Timeless Fairy Tales: New Covers!

A few of you Champions might have noticed, but the Timeless Fairy Tale series has gotten new ebook covers!

I actually didn’t mean to have the new covers up before Christmas, but Amazon jumped the gun on me a little bit and was A LOT faster to post them than I expected, so this notice is a bit late compared to when they actually went up, ahahah.

If you want to see the whole series lined up, you can see them all together on the Timeless Fairy Tales’ series page on Amazon! (Otherwise we have them loaded onto the website, too!)

I’m excited, because for the first time ever, some of the Timeless Fairy Tale Heroes are on the covers! Can you spot them all? Share who you see in the comments down below! I’m also really happy about the Little Selkie’s cover–Dylan looks like herself now!

These covers were done by the same designer who did my Fairy Tale Enchantress series, Deranged Doctor Design! I’m sad to see Myrrhlynn’s covers go–though her covers are still on the paperbacks, which won’t be getting an update for a long time because it’s SO MUCH WORK to change them!!! But it’s been so fun to work with DDD and I’m thrilled with how the covers all turned out!

Myrrhlynn has gotten super busy over the past two years, and she helps me a lot more now with marketing and graphic design in general, so she likely won’t be doing my covers very often in the future, although she still does all the font design and what not for my Elves of Lessa and Second Age of Retha series, so you’ll still see her work around!

I’m sure some of you are wondering why the cover change, and to be honest it all comes down the marketing. Cover expectations change over the years, and my Timeless Fairy Tale covers–while beautiful–were a bit behind. You can see on the new covers they are more clearly part of a series–something I actually hadn’t wanted way back when I first got started because it was unusual to have a series of stand alone books way back in 2013 when I started the series. 😉 At the time, that helped readers realize the books were stand alone, but now that it’s more normal, the previous style is likely turning off potential readers.

And it’s actually considered standard for authors to change their covers every 2-3 years, so the Timeless Fairy Tales were about due for an update. 😉

To celebrate the new covers, I’m going to have a sale on the series starting January 1st, so mark your calendars and keep your eye out, because it’s a big sale! 😉 Happy Holidays and an early Happy New Year to you, Champions! Thank you for reading!

What Next?

Reign of Magic has had a smashing release, the launch fun is all over, so naturally you Champions are wondering what I’m writing next. Unfortunately, at this point my answer is “I don’t know.” And I’ve decided I’m not going to start on my next book until January.

Part of this is because I am throwing another Christmas event this year–which takes time to prepare–and I have another event I’m planning for in January that I need to work ahead on as well. But some of it is just that I’m really, really tired, and my physical and emotional health took a real beating during Reign of Magic, so before I write any more Enchantress books I really need to recover.

I know the rest of the Fairy Tale Enchantress series is going to take longer to write, and I really don’t like the idea of leaving Second Age of Retha fans out for so long. But that series is almost as complicated as Angelique’s series, and at this point I mentally can’t handle that, so I also don’t know when the next Retha book will come.

Once I stop feeling like an anxiety-ridden squirrel whose tail got run over by a truck, I will try to create a plan for next year. And in the meantime I’ve been prepping for Christmas, I may have written another Retha short story, and I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve for 2020.

Thank you so much for your patience and support, Champions. All of you are so incredible, and I love our community so much! I’ll get through this, and in the meantime we’ll have some fun! Thanks for reading, and have a lovely week!

Evariste’s Magic

As the final Reign of Magic themed post, we’re digging into a complex topic: the curse cast on Evariste, his magic, and how his feelings for Angelique affects all of that.

I wanted to cover this topic last to give everyone a chance to read Reign of Magic, because the whole post is basically one giant spoiler. So, if you still haven’t read it yet, consider yourself warned!

We know from Curse of Magic that Evariste is blocked from his powers by a dark curse, and the only way to break it is to act out his darkest desires. The spell itself tells Evariste he has to give Angelique a kiss of true love. (So a peck on the hand or cheek isn’t going to cut it.)

We also know from the events of Curse and Reign that Liliane and her minions have been harvesting Evariste’s magic and have used it to cast the various curses Angelique has encountered. (ie: Severin’s curse, the transformation spell Clotilde put on the Arcainian Princes, and we know from Evariste’s thoughts he was used to entrap the elves, etc.) Multiple people–including Liliane and Angelique–have noted that many of the curses they’ve cast have all had an exploitable weakness for love–specifically romantic love.

Reign reveals that this is no accident, but rather a trait of Evariste’s magic. He got captured protecting someone he loved, and in order to break the curse he has to give Angelique a kiss of true love. His magic has reacted to that and thus the weakness has been forged.

But Reign also reveals another aspect of Evariste’s magic, and this time it involves Angelique. As some of you might recall, when the spell that is torturing Evariste so he sees those he’s close to in pain, Angelique’s magic shreds the spell and breaks him free of it.

Though Evariste doesn’t dwell on it overly much–he’s more fixated on the aforementioned weakness–it still is worth mentioning that this is a pretty rare case of two mages whose magic works together. Getting mages working in tandem is somewhat rare. You see it in The Snow Queen Series when magic users team up together, but Evariste’s and Angelique’s case is even more rare because it’s not just fighting together, but rather magic ebbing and flowing regardless of the user’s (in this case Angelique’s) knowledge.

It is a topic future books in the series will address, but it’s one of the most blatant hints yet that that there are two sets of rules that affect magic. Hard, physical rules–like limits/prices, core magic always being stronger than learned magic, etc, etc–and emotional rules–like love can be used to break curses, and everything we’ve discussed in this post.

This is something I’ve kept in mind since I first created the world. You can get peeks of it in Wild Swans, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Snow Queen books. It was something I designed because I feel it reflects every day life and living. We’ve got a set of hard rules we live by that define what we can and can’t do, but things like love and friendship will help us test our limits and, in a way, grow stronger.

And that ends today’s Magic Class. 😉 Thanks for reading, Champions, and I hope you enjoyed this topic!