand needing a break. It’s healthy for the mind, body, and soul. It’s vital for people like us. Essential. Non-negotiable. Even sunlight gets a break. Every. Single. Day.

This year, storm chasing was that break for me. Not that it should count as any kind of break…but I literally couldn’t afford to be gone longer than that.

I was so stressed out this spring that Artemis II’s historic 10-day journey around the moon barely registered. But, unlike the anxiety attack-induced nonsense I experienced in late December/early January (because I was not able to join Piper in Thailand for her last hurrah), I am currently stressed-but-functioning (read: daily exercise + words) so I’m better than I was. I am self aware enough to realize that this anger I’m feeling is completely irrational. (As I write this at 5am.)

But that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.

I’m allowed to feel things. We all are. Most importantly, when I’m feeling things this deeply, I should absolutely write. Maybe it’s a chapter, a journal entry, or this essay. This anger is but a brief madness. Words have always been my vehicle to work through the pain and find a way back to hope.

It’s how I have survived the last 40+ years, and it is how I will survive today.

Love you, Squad.

xox
Princess Alethea

PS: Help me, BTS. You’re my only hope…

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The post THIEFTESS Chapter 52: Jason of Malia appeared first on Alethea Kontis.

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Who did you love before?
Who did they love before you?
—Better Than Ezra, “In the Blood”

Dearest Squad,

I promise to write this essay in the vaguest way possible so as not to spoil anything…but I want to talk about it because I am so in love with this chapter. This might be my favorite chapter in the whole book. I have been building up to this chapter for over a decade.

I am a collage artist. But first I was a poet.

This chapter is collage art in word form.

This chapter is a poem.

I’m sure there are academic words I don’t know to describe this kind of exposition depending on the media: callbacks, circular storytelling, etc. I don’t know these words because I was raised in math and science. I learned literature on the side. In secret.

Defiantly.

One of the most interesting things to me about this chapter is that I always knew it was going to happen in this way, and why, but my mind had never tied it all back to my siren mythology until I stepped inside Hawk’s noisy head and started writing.

Hawk was always fascinated by sirens.

And now that I’ve tied it all back to the beginning, it looks like I was brilliant and did all of that on purpose! Hmm. Maybe I was brilliant all along and was just too much inside my own head to realize it.

Ah, the magic of storytelling.

I’ve said before that this novel revealed itself to me in layers — this chapter is the mille-feuille. It’s the rug that pulls the room together.

To me, this chapter is better than tiramisu.

I still remember the day that the history of “a thousand years of Faerie” sprang into my head, fully formed. I walk around with this knowledge every day, like the Memory Stone from “The Unicorn Hunter.” The past and present of the world of Arilland is there inside my head, everything everywhere all at once, as fresh as it needs to be. It knows no timeline. Every time I sit down and flesh out one of its stories, I feel like I’m not inventing it, just remembering it clearer. And it all fits together like magic.

When I arrived at Deborah Blake’s house in NY for a writing retreat (the first of two last fall—BLESS YOU, DEBORAH), I thought I was halfway through the book. I had about 40,000 words and figured I’d get to about 80k or so (the first three Woodcutter books were 70-75k). I did a TON of writing while I was there, mostly making notes for the rest of the book.

Slowly—SO SLOWLY—one by one, I turned each of those notes into a readable chapter. Some of them ended up being so long that I broke them into two chapters. Or more.

Those notes covered a lot.

Ask Nisi Shawl sometime about just how long I had “only seven chapters left.” Every time I finished a chapter I would say, “And now I only have…seven chapters left!” This went on for a while. They enjoyed teasing me about it, which made the writing a lot less aggravating and a lot more fun in the end. As long as I kept writing, I knew I would get to that perfect last line. Eventually.

Even if the only one who sees the beauty in this chapter is me, it will have been worth the time I spent writing it…and writing the entire rest of the book that this chapter could not exist without.

xox

Princess Alethea

PS: “In the Blood” kept going through my head while I wrote this chapter. It was always my favorite Better Than Ezra song.

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The post THIEFTESS Chapter 51: Siren’s Dilemma appeared first on Alethea Kontis.

Nominate THIEFTESS for the MG/YA Dragon Award!

All you need is an email address and the title & author of the book (Best YA/MG – Thieftess, Alethea Kontis) – make sure you check the box at the top and enter the very long number at the bottom. That’s it! No fancy sign in required. Then, when it’s tine for the actual Dragon Award vote, you will receive an email asking you to vote! THAT’S IT.

Nominate THIEFTESS for the MG/YA Dragon Award!

My dearest pirate queen sister Jenney (aka Black Jenney ) reminded me this morning that the Dragon Awards were officially open for nominations…and THIEFTESS qualifies for this year!

The Dragon Award is a fan award, so you don’t have to belong to a club or even be attending the con – you just need a valid email address. So please make sure everyone in your family votes! And everyone at your local pub, and your local library, and at your school, and at the coffee shop…

I came to terms with not chasing after awards a long time ago. And part of that feeling still lives inside me – I don’t actually care if I win another award ever again. But THIEFTESS is so much the epitome of a Labor of Love, a Book of My Heart…and it’s so good that it DESERVES to be nominated. For everything.

Nominate THIEFTESS for the MG/YA Dragon Award!

Thank you, my beloved friends and family.

Let’s make something good happen in the world today!

xox
Alethea

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Ch. 50 of THIEFTESS now live on Patreon!
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Dearest Squad,

YES.

Before a passel of y’all @ me, my spelling of “dwarf”, “dwarfs,” and “dwarfen” in all the Tales of Arilland was a CONSCIOUS CHOICE.

Is is not incorrect.

Don’t believe me? Look it up. (And if you even think about asking any kind of AI, I’m gonna Gibbs-slap you right now. You need to do the damn research on this one your own self.)

I received Favorite Tales of Grimm & Andersen published by Exeter Books in 1983 (with illustrations by Czech artist Jiří Trnka) from my Canadian French grandmother on my 8th birthday (1984) and read it multiple times from cover to cover. Inside this book, Sleeping Beauty’s name was Briar Rose, Cinderella’s sisters chopped off pieces of their own feet, The Little Mermaid became foam on the waves every time, and Snow-White was the quiet and gentle sister of the far more boisterous Rose-Red.

That other chick with the same name wasn’t even in this book. But I was head over heels in love with fairy tales by then, and Alice (thanks to Disney re-releasing the film in 1981), so my collection of folklore and fairy tales quickly grew. My bookshelves were filled with leprechauns and goblins and giants and dwarfs and all sorts of other enchanted men and beasties.

Imagine my surprise when I started reading fantasy fiction that referred to them as “dwarves.”

I never really understood why. I just accepted this as a thing: fairy tales have “dwarfs” and fantasy fiction has “dwarves.” Neither one is incorrect.

Now…enter the Age of Search Engines.

Turns out, fellow fantasy author and Capricorn J.R.R. Tolkien worked on—in addition to many other things—the Oxford English Dictionary. This man was an extremely well-educated genius, a philosopher and a linguist. He was firmly in the camp of knife = knives, therefore dwarf = dwarves.

Okay, cool.

But that doesn’t make “dwarves” 100% correct with no exceptions.

Look, Tolkien had serious feelings about this decision. So do I. And when I shuffle off this mortal coil one day and cross over to the Other Side, he and I will sit down to tea and have an extremely animated discussion about this.

(Can you even imagine….? I’m giggling already.)

Anyway.

While the Woodcutter Sisters series is YES fantasy fiction, it is very specifically fairy tale fantasy, and I chose to use the “dwarf, dwarfs, dwarfen” spelling to honor those roots. Like, there are actual reasons (which I hope to figure out how to sufficiently explain by the time I finish Book 6).

If your reading roots began in the Juvenile Fiction section of the Public Library, that is totally awesome. You were raised on dwarves. Cool.

My reading as a child was more influenced by 398.2 (which we library nerds know as the dewey decimal assignation for the section in non-fiction pertaining to fairy tales and folklore). I was the toddler reading fiction in the non-fiction section. (Stick me anywhere and I will find a way to be different, I swear…)

Y’all know me. I love J.R.R.T. I celebrate Lord of the Rings and Taxes Day every year on his birthday (Jan 3 — mine is Jan 11). He and I agree on a lot of things when it comes to fairy stories. We just disagree on the dwarfs/dwarves matter. I’m totally okay with that.

And now, I hope you are, too.

(Spoilers: Just wait until Book 6, where I introduce an “elfin” shoemaker in the first chapter. That’s right. Elf/elfs/elfin. Also…elfs in my world are non-binary. The elf pronouns are ey/eir/em. Brace yourselves!)

Love always,

xox

Princess Alethea

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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

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Dearest Squad,

As soon as Saturday freed that dragon in Hero, I knew Thursday was going to be the one to have to deal with it. I just didn’t realize it would take me so long to get there.

Hero released on October 1, 2013. I started writing the dragon chapters of Thieftess on April 1, 2026. What would have been Anne McCaffrey’s 100th birthday.

Yeah, it didn’t feel like a coincidence to me either.

My favorite books of Anne’s were the YA “Harper Hall” trilogy: Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums. There was just something magical about Mennolly and her fire drakes. Anne thought so too—the Master Harper was one of her favorite characters of all time. (She also gave me the best answer to an interview question ever…but I digress.)

One of the things I loved most about her work was how much her fantasy was based in science—so much so that I once wrote an article about it for USA Today. (Anne’s dragons existed as a way to deal with the dangerous fallout of living in a binary star system.) Meredith Ann Pierce did it too, setting an entire epic fairy tale trilogy on the moon. Sharon Shinn also did it with her angels of Samaria.

These women walked so I could run.

One of the very first short stories I ever wrote—“Blood & Water”—is a dark retelling of “The Little Mermaid” from the perspective of the sea witch who lives at the hydrothermal vents. Back when I was a wee Marine Science/Chemistry major, I was obsessed with the hydrothermal vents. Entire communities of creatures live down there, chemosynthetic ecosystems (as opposed to the photosynthetic ones you’re familiar with: flowers and trees).

The most famous of the organisms down at the hydrothermal vents is possibly the tube worm. The plumes on these worms are red because of hemoglobin. Yes, the same hemoglobin we have in our blood. It’s literally what feeds them.

So having a species of fish (mermaid) that lives at the hydrothermal vents and needs blood to survive (siren), was really not a stretch for me. Also “It’s a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid,’ only she’s a vampire…and there are pirates” is a story that sells itself, really.

To date, “Blood & Water” is my most republished short story. I wrote it before “Sunday,” but “Sunday” was the one that sold first (Realms of Fantasy, Oct 2006). “Sunday” is the short story that eventually became Enchanted.

But Thieftess could not exist without the bloodthirsty, 100% science-based siren mythology I created in “Blood & Water.”

Now, does anyone else care about all this science stuff I wrote into my fantasy novels? Probably not. (Except Black Jenney, which is why she will always be one of my favorite sister-queens.) But I do. And maybe some day, many years from now, some other nerdy science girl won’t be afraid of writing her own fantasies because I once wrote that siren hair follicles were hollow like a polar bear’s.

Thank you, Anne McCaffrey.

I keep the talisman you gave Miss Andre on my writing altar as a reminder to be brave.

And every year on April 1st, I remember just how much you both made my career possible.

Xox

Princess Alethea

Read all of THIEFTESS here!

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The post THIEFTESS Chapter 48: After the Dragon appeared first on Alethea Kontis.

I get asked this question a lot, and far more frequently when I have a new book out. Since I happen to have a new book out (YAY!) I decided to make a little post I can put on my website as an answer I can refer back to later.

1. It doesn’t matter; just buy the book and tell ten people about it!

This was the answer I used to give everyone when I was first published back in 2006, and it’s basically still true. Word of mouth continues to be THE BEST WAY to help any author and their career. You don’t have to be an influencer, you just have to be a person who loves books. Like I know you are!

My traditionally published and small press books make me somewhere around $1 or less per book, no matter what price you buy them at (as long as you buy them new). If you find them on sale, snap them up! I will make the same amount, no matter what.

My independently published books (the ones through the Alethea Kontis imprint) make me closer to $2-3 on average across the board. That $50 hardcover book with the color interior, too? Yup. Printing full-color books is really expensive. I’ve just always wanted to have a book with color interior. There once was a version of The Neverending Story that had different colored text every time Bastian was in Fantastica. I never owned a copy like that, but I dreamed about it. And now—whenever I can afford to buy them for myself—I can finally have a novel like that of my own!

I use two printers for my books: Amazon and Ingram. Amazon pays out in 2 months. Ingram’s payout is closer to 6 months. The goal is to achieve a balance between the two so I am able to maintain a steady income. (That’s the dream, anyway.)

Now, if you use the special links I give everyone to buy directly from Ingram, I make closer to $10 a book…but you have to pay for shipping. And Ingram’s user interface is terrible—you can order 100 of the same book in one go, but you can’t put multiple books on one order. But if you’re just picking up the new book, or buying a gift for a friend, this would be the link I’d give you.

2. PREORDER!

Preorders are helpful for both independently and traditionally published books because all the orders (read: $$) drop on the day of the book’s release. This kind of thing counts toward the New York Times (and other) bestseller lists, because those places look at the demand of the top selling books every Monday. Both Ingram and Amazon report to the New York Times (this was one of my jobs when I worked at Ingram).

On the independent publishing front, I can tell you that preorders really, really help with an author’s mental health. Imagine spending 2.5 years finishing the novel that’s supposed to save your life, and the day of release you see all of $250 in sales.

Yup. That’s it. I’m here to tell you: your ego definitely takes a blow. Books do take time to sell. We all know that. But if and when possible, for the sake of every author you love and want to keep writing, PLEASE preorder that book you’ve been waiting on.

3. Just Buy What You Love

Everyone loves something different. That’s why I made several varieties of formats. Buy what will look good on your bookshelf (eventually they will all have new covers that match). Buy what makes you happy. Just buy it. And tell a dozen friends.

Personally, my reach right now isn’t a tenth of what it was when I was traditionally published. Current social media and those suppressive algorithms of theirs don’t help. I KNOW there are people out there who think I stopped writing in 2015. I do what I can…but y’all can do so much more. This is one of those circumstances where you truly can make a difference. And I am grateful for each and every one of you.

My life is better with you in it!

xox
Princess Alethea

PS: If you still feel like you haven’t done enough because you bought my books at a thrift store or library book sale or whatever (you’ve totally done enough) you’re always welcome to support me on Patreon. Or throw money at me in these ways.

The post Where Should I Buy Your Book That Will Make You the Most Money? appeared first on Alethea Kontis.