Everything You Kneed to Know About Angels

So, I have a new book coming out before Untold (which I still haven't set a firm release date for, so don't worry you missed that, because I just haven't picked one yet) and I haven't mentioned it here yet. So, naturally, I decided to make a post about it!

The book is called Divinity, and I'm publishing it under the name Cosmo Knox, and I'm gonna post all the details you need to know right here:

- New pen name! I'm publishing it under the name Cosmo Knox just because it has more explicit sex scenes in it, along with some gore and stuff, and I wanted to separate it from my YA/NA books where sex is shown in less brutal detail. This is m/m romance strewn with plenty of sassy moments. So.

- It's the first in a series. I will fully admit I have no idea how many books the Seraph Chronicles will be. I'm hoping two (Divinity & Atrocity) will suffice to tell the story I have planned, but if I need more room, I'll take it.

- Angels! To be fair, here I'm calling them seraph, but Ty has no qualms about pointing out that fancy name or no, they're fallen angels.

- Problematic kidnap romance! We all know by now it's my guilty pleasure. Besides, Gabriel could kidnap me any day.

- Sassy moments, you say? Why, yes. Gabriel and Ty? Lots of chemistry, there. Soulmates, sparks flying, all that good stuff. It's shameless fun.

- Pretty book cover:

My planned release date is July 8th, but it could be give or take a few days, because I would rather adjust the release date than put out a not-quite-ready book.

You can find a full summary on the Goodreads page, but to boil it down to the barest elements, this is a fallen angel paranormal romance with a shamelessly flirty alpha male love interest, a main character who is both an indie musician and the Devil Wears Prada-style assistant to a famous designer. It's essentially my take on the Wattpad-esque "a hot paranormal guy just kidnapped me and is calling me his mate and what now?" kind of story.

I've had a lot of fun working on it and I think it's just about ready to come out, so I'm really excited to share it! More details to come, and I promise I will be blogging more in the future.

*Crawls back into the work cave.*

Untold - Book Summary + Cover Reveal!

So if you're wondering why I've been strangely absent since the release of Shadows of Ourselves (which has been my best selling book yet and gotten good ratings so far, so thank you guys <3) it's because I'm already working on a million other projects.

I have the sequel to Blood of Midnight to get out, plus Maelstrom, both books in the Dreamworld Duet, and two standalone titles I want to release soon. Yeah, there's a lot on my plate...but that's just the way I like it.

And now I can actually talk about one of those standalone projects, because I just posted the page for it (it's called Untold) and it now has a tab at the top of the blog! You can also add it on Goodreads here!

Untold is an urban fantasy novella about a group of humans called sentinels, who are tasked with policing the dangerous mythological creatures that still roam our world, long after the fall of the gods.

It has ifrits and basilisks and selkies and nixies and ogres, and it's a heap of fun! Plus, hot boys!

Here's the cover:

And here's the summary:

Lyra and her sister Rachel are sentinels—humans tasked by the ancient gods to guard humanity against the beasts they left behind. Living in a sheltered Canadian island community, Lyra and Rachel have always been kept away from most danger by the magical protections that drew their parents to the island in the first place. But now those protections are wearing off, and Lyra and her sister have no choice but to face beasts out of their worst nightmares—gorgons and nixies and basilisks—if they want any hope of saving themselves and their town.

When a charming demigod named Callum strolls into town hot on the heels of a blast of magical energy, Rachel is weary of him, and cautions Lyra to stay away—but she can’t deny her attraction to Callum. Or the fact that he could be their only chance of turning the tide against the horde of monsters descending on their home.

Now, Lyra will have to race against time and conquer her own weakness. . .or risk plunging the entire world into chaos. 

I'm pretty excited to write it. It's set in a small Canadian town on a secluded island, and it really touches on my roots: I grew up in and around the biggest city in the province of New Brunswick, and my time was split between living in various parts of the city and in really rural areas.

I remember stretches of months growing up where the only other humans I saw were my parents and my brother, because neighbors were just too far away.

This novel is set in a place that really feels like home in a lot of ways.

Also, it's got interwoven threads of different mythologies and legends. A large chunk of things are from Greek mythology, though, and I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from hero myths.

My family is Greek, and growing up I was so, so, so fascinated by those myths. My mother's name is Athena, and she has a tattoo of the goddess on her ankle. When I was in elementary school, some of the first writing I ever did, in one of those daily journals they made us keep, were stories of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Athena, going on adventures and exploring caves together during lightening storms. I still have relatives in Greece who I would love to meet some day, and all in all, I simply love the richness of the mythology and the scope and scale of those myths - interpersonal conflicts and really contained events have ripple effects that touch on the rest of the world, and that's a big part of the plot here; what these characters do and what they choose will change more than just their own lives, and they're decidedly aware of that.

I'm really excited to share all of these projects with you, but for now this is the one I'll probably be talking about most! I'm hoping to put it out within the next 15 days, at the very most.

Coffee, enthusiasm, and writing strategy are all on my side with this one. Can't wait to share <3

Awkward In The Woods

The other day I went on a walk and learned that I'm even awkward in the woods. There's a river I like to go to near the house, and it's maybe a twenty five minute walk. Right next to it, though, there's this nice house where these two tiny, angry dogs are always in the yard, barking, and when they bark at me their owners come out and like, snap at them, and it makes me so awkward. Like, let your dog bark itself out without reminding me of your existence. Human interaction messes me up.

I think mainly I just wasn't prepared to see so many people out, since it's the middle of nowhere and I was in the mood to be alone (hence the walk to the secluded river and all) but overall it was still nice, even if walking by people doing yard work is cringe-worthy to me for some reason. And I worked through some plotting issues while I was walking, so that's a plus.

When I got to the river I was walking across the rock wall that stretches across it, like a damn or something, and someone had caught and decapitated a fish and left it's head there, and a swarm of flies was buzzing over it. It wasn't exactly pleasant. But it will probably make it into my next book, nonetheless.

It's weird to think it's almost summer again. Like, it's been an entire year since last summer. I am twenty. So much has happened - I've put out my first couple full-length novels, I've started on anti-depressants again and quit drinking. I've lost a lot of weight. At the same time though, things are mostly the same.

This winter was really hard in a lot of ways - there were a lot of times where I honestly didn't expect to make it through.

But now that the warm season is here and things are slowly but steadily getting better, I feel like I'm reclaiming pieces of my identity every day, and coming back to myself. It's nice. And I keep reminding myself that I'm not in that place I was, but it hasn't fully sunk in yet that I got through it.

The thing is, every time you fall into that black well of depression, there's a part of you that doubts you'll make it out.

I'm learning to tell that part to shut up.

And, in other news, writing a bunch. I want to do a blog every day in X one of these months, I just haven't picked the one yet. I meant to blog a lot more once Shadows of Ourselves came out, to promote it, but I haven't had the time as I jumped right into drafting the sequel to Blood of Midnight. The thing is, Shadows has been doing pretty well on its own (thank you to everyone who's bought the book!) and it's even gotten some good ratings on Goodreads, which is nice.

I actually just got a new writing desk the other day that I kind of love. It's made the idea of sitting down to work a lot more appealing actually.

So when I haven't been being awkward in the woods, I've been listening to Astrid S and writing this vampire book. You can check it out on Pinterest here if you like pretty pictures, and I do: https://www.pinterest.com/writerlyprince/tears-of-sunrise/